"Terry Dowling - Clownette" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dowling Terry)

I fumbled getting the handset back into its cradle, fumbled pulling on my clothes.

What had she said? That other comment? So odd, so truly strange.

And now there was the prospect of actually leaving the room. Everything could change. Most certainly
would, I was certain. That's how these things worked. I'd go down, get the pills, and the Motley would
be back on the wall when I returned, grinning at me, its own Happy Trails maneuver wonderfully
complete. Not a bad trick, hey, Mr. J.? Motley one, Bob Jackson nil.

I had to take charge, go down, anchor myself in the ordered, everyday world.

I grabbed the magnetic key from the nightstand and stepped out into the hall, waited till the door clicked
shut behind me, then headed for the lifts.

And discovered Motley's next piece of trickery!

The corridor seemed longer, impossibly extended.

Adjusts your mind! How you see things.

My night logic snatched at it. Not surprising, not so strange, I told myself, dragged from sleep like this,
primed with weird thoughts. Just another optical trick.

The setting encouraged it. By their very nature, hotel corridors exist in a state of timelessness. Day or
night, the lights are always on. The carpeting steals sound. Every footstep is snatched away the moment
you make it. You pass other rooms as if you never exist. And the doors! Blind, replicated, one after the
other, just their vacant spy holes tracking you sightlessly like the eyes of figures in portraits.

Another key factor right there.

No portraits in hotel rooms or hotel corridors. Always landscapes, abstracts, vistas, safe, Impressionistic
pieces. No one wanted eyes watching them in hotel rooms or down those long hallway approaches.
Which explained 516's five refugees in ten, why the Motley had the impact it did. Of course! The portrait
effect!

Almost at the lifts, I noticed Room 502 with its double spy hole: one at the usual eye level, one lower
down for guests in wheelchairs, children, shorter people.

My rational mind understood, but the night terrors had me.

Being watched by something doubled over, folded on itself.

I laughedтАФmy struggling, rational self didтАФand laughed again. I was imagining a third spy hole way
down at floor level. For the snake, I thought. Or Randion the Living Torso from that old Tod Browning
movie!

Crazy. All crazy. But what you did to cope. To turn it and make it right again.

Then I was safely past. I pressed the elevator call button, heard one, possibly both of the carriages