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

of ye Fathers might be carried down through Eternity & visited upon ye
Children & ye Children's children for ever; or until a Time should come as was
once, when all Barriers crumble, & ye Stars & Dwellers therein, & ye Spaces
between ye Stars & Dwellers therein, & all Time &
Angels & Dwellers therein be falsely guided into ye ultimate Night of ye Dark
Path - until ye Great All close in & become One. & Azathoth come in His golden
Glory, & Infinity begin again . . ."'
Crow paused at the end of his reading before saying, 'There's quite a bit
that's obviously not relevant, of course, but in the main I believe - '
'Why didn't you tell me all this when I first arrived today?' I cut him off.
'You weren't ready for it, my friend.' He grinned mirthlessly. 'You're hardly
ready now!'
I gave the matter some more thought. 'Then what you're really saying is that
there is no such thing as the supernatural?'
'Correct!'
'But you've so often used the word, and recently, in its recognized context.'
'Purely out of habit, Henri, and because your concept of existence still
admits its use - will do for some time, as will my own - until we get used to
the idea.'
I mulled the matter over. 'The magic of the Elder Gods was a sort of
psychiatric science,' I mused. 'You know, Titus, I can far easier face an
alien concept than a supernatural one. Why! It all breaks down quite simply to
this: that the combined forces of evil, the Great Old Ones, are nothing more
than alien beings or forces against which it will be necessary to employ alien
weapons.'
'Well, yes, basically. We shall have to fight these things with the weapons
left us by the Elder Gods. With chants and incantations - scientifically
implanted mental and genetic blocks - with the power of the pentacle, but
mainly with the knowledge that they are not supernatural but simply outside
forces.'
'But wait,' I still countered. 'What of the, well, "super-
natural" occurrences, in all their various forms, which we've encountered in
the past? Did they, too, spring from - '
'Yes, Henri, I have to believe they did. All such occurrences have their roots
in the olden science of the Elder Gods, in a time before time. Now, how do you
say, de Marigny - are you with me or - ?'
'Yes,' I answered without further hesitation; and I stood up to firmly grasp
his outstretched hand across his great desk.
Evil the Mind
(From de Marigny's Notebooks)
I did not get away from Blowne House until very late that night, but at least
I had an idea (for some reason still more than somewhat vague) of the task
before me. Crow had not gone lightly on me, on the contrary, he had always
been a hard taskmaster, but I knew that on this occasion he had taken by far
the majority of the work upon his own shoulders. As it happened, I was never
to commence work on that portion of the overall task appointed to me; it would
be pointless therefore to set it down in detail.
This aside, then, we had worked out a system, apparently foolproof in its
simplicity, whereby Shudde-M'ell (or whichever of his brood led the English
nests) would be given more than a hard time, indeed an impossible time,