"Patrick O'Leary - Witches Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'leary Patrick)

the witchтАЩs hand by patrick oтАЩleary
They were telling scary stories.

Three boys with red lips in a red tent in the backyard on the first summer night warm enough to sleep out.
They'd brought their sleeping bags and their flashlights. Jimmy Glimm тАФ their host тАФ provided a spread
of candy bars and Cheetos which they promptly washed down with a pitcher of Cherry Kool-Aid. They
smiled when they spotted his backpack in the corner of the tent. He took it everywhere; he probably
slept with it. But he never explained why. He didn't have to. Jimmy was the coolest kid in school by far.
His perfect blond hair hung in bangs just above his blonde eyelashes and blue eyes. Girls drew pictures of
him in their notebooks and when he walked by they'd lean their heads together, follow him with their eyes
and whisper, "It's him." Bullies never messed with Jimmy. Teachers learned to call his name when no one
else had the answer: "Entropy."

"Galahad."

"Marsupial." Everybody still talked about the drowning girl he rescued from the muddy Saginaw. And
they all envied the ease he had with his body, the lopping, almost musical way he walked, his sagging
backpack rode him like a jockey rides a thoroughbred. Jimmy Glimm seemed already complete, already
adult, while they were still stuck in rehearsals. Sleeping over at his house was a real privilege. It made the
boys feel special; more alive, almost bigger, as if by sharing his inner circle they might become everything
he was.

It was late when they heard a strange ripping sound and a "thud."

Then silence.

And in the silence both of the boys who were guests tried to puzzle out what they had just heard. They
decided: It had to be an apple dropping from an apple tree, tearing through the leaves and landing on the
lawn. They remembered climbing the tree last summer and eating apples before they were ripe and
getting terrible gas. Farting all over the place. "Laughing gas" they called it. It was how they first met
Jimmy.

It had to be an apple.

It couldn't have been anything else.

"That's the witch's hand," said Jimmy as he clicked on the flashlight and underlit his face, taking his turn.

Then he told the story of Isadore The Witch. The Knight Who Worked At The Hardware Store. And
The Stalking Inescapable Hand. Until that night they couldn't have imagined hands more exotic than, say,
a conductor's with their acrobatic grace, or the singing hands of a hula girl. But after Jimmy told his story
they could see the spell coming off the witch's hands like ribbons of light that turned into thunderbolts,
smashed against the round silver shield and set the heart painted at its center ashudder. And the knight
swiftly slicing the witch's hand off at the wrist. Standing over her as she bled to death. Her eyeballs
turning white as she spit out her last curse, "My hand will be the hunter. And you will be the prey. It will
hunt you down wherever you may flee. It will find you, knight. And with that hand I will take your last
breath. Then I will take what you love the most."

The knight built a fire and burned the severed hand till all that was left was ash and bone.