"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Spirit Dump" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

 Both women came up to stand beside him.
"Now," he said, "Look down the slope and tell me what you see."
Obediently, the two peered over the edge.
"Nuthin'," Angie told him.
Suze blinked.
"Not even a beer can, right?" Paul asked.
"I don't know," Suze said. "It's... I don't see anything, but itfeels like there's something down there."
Paul nodded.
"Okay, Suze," he said, "I want you to take all that anger and depression and whatever it is that's got
your spirit so weighed down lately, and I want you to gather it all up into a big lump and throw it down
there."
She turned to stare at him. "What?"
"Like a visualization exercise," he said. "Like in meditation, or biofeedback, or something. Just
concentrate on it, think of it as if it were a real, tangible thing, and throw it down there."
Suze hesitated.
"Oh, go ahead," Angie said. "Can't hurt to try."
"All right."
She concentrated. She thought of the gloom as a big gray something that had hung down over her, and
suddenly she could see it, she could see this dark, foul thing, half cloud, half slime, that was covering her,
and she reached up with both hands and heaved it up, revolted by the feel of it, heaved it up and flung it
out over the brink. It fell, streaming grayish gunk that settled after it in a noisome, clinging cloud.
And suddenly she felt better than she had in weeks.
She blinked, and realized that the day was warm and sunny, that even though the trees down there
were thin, their leaves were green and bright, the sunlight golden on the ground. The wildflowers on the
ridgetop were cheerful, like a scattering of children's drawings. A monarch butterfly was vividly orange as
it fluttered from one blossom to the next.
"Wow," she said.
Angie looked at her, startled.
Paul grinned. "Worked, huh?"
"How did you do that?" Suze demanded-- but she wasn't angry; she felt too good to be angry. She
was just curious.
"I didn't do anything," Paul told her. "Youdid."
"Come on," Suze insisted, grinning.
"No, really! Or really, it's this place that did it. Take a look over the side, there-- carefully."
A bit doubtful, Suze approached the edge as closely as she dared and looked down.
"What am I supposed to see?" she asked.
Angie, beside her, said, "I don't see a damn thing but rocks and dirt."
"Suze," Paul said, "Try to see that bad mood you threw down there."
"I won't get it back, will I?" she asked, with just the faintest trace of apprehension.
"No, no, of course not!"
She glanced at him, then stared back down the slope, trying to recall what that gray squirming mess
had looked like...
And there it was.
And there was a great deal more.
She saw, faintly but definitely, gray and black and sick brown and bilious green and hot red, and gray
and more gray. The slope was covered with the stuff, with oozing blobs and barbed chunks and a
hundred other hazy, intangible shapes.
"Oh my God," she breathed.
"People throw away the damnedest things, don't they?" Paul asked her, grinning.
"What?" Angie shouted, "What is it? What's down there?"