"Manly Wade Wellman - Can These Bones Live" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

The jaw bone's connected from the head bone,
Hear the word of the Lord.
The jaw bone snapped no more. It rolled free from the skull.
Hallcott was up beside me. I could feel him shake all over.
"It worked," he said, in the tiredest voice you could call for.
"That song built him up," I said back. "And that song, sung different, took him back
down again. Though it appears to me the word should be 'disconnected.'"
"Sure enough?" he wondered me. "I don't know that word, that disconnected. But I
thought on an old tale, how a man read in a magic book and devilish things came all
'round him, so he read the book backward and made them go away." His eyes
bugged as he looked at a big thigh bone, dropped clear of its kneecap and shin.
"What if it hadn't worked, John?"
"Point is, it did work and thank the good Lord for that," I told him. "Now, how you
say for us to put him back in his coffin again, and not sing air note to him this
time?"
Hallcott didn't relish to touch the bones, and, gentlemen, neither did I. I scooped
them in the shovel, all the way along to where the grave was open and the coffin lid
flung back. In I shoved them, one by one, in a heap on top of the Turkey Track
quilt. I sought out air single bone, even the little separate toe bones that come in the
song, a-picking them up with the shovel blade. Somewhere I've heard tell there are
two hundred and eight bones in a skeleton. Finally I got all of them. I swung the lid
down, and Hallcott fastened the hook into the staple. Then we stood and harked.
There was just a breath of sweet, cool breeze in some bushes. Nair other sound that
we made out.
Hallcott picked up another of the shovels, and quick we filled that grave in again. We
patted it down smooth on top. Again we harked. Nair sound from where we'd buried
the bones a second time.
"I reckon he's at rest now," I felt like a-saying. "Leastways, all disconnected again
thataway, he can't get up unless some other gone gump comes here and sings that
song to him again."
"For hell's sake, whatever was he?" Hallcott asked, of the whole starry night sky.
"Maybe not even science folks could answer that," I said. "I'd reckon he was of a
devilтАФpeople long gone from this countryтАФa people that wasn't man nor either
beast; a kind of people that pure down had to go, but gets recollected in ugly old
tales of man-eating things. That's all I can think to say to it."
I flung down the shovel and went back to where my stuff lay against the walnut tree.
I slung my blanket roll and soogin on my back, and took my guitar up under my
arm. Right that moment, I sure enough didn't have a wish to play it.
"John," said Hallcott. "Where you reckon to head now?"
"Preacher Melick kindly invited me to his house. I have it in mind to go there."
"Me, too, if he's got room for me," said Hallcott. "Money wouldn't buy me to go
nowheres alone in this night. No sir, nor for many a night to come."


The End




┬й 1981 by Manly Wade Wellman.