Overheard in a Dream. Torey Hayden
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Название: Overheard in a Dream
Автор: Torey Hayden
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007370832
isbn:
Torey Hayden
Overheard in a Dream
A novel
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Other Works
Copyright
About the Publisher
The boy was so pale you would have thought he was a ghost. A wraith. Something insubstantial that would vanish into nothing at all. He was small for nine, slender and fine-boned. His hair was pale as moonlight, very fine, very straight. His skin was milky-white with a dull translucence to it, like wax. Such fair colouring meant that at a distance, he appeared to have no eyebrows or eyelashes at all, and this incompleteness only emphasized his ephemeral appearance.
“Meow?” said the boy.
“Hello, Conor,” James replied. “Won’t you come in?”
“Meow?”
Around his waist he wore numerous coils of string with bits of aluminium foil wrapped around them. Four of these trailed down behind him and onto the floor. He gripped a small toy cat by its hind legs. Extending the cat out in front of him, as if it were a scanning device, he rotated it slowly, pointing it at every corner of the room. Then he began to make an oddly mechanical noise, a sort of ratcheting “ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh” that sounded like a sluggish machine gun. Then a new sound started, a soft whirring sound. “Whirrrr. Whirrrrr. Whirrrrrrrr.” He stepped into the room just far enough to allow Dulcie to push the trailing strings forward with her foot and close the door.
The child avoided looking at James. His eyes darted nervously here and there. A hand came up alongside his face and he flapped it frantically. “Whirrrrrrrr,” he went again.
James rose from his chair in order to encourage the boy into the room, but the child reacted with panic, pointing the stuffed cat at James like a gun. “The cat knows!” he said loudly.
James stopped. “You don’t like me coming towards you.”
“Ehhh-ehhh-ehhh-ehhh. Whirrrrrrr. Whirrrrrrr.”
“You would like me to sit down again.”
“Whirrrr.”
“That’s all right,” James said quietly and returned to the small chair beside the playroom table to sit down. “In here you can decide how things will be.”
Conor remained rooted just inside the door. He looked James over carefully, or at least that’s how James interpreted his behaviour, because Conor’s eyes never met his. Instead, the boy flicked his eyes back and forth repetitively, as if he had nystagmus, but James sensed it was simply a method of gaining visual information without eye contact. Then he extended the toy cat again and took a step further into the room. Still gripping the cat tightly by its hind legs, he raised and lowered it as if scanning James’s body. “The cat knows,” he whispered.
The play therapy room was spacious and painted pale yellow, a colour James had chosen because it made him think of sunshine. Not that this was really necessary, as there was usually a surplus of the real stuff pouring through the large east-facing windows and in the heat of summer, the room had a downright Saharan feel. Nonetheless, СКАЧАТЬ