"Steve Rasnic Tem - Tricks And Treats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tem Steve Rasnic)

STEVE RASNIC TEM

TRICKS & TREATS

One Night on Halloween Street

TRICKS

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE last time they'd all go trick or treating together,
but it didn't seem right that the gang go out now that Tommy was dead.

Every year all the gang had gone trick or treating together: Allison and Robbie,
Maryanne and John, Sandra and Willona and Felix and Randall. And Tommy. They'd
been doing it since fourth grade. Now they were teenagers, and they figured this
was the last time. The last chance to do it up right.

Not that they'd ever done anything particularly malicious on Halloween. A few
soaped windows. A few mailboxes full of cow shit. Not much more than that.

But Tommy had said this particular Halloween needed to be special. "For
chrissakes, it's the last time.!"

But then Tommy had died in that big pileup on the interstate. They'd all gone to
the funeral. They'd seen the casket lowered into the ground, the earth dark as
chocolate. It wasn't like in the movies. This movie, Tommy's movie, would last
forever. Sandra kept saying that word, "forever," like it was the first time
she'd ever heard it.

The dead liked playing tricks. She figured that out quick. Dying was a great
trick. It was great because people just couldn't believe it. You'd play the
trick right in front of their eyes and they still just couldn't believe it.

He'd only been dead a week when Sandra wondered if Tommy's life itself had been
a trick. She couldn't remember his face anymore. Even when she looked at
pictures of him something' felt wrong. Tommy had this trick: he was never going
to change, and because he didn't change she couldn't remember what he looked
like.

Sandra and Willona had both had crushes on Tommy. And now he was going to be
their boyfriend forever. He used to take them both to the horror shows, even the
ones they were too young for. He knew places he could get them in. Sandra
thought about those shows a lot -- she figured Willona did, too. Tommy loved the
horror shows. Now he was the star of his own horror show that played in their
heads every night. He'd always be with them, because they just couldn't stop
thinking about him.

Sometimes it felt so great just to be alive, now that somebody you knew was
dead. Sandra thought that must be the ugliest feeling in the world, but it was