"Fritz Leiber - Our Lady of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a
profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and
the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within.
Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of
Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest Sister moves with incalculable
motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely
amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is
Mater Tenebrarum тАФour Lady of Darkness.
тАФThomas De Quincey, "Levana and Our Three Ladies of Sorrow", Suspiria de
Profundis



1
The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the
heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright
lights of downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its
territory in patient search of prey.
The waxing gibbous moon had set, and the stars at the top of the black heavens were
still diamond-sharp. To the west lay a low bank of fog. But to the east, beyond the city's
business center and the fog-surfaced Bay, the narrow ghostly ribbon of the dawn's earliest
light lay along the tops of the low hills behind Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda, and still
more distant Devil's MountainтАФMount Diablo.
On every side of Corona Heights the street and house lights of San Francisco, weakest
at end of night, hemmed it in apprehensively, as if it were indeed a dangerous animal. But
on the hill itself there was not a single light. An observer below would have found it almost
impossible to make out its jagged spine and the weird crags crowning its top (which even
the gulls avoided); and breaking out here and there from its raw, barren sides, which
although sometimes touched by fog, had not known the pelting of rain for months.
Someday the hill might be bulldozed down, when greed had grown even greater than it
is today and awe of primeval nature even less, but now it could still awaken panic terror.
Too savage and cantankerous for a park, it was inadequately designated as a
playground. True, there were some tennis courts and limited fields of grass and low
buildings and little stands of thick pine around its base; but above those it rose rough,
naked, and contemptuously aloof.
And now something seemed to stir in the massed darkness there. (Hard to tell what.)
Perhaps one or more of the city's wild dogs, homeless for generations, yet able to pass as
tame. (In a big city, if you see a dog going about his business, menacing no one, fawning on
no one, fussing at no oneтАФin fact, behaving like a good citizen with work to do and no time
for nonsenseтАФand if that dog lacks tag or collar, then you may be sure he hasn't a neglectful
owner, but is wildтАФand well adjusted.) Perhaps some wilder and more secret animal that
had never submitted to man's rule, yet lived almost unglimpsed amongst him. Perhaps,
conceivably, a man (or woman) so sunk in savagery or psychosis that he (or she) didn't
need light. Or perhaps only the wind.
And now the eastern ribbon grew dark red, the whole sky lightened from the east toward
the west, the stars were fading, and Corona Heights began to show its raw, dry, pale brown
surface.
Yet the impression lingered that the hill had grown restless, having at last decided on its
victim.