"Terry McGarry - Miasma" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGarry Terry)

The smoke had moved; it was almost vertical now, suck-ing itself into a thick pillar, sparkling like mica. It
didn’t even really look like smoke. It looked like—darkness. Tangi-ble darkness, in the middle of a safe,
well-lit room.

“Get away from me!” he cried. The smoky form seemed to waver a bit, lose substance; Granger thought
he could see the wall through it now, and the television.

Television. Sound, light—weapons. He lunged for the remote on the side table, stabbing randomly at
buttons so that Channel 4 blared at top volume from the box. It was a late-night comedy show, a
lumbering parody of Franken-stein. Once he had the volume under control he began to feel better. The
companionable presence of manufactured reality calmed him.

The smoke pulled back into the corners of the room, became indistinguishable from shadow. He would
finish his book, and the hell with it. It was some trick of the new track lighting, that was all. Or a product
of fatigue after his trau-matic day. Halloween put crazy images in your head. Or were his eyes going, was
it some failure of his optic nerve, was he slowly blinding himself by reading so much?

. . . No. It could not be that. He groped for the book and pulled the narrative around him like a blanket.

The last baby-sitter was confronting the children now. It wasn’t as scary as it had been, the flow of
suspense inter-rupted, as if by a commercial—but before long he had recap-tured the delicious tingle.

He would not look up, he vowed; there would be no smoke. He continued to read until he had forgotten
about the smoke, except that thinking about how he had forgotten about it brought it back to mind . . .
but he was on the next-to-last page, he was so close to finishing . . . but he could no longer see the
words clearly, the letters were lost in a dark haze, and he had to do it, he had to look up.

He was enveloped in it, the freezing, greasy smoke. He leaped out of the chair, ran to the door, opened it
wide to find the hallway black with the stuff, impassable. Fumbling through the murk, he found the phone,
dialed the number of the super on the first floor. There was no answer. Now the room was as dark as the
night outside.

He punched 911 by feel and asked for the fire depart-ment, told them his address. Then, trembling and
retching, he made his way to the window, throwing it open to release the smothering smoke. But it did
not pour out; it stayed, coagulated, in the room, even when a crosswind whipped in. He whimpered in
frustration and bafflement, blind. Outside, below, sirens wailed down the avenue.

He felt his way back to the door and waited; their knocks pounded so loudly that his body spasmed even
though he’d heard them clomping along the hall. He fum-bled the door open—they were here, he would
be safe now—but he was not prepared for how large and fast-moving and brusque they were.

There was no fire, and they neither saw nor smelled smoke. Granger flinched from their anger, their
threats of a citation for a false alarm; they left, disgusted, when he began to cry. “Freakin’ Halloween,”
one grumbled. “Get some help, guy, okay?” said the last one out, the axe gleam-ing in his black-gloved
hand. Granger nodded shakily and locked the door after him.

Yes, there it was again, as he turned; it was in the corners, lurking, and Granger thought he heard
laughter, but it must have been the firemen as they left the building. He went straight to the window and
closed it against the chill air. The room felt like a meat locker.