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

Did Richard want to scare her? He was looking at her as he said `I heard something else today.'

`What?' one of the girls demanded nervously.

`I don't know. It sounded like-' Was he pausing for effect, or choosing his words? `It sounded like someone ill trying to get hold of things, groping about next door, trying to hick something up.'

He leaned against the chipped mantelpiece and gazed at his listeners. He was obviously enjoying himself, but was he lying? He must have heard mice, the young girl told herself. But she was struggling to gain sufficient courage to say that she'd decided not to go into the house.

The doorbell rang. Everyone started, then pretended that they hadn't, or giggled uneasily. `Stupid,' one girt snarled - it wasn't clear to whom. Had Richard's parents returned unexpectedly? Oh, please let it be - But he returned from the front door to announce `All right, it's time. Ken's here.'

He led them out of the house. Between it and its neighbour was an arched tunnel, narrower than the stretch of the young girl's arms. The edge of headlights on the road withdrew from the passage, which was at once very dark. The girl's footsteps rang shrilly between the walls, mocking her nervousness.

At the end of the passage were the doors to two back yards. Richard pushed one, which tottered open, scraping over stone. Beyond it the kitchen of the deserted house protruded into the yard, towards a large coalshed. There was room for little else except darkness thick as mud and, in one corner of the yard, an anonymous shrub, starved and restless.

As they crept into the yard eyes gleamed at them from the coal, which scattered rattling as the awakened sleeper leapt on the wall and fled, mewing. `Shut up,' Richard hissed at giggles. He was fiddling with the back door of the house. He must be copying a film, he couldn't know how to do it properly. There came a snap of metal; he must have broken his knife. The girl relaxed, only just suppressing an audible sigh - then saw that the door was open.

Richard's flashlight reached into the darkness. It spread over the flags of the kitchen floor, dimming. Wooden legs with knobbly ankles stood in the shadows; deep in the darkness, something gurgled moistly. `Well, keep up,' he said irritably to the others as he stepped within.

The young girl tried to keep up with Wendy, who was clinging to the moustached boy. As the flashlight swung to make sure everyone had followed, a nervous drip glinted on the lip of a tap. The drip was trembling, ready to fall. It must have been the tap which had gurgled. `Shut the door,' Richard ordered.

Beyond the kitchen was a larger room. The patch of light crawled over the floor, picking at the pattern of the carpet, leaving it incomplete. Why couldn't Richard raise the torch beam? Nobody could see so far into the house from the road. In the unlit room draped chairs loomed, squatting fatty beneath their shrouds. The air smelled of hovering dust.

As they ventured into the hall, a thin silhouette sprang up to meet them. A sharp hook of panic snagged the girl's heart. Everyone halted, gasping or swearing, except Richard. In a moment they were scoffing and jostling, for it had only been the cross that separated the front-door panes, outlined by headlights. But the girl had felt caged by their panic. As they'd surrounded her, instinctively huddling together, they had seemed capable of crushing her among them. They and their indifference dwarfed her. Her fear was bigger than she was.

`Keep it quiet,' Richard muttered, and padded upstairs. His light doled out a couple of stairs at a time. Shadows tugged at the banisters, which shifted creaking beneath her hand. Nervousness and dusty breaths parched her throat; underfoot, the unseen carpet felt like a thick wad of dust. She was trapped in the midst of the uneasy procession. She could only stumble upstairs.

All the doors on the landing were ajar. As the light wavered into the rooms, they looked impossibly large with darkness, which seemed less still than it ought to be. Carpet muffled the creaks of the landing. How could the answering creaks - surely they must be echoes - sound clearer in the rooms? This seemed not to trouble Richard, who strode stealthily into the front bedroom.

He switched off the flashlight. A streetlamp lit the room, though only through two cramped windows. An indeterminate pattern swarmed on the wallpaper. As the others pushed her through the doorway she saw a large table which seemed not to belong to the room, surrounded by a dim bed, a dressing-table, a couple of chairs; rough squares of paper laid around the table's edge spelled out the alphabet - `Don't shut that door!' Richard hissed urgently.

He tugged a drawer out of the dressing-table and propped the door open. `No handle on the inside,' he explained, amused by their muffled dismay or suspicion. `Come on then, before my parents get back.'

The girl advanced, because there was nothing else to do. `Go on,' said the boy with the wispy chin, shoving her. Was he annoyed with his own nervousness? Before she knew it she was sitting on the bed, hemmed in by the wispy boy and, nearest the door, Wendy.

`Right,' Richard said triumphantly. `Now.' From beside the dressing-table he produced an object like a home-made wooden roller-skate, whose wheels were capable of veering. His gesture expected a reaction, and received one: strangled laughter, nudging, giggling. `He's going to write with his feet,' someone sniggered. The girl joined in the almost hysterical mirth, though she felt the shrillness of her laughter excluded her from the group.

`Shut up!' Richard said savagely. `Do you want someone to hear us and call the police?'

They subsided gradually into silence. There was an interlude of subdued jostling as they each placed one hand on the skate in the centre of the table. `Now what?' demanded the wispy boy.

`We wait,' Richard said.

They did S0, more or less silently. `My arm's going to sleep,' one girl muttered. `So am I,' complained .her friend. Minutes after they had spoken, their words remained, hovering as though the air had grown stagnant. The room seemed to be darkening, as if with the approach of a storm - the young girl's eyes must be tired, that was all. Headlights trailed over the ceiling and dragged at the pattern of the wallpaper, which shifted slyly. No light reached the open door, beyond which stood blackness. She imagined how much of the dark house she would have to brave to escape.

Boredom or unease was growing. `How long are we going to have to sit?' protested the wispy boy. Free hands were exploring. -'Oh, get off,' one girl cried furiously.

`I don't think this is going to work,' said the boy with the moustache. `The planchette's too heavy. You need something lighter.'

At once, accompanied by an odd sound which seemed to come from deep in the house, the wooden skate began to quest towards the edge of the table,, advancing and recoiling like a trapped rat.