Status Updates From Black Water 2: More Tales o...

"He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval turned towards the sky. 'Look,' whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)..."

Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God

That's the last of the 70 stories in this anthology. I'm finished!

"'Hate,' said Salustro, 'is not an emotion which one wears on one's sleeve. It is a soul. When it enters a man he may live on, he may laugh, work, go about, and there will be no difference to those who are his friends; but his soul has only one colour, his nights have only one dream. For twenty years I have dreamed of only one thing—to kill a man.'
I said nothing. We ate on in silence..."
Ben Hecht, The Shadow

"We went up before anyone else except the altar boys. I got back and knelt down to say a Glory Be. I sucked on the Host like Sister told us to, but it stuck to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter. I had to rub my tongue back and forth to get it loose and swallow it. When I finished getting it unstick I looked up and there was Peter chewing on the Host just like he'd been told not to.."
Brett Balon 'Room of Blood'

"'I don't care whether you go or stay, I'm sure. I wonder what you would give to be as fine a man as Mr Langan.'
All I possess, I swear it! But solely because you admire tall men more than broad views. Mr Langan may be defined geometrically as length without breadth; altitude without position; a line on the landscape, not a point on it.'"

George Bernard Shaw, 'The Miraculous Revenge'

"'I could not think of anything to wish for', he continued. 'Both my health and knowledge were as good as the next man's, and I thought that if I elected to become wiser than my contemporaries I might be a very lonely person for the rest of my days.'
'Yes,' said she thoughtfully, 'I am glad you did not ask to be made wise, unless you could have asked it for both of us.'"
James Stephens, 'Desire'

Most of the Anderson were alike and since nearly all of them were full of the same cordial sayings and the same way of chuckling with forbearance over what they couldn't help, it was hard to to remember which of them were dead and which had been more recently born. Not that they lacked personality but only that together they were like one continuous entity, a long table of a family..."
Elizabeth Spencer, The Finder

"The house was built on the highest point of the town at the very top of the hill not far from the 'Gate of the Winds'. It stood there alone, on a large square. Only a grim oil lamp would provide a glimmer of light over the square on moonless nights, but a few yards below—on the other side of the gate—life would start again with its endless rows of thickly populated dwellings..."
Luigi Pirandello, 'The Haunted House'

"When he really died, God didn't know whether he was really dead. Till then, he always used to rise from the dead, but this time he did not rise. A few weeks before he had had a heart attack. They call it a heart attack, but what attacks what?…does the heart attack the body, or the body the heart? Or does the world attack both? "

Yehuda Amichai, 'The Times my Father Died'

"'Goodbye to the old club,' Mr Arcularis said.
'The bar will miss you, ' said Harry, smiling with friendly irony.
'But let there be no moaning,' said Mr Arcularis.
'What's that quotation from?'
'The Odyssey'...

He led Mr Arcularis up the steep gangplank to the deck, and thence by devious windings to a small cold stateroom with a solitary porthole like the eye of a cyclops.."

Conrad Aiken, 'Mr Arcularis'

"We are both lefthanders. We met at the club...we prepare, effortlessly and only among ourselves, parlour games which we have invented and which comprise several tests of dexterity such as threading a needle with the right hand, sewing, buttoning and unbuttoning..."
Günter Grass, The Lefthanders

Finished:
The Miraculous Revenge by George Bernard Shaw
Room of Blood by Brett Balon

Starting:
The Shadow by Ben Hecht

Finished:
The Finder by Elizabeth Spencer
Desire by James Stephens

Starting:
The Miraculous Revenge by George Bernard Shaw

"The dusty frame of the window holds nine panes of double-glazed glass, three levels of three panes on top of each other. If Inspector Eckhardt stands on tiptoe on the threadbare carpet, the top panes are at his eye level. The middle row is comfortably situated for him, for he is a man of medium height. He has to stoop slightly however to look through the bottom row..."
'Eckhardt at the Window' by Eric McCormack

I've been admiring the way Alberto Manguel groups the stories in his Anthologies of the Fantastic since the beginning of the first volume. Charlotte Perkins Gillman's story, The Yellow Wall Paper, is a good example. Manguel placed it right after Peter Green's The House-Hunters, about the eerie doings in a strange house and right before Eric McCormack's Eckhardt at the Window about grisly murders in empty houses.

'The Fall of the House of Usher', he said, squinting up at the eaves. Then he chuckled, in a way he had when he was about to say something particularly unpleasant, and added, 'Do you remember that MR James story, The Mezzotint, wasn't it?' and left the rest of the sentence hanging in mid-air. I looked at the house again and the feeling I had tried to stifle ever since we arrived came flooding into my throat like bile

Finished:
The Haunted House by Luigi Pirandello

Starting
The Finder by Elizabeth Spencer

'Now they're going to see who I am, he said to himself in his strong new man's voice, many years after he had first seen the huge ocean liner without lights and without any sound which passed by the village one night like a great uninhabited palace, longer than the whole village and much taller than the steeple in the church...'
'The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship', Gabriel García Márquez

'The old man stood before them like a living monument. Most joys of existence meant nothing to him any more. But within him still trembled a faint echo of that sweet feeling of power he had known when he last held the rulership. It made you feel younger, stronger, more alive, to know that you could change the destiny of hundreds of thousands just by signing your name.'
'Faithful Peter', Lion Furchtwanger

My story was to be set in classical times, in the Mediterranean. My narrator would write plainly, without an attempt at period style or historical explanation. He would arrive—for a reason I had yet to work out—at that classical port with the walls and gateways like cutouts. He would walk past that muffled figure on the quayside. He would move from that silence to a doorway.."
The Enigma of Arrival, V. S. Naipaul

"I began to make my way to the door but at the third step I caught my foot in a ruck of the chocolate-coloured carpet and in reaching out my hand for support, I sent a small pink vase flying.
Suddenly I felt very small and very angry. I saw my mother's mouth opening and it reminded me of the front door and the front door reminded me of my urge to escape—but to where, to where?"
'Same Time, Same Place', Mervyn Peake

As they jostled they walked along, "a thought occurred to Ratanbabu. He was better off as he was—alone, without a friend. He didn't need a friend. Whenever he had spoken to Manilalbabu, it had seemed as if he was carrying on a conversation with himself, as if he knew all the answers before he asked the questions. There was no room for argument, no possibility of misunderstanding."
Ratanbabu and that Man, Satyajit Ray

"Tea was over (today it had been pilchard salad and chips); and Colvin had set out from the Emancipation Hotel, where he boarded, upon his regular evening walk. There had been no one else for tea and Mrs Royd had made it clear that the trouble he was causing had not passed unnoticed. Outside it was blowing as well as raining, so that Palmerston Street was almost deserted..."
'The Visiting Star' by Robert Aickman

Finished:
The Times My Father Died by Yehuda Amichai

Starting:
The Haunted House by Luigi Pirandello

'The versions of the story about Ch'ien-niang were so varied that some people said it was all a fabrication. But years later I heard the whole story from Chang Chung-hsien, who had it from his uncle, Ch'ien-niang's father, and when he told it to me, I wrote everything he said down. "In the third year of the T'ien-shou reign, Chang Yi of Ch'ing-ho came to live in Heng-chou..."'
'Ch'ien-niang' by Chen Xuanyou, c900 CEA

Her name was Belisa Crepusculario, not through baptism or because of her mother's insight but because she herself sought it out until she found it and dressed herself in it. Her occupation consisted of selling words...For 5 cents she would give out poems learnt by heart; for 7 she would improve the quality of dreams; for 9 she would write love letters; for 12 she would make up insults for enemies
'2 Words' I. Allende