"Brennert, Alan - The Refuge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brennert Alan)

Down below, in a clearing at least a hundred yards across...there was a house.

Ray stared, dumbstruck, at the sight: an enormous, two-story, Southern Colonial
mansion, fronted by a colonnade, a gabled roof crowning a white clapboard
facade...its balustrades and shuttered windows miraculously untouched by the
raging blizzard.

Elation quickly gave way to disbelief. This couldn't be real. Nothing so
fragile, so beautiful, could stand unravaged in this murderous storm. It had to
be part of his delirium: a hallucination, a winter's mirage.

He started to turn away from it, in disgust.

Turning, he caught a glimpse of something in the window.

It was a big, three-part window on the ground floor; warmly lit from within. It
stood at an angle to him, but there was a flash of movement, a shadow in the
glass, and he adjusted his position to get a better look.

There were people inside. At least two men; at least one woman. The woman had a
champagne glass in her hand; one of the men was taking a pull on a fat cigar;
another scarfed up a canape in one bite. They laughed, ate, drank. A fire burned
invitingly in the hearth.

They were having a party, for God's sake.

Slowly, Ray began to laugh. It was so absurd, so unlikely, that it was either
real. . .or a damned fine piece of delirium.Either way, he chose to embrace it.
Given a choice of dying with hope, or without it, he opted for the former. He
scrambled down the icy slope into the clearing, ready to embrace the illusion --
to let it swallow him whole. But strangely, the closer he got to the mansion,
the more real it seemed: he could make out faces behind the glass, could tell
what kind of hots d'oeuvres the partiers were nibbling, could almost taste the
wine in their fluted glasses. He was almost there now, a few dozen yards from
the rear porch --

Then, suddenly, something was screaming, and he realized it was him.

At first he thought he'd been hit by another blast of frozen rain and snow --
but no. This was different. This was worse. Not wet force, but dry; not cold but
not hot, either. Like sticking your finger in a light socket, only a hundred
times more intense. Dimly, through the pain, he became aware that he was hanging
suspended, a foot off the ground--impaled on the air itself-- while all around
him that air crackled and burned with something that was not quite electricity,
but close. His body shook like a rag doll caught on the spokes of a bicycle; his
clothes started to smoke, and smolder; he screamed, louder than any scream
forced from him by the storm, and he knew now that he had another enemy, a far
more terrible one.