"Charles L. Grant - Whose Ghosts These Are" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

WHOSE GHOSTS THESE ARE
by Charles L. Grant




Charles L. Grant was named grand master at the 2002 World Horror Convention in Chicago. It was a
well-deserved accolade for a writer and editor with more than 100 books to his credit and a mantelpiece
filled with awards, including the World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Nebula. His pseudonyms include
тАЬGeoffrey MarshтАЭ (pulp adventure), тАЬLionel FennтАЭ (funny fantasy), тАЬSimon LakeтАЭ (Young Adult horror)
and тАЬFelicia AndrewsтАЭ and тАЬDeborah LewisтАЭ (both romantic fantasies).

His 1986 novel The Pet has been optioned by the movies, the story тАЬCrowd of ShadowsтАЭ was optioned
by NBC as a TV film, while тАЬTemperature Days on Hawthorne StreetтАЭ was adapted for the syndicated
series Tales from the Darkside. His short fiction has been collected in Tales from the Nightside, A
Glow of Candles, Nightmare Seasons, The Orchard, Dialing the Wind, The Black Carousel and A
Quiet Way to Scream, and recent books include When the Cold Wind Blows, the fifth volume in the
Black Oak series, and Redmoor: Strange Fruit, a major historical horror novel from Tor, which takes
place between 1786 and the 1890s.

тАЬWhen I was asked to contribute to another themed anthology, I decided to try another serial-killer
piece,тАЭ explains Grant, тАЬexcept this time I made him a cop. The editor made a big deal about using the
museum, so I did; as it turned out, though, hardly anyone else did. Go figure.тАЭ




The street does not change, morning to night. Shops open, shops close; pedestrians walk the crooked
sidewalks, with or without burden, peering in the store windows, wishing, coveting, moving on; vans and
trucks make their deliveries and leave, while automobiles avoid it because it curves so sharply, so often.
To walk from one end to the other is like following the dry bed of a long-dead stream that snakes from
no place to nowhere.

None of the buildings here are more than four storeys high, though they seem much taller because the
street itself is so narrow. They are old, these buildings, but they are not frail. They are well-kept, mostly,
almost equally divided between brick and granite facades with occasional wood trim of various colors.
Nothing special about them; nothing to draw a camera lens or a sketch pad, a commemorative plaque, a
footnote in a tourist guide. Stores, a few offices, at ground level on both ends, apartments and offices
above; in the middle, apartment buildings with stone stairs and stoops, aged white medallions of mythical
creatures over each lintel. Gateless iron-spear fences, small plots of grass, flower boxes, trees at the
curb.

Nothing changes, and Hank Cabot liked it that way.

He walked this tree-lined block and the surrounding neighborhood for close to fifteen years, his uniform
so familiar that in his civilian clothes people he saw every day sometimes had to look at him twice just to
be sure he was who they thought he was. An almost comical look as well, as if he had shaved off a
mustache and they werenтАЩt quite able to make out what was different about him.

It was a partial anonymity and he had never been able to decide whether it was good or bad.