"Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

invaded the grounds, deciduous trees with new April leaves not yet fully
developed--ash trees, maples, oaks, all scrawny and untended. High grasses and
weeds and hedge gone wild filled in the understory. There was a path through
it, well trod, evidently in daily use. He drove another hundred yards and came
to a turn on the side of the road of the hotel and drove onto it. It was dirt,
rutted and unkempt, but passable. A service entrance? Why no chain, if so? And
why would Mildred Hewlitt have come back here, and the boy, and the four or
five others he had read about? Mystified, he kept driving slowly until he came
to a clearing, an old parking lot maybe. He could see the hotel from here:
three stories, a frame building ornately decorated with cupolas, balconies,
porches with handsome rails and fancy posts. It was boarded up, but he could
imagine the stained glass windows it must have boasted. Inside there would be
the paneling, the carefully dovetailed joints, the elaborate patterns in the
walnut floors. He felt as if he knew this building intimately; it was so like
the ones he had investigated a long time ago, looking for a place to create a
fine restaurant. So like them. He stopped and turned off his engine, and he
felt it again, and that too was the same. A pressure, a presence, like cobwebs
with an electrical charge. This time the headache was slight, a distant
throbbing. He got out and stood by his car door, looking around, and now he
understood why people came here. Lovers' lane, a place to park out of sight of
the road, beyond the sound of passing cars or the inquisitive eyes of anyone.
That explained the ages, he thought, not moving away from the cobwebs,
brushing at his face now and then. One girl of eighteen, a suicide. The
college boy, twenty-one. Mildred Hewlitt, twenty-five. Another young man of
twenty who had been apprehended smashing windows at the elementary school.
When seized, he had collapsed in a catatonic state from which he had not
recovered. Others, mentioned in whispers, with puzzlement, just weird things,
the desk clerk had said in a low voice. Weird, you know? Carson Danvers stood
brushing away electric cobwebs that were not webs at all, and he nodded. He
knew. He got in the car again and turned on the ignition, and was alone again.
He drove out. A fine rain had started to fall, soft, promising spring growth,
smelling of newly sprouted seedlings and fragrant earth. Spring, Carson
thought, warmer nights, couples in cars

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with engines turned off, mayhem. Back in his motel, he set his clock for
three-thirty and lay down, but did not sleep. When it was time, he drove to
the hotel parking lot and turned around, so that his car faced out. He ignored
the webs that found him instantly, and unloaded his equipment methodically. He
pried open a door in the rear of the building, dropped the crowbar on the
porch, and entered cautiously, flashlight in one hand, gas can in the other.
This time there was no need to make a trail, to obliterate the past with fire.
He made his way through the blackness, following his narrow beam of light,
moving with great care, not wanting to fall through a rotten floorboard, or
trip over an abandoned two-by-four. He found the stairs and climbed them,
testing each step. The building was solid, filled with real cobwebs and dust
and mold. He was disoriented momentarily at the landing on the second floor,
but closed his ey. es and drew a mental map, then continued down a hallway to
where he judged the center of the hotel was. Many of the doors were open; none