"Manly Wade Wellman - The Dead Man's Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wellman Manly Wade)

It was, but they had little appetite. Afterwards Berna washed the dishes. She
thought she had never felt such cold water as gushed from the faucet. Conley went
into the front room, and when Berna joined him he sat in a solid old rocking chair,
still holding the shotgun.
 "The furniture's nice," said Berna lamely.
"Reminds me of another thing that skunk said," rejoined Conley. "That his
Shonokins had made all the furniture, as well as the house. That itтАФthe
furnitureтАФwas really theirs and would do what they said. What did he mean?"
Berna did not know, and did not reply.
"Those new locks weren't made by him," Conley went on. "They won't obey him.
Let him try to get in."
When Conley repeated himself thus aimlessly, it meant that he was harassed and
daunted. They sat in the gathering gloom that the hanging lamp could not dispel
successfully. Berna wished for a radio. There was one in the car, and this was a
night for good programs. But she would not have ventured into the open to meet the
entire galaxy of her radio favorites in person. Later on perhaps they'd buy a cabinet
radio for this room, she mused; if they lasted out the evening, and the next day and
the days and nights to follow, if they could successfully avoid or defeat the slender
dark man who menaced them.
Conley had unpacked their few books. One lay on the sideboard near Berna's
chair, a huge showy volume of Shakespeare's works that a book agent had sold to
Berna's mother years ago. Berna loved Shakespeare no more and no less than most
girls of limited education and experience. But she remembered the words of a
neighbor, spoken when the book was bought; Shakespeare could be used, like the
Bible, for "casting sortes." It was an old-country custom, still followed here and
there in rural America. You opened the book at random and hastily clapped your
finger on a passage, which answered whatever troubled you. Hadn't the wife of
Enoch Arden done something like that, or did she remember her high school English
course rightly?
She lifted the volume into her lap. It fell open of itself. Without looking at the fine
double-columned type, she put out her forefinger quickly. She had opened to
Macbeth. At the head of the page was printed: "Act I, Scene 3." She stooped to read
in the lamplight:


Were such things here as we do speak about,
Or have we eaten on the insane root,
That takes the reason prisoner?


That was close enough to what fretted her and her father. Shakespeare, what she
knew of him, was full of creepy things about prophecies, witches, phantoms and
such. The "insane root"тАФwhat was that? It had a frightening sound to it. Anyway,
Shonokin had momentarily imprisoned their minds with his dirty tricks of hypnotism.
Again she swore to herself not to be caught another time. She had heard that a
strong effort of will could resist such things. She took hold of the book to replace it
on the sideboard.
 She could not.
As before, her eyes could not blink, her muscles could not stir. She could only
watch as, visible through the hallway beyond, the front door slowly moved open and