"Wolfe, Gene - Fish Story (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

it into my pocket, and went home and went to bed. I still have it, but I've
never gotten up the nerve to read it."

Rab sighed. "That's my story. I don't imagine that yours will be true --I know
both of you too well for that. But mine is."

"When you woke up in the morning was your aunt still dead?" Bruce wanted to
know.

Rab said, "Yes, of course. The hospital called me at work."

That bothered me, and I said, "When you started telling us about this, you said
that there was a message from the hospital on your answering machine when you
got home from the office. So the hospital didn't have your number there,
presumably at least."

Rab nodded. "I suppose he gave it to them."

Nobody said much after that, and pretty soon we undressed and got into our
sleeping bags. When we had been asleep for two or three hours, Rab screamed.

It brought me bolt upright, and Bruce, too. I sat up just in time to see Rab
scream again. Then he blinked and looked around and said, "Somebody yelled. Did
you hear it?"

Bruce was a great deal wiser than I. He said, "It was an animal, Rah. Maybe an
owl. Go back to sleep."

Rah lay back down, and so did I; but I did not go back to sleep. I lay awake
looking at the clouds, the moon, and the stars, and thinking about that midnight
hospital waiting room in which the man who stood outside sat reading a magazine,
the wondering just how much power the recently dead may have to twist our
reality, and their own.

There actually was something shrieking up on the bluff, but I cannot say with
any confidence what it was. A wildcat, perhaps, or a cougar.