"Lawrence Watt - Evans - The Nightmare People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

Between the eyes was a mere sketch of a nose, a narrow grey ridge down the center of the face, ending
in two large, open, sharp-edged nostrils.

Below that, thin black lips rimmed a pursed little slit of a mouth.

Above that face the hat was like a patch of starless night sky, a heavy, old-fashioned hat that made no
sense at all on a hot August night.

For a moment he tried to tell himself that it was his imagination, or a distortion of his own reflection, but
then the apparition smiled at him, a humorless grin revealing long needle-sharp teeth, far too many teeth,
gleaming pale gray in the darkness. That was not his reflection, distorted or not.

A misshapen, attenuated hand appeared, one black, clawlike fingernail touched the brim of the hat in
sardonic salute, and abruptly the thing was gone, sliding suddenly away in a direction the man inside the
bedroom could not identify.

Startled out of his paralysis by this disappearance, he snatched at the window latch and flung up the sash;
he wanted to lean out the window and call after whoever тАФ or whatever тАФ had looked in.

The screen blocked him. He leaned up against it, knowing that by the time he could work the stiff,
unoiled, spring-loaded catches the peeper would be long gone.

He stared out at shadowy treetops above the parking lot and saw no trace of anyone at the window, no
sign of anyone at all, and through his surprise and muddled weariness he remembered abruptly that he
was on the fourth floor, the top floor, and that the only balcony was outside the living room, a good
twenty feet away.

The window was thirty feet up in a sheer brick wall. Nobody could possibly look in that window.

He sank slowly back onto the bed until he was sitting with his hands at his sides, suddenly unsure of the
reality of what had just happened. Perhaps he had fallen asleep after all, he thought, enough to dream the
apparition.

That had to be it, he told himself. After all, he could see nothing outside now but the motionless leafy
branches, the dark mass of the building across the way, and the dim glow of distant streetlights.

He stood again and stepped toward the window. Thick, moist air brushed against his face, warm and
muggy, but cooler than the air in his apartment. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

He stepped back again, leaving the sash wide open.

He shuddered. He was out of practice facing nightmares. He did not remember having any since he was
a kid.

He had had one now, though. That ghastly face could be nothing else. It had seemed completely real for
an instant, but it couldnтАЩt have been. It had to have been a nightmare.

It had to have been a nightmare.

Well, he told himself, if he was sleepy enough to dream, he was sleepy enough to sleep, whatever the