"Charles L. Grant - In a Dark Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

pocket.

The car was dark brown, or had been at one time, before the summer's sun
and dust, the claws of low branches, had faded and scratched it to a
shade no one could name. He loved it. He'd had it for six years, and the
driver's leather seat had finally conformed to every sag of his spine,
every bulge of his rump. Like slippers that looked as if they were ready
for the trash, and couldn't possibly be that comfortable.

He switched on the ignition; the engine coughed worse than a dying man.
He waited for it to settle, the patience of experience. And when it did,
after flirting with a stall just to annoy him, he pulled onto the
road-all curves and sharp bends, rising and falling as the land rose and
fell. The houses on the slopes above and below it were widely separated
by wooded lots, mailboxes in clusters on cleared patches of level
ground, oak and caged birch

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and hickory and pine that hid much of the sky and most of the sun,
railroad ties and whitewashed stones to mark driveways.

Even in the afternoon it was like driving through evening.

But the more houses there were, the less trees there would be, and the less-

"Cut it," he ordered, left hand on the wheel, right hand on his thigh.
"You're beginning to sound like an old man."

But he had missed the stone.

And there'd been a shadow without a cloud.

And as he swung around a bend forced by a huge boulder, there was a body
in the road.

Oh great, Nancy thought glumly when she recognized her father's car;
great, wonderful, swell, shit. I'm dead. Aw shit. I'm dead.

"Hi, Dad!" she called brightly when Glenn pulled alongside her bike and
braked sharply enough for her to wince. She leaned over to peer through
the open passenger window. "I thought you were going to work."

A moment passed without an answer.

Please, she prayed; God, please let him be in a good mood.

Then she panicked, fought it back, because her shorts were too tight (he
would say), her thin white t-shirt too revealing (he would say), her
hair, thick and brown and inherited from him, long and almost frizzy,