"Night Warriors - 02 - Death Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

That detective in the brown suit.'
'He didn't say anything; he only whispered. What are you talking about?'
'But he said something to me,Т said Lenny.
'Well, I sure didn't hear him. All I saw him do was whisper.' Lenny shook his head. 'He spoke out loud. It was real clear. He said, "Better watch out, kid. You're one of them.'"
John felt a sudden pang of uncertainty. 'I sure didn't hear him say that. I didn't hear him say anything.' He turned to Jennifer. 'Did you hear that detective say anything? Not the sergeant; the other one, his twin?'
Jennifer slowly shook her head. 'I didn't hear him say anything at all, honey.'
But Lenny was adamant. 'He said, "Better watch out, kid." He said it real clear. "Better watch out, kid. You're one of them."
'And that was all? He didn't explain what he meant?' That was all. He said it like I was supposed to know what he meant.'
John clasped his hand over his mouth for a moment. Then he said, 'I don't know. This gets wackier by the minute, I mean, if he'd said something out loud, if he'd said anything out loud, I'm sure I would have heard him. I was paying so much attention to the fact that he whispered all the time.'
Jennifer laid her arm around Lenny's shoulders, and smiled, 1 think you're suffering from wearyitis. We've all had a bad night and a long day. It's easy to imagine things when you're tired.' 'But he said it,' Lenny insisted. 'All right,Т said John. СIТll tell you what I'll do. I'll call police headquarters tomorrow and talk to Detective Clay, and ask him what he meant. And if he denies that he said it, or if he doesn't want to discuss it, then I'll talk to the police commissioner in person.'
Lenny said, 'You do believe me, don't you? I'm not telling lies.'
'Sure I believe you. Just because I didn't hear him, that doesn't mean beans. I'm over forty now, champ, over the hill. The old eardrums are wearing out.' Lenny went up to bed. John and Jennifer sat in silence for a while, their loungers pushed together so that they could hold hands, watching the stars come out.
A shooting star flared briefly, over toward Conshohocken.
'Isn't that supposed to be an omen?' asked Jennifer.
John nodded. 'Actually, it's a warning. If I don't take half a glass of Pepto-Bismol before I go to bed, I'm not going to sleep tonight, either.'
John woke up in the very smallest hour of the night and opened his eyes. For a long, disorienting moment, he couldn't think where he was. The window was on the wrong side of the room and something unfamiliar was shining on the opposite wall, and the bedcovers felt puffy and suffocating.
He sat up, and suddenly understood that he was in Jack Felling's guest bedroom. Jennifer was breathing quietly and deeply just beside him. The shine on the opposite wall was nothing more than the moonlight, reflected in the glass of a large Italian print. The Church of San Carlino by Borromini, at Daybreak.
He looked at the digital clock on the marble-topped bedside table: 2:17 AM. He reached across for his glass of water, and drank almost all of it without taking a breath. He felt as if Chablis were oozing out of his pores instead of perspiration, and the roof of his mouth was coated with grease. The Chinese seemed to have perfected a special kind of grease that stuck to the roof of your mouth and wouldn't come off: Hong Fat, he thought wryly.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling. His stomach growled, but he knew he wasn't going to be sick. That feeling of nausea was just going to stay there until tomorrow morning. He lay awake, his mind turning over like a flag-decorated Ferns wheel. He wondered if he could find a way to improve the News's distribution in Camden, on the Jersey side of the river, where they always ran second-best to the Inquirer. He began to think about a four-page supplement, folded around the outside of the paper, with a strong Camden lead on the front and Camden sports on the back.
After a while, his mind revolved around to thoughts of Lenny, and to Lenny's belief that he had seen Virginia. John guessed that Dr Hendriksen was right, and that Lenny was suffering from nothing more alarming than long-suppressed guilt and grief. All the same, it seemed strange that Lenny should have started hallucinating so suddenly, and for no apparent reason.
The fact that they had finished decorating the house might have had something to do with it. Maybe Lenny had finally come face-to-face with the fact that his mother was really gone forever, and that his new life with Jennifer was permanent.
All the same, there was still the bewildering vandalism of their bedroom to think about. For about ten seconds after they'd discovered it, John had entertained the possibility that Lenny hadn't really been asleep that evening, and that he had crept into their bedroom and torn it to pieces. But quite apart from the fact that he didn't have the physical strength to inflict all of that damage, especially in the short time that had been available to him, Lenny hadn't come out with any protestations of innocence - the kind that every father recognizes from his own youthful career of broken windows and stolen candy bars. The only time you could be sure that a boy had done something bad was when he took the trouble to tell you that he hadn't. Then there was all this weirdness with the Clay twins. Had Detective Clay really spoken to Lenny, or had Lenny imagined it? And if he had said that - Better watch out, kid, you're one of them - what the hell was that supposed to mean? One of whom?
There you are, he thought with some satisfaction, I can even be grammatical inside my own head.
He felt a yawn coming on. He allowed his mouth to open slowly, his eyes to close, his back muscles to stretch. While he yawned, a soft thunder filled his ears, of rushing blood and rusting bedclothes. But that thunder only partially blotted out the scratching noise from the corridor.
He stopped yawning instantly and lay there with yawn-tears still glistening in his eyes, listening.
There it was again, another scratch. Loose and hollow, like somebody dragging a garden fork along the wall. Closer this time, as far as John could make out.
'Lenny?' he called under his breath, trying not to wake Jennifer. 'Lenny, is that you?'
Silence. The scratching had stopped. John lay in bed with his heart beating hard and his toes stiffly curled and his ears listening so acutely that he could have heard a bird landing on the roof.
Maybe that was it, a bird scratching in the roof-space. Or squirrels. Squirrels were notorious for finding their way into lofts and tearing up insulation and paper to make themselves nests. He would have to tell Jack when the Fellings came home.
Krrrrrrrrrr. The scratching was repeated. This time it was much closer. And this time he knew it couldn't be squirrels because it was too long and too loud and in any case it wasn't in the roof, it was out in the corridor - right outside the door.
My brother says you should lock your bedroom door.
'Lenny?' he called, and this time his voice was loud enough to wake up Jennifer. She sat up beside him, with her hair tousled.
'What is it? John - what's the matter?'
'Ssh!' he said. 'Listen!'
'Listen to what? John - you woke me up!'
'Listen!'
They listened. There was nothing at all. No scratching, no movement. At last John said, 'I thought I heard something. Kind of a scratching noise, outside in the corridor.'
'It could have been Lenny.'
'Yes, well, maybe it was. But it didn't sound like Lenny.'
There was a very long pause. Then Jennifer said. 'Aren't you going to go check?'
John looked at her, then back toward the door, and then said, 'It's quiet now.'
'You ought to make sure. Perhaps he's sleepwalking.'
'Sure, you're right.' John pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. He slept naked, but even though it was a warm night and there was nobody else in the house, he reached for his robe. Nobody relishes a nude encounter with the unknown.
'It's probably squirrels,' he remarked, tightening the knot in his sash.
Jennifer said nothing as she watched him go to the door. He put his hand on the doorknob, and hesitated.
'John?' asked Jennifer.
'I was just giving it one more listen. They have quite a few burglaries up here on Chestnut Hill. Last thing I want to do is run straight into a burglar.'
'My God,Т said Jennifer, laughing. 'Vandalized and burgled, all in one week.'
John opened the door. He opened his eyes again. It was still dark. He must have been dreaming. He lay still for a long time, and he was aware that the room around him was unfamiliar. It wasn't his own bedroom on Third Street: the window was on the wrong side. It didn't smell the same, either. This room smelled neutral and stuffy. No perfume. No wine. No hint of sex.
Somewhere nearby, he could hear voices. Somebody laughing. Then chimes, like a doorbell.