"Simon R. Green - Nightside 1 - Drinking Midnight Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

Avon like a horse scenting its stables. Toby closed his paperback and stuffed it into his jacket
pocket. Not long now; almost home. He felt tired and heavy and sweaty, and his feet ached inside
his cheap shoes, already on their second set of heels. He looked out of the window, and there, on
the very edge of town, was Blackacre. An old name and not a pleasant one, for a seventeenth-
century farmhouse and surrounding lands, all set within an ancient circle of dark trees, cutting
Blackacre off from the rest of the world - dead land, and dead trees.
A long time ago, something happened in that place, but few now remembered what or when or why. The
old farmhouse stood empty and abandoned, in the centre of a wide circle of dead ground, on which
nothing grew and in which nothing could thrive. The deep thickets of spiky trees were all dead
too, never knowing leaves or bloom, scorched long ago by some terrible heat. Animals would not go
near the area, and it was said and believed by many that even the birds and insects went out of


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their way to avoid flying over Blackacre. Local gossip had it that the house and the land had a
new owner, the latest of many, probably full of big-city ideas on how to reclaim the land and make
it prosper again, to succeed where so many others had failed. Toby smiled tiredly. Some things
should be left alone as a bad job. Whatever poor fool had been conned into buying the place would
soon discover the truth the hard way. Blackacre was a money pit, a bottomless well you threw money
into. Dead was dead, and best left undisturbed.
Sometimes the local kids would venture into the dark woods on a dare, but no one ever went near
the farmhouse. Local builders wouldn't have anything to do with the place either. Everyone knew
the stories, the old stories handed down from father to son, not as entertainment but as a
warning. Bad things happened to those who dared disturb Blackacre's sullen rest.
Which made it all the more surprising when Toby suddenly realised that there were lights in some
of the windows of Blackacre Farm. He pressed his face close to the carriage window, and watched
intently as a dull yellow glow moved steadily from one upper-floor window to the next. Some damned
fool must actually be staying there, in a rotten old building without power or heat or water. Toby
shivered for a moment, though he couldn't have said why. A dark figure appeared against a lit
window. It stood very still, and Toby had a sudden horrid feeling that it was watching him, just
as he was watching it. And then the light went out, and the figure was gone, and Blackacre Farm
was dark and still again.
Toby's upper lip was wet with sweat, and he brushed at it with a finger before settling back into
his uncomfortably hard seat. He would soon be at his stop, and he wanted one last look at the
woman sitting opposite him. She was reading The Times with great concentration, the broadsheet
newspaper spread wide to put a barrier between herself and the world. In all the time they'd
travelled on the same train, Toby had never seen the woman speak to anyone. Most of The Times's
front page was given over to a story about unusual new conditions on the surface of the sun. Toby
squinted a little so he could read the text of the story without having to lean forward.
Apparently of late a series of solar flares had been detected leaping out from the sun's surface;
the largest and most powerful flares since records began. There seemed no end to these flares,
which were already playing havoc with the world's weather and communications systems. Toby smiled.
If the flares hadn't been screwing up everyone's television reception, such a story would never
have made the front page. People only ever really cared about science when it bit them on the
arse.
He looked away, and surreptitiously studied the woman's face, reflected in the carriage window
beside her. She was frowning slightly as she read, her perfect mouth slightly pursed. Not for the
time first, Toby thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She had a classic face,