"EB - Mike Resnick + Martin H. Greenberg - Christmas GhostsUC - Compilation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenberg Martin H)

I thought she'd refuse to take me to the airport, but in the end, she and the kids piled into a car, and I had to explain to my three living children why I was leaving them to go chasing after a ghost they couldn't see. Only Alexander remembers it now; the others were just a little too young or a little too distracted.

When I got onto the plane, I heard the tapping on glass that always came for each of the twelve days of Christmas. The window was a tiny oval plastic pane, and the clouds were streaking past at hundreds of miles per hour, but the little hungry girl was there, with her wide eyes and her voiceless plea. This time

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Michelle Sagara

I nodded and watched her face against the background of columned clouds and sunlight.

Welt, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I followed her. From the moment we landed, she appeared, floating on air in the arrivals lounge. Thin, scrawny and openly ravenous, she followed me with her eyes, and I followed her with my legs. I didn't bring much in the way of luggage because I thought it'd be best to travel light, so I zipped right out of the airport on her trail.

She walked beside my car, tapping against the smoked glass, begging for food. It was hard to say who was leading who, because I knew where I was going, or at least I thought I did. In retrospect, it was lucky I had her with me, because everything had changed in the years between my five-year-old and thirty-six-year-old selves. The great old manor house that haunted my inner eye was still thereЧbut it wasn't a house anymore, it was a small hotel and, at that, one that had seen better days. There was a paved road leading up to its doors which showed that the place had had money once, and I took the bend slowly, keeping an eye on my little companion.

After I got out of the car, explained what I wanted to four different people in two different languages, and checked into a small room, I found the little girl waiting for me by the window hi the dining room. There were two elderly couples in the dining room, so it was quiet, almost austere.

That's where I first saw you, I thought. And I stood up, pushed my chair back, and walked out through the front doors. It didn't surprise me when I found her on the porch, wringing her hands dramatically and begging for food. She didn't need to be dramatic; her arms were almost skeletal, her eyes, sunken disks in the paleness of ghostly skin.

"All right," I said quietly. "Where?"

She started walking, and I started to follow her. All

HUNGER

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the while she was chattering away. Food, please. Please, I'm so hungry. Please, feed me.

"I'm not doing this for you," I said. "You're already dead." But I didn't realize, until the words left my mouth, how true both statements were. She stopped her chattering then; left it behind as if she didn't need it anymore.

I must've looked funny, coming away from my car with a shovel and a pick-axe. If I did, no one commented, and I made a note to leave a generous tip if I wasn't interrupted or interrogated. You see, the site that she came to stand on wasn't all that far away from the grounds of the house.

"Did you die here, that night?" I asked her, hi between shoveling dirt.

She said, Feed me, please, I'm so hungry; feed me. So I didn't ask her any more questions. I just kept upending shovels full of dirt until my back ached with the effort. You'd probably laugh if you knew how shallow the unofficial grave was, but I didn't get as much exercise as I should back then. But I found her, and this was the only Christmas miracle I can think of: The body. It was dead, all right, and it was obviously the same little girl that had plagued my nights for twelve days each year, but it hadn't decayed at all. No smell, no worms, no rot. I thanked GodЧand I didn't care whose. I hadn't thought much beyond finding the body.

Should've, though, because as it turns out, it was a long walk from the hotel to the place that the little ghost began to lead me to. This was the fourth day, and the day was definitely gone. There's really not that much in the way of light along the dirt roads, and the lamp I held didn't helpЧthe body didn't weigh much, but it was really awkward to carry one-handed. I managed.

Funny what runs through a mind in the dark with a small girl's corpse hugged against your chest. Mostly,

I was worried that the police would appear over the horizon, see me with this young girl, and have me shot on sight. I thought I was crazy; I thought I was stupid. But I wouldn't have let go of her; this was as close a chance to peace as I was ever going to get. I kept following her and she kept leading.

And then we found it. An old farm, of sorts. Not a good farm, and not one that was meant to make a lot of money either, although I'll be the first to admit that I'm no judge of farms. There was this little light nickering in the window of the small farmhouse, and as I approached it, I realized that it was candlelight. Someone was awake.

You've never frozen solid in the middle of a dark night with a little girl's ghost nagging you and a little girl's corpse in your arms. I didn't know what to do. I mean, now that I'd found her and brought her home, I wanted to drop her body and run. But she kept on at me, asking for food with her pale thin lips and her wide eyes, and I knew by now that it meant she wasn't quite finished with me. So I did the stupid thing.

I walked up to the closed door of the little house, and I knocked as loudly as I could. After five long minutes, someone answered. She was short, little; she seemed ancient. I thought she was going to drop the candle she was holding when she saw what I was carrying; she went that funny white-green color that people go when they're in shock.

I'm sorry, I said, in my broken Spanish. / wanted toЧ