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

later this year, and I would be pleased to send you the various chapters as
they appear if you so desire.
Yours faithfully, William Plant
Alston, Cumberland 28th May
Blowne House Dear Mr Crow,
I got your letter yesterday afternoon, and not being much of a writing man,
I'm not sure how to answer it, or even if I can find the right words.
First off, let me say you are quite right about the pictures on the tunnel
walls - and also about the chanting. How you could know about these things I
can't possibly
imagine! So far as I know, I'm the only one to have been down that shaft since
they closed the pit, and I'm damned if I can think of any other spot on or
under the earth where you might have heard sounds like those I heard, or seen
drawings the like of them on the tunnel walls. But you obviously have! Those
crazy words you wrote down were just like what I heard . . .
Of course, I should have gone down there with a mate, but my No. 2 was off
sick at the time and I thought it was going to be just another routine job.
Well, as you know, it wasn't!
The reason they asked me to go down and check the old pit out was twofold -
I'd worked the seams, all of them, as a youngster and knew my way about, and
of course (to hell with what Betteridge says) I am an Experienced inspector -
but mainly someone had to do the job to see if the empty seams could be
propped up or filled in. I imagine that the many subsidences and cave-ins
round Ilden and Blackhill have been giving the Coal-Board a bit of a headache
of late.
Anyhow, you asked for a more detailed account of what I came up against
underground, and I'll try to tell it as it happened. But can I take it that
everything I say will be in confidence? See, I have a good pension coming from
the Coal-Board in a few years' time, and naturally they don't much care for
adverse stuff in the press, particularly stuff to worry local landowners and
builders. People don't buy property that's not safe, or ground that's liable
to subsidence! And since I've already had one ticking off as it is, well, I
don't want to jeopardize my pension, that's all...
I think what really annoyed the bosses was when I went on about those tunnels
I found down there - not old, timbered seams, mind you, but tunnels - round
and pretty smoothly finished and certainly artificial. And not just
one, as they said in the Mail, but half a dozen! A proper maze, it was. Yes, I
said those tunnel walls were burned rather than cut, and so they were. At
least, that's how they looked, as though they'd somehow been coated on the
inside with lava and then allowed to cool!
But there I go running ahead of myself. Better start at the beginning . . .
I went down the main shaft at Harden, using the old emergency lift-cage which
they hadn't yet dismantled. There was a gang of lads at the top just in case
the old machinery should go on the blink. I wasn't a bit worried, you
understand; it's been my job for a long time now and I know all the dangers
and what to look for.
I took a budgie down with me in a little cage. I could hang the cage up to the
roof timbers while I looked about. There are some of the old-fashioned methods
you still can't beat, I reckon. The old-timers used canaries - I took a
budgie. That was so I'd know if there was any firedamp down there (methane to