"Mervyn Peake - Danse Macabre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Peake Mervyn)

laughter chilled me. It was like a child I once heard shouting out in his terror,
"I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of you."
Opening the door of the cupboard 1 sighed with relief for there, hanging
demurely in the semi-darkness, were my evening clothes. Taking a tweed jacket
from its hanger, I was about to close the door when I saw, clinging to the knee
of my evening trousers, a wisp of grass.
It had always been a habit of mine, almost a fixation you might say, to keep
my clothes in good condition. It seemed odd to me this being so, that, having
brushed my suit a night or two previously, there should be any kind of blemish.
Why had the wisp of grass not caught my attention? However, strange as it
seemed, I told myself there must, of course, be some simple explanation, and I
dismissed the little problem from my mind.
Why I do not quite know, but I told no one of the dream, perhaps because
anything strange or bizarre is distasteful to me and I presumed, perhaps
wrongly, that such things are distasteful to others also. The memory of that
horrible night lingered all day with me. Had it not been that I hate to be thought
peculiar I think I would have found release in confiding the silly dream to
someone or other. You see it was not simply frightening; it was ludicrous too.
Something more to smile about than to be afraid of. But I found I could not
smile.
The next six days passed uneventfully enough. On the seventh evening,
which was a Friday, I went to bed much later than is my usual practice, for
some friends who had come to dinner with me had stayed talking until well
after midnight and when they had gone I began to read, so that it was close upon
two o'clock before I climbed to my bedroom where I sank upon the bed still
fully clothed and continued for at least twenty minutes more to read my book.
By now I was drowsy but before I got to my feet in order to undress, I found
that against my will I was directing my gaze at the cupboard. Fully believing
that the dream had indeed been a dream, and nothing but a dream, the hideous
habit had taken hold of me, so that the last thing I saw before I fell asleep was
always, the doorknob.
And again it moved, and again as terrible to me as ever before, it went on
turning with the deliberate rotation and my heart seemed to be stuck between
my ribs, hammering for release in the silence of the second ghastly night. The
sweat poured out of my skin and the avid taste of terror filled my mouth.
The fact that it was happening all over again; that it was a repetition in no
way helped me, for it appeared that what was once unbelievable was now an
unarguable fact.
Slowly, inexorably, the knob turned and the cupboard door swung open and
my evening clothes floated out as before and the trousers slid until they touched
the ground, the hanger dislodged itself from the shoulders and it seemed there
was no change in the absurd, yet ghastly ritual, until it came to that moment
when the apparition was about to turn to the window. This time it turned to me,
and, though it had no face, I knew it was looking at me.
Then, as its entire body began to shake violently, I closed my eyes for no
more than a second but during that instant the clothes had disappeared through
the open window.
I leapt to my feet and rushed to the window. At first I could see nothing for I
was directing my gaze at the lawn that stretched away for about sixty yards to
the outskirts of the woods. No creature, ghost or mortal could have covered that