"Bailey-TheMall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

done with this! No, Ellis thought. That was too easy. What the hell was
happening here? Where were Katie and the kids?

Steeling himself, he turned and peered into the depths. Empty escalators and
walkways intersected at wholly prosaic angles. The Ferris wheel revolved
lethargically.

"Katie!" he screamed. "Jason! Donna!"

The mocking strains of the calliope drifted up to enfold him -- that and his own
voice, crying ghostly out of the distance. They're late, he thought, that's all.
They're probably on their way right now. But even so, a hundred tenuous
filaments of panic began to work through his body.

What if they weren't?

"Katie!" he yelled, and a rational core at the center of his mind wondered at
the hysterical edge to his voice. What's wrong, Ellis? it asked. Something
bothering you? And something sure as hell was, he knew. Something about this
mall and this long strange night. Something about The Boy's Book of
Constellations. "Donna! Jason!"

From behind Ellis, a mellifluous voice said, "It really is no use to shout, you
know. They won't hear you," and panic -- fear -- came on like a light within
him. Each one of those tiny filaments glared suddenly incandescent with
hysteria. Out of the distance, his own cry returned to him, dissolving in the
frenetic cadence of the calliope.

"Ellis," that voice said. "Why don't you turn around?"

Ellis opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had gone dry. Blood roared in
his ears. Finally, his voice a sandpapery rasp, he said, "Who are you?"

The voice said, "I'm the night manager, Ellis. I think you knew that. Really, I
don't see any point in talking to your back. Why don't you turn around?"

Ellis did. The night manager stood quietly before the revolving doors. He was
angular and tall -- too tall, some part of Ellis's mind insisted -- dressed
impeccably in a gray double-breasted suit with a pink vanity handkerchief. Ellis
said, "What in the hews going on?" He clutched the book --

-- Open it! --

-- against his chest and began to back away, skating his hand along the rail.

"Ellis!" said the night manager. "Stop!"

Ellis stopped. Moving with the predatory grace and strength of a shark, the
night manager glided across the space between them. He stooped and peered into
Ellis's face, his black vertiginous eyes dissolving first into a wheeling