"Bradbury, Ray - The October Game (ss) v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

Louise didn't look up.
'Hi, Mr Wilder!'
The children shouted, waved, as he came down.
By ten o'clock the doorbell had stopped ringing, the apples were
bitten from stringed doors, the pink faces were wiped dry from the
apple bobbling, napkins were smeared with toffee and punch, and he,
the husband, with pleasant efficiency had taken over. He took the
party right out of Louise's hands. He ran about talking to the twenty
children and the twelve parents who had come and were happy with the
special spiked cider he had fixed them. He supervised pin the tail on
the donkey, spin the bottle, musical chairs, and all the rest, amid
fits of shouting laughter. Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine,
all house lights out, he cried, 'Hush! Follow me!' tiptoeing towards
the cellar.
The parents, on the outer periphery of the costumed riot, commented
to each other, nodding at the clever husband, speaking to the lucky
wife. How well he got on with children, they said.
The children, crowded after the husband, squealing.
'The cellar!' he cried. 'The tomb of the witch!'
More squealing. He made a mock shiver. 'Abandon hope all ye who
enter here!'
The parents chuckled.
One by one the children slid down a slide which Mich had fixed up
from lengths of table-section, into the dark cellar. He hissed and
shouted ghastly utterances after them. A wonderful wailing filled dark
pumpkin-lighted house. Everybody talked at once. Everybody but Marion.
She had gone through all the party with a minimum of sound or talk; it
was all inside her, all the excitement and joy. What a little troll,
he thought. With a shut mouth and shiny eyes she had watched her own
party, like so many serpentines thrown before her.
Now, the parents. With laughing reluctance they slid down the short
incline, uproarious, while little Marion stood by, always wanting to
see it all, to be last. Louise went down without help. He moved to aid
her, but she was gone even before he bent.
The upper house was empty and silent in the candle-shine. Marion
stood by the slide. 'Here we go,' he said, and picked her up.
They sat in a vast circle in the cellar. Warmth came from the
distant bulk of the furnace. The chairs stood in a long line along
each wall, twenty squealing children, twelve rustling relatives,
alternatively spaced, with Louise down at the far end, Mich up at this
end, near the stairs. He peered but saw nothing. They had all grouped
to their chairs, catch-as-you-can in the blackness. The entire

programme from here on was to be enacted in the dark, he as Mr
Interlocutor. There was a child scampering, a smell of damp cement,
and the sound of the wind out in the October stars.
'Now!' cried the husband in the dark cellar. 'Quiet!'
Everybody settled.
The room was black black. Not a light, not a shine, not a glint of
an eye.