"Esther M. Friesner - Chestnut Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

old detective movies and had even worn a trenchcoat for a while until Mrs.
Starrett put a stop to that nonsense.)

The cab cared nothing for the hound-like, prying gaze of Mr. Budd or the pursed
lips of Mrs. Starrett. It continued to inch its way down Chestnut Street until
it came to a stop in front of #34, which was the Gaye house. The right rear door
opened and a skeleton got out.

You could tell it was a real skeleton. Even the Kittredges, who lived across the
street from the Gayes and didn't have a cataract-free eye between them, could
see that much. The Gaye house, blue with white trim, was fronted by a fieldstone
fence, all dark gray stones. There were also several outsize garbage bags
leaning against the outer face of the stone wall, leftovers from Halloween --
the decorative black sort that looked like wickedly grinning bats when you
stuffed them with leaves or old newspapers, and the orange kind that looked like
giant jack o' lanterns. The skeleton was white, and the blue, gray, black and
orange background made it stand out so that there was no way you could identify
it as anything but what it was.

There wasn't an ounce of flesh on it, nor any scrap of winding sheet. It wore
neither deeply cowled black monk's habit nor bowtie nor bikini. It stood in the
street, skull turning slowly to left and to right, one bony hand still poised on
the open taxi door. The empty eye-sockets rested for a heartbeat on the
Kittredges.

They saw that all right, too. Mrs. Kittredge's scream was loud enough to make
the houses all up and down Chestnut Street yield up their living in much the
same way as the sea is advertised to yield up its dead come Judgment Day. To
borrow a phrase, some came running. To coin another, some got one good gander at
the biding bones and kept running until they were well past the skeleton and all
the way down to the far end of the street, where the cul-de-sac gave on Linden
Way, which was a thoroughfare.

Mostly, though, the people stood in their own front yards and goggled.

Somebody said "Holy shit!" Somebody else said "Whoa!" Both of these local
commentators were Denny and Sam, the teenaged sons of the McGraw household,
widely suspected among the older residents of Chestnut Street of being a bad
influence on their younger brother Matthew, his mother's mid-life crisis baby, a
tender tad of only seven summers.

Miss Talmadge, who had the yellow house with her cousin, Miss Pennington, began
to say the Lord's Prayer until the sound of those words seemed to draw the
skeleton's attention. One good, steady once-over from those lightless sockets
and Miss Talmadge shut up fast.

A little time passed. Mothers of small children began to fidget on their front
steps. It was a Tuesday and their watches told them it was five after three. The
school bus would be turning onto Chestnut Street at twenty past, just the way it
did every weekday, barring breakdowns. What would the children think? How would