IGMS Issue 17 Read Online Free PDF Page B

dark since before there was winter.
    She looked, he thought, like something carved from memory, something that had been extravagantly beautiful once. But the unending rain and wind had worn everything away to bare essentials. She had a long, thin nose centered in a pale, thin face in which her eyes gleamed, overlarge, out of skull-dark hollows, and over which fair hair was plastered in long, lank, streaks.
    She looked cold and wary and very much alone.
    He did not invite her inside.
    It was dark out but for the streetlight and the light coming from his own window, and cold. He could see the warm air spilling out in rolling clouds all around them while they stood on opposite sides of the barred window. She did not shiver -- in a very deliberate way that implied steely pride rather than immunity from the cold.
    There was something unquestionably inhuman about her, and Steve did not want this beautiful, ageless woman-thing to set one ice-cold toe in Matt's room.
    "Who are you?" he asked.
    "I am the evening shade," she said. Her voice was soft, but the wind carried it to him. His ears seemed to quiver, animal-like, trying to stretch themselves to catch that sound. A husky, low-pitched voice that reminded him of water, though not of rain, or of music in some undefined way that had very little to do with singing. "I am a haunted melody half-remembered. I am summer's regret. I am the last hope of an unlucky man. I am a bishop's curse and a beggar's blessing. I am the dream of flowers in winter. I am the woken nightmare. I am moonlit laughter and starlight tears. I am seen with the eyes and believed with the heart."
    Steve rolled his eyes, feeling a surge of irritation at her nonsense, at his own fears. She was high, he thought.
    "Tell me who you are," he said.
    "A sparrow, living off the crumbs you let fall."
    "What are you doing here?" he made his voice harsh. "What do you want?"
    "Tell me a story," she said.
    Steve shook his head and backed away. He closed the window. Locked it. He made sure of the bars, and drew the curtains. His hands were like ice, but they didn't shake until he turned round and saw Matt, still sleeping, undisturbed.
    He believed her.

    "Tell me a story," she said on the next night, when he only stared at her through the window. He watched her through the glass and did not even open it. Her lips moved. The sound was muffled, but Steve could tell what she said.
    "Tell me a story."
    He started moving the bedtime rituals to the living room, away from that big, benighted window and the harmless-seeming shape that lurked just outside it. Steve made sure all the curtains were shut, that not a chink of darkness could get inside. He tried giving up on story time altogether, but Matt rebelled.
    "I liked it better the old way," he said, his face flushed in a way that presaged a tantrum . . . or a fever. "Why do you always have to change everything?"
    Steve didn't have the heart to keep it up after that. There wasn't anything left in his life but Matt. Maybe there was a little pride left, too, enough to keep Steve from admitting his fears, even to himself.
A woman on the fire escape.
It was easy, in the warmth and light to remember she was small and thin. Matt still slept in the same room. That was only a problem if Steve believed that what waited outside the window was a monster.
    Steve believed in monsters. He did not think the junkie was one.
    He tucked Matt into bed, and told him the story of Mother Holla. Matt thought the heroine, who dropped diamonds and pearls from her mouth like an exploding jewelry box whenever she spoke, was liable to choke to death if she talked in her sleep. He laughed hysterically at the fate of the unkind daughter, too. For Matt, it was a short jump from imagining frogs and snakes falling out of his own mouth, to demanding a burping contest. Matt won, shortly before the night meds kicked in again, and he settled into the pillow, closing his eyes in drowsy triumph.
    Steve set the unopened