"James Herbert - Soul Catcher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)

kill an innocent of the whites. Let your deed fall upon this world. Let your deed be a
single, heavy hand which clutches the heart. The whites must feel it. They must hear it.
An innocent for all of our innocents."

Having told him what he must do, Bee took flight.

His gaze followed the flight, lost it in the leafery of the vine maple copse far upslope.
He sensed then a procession of ancestral ghosts insatiate in their demands. All of those
who had gone before him remained an unchanging field locked immovably into his past, a
field against which he could see himself change.
Kill an innocent!

Sorrow and confusion dried his mouth. He felt parched in his innermost being, withered.

The sun crossing over the high ridge to keep its appointment with the leaves in the canyon
touched his shoulders, his eyes. He knew he had been tempted and had gone through a
locked door into a region of terrifying power. To hold this power he would have to come
to terms with that other self inside him. He could be only one person -- Katsuk.

He said: "I am Katsuk."

The words brought calm. Spirits of air and earth were with him as they had been for his
ancestors. He resumed climbing the slope. His movements aroused a flying squirrel. It
glided from a high limb to a low one far below. He felt the life all around him then:
brown movements hidden in greenery, life caught suddenly in stop-motion by his presence.

He thought: Remember me, creatures of this forest. Remember Katsuk as the whole world
will remember him. I am Katsuk. Ten thousand nights from now, ten thousand seasons from
now, this world still will remember Katsuk and his meaning.

***
From a wire story, Seattle dateline:

The mother of the kidnap victim arrived at Six Rivers Camp about 3:30 p.m. yesterday. She
was brought in by one of the four executive helicopters released for the search by lumber
and plywood corporations of the Northwest. There were tearstains on her cheeks as she
stepped from the helicopter to be greeted by her husband.

She said: "Any mother can understand how I feel. Please, let me be alone with my
husband."

***
An irritant whine edged his mother's voice as David sat down across from her in the sunny
breakfast room that overlooked their back lawn and private stream. The scowl which
accompanied the whine drew sharp lines down her forehead toward her nose. A vein on her
left hand had taken on the hue of rusty iron. She wore something pink and lacy, her
yellow hair fluffed up. Her lavender perfume enveloped the table.

She said: "I wish you wouldn't take that awful knife to camp, Davey. What in heaven's
name will you do with such a thing? I think your father was quite mad to give you such a