"A. E. Merritt - Dwellers In The Mirage - v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

A chuckle from the darkness; thereafter silence.

I leaned against the tree trunk. The sounds, or rather
the evil memory they had evoked, had shaken me more
than I was willing to admit, even to myself. The thing
I had carried for two years in the buckskin bag at the
end of the chain around my neck had seemed to stir;
turn cold. I wondered how much Jim had divined of
what I had tried to cover. . . .

Why had he put out the fire ? Because he had known
I was afraid ? To force me to face my fear. and conquer
it ? ... Or had it been the Indian instinct to seek
cover in darkness ? . . . By his own admission, chant
and drum-roll had played on his nerves as they had on
mine. . .

Afraid ! Of course it had been fear that had wet the
palms of my hands, and had tightened my throat so my
heart had beaten in my ears like drums.

Like drums . . . yes!

But . . . not like those drums whose beat had been
borne to us by the north wind. They had been like the
cadence of the feet of men and women, youths and maids
and children, running ever more rapidly up the side of
a hollow world to dive swiftly into the void . . .
dissolving into the nothingness . . . fading as they
fell . . dissolving . . . eaten up by the nothingness ....

Like that accursed drum-roll I had heard in the
secret temple of the Gobi oasis two years ago !

Neither then nor now had it been fear alone. Fear
it was, in truth, but fear shot through with defiance . . .
defiance of life against its negation . . . up-surging,
roaring, vital rage . . . frantic revolt of the drowning
against the strangling water, rage of the candle-flame
against the hovering extinguisher. . . .

Was it as hopeless as that ? If what I
suspected to be true was true, to think so was to be
beaten at the beginning !

But there was Jim ! How to keep him out of it ?
In my heart, I had never laughed at those subconscious
perceptions, whatever they were. that he called
the voices of his ancestors. When he had spoken of
Usunhi'yi, the Darkening-land, a chill had crept down