Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“Now, Mr. Lane...” Malone said. He let it hang there.

I knew, of course, what Edie had done to me. The tape I had burned at her place the previous day — I hadn’t played it to be sure that it was my own!

“We found several other tapes, Lane, but this particular one—”

“Okay,” I said, interrupting Malone, “so I lied about knowing her. I just didn’t want to get involved. I got a wife. You know how those things are. That’s all—”

He cut me off. “There’s a couple of things mighty peculiar about the Jackson girl’s death. Medical examination turned up a large bump on her head. Too, her chest was crushed and the lungs punctured. She could have received these injuries in the crash, but — well, we found the girl strapped into the car by a safety belt. And we don’t figure it’s too likely she hit the steering wheel hard enough to crush her chest seeing as the belt wasn’t broken.”

He paused and looked at me steadily.

I wanted to run. But where?

“The truth of it is, Lane, we found tire marks on the girl’s clothing, glass in her hair, and this in the front room of her house.”

He opened a desk drawer and held up the top quarter of a broken bourbon bottle. He held it gingerly by the jagged edge.

“There are fingerprints on this, Lane. Are they yours?”

Hang on, boy, I told myself. Hang on tight. They still haven’t got you cold.

But I knew they’d get me eventually. They always did. And before I knew it, I was talking, telling them everything.

They put it on tape. And later they had it on paper and the paper in front of me. They wanted me to sign my name.

I did.

Razor, Razor, Gleaming Bright by Roy Carroll

She threw despairing looks over her shoulder, and each time he was a little closer with the weapon raised high and eager.

* * *

Waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Carson, Gretta fell asleep on the living room couch. Hers was a shallow, troubled slumber, shot through with a dream.

She was in a long, narrow corridor of darkness, a faint light shimmering at the far end. She couldn’t see the walls, but each time she tried to escape, she ran into them.

The corridor tipped and tilted in such a way as to make her dizzy. And down it rang his laughter, echoing as in a great, empty chamber.

She threw despairing looks over her shoulder, and each time he was a little closer with the weapon raised high and eager.

It was a razor, and it threw out a phosphorescent glow. It loomed over her, larger and larger. His face was somewhere in the background. A pale blob. She couldn’t see him clearly, only the razor. His laughter rose higher and higher until it filled the whole corridor.

She renewed her efforts to get away. Her heart beat wildly. A faint hope was born in her. She was gaining on him now. Leaving him behind.

Then the corridor tipped up at an angle too steep for her to hold her footing. She fell to her knees. Her toes dug to get her feet beneath her once again. Her hands clawed the hard, slick floor of the corridor until the nails tore loose.

With a gasp of despair, she knew her efforts were useless. She began sliding down the corridor. It was like a slick chute.

She slid faster and faster. Straight toward the man with the razor. It became a giant razor. It came slashing down...

She screamed as a hand shook her. She snapped awake with a nervous jerk of her whole body that almost threw her off the couch.

She pulled back, rigid, staring at the face before her.

Mrs. Carson said, “My dear, whatever is the matter? You were carrying on dreadfully in your sleep.”

“Was I?” Gretta felt the fine beads of sweat on her face. Her heart was still hammering and her breath was short. The razor had seemed so certain to claim her that it was hard for a moment to realize that she was here in the Carson’s apartment with Mrs. Carson’s plump middle-aged face before her filled with concern.

Mr. Carson stood beside his wife, still in his topcoat and hat. Where the years had pleasantly softened his wife, they had had the opposite effect on him. He somehow reminded Gretta of a hard, coiled spring. All his movements were brisk. His face was narrow with each bone sharp and clear beneath the stretched mask of skin.

“Are you ill, Gretta?” he inquired. His tone indicated that he had no real feeling about the matter. He never used any other tone.

“No, sir,” Gretta said.

Mrs. Carson did not dismiss her concern easily. She was a sweet, vague woman. Stupid, Gretta had decided upon first meeting her. But rather kind.

“Perhaps you’ve eaten something that upset you and gave you a nightmare, dear,” Mrs. Carson said.