JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 404 из 425M… Eastern Daylight, the robot voice had said, which meant that Rogette had been calling at six-forty in the morning. . if, that was, she’d really been calling from Palm Springs. That was at least possible; had the oddity occurred to me while we were driving from the airport to Mattie’s trailer, I would have told myself that there were no doubt insomniacs all over California who finished their East Coast business before the sun had hauled itself fully over the horizon, and good for them. But there was something else that couldn’t be explained away so easily. At one point John had ejected the tape. He did it because, he said, I’d gone as white as a sheet instead of looking amused. I had told him to go on and play the rest; it had just surprised me to hear her again. The quality of her voice. Christ, the reproduction is good.
Except it was really the boys in the basement who had reacted to John’s tape; my subconscious co-conspirators. And it hadn’t been her voice that had scared them badly enough to turn my face white. The underhum had done that. The characteristic underhum you always got on TR calls, both those you made and those you received. Rogette Whitmore had never left TR-90 at all. If my failing to realize that this morning cost Ki Devote her life this afternoon, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I told God that over and over as I went plunging down the railroad-tie steps again, running into the face of a revitalized storm.
It’s a blue-eyed wonder I didn’t go flying right off the embankment.
Half my swimming float had grounded there, and perhaps I could have impaled myself on its splintered boards and died like a vampire writhing on a stake. What a pleasant thought that was. Running isn’t good for people near panic; it’s like scratching poison ivy. By the time I had thrown my arm around one of the pines at the foot of the steps to check my progress, I was on the edge of losing all coherent thought. Ki’s name was beating in my head again, so loudly there wasn’t room for much else. Then a stroke of lightning leaped out of the sky to my right and knocked the last three feet of trunk out from beneath a huge old spruce which had probably been here when Sara and Kito were still alive. If I’d been looking directly at it I would have been blinded; even with my head turned three-quarters away, the stroke left a huge blue swatch like the aftermath of a gigantic camera flash floating in front of my eyes. There was a grinding, juddering sound as two hundred feet of blue spruce toppled into the lake, sending up a long curtain of spray, which seemed to hang between the gray sky and gray water. The stump was on fire in the rain, burning like a witch’s hat.
Except it was really the boys in the basement who had reacted to John’s tape; my subconscious co-conspirators. And it hadn’t been her voice that had scared them badly enough to turn my face white. The underhum had done that. The characteristic underhum you always got on TR calls, both those you made and those you received. Rogette Whitmore had never left TR-90 at all. If my failing to realize that this morning cost Ki Devote her life this afternoon, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I told God that over and over as I went plunging down the railroad-tie steps again, running into the face of a revitalized storm.
It’s a blue-eyed wonder I didn’t go flying right off the embankment.
Half my swimming float had grounded there, and perhaps I could have impaled myself on its splintered boards and died like a vampire writhing on a stake. What a pleasant thought that was. Running isn’t good for people near panic; it’s like scratching poison ivy. By the time I had thrown my arm around one of the pines at the foot of the steps to check my progress, I was on the edge of losing all coherent thought. Ki’s name was beating in my head again, so loudly there wasn’t room for much else. Then a stroke of lightning leaped out of the sky to my right and knocked the last three feet of trunk out from beneath a huge old spruce which had probably been here when Sara and Kito were still alive. If I’d been looking directly at it I would have been blinded; even with my head turned three-quarters away, the stroke left a huge blue swatch like the aftermath of a gigantic camera flash floating in front of my eyes. There was a grinding, juddering sound as two hundred feet of blue spruce toppled into the lake, sending up a long curtain of spray, which seemed to hang between the gray sky and gray water. The stump was on fire in the rain, burning like a witch’s hat.