"Mike Resnick & Martin Greenberg - Christmas Ghosts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

encouraged him to feel the exact same way he always had. I'll never know. Because in the winter of my
sixth year, tucked under the covers and dreaming of Santa, I heard her tapping at my windows.

Back then, I had my own small room on the second story of our house, and when I heard the tapping at
the window, well, I thought it was monsters or something. I gathered my blankets around me like a
shield, yanked 'em off the bed, and then trundled, slowly, over to the window.

And I saw her standing there, with her gaunt, darkened cheeks and her wide, wide eyes. She was
rapping the glass with her thin, bony fingers and she said the same words over and over again. I think I
screamed, because I could see the northern stars bunking right through her, and I knew what that meant,
back then.

My mother came firstтАФshe always did, moving like a quiet shadow. She asked me what was wrong, and
I told her, pointingтАФand my mother looked at our reflection in my window and shook her head softly.
You were having a nightmare, she said. Go back to sleep.

But it's her, I said. It's her, can't you see her? She's dead, Mom, and she's hungry. I don't want her to eat
me.

She's not here, she's not dead. Hush. My mother held me in her arms as if she were a strong, old cradle.
And I cried. Because over my mother's whispers, I could hear the voice of the hungry girl.

It didn't stop there, of course. Sometime in my teenage years, I stopped being afraid that she would eat
me. Instead, I started being afraid I was mad, so I never talked about the dead, starving peasant, and my
mom and dad were just as happy to let the matter drop. But she came every Christmas midnight, and
stayed for a full twelve days, lingering at the window, begging me to feed her. I even left the table once
and threw open the door, but all I got was snow and a gust of wind. She didn't come into the warmth.

She was there every year. Every day. She was there from the minute I went to college to the minute I
graduated. She was there when I finally left home, found my wife, and settled down. It wasn't my parents
she haunted although they wouldn't feed her. It was me. I even railed against the injustice of it allтАФ/ was
the only person who'd even cared about her that nightтАФbut hunger knows no reason, and she came to
me.

I have three childrenтАФlittle Joy, Alexander, David. Well, I guess they aren't that little anymore; fact is,
they're old enough now that they don't mind being called little. I consider it a miracle that they survived
their teenage yearsтАФI don't know why God invented teenagers.

But Melissa and I, we had four children. You see that black and white photo in the corner there? That
baby was my last child, my little girl. She didn't see three. It's funny, you know. They talk a lot about a
mother's grief and a mother's loss, but Melissa said her good-byes maybe a year or two after Mary died,
and meтАФwell, I guess I still haven't. It's because I never saw her as a teenager. It's because I can't
remember the sleepless nights and the crying and the throwing up.

I just remember the way she used to come and help me work, with her big, serious eyes and her quiet,
serious nod. She'd spread the newspapers from here to the kitchen, same as she saw me do with my
drafting plans. I had more time with her than I had with the older kidsтАФmaybe I made more timeтАФand I
used to sit with her on weekends when Melissa did her work. Mary'd sleep in my lap. Draw imaginary
faces on my cheek.