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

Eyes open wide, body sweating with anticipation, Katsuk had obeyed Clark's directions.

"Move a little farther left, Chief."

Chief!

"That's good. Now, shield your eyes with your hand as though you were staring out at the
forest. No, the right hand."

Katsuk had obeyed.

The photographs pleased him. Nothing could steal a soul which Soul Catcher already
possessed. The photographs were a spirit omen. The charges of Cedar Cabin had clustered
around him, their faces toward the camera. Newspapers and magazines would reproduce those
pictures. An arrow would point to one face among the boys -- David Marshall, son of the
new Undersecretary of State.

The announcement will come on the six-o'clock news over the rec room's one television.
There will be pictures of the Marshall boy and his mother at the San Francisco airport,
the father at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

Many hoquat would stare at the pictures Clark had taken. Let them stare at a person they
thought was Charles Hobuhet. The Soul Catcher had yet to reveal Katsuk hidden in that
flesh.

By the moon shadow on the wall, he knew it was almost midnight. Time. With a single
motion, he arose from the bunk, glanced to the note he had left on the room's tiny desk.

"I take an innocent of your people to sacrifice for all the innocents you have murdered,
an innocent to go with all of those other innocents into the spirit place."
Ahhh, the words they would pour upon this message! All the ravings and analysis, the
hoquat logic. . . .

The light of the full moon coming through the window penetrated his body. He could feel
the weighted silence of it all along his spine. It made his hand tingle where Bee had
left the message of its stinger. The odor of resin from the rough boards of the walls
made him calm. Without guilt.

The breath of his passion came from his lips like smoke: "I am Katsuk, the center of the
universe."

He turned and, in a noiseless glide, took the center of the universe out the door, down
the short hall into the bunk room.

The Marshall boy slept in the nearest cot. Moonlight lay across the lower half of the cot
in a pattern of hills and valleys, undulant with the soft movement of the boy's breathing.
His clothing lay on a locker at the foot of the cot: whipcord trousers, a T-shirt, light
sweater and jacket, socks, tennis shoes. The boy was sleeping in his shorts.

Katsuk rolled the clothing into a bundle around the shoes. The alien fabric sent a