"Smith, Guy N - The Lurkers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

Then, suddenly, she heard a harsh long-drawn-out scream that jarred her brain with the force of an electric shock, juddering every nerve in her body and bringing her up to a sitting position before she was full awake. Her hands covered her ears in a futile attempt to shut it out. Waking, she tried to tell herself that it had been a dream, that the events and fears of this past week had combined and exploded in one mind-shattering nightmare.

Trembling. Listening. The room seemed to vibrate with the hellish animal-like cry, and the moonlight dimmed as though even the silvery orb in the heavens feared to cast its ethereal glow upon whatever lurked in the wooded hills.

For a few seconds she seemed- to be paralysed. She was unable to shout or to shake her sleeping husband, imprisoned by that same inexplicable force which had taunted her and terrified her ever since their arrival at Hodre.

'Peterl* Now it was Janie who was screaming, her limbs freed so that she could grasp Peter's shoulder and dig her long fingernails deep as she shook him. 'Peter, for God's sake wake up!'

'What the hell's the matter?' He rolled over and opened his eyes. 'Can't a feller get a good night's sleep without - '

'Didn't you hear it? You must have!'

'Hear what?' He struggled up on to an elbow.

'That scream. Something out there's screaming. Listen.'

Together they listened, but heard only the distant hooting of an owl. So peaceful. And so menacing.

Anticipating another scream, Janie clung frantically to the man at her side. It came as an anti-climax, so different this time, harsh like the dog's barking had been earlier; but not so ear-shattering, not so hellish, as the one which had awoken her. It died slowly away and somewhere there was an answering bark.

'Foxes!* Suddenly Peter burst out laughing, a peal of enforced mirth and relief. 'My God, that's what those screams were that people reckon they hear up on Hodre after dark, the screech of vixens! I read somewhere that vulpine mating begins any time from mid-November onwards. You'd think country folk would know that.'

'No!' Janie gave an indignant hiss. 'That's not what I heard, Peter. The first scream was nothing like that at all! It was the most unearthly sound I've ever heard!'

Damn it, her nerves were getting the better of her, he thought. Of course it was foxes; Janie, like the villagers, was letting herself be scared. He had to reassure her right now before she became hysterical.

'I tell you it's foxes. Listen again for a moment.'

Silence. Peter thought he could hear Janie's heart pounding; maybe it was his own. He prayed that the vixen would screech again. It did, a few seconds later - a wild, hideous scream that shattered the stillness and made the prowling male of the species bark again. Both animals were somewhere in the big forest.

There, what did I tell you? That was a fox, all right.'

'That was. 'Janie's voice quavered. 'But the other wasn't. I tell you, Peter, it was the most unearthly, awful sound I've ever heard in my life.'

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. Women! Once they got a stupid notion into their heads there was no way of changing their minds. 'Have it your own way, but I'm getting back to sleep because I've a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow. As far as I'm concerned it was mating foxes up in the forest and I don't want to hear any more about it.'

'But it wasn't up in the forest, not the sound I heard, anyway,' she almost screamed. 'Peter, it came from that stone circled

'For Christ's sake! This is sheer nonsense. You're forcing yourself to believe what that pair of bumpkins in the pub were ranting on about. No wonder Gavin's scared. You're frightening him to death. Now, I'm getting to sleep. You please yourself.'

Janie went over to the window, and stared out forcing her confused brain to register details; the sloping grassland ethereal and silvery, the bare hedges. In the distance the mass of pine trees seeming to glower threateningly. She tried not to turn her head, but in the end was compelled to, mentally flinching from the stunted pines only a couple of hundred yards away - so eerie, so majestic, so vibrant that she could almost feel their power. Wide-eyed, frightened, she was held there at the window as though they were hypnotising her, warning her.

Finally they let her go and she shuffled barefooted and trembling back to bed and lowered herself down alongside Peter. He was already asleep, she could tell by his regular breathing. The fool, he had scorned the final warning, scoffed at it. And there might not be another . . .

For the rest of the night she lay there just staring up at the ceiling, watching the latticed square of moonlight pale until finally it was replaced by the cold grey light of a mountain winter dawn. That scream - she could still hear it like a catchy tune that persistently sticks in the brain. She heard it again and again, a long-drawn-out cry of agony, the embodiment of every fear known to man or beast, the ultimate in terror.

Her train of thought led back to wild beasts, ferocious creatures that had escaped from captivity to return to the only way of life they knew: stalking their prey with a ruthless patience, pouncing out of the darkness and ripping it to shreds with huge sharp claws. Nature's law, the law of the jungle.

And Hodre was now that jungle.