"Patricia A. McKillip - The House on Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

looked at her. His face had gone white; his eyes were wide, dark, speculative.
"The girl in the paintingтАж . Don't cry."
A tear trickled down the side of her nose. She brushed it away. "I'm not. I wasтАФI can'tтАФI don't
understand any of it. Who is going to come next?"
"I don't know." He stared at the stones as though they were not there and he could see what lay beyond
them. Carol watched the serene fall of sunlight uneasily. A shadow melted through it, and she jumped.
Bruce's head turned sharply. The amber-eyed cat leaped up beside him and picked a path through the
figurines. He leaped up to the window and squeezed through the broken pane.
The bells rang the quarter-hour. Sun slipped behind a cloud, and the light faded from the stones, leaving
them old and worn. Bruce slipped off the table. "Come on."
Carol nodded. She followed him up the stairs slowly, out the front door, across the side lawn where the
warm grass, newly mowed, smelled sweet, crashed beneath their feet. Bruce stopped beneath a grey
cherry tree beside the wall. He swung himself up and came to rest in the crook of a strong branch,
overlooking the broad field and the flat world beyond. Carol found a comfortable spot below him. She
leaned her head back against the broad smooth trunk.
"I'm so tired."
"Mm. That's from being nervous all afternoon." The tree trembled faintly as he shifted. "I feel like I'm
trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. Who is Edward? Why was she telling him to
come through a stone wall?"
"She wasn't telling Edward to come. She was talking to us. She looked straight at us."
"How do you know she saw us? How could we follow her through a wall?" "In the painting it wasn't a
wall." Bruce was still. He swung off his branch and landed on hers with an abruptness that made her
cling to the shaking tree. "It was an arch," he breathed. "You're right. An arch of stones. тАж" "In the
cellar?"
"I don't know. I don't know." He pounded softly, rhythmically on the branch, his eyes narrowed on the
far fields. He said slowly, "I've got an idea."
"What kind?" Carol said suspiciously. He picked a leaf and tore it delicately along the veins.
"Just a hunch." He tossed the leaf-bits away and looked at her. "A hunch about ghosts, and graveyards at

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midnightтАж ." "No."
"Think a little. If there's two ghosts walking round in our cellar as though they still live there, what do
you think happens at midnight when ghosts are properly, traditionally supposed to come out? If we can
see ghosts when nobody else can, we can see them wherever they are, at any time. Aren't you curious to
see if there's any truth in that?"
"If we can see ghosts, we can also see vampires, werewolves, witches, and Frankenstein's monster."
"Frankenstein's monster was only in a book. Carol, that sunlightтАФit wasn't right. They had shadows.
They weren't real, but they had shadows. Whose sunlight
were we sitting in? OursтАФor theirs? Who was real, then? Us or them? Were they in our time? Or were
we in theirs? Or is time something like the house, where stones from different centuries exist side by
side, and where people from different centuries can talk to each other?"
"I don't know. It sounds scary. I still don't see why we have to go sit in a graveyard at midnight."
"I want to see if they come out at midnight. Perhaps the girl was buried in the graveyard. She probably
was, if she lived in this house, because people didn't move around so much before cars were invented.
And perhaps we can find her tombstone, find out when she lived, what her name is."
Carol grimaced. "Why should she come out at midnight? It's cold and wet and dark."
He sighed patiently. "Ghosts do. It's traditional." "It's also traditional for witches and werewolves to
exist. Suppose we do sit out there, and everyone comes outтАФthere's bound to be a vampire around