"Shaun Hutson - Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutson Shaun)

shaven and carefully groomed, he looked younger than his forty years,
particularly when his eyes sparkled as they did now. Nevertheless, his
forehead was heavily lined and his thick eyebrows, which strained to
meet above the bridge of his nose, gave him a perpetual frown. He dried his
face and sat down at his dressing table. Even now he could hear the persistent
applause generated by those who had yet to leave the hall.
It was like this every time. At every meeting.
He held three a week. The one today had been conducted in a large red-brick
building on New York's West Side. Next time it might be in Manhattan, Queens
or the Bronx. Or maybe somewhere in one of the city's more affluent areas.
Over the years he had found that the rich needed his attentions as badly as
anyone else.
Those he didn't reach in person could see him twice a week on CBS, his
hour-long television show attracting an audience in excess of 58,000,000. He
was known throughout the country and most of Europe for his abilities as a
psychic but, of the man himself, little had ever been revealed. He spoke with
a New York accent but the harder edges had been smoothed off and he came
across as a cultured man, though he was respected and ridiculed in roughly
equal proportions. There were those who still branded him a fraud and a
charlatan. With an annual incorhe of 20,000,000 dollars, the barbs seemed to
cut less deeply than they might otherwise have done.
He smiled at his own reflection and began wiping his face with a paper cloth.
There was a light rap on the door and Mathias turned in his seat as if he were
expecting to see through the partition.
'Who is it?' he asked.
'Blake,' a distinctively English voice told him.
'Come in,' he called, his smile broadening.
As David Blake entered the room, Mathias studied the newcomer warmly.
He was twenty-eight, about five-ten, dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a.
sweatshirt which, despite the folds of material, could not disguise the
powerful frame beneath it. A packet of cigarettes bulged from one of his
pockets and, as the young man sat down, he took one out and lit it up.
'Very impressive,' he said, re-adjusting the tinted glasses on his nose.
it isn't intended to create an impression, David,' said the psychic. 'You know
that.'
own body is a skill which can be learned.' 'I agree.'
'Then I don't see what this has to do with your powers. I can control other
people's Astral bodies.' Blake frowned, taken aback by the psychic's words.
Mathias returned his gaze, unblinking. There was a twinkle in his
blue eyes which Blake mistrusted. He studied the American as if
he were an exhibit in a museum, trying to muster his own thoughts, it's
impossible,' he said, softly. 'Nothing is impossible, David,' the psychic told
him. Blake shook his head.
'Look, I know plenty about Out of the Body experiences,' he countered. 'I've
met dozens of people who've had them but the idea of being able to manipulate
someone else's Astral body ...' The sentence trailed off as he felt his body
stiffen. It was as if every muscle in his body had suddenly contracted and the
sensation forced a gasp from him.
Overwhelming, numbing cold enveloped him until he felt as if his blood were
freezing in his veins. He shuddered, the flesh on his forearms rising into