"Brian Lumley - Titus Crow 1 - The Burrowers Beneath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

in the past as to make Crow's 'geologic infants' statement perfectly
acceptable, the Elder Gods had punished a rebellion of the Great Old Ones by
banishing them to their various prisoning environs - Hastur to the Lake of
Hali in Carcosa; Cthulhu to R'lyeh beneath the Pacific Ocean; Ithaqua to dwell
above the ice-wastes of the Arctic; Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Yibb-Tstll to
chaotic continua outside the geometric design of which the known infinite
forms but one surface; Tsathoggua to cthonian Hyperborean burrows, and
similarly Shudde-M'ell to other lost labyrinths beneath the earth - so that
only Nyarlathotep the Messenger was left free and unprisoned. For in their
infinite wisdom and mercy the Elder Gods had left Nyarlathotep alone that he
might yet ply the currents between the spheres and carry, one to the other in
the loneliness of their banishment, the words of all the evicted forces of
evil.
Various magical sigils, signs, and barriers kept the Great Old Ones
imprisoned, had done so since time immemorial (again an inadequate cliche),
and the books, particularly the Necmnomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred,
warned against the removal of such signs and of possible attempts by deluded
or 'possessed' mortals to reinstate the Great Old Ones as lords of their
former domains. The legend in its entirety was a fascinating thing; but as
with all the world's other, greater primal fantasies, it could only be
regarded as pure myth, with nothing in it to impress any but the most naive
souls of the possible actuality of its surmises and suggestions. So I still
thought, despite certain things Crow had told me in the past and others I had
stumbled across myself.
All these thoughts passed in very short order through my head, but thanks to
my ability to give many things my full, simultaneous concentration, I missed
none of Titus Crow's narrative regarding his dreams of over thirty years
and their implications as applied to actual occurrences in the real, waking
world. He had covered certain monstrous dreams of a time some years gone, when
his nightmares had been paralleled in life by any number of disastrous losses
of oceangoing gas- and oil-drilling rigs, and was now about to relate the
details of yet more hideous nightmares he had known at a time only some few
weeks ago.
'But first we'll go back to those dreams I skipped over earlier,' he said, as
I banished all other pictures from my mind. 'The reason I did that was because
I didn't want to bore you with duplication. You see, they first came to me as
long ago as August, 1933, and though they were not so detailed they were more
or less the same as my most recent, recurrent nightmares. Yes, those dreams,
until recently, have been coming nightly, and if I describe one of them, then
I shall have described most of them. A few have been different!
'To make it short, Henri, I have been dreaming of subterranean beings,
octopus-things apparently without heads or eyes, creatures capable of organic
tunnelling through the deepest buried rocks with as little effort as hot
knives slicing butter! I don't know for sure yet just what they are, these
burrowers beneath; though I'm pretty certain they're of an hitherto unguessed
species as opposed to creatures of the so-called "supernatural", survivors of
a time before time rather than beings of occult dimensions. No, I can only
guess, but my guess is that they represent an unholy horror! And if I'm
correct, then, as I've already said, the whole world is in hellish danger!'
Crow closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and put his fingertips up to