The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 by Karl Edward Wagner

Author:Karl Edward Wagner [Wagner, Karl Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-01T04:42:46+00:00

He walked toward Broadway in the quickening darkness, leaves piled like ashes all around him. Cassady had known Sarah since his freshman year at the University of Illinois on Polk Street. 1980. Geez, six years that seemed like yesterday. He still couldn’t find a decent job.

Sarah had tawny hair and almond brown doe eyes. Cassady felt himself getting an erection. Once, when he has awakened after dozing on the bus and dreaming of Sigourney Weaver, Cassady was embarrassed to discover that he was the proud owner of a raging hard-on and at least three bus passengers were aware of it. They had tittered amongst themselves, thinking everything was funny as usual. If only more people could be concerned with what was happening in the real world. After the bus incident, Cassady learned to sleep with a copy of the Trib over his lap, even if he was only daydreaming.

Sarah had taken up nursing after graduation. He had dropped out in his junior year at the U of I. She still loved him, though. The suspected killer’s name was David Spellman, age 27, unemployed. Chicago’s Finest found him in an alleyway behind a Winchell’s Donut House. He was in the process of raping a fifteen-year-old girl. He had a broken Coke bottle in one hand, and still had not actually confessed to anything. Cassady reeled off the stats from the newspaper article as if he had been reading the back of a Topps baseball card. He did not realize he was talking out loud.

He knew them all, though. Manson. Speck. Son of Sam. And Gacy, just five Christmases ago. What was that joke … Gacy’s favorite country and western song: I’m walking the floor over youuu … His voice trailed in mock falsetto, echoing madly in the shadowed corners of New Town. Some people thought the gays deserved it, deserved getting picked up by Gacy and shown the old handcuff trick. Cassady didn’t think so, though. Gays were different, but that was no reason to kill them.

The paper also had a short piece about the man who had found Quita McLean’s body. It was on page three of the Chicagoland section, next to an ad for Field Days.

Sarah Dunleavy lived in a second-floor walkup at 1123 Wolfram. Wrigley Field was a short distance away, and as he trudged toward Sarah’s block, Cassady imagined opening day of the ’86 season. Maybe this would be the year the Cubs would take it. He remembered all the times his mother had taken him to the weekend games with the Cardinals and the Mets. The smell of hot dogs and pizza, watching couples hold hands, yelling when Banks or Santo hit one out on Sheffield. Songs on the radio …

(Do you remember when, we used to sing, shala la la) Well, shala la la, here he was. He scratched nervously at his right hand before ringing the bell.

(Whatever happened, to Tuesday and So Slow?) He wondered whatever had happened to Van Morrison, the Dave Clark Five, Paul Revere & The Raiders.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.