When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son-and now an idyllic home. As a family, they’ve got it all…right down to the friendly cat. But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth-more terrifying than death itself…and hideously more powerful.
Авторы: King Stephen Edwin
is hooded, but it is there if we need it… and none need know but us because the soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can… and tends it.
Thinking such troubled half-dreaming thoughts, Louis Creed slipped away, unplugging his connections to waking reality line by line, until all thoughts ceased and exhaustion dragged him down to black dreamless unconsciousness.
Just before the first signs of dawn touched the sky in the east, there were footsteps on the stairs. They were slow and clumsy but purposeful. A shadow moved in the shadows of the hail. A smell came with it-a stench. Louis, even in his thick sleep, muttered and turned away from that smell. There was the steady pull and release of respiration.
The shape stood outside the master bedroom door for some little time, not moving. Then it came inside. Louis’s face was buried in his pillow. White hands reached out, and there was a click as the black doctor’s bag by the bed was opened.
A low clink and shift as the things inside were moved.
The hands explored, pushing aside drugs and ampules and syringes with no interest at all. Now they found something and held it up. In the first dim light there was a gleam of silver.
The shadowy thing left the room.
“I only just thought of it,” she said hysterically. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?”
“Think of what?” he questioned.
“The other two wishes,” she replied rapidly. “We’ve only had one.
“Was that not enough?” he demanded fiercely.
“No,” she cried triumphantly: “we’ll have one more. Co down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”
–w. w. JACOBS (“The Monkey’s Paw”)
Jud Crandall came awake with a sudden jerk, almost falling out of his chair. He had no idea how long he had slept; it could have been fifteen minutes or three hours. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five minutes of five. There was a feeling that everything in the room had been subtly shifted out of position, and there was a line of pain
