Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Shuteye for the Timebroker
    Shuteye for the Timebroker
    Shuteye for the Timebroker
    Ebook370 pages7 hours

    Shuteye for the Timebroker

    By Paul Di Filippo

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “A colorful palette of ideas and approaches . . . Most of the stories percolate with the author's trademark gushes of wit and humor” (Publishers Weekly).

    You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast-moving, heart-warming, brain-bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you’ll no longer see everyday life quite the same.

    If you’re allergic to surprises, Paul Di Filippo is not the writer for you. With a total of fifteen stories including two original to this volume, Di Filippo delivers conventional stories unconventionally and unconventional ones straightforwardly. With a magic imagination he transforms traditional science fiction formulas into strange coruscating gems. Many of the tales in Shuteye for the Timebroker mix scientific rigor with wild and hilariously weird fantasy, producing delightful alloys of the surreal and the mundane. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 1, 2014
    ISBN9781497626904
    Shuteye for the Timebroker
    Author

    Paul Di Filippo

    Paul Di Filippo is a prolific science fiction, fantasy, and horror short story writer with multiple collections to his credit, among them The Emperor of Gondwanaland and Other Stories, Fractal Paisleys, The Steampunk Trilogy, and many more. He has written a number of novels as well, including Joe’s Liver and Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken.  Di Filippo is also a highly regarded critic and reviewer, appearing regularly in Asimov’s Science Fiction and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A recent publication, coedited with Damien Broderick, is Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985–2010.

    Read more from Paul Di Filippo

    Related to Shuteye for the Timebroker

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Murder Most Fowl

      Mar 12, 2023

      Murder Most Fowl
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Old Un's Notes

      Jan 11, 2023

      Just before Christmas, historian Lady Antonia Fraser composed a verse on confronting that age-old companion to faith – doubt – at Farm Street Church, Mayfair. Nick Downes is one of the most treasured cartoonists at Oldie Towers (see above right for a

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken

      Feb 4, 2019

      What she wanted was a kind of greatness that women were not allowed. The post ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      MESSAGE In A BOTTLE

      Apr 1, 2023

      In 1849, fifteen-year-old Christy Dooley leaves Ireland for America, stowing away aboard the St. John, a “famine ship” crowded with Irish families fleeing the miserable poverty and devastation caused by the Great Potato Famine. Christy has a crooked

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Gardens Of The Queen

      Feb 2, 2024

      Gardens Of The Queen
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      March’s GREAT READS

      Feb 17, 2020

      March’s GREAT READS
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Paranormal Cold Case Investigating History’s Most Spine-chilling Encounters

      Jul 7, 2022

      Scott is nervous. The last time he told this story was in his late teens. Halfway through, his friend told him he should go to the bathroom. “Why?” Scott asked. The friend pointed out Scott was bleeding. “I had been so nervous telling the story, that

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Chairman Of The Hoard

      May 13, 2022

      Chairman Of The Hoard
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books To Read

      Dec 6, 2024

      KATIE CALDESI AND GIANCARLO CALDESI (HARDIE GRANT, R445) Join the Caldesi duo as they head to the island of Sicily to delve into its delicious food. Starting in the capital, Palermo, they explore street food from Arancini (rice balls stuffed with mea

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Paranormal Cold Case Investigating History’s Most Spine-chilling Encounters

      Jul 7, 2022

      Scott is nervous. The last time he told this story was in his late teens. Halfway through, his friend told him he should go to the bathroom. “Why?” Scott asked. The friend pointed out Scott was bleeding. “I had been so nervous telling the story, that

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Better Books

      Mar 3, 2021

      Delia Owens (Little Brown, $22.99) Rumours about the ‘marsh girl’ have haunted Barkley Cove, on the North Carolina coast, for years. When Chase Andrews is found dead, locals suspect Kya Clark, aka the ‘marsh girl’, is the killer. But Kya is not what

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Club

      Aug 7, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Books

      Oct 18, 2021

      by Gigi Fenster Text Publishing — $38 Alarm bells may be set off by the first few lines of this novel: “The baby, Michael, grew healthy and strong. Strong enough to be difficult. Strong enough to have tantrums … And it wasn’t so bad for the baby’s mo

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Club

      Dec 30, 2019

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Worship On High

      Oct 18, 2021

      Worship On High
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2024

      after a cycle of paintings by the Meister des Marienlebens, Munich What begins: everything. Size of a crumb,indiscriminate bundle of cells. It’sa barnacle with a dream inside. Cloudin-sewn with seed pearls. Radiant shapethat in theory she’s always ca

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Birth Rates, Dislocation, And A Star's Story

      Oct 11, 2024

      An American once wrote a book called The Vanishing Irish, where he predicted the demise of the Irish people. He was wrong. Ismail's tome may very well be a different kettle of fish. Given its subject and statistical basis, it is surprisingly easy to

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Lost Prayer

      Feb 2, 2023

      A Lost Prayer
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lucy Sweet Is On The Verge

      Jul 22, 2024

      Boomers get a bad rap, blamed for everything from the destruction of the planet to economic instability. But despite that, I’m quite jealous of them. They lived through the swinging Sixties, they don’t have to work any more, and they couldn’t give tw

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Margaret Atwood Gets Personal

      Mar 10, 2023

      In 'Old Babes in the Wood,' Atwood grieves the death of her partner and bygone cultural mores. The post Margaret Atwood Gets Personal appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters

      Apr 20, 2023

      Alan Murdie’s article “Spirits of Glencoe” [FT428:18-21] describes the infamous massacre, along with latterday commemorations of the event, and the general atmosphere of foreboding that seems to pervade the Glen and surrounding area. Glen Coe is an a

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Second Language

      Aug 14, 2017

      Second Language
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Poetry

      Jun 1, 2021

      Poetry
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Vaguely Clever

      Jun 29, 2022

      It was quite a coup for our little church in the Sussex village of Ticehurst. Edith Vogel, a renowned pianist, had generously come down from London to give a recital in aid of the restoration of the roof. She was well into a Beethoven sonata which wa

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Shuteye for the Timebroker

    3.5/5

    7 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Shuteye for the Timebroker - Paul Di Filippo

      Shuteye for the Timebroker

      Paul Di Filippo

      Open Road logo

      Readers of my Neutrino Drag collection will perhaps recall the presence there of two early stories of mine: Rescuing Andy and Yellowing Bowers. As I explained in those pages, these stories were the start of an abortive series set in the mysterious New England seaside town of Blackwood Beach. Two other installments were written but never sold.

      On a whim recently, I went into my cave of memories (a large closet in my office full of moldering boxes) and dug out the manuscripts of those two tales, which I had not looked at in nearly twenty years. I was amazed to see they were at least as readable as the two that saw print, and so I determined, rather nostalgically, to give them a long-delayed life.

      Following the seasonal motif established by Rescuing Andy (summer) and Yellowing Bowers (autumn), the third story, Captain Jill, illustrates the events of a typically atypical Blackwoodian winter. The knitting motif herein traces its origin to the vocation of my mate, Deborah Newton, who at the time I was embarking on my career with this story was starting her own as a knitwear designer.

      Captain Jill

      Someone was singing in the cellar.

      T. Clayton Little, sitting stiffly in his ornately carved canopy bed, the still-strange room around him darkly full of the accumulation of two hundred years of other peoples lives, wondered if he should investigate.

      Perhaps, he thought, if I simply lie here, Granny will go and check it out. And if she doesn’t get up, then it can’t be anything serious.

      For a moment, that train of reasoning reassured him. Its derailment, however, was almost immediate. Granny Little was partially deaf and suffered from arthritis in several crucial joints. Additionally, she would never see the blithe side of ninety again. Weren’t these very facts the reason why Clayton had let his father convince him to come live with her and manage her affairs, not the least of which was the Little Mistletoe Farm of Blackwood Beach? Have to drive out there early tomorrow and show some extra attention to Ethel, thought Clayton with absurd irrelevance, before dragging his mind back to the problem at hand. What was he thinking of, hoping the frail old woman would save him the unpleasant task of venturing out of his warm bed at four in the morning, padding down three flights of steep stairs into a cold, damp basement, and finding out just who—or what—was making that cacophony?

      Ashamed of his selfish trepidation, Clayton tossed back the thick comforters and swung his long, gangly legs over the side of the bed. Midwinter moonlight shafting through a leaded-glass window revealed one of Clayton’s best-kept secrets: a fondness for old-fashioned nightshirts most unfashionable in a young man of thirty-two. Catching sight of the dim ghost of his reflection in a mirror, he winced, recalling the derision Marianne had heaped upon him back in Asheville when she had discovered this gaucherie. Her insensitive laughter had been one of the prime causes of their breakup, freeing Clayton from his last tie to the town of his birth.

      He shook his head in wonder at the inexplicable twists and turns of life. Had he not been so enamored of being unromantically comfortable while sleeping, he might never have broken up with Marianne. Consequently, he would not have been inclined to move north, to this strange New England town of his ancestors. And therefore, he would not, at this instant, have been shuffling from one frozen foot to another, postponing the inevitable moment when he would have to descend to locate the source of the mysterious singing.

      Chafing his big, rawboned hands together nervously, Clayton left his bedroom. Out in the long third-floor hall, he turned left and proceeded cautiously past Granny Little’s room—whence gentle old-lady snores issued—to the head of the stairs. The noise was more easily heard here, drifting up from the depths of the large house like the notes of an infernal symphony. Although Clayton could not make out any words, the lusty soprano seemed to convey unpleasant intimations of villainy and unholy glee.

      Down the stairs, with their threadbare woven runner, to the second floor, Clayton slowly made his way. Pausing, he sought to discern at least the refrain of the song, hoping to recognize a pop tune and thereby draw the reassuring conclusion that the radio had somehow shorted itself into activity. No luck.

      On the ground floor of Claytons new home, tiny fragments of the song became recognizable. Standing in the kitchen, with its massive wood-gas stove and cantankerous icebox, Clayton thought to make out the words dead man, treasure, and rum. Not exactly the components of any current Top 40 hit he could recall. And anyway, the innocent radio sat quiescent on its shelf.

      Now Clayton began to grow intrigued, despite his fears. Who could be responsible for this bellowed chantey? Some drunk who had wandered into their cellar to escape the cold, no doubt. Emboldened, Clayton took a long-handled flashlight from its resting place and moved to the locked door leading to the stone-walled cellar.

      The rickety stairs leading down were lined with old galoshes, empty Ball jars, broken crockery, and other relics of life led by generations of Littles. Clayton descended cautiously, reaching the dirt floor without barking his bony ankles, a minor triumph.

      Here the song welled up in its full glory, only slightly muted. Clayton recognized it now for a version of that beloved boyhood favorite, Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest. Odd, he hadn’t thought of that song for decades. He wondered that anyone still sang it. And the voice! Was it that of a throaty woman, or of a high-voiced man?

      The familiarity and innocent connotations of the song lifted Clayton’s spirits even further. Some teenager it had to be, bent on mischief.

      Flashing the beam of his light around the web-shrouded, unpartitioned space, cluttered with generations of offcast miscellany, Clayton looked for an open window that could have granted the intruder access. But as far as he could see, the small, dusty casements were all fastened securely with rusty hooks and eyes. Perhaps elsewhere, out of sight, a window had been breached. Clayton pictured the inconsiderate singer, supine and drunk, lying facedown on the damp earthen floor, bellowing in his muffled manner. Not wanting even an annoying vagrant to catch a cold, Clayton moved away from the foot of the stairs and walked down irregular aisles of cartons and loose junk, furniture and Flexible Flyers.

      A thorough investigation of the capacious cellar, however, revealed no open window or supine drunk, but only more assorted trunks and boxes, a gigantic furnace with its pile of coal boxed by three wooden walls, and a dilapidated sleigh covered with cobwebs and smelling of musty leather.

      The unseen singer had switched tunes by the time Clayton had completed his search. The new song was unfamiliar, but of the same genre, detailing unsavory depradations and plunderings, accompanied by graphic bloodshed.

      Clayton returned to the foot of the stairs and stood there, baffled. Where the hell was this intruder who had disturbed his sleep?

      He cocked his head. Was the sound issuing from below?

      Suddenly he was ten years old again. Gran’pa Little, long dead, stood beside him. Yup, Clay, this town is wormier than Swiss cheese. Laced with tunnels dug by the old freebooters and smugglers. Why, one of them surfaces right here.

      Perhaps the old man hadn’t been joshing. Clayton went to the southwest corner of the cellar. There, shifting a box or two, he uncovered the trapdoor set in its wooden frame. He pried up the rusty ring set in its top and heaved. The door opened with a ghastly creak, and surprisingly fresh, sea-scented air rushed out in a puff. A set of rungs led straight down into the black hole.

      Flashlight in one hand, its lonely beam directed uselessly upward, Clayton took the first step downward.

      His return to Blackwood Beach was proving a bit more arduous than he had anticipated.

      Once upon a time, Blackwood Beach had been, for young Clayton, a place of no responsibilities. In those days he had never had to contend with late-night caterwauling; nor had he had to manage family businesses.

      Every summer for thirteen years, from the age of six to eighteen, Clayton had left behind the mundane for the miraculous by means of a simple sixteen-hour drive north with his parents. Departing hilly Asheville, North Carolina, where his father was the curator of the Vanderbilt mansion, Clayton always felt as if his soul were being freed from the bondage of his school work and his paper route and reformed into a purer, more marvelous thing.

      The feeling would persist until his father would yell at Clayton and his sister, Get your goddamn feet off the back of my seat, you two depraved young monsters, and count out-of-state license plates! Reality reasserted itself then, informing Clayton that he was not entirely free. Still, something of the sense of emancipation would remain with him through the long months of June, July, and August, spent amid the straggling, elm-shaded streets of Blackwood Beach.

      For the first few trips, Clayton was never quite sure of how they arrived at the old seaside town. Pestering his father to tell him the precise directions, he got back such instructions as follow a dark star or turn left where normality turns right. By the age of ten, though, he knew the route as well as Mr. Little, though he could not put it into phrases any less opaque than his fathers.

      Although it took some getting used to, Blackwood Beach eventually became Clayton’s favorite place. (What child could fail to fall in love with a village where, for instance, the town coordinator possessed scales, webbed fingers, and a penchant for raw herring?) When, in his teens, he came to read the works of Asheville’s most famous native son, Thomas Wolfe, he found a sentiment that tallied with his feelings for Blackwood Beach:

      America is the only place where miracles not only happen, but happen daily.

      Throughout his teens, Clayton continued to enjoy his yearly stays with Granny and Gran’pa Little, especially the visits to the Little Mistletoe Farm, which lay a few miles out of town. As the years passed, however, other interests naturally grew to assume equal importance. When it came time for him to enter college, he regretted that having to work during the summers would mean that he could not keep up his visits. After a time, the town and its weird doings shrank to relative insignificance, a parcel of happy, youthful memories wistfully untied and examined during the more stressful moments of adult life.

      At the age of thirty, Clayton had returned to Asheville to live with his parents. His own business—a video-rental store specializing in recordings of various elderly actors reading the works of Romantic poets—had gone bankrupt, thanks to an appalling lack of taste on the part of the general public, and he needed some time to recoup his inner resources.

      Somehow, two years had drifted by while he held a succession of odd jobs. A wan romance had developed with an old friend, now divorced. Its ending had almost ruined the pleasure of nightshirts for Clayton, leaving him bitter and confused.

      Then had come the letter from Granny Little, written in her familiar crabbed script, which looked as if a drunken spider dipped in ink had wandered across the paper. Requesting help with the family business, the letter was too plaintive to go unheeded.

      And so Clayton had taken the well-known road north, finding that he hadn’t forgotten the final, crucial passage into Blackwood Beach, and feeling as if the tawdry years were dropping off his back like a snake’s too-small skin.

      The splintery ladder had left its calling cards in the soles of Clayton’s bare feet and under the base of one thumb. Standing beside the ladder, he tried to aim the flashlight at his injury with the same hand with which he was attempting to remove the sliver in his digit. The whole procedure was both ineffectual and frustrating, so he gave up and concentrated on taking in his novel surroundings.

      The ladder vanished above into a deep black square that was the cellar trapdoor casement. The tunnel ceiling around the hole was braced with wooden planks and beams, mossy and green with age. The rickety ladder hung down like a dipstick in an oil tank, not far from the earthen wall of the passage, so that one might almost have missed it without moving slowly through the subterranean shaft and carefully shining a light.

      The passage—obviously part of the extensive network underlying Blackwood Beach—was wider across than the span of Clayton’s outstretched arms, a not inconsiderable distance. From behind Clayton came a moist breeze meandering in from the sea. Ahead, the beam-ribbed tunnel stretched cold and damp.

      It was from this direction that the singing came. So much was clear. Also apparent was the nature of the voice. It was a woman’s, reminiscent of that of the young Lauren Bacall. (Clayton still got shivers when he recalled the neophyte actress telling Bogart how to whistle.) Had this woman wandered in from the seaward end of the tunnel and gotten lost? She certainly didn’t sound frightened, unless she was singing solely to keep her courage up. Clayton doubted, however, that someone who was terrified could put so much almost palpable joy into lyrics about maiming, looting, and burning.

      Down the tunnel, flashlight probing ahead, Clayton cautiously advanced.

      He was not ready for what he encountered.

      The young woman sat on a big crate. Her hair was a wild mass of red curls, like a bank of roses in spring. Her skin was white as country snow, save for random freckles and ruby lips. Her green eyes seemed to catch the flashlight’s rays; they shone like a cat’s. Her small nose managed to imply an impudent archness.

      She was dressed rather unconventionally. A white shirt of masculine cut, big balloon sleeves tight at the wrist, its buttons half-undone, causing it to hang off one shoulder. A short black skirt with a jagged hem, revealing long, exquisitely tapering bare legs, which were encased below the knees in high boots. A wide leather belt, from which depended a sheathless sword.

      Swigging from a bottle, she let one leg dangle; the other was bent sharply, the heel of her boot caught against the upper edge of the crate. The whole effect was exceedingly indelicate, and had Clayton’s mother ever caught his sister sitting in such a fashion, the girl would have gotten the walloping of her life.

      An icy drip started to fall from the root-tangled ceiling of the ancient, beam-braced tunnel, directly above the befuddled Clayton. It seemed the very essence and distillation of frigidity, a succession of pure arctic droplets, each stinging like the Ice Queen’s kiss.

      Clayton didn’t even feel them. He stood barefoot—his robe twitching halfheartedly in the tunnel’s mild breeze, his collar growing wetter by the minute—unable to believe what he was seeing.

      Bellowing out the final refrain of her chantey, the woman paused to drink long and heavily from her bottle, afterward wiping her mouth with the back of one hand. Clayton noticed then that one board of the crate had been pried off, revealing numerous bottles packed in straw within. When she lowered her head, her gaze at last fell upon Clayton.

      Company! she shouted. ‘Sblood, but I do hate drinking alone! Haul your carcass over here, man, and help me hoist a few.

      She patted the empty spot next to her invitingly, with a lascivious twinkle in her eyes that Clayton found disconcerting, to say the least. He gulped, coughed, and found his voice.

      Uh, sorry, ma’am, but I make it a policy not to mix spirits with spirits.

      Ah, a regular tavern wit, I see! Very glib, indeed. But your caution is overnice, in this case. I’m no ghost, you mooncalf! Look at me! Does this flesh look less than solid?

      Subtly shifting her position, allowing her skirt to hike up in an apparent attempt to meet her downward-trending blouse halfway, the woman offered herself for inspection.

      Ma’am, please! Clayton begged, averting his reddening face.

      Have some spine, man! Are you a eunuch? Why, the scurvy potboy, lowest of my crew, would have known how to react to such an invitation by Captain Jill Innerarity, Hellcat of the East Coast, known from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras as a mortal terror and expert wench. All right, you can look again. I’ve composed myself all ladylike for your eyes.

      Clayton swung his head back around. Captain Jill had spoken true, going so far as to demurely cross her legs at the knees. Still, Clayton didn’t trust her.

      If you’re not a ghost, he demanded, then what are you? And what are you doing underneath my house, howling those awful songs and keeping me awake?

      I’m a woman and a pirate, any fool could see those two things. And as for my singing, I’m celebrating my release. After three-hundred-odd years of entombment, you’d bloody well feel like singing too, bucko!

      Clayton’s bafflement must have been obvious. Jill boosted herself off the crate, dusting her skirt neatly. Follow me, you poltroon, and I’ll show you.

      She headed off down the tunnel, and Clayton cautiously came after her.

      By a tumbled pile of bricks partially filling the way, they stopped.

      My home for these past three centuries, Captain Jill said, indicating with a wave of her hand where Clayton should look.

      He swung the flashlight to reveal a brick-lined cubicle set into the earthen side of the tunnel, its fourth wall a knee-high remnant flush with the passage.

      How— began Clayton.

      Captain Jill interrupted. This Blackwood Beach of yours was a wizardly place even in my day, and I steered clear of it as long as I could. But after raiding up and down the coast for years, I ran out of towns to sack. And I was always looking for new challenges. So at last I convinced my men that we could deal with any dastardly tricks this hamlet could offer. One stormy evening, we hazarded a landing on the beach, thinking no one would be expecting us. But they were. A queer one-eyed sorcerer by the name of Goodnight led them. My men he bewitched into hermit crabs, who promptly buried themselves in the sands. Me he bricked up here, filling the loathsome box with a strange blue gas that left my senses intact, saying he might have a use for me in time.

      Clayton contemplated the coffin-sized space. Three hundred years in a closet? He would have gone mad.

      As if guessing his feelings, Captain Jill continued. That devilish blue phlogiston, or whate’er it was, left my poor body suspended, but my mind all arace, like a chip in a millstream. At first, I thought I’d be a bedlamite ere long. I couldn’t understand why the warlock had gone to such trouble to preserve me, only to drive me mad. Why hadn’t he just extinguished my thoughts for the nonce, as one caps a flame? But then I noticed the gas gave me certain powers. To wit, I could see and hear what was happening outside my petty cell—all over the world, in fact. I suspect that the scheming Goodnight wished me to keep abreast of history as it happened, so to speak, perhaps in preparation for whate’er obscure use he had for me. At first, I was chary of using my supernatural vision and hearing o’ermuch. But I soon came to enjoy amusing myself, watching the folly of mankind.

      Clayton had a sudden frightening thought. Welcome Goodnight, the magician—did he just free you tonight? Clayton had no wish to intrude on any of the mysterious Goodnight’s projects.

      Hah! That rascal did no such merciful thing. Yesterday a tremor of the earth opened a crack in my prison. The gas seeped out, and I came to, my old self. With my sword, I gradually chipped away this old mortar and made my escape. If luck be with me, that bastard Goodnight knows nothing of my escape, and I’ll soon have my revenge.

      Talk of taking revenge on the powerful Goodnight, still living as one of Blackwood Beach’s most eminent citizens, sent gooseflesh crawling up Clayton’s wet back, and he sought to change the topic.

      Uh, your visonary powers—do you still have them?

      Captain Jill scowled fiercely. Blast it, no! They’ve vanished with the gas. A handy talent those would have been, now that I’m free! Luckily, I remembered watching some men hide that crate of whiskey not far from me some sixty years ago—during a time called Prohibition, I wot—and I knew where to head as soon as I was free. All those years built a powerful thirst, my lad. Captain Jill passed a silky tongue over her lips. As well as certain other yearnings.

      Nervously, Clayton replied, Well, yes, I’m sure that’s true. We’ll see about attending to those when we get you back up to the surface and make you presentable.

      Who says I’m following you back up aboveground? Captain Jill demanded.

      I naturally assumed—

      You’ve assumed wrong, my fine fellow. Your modern world makes me nervous, at least for the nonce. I’ve everything I need down here. Whiskey, song—and now you.

      While she talked, Captain Jill had managed to inch closer without Clayton’s noticing. Now she was within a foot of him. Realizing this with a start, he began to back away.

      Uh, that’s very flattering, Miss Innerarity, but I’m afraid I have no intention of staying. I have duties up above, a saintly old grandmother to attend to—

      Grandmother be damned! Captain Jill yelled. I’ve got blue fog in my veins that I’ve got to work off. It’s left me cold after that long sleep, and I need some mortal warmth!

      Captain Jill extended one slim finger to touch the back of Clayton’s hand. A preternatural bolt of ice shot up his arm, and he hastily jerked back.

      I’m sure a doctor can cure that condition better than me, Clayton argued. Perhaps a day in the sun would work wonders—

      I’ll pick the nostrum for what ails me, you snivelling whelp, and it’ll be a cure that’s never failed me yet!

      With this, Captain Jill leaped upon Clayton with alarming speed. Her embrace transmitted a fearsome chill through his nightshirt and throughout his entire body. He felt her breasts as two soft mounds of snow tipped with nubby little stalagmites. (Or was that stalactites? he wondered absurdly. He could never keep the two straight. He supposed it depended on whether she was lying on her back or on her stomach.)

      Clayton’s mind began to fail under the onslaught of the cold radiated by Captain Jill, who now wrapped one leg around one of his and toppled him to the ground. Much to his alarm, he detected certain umistakable stirrings below his waist, as her actions combined with the supernatural chill began to rouse him to an icy erectness.

      Before blanking out, Clayton had time to wonder if Roger me silly, you varlet! meant what he suspected it did.

      Why was he thinking of John Keats? Surely there were more pressing matters to fill his mind as he lay there on the damp, packed earth of the tunnel floor. Such as finding the power to get to his feet.

      Ah, that was why thoughts of Keats had occurred to him. Those lines in La Belle Dame sans Merci: And I awoke, and found me here / On the cold hill’s side. Certain parallels were undeniable. Was there any record of how the knight in that poem had dealt with the morning after?

      Summoning energy from previously unplumbed depths, Clayton woozily got to his feet. His flashlight was sending out a yellow beam indicative of drained batteries. Captain Jill was nowhere to be seen.

      Somehow Clayton made it back to the ladder leading up to his cellar. His energy was dribbling back in small increments, and he used some to ascend the rungs.

      In the basement, he dropped the trapdoor and weakly shoved boxes atop it. He jumped as a noise sounded behind him. Jill? No, only a whiskery rat scrambling across some cardboard.

      The cellar stairs were another obstacle, but he conquered them like Hillary taking the last hundred yards of Everest. In the kitchen, he slammed the door shut and locked it, wondering if he had the strength to move the refrigerator in front of it.

      Clayton?

      He nearly shot out of his skin. Turning around slowly, he found Granny Little seated at the breakfast table. His loud sigh of relief obviously puzzled her.

      Granny Little was about four feet five inches tall. Her silvery white hair was caught up in a large bun partway back on her head. Thick bifocals in gold frames rested on her hawklike nose. Her knobby, arthritic hands were clasped clumsily atop the table. She wore her unvarying outfit: a gingham dress covered with a homemade cardigan.

      Where have you been, Clay? I checked your bedroom and found it empty at six. It’s nine now. I was so worried.

      Clayton began to explain. The singing, his descent to the cellar, and then to the tunnel, his conversation with Captain Jill. When it came time to detail how he had been rendered unconscious and taken advantage of, Clayton paused, unsure of how to phrase it delicately. At last, he bulled ahead, knowing Granny had led no sheltered life.

      Granny nodded knowingly. I was afraid something like that had happened when I saw the cellar door open. Granny’s cherubic face assumed a look of worry and sadness. Oh, I’m afraid it’s all my fault for not warning you, Clay. And once I suspected where you’d gone, I still couldn’t help. My joints, you know.

      Clayton felt awful that Granny was blaming herself. All his self-pity quickly vanished. What did he have to worry about? At least he was young and healthy. The woman lurking under the house could surely be evicted by someone of his ingenuity and abilities. When he smelled the coffee Granny had perked, he felt even more hopeful.

      I had completely forgotten about this Jill person, Granny continued, her look of concern partially overlaid by one of calculation. There was an old legend about her, but after so many years, no one gave it much thought. It seems now we’ll have to do something about it. Tell me, Clay, what exactly did that chill of hers feel like?

      Clayton thought a moment, then strove to capture the preternatural sensation in at least a simile.

      Like being squeezed by a polar bear during an Antarctic midnight while simultaneously having a spinal tap.

      Granny shook her head in sympathy. It sounds, son, like you could have used a nice warm sweater between you and that witch.

      At that instant, having placidly uttered the non sequitur, Granny began to knit.

      Clayton put a hand to his forehead and eyed her uneasily—for the woman had neither needles nor yarn in her hands.

      For almost seventy years, Granny had been a compulsive knitter. Even her arthritis had not slowed her down. The output of her flickering needles had clothed, covered, and comforted dozens of Littles and their neighbors with sweaters, blankets, slippers, mittens, socks, and gloves of every description and size. Nor was Granny a purist. She would knit with wool, rayon, acrylic, even string. She knew every pattern in the books, and dozens that were unique to her. Clayton had worn garments made by her all his life.

      But just recently, Granny had developed a disconcerting habit. Although as capable as ever, she had forsaken the conventional implements and materials of her craft, apparently having exhausted their potential after seven

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1