"Campbell, Ramsey - The Parasite 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell Ramsey)

Des staggered at her. He was the reason Rose was nervous; what other reason could there be? `Not so fucking rational after all, eh?' he said with exaggerated care.

`I don't mind at all if you attack me,' Colin said. `But now that you insult my mother I must ask you to leave.'

`Must you? . Who's making you?' Eventually Des stumbled to the car, his walk wandering independent of him. Rose helped support him, and watched Hilary drive away.

She stood in the driveway, gulping night air. Gravel bit dully into her feet through her shoes. On the bay beyond New Brighton, foghorns lowed. The air tasted acrid; the few streetlamps looked enfeebled. She hoped they had called off the stance.

Colin seemed anxious to avoid another scene. He'd smiled reassuringly at his mother, promising her that he wouldn't let things get out of hand again. Mightn't he have given in to her unease? But someone had switched off the hall light. As Rose went reluctantly into the house, there was only a glow seeping out of the living room.

The living-room table was bare. A lamp craned its jointed neck out of the darkness; its metal cone laid down a blurred disc of light. At the edge of the disc, pairs of dissimilar hands clung together, chopped off at the wrists by the dark. They were immobile as meat on a slab. They looked too precise, too pink, their hairs wiry and glinting, their nails like embedded shells.

Above them faces hovered, stained and bruised by shadows. Bill's face looked amused but a little self-conscious, an adult at a children's tea party. The sight of him helped Rose step forward, though her guts felt liquid, burning. `Thank you for the party,' she said to the Hays.

`Aren't you staying?' Bill frowned; shadows flooded his eyes. `What's wrong?'

`I'm just tired and headachy.' A nerve tried to tug her smile crooked. `You stay if you want to. Excuse me if I go to bed,' she said to Colin's hovering face.

`Of course.' But he looked puzzled, almost disturbed. Did he suspect that more was wrong than she was admitting? Everyone was staring at her. Obviously they would be, since she was leaving.

`You're sure you don't mind if I stay?' Bill said.

`No, I've already said so.' The room in which she'd often sat with old Mrs. Winter was invisible, expanded ominously by the dark, which felt somehow larger than the night outside. `Good night all,' she stammered, and hurried out.

She was glad to be able to switch on the lights in her own living-room. The Chinaman squatted on the sideboard, reaching out vainly for his twin. `I'm sorry if you would have preferred things left dusty,' Miss Price had said haughtily. Though she hadn't admitted to the breakage, Rose was sure it had been her doing.

In the bathroom Rose's face dodged from tile to black tile. It looked rudimentary, as though an embryo were imitating her. She finished in the bathroom as quickly as she could, then she lay in bed, trying to make sense of her feelings.

Perhaps she knew what she had feared: that the seance, however playful, might catch old Mrs. Winter in its net. So Rose believed she was still alive somewhere, in some form? She wasn't sure, which meant it was best not to play. She could accept her own eventual nonexistence simply because the concept was impossible to grasp - but she refused to believe that one day Bill would cease to exist, because she could imagine that. To believe would be almost like wishing him dead.

In a way her fears were comforting. After all, there was no reason to suppose that Mrs. Winter was still bound to her house. She hoped the seance would be wholly unsuccessful. Feeling reasonably calm, she switched off the bedside lamp.

The seance was waiting for her. The hands crouched close together around the rim of the circular table, a meeting of blind pink creatures with five legs. Some of the fingertips were pressing against the table, for crescents of white had invaded the mauve beneath the nails. The bare bright table was a stage with darkness for an audience. She was floating above the stage, gazing down. Oh God, no - please, not that again! Her hands clenched on the blankets. Her fingernails were bending, an acid thread of panic burned from her throat to her stomach. The sensations helped her hold on to her body, reassured her that she hadn't drifted helplessly into the dark.

She wasn't at the mercy of the dark, only of her own imagination. That was how she could see the table so vividly. But she seemed to be able to feel the power of the stance, fumbling blindly and mindlessly in the dark for something to play with, however dangerous. For a moment it seemed that it might drag her out of her body.

Then it seemed to pass her by, though her skull felt thin and irritable. She bit back a gasp of relief; she felt in danger of gasping herself out of her mouth. In any case the gasp would have been premature, for she wasn't alone in the dark. The search had touched something.

Perhaps it was only one of those stray nightmarish thoughts that come in the depths of the night and insomnia, and are so difficult to deal with. There was a face on a pillow in a dim room. She would stumble in the dimness, fall on the bed, into its arms. The cold flabby face would open its dead eyes, grinning.

Had she dreamed that as a child? Was it only a dream that had waited in the dark to be touched? If she let go of the blankets, she could switch on the lamp - but she could only lie there, praying that the face in the dark would go away before she saw it clearly.

At last it seemed to fade into the dark. She could reach out for the lamp now, and in a moment she would - just another moment. Before she could move, she heard a scratching at the front-door lock.

Of course it was Bill. His progress was hesitant and fumbling because he was drunk. She could hear that he was reduced to all fours on the stairs. Now he was in the room, padding about in the dark so as not to waken her. But she wasn't sure of any of this until he whispered, `Are you asleep?'

'No. Come into bed, quickly.'

When he did so, she held tight to him. `What hap-