Читать книгу The Book of Rapture - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 13

Their doorknob’s now rattling like someone wants to shake it right off.

A bang.

The door shudders. Everything is quiet. Not good quiet, creepy quiet. And the only noise is their jagged breathing too loud and they can’t still their breaths as the three of them stare at that feral door wondering what on earth it’s springing on them next. And you. Watching. Glary with guilt and helplessness, riddled with rangy light. Your middle child, Tidge, is bone white. He clutches his chest, at a mothy flittery something inside him batting away like a sparrow in a room, trying to find sky, get out. He reaches across and finds his little brother’s hand but Mouse’s pulse is leaping like a flea on steroids and Tidge winces, he’s not good with blood and bone, he can’t hold any more, lets go. ‘Thanks, dude,’ Mouse says, soft, ‘great.’ So his siblings can hear it but the person out there can’t.

His wiliness constantly surprises you. That guile of the third-born. He can’t compete physically so he’s always competed with something else. Cunning. Irony. An aware heart. One day perhaps he’ll run rings around his brother, you’ve always said that, but is he wily enough to get out of this? Can any of them? You can’t help them, they’re by themselves.

Everything ahead, wide open, like a bull on the loose.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.