"Robert Reed - Graffiti" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

suggested that they sneak down there and have a look.

"A look at what?" Eddie wondered aloud.

"You like to paint," Macon reminded him. "Well, there's some really strange
paintings in that sewer. If what I heard is true, I mean."

They met after dark, armed with their fathers' best flashlights, Macon
shouldering a heavy knapsack that rattled as they slipped into a deep,
weed-choked gully. The sewer began where the gully dove into an oversized
concrete tube, the tube's mouth blocked by thick steel bars aligned in a
crosshatching pattern. There was a small door secured by heavy padlocks, and for
no conscious reason, Eddie felt relief when he thought they could go no farther.
It was just a sewer, of course. In eighteen years, he had never wondered what
was beyond the barricade. But he smiled in the darkness, smiled until Macon
said, "Over here. We can get inside here."

Freezes and floods had worn away a portion of the concrete wall. With the help
of a crowbar, chisel and ball-peen hammer, they enlarged nature's work. Then
Eddie, smaller by plenty, slipped easily into the sewer, and with a lot of
grunting and twisting and breathless little curses, Macon joined him, slapping
his buddy on the back, then whispering, "Follow me," with a wink that went
unseen.

A trickle of water, antifreeze, and discarded oil led the way, spilling down a
long slope before turning beneath Main Street, slowing and spreading until it
was little more than a sheen of moisture and reflective slime. Modern concrete
gave way to enduring red brick. The sewer had been built in the 1890s, arching
walls frosted with an excess of mortar, and the mortar was decorated with
colorful, even gaudy paintings. Holding a big Coleman flashlight in both hands,
Eddie focused the beam on the nearest work. In clinical detail, it showed a man
and woman making love. Except they weren't making love, he realized. The woman
was struggling, and the man, taking her from behind, held a knife flush against
her long and pale screaming throat.

"This is real," Macon reported. "Everything you see here happened as it's
shown."

Other paintings portrayed other violent crimes. A man dressed in an
old-fashioned suit was being shot in the face, pointblank. A second man was
being gutted with a long blade. A third was being battered from behind with a
baseball bat. And in each case, the painting looked astonishingly new, and the
murderous person was shown in photographic quality.

It was a kind of gallery, Eddie realized. Utterly unexpected, and inexplicable.
Yet Macon had a ready explanation. "The way I hear it, our town once made a pact
with the Devil, or someone just as good." He illuminated his own face, proud of
his knowing grin. "If there's violent crime anywhere in Riverview, it appears
here. As it happens. By magic." "How do you know?"