• Пожаловаться

Lesley Kagen: Whistling in the Dark

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Lesley Kagen: Whistling in the Dark» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Триллер / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Lesley Kagen Whistling in the Dark

Whistling in the Dark: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Whistling in the Dark»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

It was the summer on Vliet Street when we all started locking our doors… Sally O'Malley made a promise to her daddy before he died. She swore she'd look after her sister, Troo. Keep her safe. But like her Granny always said-actions speak louder than words. Now, during the summer of 1959, the girls' mother is hospitalized, their stepfather has abandoned them for a six pack, and their big sister, Nell, is too busy making out with her boyfriend to notice that Sally and Troo are on the Loose. And so is a murderer and molester. Highly imaginative Sally is pretty sure of two things. Who the killer is. And that she's next on his list. Now she has no choice but to protect herself and Troo as best she can, relying on her own courage and the kindness of her neighbors.

Lesley Kagen: другие книги автора


Кто написал Whistling in the Dark? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

Whistling in the Dark — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Whistling in the Dark», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Somebody down the block yelled, “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free,” and Little Richard singing “Tutti Frutti” drifted by out of a car radio. That’s how it was on Vliet Street. Something lively was always going on. Except for dead Junie Piaskowski, who everyone on the block said was murdered and molested. Sara Heinemann hadn’t been murdered and molested yet when Mother fastened the last clothespin on the line and said, “O’Malley sisters, come over here. I have something to tell you.”

Of course, I let Troo sit next to Mother on the stone bench near the pink peony flowers that were falling all over themselves because I made my daddy a couple of promises before he died. And if there is one thing you’re gonna get to know about me, it’s that I was a girl who wouldn’t break a promise even if her life depended on it.


Right when the sun was going behind the trees, Daddy made everybody else go out of the hospital room and asked me to come lie down next to him in his bed that he could make go up and down whenever he wanted.

“Sally?” He had all these tubes coming out of him. And next to him was a machine that ping ping pinged just like the submarine in that movie Troo and me had seen at the Uptown Theater called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

“Yes, Daddy?” He didn’t look so much like himself anymore. His face was swelled up and he had cuts around his mouth and bits of blood that didn’t seem to wash off. Also he had a big purple circle bruise from the steering wheel going into his chest. Something had collapsed in there, the old nurse said.

“You need to take care of Troo,” Daddy said ever so quietly. His usually fluffy red-as-a-pile-of-fall-leaves hair came into points on his forehead. “You need to promise me that.”

I patted his hand that felt smooth because the old nurse had just put some cream on it. “I promise. I’ll take care of Troo. Cross my heart. But I gotta tell you something really important, I’m-”

“You have to tell Troo for me that it’s okay,” Daddy interrupted. “Tell her the crash wasn’t her fault.”

Troo was in the hospital too, down the hall from Daddy, because she was also in the car when it ran into that big elm tree on Holly Road. Since she was sitting in the backseat, she didn’t get as hurt as Daddy or Uncle Paulie. She just got a broken arm that ached sometimes now before it was gonna rain.

Daddy took in a breath like it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and when he let it out he said, “And tell your mother that I forgive her for what she did. Promise?” Then he started coughing some more and a little pink spit came up onto his lips. “I’ll be watching, Sally. Remember… things can happen when you least expect them so you always gotta be prepared. And pay attention to the details. The devil is in the details.” Then Daddy went to sleep for a minute but woke up again and said, “And Nell is not the worst big sister in the world. There are one or two that’re worse.”

The old nurse came back into the room then and said Daddy was either delirious or hilarious. I couldn’t quite catch it because she had a funny way of talking.

Troo’s fault that Daddy was in the hospital? How could all this be Troo’s fault? Troo couldn’t drive a car, she was only seven years old! Oh, Daddy. And I had no idea what he wanted to forgive Mother for and why he couldn’t tell her himself, but maybe it was because she was crazy with grief like the doctor said.

Even though Daddy had fallen asleep, I whispered, “Roger, wilco and out.” That’s how we always said good-bye to each other. Just like Penny said good-bye to her uncle Sky King when he was up in the clear blue of the western sky in his plane the Songbird. Daddy and me just adored that TV show, watched it together every single Saturday morning because Daddy was a pilot, too.

And then the old nurse said, “Visiting hours are over.” “But I gotta…,” I tried to say, but she shook her head in a way that I knew there’d be no gettin’ around. What I wanted to tell him would have to wait until tomorrow. I put my hand on his whiskery chin and turned his face toward mine so I could give him a butterfly kiss on his cheek, because that was his absolute favorite, and then an Eskimo kiss on his nose because that was my absolute favorite.

Daddy’s funeral was three days after I made him those promises. I never did get to tell him I was sorry.

CHAPTER TWO

Mother took me to go see Dr. Sullivan last summer when I started having real bad dreams about The Creature from the Black Lagoon. In this movie that took place in the Amazon area there was this creature who lived deep down in the water but would come up to get people whenever it wanted to. After Daddy died, I started thinking all the time about how the Creature could come for me or Troo or Nell or Mother, and what would we do if it did? We weren’t strong. We just were not. And after we moved from our farm way out in the country into the city, to make matters even worse, the Washington Park lagoon was just three blocks away from our house. That’s where they found Junie Piaskowski’s dead body our first summer on Vliet Street. They never found the person who left her there all alone next to those red rowboats you could rent. And I couldn’t believe that not one person thought it coulda been the Creature that had murdered Junie because that Creature had a lot of stick-to-itiveness. Look how much he had wanted that actress Julie Adams!

But sitting there in the doctor’s office that smelled like shots, I reconsidered about that for a while, and finally said to Dr. Sullivan, “Okay, maybe it wasn’t the Creature who murdered Junie.”

The doctor smiled and nodded his head.

“Because of those pink undies being tied around Junie’s neck,” I explained. “The Creature doesn’t have very nice fingers and you’d need very nice fingers to tie undies around a girl’s neck, wouldn’t you?”

Dr. Sullivan made me swallow some cod-liver oil and then put his face right up close to mine, so close that the pores in his nose looked like the insides of an empty egg carton. “Sally O’Malley, you have what is known as an overactive imagination.” His breath was warm and putrid, just like I imagined the Amazon would be. “That’s not good. In fact”-he looked over at Mother and shook his head-“it just goes to prove once again that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Have you been attending mass regularly?”

Him saying that didn’t give me a lot of faith in Dr. Sullivan. Because he was so wrong. My mind was never idle. Never ever.


The noon whistle blew over at the cookie factory and I heard Mother say from far off, “Sally? Sally! Did you hear me?” in that tone she got to let you know she had better things to do.

“Sorry.” Thinking about the Creature and Daddy like that, that was what Dr. Sullivan called a flight of the imagination, which was something I musta inherited from my Sky King.

Mother sighed one of her big sighs and said, “I have to go to the hospital tomorrow to have an operation. My gallbladder has to come out.” She placed her hand below her right ribs. “And while I’m gone”-she pointed her finger at Troo-“I want you to work on your charitable works, and you”-she pointed at me-“get control of that imagination of yours or I’ll take you back to the doctor.”

Then she looked down at her hands and twirled the wedding ring that Hall had given her, which seemed like it hurt because she had a pained look on her face. With the bad luck Mother was having with her husbands, Troo and me figured that one of the reasons she had married Hall so fast after Daddy died was because he didn’t look like he’d decease anytime soon, with his muscles and wavy Swedish hair and that tattoo on the top part of his arm that said MOTHER. Nell said that tattoo must have impressed the hell right out of Helen. And maybe it had right after Daddy died. But now Mother was stuck with Hall because if you were a Catholic you couldn’t get a divorce unless you wanted to go straight to hell and burn for all eternity. If you were a Catholic, Granny said, the only thing you could do if you didn’t want to be married anymore was to pray really hard for a certain shoe-selling louse to get run over by a bus on his way to work.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Whistling in the Dark»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Whistling in the Dark» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Sally Simpson: With Bobby_s mom
With Bobby_s mom
Sally Simpson
Sally Simpson: And mom makes three
And mom makes three
Sally Simpson
Mo Hayder: Hanging Hill
Hanging Hill
Mo Hayder
Lesley Kagen: Tomorrow River
Tomorrow River
Lesley Kagen
Lesley Kagen: Good Graces
Good Graces
Lesley Kagen
Отзывы о книге «Whistling in the Dark»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Whistling in the Dark» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.