"McCammon Robert R. - They Thirst" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

The boy watched, heat striping his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose, while
his mother rocked in the chair behind him, glancing down occasionally at her
son's sharp profile.
In that fire the boy saw pictures coming together, linking into a living mural:
he saw a black wagon drawn by two white horses with funeral plumes, their cold
breath coming out in clouds. In that wagon a simple, small coffin. Men and women
in black, some shivering, some sobbing. Others following the wagon, boots
crunching through a crust of snow. Muttered sounds. Faces layered with secrets.
Hooded, fearful eyes that stared out toward the gray and purple rise of the
Jaeger Mountains. The Griska boy lay in that coffin, and what remained of him
was now being carried by the procession to the cemetery where the lelkesz
waited.
Death. It had always seemed so cold and alien and distant to the boy, something
that belonged not to his world, nor to the world of his mama and papa, but
rather to the world that Grandmother Elsa had lived in when she was sick and
yellow- fleshed. Papa had used the word then-dying. When you're in the room with
her, you must be very quiet because she can't sing to you anymore, and all she
wants to do now is sleep. To the boy death was a time when all songs ceased and
you were happy only when your eyes were closed. Now he stared at that funeral
wagon in his memory until the log collapsed and the tendrils of flame sprang up
in a different place. He remembered hearing whispers among the black-garbed
villagers of Krajeck: A terrible thing. Only eight years old. God has him now.
God? Let us hope and pray that it is indeed God who has Ivon Griska.
The boy remembered. He had watched the coffin being lowered by a rope and pulley
into the dark square in the earth while the lelkesz stood intoning blessings and
waving his crucifix. The casket had been nailed shut and then bound with barbed
wire. Before the first shovelful of dirt was thrown, the lelkesz had crossed
himself and dropped his crucifix into the grave. That was a week ago, before the
Widow Janos had disappeared; before the Sandor family vanished on a snowy Sunday
night, leaving all their possessions behind; before Johann the hermit reported
that he had seen naked figures dancing on the windswept heights of Mount Jaeger
and running with the big timber wolves that stalked that haunted mountain. Soon
after that Johann had vanished along with his dog, Vida. The boy remembered the
strange hardness in his father's face, a flicker of some deep secret within his
eyes. Once he had heard Papa tell Mama, They're on the move again.
In the fireplace, wood shifted and sighed. The boy blinked and drew away. Behind
him his mother's needles were still; her head was cocked toward the door, and
she was listening. The wind roared, bringing ice down from the mountain. The
door would have to be forced open in the morning, and the hard glaze would
shatter like glass.
Papa should be home by now, the boy told himself. It's so cold out tonight, so
cold . . . surely Papa won't be gone much longer. Secrets seemed to be
everywhere.
14
Just yesterday night someone had gone through the Krajeck cemetery and dug up
twelve graves, including Ivon Griska's. The coffins were still missing, but it
was rumored that the lelkesz had found bones and skulls lying in the snow.
Something pounded at the door, a noise like a hammer falling upon an anvil.
Once. And again. The woman jumped in her chair and twisted around.
"Papa!" the boy shouted joyfully. When he stood up, the flame-face was