"Stoker, Bram - DRACULA'S GUEST" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stoker Bram)

that I was not alone. I looked towards the tomb. Just then
there came another blinding flash which seemed to strike the
iron stake that surmounted the tomb and to pour through to
the earth, blasting and crumbling the marble, as in a burst
of flame. The dead woman rose for a moment of agony while she
was lapped in the flame, and her bitter scream of pain was
drowned in the thundercrash. The last thing I heard was this
mingling of dreadful sound,as again I was seized in the giant
grasp and dragged away, while the hailstones beat on me and
the air around seemed reverberant with the howling of wolves.
The last sight that I remembered was a vague, white, moving
mass,as if all the graves around me had sent out the phantoms
of their sheeted dead, and that they were closing in on me
through the white cloudiness of the driving hail.

Gradually there came a sort of vague beginning of cons-
ciousness, then a sense of weariness that was dreadful. For
a time I remembered nothing, but slowly my senses returned.
My feet seemed positively racked with pain, yet I could not
move them. They seemed to be numbed. There was an icy feeling
at the back of my neck and all down my spine, and my ears,
like my feet, were dead yet in torment; but there was in my
breast a sense of warmth which was by comparison delicious.It
was as a nightmare--a physical nightmare, if one may use such
an expression; for some heavy weight on my chest made it diff-
icult for me to breathe.

This period of semilethargy seemed to remain a long time,
and as it faded away I must have slept or swooned. Then came
a sort of loathing, like the first stage of seasickness, and
a wild desire to be free of something--I knew not what.A vast
stillness enveloped me, as though all the world were asleep
or dead--only broken by the low panting as of some animal
close to me. I felt a warm rasping at my throat, then came a
consciousness of the awful truth which chilled me to the heart
and sent the blood surging up through my brain. Some great an-
imal was lying on me and now licking my throat. I feared to
stir, for some instinct of prudence bade me lie still; but
the brute seemed to realize that there was now some change in
me, for it raised its head. Through my eyelashes I saw above
me the two great flaming eyes of a gigantic wolf. Its sharp
white teeth gleamed in the gaping red mouth, and I could feel
its hot breath fierce and acrid upon me.

For another spell of time I remembered no more. Then I be-
came conscious of a low growl, followed by a yelp, renewed
again and again. Then seemingly very far away, I heard a "Hol-
loa! holloa!" as of many voices calling in unison. Cautiously
I raised my head and looked in the direction whence the sound
came, but the cemetery blocked my view. The wolf still contin-