"David,.Peter.-.Howling.Mad" - читать интересную книгу автора (David Peter)

I've done my damnedest to fill in the gaps where there are gaps. I admit itЧsome
of the things I made up out of whole cloth, based on nothing more than my
guessing that this was probably what was going on. I like to think of those
parts of the story as apocryphalЧthat is, if they didn't happen, then they
really should have.
Of course, the really great thing about all this is that the stuff which I know
to be factual and true is the most bizarre stuff of allЧthe stuff that you'd
read and go, "Oh, no way in hell is that the truth." And if you don't think
truth is stranger than fiction, then you haven't been reading the newspapers
lately.
So here's the story. I happen to hate books where the narrator keeps sticking
his nose into the story all the time, so I'm going to try and just keep out of
the way. However, every now and then I may jump in to quote something that Josh
himself said to me, because he really did have a way of turning a phrase that I
couldn't help but admire. And his perspective was, to put it mildly, unique.
When I do jump in with one of those, I'll kind of draw your attention to it and
put it into italics, that fancy type that looks like this. And it seems to me
that the best way to start off this whole crazy story is to tell you, right here
and up front, what Josh first said to me:
"I never much believed in werewolves, and even to this day I'm not entirely
certain I accept all the various aspects of the legends. I feel this way despite
the fact that I met a werewolf, was bitten by a werewolf, and had my life
permanently changed by a werewolf.
"Not only did I not believe in werewolves, I didn't believe in vampires, ghouls,
goblins, zombies and all the other nasty creatures that humans have conjured up
for themselves over the years.
"Probably the reason for this is that all theseЕ things, I guess you would sayЕ
manifest themselves in the nighttime hours. Humans probably manufactured these
creatures for themselves out of their own overactive imaginations when faced
with the darkness.
"But I have spent much of my five years on this earth in that selfsame
darkness. The night holds no terrors for me. It is the time when I, and the
pack, can be at our stealthiest, noiselessly travelling through the brush,
darting between protecting trees, staying upwind of our prey until it's too late
for the prey to escape.
"When humans huddled around the protective fire, looked out into the night
forest and saw glowing eyes staring at them"Чand Josh grinned that toothy grin I
mentioned earlierЧ "that was where the superstitions about what lurks in the
woods first began. But you seeЕ it was my ancestors the humans were staring at.
And whereas humans couldn't see us, and so conjured up all manners of hideous
things, we could very easily see them. White and shivering and clustered around
their fires for warmth, they were hardly in a position to induce terror in us.
My ancestors felt pity for them, nothing more."
"I should feel flattered, I suppose, that we were endowed with such forbidding
powers in the minds of those early humans. But it ultimately backfired. Humans
became so afraid of wolves that in addition to becoming the basis for
superstitions, we became the targets for weapons from the moment that humans
realized we could die as readily as any other animal."
"The point of all this, as I was saying, is that I did not share the
superstitions of humans, what with my not being a human myself. Certainly, even