Reed Andrus (July 19, 1998)In the spirit of using the Web, and organizations with more genre knowledge in their little fingers than I have anywhere else, here's a question that's been bothering me for 10-20 years.I say 10-20 because I read the following storyline in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and considered asking for reprint authorization in a fanzine I was publishing at the time. I quit publishing in 1975 or 1976. That ought to make a few of you shudder.
The story was very short, no more than 4-5 pages. Told in first person by a girl maybe between 9 and 13. She would escape to a room (think it was the attic) when her parents were arguing. In the room was a mirror. As she tells the story in real time, she remembers one particular argument about her mother's philandering. She looked into the mirror and saw her father instead of herself. Later that night, the father dies somehow. All his money is left to her. A new boyfriend moves in. They begin to argue about her inheritance. As the story ends, she is in the attic, hearing her mother come up the stairs looking for her, looks into the mirror and sees herself. Everything else is implication, of course, but the author manages to be poignant, chilling, fatalistic, all in the course of 4-5 pages. The story is very much in keeping with the style used by AH in both magazine and television series -- could have easily been done on The Twilight Zone.
The author is/was female. I did not recognize the name at the time. And I may be off by a factor of 10 years.
How about some help? I'm going to post this over in the mystery group as well.
... Reed (hearing the screams of dying brain cells night after night... after night..._
oOo
rbadac (July 29, 1998)
What's the old saying? 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for the rest of his life.'Pretty corny. Nevertheless, here's a pole. Check your library for the following, which has a complete listing for AHMM- having read the story, you may recognize it by title:
MONTHLY MURDERS: A CHECKLIST AND CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF FICTION IN THE DIGEST-SIZE MYSTERY by Michael L. Cook ( Greenwood Press, Westport, CT 1982)
Then come back and tell us! It sounds like a good story.
rbadac, who throws 'em back if they're too little
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John Pelan (July 20, 1998)
'beat him about the head and shoulders with the fish, and you're in alt.books.ghost-fiction!'John Pelan (with apologies to ECW wrestling)
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Violet (July 21, 1998)
"Give a man enough beer & he'll get drunk out of his mind. Make him plant & raise the barley & he'll become a teetotaler overnight.""Give a pervert a fish & you won't want to eat it afterward."
"Give a man a gun & he'll blow his foot off. Teach him to use it & he'll shoot YOUR foot off."
"Give a beggar a dime & he's still a beggar. But teach him to tapdance, ah!"
"Give me that gawdamned fish and let ME worry about what I'll eat tomorrow you moralistic jerkoff."
"Give the man a donut, he's a cop."
"Give the man macaroni & cheese & eventually his arteries will clog. Give him sprouts & he'll strangle your dog."
"Give a drunk a beerbottle that's been pissed in."
"Give a mugger your wallet & probably the cops won't give a shit about your stupid wallet so why even report it. But refuse & let him kill you then he's in DEEP kaka."
"I met a man who had no legs & felt really sorry for him until I met a man who had no butt."
"Give the kid a fresh diaper & he'll just soil it again, so why not just let the little bastard steep."
j.a.s.
oOo
Bill Barnett (July 21, 1998)
Violet wrote:
>"Give the kid a fresh diaper & he'll just
>soil it again, so why not just let the little
>bastard steep."Because she might decide to take it off herself and smear said "soil" all over her clothes, her skin, her hair, her bedsheets, her toys, and her crib rails, and then fling some on the carpet for good measure last Saturday night. For instance.
Bill B., proud but soiled father of Vivien Lafcadia B.
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Reed Andrus (July 21, 1998)
Geez. All I did was ask a simple question. This group is tough!... Reed (looking up the meaning of "library.")
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rbadac (July 21, 1998)
I blame myself, Reed. This bunch is on a hair-trigger of insanity. I should have known something like that old fish saw would set them off !!! (Actually I did. I'm a monkey-cage poker from way back.)It's like working at MAD magazine. I love it.
rbadac
P.S. This board is getting nuttier by the minute anyway, without my help. How 'bout all those recent threads? Jessica's Bierce quote turned into a provenance study of the Bible, we're still getting occasional rambles from cross-posting pundits I never heard of, and the Stooges started a pie fight.
Think I'll go read a ghost story !
oOo
Robert Suggs (July 21, 1998)
As for me, I'm busy reading "Dracula," in my series of books I've somehow never gotten around to (in this case, I've been sick of vampires for too long). All I'll say for the time being is this: it's amazing how much it reminds me of Wilkie Collins! (Stoker borrowed the shifting-narrator method from "The Woman in White," but even more to the point it's very much a "sensation" novel from Collins' era.Listen! The children of the night!
Welcome to my house,
RoboOo
rbadac (July 22, 1998)
[Varney the Vampire]I saw the two-volume Dover reprint of VARNEY THE VAMPIRE in a used bookstore last week for $10. I almost bought it, but then I picked it up and tried reading it- whew !!
It was a serial, and it went ON AND ON AND ON...in the intro, it sez that the editor finally had to tell the author (whom they STILL don't know for sure who it was, Rymer or Prest) to kill the sonovabitch and end the story.
Illustrations were neat, though.
rbadac
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Reed Andrus (July 22, 1998)
rbadac wrote:
> I blame myself, Reed.Lotta good that does now. I actually approached the door of a library before chickening out and running away in terror.
> Think I'll go read a ghost story !
What's that?
... Reed (now wondering if the term "devotees of weird friction" was really a misprint)
ooOoo