Richter 10

Начало книги

Fingertips tingling and toes numb, pajamas damp with sweat, Lewis Crane came wide awake. Every one of his worst night terrors was real! And at that horrible moment he knew he’d been right all along and the grownups had been wrong: The Wild Things did live in the back of his closet; a dragon did sneak in when the sun went down to curl up under his bed. The monsters were invisible in the dusty moonlight seeping through the slats of the blinds, but Lewis knew they were there. They roared hideously and stomped around the room, making his bed wiggle like a trampoline he was trying to climb onto. He screwed his eyes closed and clamped his hands over his ears. But the monsters didn’t go away. They got wilder and made even louder noises. Suddenly pitched out of bed, Lewis screamed for his parents.

His voice was so little and the noise was so big that his Mama and Daddy would never hear him. He had to get to them. Heart pounding, he tried to make himself stand up, but fear kept him rooted to the floor as it started to buck beneath him and the walls began to undulate like the enormous pythons he’d seen at the big zoo in San Diego. His bookcases were quivering, the chairs trembling, and the video games stacked on top of his computer came tumbling down. Something whirred over his shoulder—the picture that had hung above the little table next to his bed—and landed beside his knee, glass popping out of its frame and spraying his leg.

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