"Whitley Strieber - Cat Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strieber Whitley)

Peconic made him be here in his capacity as regional manager.

How Mandy had dreamed, lying in that bed beneath the window. Sometimes she saw witch lights on
Stone Mountain; sometimes she watched the red moon rising, or the stars.

There was dust in this house, dust and loneliness. And something else, too, she reflected as she closed
the guest mom door. There was a place in the living room wall that had recently been patched, as if a fist
had been slammed into it. Shades of Dad. тАЬGeorge is a violent man,тАЭ Kate had told her. And Kate had
left him.

Mandy brushed her teeth and lay down on her bed in the dark. The moon made a pale shadow across
the floor. A hollow autumn wind muttered in the dry leaves. Down the street a dog howled.

The old torn came out of his hiding place and proceeded across the game room, through the big eat-in
kitchen, pausing in the living room. Against the perspective of the furniture the cat seemed unnaturally
large.

It had a weathered, surprisingly kind face. And that kinked tail was endearing. The shredded ear, though,
was almost comical, making it seem as if the whole cat was lopsided.

The torn waited on the sun porch where Mandy's easel and canvases were installed, waited amid the
smell of linseed oil and paint. It saw the skill in her brushstrokes, and drank in the energy of the young
woman. Poor, confused young woman. She had no idea how dangerous this story would be to her, as it
unfolded.

She had painted a haunted landscape with a fairy stealing down a moonlit path. . . painted it with skill and
even passion, and more than a little of her own heart's truth. But what a relentlessly sentimental notion of
a fairy. It looked like a bug, with those wings. And it was far too small. The picture had the fatal defect of
charm.

Settling sounds began to come from the bedrooms. The cat grew still. It closed its eyes, concentrating on
every nuance of their beings. It felt as they felt, sensed as they sensed, shook its dirty old body as they
tossed and turned, gazed with George as he adored the mental images of his women, Bonnie and his lost
Kate, and Mandy, felt the pulsing, stifled sensation in his loins, and knew with him the dreadful weight of
time.

The old torn waited until the moon was at the top of the sky to begin.

Then it moved off to commit the next act of the story.

It stole into George's bedroom, listened a moment to his sleep. In one quick motion it leaped upon his
bed. It heard his heart laboring softly and faithfully on toward its eventual breaking end, listened to his
stomach digesting the day's meals, felt his dreams, haunted dreams of frogs and death and girls and loss.

The torn walked softly up his sleeping body, until its big head hung over his throat. It looked down at the
pulsing artery in George Walker's neck. It opened its mouth, its fangs just inches from the flesh. George
Walker sighed, as if inwardly aware of the death overlooking him.
The cat gagged softly and regurgitated. Something green and slimy slipped out of its mouth and onto
George's face. By the time he had taken the first shocked breath of awakening, the cat was in the
enclosed porch, passing the easels and paints. By the time George was gasping and fumbling for the light,