JК
Cycle of the Werewolf :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 26 из 35They're the real animals, Lowe thinks, his hand unconsciously going to the eyepatch he has worn since July. Somebody will shoot somebody, most likely. They're lucky it hasn't happened already.
The last of the trucks drives out of sight over Tarker's Hill, horn honking, dogs yarking and barking in the back. Yes, some of the men are just skylarking, but some-Elmer and Pete Zinneman, for example-are dead serious.
If that creature, man or beast or whatever it is, goes hunting this month, the dogs will pick up its scent, the Rev. Lowe has heard Elmer say in the barber shop not two weeks ago. And if it-or he-don't go out, then maybe we'll have saved a life. Someone's livestock at the very least.
Yes, there are some of them-maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen-who mean business. But it is not them that has brought this strange new feeling into the back of Lowe's brain-that sense of being brought to bay.
It's the notes that have done that. The notes, the longest of them only two sentences long, written in a childish, laborious hand, sometimes misspelled. He looks down at the letter that has come in today's mail, addressed in that same childish script, addressed as the others have been addressed: The Reverend Lowe, Baptist Parsonage, Tarker's Mills, Maine 04491.
Now, this strange, trapped feeling… the way he imagines a fox must feel when it realizes that the dogs have somehow chased it into a cul-de-sac. That panicked moment that the fox turns, its teeth bared, to do battle with the dogs that will surely pull it to pieces.
He closes the door firmly, goes inside to the parlor where the grandfather clock ticks solemn ticks and tocks solemn tocks; he sits down, puts the religious circulars carefully aside on the table Mrs. Miller polishes twice a week, and opens his new letter. Like the others, there is no salutation. Like the others, it is unsigned. Written in the center of a sheet torn from a grade-schooler's lined notepad, is this sentence:
Why don't you kill yourself?
The Rev. Lowe puts a hand to his forehead-it trembles slightly. With the other hand he crumples the sheet of paper up and puts it in the large glass ashtray in the center of the table (Rev. Lowe does all of his counselling in the parlor, and some of his troubled parishoners smoke). He takes a book of matches from his Saturday afternoon “at home” sweater and lights the note, as he has lit the others. He watches it burn.
The last of the trucks drives out of sight over Tarker's Hill, horn honking, dogs yarking and barking in the back. Yes, some of the men are just skylarking, but some-Elmer and Pete Zinneman, for example-are dead serious.
If that creature, man or beast or whatever it is, goes hunting this month, the dogs will pick up its scent, the Rev. Lowe has heard Elmer say in the barber shop not two weeks ago. And if it-or he-don't go out, then maybe we'll have saved a life. Someone's livestock at the very least.
Yes, there are some of them-maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen-who mean business. But it is not them that has brought this strange new feeling into the back of Lowe's brain-that sense of being brought to bay.
It's the notes that have done that. The notes, the longest of them only two sentences long, written in a childish, laborious hand, sometimes misspelled. He looks down at the letter that has come in today's mail, addressed in that same childish script, addressed as the others have been addressed: The Reverend Lowe, Baptist Parsonage, Tarker's Mills, Maine 04491.
Now, this strange, trapped feeling… the way he imagines a fox must feel when it realizes that the dogs have somehow chased it into a cul-de-sac. That panicked moment that the fox turns, its teeth bared, to do battle with the dogs that will surely pull it to pieces.
He closes the door firmly, goes inside to the parlor where the grandfather clock ticks solemn ticks and tocks solemn tocks; he sits down, puts the religious circulars carefully aside on the table Mrs. Miller polishes twice a week, and opens his new letter. Like the others, there is no salutation. Like the others, it is unsigned. Written in the center of a sheet torn from a grade-schooler's lined notepad, is this sentence:
Why don't you kill yourself?
The Rev. Lowe puts a hand to his forehead-it trembles slightly. With the other hand he crumples the sheet of paper up and puts it in the large glass ashtray in the center of the table (Rev. Lowe does all of his counselling in the parlor, and some of his troubled parishoners smoke). He takes a book of matches from his Saturday afternoon “at home” sweater and lights the note, as he has lit the others. He watches it burn.