"Murphy, Pat - Departure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

He said nothing. The train came and she got on. She stared out at the darkness
and imagined a new world, constructing it from the shades of night.

That night, she felt restless. The borrowed apartment was not her home. Her
clothes were still in her suitcase: she had never unpacked. The closet and the
bureau drawers were filled with her friend's clothes. Jan was temporary, a
transient guest who would come and go without leaving a trace of her passage.
She did not belong here.

In the pocket of her coat, she found the flier that the Salvation Army woman had
thrust into her hand. It was badly printed on cheap stock, and the letters were
smeared where her fingers had rubbed them. The text was littered with
exclamation points and loud with religious exhortations: "DOOMSDAY IS NEAR!
Behold! Beware! Be Watchful! Satan's evil dominion is rampant. You must choose
between light and darkness. Do not go down into the darkness without Jesus in
your heart. Let Jesus be the torch that lights your way. ARE WE MEN OR ARE WE
BEASTS? Accept the Lord into your heart and renounce the ways of the beast."

Yes, she thought, they dwell in darkness. The tunnels are dark and very private.

At three that morning, she called Dennis. She stood at the window, looking out
as she listened to the phone ring. In the glass, she could see her own
reflection. Her eyes were enormous; her pupils dilated. Outside, it was snowing.
The phone rang twenty times before he finally picked it up. She did not speak,
but listened as he swore into the receiver. His voice did not reassure her as it
once had. He sounded muffled and far away.

She hung up and listened to the wolves howling in the street, a chorus of
keening voices raised to serenade the waxing moon. She opened the window to let
the sound enter the apartment.

The cats watched her nervously. The howling sang in her blood, agonizingly sweet
and piercingly high, rising and falling like the wind. She paced to and fro in
the tiny apartment, and the cats stared at her. The larger of the two followed
her, meowing as he twined between her legs. At last, tired of his persistence,
she throttled him, closing her hands around his throat softly, then applying
pressure. It seemed, in that moment, like the right thing to do. The dying
animal struggled, but she did not release her hold. She put the warm body in the
kitchen trash. The other cat hid beneath the bed and made no sound,

That night, she turned down the sound on the television. She lay awake and
listened, her eyes wide. She wanted to run through the streets, to race through
the night toward some unknown goal. In the darkness of the room that was not
hers, she smiled, thinking of the subway tunnels where secret creatures lived.

The next morning, she found paw prints in the snow beneath her window. The snow
had melted in most places, but on the sidewalk beneath Jan's window, there was a
patch that had lingered. The first set of prints was joined by another, and then
by a third. For half a block, she followed them. Then the paw prints were
obliterated by the footprints of commuters, and she went down the subway stairs