"Brian Lumley - Necroscope 7 - The Last Aerie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

To the members of E-Branch, bad dreams were an
occupational hazard; it was generally accepted that
nightmares went with the work. Ben Trask, current head
of the Branch, had always had his share of bad dreams.
Indeed, since the Yulian Bodescu affair twelve years ago,
he'd had more than his share. And only half of them when
he was asleep. The sleeping ones were of the harmless
variety: they frightened but couldn't kill you. They were
engendered of the waking sort, which were very different:
sometimes they could kill and worse. Because they were
real.
As for this one, it wasn't so much a bad as a weird
dream. And weirder because Trask was wide awake,
having driven his car through the wee small hours of a
rainy night into the heart of London, and parked it
opposite E-Branch HQ . .. without knowing why. And
Trask was fussy about things like that; he generally liked
to be responsible for his actions.
It was a Sunday in mid-February of 1990, one of those
rare days when Trask could get away from his work and
switch off, or rather switch on, to the normal world which
existed outside the Branch. It should have been one of
those days, anyway. But here he was, at E-Branch HQ in
the middle of the sleeping city; and in the eye of his mind
this weird dream which wouldn't go away, this daydream
repeating over and over, like flick-
ering frames from an old monochrome movie projected Trask knew that if he were someone or thing other than
onto a window, so that he could see right through it. A who and what he was — head of a top-secret, in more
ghost film; if he blinked his eyes rapidly it would vanish, than one way esoteric security organization — that the
however momentarily, and return just as soon as he experience must surely scare the hell out of him. Except,
relaxed: well, he'd been scared by experts. Or, he might believe he
A corpse, smouldering, with its fire-bJackened arms was going mad. But there again, E-Branch was ... E-
flung wide; steaming head thrown back as in the final Branch. This thing he was experiencing, it must be in his
agony of death; tumbling end over end into a black void mind, he supposed. It had to be, for there was no physical
shot through with thin neon bars or ribbons of blue, mechanism to account for it. Or was there?
green, and red light. Hallucination? Well, possibly. Someone could have
It was a tortured thing, yes, but dead now from all of its got to him, fed him drugs, brainwashed him ... but to
torments and no longer suffering; unknown and what end? Why bring him here in the dead of night? And
unknowable as the weird waking dream which it was. why bring these other people here? (The extra lights up
And yet there was something morbidly familiar about it; there, the shiny black MG Metro pulling into the kerb,
so that watching it, Trask's face was grey and his lips and the bloke across the road - an E-Branch agent,
drawn back in a silent snarl from his strong, slightly surely? - even now running through the rain towards the
yellow teeth. If only the corpse would stop tumbling for a Branch's back door entrance.) Why were they here?
moment and come into focus, give him a clearer shot of 'Sir?' A girl struggled stiffly, awkwardly out of the
the blistered, silently screaming face ... Metro. She was Anna Marie English, a Branch esper.
Trask got out of his car into a sudden squall of leaden English by name but never an English rose - nor any sort
raindrops, as if some Invisible One had dipped his hands of rose by any other name - she was enervated, pallid,
in water and scooped it into Trask's face. And muttering a dowdy, a stray cat drowning in the rain. It was her talent,
curse as he turned up the collar of his overcoat, he Trask knew, and he felt sorry for her. She was