"Brian Lumley - Fruiting Bodies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

with the blue-grey of the North Sea itself. For cresting a rise, suddenly I was there.

An old, leaning wooden signpost saidEasinghтАФ , for the tail had been broken off or rotted away, and
"the village" lay at the end of the road. But right there, blocking the way, a metal barrier was set in
massive concrete posts and carried a sign bearing the following warning:



DANGER!

Severe Cliff Subsidence. No Vehicles Beyond This PointтАж



I turned off the car's motor, got out, leaned on the barrier. Before me the road went onтАФand
disappeared only thirty yards ahead. And there stretched the new rim of the cliffs. Of the village,
Easingham itselfтАФforget it! On this side of the cliffs, reaching back on both sides of the road behind
overgrown gardens, weedy paths and driveways, here stood the empty shells of what had once been
residences of the "posh" folks of Easingham. Now, even on a day as lovely as this one, they were morose
in their desolation.

The windows of these derelicts, where there were windows, seemed to gaze gauntly down on
approaching doom, like old men in twin rows of deathbeds. Brambles and ivy were rank; the whole
place seemed despairing as the cries of the gulls rising on the warm air; Easingham was a place no more.

Not that there had ever been a lot of it. Three streets lengthwise with a few shops; two more, shorter
streets cutting through the three at right angles and going down to the cliffs and the vertiginous wooden
steps that used to climb down to the beach, the bay, the old harbour and fish market; and standing over
the bay, a Methodist church on a jutting promontory, which in the old times had also served as a
lighthouse. But nowтАФ

No streets, no promontory or church, no harbour, fish market, rickety steps. No Easingham.

"Gone, all of it," said a wheezy, tired old voice from directly behind me, causing me to start. "Gone
forever, to the Devil and the deep blue sea!"

I turned, formed words, said something barely coherent to the leathery old scarecrow of a man I found
standing there.

"Eh? Eh?" he said. "Did I startle you? I have to say you startled me! First car I've seen in a three-month!
After bricks, are you? Cheap bricks? Timber?"

"No, no," I told him, finding my voice. "I'mтАФwell, sightseeing, I suppose." I shrugged. "I just came to
see how the old village was getting on. I didn't live here, but a long line of my people did. I just thought
I'd like to see how much was leftтАФwhile itwas left! Except it seems I'm too late."

"Oh, aye, too late," he nodded. "Three or four years too late. That was when the last of the old fishing
houses went down: four years ago. Sea took 'em. Takes six or seven feet of cliff every year. Aye, and if I
lived long enough it would take me too. But it won't 'cos I'm getting on a bit." And he grinned and
nodded, as if to say: so that's that! "Well, well, sightseeing! Not much to see, though, not now. Do you