"Nayler, Ray - An AIr-Conditioned Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

"Are you afraid?"

He thought of Jerome running to his car, the bank guard down on one knee, shooting from the bank doorway. Kenneth had pulled his own car away, watched in the rear-view mirror as Jerome reached his car's door and ripped it open. The crack of the gun followed Kenneth around the corner. He had never known whether Jerome had escaped. He never would know, without the signal. And if Jerome had not escaped -- if he had been captured -- how soon before the paranoid little man spilled everything? How short was the thread that connected them? How easily could it be followed by the police and the FBI?

"Something was wrong with me. It happened last year, in the springtime. In the middle of the night I got one of those death-fears. You know, when suddenly you realize -- really realize that you will cease to exist -- you will be nothing, like before you were born. But this one wouldn't go away. It stayed with me. It got worse -- I could barely get up in the morning. I couldn't deal with people. I saw them dying. I saw us all dead -- a million years dead, a billion years -- swept away, buried under the eons. And the colors...seemed dimmer, somehow."

Tally paused meaningfully. She wanted him to understand -- needed him to; the need registered in her posture, in the muscles of her face. "It was like everything was overcast, drained of color. Even on sunny days...."

Kenneth felt a flush of recognition. He fingered the curtain, turning away from her.

"What happened?"

"It went away. But I'm afraid. I know it will come back. I feel it waiting, inside me. I try not to think about it. I force it down."

He nodded, and met her eager eyes.

"It happened to me, too. A few years ago -- it was...." He stopped and shifted uncomfortably. "It was...I saw skulls underneath everyone's faces. I felt all the dark...waiting for me."

She came to him, touched his shoulder. "I know."

Eleven o'clock.

He switched the lights off, extinguishing the smile on her lips. He went to the window and pulled the curtain aside. Outside, the freeway was dark. The small red comet of a car's taillights shrank off into the darkness. There was no moon. The black trees stretched out beyond. He raised the lighter and jerked his thumb across the flint. The orange phantom-face showed itself in the glass again. He saw the mark there of his fight against what he had called "the void time" -- the lines around his eyes, the hollow eyes themselves. He snapped the lighter closed.

A moment later, a dim coin of light showed itself in the trees. It flashed twice more, and was gone. He felt cool relief in his veins, numbing him. It was almost over, then. Finally, the signal had come.

He lit the lighter again, to complete the sign. The dim shape of the maid appeared, reflected in the glass, standing just over his shoulder.

"Is it done?"

"Yes."

There was a small crack, as if something had struck the glass. Confused, he looked at Tally. Her hand gripped his shoulder tightly for a moment and then she seemed to deflate, sagging against him. There were two more small cracks, and something sang past his ear. He could not seem to move quickly. He found himself trying to support Tally, to move away from the window, and to crouch down to the floor all at the same time. He got away from the window just as it showered into the room. Tally began to slide out of his arms. He laid her down on the floor and crouched over her, trying to awaken her.

She was not moving. Her eyes were open, warm and brown. Her mouth looked soft and unmarred in the dim light. A red stain was spreading across the front of her white uniform, and he found himself thinking of the red heart on a fencer's uniform. Was that real? Did they have hearts on their uniforms? Where had he seen that?

Tally was dead.

Dimly, he realized that Jerome had tried to kill him -- that he had been set up. He had to get out. There was a window in the bathroom that let out on the back of the motel. He headed for it, suitcase in hand.

He would be able to get away, he knew. Jerome's plan had misfired. By the time Jerome was across the freeway, Kenneth would have hotwired another car -- at a lonely farmhouse, or the parking lot of a twenty-four hour restaurant. He could hijack someone at a gas station or hide in the woods as long as necessary. Jerome had failed.

He was through the window. He dropped down into a small fenced-in area full of leaning scrap, soggy cardboard and stinking cans of garbage.

He felt it coming back over him -- the void time. He wished that Tally had not mentioned it. He wished that she would still be around, tomorrow or tomorrow night when it hit him -- to help him, to talk him through the night-terrors and the gray, grainy days.

He wished he had not given the signal, that he had just left with her. He scrambled over the fence and dropped down into the bushes on the other side. He stopped for a moment and turned. He closed his eyes and pictured her face. He saw it very clearly, for a second. But he knew it would begin to blur in a few days. He would not be able to keep her with him.

RAY NAYLER was born in Desbiens, Quebec. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of magazines, from Ellery Queen to Crimewave to The Berkeley Fiction Review. His first novella, AMERICAN GRAVEYARDS, is now available as a Crimewave Special from the publishers of Crimewave magazine; details are available at www.ttapress.com. Ray lives in Toronto. He can be contacted at [email protected].