"Bruce McAllister - Poison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcallister Bruce)

everyone knew it was poison and who had put it out. It was what witches
did—poisoning animals you loved. Everyone knew this.

Hand shaking, he found a paper bag under the kitchen sink just the
right size for the body, put it in gently, twisted the top, and, though it hurt him
to do it, left it in the bathtub where no one would notice it during the night. It
was his bathroom, and no one would look in his tub until their maid came on
Monday. If his parents asked where the cat was, he’d say he didn’t know;
and when he was finished with what he needed to do, he’d tell them what
had happened. Or at least how the cat had died, poisoned by a witch, and
how he’d buried it, which would indeed be true by the time he’d finished
what he needed to do.

The next morning, as he ate breakfast with his mother and father, he
asked, “What do witches do on Sunday?”

“They’re not witches,” his mother answered. “They’re just old women,
John, and if they had family—if they lived in town with their families—the
entire village would call them befane, Christmas witches, and not streghe,
which is so unkind.” His mother was a teacher and was always teaching.
She was wrong—they wouldn’t be called befane—they’d be called nonne
—grandmothers—but she was frustrated that she didn’t know the language
well enough to teach in this country, so she was always lecturing whenever
she could.

“It doesn’t matter whether they’re witches or not,” the boy answered,
and, as he did, knew that it had begun and that he could not turn back. The
truth. The courage to speak it. The anger needed for such courage. To
stand before the witch who’d done it and talk to her about what was fair and
what wasn’t, to make her feel what he felt. And by doing so, free himself
from an anger that was like a spell, one that might hold him forever if he did
not find her in the olive groves and make her see what she had done.

“You could be more sensitive about the elderly,” his mother was
saying. “And you don’t need to speak to me or your father in that tone of
voice, John.”
 I had no tone, he wanted to say, but knew it would only make her
madder and he would have to spend the morning undoing what he had
done. He had his own anger now, and anger was a powerful thing. It could
make you courageous. It could make people do what you wanted. But it
was also a spell—like a song you couldn’t get out of your head—and could
make you a slave to it. He did not want to be a slave to it, but he did have a
right to be angry, didn’t he? His cat had died in his bathtub making that
terrible sound; and as she’d died he’d stood there, seen the shadow, and
watched it happen: The soul of his cat being pulled from its dying body by
the ghostly hand of an old woman, the end of her pinky finger missing.

I will know the witch by her hand, he told himself again. By her little
finger....