"Barker, Clive - Books of Blood 03" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

'Shit,' Birdy said quietly.
Suddenly the foyer seemed smaller than she'd previously thought it, and so did her reserve of cool. She mentally slapped herself across the face, the standard response for a heroine verging on hysteria. Think this through, she instructed herself. One: the door was locked. Lindi Lee hadn't done it, Ricky couldn't have done it, she certainly hadn't done it. Which implied-
Two: There was a weirdo in here. Maybe the same he, she or it that was on the phone. Which implied -
Three: He, she or it must have access to another line, somewhere in the building. The only one she knew of was upstairs, in the storeroom. But there was no way she was going up there. For reasons see Heroine in Peril. Which implied -
Four: She had to open this door with Ricky's keys.
Right, there was the imperative: get the keys from Ricky.
She stepped back into the cinema. For some reason the house-lights were jumpy, or was that just panic in her optic nerve? No, they were flickering slightly; the whole interior seemed to be fluctuating, as though it were breathing.
Ignore it: fetch the keys.
She raced down the aisle, aware, as she always was when she ran, that her breasts were doing a jig, her buttocks too. A right sight I look, she thought for anyone with the eyes to see. Ricky, was moaning in his faint. Birdy looked for the keys, but his belt had disappeared.
'Ricky . . .'she said close to his face. The moans multiplied.
'Ricky, can you hear me? It's Birdy, Rick. Birdy.'
'Birdy?'
'We're locked in, Ricky. Where are the keys?'
'. . . keys?'
'You're not wearing your belt, Ricky,' she spoke slowly, as if to an idiot, 'where-are-your-keys?'
The jigsaw Ricky was doing in his aching head was suddenly solved, and he sat up.


'Boy!' he said.
'What boy?'
'In the John. Dead in the John.'
'Dead? Oh Christ. Dead? Are you sure?'
Ricky was in some sort of trance, it seemed. He didn't look at her, he just stared into middle-distance, seeing something she couldn't.
'Where are the keys?' she asked again. 'Ricky. It's important. Concentrate.'
'Keys?'
She wanted to slap him now, but his face was already bloody and it seemed sadistic.
'On the floor,' he said after a time.
'In the John? On the floor in the John?'
Ricky nodded. The movement of his head seemed to dislodge some terrible thoughts: suddenly he looked as though he was going to cry.
'It's all going to be all right,' said Birdy.
Ricky's hands had found his face, and he was feeling his features, a ritual of reassurance.
'Am I here?' he inquired quietly. Birdy didn't hear him, she was steeling herself for the John. She had to go in there, no doubt about that, body or no body. Get in, fetch the keys, get out again. Do it now.
She stepped through the door. It occurred to her as she did so that she'd never been in a men's toilet before, and she sincerely hoped this would be the first and only occasion.
The toilet was almost in darkness. The light was flickering in the same fitful way as the lights in the cinema, but at a lower level. She stood at the door, letting her eyes accommodate the gloom, and scanned the place.
The toilet was empty. There was no boy on the floor, dead or alive.
The keys were there though. Ricky's belt was lying in the gutter of the urinal. She fished it out, the oppressive smell of the disinfectant block making her sinuses ache. Disengaging the keys from their ring she stepped out of the toilet into the comparative freshness of the cinema. And it was all over, simple as that.
Ricky had hoisted himself on to one of the seats, and was slumped in it, looking sicker and sorrier for himself than ever. He looked up as he heard Birdy emerge.


'I've got the keys,' she said.
He grunted: God, he looked ill, she thought. Some of her sympathy had evaporated however. He was obviously having hallucinations, and they probably had chemical 'origins. It was his own damn fault.
'There's no boy in there, Ricky.'
'What?'
There's no body in the John; nobody at all. What are you on anyhow?'
Ricky looked down at his shaking hands.
'I'm not on anything. Honestly.'
'Damn stupid,' she said. She half-suspected that he'd set her up for this somehow, except that practical jokes weren't his style. Ricky was quite a puritan in his way: that had been one of his attractions.
'Do you need a doctor?'
He shook his head sulkily.
'Are you sure?'