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It takes me a while to drag him out, he's got himself stuck to the axle, and by the time I am done and stand over the body something strange has started to happen. The alley's filled with a half-dozen cats, runty little things with their ribs showing and their tails worn high like they're pointing to the moon. I stand there, breathing froth into the snowflakes and watch them gather round me, soft kitty paws, and now and then a patrol car rolls past in the distance. The cats are circling us, tails cocked at the moon, their muzzles bloodied by the tail lights' glow. They are vicious bastards, let me tell you: frost on their whiskers, eyes like cut glass, a half-dozen pairs, on me and the dead man. And then they start licking. Licking at the snow I mean, the blood in the snow, they lap it up like mother's milk. And all the while from their throats, from their whole bodies, there issues this sound, you hear it with your skin, it's like an engine running under your palm. That's when I realize they are purring, man, purring as they feed on the midget's death. ↗
A selection of quotes from The Night of Harrison Monk’s Death (Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection: 1) "Is this one of the more unusual cases of safe-breaking you've been asked to investigate, Mrs Hetherington?" "Remember your private detective wants to be able to sleep soundly at night and in their own bed, not one supplied as her Majesty's pleasure." "It seems to be an open and shut case doesn't it? But it's not you know? How do you know if anything is what it seems?" "But where is Cheung kin?" "When I first set eyes on your father, he was spying on a man from between two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." "I don't think I need say more." "On the contrary, if you want me to have any idea what you're talking about, I think you do." "Why don't you report it to the police?" "Because I stole it in the first place didn't I?" "It's something of a mystery, I admit." "Vanished into thin air!" "You sound so sensible Mrs Hetherington. Please help us get to the bottom of this." Ah, thought Jane – the old story. "No body was found?" "Shall I put the kettle on?" "Only if you fill it with whiskey." "The course of true love didn't run smoothly for me either, you know." "Life has its tragedies for sure." "… What do I want? I want money that's what I want. I want money." She was even more horrified by the words she heard next. Callum MacCallum knew what it was like to be an outsider. ↗
#crime #female-private-detective #mystery #suspense #whodunnit
With reference to the elect we might distinguish between three classes. First, there are those who are satisfied with God’s will, as it is, and do not murmur against God, but rather believe that they are elected. They do not want to be damned. Secondly, there are those who submit to God’s will and are satisfied with it in their hearts. At least they desire to be satisfied, if God does not wish to save, but reject them. Thirdly, there are those who really are ready to be condemned if God should will this. These are cleansed most of all of their own will and carnal wisdom. And these experience the truth of Canticles 8:6: “Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.” Such love is always joined with cross and tribulation, for without it the soul becomes lax, and does not seek after God, nor thirst after God, who is the Fountain of Life. ↗
… the countryside and the village are symbols of stability and security, of order. Yet they are also, as I have noted, liminal spaces, at a very narrow remove from the atavistic Wild. Arcadia is not the realm even of Giorgione and of Claude, with its cracked pillars and thunderbolts, its lurking banditti; still less is it Poussin’s sun-dappled and regularised realm of order, where, although the lamb may be destined for the altar and the spit, all things proceed with charm and gravity and studied gesture; least of all is it the degenerate and prettified Arcady of Fragonard and Watteau, filled with simpering courtier-Corydons, pallid Olympians, and fat-arsed putti. (It is only family piety that prevents me from taking a poker to an inherited coffee service in gilt porcelain with bastardised, deutero-Fragonard scenes painted on the sides of every damned thing. Cue Wallace Greenslade: ‘… “Round the Horne”, with Marie Antoinette as the dairymaid and Kenneth Williams as the manager of the camp-site….’) No: Arcadia is the very margin of the liminal space between the safe tilth and the threatening Wild, in which Pan lurks, shaggy and goatish, and Death proclaims, from ambush, et in Arcadia ego. Arcadia is not the Wide World nor the Riverbank, but the Wild Wood. And in that wood are worse than stoats and weasels, and the true Pan is no Francis of Assisi figure, sheltering infant otters. The Wild that borders and penetrates Arcady is red in tooth and claw. ↗
Returning to the wreckage, Cartographer moved to stand over each victim, shaking his head and muttering in low tones - possibly a prayer - Setoc wasn't close enough to hear his words. He rejoined her once they were past. 'I find myself in some conflict,' he said. 'On the one hand, I wish I'd been here to witness that dread clash, to see Trake's Mortal Sword truly awakened. To see the Trell's rage rise from the deepness of his soul. On the other hand, witnessing the gruesome deaths of those I had come to know as friends, well, that would have been terrible. As much as it grieves me to say, there are times when getting what one wants yields nothing but confusion. It turns out that what one wants is in fact not at all what one wants. Worse is when you simply don't know what you want. You'd think death would discard such trials. If only it did. ↗
Then shouts from the direction of the doorway. I started to black out, kneeing him in the crotch to no effect and clawing in panic at his hands, the flesh sloughing off under my nails. Then suddenly he straightened, and looked toward the door. Schubert came charging through, his service revolver raised. Two more officers came right behind. He whirled away from them as if to hide his ruined face. But he didn't hide it from me! He looked at me with what passed for a fixed and hideous grin, although it might have been the death rictus of his facial muscles. His voice was like a tinny rasp, hollow and unreal. "When the world starts to chew itself up alive, and spits out its own guts... be it on your conscience, Mr. Kolchak!" He staggered away. Schubert was yelling for me to stop him. I made a grab for his coat but it came off in my hand. The acid. He bolted for what had been an outside window, now boarded up, and smashed through it. We could hear his wail all the way down. And a distant, echoing clatter of falling wood... and glass... and bones. ↗
I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all. I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei. Plague carrier. Living death. Drainer of life. The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could. Vampire. And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death. ↗
#blood-drinkers #corcitura #drainer-of-life #eric-bradburry #fear
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. 'When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "so it goes. ↗
