"K.D. Wentworth - Outhouse Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

Willy leaned his cheek up against the rough bark of the tree and wrapped his arms around it for support. The wind swayed the dark branches above them, and he caught another winking glimpse of the crescent moon and its companion star.
Rick fastened his fingers in Willy's shirt again. "Come on! We got to find them before it gets another one of my dogs!"
"But—but what do you think they're running?" Willy gasped as his feet scrambled through the tangled brush, towed along by Rick's relentless arm.
"I dunno! Not coon, though, that's for sure!"
Then they came upon the dog's broken body, curled up as though it were only sleeping by the gnarled foot of an ancient tree. "Jeez!" Rick handed him the twenty-two, then knelt to touch the dog's brow with his fingertips.
The wind gusted, and the trees creaked in the cold, sounding a little like squeaky, high-pitched laughter. The hair crawled on the back of Willy's neck. "Maybe you should call them in, Rick." Staring around under the dark trees, he shivered. "Maybe that's a bear or a cougar they're running."
Rick stood up and reached for the twenty-two. "Maybe, but, lessin' I catch up with them, they won't be back until breakfast." He swiveled his head, listening intently. "Come on!"
Rick dashed off between the twisted trunks. Willy plunged in after him with a choking feeling like his heart was too big for his chest. And now that Rick was scared for his dogs, he wasn't laying back for him anymore. After a few minutes, Willy could only follow him by sound. They were so deep into the woods now that the trees made an impenetrable ceiling above them and every sound they made echoed crazily.
The crash and crunch ahead of him stopped; Willy froze, terrified that he had turned wrong. The seconds dragged by as he tried not to breathe so that he could catch a sound, any sound to follow out of this suffocating darkness.
"Willy!" a faint voice called.
"Here!" he called back.
"Willy!" the voice came again, from somewhere on the left up ahead of him. "Goddammit, where are you?"
"Over here!" Willy floundered toward him, skinning his ankle against an invisible broken-edged rock, then struggling up again, thinking that his gasping breaths were the loudest things he'd ever heard in his life. Finally an arm snagged him as he stumbled past a split, half-fallen oak.
"Willy, look!"
Rick's fingers dug into his arm as Willy tried to focus through the dark, then finally got down on his knees before the dark tumbled heap of bodies. "It's Daisy and Singer and my new pup, little Poco." His voice was hoarse with restrained tears. "All's I got left now is Betsy and Old Jobe running out there all by theirselves. We've got to get to them!"
Willy stared at the tangled mass of hounds lying there as though a giant had scooped them up and thrown them against the old oak. Somewhere in the night, baying continued thinly, moving steadily off to their right.
Rick jerked at his sleeve. "Come on!" And he was off again into the darkness.
Willy lurched back onto his feet. "This is stupid!" he called after Rick. "What if that old bear decides to up and chunk your head against a tree?" As he strained to hear an answer, he caught only the wind groaning through the trees and the branches scraping over one another.
His hands out before him, he followed the crashing of Rick's footsteps, falling to his knees several times and once plunging ankle-deep into cold unseen mud. The wind blew, stirring the dead leaves on the ground, whistling thinly through the branches.
Willy struggled on, remembering the whiteness of his ma's face when he'd said that he was going coon hunting, remembering how his pa had been lost out on a cold fall night like this, five years ago. He'd fallen and broken his neck, and though the whole community had searched, it had taken three days to find him. Willy had been only six.
The hounds' baying abruptly changed in pitch, ascending the scale until it seemed that it could go no higher, and yet it still climbed. Willy oriented on it and changed direction slightly, realizing sickly that he was heading even deeper into the woods. "Rick, where are you?"
The wind came up again, howling and clattering the tree limbs against each other so that they sounded like two bucks knocking antlers together.
"Rick!" He stopped and held his breath, praying for an answer. "Wait for me!"
Then he thought that he heard a reply, very faint and off to his left. He changed direction again, thinking that the hounds did sound nearer now. He listened to his own feet clumping and crashing through the unseen brush, promising himself that he would never go coon hunting again if only he got home safe tonight. Even Ma's switch would look good compared to this.
"Over here!"
His face smarting from a deep scratch, Willy turned again. "Rick?" The hounds' baying grew clearer. "Have they got it treed?"
"Not exactly."
The hounds were yelping frantically now, as though they'd been hurt. Willy glanced around, his heart hammering against his chest. "Jeez, where are you? I can't see you!"
"Well, that depends on what you mean." The voice sounded nearer now. "The Rick you knew is over there by that tree on the left."
Willy stumbled to his left, finally making out the dark mass of a fallen body and the frenzied hounds whining and licking at its face.
"But the Rick that you're going to know is over here," the voice continued.
The wind surged again; the tree limbs made creaky whispering noises all around him. Willy edged closer to the hounds and the body. "What are you talking about?" he whispered between clenched teeth. "Is it someone we know? Should we go for help?"
"It's too late for that," Rick said, his voice strangely smooth and easy. "And besides, we have all the help we need right here."
Grabbing the collar of one of the crying hounds, Willy pulled it away, then knelt and tried to see the person's face. "It's not funny! Do you think that bear got him?"
The creaking grew louder all around him, squeaking and cackling, sounding for all the world like his grandpa laughing.
"No bear did that."
Footsteps shuffled through the dead grass and the brittle leaves. "Rick's hounds don't run bear." The footsteps stopped just behind a tree. The hound by the fallen body whined and cringed back against the tree.
Willy kept hold of the other dog's worn collar, feeling its exhausted sides heave against his leg. "Look, we've got the dogs now. Let's get on home and tell your pa about—"
"About this?" The footsteps crunched closer. "But nobody will know about this—ever."
"Nnnobbodyyy," answered the creaking.
Something dark and solid moved through the closely packed trees, its head so high up that it knocked the stiff tree limbs aside as it came. Willy squatted down in the dead leaves and the hound cowered back into his arms, snarling and snapping out there in the dark.
Willy wiped at the sweat on his face with the back of his sleeve, flinching at the salt stinging in his scrapes and scratches. "Let's get out of here, Rick. These dogs are scared plum out of their minds and I don't feel so good myself."
"In a minute." The shuffling black mass moved another step forward. "You're very warm."
"Wwwarrmmm!" the creaking agreed.
"Course I'm warm!" Willy snapped and struggled to his feet, keeping a good hold on the dog's collar because he didn't want to have to chase it again. "I've run over half the county after you and these dadblamed hounds!"
"Yes, you were a good friend." Rick sighed. "It's so touching, two good friends out on a night of hunting."
"Goooooddddd," the creaking chimed in.
Willy glanced around, his knees shaking until he wasn't sure that they would hold him. "How do we get back?" The black mass moved another step closer and suddenly he could see its vaguely manlike shape.
"Oh, I'm going back, but you're not." Blacker than the inside of a well at midnight, the shape melted down into a shape that was more human with each second.
Willy wanted to run, to scream, to do anything, but he was mortared right there to that spot.