"Esther M. Friesner - Auntie Elspeth's Halloween Story (or The Gourd, The Bad, And The Ugly)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

A Halloween tale? Child there just might be some hope for you, after all. October is getting on.
Halloween will be at our throats before you know it, and it just so happens to be your kindly old Auntie
Elspeth’s favorite holiday.

I heard that, Billy. If you’re going to be malicious, at least have the stones to do it out loud so a person
can hear you. Halloween is not my favorite holiday because I’m an old witch, I don’t care what your
Mommy said. Your Mommy also said she was a virgin when she married your Daddy, but between you
and me and the Seventh Fleet—

Cindy, dear, it’s not polite to interrupt. However, since youdid ask, a virgin is a mythological creature,
okay? Sort of like a dragon or a unicorn or a compassionate conserva-tive or—

Look, grow up, learn to read, look up the words you don’t know in the dictionary, and shut the hell up
for two seconds. I don’t have time to answer a lot of stupid ques-tions.

Daddy told you there’s no such thing as a stupid ques-tion? Daddy was wrong.

Do you want a Halloween story or not?

Now this is called “How the Vampire Prince Plunged His Fangs into the Heaving White Bosom of the
Helpless Maiden and Devoured Her Still-Beating Heart.” Once upon a time—

Nowwhat?

Yes, Tommy, I know that Cindy is only four years old. Yes, I know that your Mommy and Daddy don’t
want any of you mini-weasels exposed to undue levels of violence. Speaking of which, where did a
peewee pissant like you come up with such a mouthful of buzzwords?

Ah. Educational television. I should have known. All right, in that case I suppose I could tidy up the
vampire story a bit and—

No vampires allowed? None at all? Not even a little one? He doesn’t have to devour the maiden’s
still-beating heart, if you’re going to be a big bunch of wussies about it. He can just devour it after he’s
sated his hellish thirst on the helpless maiden’s blood and her heartstops beating, all right?

Okay, fine. Be that way. Sissies.

Ahem: The merciless sun of the Egyptian desert beat down upon the City of the Dead, but within the
tomb of the Pharaoh’s daughter it was cold; cold as the bellies of the deadly native vipers whose bite
means a lingering, agoniz-ing death; cold as the blade of a fanatical assassin as it slits the throat of the
foreign devil rash enough to defy the ancient curses sealing the princess’ final resting place; cold as the
steely nerves of Sir Henry Battabout-Montescue as he strode into the burial chamber and laid impious
hands upon the lid of the princess’ sarcophagus. But before he could defile the royal virgin’s eternal
sleep, an unholy roar came from behind him. He turned in time to see the figure of a mummy—a hideous,
deformed, desiccated corpse, rank with the putridity of centuries, trailing the dusty wrappings of its
entombment—come lurching toward him. Hands like the talons of the sacred vulture closed around his
windpipe and his last breath was overwhelmed by the fetor of the crea-ture’s—

Good Lord,now what’s wrong, Cindy? Stop making noises like a dachshund with the hiccups and speak