"Barker, Clive - The Hellbound Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

"That's gallant of you," she said, and turned back to the door. Behind her she heard his belt buckle clink, and the sound of cloth slipping over skin as he dropped his trousers.
So far and no farther, she thought. She had no wish to see him babe-naked. It was enough to have him like this-
She reached into the jacket pocket.
"Oh dear," the lamb suddenly said.
She let the knife lie. "What is it?" she asked, turning to look at him. If the ring on his finger hadn't already given his status away, she would have known him to be a married man by the underpants he wore: baggy and overwashed, an unflattering garment bought by a wife who had long since ceased to think of her husband in sexual terms.
"I think I need to empty my bladder," he said. "Too many whiskies."
She shrugged a small shrug, and turned back to the door.
"Won't be a moment," he said at her back. But her hand was in the jacket pocket before the words were out, and as he stepped towards the door, she turned on him, slaughtering knife in hand.
His pace was too quick to see the blade until the very last moment, and even then it was bemusement that crossed his face, not fear. It was a short-lived look. The knife was in him a moment after, slicing his belly with the ease of a blade in overripe cheese. She opened one cut, and then another.
As the blood started, she was certain the room flickered, the bricks and mortar trembling to see the spurts that flew from him.
She had a breath's length to admire the phenomena, no more, before the lamb let out a wheezing curse, and-instead of moving out of the knife's range as she had anticipated-took a step toward her and knocked the weapon from her hand. It spun across the floorboards and collided with the skirting. Then he was upon her.
He put his hand into her hair and took a fistful. It seemed his intention was not violence but escape, for he relinquished his hold as soon as he'd pulled away from the door. She fell against the wall, looking up to see him wrestling with the door handle, his free hand clamped to his cuts.
She was quick now. Across to where the knife lay, up, and back toward him in one fluid motion. He had got the door open by inches, but not far enough. She brought the knife down in the middle of his pockmarked back. He yelled, and released the door handle. She was already drawing the knife out, and plunging into him a second time, and now a third and a fourth. Indeed she lost count of the wounds she made, her attack lent venom by his refusal to lie down and die. He stumbled around the room, grieving and complaining, blood following blood onto his buttocks and legs. Finally, after an age of this farcical stuff, he keeled over and hit the floor.
This time she was certain her senses did not deceive her. The room, or the spirit in it, responded with soft sighs of anticipation.
Somewhere, a bell was ringing...
Almost as an afterthought, she registered that the lamb had stopped breathing. She crossed the blood-spangled floor to where he lay, and said:
"Enough?"
Then she went to wash her face.
As she moved down the landing she heard the room groan-there was no other word for it. She stopped in her tracks, almost tempted to go back. But the blood was drying on her hands, and its stickiness revolted her.
In the bathroom she stripped off her flower-patterned blouse, and rinsed first her hands, then her speckled arms, and finally her neck. The dowsing both chilled and braced her. It felt good. That done, she washed the knife, rinsed the sink and returned along the landing without bothering to dry herself or to dress.
She had no need for either. The room was like a furnace, as the dead man's energies pulsed from his body. They didn't get far. Already the blood on the floor was crawling away toward the wall where Frank was, the beads seeming to boil and evaporate as they came within range of the skirting boards. She watched, entranced. But there was more. Something was happening to the corpse. It was being drained of every nutritious element, the body convulsing as its innards were sucked out, gases moaning in its bowels and throat, the skin dessicating in front of her startled eyes. At one point the plastic teeth dropped back into the gullet, the gums withered around them.
And in mere moments, it was done. Anything the body might have usefully offered by way of nourishment had been taken; the husk that remained would not have sustained a family of fleas. She was impressed.
Suddenly, the bulb began to flicker. She looked to the wall, expecting it to tremble and spit her lover from hiding. But no. The bulb went out. There was only the dim light that crept through the age-beaten blind.
"Where are you?" she said.
The walls remained mute.
"Where are you?"
Still nothing. The room was cooling. Her breasts had grown gooseflesh. She peered down at the luminous watch on the lamb's shriveled arm. It ticked away, indifferent to the apocalypse that had overtaken its owner. It read 4:41. Rory would be back anytime after 5:15, depending on how dense the traffic was. She had work to do before then.
Bundling up the blue suit and the rest of his clothes, she put them in several plastic bags, and then went in search of a larger bag for the remains. She had expected Frank to be here to help her with this labor, but as he hadn't shown she had no choice but to do it herself. When she came back to the room, the deterioration of the lamb was still continuing, though now much slowed. Perhaps Frank was still finding nutriments to squeeze from the corpse, but she doubted it. More likely the pauperized body, sucked clean of marrow and every vital fluid, was no longer strong enough to support itself. When she had parceled it up in the bag, it was the weight of a small child, no more. Sealing the bag up, she was about to take it down to the car when she heard the front door open.
The sound undammed all the panic she'd so assiduously kept from herself. She began to shake. Tears pricked her sinuses.
"Not now..." she told herself, but the feelings would simply not be suppressed any longer.
In the hallway below, Rory said: "Sweetheart?"
Sweetheart! She could have laughed, but for the terror. She was here if he wanted to find her-his sweetheart, his honeybun-with her breasts new-washed, and a dead man in her arms.
"Where are you?"
She hesitated before replying, not certain that her larynx was the equal of the deception.
He called a third time, his voice changing timbre as he walked through into the kitchen. It would take him a moment only to discover that she wasn't at the cooker stirring sauce; then he would come back and head up the stairs. She had ten seconds, fifteen at most.
Attempting to keep her tread as light as possible, for fear he heard her movements overhead, she carried the bundle to the spare room at the end of the landing. Too small to be used as a bedroom (except perhaps for a child), they had used it as a dump. Half-emptied tea chests, pieces of furniture they had not found a place for, all manner of rubbish. Here she laid the body to rest awhile, behind an upended armchair. Then she locked the door behind her, just as Rory called from the bottom of the stairs. He was coming up.
"Julia? Julia, sweetheart. Are you there?"
She slipped into the bathroom, and consulted the mirror. It showed her a flushed portrait. She picked up the blouse she'd left hanging over the side of the bath and put it on. It smelled stale, and there was undoubtedly blood spattered between the flowers, but she had nothing else to wear.
He was coming along the landing; she heard his elephantine tread.
"Julia?"
This time, she answered-making no attempt to disguise the tremulous quality of her voice. The mirror had confirmed what she feared: that there was no way she could pass herself off as undistressed. She was obliged to make a virtue of the liability.
"Are you all right?" he asked her. He was outside the door.
"No," she said. "I'm feeling sick."
"Oh, darling..."
"I'll be fine in a minute."
He tried the handle, but she'd bolted the door.
"Can you leave me alone for a little while?"
"Do you want a doctor?"
"No," she told him. "No. Really. But I wouldn't mind a brandy-"
"Brandy..."