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.'Who are you?' he says.'Hart Miller.An anthropologist.I study sleep disorders.If you can't speak now, come and see me, please.I'll beg if it makes a difference.On Market Street, opposite Grey Friars.Please.I'm going out of my mind with this.'Eliot regards him for a moment, and his lips move as if repeating what Hart has just said.'You can't know,' he then says, softly, his punished face pale in the shadows of the basement, the lines by his mouth creasing the flesh deep.'It's not safe to know.And if you believe what you claim to, you are in danger.' Eliot turns and continues to walk to the basement staircase.Hart follows.When he places a firm hand on Eliot's shoulder, the old man flinches.Below the sound of their scraping feet and the swish of Eliot's overcoat, Hart thinks he hears the old man whimper.'Sorry,' he says, automatically.Eliot leans against the wall, hunched over, his eyes screwed up.When they open they are full of fear.His face twitches and he shivers, or does it just seem so in the failing light? His mind wanders, and he says something Hart does not hear.This is no great necromancer; the man is finished.He is drunk and unwashed and his memory is shot full of holes.'Sir, you need help.'Eliot looks at him, his eyes wide like an innocent afraid of the dark.'They're here.After a while you can feel them.'Hart feels his body go cold; a cloud passes over the sun in the world outside the School of Divinity.At the end of the corridor, the light that penetrates the dusty glass of the fire escape dims, snuffs out.'Listen to me,' Eliot says, sounding as if he is trying to catch his breath, his body no more than a thin silhouette in the new darkness.'If you follow me outside, you're finished.'Hart swallows and takes a step back.'How?''Because it's too late to undo what has started.Get out while you can.''I can't.'Eliot pushes himself away from the wall.'Then be damned,' he says, and begins to mount the stairs, every step taken in reluctance.Hart can see that.He gives it one more try.'OK.I'll leave.You'll never see me again, I promise.I don't want to be hunted down like they were.' Eliot reacts when he says 'hunted'; one of his liver-spotted hands nudges at the wall for support.'But,' Hart continues, 'I have to know what it is.What came through.'Eliot breathes out, exasperated.'Rhodes Hodgson,' he says, unable to even meet Hart's eye.'See Rhodes Hodgson in the archive.Ask him about the work.If you believe what he tells you, you have a name for it.Nothing else can be done.' And then Eliot is gone, around the last bend in the staircase and into the reception.CHAPTER TWENTY-THREEBack inside his flat, Hart closes the front door, and then leans against it to make sure the lock has clicked shut.Quickly, he walks into the kitchen and scribbles the name, Rhodes Hodgson, onto a piece of notepaper.He sticks the note on the tack to which the wall calendar is suspended.He sits down, to take in what Eliot just suggested, confirmed even, to put it together.But before he knows it has happened, he is back on his feet, pacing.He pours a drink and looks at his street map without properly seeing it.After the confrontation, he's never felt so isolated in St Andrews.He has no companion with whom to share his suspicion and fear.To do something, anything, to hear another person speak, he turns the portable kitchen radio on and then walks to the window in the lounge.Before the glass, he rubs the palms of his cold hands against his temples, trying to slow things down inside his mind.Outside the sky has darkened.More rain soon.A sheet of cloud tints from grey above the town to black on the horizon, promising a storm.People below in Market Street are looking at the sky, their faces full of blame.A car horn sounds but he cannot hear a single bird.Soon it will be night.On the radio, tuned to a local station, two journalists talk with a government minister and a local councillor.A member of the Wicca religion joins the discussion.Hart is too distracted to listen.He continues to pace the living room while they argue.Has he just met a man at the end of his reason? Eliot was drunk; that was certain.But what did he mean when he said he no longer saw students? Has he been fired? He jumped at the touch of a hand and then talked in riddles about 'they'.That you could feel them coming.That they were near [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]