He turned, ready, but it was Rebecca Meyer. "You didn't answer your phone," she said. "I wasn't home," Paine said. He opened the door for her and she went in. As she passed, something stirred in him, deep down. It was something primal, animal, but it wasn't only sexual. It both frightened and ela...
Quiff helped me prepare, and I was happy to learn that he would accompany me. There were others of his kind, some of whom I met, including one who I took to be his spouse. They were indeed an unknown clan, who spent most of their time underground. There were two young kits, even stranger looking ...
Paine wondered if they had found Coleman; for a brief moment, the image of that surprised face staring down from the shower head broke through Paine and made him nauseous. It was easy to get in; like most cops, Coleman believed in his own invincibility more than in security devices, and, after Pa...
Once again I stood before a mirror, but this time not in my wedding gown but in a ridiculous full length white fur coat, which made me look huge and which weighed as much as I did. “It’s hot as blazes in this thing!” I protested. “You won’t complain when the temperature drops to ten below zero,” ...
He slept at night with the whistle of an icy wind in his ears, touched with the feel of frozen fingertips, listened with ears cold to the touch, watched with lidless eyes that stung from the tap of methane ice crystals. Warmth was something to dream about, something in another world of long ago. ...
“You couldn’t wake a mouse like that, Merlin,” I commented, yawning myself out of a wonderful dream, something to do with floating on a cloud over the massive volcano Olympus Mons. She was looking at me curiously, and skittered back, pulling her hand away. &nbs...
LansdaleMAD DOG SUMMERThe highest compliment one writer can pay to another is to admit he wishes he’d written something by the other scribbler. Joe Lansdale has written two things I fervently wish I’d written. One of them is the piece you’re about to read. If you look up the phrase “Southern Goth...
They both shared desert characteristics, both shared the dry, clean air that Thomas had so forgotten about in humid Boston, but they were different pages from the same book. For one thing, Thomas had never seen saguaro cactus before. They were a species unknown to West Texas, and, indeed, he was ...
There were some students in costume, a party going on in the grassy area in front of the domed Low Memorial Library. He asked a girl dressed like a vampire where the Law School was located. She asked a companion dressed like a flying monkey from The Wizard of Oz, who hitched his thumb to the righ...
"And once again I resolve to you that this Union will not be broken. "The present course upon which we find ourselves, as in that earlier conflict, can only lead in two directions. Either there will be peace, or peace will be abrogated, and war will continue. There is no m...
He dreamed of apples. In his dream, a canopy of apple trees hung over him, a shroud of sweet, red fruit, bobbing, ripe, heavy spheres dancing to some hidden melody. Above, the sky was very black, but his orchard was suffused with light, as if the fruit itself glowed with fecundity, the trees, sti...
There was another girl behind the desk instead, older, plain-looking, with thick, round glasses—the traditional dry librarian type. She asked to see his university library card, and when he didn't produce one she obviously debated whether or not to refuse him use of the library. But when he put o...
There, he had been a minister with a desk and no discernible job; here, he had no desk. Being a Titanian child on Mars was as much of a mindless activity as being a Minister of Nothing. He was used to wasting time.And waiting.Waiting was what he did best. For within Trel Clan were two things: hat...
NORTH Somewhere in Montreal, Peter Wayne got lost. First, the jerkoff at the border-crossing booth gave him the wrong directions, probably for fun (Peter had sensed his leg was being pulled—”You go about eighty miles west, hey?” the idiot had said, saying it in such a way, by going back to the ...
Frances knew that now, knew it so deep in her bones that her body quaked with the knowledge. The barber pole was just a barber pole now; not the Northern Star, the red and white of His passion and pain, His protecting veil over her. There was only the open Book before her, open to the last page o...