"Charles L. Grant - Oxrun Station 4 - The Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

Mysteries, and the business grew, easily turning a steady and comfortable profit as word con-tinued to
spread about the curious, white-haired young man and the items he unearthed. Billboards, like the first one.
Butler's tables edged in filigree silver. Letters. Gowns. A manuscript in Maine, a derringer in Natchez, a
signed crock in New Hamp-shire, a photograph in New Jersey; and more than a few things were
uncovered right in the Station.
He hated telephone answering machines and ser-vices, and he hated working with numbers, and he
hated doing anything but his job; so he took on Felicity Lancaster to keep the books and dust the shelves,
fend off the unwanted and entice the hard-to-get.
And it had taken him quite a while to realize that he was, without question, excited . . . and content.
There were just enough challenges to keep him from getting stale.

The breeze swirled again, pushing at the fringe of hair around his cap, slipping down his shirt to tighten his
chest. He frowned as he stared at the agitated foliage around him. It felt as if there were a storm in the
offing, but the sky was still blue, no clouds to be seen. He zipped up his jacket and lit another cigarette.
The weather, he thought glumly; one day it's warm and summer, the next you'd think it was February and
snowing. His mother called it pneumonia time, the weeks when summer colds came ahead of schedule and
stayed through September, never really dying. Whatever it was, it was distressing. He didn't care for things
that changed on him without warning.
The breeze stiffened.
He squirmed and told himself he had better get moving. There were shadows here in broad daylight that
he did not like to see.
But as soon as the thought surfaced he shook his head and dismissed it. Considered a quiet visit to a
friend, Lloyd Stanworth, who would doctor him away from this unnatural reaction. And that too, he thought,
was pushing the imagination.
But he did not look behind him when he heard the leaves whisper.

____________ 2
W
hen the damp from the rock began to penetrate to his skin, Josh grunted and decided it was time to move
on. The solitude here was taking chips from his sanity, and all he needed now was to see monsters in the
woods.
I've seen some things here, his father had whispered once, while his mother was out shopping and they
were alone in the house; you can't live in the Station all your life without knowing the place isn't what
you call your normal town.
Josh had never believed it, never seen evidence that his father was right. But it wasn't the words that had
bothered him, back when he was twelve ... it was the sly look in his father's eyes, the wry quiver of his lips,
and the fact that the afternoon was the afternoon of Halloween. It had frightened him more than seeing the
masks on the children and hearing the wind in the trees; and it was almost a month before he knew he'd
been kidded.
Nevertheless, he did not look around when the breeze kicked again.
Go, he told himself instead; go and have a drink.
But he hesitated, hating to admit to another round of defeat. What had brought him out here had begun
two weeks ago, just after he had returned from a grateful Felicity wasn't as perfect as she'd like him to
believe. But neither had he discovered anything that even remotely resembled the implement he was
hunt-ing. From sketches Felicity had copied from texts in New Haven he knew the handplow was
constructed of two thick bows of wood joined at the base by a single huge blade, joined near the top by a
crossbar of iron easily removable if either of the handles split or wore out.
But knowing what it looked like hadn't helped him thus far.

Suddenly, as he was crushing the cigarette out under his heel, the breeze exploded into a stiff violent