"Tom Easton - Mood Wendigo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Eventually, we talked ourselves out and let the fire die. We were readying ourselves for the sleeping
bags, washing up, brushing teeth, when it happened. We heard a moan at first, low as if far distant,
swelling loud and clear and close. At its peak it sounded like a baby must when it is being dipped in
boiling oil.

It was a little after midnight and as black as the inside of a closet. We had been using the light of an
electric lantern as well as the glow of the coals. We had been contained in a small and cozy room, but
that sound broke down the walls. I shuddered, and Lydia ran, the soap and water spilled on the moss,
her camera ready in her hand, Keith hot on her heels. Ronny would have gone too, but I held him still
with a hand on his shoulder. "Let go!" he cried. "I want to see it too!"

"Remember the stories," I said as softly as I could over the dying scream. "Someone should mind the
camp." He subsided as I'd hoped he would. When the scream was gone and the night was again silent, I
added, "Now. Now we can look for them."

We took our flashlights and tried to follow the marks Lydia and Keith had crushed into the moss as they
ran. But the tracks soon disappeared in the tangled skein of prints we had made earlier that afternoon.
We called and shouted. We covered every inch of that hilltop, again and again, shining our lights down
cracks in the rock and under bushes, checking the bottom of every drop we came across, large or small.
We searched until our batteries were exhausted, and then we huddled around a rebuilt fire, worrying,
starting at every crackle of brush.

With the dawn, we searched and called again, but we had no better luck. Lydia and Keith had vanished
without a trace, just as in the legends. I was closer than ever before to believing in the wendigo, and thus
in ghosts, banshees, and all the rest of what I had once dismissed as so much claptrap.

Our second search soon ended in futility. We made a hasty breakfast, doused the fire, and broke camp.
Then we lugged the gear back to the car. It took longer, since there were fewer of us now. I had plenty
of time to berate myself, to think I should never have helped Lydia with her obsession, never have let the
boys come along, never have come myself. But who could have expected a myth to be real? Who could
have guessed it would cost us half our party? And what was the wendigo? What was it that made a
sound that swelled and faded like a freight train's whistle, that screamed like a soul in torment? Like a
god on a cosmic treadmill? If only I had known, I might have left the boys in town, but I would still have
come with Lydia, hoping to protect her, shield her. I felt as I might for the child I didn't have, and I
mourned.

Ronny was less thoughtful. He shivered when he thought of the night, and once he dropped his load with
a clatter of pans. He had lost a teacher and a friend. He might have been lost himself. The horror of that
scream had almost touched him, and he could barely control his thoughts. He stayed close to me,
keeping a wary eye on the woods around us, talking endlessly, trying to imagine what had happened to
the others. He failed to disrupt my thoughts only because I was as obsessed myself. There was no
conversation. He talked on, while I muttered responsive noises, and we both scurried around our
separate skulls, like rats seeking the way out of a trap.

By mid-morning, we were back in town. I stopped the car in front of the town hall. The police station
was across the street. We would have to go there first, of course. Missing persons, runaways, lost in the
woods, carried off by a mythical beast, had to be reported, search parties organized, motions gone
through even if they could do no good. Ronny was still talking, muttering, his skin a cold and clammy
white, his eyes glazed. I helped him out of the car and steered him across the road. I remember being