"17 - The Thing in the Closet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

Christopher Pike: Spooksville #17 Ч The Thing in the Closet


One

Cindy Makey awoke with a start. But she hadn't heard a noise. Apart from the soft pounding of her heart, her bedroom was completely quiet Turning her head, she glanced at her clock. It was three in the morning, and outside it was dark. Briefly, she wondered why she had woken up at all. She was pretty sure she had been sleeping deeply. She was just about to roll over and go back to sleep when she noticed the faint green glow coming from her closet door.
Cindy sat up and stared at it.
Like most people, Cindy had always been a little afraid of a dark closet. Especially now, in the middle of the night, when the closet door was slightly ajar. There was just something about the darkness inside the closet Ч it was as if it were a portal into horrors unimagined. At the same time, she didn't much like getting into bed in the dark. She was always worried a hand would reach out and grab her ankle and drag her under the bed. What would happen next would be just too awful to contemplate.
Of course Cindy was twelve years old, a big girl, and she knew these fears were ridiculous. There was nothing either in her closet or under her bed that could hurt her. Really, she should have outgrown these fears long ago.
Then again, this was Spooksville.
Where kids disappeared without warning all the time.
And there was something strange glowing in her closet.
That was a fact Not imagination.
Cindy rubbed her eyes and leaned forward on her bed and studied the light further. It was the weirdest green colour. Not like grass or trees, more like something sickly Ч the green-tinted skin of a dying patient. For a moment Cindy almost believed there was an odour of decay in the room, but then she realised that was her imagination.
'But what could it be?' she whispered aloud.
There was really nothing she could do but examine it closer.
Get out of bed and walk over to the closet.
But she didn't want to do that.
Not this second at least
Cindy hoped it was her flashlight That somehow it had slipped off the shelf in the closet and turned itself on. Of course the flashlight did not give off a green beam, but she wondered if the light could be shining through a green sweater or something. The only trouble was, she didn't own a green sweater. And her one and only green shirt was in her chest of drawers, not in the closet For that matter, she didn't even think her flashlight was still in the closet. She had used it a couple of days ago in the garage, looking for loose change, and she thought she had left it there. No, this weird glow had to be something else.
'Like what?' she muttered.
Cindy reached over and tried to turn on the lamp beside her bed. For some reason it wouldn't come on. She fiddled with the switch for a few moments before giving up. Was it possible, she asked herself, that the green glow was somehow affecting her lamp? It seemed unlikely, and yet her lamp had been working a few hours ago when she had gone to bed. She wondered if the green glow liked the dark. If it needed the dark.
She wondered what it wanted with her.
'This is stupid,' she chided herself aloud. 'It is just a light. It is not alive. It can't hurt me.'
She hoped it couldn't, boy did she. Now that she had mentally exhausted everything that it could be, she knew she finally had to have a closer look at it. How could she go back to sleep without checking it out? For all she knew the green glow would transform itself into a green hungry monster while she was asleep and then eat her alive. Things like that happened in Spooksville, at least according to her friend, Sally Wilcox. Ordinarily Cindy didn't believe most of what Sally said but at the moment even Sally's darkest and most disturbing ravings seemed possible.
For a second Cindy considered calling Sally.
Or Adam Freeman, another best friend.
But she was afraid they might think she was a chicken.
'I am a chicken,' Cindy said to herself. 'Adam would have jumped out of bed the moment he saw the glow. He's not afraid of anything.'
Cindy sort of liked Adam.
Quite a bit, really, even though he didn't know it
Cindy slowly climbed out of her bed. The floor was cold. She trembled as she walked towards the closet The green glow seemed to brighten slightly at her approach.
'Please don't hurt me,' Cindy whispered as she drew close to the closet The door was only slightly ajar. She could just see inside the closet. The green glow had turned her clothes all green, as well as her shoes and hats. Cindy was a big hat lover. Usually, she couldn't wait till the weather turned cold so that she could wear one. But seeing how sickly green they were right now, through the crack in the door, she wondered if she would ever wear them again. It seemed as if this glow was actually sinking into the material. Into her skin, even, as she stood outside the closet. The light itself felt cold, as if it were being generated by a huge block of alien ice.
Yet Cindy could see no source of the light.
It just seemed to come from the back of the closet.
To get a better look she needed to open the door all the way. And she didn't want to do that. She didn't want to let whatever was inside out into her bedroom.
'But it's not alive,' she told herself again. 'It can't hurt me.'
Cindy took hold of the door knob.
With trembling fingers, she pulled the door open a little bit further.
The green glow went out
Cindy yanked the door all the way open.
The closet was completely dark. The way it was supposed to be.
'Hello?' Cindy called, feeling stupid.
No one called back.
Behind her, beside the bed, her lamp popped on.
The light made her jump. Thank goodness it wasn't green. Cindy used the light from the lamp to explore the closet further. Her clothes, her shoes, her hats Ч nothing seemed out of place. Yet there must have been something that gave off the light, she thought. She just couldn't figure out what it was.
Cindy left her bedroom and peeked in on her sleeping brother and mother. There didn't seem to be any green glow in their closets. Returning to her bedroom, she checked her closet one more time. Still nothing, and she was glad there wasn't Yet the mystery remained and that disturbed her even more.
Eventually Cindy returned to bed and turned off the light.
It was not long before she was asleep.
Too fast asleep to notice that the closet door she had so carefully closed had popped open. Too fast asleep to see the green glow return.