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Cycle of the Werewolf :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 33 из 35Truth to tell, Marty has had a few bad moments himself… but Uncle Al arrived up around eight, driving not his Mercedes sports car but a borrowed four-wheel drive.
By eleven-thirty, everyone in the family has gone to bed except for the two of them, which is pretty much as Marty had foreseen things. And although Uncle Al is still pooh-poohing the whole thing, he has brought not one but two handguns concealed under his heavy CPO coat. The one with the two silver bullets he hands wordlessly to Marty after the family has gone to bed (as if to complete making the point, Marty's mother slammed the door of the bedroom she shares with Marty's dad when she went to bed-slammed it hard). The other is filled with more conventional lead-loads… but Al reckons that if a crazyman is going to break in here tonight (and as time passes and nothing happens, he comes to doubt that more and more), the. 45 Magnum will stop him.
Now, on the TV, they are switching the cameras more and more often to the big lighted ball on top of the Allied Chemical Building in Times Square. The last few minutes of the year are running out. The crowd cheers. In the comer opposite the TV, the Coslaw Christmas tree still stands, drying out now, getting a little brown, looking sadly denuded of its presents.
“Marty, nothing-” Uncle Al begins, and then the big picture window in the family room blows inward in a twinkle of glass, letting in the howling black wind from outside, twisting skirls of white snow… and the Beast.
Al is frozen for a moment, utterly frozen with horror and disbelief. It is huge, this Beast, perhaps seven feet tall, although it is hunched over so that its front hand-paws almost drag on the rug. Its one green eye (just like Marty said, he thinks numbly, all of it, just like Marty said) glares around with a terrible, rolling sentience… and fixes upon Marty, sitting in his wheelchair. it leaps at the boy, a rolling howl of triumph exploding out of its chest and past its huge yellow-white teeth.
Calmly, his face hardly changing, Marty raises the. 38 pistol. He looks very small in his wheelchair, his legs like sticks inside his soft and faded jeans, his fur-lined slippers on feet that have been numb and senseless all of his life. And, incredibly, over the werewolf's mad howling, over the wind's screaming, over the clap and clash of his own tottering thoughts about how this can possibly be in a world of real people and real things, over all of this Al hears his nephew say: “Poor old Reverend Lowe. I'm gonna try to set you free.”
And as the werewolf leaps, its shadow a blob on the carpet, its claw-tipped hands outstretched, Marty fires.
By eleven-thirty, everyone in the family has gone to bed except for the two of them, which is pretty much as Marty had foreseen things. And although Uncle Al is still pooh-poohing the whole thing, he has brought not one but two handguns concealed under his heavy CPO coat. The one with the two silver bullets he hands wordlessly to Marty after the family has gone to bed (as if to complete making the point, Marty's mother slammed the door of the bedroom she shares with Marty's dad when she went to bed-slammed it hard). The other is filled with more conventional lead-loads… but Al reckons that if a crazyman is going to break in here tonight (and as time passes and nothing happens, he comes to doubt that more and more), the. 45 Magnum will stop him.
Now, on the TV, they are switching the cameras more and more often to the big lighted ball on top of the Allied Chemical Building in Times Square. The last few minutes of the year are running out. The crowd cheers. In the comer opposite the TV, the Coslaw Christmas tree still stands, drying out now, getting a little brown, looking sadly denuded of its presents.
“Marty, nothing-” Uncle Al begins, and then the big picture window in the family room blows inward in a twinkle of glass, letting in the howling black wind from outside, twisting skirls of white snow… and the Beast.
Al is frozen for a moment, utterly frozen with horror and disbelief. It is huge, this Beast, perhaps seven feet tall, although it is hunched over so that its front hand-paws almost drag on the rug. Its one green eye (just like Marty said, he thinks numbly, all of it, just like Marty said) glares around with a terrible, rolling sentience… and fixes upon Marty, sitting in his wheelchair. it leaps at the boy, a rolling howl of triumph exploding out of its chest and past its huge yellow-white teeth.
Calmly, his face hardly changing, Marty raises the. 38 pistol. He looks very small in his wheelchair, his legs like sticks inside his soft and faded jeans, his fur-lined slippers on feet that have been numb and senseless all of his life. And, incredibly, over the werewolf's mad howling, over the wind's screaming, over the clap and clash of his own tottering thoughts about how this can possibly be in a world of real people and real things, over all of this Al hears his nephew say: “Poor old Reverend Lowe. I'm gonna try to set you free.”
And as the werewolf leaps, its shadow a blob on the carpet, its claw-tipped hands outstretched, Marty fires.