"Paul J. McAuley - Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

 Tolley thought of the initials scrawled in the steam on the kitchen
window, then thought of his room. How could a feeling, a sense of
place,
do that? He said, "Let's take a look at those inscriptions you
mentioned."

Rather than funny, Tolley found them prim and touchingly pious, almost
wistful. Death had not been an end to these people, but an interval, a
sleep. He left Beaumont photographing them, and stepped inside the
porch
of the little church. The iron handle of the door was stiff; then it
gave,
and the door creaked open.
It was colder than outside. Tolley shivered, looking at the brief row
of
pews either side of the aisle, the plain pulpit and the draped altar
beyond. The windows were narrow, their slots edged with dogtoothing:
Norman, perhaps, although the glass was Victorian. Below, tablets were
set
in the rough stone walls, one listing the names of those killed in the
Great war, a dusty poppy wedged in the iron holder beneath it, another
mentioning a Victorian incumbent of the parish. The next was in
memorium
of Alfred Tolley, squire of this parish, and his wife Evangaline, both
dead in the same year, 1886. Was that when the manor house had burned
down? Beyond were other memorials of his family, and, as Tolley began
to
examine them, he thought he heard the door creak open. He said, "How
old
is this place, Mr Beaumont?"
Silence. Tolley looked around. He was alone. The door was closed.
It was then that he heard a distant, drawn-out metallic screeching, a
frantic sound keening towards the edge of disaster; and then it cut
off.
He smelled the same, gritty, sulphureous stench he'd encountered in his
hotel room, and a voice said out of the air, "You'll none of you help
them! Let their damned engines come to their aid!"
Tolley grasped the edge of a pew, and the prick of a splinter in his
palm
brought him to himself. His first step turned into a stagger, and then
he
ran, wrenching back the door and bursting out into the bleak daylight.
Gravel scraped under his shoes, and he stopped, gasping, air achingly
cold
on his teeth. The church door hung ajar on the merest sliver of
darkness;
with an effort, Tolley turned away from it. Near the gate in the
overgrown
hedge, Gerald Beaumont was preparing to photograph yet another head
stone.