Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 823 & 824, March/April 2010

Вэл Макдермид, Кристин Кэтрин Раш, Эдвард Д. Хох, Bruce Rubenstein, Майкл Цинн Луин, Уильям Линк, Lynne Barrett, Art Taylor, Christine Poulson, Robert S. Levinson, Brian Muir, Дуг Аллин, Джанет Хатчингс, Теренс Фэхерти, Paul W. Nash, John Buchanan, Thomas Kaufman, Vincent Lardo, Judith Merchant, E. Shaun Russell, Steven Steinbock

Серия: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, книга 823

Читать онлайн

Скачать

Начало книги

Edward D. Hoch was, of course, best known for the hundreds of stories he wrote that fell within the classically defined borders of the mystery. But he also wrote a number of stories that could be classified as cross-genre pieces. The following tale, which first appeared in The Magazine of Horror in 1963, is one. A story about aging and fear, it was suggested to us for reprint by one of the author’s good friends, Doug Greene of Crippen and Landru Publishers.

SUNSET: golden flaming clouds draped over distant canyons barely seen in the dusk of the dying day; farmland gone to rot; fields in the foreground given over wildly to the running of the rabbit and the woodchuck; the farmhouse gray and paint-peeled, sleeping possibly but more likely dead — needing burial. It hadn’t changed much in all those years. It hadn’t changed; only died.

He parked the car and got out, taking it all in with eyes still intent and quick for all their years. Somehow he hadn’t really thought it would still be standing. Farmhouses that were near collapse fifty years ago shouldn’t still be standing; not when all the people, his mother and father and aunt and the rest, were all long in their graves.

Читать дальше →