"Roger Zelazny - Amber 06 - Trumps Of Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

chest before the gilt-framed mirror - the mirror that had reflected our
embrace, slightly warped, many times. My face rippled as I went by.
I climbed the green-carpeted stairs. A dog began howling somewhere out
back.
The first landing was unchanged. I walked the short hallway, past the drab
etchings and the old end table, turned and mounted the second staircase.
Halfway up, I heard a scratching noise from overhead and a sound like a bottle
or a vase rolling on a hardwood floor. Then silence again, save for a few
gusts of wind about the eaves. A faint apprehension stirred within me and I
quickened my pace. I halted at the head of the stairway and nothing looked to
be out of order, but with my next inhalation a peculiar odor came to me. I
couldn't place it - sweat, must, damp dirt perhaps - certainly something
organic.
I moved then to Julia's door and waited for several moments. The odor
seemed stronger there, but I heard no new sounds.
I rapped softly on the dark wood. For a moment it seemed that I heard
someone stirring within, but only for a moment. I knocked again.
"Julia?" I called out. "It's me, Merle."
Nothing.
I knocked louder.
Something fell with a crash. I tried the doorknob. Locked.
I twisted and jerked and tore the doorknob, the lock plate, and the entire
locking mechanism free. I moved immediately to my left then, past the hinged
edge of the door and the frame. I extended my left hand and applied gentle
pressure to the upper panel with my fingertips.
I moved the door a few inches inward and paused. No new sounds ensued, and
nothing but a slice of wall and floor came into view, with narrow glimpses of
a watercolor, the red sofa, the green rug. I eased the door open a little
farther. More of the same. And the odor was even stronger.
I took a half step to my right and applied a steady pressure.
Nothingnothingnothing...
I snatched my hand away when she came into view. Lying there. Across the
room. Bloody...
There was blood on tie floor, the rug, a bloody disarray near the corner
off to my left. Upset furniture, torn cushions...
I suppressed an impulse to rush forward.
I took one slow step and then another, all of my senses alert. I crossed
the threshold. There was nothing else / no one else in the room. Frakir
tightened about my wrist. I should have said something then, but my mind was
elsewhere.
I approached and knelt at her side. I felt sick. From the doorway I had
not been able to see that half of her face and her right arm were missing. She
was not breathing and her carotid was silent. She had on a torn and bloodied
peach colored robe; there was a blue pendant about her neck.
The blood that had spilled beyond the rug onto the hardwood floor was
smeared and tracked. They were not human footprints, however, but large,
elongated, three-toed things, well padded, clawed.
A draft of which I had been only half-consciously aware - coming from the
opened bedroom door at my back - was suddenly diminished, as the odor
intensified. There came another quick pulsing at my wrist. There was no sound,