"Wildcards - 07 - Dead Mans Hand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

Wildcards VII: Dead Man's HandDead Man's Hand
Book 7 of Wildcards
Edited by George R.R. Martin
ISBN: 0-553-28569-6


Monday July 18, 1988

5:00 A.M.
The trees were moving, though there was no wind.
He did not know how long he had been walking, or how he had gotten to this
place, but he was here, alone, and he was afraid. It was night, a night longer
and darker than any he had ever known. Moonlight painted the landscape in shades
of black and gray, but the moon was obscenely swollen, the color of rotting
flesh. He looked up at it once, and for one awful moment it seemed to pulse. He
knew he must not look again. Whatever he did, he must not look again..
He walked. On and on he walked. The gray, thin grass seemed to clutch at his
bare feet with every step, to slide greasy tendrils between his toes. And the
trees moved. Windless, they moved. Long cruel branches, barren of any leaves,
writhed and twisted as he passed, and whispered secrets he did not want to know.
If he stopped for only a moment, he would hear them clearly, he would
understand. And then, surely, he would go mad. He walked.
Beneath that sickly-sweet moonlight, things that did not bear thinking of woke
and stirred. Vast leathery wings beat against the air, filling the night with
the smell of corruption. Gaunt spider shapes, leprous and rotten, slipped
between the trees just out of sight, their legs rustling softly as they moved,
never seen but never far behind him. Once a long low moan shuddered across the
landscape, growing louder and louder until even the trees grew still and silent
and afraid.
And then, when the feeling of dread was so thick he thought he might choke on
it, he saw the subway kiosk up ahead.
It stood in the middle of the forest, bathed in that awful moonlight, but he
knew it belonged, somehow. He began to run. He seemed to be moving very slowly,
as if each stride took an eon. Slowly the mouth of the kiosk grew. The steps
descending into the dark,. the worn railing, the familiar signs; they called him
home.
Finally he reached the top of the stairs, just when he felt he could run no
farther. There were sounds behind him, but he dared not look around. He started
down the steps, holding the handrail, faint with relief. It seemed as though he
descended a long way. Trains rumbled through dark gulfs far, far below him.
Still he descended. Now he could taste the fear again. The steps twisted around
on themselves, spiraling down and down.
Then, well beneath him, he glimpsed another passenger, descending. He moved
faster, bare feet slapping against the cold stone, down and around, and saw him
again, a big man in a heavy black coat. He tried to call out to him, but here,
in this place, his voice was gone. He ran even faster. He ran until his feet
began to bleed. The steps had grown very narrow.
They opened suddenly, and he stepped out onto a long, narrow platform suspended
over a vast blackness, a darkness that swallowed all light. The other man stood
on the platform. There was something odd about his proportions, something