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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 381 из 425Ash sifts around him like black rain and the tears b I UI–IEN IXLPQKA pour out of his eyes and as she struggles furiously beneath his hands, trying to free herself)qom his drowning grip, he tells himself It was an accident, just a terrible accident, I took her out in the lake because it was the only place I could take her, the only place left, and she panicked, she started to struggle, she was all wet and all slippery and I lost my good hold on her and then I lost any hold on her and then-I]rget I’m a ghost. I scream “Kia/ Hold on, Ki!” and dive. I reach her, I see her terrified face, her bulging blue eyes, her rosebud of a mouth which is trailing a silver line of bubbles toward the surface where Fred stands in water up to his neck, holding her down while he tells himself over and over that he was trying to save her, it was the only way, he was trying to save her, it was the only way. I reach for her, again and again I reach r her, my child, my daughter, my Kia (they are all Kia, the boys as well as the girls, all my daughter), and each time my arms go through her. Worse—oh, far worse—is that now she is reaching)$r me, her dappled arms floating out, begging Jr rescue. Her groping hands melt through mine. I cannot touch, because now I am the ghost. I am the ghost and as her struggles weaken I realize that I can’t I can’t oh I couldn’t breathe—I was drowning. I doubled over, opened my mouth, and this time a great spew of lake-water came out, soaking the plastic owl which lay on the pallet by my knees. I hugged the jo’s NOTIONS box to my chest, not wanting the contents to get wet, and the movement triggered another retch. This time cold water poured from my nose as well as my mouth. I dragged in a deep breath, then coughed it out. “This has got to end,” I said, but of course this was the end, one way or the other.
Because Kyra was last. I climbed up the steps to the studio and sat on the littered floor to get my breath. Outside, the thunder boomed and the rain fell, but I thought the storm had passed its peak of fury. Or maybe I only hoped. I rested with my legs hanging down through the trapthere were no more ghosts here to touch my ankles, I don’t know how I knew that but I did-and stripped off the rubber bands holding the steno notebooks together. I opened the first one, paged through it, and saw it was almost filled with Jo’s handwriting and a number of folded typed sheets (Courier type, of course), single-spaced: the fruit of all those clandestine trips down to the TR during 1993 and 1994. Fragmentary notes, for the most part, and transcriptions of tapes which might still be down below me in the storage space somewhere. Tucked away with the VCR or the eight-track player, perhaps. But I didn’t need them. When the time came—if the time came—I was sure I’d find most of the story here. What had happened, who had done it, how it was covered up. Right now I didn’t care.
Because Kyra was last. I climbed up the steps to the studio and sat on the littered floor to get my breath. Outside, the thunder boomed and the rain fell, but I thought the storm had passed its peak of fury. Or maybe I only hoped. I rested with my legs hanging down through the trapthere were no more ghosts here to touch my ankles, I don’t know how I knew that but I did-and stripped off the rubber bands holding the steno notebooks together. I opened the first one, paged through it, and saw it was almost filled with Jo’s handwriting and a number of folded typed sheets (Courier type, of course), single-spaced: the fruit of all those clandestine trips down to the TR during 1993 and 1994. Fragmentary notes, for the most part, and transcriptions of tapes which might still be down below me in the storage space somewhere. Tucked away with the VCR or the eight-track player, perhaps. But I didn’t need them. When the time came—if the time came—I was sure I’d find most of the story here. What had happened, who had done it, how it was covered up. Right now I didn’t care.