by Robert Bloch
“Pardon me, miss,” he said, smiling warmly down at her.
She looked up, her eyes luminous and deeply blue. “Yes?”
“I’m a stranger in town, and was wondering about the bus schedule. There doesn’t seem to be anything posted—and I wondered how often they ran this time of night.” His voice was smooth and sincere, his smile friendly.
She won’t doubt me, Willard Broun told himself; they never doubt me.
“Slow after midnight,” she told him, her own smile answering his. “One should be along in the next forty minutes, though.”
“Thank you.”
“Quite all right. Always glad to help a stranger,” she said, and her eyes lowered. The question was taken care of, the conversation done.
She has a voice like Abbe’s, Willard Broun marveled, musical and lilting like Abbe’s. But she’s not like Abbe and all the others. Not this girl. I’m sure of it.
The others were all the same; all weak and easy and cheap. Not good as his mother had been. They were all like his stepmother, and each time he killed one of them he killed her—over and over and over.
“Cigarette?” asked Willard Broun, seating himself on the bench.
“I don’t use them,” she said, smiling again. “But thanks.”
He drew cigarette smoke deeply into his lungs. “New Orleans is certainly an exciting town, isn’t it?”
“I grew up here,” the girl said, “and I still love it more than any other place.”
She was talking to him now, hesitant at first, then with more confidence. Willard Broun was a handsome man, with the type of open, clean-featured face that inspires immediate trust. His smile was genuine and appealing.
“I’m from St. Louis, myself,” he told her. “Too much dirt back there to suit me. I’d like to settle down in this kind of country.”
“Oh, you’d never be sorry,” she said with conviction. “The South grows on a person.”
Willard Broun wondered; what will she do if I ask her to have a drink with me? Of course she’ll say no. She’s not the kind who’d agree to drink with strangers. She’ll say no.
But she didn’t.
“Only one,” she smiled, “just because it’s so hot and because we still have time for one if we hurry.”
She simply trusts you, he told himself, taking her arm. She figures you for a friendly, harmless fellow alone in a strange town. Oh, she won’t go to your hotel. Not this girl. She’ll have her drink and then she’ll catch the bus and you’ll never see her again. Never.
“They say that right here, in this very building, General Jackson met the pirate, Lafitte, to plot out the battle of New Orleans.” She pointed to a narrow wooden stairway. “There’s a special room at the top where they met.”
He was sitting with her at the bar of the Old Absinthe House and she was telling him the history of Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. She was on her second highball, her face flushed and excited as she described famous places and people.
“This is one of the city’s oldest bars,” she said. “Mark Twain used to come here and kings and presidents and all.”
“It’s very colorful,” he agreed. “There must be ten thousand calling cards tacked up around here.”
“Everyone is supposed to leave one,” she said, gesturing to the walls and ceiling, covered by a white snowfall of paper. “Do you have a calling card?”
“Sorry.” He smiled.
“Then we’ll just use a napkin,” she said, smoothing one out on the bartop. “A lot of people do. Oh, say!”
“What’s wrong?”
“We haven’t even been introduced. Here, I’ll write my name and then you can write yours.”
In a neat, precise hand she printed: ANNE FERRAR. Then she pushed the napkin to him and extended her pen.
He wrote: FRANK BOUTELL, and returned the pen.
“Fine,” she said. “Hi, Frank!”
“Hi, Anne!” They smiled together.
He watched her tack the soft white square of paper to a post and he thought: will she go to my hotel if I ask her now? Another couple of drinks and she’ll go fast enough. NO…no, she won’t. She’s not like all the others.
“There,” Anne giggled, climbing back on the stool. “Now we’re kind of immortal.”
He put his hand over hers. “Afraid we’ve missed our bus.”
“Who cares. There’ll be another. I’m having so much fun, Frank!”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Ready for another drink?”
“Sure. Why not!”
Two more and her head was on his shoulder, her dark hair fluffing against his cheek; the scent of her scrubbed skin was sweet…
Willard Broun had begun to hate her. He was thinking of Abbe and Irene and Linda and all the rest. Now, in his mind, Anne was one of them. Anne was no different.
“Say, I’ve got a swell idea,” he said. “A guided taxi tour around New Orleans for yours truly.”
“But—wouldn’t that be terribly expensive, Frank?”
“I can afford it,” he assured her. “Will you go, Anne?”
Say no, a voice inside him warned her, because this is your last chance, Anne Ferrar. Refuse!
“Okay,” she smiled. “Only not too far. I don’t want to think I’ve made you spend all your money.”
“Wait here,” he instructed, squeezing her arm. “I’ll call us a cab.”
The cabbie was a mouse-quick little man with sharp eyes that missed nothing. Wise in the ways of his profession, he drove slowly, careful not to disturb his two passengers.
Anne rode with her arm around Willard Broun’s waist, sitting close to him in the soft leather seat, pointing out the sights with her free hand, her voice light and high.
A sudden summer rain had begun to fall, and the night buildings glistened under the overhead lights.
They moved up Rampart Street, passing the rain-pearled spire of the Church of St. Anthony, and out Claiborne to the dark, heaving expanse of the Mississippi.
“Don’t you love to see rain on the water?” she asked him. “It fascinates me. All the hard little drops cutting into the face of the river like bullets.”
“I hate the rain,” he told her, his voice hard and slow. “My stepmother used to make me stand out in it naked for hours as punishment. I’d stand there, barefoot and screaming, but the thunder ate up my cries. Sometimes my whole body would go numb until I could no longer feel the rain on my skin.”
“How horrible!” Anne exclaimed. “Why—you could have caught pneumonia and died.”
“She hoped I would,” breathed Willard Broun, remembering the cold black eyes of his stepmother. “She always hated me, from the day she stepped into our house, because I was my father’s child and not hers.”
“What about your real mother?”
“Dead. Passed away when I was seven. She was a real lady. A wonderful, clean, decent person and not like that…” His face hardened. “…that woman my father married.”
Anne pressed his hand tightly. “Oh, Frank.”
The rain thinned, misting away, and the yellow moon rode out free between the dark thunderclouds.
Kiss her, Willard Broun told himself, because she wants you to. She wants what they all want. Go ahead.
When he pressed his lips to hers, she didn’t try to resist. She ran her fingers through his hair and murmured softly under his touch.
“Listen, Anne,” he whispered, nuzzling the skin along her neck. “How about calling off the tour and having a final nightcap at my hotel. The downstairs bar is still open. All right?”
She nodded and sighed deeply. “All right, Frank.”
The bar was crowded, and he was taking a risk being seen here with Anne. When they discovered her body in his room they could round up plenty of witnesses who had seen them together. But what did all that matter? By the time she was found he’d be gone like smoke in the wind. They’d never find him.
He led her to a small booth in the corner, quiet, away from the lights.
<
br /> “Do you know you’re a nice guy, Frank?” she told him, her hands clasped over his on the table. “You’re a real nice guy.”
And you’re a bitch, a voice inside Willard Broun replied. A slut. And you’re going to die for being what you are.
He looked up and saw the redhead again, the same one he’d encountered earlier in the evening. She was still at the end of the bar, watching him across the smoky room.
You’re no better than she is, Anne Ferrar. No better than that tramp at the bar.
“Salud!” he toasted, holding up his drink.
They clinked glasses and Anne giggled. She set her empty glass down unsteadily.
“This place is like a circus,” he said, brushing her ear with his lips. “Let’s take the elevator up to my room. We can talk there, and I can fix us some fresh drinks.”
She nodded and smiled, her eyes half-closed.
The redhead was still watching him as they left the bar.
“Here we are, darling,” he said, when they were safely inside his room. “All the comforts of home.”
“It’s nice,” she sighed, hanging tight to his arm. “Real kind of cozy and nice.”
“Martini?”
She plumped herself down on the couch and he noticed that her dress had slipped up Over her knees. “Yes,” she smiled. “And make mine very dry, please.”
Look at you, his inner voice accused, your lipstick is smeared, and your hair is in your face, and half of your thigh is exposed. Well, Anne, now you’re beginning to look like what you really are. Killing you will be a pleasure!
He stepped to the wall radio and switched it on. The measured beat of Chopin’s Bacarolle drifted through the room. Whistling softly to the music, he mixed two very dry Martinis.
“Thank you, sir!” she said, when he handed one to her.
“To life,” said Willard Broun, elevating his glass,” and to the decent people in it.”
They drank, her large blue eyes meeting his.
Oh, but she’s clever, he thought, so damned clever. Putting on her innocent little-girl act and fooling me in the beginning, making me think she was different.
He wouldn’t use a knife on Anne. A knife would be too quick, too clean for her. She deserved a slower death—one she could see and taste and feel.
Willard Broun looked at his two hands, cupped around the thin glass in front of him. Hard, square-fingered hands. Yes, they would do the job easily. The hands would be perfect.
He moved closer to her on the deep couch, resting one of his hands on her shoulder, caressing her cheek with the other. “You’re a remarkable girl, Anne Ferrar. Do you know that?”
“Ummm . . .” She made soft cat-sounds and snuggled close to him, her warm bosom pressing into his chest. She was waiting for him to kiss her.
His right hand moved along her shoulder to the soft column of her neck. Idly he ran his fingers along the satiny skin. Now he brought up his left hand—slowly, so slowly, to join the first.
Her eyes were closed, her head back, waiting.
The raging darkness swept up in the mind of Willard Broun. And a voice from that darkness spoke to him. Go ahead, the voice commanded, let your fingers close.
Both of his hands rested lightly on her slender white neck. He brought his two thumbs into position, still caressing the skin hypnotically with his fingers.
Go on, whispered the voice. Now!
The strong hands of Willard Broun began to tighten…
And fell away.
Anne Ferrar was crying.
“Why—what’s wrong?” he asked, puzzled and shaken.
“I—I’m sorry, Frank, but I can’t. I just can’t go on with this.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that—that I can’t let you make love to me.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “If we made love now—tonight, it would be—well, it would be all wrong. It would be something cheap and dirty, and I don’t want it to be that way with us, Frank. I’m sorry. I don't know what made me come here, to your place, because I swear I’ve never done anything like this before in my life. But—the drinks, and the heal, and the cab ride—and your being so nice to me and—”
Her head dropped into her hands and she sobbed quietly.
Willard Broun felt the darkness drain away; his fingers relaxed.
“You—you do understand, don’t you, Frank? Don’t you?”
“Yes, Anne,” he said slowly. “I do.”
It had begun to rain once more when they reached the street in front of the hotel. He helped her into the cab, pressed the door shut, and took her hand through the open window.
“I feel—like a little fool,” she said.
“You shouldn’t,” he told her. “You did the right thing, Anne.” He kissed her lips, now cool with the misting rain and he fell, suddenly, a comfort he had never known.
“You have my address and my phone,” she said. “Will you call me soon, Frank?”
“Soon,” he replied. “I promise.”
He signaled the driver and the cab moved off, its tires hissing on the wet street. Anne’s pale face, framed in the car’s rear window, grew smaller, vanishing finally into the darkness.
He stood there at the curb for a long moment, watching the crimson dots of the tail lights melt away and die; then he turned back to the hotel lobby, his shoulders hunched against the cold rain.
The girl was standing just beyond the entrance, the overhead neon glinting on the red of her hair.
“Remember me,” she said. “From the bar?”
“Yes,” said Willard Broun, moving toward her, breathing deeply, “I remember you.”
Two Muscovy Ducks
Charles Norman
The farmhouse stood on eroded soil about fifty feet from the road. From its single chimney vaporous smoke rose like an elongated ghost. Beyond the house, against the rise of a hill, loomed a barn.
The first flakes were falling when Oscar Phipps arrived. It was four o’clock. He glanced around. The sky seemed to be thronged with something besides snow; it was closing in on him. He did not like the look of things, chiefly the falling snow; it could make the return walk difficult. Still, he thought to himself, he was there, he had made the walk in about the time he had estimated, and he knew every foot of the way.
Nothing like walking, he told his friends: beats golf, beats swimming, you just go on and on, breathing God’s pure air, exercising every part of your body as you walked and swung your hands. He had seen the countryside in all weathers, all seasons, and it pleased him to think he knew what everyone did or raised on the back roads where his walks led him.
He started toward the house. Holes in the path and crevices in the ground were beginning to be laced with white.
He came to the back door, wondering what was holding the house together, although it was obvious it had held together for a long time. Discolored boards and strips of tin made a patchwork of front and sides, and the wind beating against them in swirls of white shook and rattled walls, windows and eaves. For a moment Oscar Phipps hesitated, then he rapped loudly with his gloved hand.
It seemed a long minute before he heard someone fumbling with the latch; then the door opened about a foot. A woman was peering out at him. Her while hair was drawn back tightly against her skull, and from a steep expanse of brow sunken eyes held him in their gaze. Her nose was long and sharp, and she was wearing a man’s tweed jacket and soiled dungarees. Tall as she was, her hand on the door post seemed out of proportion to the rest of her; it was large, bony and raw, and suggestive of great strength.
“Excuse me,” Oscar Phipps said, speaking rapidly, to tell his errand and get away. “I have some friends coming for Thanksgiving, and I thought I’d give them a treat, something unusual—you know, not just ducks, but muscovy ducks. I understand you raise them. I’d like to buy two.”
The woman continued to peer at him, then reached inside, donned a man’s cap and closed the door. Oscar Phipps fell in behind her as she he
aded for the barn. She walked with powerful strides. There was, he estimated, a half-inch of snow on the ground; above him, the sky teemed with gray and white flakes.
The barn was a more solidly built structure than the farmhouse. High and broad, with sloping roof, it loomed like a fortress in the dusk made by the snow. Inside, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he could see them, scores of white shapes squatting or waddling about; a few were fluttering or flying in all directions.
“How far did you drive?” the woman asked. It was a country voice, without inflection.
“Walked,” he told her. “About five miles.”
She made no comment. They were standing beside a coop.
“Good walking—so far,” he added. “I’d like to start back as soon as possible.” He hoped she would understand.
“Quiet, you!” the old woman shouted. Oscar Phipps stared at her, startled, then realized she had not spoken to him. He looked in the direction of her gaze, and saw, some twenty feet away, in the middle of the barn, a pen about four feet high, and inside it the massive shapes of heaving flank and haunch. At the same time he became aware of a low, deep-throated chorus of animal grunts. It was coming from the pen. Between the bars snouts protruded in his direction, and he could now make out the glitter and gleams of wild and frightened stares—stares which seemed to be fixed on him. There were no ducks near the pen.
“I didn’t know you raised pigs,” he said.
“They’re not pigs,” the old woman said sharply. “Boars!”
“Must be hard to feed in winter,” he offered lamely.
She gave him an odd look, then opened a door in the coop, reached in, and yanked out two muscovy ducks. Her hand encircled four legs. The ducks hung like plummets in her grasp.
“What do you do with them?” he asked.
“Cut off their heads,” she replied. “Here,” she commanded, “just hold them for me.”
His gloved hands closed around their legs, but their unexpected struggle to be free made his arms fly out, and at that moment his hat, stiffening with frost, fell from his head.
