INTERZONE 253 JUL-AUG 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page A

marriage in. I’d grown up in this house. In a month or two, if our plans went well, it would be sold, and another family would be living there.
    I tried not to think of that.
    “I need to grab something, Dad. Will you be okay?”
    He unbuckled his belt. I had assumed he would stay in the car. That would be easier, but he already opened the door. I rushed around the front of the car to help him.
    Inside, he sat on a folding chair that was the only furniture left on the living room’s hardwood floor. The drapes were closed, shrouding the room in twilight. At the care center, when he wasn’t sleeping, he sat. He’d never fallen while sitting, so I knew he would be okay to leave alone.
    I went downstairs to get the box.
    It didn’t weigh much. Before I turned off the lights in the basement, I looked around. My bedroom had been down here. It looked different without my parents’ photographs on the wall, without the interruption of couch and table. It was unlikely I’d ever see the basement again. Maybe some other little boy or girl would use the bedroom. Maybe they too would stay up late, reading by the closet light. For a second, I thought about leaving the old science fiction magazine. What would someone else’s child think of part three of ‘Glory Road’?
    In the background, something buzzed. At first I thought it might be the furnace, but it came from upstairs. It wasn’t the door bell or a telephone, but it was incessant and familiar. I cocked my head to the side to hear better as I walked up the stairs.
    The sound came from the back of the house upstairs, from the bedrooms. Dad wasn’t in the chair by the door, though. I almost dropped the box as I put it on the floor.
    “Dad?”
    I went down the hall, glanced in his empty office, checked the bathroom and the guest bedroom. Nothing.
    His bedroom was empty too. The buzzing came from the closet and filled the room.
    It was Dad’s UFO detector, still in working order after all these years. I moved the magnet off the contacts, cutting off the sound.
    Where was Dad?
    I double checked the rooms on the way out.
    “Dad?”
    Out the front door. He wasn’t in the car. I rushed to the street. Looked both ways. The sidewalks were empty.
    In the next hour, I called the police. I called my sisters. I drove the blocks, slowly, windows down, looking at porch chairs and front yard swings. How could he get so far? Where could he be?
    It’s dusk now. He’s been gone for four hours. I’ve answered a thousand questions. I’ve cried. I’ve been wracked with guilt. Now, though, for the moment, the house is quiet again. Everyone is outside, somewhere, searching.
    I’m looking at Dad’s UFO detector, thinking about Martian moon maids and their queen. Dad introduced me to science fiction and telescopes and the stars.
    It seemed fantastic, but his UFO detector had gone off.
    For just a second, a tiny instant, I wanted to believe that maybe there was an alternate explanation. He wasn’t just a wandering Alzheimer’s patient.
    He wasn’t.
    •••••
    James Van Pelt’s father introduced him to science fiction movies at a young age, starting with The Day the Earth Stood Still and the Godzilla films, and the rest of the best of the 50s. James sold his first short story in 1989, and since then has produced four collections and one novel. Besides Interzone – most recently issue #248 – his work has appeared in Asimov’s , Analog , and numerous other venues. He has been a finalist for the Nebula and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He occasionally blogs at jimvanpelt.livejournal.com and can be found on Facebook.

FLYTRAP
    ANDREW HOOK
    ILLUSTRATED BY DANIEL BRISTOW-BAILEY

    When Adamson was a boy he imagined a planet. Days were dreamt in visual soliloquies, quiet monologues. He pieced together a harsh, barren, dangerous world from what he knew of the extremities of conditions on Earth. Volcanoes pepper-potted the surface, craters pock-marked its face. The