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

had their origin in me – that I formed their focus.”

“He did find out, though?”

“Oh, yes, he did,” she slowly answered, her eyes seeming to glisten just a little in the homely evening
glow of the room. “And as I’ve said, that’s why he left home in the end. It happened like this:

“I had never been a pretty girl – no, don’t say anything, Love. You weren’t even a twinkle in your
father’s eye then, he was only a boy himself, and so you wouldn’t know. But at a time of life when most
girls only have to pout to set the boys on fire, well, I was only very plain – and I’m probably giving myself
the benefit of the doubt at that.

“Anyway, when George was out nights – walking his latest girl, dancing, or whatever – I was always at
home on my own with my books. Quite simply, I came to be terribly jealous of my brother. Of course,
you don’t know him, he had already been gone something like fifteen years when you were born, but
George was a handsome lad. Not strong, mind you, but long and lean and a natural for the girls.

“Eventually he found himself a special girlfriend and came to spend all his time with her. I remember
being furious because he wouldn’t tell me anything about her …”

She paused and looked at me and after a while I said: “Uhhuh?” inviting her to go on.

“It was one Saturday night in the spring, I remember, not long after our nineteenth birthday, and George
had spent the better part of an hour dandying himself up for this unknown girl. That night he seemed to
take a sort of stupid, well,delightin spiting me; he refused to answer my questions about his girl or even
mention her name. Finally, after he had set his tie straight and slicked his hair down for what seemed like
the thousandth time, he dared to wink at me – maliciously, I thought, in my jealousy – as he went out into
the night.

“That did it. Somethingsnapped! I stamped my foot and rushed upstairs to my room for a good cry.
And in the middle of crying I had my idea –”

“You decided to, er, swap identities with your brother, to have a look at his girl for yourself,” I broke in.
“Am I right?”

She nodded in answer, staring at the fire; ashamed of herself, I thought, after all this time. “Yes, I did,”
she said. “For the first time I used my power for my own ends. And mean and despicable ends they
were.

“But this time it wasn’t like before. There was no instantaneous, involuntary flowing of my psyche, as it
were. No immediate change of personality. I had to force it, to concentrate and concentrate andpush
myself. But in a short period of time, before I even knew it, well, there I was.”

“There you were? In Uncle George’s body?”

“Yes, in his body, looking out through his eyes, holding in his hand the cool, slender hand of a very
pretty girl. I had expected the girl, of course, and yet …
 “Confused and blustering, letting go of her hand, I jumped back and bumped into a man standing behind
me. The girl was saying, ‘George, what’s wrong?’ in a whisper, and people were staring. We were in a
second-show picture-house queue. Finally I managed to mumble an answer, in a horribly hoarse,