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

level that did not affect muscles and skin, but was active deep inside his
head, making it ache. For a moment he swayed, but the dizziness passed quickly
and all he felt now was a headache

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that was growing in intensity. Like a hangover, he thought from a distance,
spacing himself away from it, the way he had learned twenty years ago in
college. Pretend it isn't there, think yourself away from it, and let the damn
thing ache all it wants. Cholly's advice. Cholly, his college roommate whom he
had not thought of in years. The headache became manageable and he opened his
eyes with caution, as if afraid of startling away that something that was
there with him. He could still feel it; he felt surrounded by it, pressed from
all sides. Moving very slowly he started to back away, backed down the steps
to the overgrown path, walked deliberately around the building to get inside
his car, Loesser car. It was still there with him. He turned on the ignition,
and then it

was gone. That night he stood naked before his mirror and regarded the long
ugly scar that started somewhere on his back out of sight, curved under his
arm and went up to just under his nipple. The scars on his shoulder were
uglier, bigger. The skin and bone grafts would blend in, the doctors had said,
but it would take time. His face was the worst of all. Hideously mutilated,
inflamed, monstrous. Plastic surgery would hide it all, they assured him. He
was an excellent candidate for the kind of reconstruction they were capable of
now. His gaze traveled down his body and he was mildly surprised to see how
thin he had become. He had lost nearly forty pounds. The doctors had been
amazed that he had lived through his attack, that his recovery was going along
so uneventfully, so quickly. He had been amazed at the same things, but now he
knew why he had been spared, knew what he had to do. He had been spared
because he had to kill the thing in the inn. He moved the next day to a
bright, airy apartment with a view of the Potomac that looked lovely,
inviting. He thought of the river below the inn; was that's where the bodies
had been hidden? He knew even as he wondered that that was wrong; they had
been taken behind that darkness of the doorway. This time no tears came. He
began to think of what he would need. Crowbar. Flashlight. Gasoline. He
already had decided he had to burn it out, let fire consume and purify the
house. Matches. How terrible it would be to have everything ready and no
matches. After a thunderstorm, he decided, when the woods would be wet. He did
not want a conflagration in the woods, did not want to hurt anyone, or chance
having the fire put out before its work was done. An interior fire that would
be out of control before it could be spotted from outside, at a time when no
one would be on the road to call a fire department. He made his plans and the
next day began to provision himself. There were thunderstorms almost every
afternoon; he was able to pick his night.

He felt it as soon as he stopped the car at the inn. It was three-thirty in
the morning, an inky black night, the air heavy with leaf mold and forest
humus, earthy smells of the cycle of life and death repeated endlessly. He
could smell the river, and the grass. He circled the inn to the back, where he