"David Langford - The Motivation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Langford David)

world's vileness...
Peter lurched upright, stomach churning. Automatically, shakily, he began to
walk away, his intention of exploring the trees forgotten. This was local color? He'd
never felt troubled before with too much imagination, had never been able to read a
place. Think, think of something else.
...how interesting to analyze this: a small horrible thing is so much more
repulsive than a large. Cf. the failure of giant insects and suchlike in all those movies.
A small, fascinatingly yucky thing like whatever was there in the grass. Or like a
photograph.
Peter shook his head violently. Walking briskly and without a pause into the
village, he tried to shut out all the unspeakable facts for a moment, and probe the
motives behind it all. As always, he failed. How could Quinn, how could anyone,
deserve that? "Oh, Quinny's okay," the sniggering Lambertstow kids had told him
ten years back. The village went by in a blur. Funny you never ran into any of the old
kids these days. On the London train he sneered at himself as a coward and an
incompetent, but with a deeper sense of comfort, a satisfaction at having read or
even for a moment imagined the supposed horror of that locality. This was the
insight, which could take you to the top.
At home he wrote it all down as local color, and didn't sleep too well
afterwards.


Next day was Sunday, with the heat of fading summer thicker and murkier
than ever. Peter fiddled with a much worked-over draft -- Today I stood on the very
spot where the strangely notorious Kenneth Quinn allegedly met his terrible end.
Even ten years after the horror, it is not a pleasant place etc. -- abandoned it, and
walked out to telephone the Treetops Private Home from a nearby booth, which did
part-time duty as a urinal.
"Treetops, can I help you?" said a pleasant female voice.
"Is it, er, possible for me to have a word with Dr. Barry?"
 "One moment." A pause. "There is no Dr. Barry on our staff, are you sure
you have the right number?"
"They... told me I could find Dr. Janice Barry at Treetops," said Peter weakly.
He should have known, doctors would stick together and hide one another's
addresses, frustrate anyone who might ask awkward questions...
"One moment." A longer pause, during which it occurred to Peter that the
woman's ordinary speaking voice must be half an octave lower than the strained
tones, which drifted with such refinement down the line. "I am sorry. Yes. Miss
Barry is & patient at Tree-tops, do you wish to visit her?"
He blinked. It shouldn't be that surprising, now you thought about it, but
somehow... "Yes please," he said. "What are your visiting hours?"
The voice sounded a little shocked. "There are no fixed visiting hours at
Treetops. You may visit whenever you wish, between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m."
Peter calculated rapidly, and hastily fed in more money. "Hello? Hello? Could
I visit at about seven tomorrow evening, please?"
"Certainly. Please could I have your name?"
"Edgell. Peter Edgell. A friend of a friend."
"Thank you."
Monday was a trifle cooler, but still nowhere near comfortable. The shop
seemed to attract a higher than usual proportion of nutters, people who wandered in