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

the others I've been having lately. It is a dream, isn't it? Good-bye Scott,
Kyle, Leslie . . .'
Suddenly, eyes bulging, he spun wildly around. 'The ground is breaking up! So
many of them . . . I'm falling!
'It's not a dream - dear God! It's not a dream!
'No! Keep off, do you hear? Aghhh! The slime ... got to run! Run! Away from
those - voices? - away from the sucking sounds and the chanting . . .'
Without warning he suddenly broke into a chant himself, and the awful sound of
it, no longer distorted by distance or the thickness of a stout door, would
have sent a more timid listener into a faint. It was similar to what I had
heard before in the night and the words do not seem so evil on paper, almost
ludicrous in fact, but to hear them issuing from the mouth of my own flesh and
blood -and with such unnatural fluency:
'Ep, ep-eeth, fl'hur G'harne
G'harne fhtagn Shudde-M'ell hyas Negg'h.'
While chanting these incredible mouthings Sir Amery's feet had started to pump
up and down in a grotesque parody of running. Suddenly he screamed anew and
with startling abruptness leaped past me and ran full tilt into the wall. The
shock knocked him off his feet and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.
I was worried that my meagre ministrations might not be adequate, but to my
immense relief he regained consciousness a few minutes later. Shakily he
assured me that he was 'all right, just shook up a bit', and, supported by my
arm, he retired to his room.
That night I found it impossible to close my eyes. I wrapped myself in a
blanket instead, and sat outside my uncle's room to be on hand if he were
disturbed in his sleep. He passed a quiet night, however, and paradoxically
enough, in the morning, he seemed to have got the thing out of his system and
was positively improved.
Modern doctors have known for a long time that in certain mental conditions a
cure may be obtained by inciting the patient to relive the events which caused
his illness. Perhaps my uncle's outburst of the previous night had served the
same purpose - or at least, so I thought, for by that time I had worked out
new ideas regarding his abnormal behaviour. I reasoned that if he had been
having recurrent nightmares and had been in the middle of one on that fateful
night of the earthquake, when his friends and colleagues were killed, it was
only natural that his mind should become temporarily - even permanently -
unhinged upon awakening and discovering the carnage. And if my theory were
correct, it also explained his seismic obsessions . . .
A week later came another grim reminder of Sir Amery's condition. He had
seemed so much improved, though he still occasionally rambled in his sleep,
and had gone out into the garden 'to do a bit of trimming'. It was well into
September and quite chilly, but the sun was shining and he spent the entire
morning working with a rake and hedge-clippers. We were doing for ourselves
and I was just thinking about preparing the midday meal when a singular thing
happened. I distinctly felt the ground move fractionally under my feet and
heard a low rumble.
I was sitting in-the living room when it happened, and the next moment the
door to the garden burst open and my uncle rushed in. His face was deathly
white and his eyes bulged horribly as he fled past me to his room. I was so
stunned by his wild appearance that I had barely moved from my chair by the