"Dan Simmons - A Winter Haunting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

geometries of the Midwest, and forcing himself down through more than forty years of memories like a
diver going deep, fighting the pain and pressure that such depths bring. Dale stopped only for food, fuel,
and a few catnaps at interstate rest areas. He had not slept well for months, even before his suicide
attempt. Now he carried drugs for sleeping, but he did not choose to stop and use them on this trip. He
wanted to get there as soon as possible. He did not really understand why he was going there.

Dale had planned to arrive at Elm Haven in midmorning, tour his old hometown, and then drive on to
DuaneтАЩs farmhouse in the daylight, but it was after eleven oтАЩclock at night when he saw theELM
HAVEN exit sign on I-74.

He had planned to move into DuaneтАЩs old house in early or mid-September, allowing plenty of time to
enjoy the fall colors and the crisp, sunny autumn days. He arrived on the last day of October, at night, in
the last hours of the first Halloween of the new century, hard on the cold cusp of winter.

I screwed up,thought Dale as he took the overpass above I-74 and followed the night-empty road the
two miles north toward Elm Haven.Screwed up again. Everything I havenтАЩt lost, IтАЩve screwed up.
And everything I lost, I lost because I screwed it up .
He shook his head at this, angry at the bumper-sticker-stupid self-pity of the sentiment, feeling the fog of
too many nights with too little sleep, and punched a button to lower the driverтАЩs-side window. The air
was cold, the wind blowing hard from the northwest, and the chill helped to wake Dale a bit as he came
out onto the Hard Road just a mile southeast of Elm Haven.

The Hard Road. Dale smiled despite himself. He had not thought of the phrase for decades, but it
immediately came to mind as he turned back northwest onto State Highway 150A and drove slowly into
the sleeping town.

He passed an asphalt road to his right and realized that they had paved County Road 6 between Jubilee
College Road and the Hard Road sometime in the last few decadesтАФit had been muddy ruts between
walls of corn when he had lived hereтАФso now he could drive straight north to DuaneтАЩs farmhouse if he
wished. He continued on into Elm Haven out of curiosity.

Morbid curiosity, it turned out. The town itself seemed sad and shrunken in the dark. Wrong. Smaller.
Dead. Desiccated. A corpse.

The two business blocks of Main Street along the Hard Road had lost several buildings, disorienting Dale
the way a familiar smile with missing teeth would. He remembered the tall facade of JensenтАЩs Hardware;
it was now an empty lot. The A & P, where MikeтАЩs mother had worked, was gone. He remembered the
glowing windows of the Parkside Cafe: it was now a private residence. LuckyтАЩs Grill on the other side of
the street appeared to be some kind of flea market with stuffed animals staring out at the Hard Road
through dusty black eyes. The Corner Pantry market was boarded up. The barbershop next door was
gone. Bandstand Park was worse than goneтАФthe tiny yard-sized space was now cluttered with a tiny
VFW hall and various tin sheds, the bandstand torn down, the trees uprooted and their stumps cut out,
and the war memorial hidden by weeds.

Dale made a U-turn and drove back east, turning north onto Broad Avenue. The clouds were low and
the wind was cold. Leaves blew across the wide street ahead of his Toyota Land Cruiser, their dry
scraping sounding like the scuttle of rats. For an instant, fatigue convinced Dale that thesewere rats,
hundreds of them, rushing through the cones of his headlights.

There were no streetlights on Broad Avenue. The great elms that used to arch over the wide street had