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

feet. Prayer books. He picked one up, and its limp red cover fanned
like
the wings of a dead bird. Dead, dead and buried. He understood that it
was
his only hope.
First, he had to have light.
He lifted one of the thick candles from the altar and used several
matches
to get it alight, then stuck it to the rim of the pulpit with its own
wax
 drippings. All the while the wind howled and keened, and the hammering
at
the door never let up, underscored by scratchings like fingernails on
the
stained glass of the broken window. Tolley saw with horror one glass
fragment and then another fall, brief twinkling meteors. He scrabbled
through the thin pages of the prayer book until he came to the Service
for
the Burial of the Dead, and began.
The wind did not die as he read the psalm, but the banging of the door
became staccato, and no more fragments of glass fell. When he reached
the
middle of the lesson, the banging ceased. Tolley read on, a weight
seeming
to lift from his chest, the wind dropping around the church, a mumbling
moan that seemed at the edge of words. Danger, danger. And as he read,
it
seemed that he was no longer alone in the church, that a dark shadow
occupied the middle of the front pew. He dared not lift his eyes from
the
page lest he stumble in his recitation, yet the shadow tugged at the
corner of his vision, undefined, insubstantial, but definitely there.
And then, his throat dry, Tolley came to the end of the lesson, and
realised that he would have to read the last part at the grave. He
hesitated, and the wind rose again, the candle flame flickered. There
was
nothing for it: the forms had to be gone through.
The shadow melted from the pew as, holding the candle before him,
Tolley
walked down the aisle and fumbled with the door's heavy bolt. It slid
back, and he turned the handle.
Wind blew in his face.
The candle flame winnowed flat but did not quite go out.
There was nothing outside but gray-edged darkness.
As he walked amongst the ranked gravestones towards the isolated pair
beneath the yew, Tolley felt a kind of pressure at his back, but
steeled
himself not to look around. He faced the grave of the unknown man and
by
the light of the candle began to read the final part of the service.