"Charles L. Grant - Something Stirs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

The bright-eyed lad becomes a man,
The bonny lass a woman shines,
And leave behind both doll and dream.

It matters not that you grow old,
That ghoul and witch are night-told tales;
It matters not for anything.

Believe it then.

Believe it now.

It matters not what you believe. What matters is what you forgot:

The sun will shine on loch and kirk, But in the dark, child, Something stirs.
Part One
 WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
ONE




Nobody died until Eddie Roman screamed.
TWO




A mild night in November, though not so mild that the season was forgotten. Dead leaves stirred in gutters
at the touch of a breeze, dead leaves on branches just waiting for a wind. The air still damp after a sudden
day-long rain. Puddles quivering. Neon hissing. A small dog, muddy and white with a wire tail and pointed snout,
rooting in the garbage left in an alley behind a closed Chinese restaurant. A large cat, bedraggled and white with a puffed tail
and flattened muzzle, tightroping the chain-link fence around the Little League field. A car backfiring, and several
young voices in it laughing hysterically, a beer can spinning into the gutter, rattling across the bars of a storm
drain before settling against the curb. A wheezing bus stalling at a traffic light, the driver swearing, his four
passengers saying nothing, only staring out the windows at the shops long since emptied. On a poncho behind the
high school, in the middle of the gridiron, a boy and a girl playing out a dare, though the girl had less qualms about
finally taking off her clothes.
A haze that blurred all the lights, even the stars, especially the low and hazy hanging moon.
On a dark street a boy in a black leather jacket, collar turned up, hands jammed into his black jeans pockets with
thumbs hanging out, walking slowly, turning around every ten yards or so and looking back, into the dark, turning
around and kicking morosely at the shadows. His boots, bulky and black, made too much noise, their pointed
chrome studs catching too much of the diffused light when he glanced down at the pavement. His jeans
were too thin, too cold when a breeze swung out of a driveway and slapped against his calves. And he
should have listened to his mother's nagging, should have worn some kind of sweater; but no, not him, he
was tough, he was cool, he knew he could stand it when the unseasonable warmth finally deserted the
night, he could take the chill as the warmth bled from concrete and blacktop and wood and his bones, he didn't need
any damn sweater. He was tough. He could take it.
He shivered.
He was a jerk.