"Brian Lumley - Aunt Hester" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

from the beginning.”

By that time we had settled ourselves down in front of the fire in Aunt Hester’s living-room, and I was
able to scan, as she talked, the paraphernalia her ‘group’ had left behind. There were old leather-bound
tomes and treatises, tarot cards, a Ouija board shiny brown with age, oh, and several other items
beloved of the spiritualist. I was fascinated, as ever I had been as a boy, by the many obscure curiosities
in Aunt Hester’s cottage.

“The first I knew of the link between George and myself,” she began, breaking in on my thoughts, “as
apart from the obvious link that exists between all twins, was when we were twelve years old. Your
grandparents had taken us, along with your mother, down to the beach at Seaton Carew. It was July and
marvellously hot. Well, to cut a long story short, your mother got into trouble in the water.

“She was quite a long way out and the only one anything like close to her was George – who couldn’t
swim! He’d waded out up to his neck, but he didn’t dare go any deeper. Now, you can wade a long
way out at Seaton. The bottom shelves off very slowly. George was at least fifty yards out when we
heard him yelling that Sis was in trouble …

“At first I panicked and started to run out through the shallow water, shouting to George that he should
swim to Sis, which of course he couldn’t –but he did! Or at least,I did! Somehow I’d swapped places
with him, do you see? Not physically but mentally. I’d left him behind me in the shallow water, in my
body, and I was swimming for all I was worth for Sis in his! I got her back to the shallows with very little
trouble – she was only a few inches out of her depth – and then, as soon as the danger was past, I found
my consciousness floating back into my own body.

“Well, everyone made a big fuss of George; he was the hero of the day, you see? How had he done it?
– they all wanted to know; and all he was able to say was that he’d just seemed to stand there watching
himself save Sis. And of course hehadstood there watching it all – through my eyes!

“I didn’t try to explain it; no one would have believed or listened to me anyway, and I didn’t really
understand it myself – but George was always a bit wary of me from then on. He said nothing, mind you,
but I think that even as early as that first time he had an idea …”

Suddenly she looked at me closely, frowning. “You’re not finding all this a bit hard to swallow, Love?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not really. I remember reading somewhere of a similar thing between twins –
a sort of Corsican Brothers situation.”

“Oh, but I’ve heard of many such!” she quickly answered. “I don’t suppose you’ve read Joachim Feery
on theNecronomicon?”

“No,” I answered. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, Feery was the illegitimate son of Baron Kant, the German ‘witch-hunter’. He died quite
mysteriously in 1934 while still a comparatively young man. He wrote a number of occult limited editions
– mostly published at his own expense – the vast majority of which religious and other authorities bought
up and destroyed as fast as they appeared. Unquestionably – though it has never been discovered where
he saw or read them – Feery’s source books were very rare and sinister volumes; among them the
Cthaat Aquadingen, theNecronomicon, von Junzt’sUnspeakable Cults, Prinn’sDe Vermis Mysteriis
and others of that sort. Often Feery’s knowledge in respect of such books has seemed almost beyond