The Dinosaur Tourist by Kiernan Caitlin R

Author:Kiernan, Caitlin R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: kiernan, horror, dark fantasy, weird, short stories, sierenia
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2018-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

WHISPER ROAD

(MURDER BALLAD NO. 9)

As a kid I was terrified of lights in the night sky. All this time later, that hasn’t changed. This story was written in July 2016, and was, in fact, the only story I managed to finish that summer.

Animals Pull the Night

Around Their Shoulders

1.

It’s almost four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon when the Federal Express delivery truck deposits the big yellow box on my doorstep. This might be the last hot day of the short New England summer, and the driver looks annoyed at having to wrestle the box out of his truck and across the street to my front door. He rings the bell, but I don’t go downstairs to answer. So, he’ll either leave the box or he’ll schlep it back across the street again and drive away. There are dark stains on his shirt, and his face is slick with sweat. I sit at my third-floor window, gazing down on the street, and the air conditioning wraps me in preternatural January and keeps me safe from the sun and the baking black asphalt and delivery men I have no desire to talk with. He rings the bell again, and I think, Leave it. Just fucking leave it, and please go away, as though I have some faith in telepathy. Please, go away. He frowns and stares up at all the windows of this old house staring out and down at him. Then the delivery man scribbles something on his pad, shakes his head, and goes back to his truck. He drives off down Parade Street, leaving the big yellow box behind as he vanishes into the broil of the afternoon. I close the curtain, not wanting to wait until the sun is down, wanting to go right this minute and retrieve the box. What is it people say, Throw caution to the winds? Couldn’t I do that, just this once? It’s the middle of the day, and everyone on Sycamore Street is still at their job or busy with housework or whatever, and no one’s watching to see me come scrambling downstairs in broad daylight. And so what if they were? It’s mine, isn’t? Why should I have to sit here another three and a half hours, worrying that someone might come along and steal it? This isn’t the worst neighborhood in Providence, but it certainly isn’t the best, either, and people’s mail gets stolen all the time. And there’s this big yellow box like a flashing neon sign, flashing, flashing C’mon, take me. No one will see. No one’s watching. But aren’t they? Aren’t they always? No, it’s best if I wait. I can sit right here in my chair, at my table, and wait, and if anyone tries to steal the yellow box, I can be downstairs before they make off with it. I look away from the window, turning my attention back to the book that lies open in front of me, back to the full-color reproduction of John Charles Dollman’s The Unknown, painted sometime around 1912.

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