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

- you'd be surprised what lurks beneath the surface of some of those peaceful
Cotswold hills - but that would have alerted a host of so-called "experts" and
amateurs alike, and so I decided upon G'harne. When I first mentioned an
expedition to Kyle and Gordon and the others I must surely have produced quite
a convincing argument, for they all insisted upon coming along. Some of them,
though, I'm sure, must have considered themselves upon a wild-goose chase. As
I've explained, G'harne lies in the same realm as Mu or Ephiroth - or at least
it did - and they must have seen themselves as questing after a veritable Lamp
of Aladdin; but despite all that they came. They could hardly afford not to
come, for if G'harne was real . . . why! Think of the lost glory! They would
never have forgiven themselves. And that's why I can't forgive myself. But for
my meddling with the G'harne Fragments they'd all be here now, God help them .
. .'
Again Sir Amery's voice had become full of some dread excitement, and
feverishly he continued:
'Heavens, but this place sickens me! I can't stand it much longer. It's all
this grass and soil. Makes me shudder! Cement surroundings are what I need -
and the thicker the cement the better! Yet even the cities have their
drawbacks . . . undergrounds and things. Did you ever see Pickman's Subway
Accident, Paul? By God, what a picture! And that night. . . that night!
'If you could have seen them - coming up out of the diggings! If you could
have felt the tremors - The very ground rocked and danced as they rose! We'd
disturbed them, do you see? They may have even thought they were under attack,
and up they came. My God! What could
have been the reason for such ferocity? Only a few hours before I had been
congratulating myself on finding the spheres, and then . . . and then -'
Now he was panting and his eyes, as before, had partly glazed over; his voice,
too, had undergone a strange change of timbre and his accents were slurred and
alien.
'Ce'haiie, ce'haiie - the city may be buried but whoever named the place dead
G'harne didn't know the half of it. They were alive! They've been alive for
millions of years; perhaps they can't die . . . ! And why shouldn't that be?
They're gods, aren't they, of a sort? Up they come in the night -'
'Uncle, please!' I interrupted.
'You needn't look at me so, Paul,' he snapped, 'or think what you're thinking
either. There's stranger things happened, believe me. Wilmarth of Miskatonic
could crack a few yarns, I'll be bound! You haven't read what Johansen wrote!
Dear Lord, read the Johansen narrative!
'Hai, ep fl'hur . . . Wilmarth ... the old babbler . . . What is it he knows
that he won't tell? Why was that which was found at those Mountains of Madness
so hushed up, eh? What did Pabodie's equipment draw up out of the earth? Tell
me those things, if you can! Ha, ha, ha! Ce'haiie, ce'haiie - G'harne icanicas
. . .'
Shrieking now and glassy-eyed he stood, with his hands gesticulating wildly in
the air. I do not think he saw me at all, or anything - except, in his mind's
eye, a horrible recurrence of what he imagined had been. I took hold of his
arm to calm him but he brushed my hand away, seemingly without knowing what he
was doing.
'Up they come, the rubbery things . . . Good-bye, Gordon . . . Don't scream so
- the shrieking turns my mind - but it's only a dream. A nightmare like all