"Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

was locked. He opened more of .them and then began to splash the gasoline
around the walls, through the hall. He brushed away webs and shone his light
around to make certain he had soaked the place thoroughly, and then went back
downstairs, dribbling out gas as he moved. He tried to find a spot roughly
under the gas-soaked area, and emptied the can, spilling the last drops on a
handkerchief he had knotted around a rock. He looked about with the flashlight
one more time, then went to the back door he had forced open. There he lighted
a match, touched it to the handkerchief, which blazed instantly, and heaved
the handkerchief to the bottom of the stairs to ignite a trail of fire. He
could feel the webs all around him, pressing as he picked up the crowbar and
returned to his car. He put the empty gas can in the trunk, brushed away webs,
got in his car, and turned the key. It fled. He drove out carefully. No sign
of fire was visible when he drove past the main entrance. The rain was
falling, more like a mist now, settling gently with great persistence, as if a
mammoth cloud were being lowered to earth. He got back to his motel, back to
his room, and fell into bed--and sleep--without undressing. It was one of the
very few nights of the past nine months that he was untroubled by dreams, that
he awakened feeling refreshed and vital.

24 25

Chapter

3

October 1985. Constance Leidl drove home happily that October afternoon. The
two-year-old Volvo still smelled of apples; a stack of books from the
university library added its own peculiar, comforting odor, but the dominant
fragrance was of fall, of wood stoves, frosts to come, and burning leaves.
"The world is draped in the glory of autumn," one of the patients in the
hospital had murmured to her. A hopeless schizophrenic, wandering in a world
of poetry and surrealism. Constance shook her head, then smiled, remembering
Charlie complaint as they had picked apples over the past three days.

"Honey, I don't get it. Why do we tend all these damn trees and then just give
away the apples?"

"Do you want strangers in here picking them?" "Come on!"

"Well then .... "

"Itnot one or the other," he had said indignantly. "We could sell off the
hillside."

He garumphed at her grin. "Okay. But tell me why we are doing this." A cold
breeze had colored his cheeks as red as the apples they were picking. He had
stopped working and was regarding her with a mutinous expression.

"Well," she had said with what she considered great practicality, "because."