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

The bed was not empty. As she fell back, she glimpsed a face upturned on the pillow. A convulsion seized her whole body; she arched upward, straining her spine -anything rather than touch what lay in the bed. Was the face only an accident of shadows on the lumpy pillow? Perhaps, for as she wrenched her neck in peering wildly, she saw that the face was incomplete. But as her hand tried to lever her away from the bed it touched, through the bedclothes, a thin yet flabby limb.

She heard someone stumble over the drawer in the doorway and kick it aside. The door slammed. `Hey, Richard,' said the muffled voice of the wispy boy, `did you realize we've left that kid in there? Was she supposed to be the one?' Several of them giggled, relieved; perhaps they had known they were shutting her in.

She kicked the table away and ran blindly to the door. Her gasp of terror had hurt her chest, leaving her no breath with which to cry out. She heard Wendy from what seemed a great distance. `You haven't really left her in there, have you? You silly fool, she's only a kid! I'm supposed to be looking after her!'

`All right. Calm down.' It was the voice of the moustache. `The door isn't locked, is it? She's braver than half you people, anyway. I didn't hear her whining.' The handle of the door rattled. There was a thud, and a silence.

When he spoke again his voice was low with anger. `What sort of games are you playing, Richard? The handle's come out and the door won't budge.'

The dark closed around the young girl, like the embrace of fever. The door shook as shoulders thumped it, but held. Now the babble of angry voices was retreating from her. Was Richard calling `It's all right, don't fret, I'll get something'? The voices faded down the stairs, leaving her alone with silence.

It was not quite silence. Behind her, something dropped softly to the floor. She could neither turn nor cry out, but she knew without turning what the sound was: the fall of the bedclothes. Had something else got down from the bed?

She could move her hand now. She hooked her finger

in the hole where the door-handle ought to be. She dragged at the door, though her hand was trembling so violently that it threatened to jerk out of the hole, but it was no use; the door refused to budge. Now she was trapped there, unable to let go of the door, held fast by the dark as though it was a marsh.

When she was seized from behind she was not even able to scream. They must be hands, for they had fingers, though they felt soft as putty - far softer than putty, indeed, to be able to do to her what they began to do then.

PART ONE

The Follower

One

`Discerning a director's personality in his films can be rather like doing a jigsaw puzzle,' Rose said, `except that sometimes the pieces are blurred.'

Trevor gazed up at her, smiling ambiguously. As he sat back, crossing one leg over the other, his sharp nose poked forward like Punch, the curtains of his long black hair parted further. `Why can't it be your method that's blurred?' he said.

`Because the method doesn't preconceive the personality. We examine a director's films to see if they express a consistent personality, not on the assumption that they do. Often they don't, of course.' Though she was glad he'd raised the issue, she wished he hadn't done so at the last lecture of the term; the rest of her students looked blandly impatient, unprepared to listen.

`I see your point, Trevor, of course. Directors often have to work with scripts or actors they wouldn't have chosen - did you ever see Dan Duryea as a Cockney running a fish and chip shop in None But The Lonely Heart? And the director often has no say in what's done to the film once it's completed. It seems impossible that anything at all can be expressed. But I think that argument misses a crucial point about creativity in general.'

They were gazing at her as though she was a rather dull film. They must be as eager for the end of term as she was for New York. Eventually Trevor asked `Why?'

`Because creativity is never simply a matter of conscious control, though the writer or film-maker or whatever often gives that illusion to the audience, and sometimes to himself.' Some of the girls were reacting now, but only to her slavish use of the male pronoun. `Himself or herself,' she said with a wry smile they didn't share, and went on `You might think writers have more control than film-makers, but writers must be influenced by received ideas of narrative, by things they've heard or read or seen and consciously forgotten, by the culture in which they live. Like anyone else, a writer must be partly at the mercy of his subconscious.'

Trevor had sat forward, ready to pounce. `But then there's even less reason to look at films as personal statements.'

`No, because remember that one can trace a consistent vision in the work of many directors. Sometimes they seem unaware of it, but of course if it comes from the subconscious, it isn't surprising that they're the last people to admit to it.'

Trevor seemed to feel she'd tricked him, performed some sleight of mind. The rest of them looked unconvinced, but unwilling to prolong the lecture by raising objections.

`I think we'll call it a day,' she said. `Have a good Easter, since I don't suppose I'll see you before.'

The students trooped out, audibly relieved. Maybe they had heard some of it before: hadn't she already used the metaphor of jigsaws? In one of her books, perhaps, though she couldn't recall whether she or Bill had written the line.

She came out of her office into the low corridor. Lighting, more or less concealed, flared down the walls. Beyond the Henry Moore drawings, Gainsborough's portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews gazed haughtily at her. Quivering after-images of light exploded before her, and she had to shut her eyes. She hoped she wasn't due for a migraine.