"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

feelings?

What if you could enter and walk your own mind, identifying and confronting the monsters that lie in wait
there?

What if the only help you can give to another is to help him lose his fear of death?

There are other dimensions and they too must have their dangerous mental cases. What if the insane of
our dimension, muttering gibberish to themselves, are actually in communication with the insane of other
dimensions? What if they could exchange more than thoughts?

What if you really could go back? Could you handle it? You couldn’t handle it before. That’s why the
virus is occupying your brain pan instead of reality. What about a chance to start over, but knowing what
you know now?

All intelligent beings we can imagine have mind shadows. The ability to imagine and create is the ability to
choose one’s warp of reality. Gods are intelligent beings. What of their dark corners? What kind of help
can they seek? What does a god use for a god?

Dark corners only exist because we don’t want to know what’s in them. Yet, when we become aware of
a problem through pain or embarrassment, the curiosity to establish the origins occasionally gets the
better of us and we take a chance. It reminds me of all those ancient horror movie clichés. Just at
midnight the couple enters the huge, ramshackle dwelling, the thunder from the lightning storm shaking the
remaining window panes. As the lightning flashes illuminate the murky interior of the house, he turns on a
flashlight and plays the beam over the cobweb hung heart of the dwelling. The dust is thick on the floor
and furniture. There is, however, a strange set of footprints in the dust on the floor. He shines the light on
one and examines it. The foot that made the print was bare, very large, and had unusually long toenails
that disturbed the dust between each print as whatever it was dragged its nails across the floor. Nails —
or claws.

Suddenly there is a noise, the whunk of something heavy and soft falling against something unyielding, like
two hundred pounds of meat against a stone floor. She grabs his arm and shakes his sleeve, causing him
to jump.

“Don’t do that!” he says, pulling his arm free from her grasp.

“Can’t we go now?” she whispers.

“What was that sound?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Please, let’s get out of here.”

He plays the beam of light along the floor, following the footprints, until they disappear beneath the door
to the cellar. The noise comes again.

“It’s coming from down there,” he whispers. A strange pale mist begins coming from beneath the door as
the flashlight goes dark. He smacks the flashlight against his hand and the beam returns. As he goes to the
door, she pulls on his sleeve. “We shouldn’t. Oh, please, let’s leave this place!”

He shushes her as he places his hand on the door latch and pulls up, the latch grating as though it hadn’t