"Henry Kuttner - Call Him Demon UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

'Don't they notice?' Jane meant the adults.

'No,' Beatrice told her, and the children all looked toward the house and pondered the inscrutable ways of grown-ups. 'They act like he's always been here. Even Granny. Aunt Bessie said he came before / did. Only I knew that wasn't right.'

'Three weeks,' Charles said, changing his mind.

'He's making them all feel sick,' Emily said. 'Aunt Bessie takes aspirins all the time."

Jane considered. On the face of it, the situation seemed a little silly. An uncle three weeks old? Perhaps the adults were merely pretending, as they sometimes did, with esoteric adult motives. But somehow that didn't seem quite the answer. Children are never deceived very long about such things.

Charles, now that the ice was broken and Jane no longer an outsider, burst suddenly into excited gabble.

'Tell her, Bee! The real secretЧyou know. Can I show her the Road of Yellow Bricks? Please, Bee? Huh?'

Then the silence again. Charles was talking too much. Jane knew the Road of Yellow Bricks, of course. It ran straight through Oz from the Deadly Desert to the Emerald City.

After a long time Emily nodded.

'We got to tell her, you know,' she said. 'Only she might get scared. It's so dark.'

'You were scared,' Bobby said. 'You cried, the first time.'

'I didn't. Anyhow itЧit's only make believe.'

'Oh, no!' Charles said. 'I reached out and touched the crown last time.'

'It isn't a crown,' Emily said. 'It's him, Ruggedo.'

Jane thought of the uncle who wasn't a real uncleЧwho wasn't a real person. 'Is he Ruggedo?' she asked.

The children understood.

'Oh, no,' Charles said. 'Ruggedo lives in the cellar. We give him meat. All red and bluggy. He likes it! Gobble, gobble!'

Beatrice looked at Jane. She nodded toward the clubhouse, which was a piano-box with a genuine secret lock. Then, somehow, quite deftly, she shifted the conversation onto another subject. A game of cowboys-and-Indians started presently and Bobby, howling terribly, led the route around the house.

The piano-box smelled pleasantly of acacia drifting through the cracks. Beatrice and Jane, huddled together in the warm dimness, heard diminishing Indian-cries in the distance. Beatrice looked curiously adult just now.

'I'm glad you came, Janie,' she said. "The little kids don't understand at all. It's pretty awful.'

'Who is he?'

Beatrice shivered. 'I don't know. I think he lives in the cellar.' She hesitated. 'You have to get to him through, the attic, though. I'd be awfully scared if the little kids weren't soЧsoЧthey don't seem to mind at all.'

'But Bee. Who is he?'

Beatrice turned her head and looked at Jane, and it was quite evident then that she could not or would not say. There was a barrier. But because it was important, she tried. She mentioned the Wrong Uncle.

"I think Ruggedo's the same as him. I know he is, really. Charles and Bobby say soЧand they know. They know better than I do. They're littler . . . It's hard to explain, butЧwell it's sort of like the Scoodlers. Remember?'