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

disturbing about the way he stood there, humped and silent. Then he turned, and
Jay saw its face, a featureless white cone that tapered to a single wet red
tentacle. It lifted its head and began to howl. Jay screamed...
... and woke, shaking, in a dark room that smelled of piss.
"Goddamn," he muttered. His heart sounded like a rock drummer on speed, his
underwear was soaked with sweat, and he'd wet the bed. This had been a bad one.
Jay fumbled for the bedside lamp, and swung his legs off the side of the bed and
sat waiting for the nightmare to recede.
It seemed so real. But it always did. He'd been having the same damned nightmare
since he was a kid. When he'd started waking up screaming twice a week, his
parents banned H. E Lovecraft from the bookshelf and threw away his prized
collection of E. C. Comics. It didn't help; the dream stayed with him. Sometimes
it went away for months. Then, just when he thought he was rid of it forever, it
would return with a fury, and haunt his sleep night after night. He would be
forty-five this year, and the dream was as vivid as the first time he'd dreamt
it.
It was always the same: the long walk through that nightmarish forest, the old
New York City subway kiosk, the endless descent into the earth, and finally the
cone-faced thing on the platform. Sometimes, just after he woke, Jay thought
that there was more to the dream, that there were parts he was forgetting, but
if that was true, he didn't want to know.
Jay Ackroyd made his living as a private detective. He had a healthy respect for
fear that had saved his life a time or two, but he didn't scare easily, at least
not when he was awake. But he had one secret terror: that some night he would
find himself standing on that platform, and the conefaced thing would turn, and
lift its head, and howl. . . and he wouldn't wake up.
"No fucking thanks," Jay said aloud.
He looked at the clock. A few minutes past five in the morning. No sense trying
to get back to sleep. He was due at the Crystal Palace in less than two hours.
Besides, after one of his dreams, nothing short of cardiac arrest would close
his eyes again.
Jay stripped the bed, bundling sheets, blankets, and underwear in his hamper to
take to the laundromat the next chance he got. He'd be sleeping on Crystal
Palace sheets for the next week or two, however long this gig with Chrysalis
lasted. He hoped like hell the nightmare went away for a little while. He didn't
think Chrysalis would be too thrilled to learn her new bodyguard had a recurring
nightmare that freaked him out so bad that he wet his bed. Especially if she was
in the bed when he wet it. Jay had been hitting on Chrysalis for years, but
she'd never succumbed to his charms. He was hoping this might be his chance. Her
body was so alive. Beneath that transparent skin, you could see the blood
rushing through her veins, the ghostly movement of half-seen muscles, the way
her lungs worked under the bones of her rib cage. And she had great tits, even
if they were mostly invisible.
He opened the window to air out his bedroom, although the odors wafting up the
dingy airshaft to his third-floor walk-up were almost as foul as those in the
room. After a long soak in his clawfoot tub, he dried himself off in a beach
towel decorated with a rather threadbare picture of Opus the Penguin.
In the top drawer of his dresser, Jay found some clean boxer shorts. Black socks
in the drawer below. Then he went to the closet and looked at his suits. He had
a cool white linen number that was fashionably rumpled, a charcoal gray Brooks