"HellHouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Matheson Richard)

"Did Belasco take drugs?" asked Barrett.
"In the beginning. Later on, he started to withdraw from all involvement with his guests. He had it in mind to make a study of evil, and he decided that he couldn't do that if he was an active participant. So he began to remove himself concentrating his energies on the mass corruption of his people.
"About 1926, he started his final thrust. He increased his efforts at encouraging guests to conceive of every cruelty, perversion, and horror they could. He conducted contests to see who could come up with the ghastliest ideas. He started what he termed 'Days of Defilement,' twenty-four-hour periods of frenzied, nonstop depravities. He attempted a literal enactment of de Sade's _120 Days of Sodom_. He began to import monstrosities from all over the world to mingle with his guests--hunchbacks, dwarfs, hermaphrodites, grotesques of every sort."
Florence closed her eyes and bowed her head, pressing tightly clasped hands against her forehead.
"About that time," continued Fischer, "everything began to go. There were no servants to maintain the house; they were indistinguishable from the guests by then. Laundry service failed, and everyone was forced to wash their own clothes--which they refused to do, of course. There being no cooks, everyone had to prepare their own meals with whatever was at hand--which was less and less, because the pickups of food and liquor had dwindled so much, with no acting servants.
"An influenza epidemic hit the house in 1927. Believing the reports of several of his doctor guests that the Matawaskie Valley fog was injurious to health, Belasco had the windows sealed. About that time, the main generator, no longer being maintained, started functioning erratically, and everyone was forced to use candles most of the time. The furnace went out in the winter of 1928, and no one bothered to relight it. The house became as cold as a refrigerator. Pneumonia killed off thirteen guests.
"None of the others cared. By then they were so far gone that all they were concerned with was their 'daily diet of debaucheries,' as Belasco put it. They were at the bottom by 1928, delving into mutilation, murder, necrophilia, cannibalism."
The three sat motionless and silent, Florence with her head inclined, Barrett and Edith staring at Fischer as he kept on speaking, quietly, virtually without expression, as though he were recounting something very ordinary.
"In June of 1929, Belasco held a version of the Roman circus in his theater," he said. "The highlight was the eating of a virgin by a starving leopard. In July of the same year, a group of drug-addicted doctors started to experiment on animals and humans, testing pain thresholds, exchanging organs, creating monstrosities.
"By then everyone but Belasco was at an animal level, rarely bathing, wearing torn, soiled clothes, eating and drinking anything they could get their hands on, killing each other for food or water, liquor, drugs, sex, blood, even for the taste of human flesh, which many of them had acquired by then.
"And, every day, Belasco walked among them, cold, withdrawn, unmoved. Belasco, a latter-day Satan observing his rabble. Always dressed in black. A giant, terrifying figure, looking at the hell incarnate he'd created."
"How did it end?" asked Barrett.
"If it had ended, would we be here?"
"_It will end now_," Florence said.
Barrett persisted. "What happened to Belasco?"
"No one knows," said Fischer. "When relatives of some of his guests had the house broken into in November of 1929, everyone inside was dead--twenty-seven of them.
"Belasco was not among them."




8:46 P.M.


Florence came walking back across the great hall. For the past ten minutes, she'd been sitting in a corner, "preparing herself," she'd told them. Now she was ready. "As ready as one can be in this kind of climate. Excessive dampness is always a handicap." She smiled. "Shall we take our places?"
The four sat at the huge round table, Fischer across from Florence, Barrett several chairs away from her, Edith next to him.
"It's occurred to me," Florence said as she settled herself, "that the evil in this house is so intensely concentrated that it might be a constant lure to earthbound spirits everywhere. In other words, the house might be acting like a giant magnet for degraded souls. This could explain its complicated texture."
What is one supposed to say to that? Barrett thought. He glanced at Edith, forced to repress a smile at her expression as she gazed at Florence. "You're certain this equipment isn't going to bother you?" he said.
"Not at all. As a matter of fact, it might not be amiss for you to switch on your tape recorder when Red Cloud starts to speak. He might say something valuable."
Barrett nodded noncommittally.
"It works on battery as well, doesn't it?"
Barrett nodded again.
"Good." Florence smiled. "The rest of the instruments, of course, are of no use to me." She looked at Edith. "Your husband has explained to you, I'm sure, that I'm not a physical medium. Mine is solely a mental contact with those in spirit. I admit them only in the form of thought." She glanced around. "Will you put out your candles now?"
Edith tensed as Lionel wet two fingers and crimped out the wick of his candle, Fischer blew his out. Only hers remained, a tiny, pulsing aura of light in the vastness of the hall; the fire had gone out an hour earlier. Edith was unable to make herself extinguish it. Barrett reached out and did it for her.
Blackness seemed to crash across her like a tidal wave, taking her breath. She groped for Lionel's hand, the moment reminding her of a visit she had made once to the Carlsbad Caverns. In one of the caverns, the guide had turned out the lights, and the darkness had been so intense that she had felt it pressing at her eyes.
"O Spirit of Love and Tenderness," Florence began. "We gather here tonight to discover a more perfect understanding of the laws which govern our being."
Barrett felt how cold Edith's hand was and smiled in sympathy. He knew what she was going through; he'd been through the same thing dozens of times in the early days of his work. True, she'd been to seances with him before, but never in a place with such an awesome size and history.
"Give us, O Divine Teacher, avenues of communication with those beyond, particularly those who walk this house in restless torment."
Fischer pulled in a long, erratic breath. He recalled his first sitting here in 1940--in this hall, at this very table. Objects had been hurled about; Dr. Graham had been knocked unconscious by one of them. A greenish, glowing mist had filled the air. Fischer's throat felt parched. I shouldn't be sitting in on this, he thought.
"May the work of bridging the chasm of death be, by us, so faithfully accomplished that pain may be transformed into joy, sorrow into peace. All this we ask in the name of our infinite Father. Amen."
It was silent for a while. Then Edith's legs retracted as Florence began to sing in a soft, melodious voice: "'The world hath felt a quickening breath from heaven's eternal shore. And souls, triumphant over death, return to earth once more.'" Something about the sound of her muted singing in the darkness made Edith's flesh crawl.
When the hymn had ended. Florence started to breathe in deeply, making passes in front of her face. After several minutes, she began to rub both hands over her arms and shoulders, down across her breasts, and over her stomach and thighs. The strokings were almost sensual as she massaged herself, lips parted, eyes half-closed, an expression of torpid abandonment on her face. Her breathing became slower and louder. Soon it was a hoarsely sibilant, wheezing sound. By then, her hands lay flaccid in her lap, her arms and legs twitching slightly. Bit by bit, her head leaned back until it touched the chair. She drew in an extended, quavering breath, then was still.
The great hall was without a sound. Barrett stared at the place where Florence sat, though nothing was visible to him. Edith had closed her eyes, preferring an individual darkness to that of the room. Fischer sat tensely in his chair, waiting.


Florence's chair made a creaking noise. "Me Red Cloud," she said in a sonorous voice. Her face, in the darkness, was stonelike, her expression imperious. "Me Red Cloud," she repeated.
Barrett sighed. "Good evening."
Florence grunted, nodding. "Me come from afar. Bring greeting to you from realm of Eternal Peace. Red Cloud happy see you. Always happy see earthlings gather in circle of belief. We with you always, watch and ward. Death not end of road. Death but door to world without end. This we know."
"Could you--?" Barrett started.
"Earthling souls in prison," Florence interrupted. "Bound in dungeons of flesh."