"Spirits Of The Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

'Well ... supposing we use the same ritual to bring Albert's spirit back? Supposing we reunite them - not physically, we can't do that. But at least we can bring their spirits back together.'

Roger Frost sniffed and helped himself to another handful of dryнroasted peanuts, which he churned around his mouth like a cementнmixer. 'I thought you had a screw loose the moment you walked into the shop.'


In the Durbar Room, half an hour before midnight, Michael laid out a pattern of candles on the polished floor, and drew with chalk the Shri-yantra, a circular pattern filled with overlapping triangles. If you meditated on this yantra long enough, you could look back into the dizzying mouth of space and time, back and back, to the beginning of creation.

The room echoed, except for its dead spots, and the dripping candle-flames made it look as if shadowy spirits were dancing across the coffered ceiling.

Roger came quietly into the room and stood beside him. 'I can't guarantee this is going to work, you know, just because I printed it in my book. For all I know, Abdul Karim was nothing but a shyster.'

'Well, we can only try,' said Michael. He picked up the book and turned to the ritual, the Paravritti, the 'turning back up.'

He began to recite the words. 'We who are looking back into time and space, we call you to find the spirit of our lost son Prince Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg and carry him forward on the stream of creation. Let his spirit rise from where it lies asleep so that it can come to join us here.'

Roger Frost, with a very serious face, began to recite the "Om... There was a time when Michael would have found it ludicrous, but here in the Durbar Room, with midnight approaching, and the figures of Indian gods and goddesses leaping in the candlelight, it sounded sonorous and strange, as if it were a summons that could wake up spirits from days and years and centuries long forgotten.

'We call on our lost son Prince Albert to open his eyes and return to the house of his greatest happiness. We call him to rejoin the ones he loved so dearly.'

It was then that Roger touched Michael's arm. From the far door, a small dark shadow had appeared, a small dark shadow with a pale, unfocused face. It made no sound at all, but glided toward them across the floor, until it was standing just outside the circle of candles.

Roger said, 'I'm seeing things.'

'No,' said Michael. 'She's there.'

'What are you doing?' she said, in that tissue-papery voice.

'The ritual,' said Michael. 'Abdul Karim's ritual. We can't bring back the Prince Consort's body. We don't have the power to do that. But perhaps we can bring back his spirit.'

'What? What are you talking about?'

'You can have his spirit back here, at Osborne. You can both be together again.'

'What?' She sounded aghast. 'Don't you understand? Once you've called up a spirit, it can never go back.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean that, once you've summoned him, he'll have to stay with me, whether he wants to or not, forever.'

'But I thought that's what you-'

Michael was interrupted by a sound like nothing he had ever heard before - a low, agonized moan that made him feel as if centipedes were running up his back. He felt a sudden draft, too - a draft that was chilly and smelled of dust and long-enclosed spaces. The candle-flames were blown sideways, and some of them were blown out altogether, so that the Durbar Room became suddenly much gloomier.

Out of the darkness, a dusty-gray figure appeared, so faint that it was almost invisible. It seemed to be moving toward them, but Michael couldn't be sure. The small shadow-woman took two or three steps away from it, toward the door. Michael stood where he was, his fists clenched tight, his breathing quickening, his heart banging harder and harder.

The figure stood still for a moment. It was no more substantial than a gray net curtain hanging at a window. Michael thought that he could see a luminous white face, and the indistinct smudges of side-whiskers, but that was all. But gradually, as it came nearer, its substance began to thicken, and darken.

By the time it was standing by the pattern of candles, it was clearly Prince Albert, a small portly man in young middle-age, deathly-white, with a sharp nose and an oval face, and drooping moustaches. He was wearing a dark uniform decorated with medals and a large silver star.