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

that in August there had been quakes in Aisne of such severity that one or two
houses had collapsed and a number of people had been injured. These shocks had
been likened to those of a few weeks earlier at Agen in that they seemed to be
caused more by some settling of the ground than by actual tremors. In early
July there had also been shocks in Calahorra, Chinchon, and Ronda in Spain.
The trail went as straight as the flight of an arrow and lay across - or
rather under -the straits of Gibraltar to Xauen in Spanish Morocco, where an
entire neighbourhood of houses had collapsed. Farther yet, to ... But I had
had enough; I dared look no more; I did not wish to know - not even remotely
-the whereabouts of dead G'harne . . .
Oh! I had seen more than sufficient to make me forget about my original
errand. My book could wait, for now there were more important things to do. My
next port of "call was the town library, where I took down Nicheljohn's World
Atlas and turned to that page with a large, folding
map of the British Isles. My geography and knowledge of England's counties are
passable, and I had noticed what I considered to be an oddity in the seemingly
unconnected places where England had suffered those 'minor quakes'. I was not
mistaken. Using a second book as a straight edge I lined up Goole in Yorkshire
and Tenterden on the south coast and saw, with a tingle of monstrous
foreboding, that the line passed very close to, if not directly through,
Ramsey in Huntingdonshire. With dread curiosity I followed the line north and,
through suddenly fevered eyes, saw that it passed within only a mile or so of
the cottage on the moors!
With unfeeling, rubbery fingers I turned more pages, until I found the leaf
showing France. For a long moment I paused - then I fumblingly found Spain and
finally Africa. For a long while I just sat there in numbed silence,
occasionally turning the pages, automatically checking names and localities.
My thoughts were in a terrible turmoil when I eventually left the library, and
I could feel upon my spine the chill, hopping feet of some abysmal dread from
the beginning of time. My previously wholesome nervous system had already
started to crumble.
During the journey back across the moors in the evening bus, the drone of the
engine lulled me into a kind of half-sleep in which I heard again something
Sir Amery had mentioned - something he had murmured aloud while sleeping and
presumably dreaming. He had said: 'They don't like water . . . England is safe
. . . have to go too deep . . .'
The memory of those words shocked me back to wakefulness and filled me with a
further icy chill which got into the very marrow of my bones. Nor were these
feelings of horrid foreboding misleading, for awaiting me
at the cottage was that which went far to completing the destruction of my
entire nervous system.
As the bus came around the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight
- I saw it! The place had collapsed! I simply could not take it in. Even
knowing all I did - with all my slowly accumulating evidence - it was too much
for my tortured mind to comprehend. I left the bus and waited until it had
threaded its way through the parked police cars and others of curious
travellers before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked
down to allow an ambulance to park in the now queerly tilted garden.
Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers
toiled frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was