"Parick O'Leary - The Witch's hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'leary Patrick)

"What's it gonna do?"

Jimmy swallowed. "Rip his throat out."

They felt more than saw the long cold fingers upon their necks, the same white fingers that cast the spell
upon the knight.

"Too far," said one boy.
"Yeah. It'll never catch him."

"It already has. Twice."

The boys looked at Jimmy and tried to understand his faces. Jimmy always had more faces than
anybody. It could drive you crazy trying to understand which one he'd put on next.

"He got stupid. He let his guard down. I mean, he'd been safe for centuriesтАжAnyway, the first time it
caught him was in the first elevator in New York City. He was the operator and it was his job to explain
to folks how it rode on tubes of water that lifted it up and down. This was when people would line up
through the lobby and out to the street just to ride on it. They called it a 'contraption.' There was a
Chinaman on the elevator. He never stopped smiling. He wore a tuxedo and a black top hat, and a red
silk scarf with a pearl pin in the center. The Chinaman waited till it was only him and the knight onboard.
Then he got off on the fourteenth floor and he turned and bowed. And as the doors closed he reached
into his vest and tossed something to the knight. It was all bones then. But the next time it had skin."

There was a long pause.

"It was 50 years later. He was on a car ferry going from Canada to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan."

"Wait! Wait! Wait! What happened in the elevator?"

"What do you think? That's how he lost his ear."

Both of them were very still because the only person they'd ever known who was missing an ear was
Jimmy's dad.

"So he was leaning over the side, watching the wake churning up the dark grey water. Wondering how
deep the lake got there. It was noisy and he only had one ear so he didn't hear it coming. It got him by
the ankle and wouldn't let go. He had to beat it with an axe. He broke his ankle but he got it off and
threw it overboard. Lake Superior is really deep. So it must have taken it a long time to get back on
land."

Together, though neither of them knew it, his guests imagined the exact same image. A hand trapped
under the ice that covered a lake. Its blue fingers clawing, clawing at the pale clear wall above it.

"Where'd you hear this story?"

"Who said it was a story?" For a moment, Jimmy peered out the open slit of the red tent, and juggled the
flashlight back and forth. The boys looked at each other again to check if the other thought it was a joke.
But nobody wanted to risk laughing at the town hero and never getting invited over again. And both