"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 330 - The Shadow's Revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

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THE SHADOW'S REVENGE

THE SHADOW'S REVENGE

A BELMONT BOOK--October 1965.


In the tall grassland, between the mountain and the jungle wall, a lion roared. At that moment
the sun jaded from the purple African sky and dusk rose up from the hot land itself. Then silence.
An uneasy silence. The heavy purple sky held its breath. The mountains and the jungle waited.
Animals lay fiat against the ground or moved furtively. The air itself hovered thick, waiting.
In the village at the edge of the jungle the people stopped their work to look up at the sky.
They looked at the mountains and the silent jungle. They looked behind them, uneasily. Their
eyes showed white as they searched the gathering darkness.
At the instant of total night the drums began.
Distant drums from many corners of the night.
The people of the village moved together to the open, sunbaked heart of the village where the
ground had hardened to the smoothness of stone under the years of dancing feet. An old man
stepped to the pyre of tall logs and set it afire. The fire blazed up In the night. The people moved
close to the flames despite the thick heat of the night.
A distance away, at the edge of the village, a tall man stood on the covered verandah oj a
house much larger than the huts of the village. The flames of the fire flared up from time to time
revealing his thin, pale face and European clothes. His dark eyes were staring out into the night
toward the south and the jungle wall.
The man had been standing on the verandah for some time--since before the drums began far
of]. There was more than uneasiness on his pale white face as he listened to the drums. He knew
what they told. They told of the coming of the Demon.
The Demon came.
The sound came.
A sound torn from the dark throat of the jungle. A sound like a long, violent scream. Wailing,
rising, echoing through the night and out across the grass-land to the mountain wall. A sound as
sharp and piercing as a knife. Steady, rising higher and higher.
The Demon appeared in the blazing light of the fire.
High, floating in the air.
The single shining eye glistening down at the cowering people of the village.
It hovered--floated in the air as if suspended on the long, screaming sound that filled the dark
night sky of Africa.
On the verandah of the house at the edge of the village the tall man gripped the rail and
stared toward the glare of the fire and the demonic figure that floated in the night.
A giant figure shimmering in the flames. Black boots on Its glistening feet. Skirt of
shimmering feathers and the long tail of a lion. Tunic of a soldier gleaming with the color of
medals. The head of a giant bird with the sharp, hooked beak of an eagle. In the center of the
head the single shining eye.
The Demon floated, hovered, swooped high above the dancing flames.
A wide, shimmering, undulating halo above its eagle head. The tall man on the verandah at
the edge of the village turned quickly and went into the large house. Inside, he bent over a small
radio transmitter. He manipulated dials, spoke urgently. He spoke for no more than a moment.
THE SHADOW'S RE