"Night Warriors - 02 - Death Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

He felt peculiarly numb. He tried to lift his arms, but found that they wouldn't move. They were still there, lying by his sides, but none of the instructions his brain sent down to them seemed to be able to reach them. In fact, he couldn't persuade any of his body to move.
He began to wonder, vaguely, if he were dead.
But why should he be dead? All he had done was to eat supper in the kitchen with Jennifer and Lenny, and then finish a bottle of wine, and go to bed.
Perhaps he had died of alcohol poisoning. Perhaps he had vomited in bed and asphyxiated on his own vomit. Perhaps the giant prawns had been contaminated, and he had died of botulism.
Perhaps he wasn't dead, but simply paralyzed. His brain felt so anesthetized that it was difficult to work out which. He could feel himself slowly surfboarding in and out of sleep, over a dull, silvery-gray ocean that had no horizon.
Jennifer, he thought. Then, out loud, he said, 'Where's Jennifer?'
It seemed as if hours had passed him by, or possibly days. He was dimly conscious that it had been light, and then it had grown dark, and now it was light again. He could still hear the voices. Sometimes they were near, and sometimes they were very far away.
And, wave after wave, he surf-boarded over the silvery-gray ocean, on and on, as if his journey would never end.
He slept. He dreamed.
He dreamed he was reaching out for the doorknob. Jennifer said, 'Vandalized and burgled, all in one week.' He turned slowly back to smile at her, a glutinous movement like a man wading through syrup.
He said, 'It's squirrels, I'll bet you.'
And then the door was racketed open as if an express train were hurtling through it, and John was ripped across the chest by something that felt like red-hot wires, and was slammed speechless against the Italian bureau, hitting his head on the marble top.
Something huge and black rushed toward the bed, treading right on top of his pelvis so that the bone snapped like a broken dinner-plate. He experienced instant and over-whelming agony, and he screamed.
Jennifer was screaming, too, high and piercing, right through his head. And the huge black monstrosity tore the bedclothes off the bed with claws as sharp as kitchen knives, shreds of linen and feathers and silvered silk, and seized hold of Jennifer's naked body and raked her open from shoulders to thighs, blood bursting everywhere, gouting over the sheets, spattering the ceiling, raining hot and sticky on John's unprotected face. Shocked, maddened, he wailed like an injured animal.
He felt the huge black thing rush away again, leaving a cold vacuum of terror behind it. But all he could do was lie on his side on the blood-sprayed carpet, whimpering with pain.
He lost consciousness. When at last he opened his eyes, he saw Lenny's bare feet, close to his face. 'Lenny,Т he whispered. СFor God's sake, Lenny, save me.'










Four



A nun in a white habit was waiting by his bed when he awoke. 'Mr. Woods?' she said in the sweetest of voices. Her face was as smooth as a saint's. Her eyes were green and her lips were pale and her eyebrows were unplucked. The sun shone through the starched, upswept wings of her wimple. 'Mr. Woods?' she said again, and reached out and held his hand.
Her fingers were cool and reassuring. He wanted to squeeze them, but couldn't. He couldn't move his hand at all.
'Was it a dream?' he asked, his speech still thick with drugs.
The nun shook her head. 'It was a terrible tragedy, Mr. Woods, and terrible tragedies sometimes seem like dreams.'
'Then she's dead.'
A long silence. Outside the window, the sounds of the world going by. Airplanes and traffic and birds perching on the guttering. The nun squeezed his hand. At last she said, 'She's gone, Mr. Woods, yes.'
His dream of opening the bedroom door had been so vivid that John had already suspected that it was real. But the confirmation that Jennifer was dead burst like a bomb inside his mind. A dark, silent bomb that blotted out everything with panic and grief and self-pity.
'I thought it was a dream. I thought it was nothing but a bad dream.' The tears poured down the sides of his face and onto his pillow.
'In a way, Mr. Woods, it was. You'll have to think of it like that.'
'Is my son all right?' asked John. 'He wasn't -?'
'Your son's fine. He's staying with your friend Mr. Felling. Now that you're awake, you'll be able to have him to visit.'
Again John tried to move his arm, but couldn't. 'And me? What about me? I feel so damned numb.'
The nun smiled at him sadly. 'You were lucky not to have been killed, Mr. Woods. You were also lucky that Dr Freytag was still here when they brought you in. He is one of the most skilled neuro-surgeons in the country.'
John sniffed. 'If he's so skilled, why do I feel so numb? Look -1 can't even move my arm.'
'Mr. Woods, you've suffered some very serious injuries.'
'How serious?'
'Well...' Here she licked those pale lips. 'Your spinal cord has been damaged, and I'm sorry to say that...'
She paused, lowering her head so that all he could see of her was her wimple, like a snow-white seagull dipping toward the ocean.
'I'm sorry to say that you may not walk anymore,Т
John closed his eyes. This was more than he could take. He didn't want to be here; he didn't want any of this to be really happening. He wanted to be right back in Jack Felling's house with his hand on the doorknob, turning around to Jennifer and smiling and telling her that it was nothing but squirrels.