JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 231 из 359Enter Kim Dougherty, young hotshot architect; he builds a contemporary home on the lot that fits the land like a glove. In fact . . . it looks almost alive.
Colquitee writes of her first look at the house plans: I drew my breath at it. It was magnificent. I do not as a rule care for contemporary architecture, [but] . . This house was different. It commanded you, somehow, yet soothed you. It grew out of the penciled earth like an elemental spirit that had lain, locked and yearning for the light, through endless deeps of time, waiting to be released . . . . I could hardly imagine the hands and machinery that would form it. I thought of something that had started with a seed, put down deep roots, grown in the sun and rains of many years into the upper air. In the sketches, at least, the woods pressed untouched around it like companions. The creek enfolded its mass and seemed to nourish its roots. It looked- inevitable.
Events follow in ordained fashion. Dionysian change is coming to this Apollonian suburb where hitherto there has been a place for everything and everything is in its place. That night, when Colquitt hears an owl hooting in the woodlot where Dougherty's house will soon go up, she finds herself tying a knot in the corner of her bedsheet to ward off bad luck, as her grandmother did.
Dougherty is building the house for a young couple, the Harralsons (but he would have been just as happy building it for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, he tells the Kennedys over drinks; it's the house that interests him, not the owners). Buddy Harralson is an up-and-coming young lawyer. His little-girl-Chi-Omega-Junior-Leaguer wife, hideocomically known as Pie (as in Punkin Pie, her daddy's nickname), loses first her baby to the house in a miscarriage which occurs there when she's four months pregnant, then her dog, and finally, on the evening of her housewarming, everything else.
Exit Harralsons, enter Sheehans. Buck and his wife, Anita, are trying to recover from the loss of their only child, who went down in a flaming helicopter while serving in Vietnam. Anita, who is recovering from a mental breakdown as a result of the loss (which dovetails a little too neatly with the loss of her father and brother years before in a similar accident), begins to see movies of her son's horrible death on the television in the house. A neighbor who is helping out also catches part of this lethal film. Other stuff happens . . . there is a climax . . . and exit Sheehans. Then, last but hardly least in terms of the grand guignol, comes the Greenes.
If all this sounds familiar, it comes as no surprise to either of us.
Colquitee writes of her first look at the house plans: I drew my breath at it. It was magnificent. I do not as a rule care for contemporary architecture, [but] . . This house was different. It commanded you, somehow, yet soothed you. It grew out of the penciled earth like an elemental spirit that had lain, locked and yearning for the light, through endless deeps of time, waiting to be released . . . . I could hardly imagine the hands and machinery that would form it. I thought of something that had started with a seed, put down deep roots, grown in the sun and rains of many years into the upper air. In the sketches, at least, the woods pressed untouched around it like companions. The creek enfolded its mass and seemed to nourish its roots. It looked- inevitable.
Events follow in ordained fashion. Dionysian change is coming to this Apollonian suburb where hitherto there has been a place for everything and everything is in its place. That night, when Colquitt hears an owl hooting in the woodlot where Dougherty's house will soon go up, she finds herself tying a knot in the corner of her bedsheet to ward off bad luck, as her grandmother did.
Dougherty is building the house for a young couple, the Harralsons (but he would have been just as happy building it for Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, he tells the Kennedys over drinks; it's the house that interests him, not the owners). Buddy Harralson is an up-and-coming young lawyer. His little-girl-Chi-Omega-Junior-Leaguer wife, hideocomically known as Pie (as in Punkin Pie, her daddy's nickname), loses first her baby to the house in a miscarriage which occurs there when she's four months pregnant, then her dog, and finally, on the evening of her housewarming, everything else.
Exit Harralsons, enter Sheehans. Buck and his wife, Anita, are trying to recover from the loss of their only child, who went down in a flaming helicopter while serving in Vietnam. Anita, who is recovering from a mental breakdown as a result of the loss (which dovetails a little too neatly with the loss of her father and brother years before in a similar accident), begins to see movies of her son's horrible death on the television in the house. A neighbor who is helping out also catches part of this lethal film. Other stuff happens . . . there is a climax . . . and exit Sheehans. Then, last but hardly least in terms of the grand guignol, comes the Greenes.
If all this sounds familiar, it comes as no surprise to either of us.