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.“Of course not.I mean …”“Good boy, John.And don’t forget about Parsnip Bridge.”“Good night,” Redpath said, addressing himself to the entire group, and in a few seconds he was ascending through the tall, narrow house with wraith-like speed and silence, taking the stairs two and three at a time.He reached the top landing, went into his room and closed the door.The pendant lamp stirred slightly, activated by his arrival, causing uneasy movements of shadows.Redpath’s relief at being alone was tempered by a sudden appreciation of the fact that all the long night lay ahead of him and that he was to spend it amid an assemblage of furniture which looked inhospitable and accidental, like items gathered in a shabby saleroom.It was highly unlikely that he would be able to sleep in such surroundings, tired though he was.He hesitated near the door, rubbing his arms to subdue the goose-pimples which had been brought out by the unheated air, then crossed to the bed and got underneath the quilt without undressing.After a couple of minutes he began to feel warm again, but that served only to make the house seem colder and more hostile by comparison.His body-heated tent was a solitary outpost, menaced on all sides by watchful and implacable enemies.Enemies? Don’t be stupid.Don’t fight it.You’re safe here.You’re one of the family now…He listened to the sounds of the house bedding down for the night, the various distant rushings of water, the thrumming of pipes, the muted closing of doors.Somebody padded quietly past the door of his own room and he guessed it was Wilbur Tennent making for his quarters at the front of the house.In the silence which followed he became aware that the ceiling light was making a faint muttering sound, indicative of a poor electrical connection.He considered getting out of bed and turning it off, but taking the plunge into sudden darkness seemed a bold and extreme course of action, one which should be postponed until he had had time to get the lie of the land, to weigh all the consequences.He pulled the quilt more tightly around himself, slipped down into a more comfortable position and—purely as an experiment—closed his eyes to gauge the possibility of his eventually being able to sleep…The nightmare was immediately identifiable as a nightmare, and that made it a Class Two.Gratitude flickered in an isolated fragment of his consciousness, but only briefly.Knowledge that a dream was a dream was supposed to dilute the effect, to enable him to stand back and take an indulgent interest in the latest playlet being offered by his subconscious, but on this occasion something seemed to be going wrong.Once again he was standing on a stair and looking down on a broad expanse of green-and-cream checkerboard—the hall floor of the psychophysiology building at the Jeavons Institute—and he knew the floor was not really there, because he had quit the programme and would never be returning to it, and yet the image was impinging on his senses with a sharp, uncompromising clarity which proclaimed that it was part of the external material world.What is this? Am I capable of double-double-think?Redpath watched in taut fascination as the floor tiles began to exhibit colour changes, some of them becoming blue and semi-transparent while others metamorphosed into squares of amber, ruby and citrine.They seemed to be illuminated from underneath by lights which continually varied in intensity, creating patterns with shifting emphases, and again there was a sense of movement as though each square capped a cell containing a small, nervous animal.The vision held no significance for Redpath—compared to some of his recent imaginings it was almost beautiful—and yet as he scanned the warm-glowing geometries he was gripped by a sense of apprehension which left him sick and paralysed.There was an imminence, a quickening dread, a bleak certainty that none of the terrors which had gone before could even begin to prepare him for what was corning next.I was lucky last time—this nightmare never really got started.But it has started now.There was a stirring at the edge of his vision, a stealthy advancement, and he became aware of a creeping brown tide.It resembled old thready blood, bulked up to the consistency of sludge with millions of writhing slug-like strips of liver.The leading edge of the tide wavered and hesitated and rippled as it crossed the patterned floor, extending slim and tremulous pseudopods on to new squares, sometimes withdrawing them at once as though conditions had been judged unfavourable, more often gorging and swelling them with dark fluids until yet another section of the checkerboard had been submerged by the loathsome organic slurry.Redpath, trapped in the chilly immobility of the dreamer, willed himself to do something, anything which would break the paralysis and let him make it clear to the universe at large that he wanted no part of what was happening, that he was not some death-oriented creature willingly going forward to…what?The beginnings of a retching moan shaped themselves low in his body, then came the incredible realisation that this—the slow engulfment by a slurry of sentient blood clots—was not the ultimate horror he had been anticipating.There was something else to come.Something much worse.His gaze was drawn to an area at the middle of the floor where four tiles made up a larger square which until that moment had not changed from their original coloration.As he watched, the larger square grew darker and darker until quite suddenly it resembled a transparent hatch leading down into a well of utter blackness.A pinpoint of light was born in the centre of the jetty rectangle.It grew brighter, then split in two, finally resolving itself into a tiny blue-white disc accompanied by a white star-like speck of brilliance.For one instant a weight seemed to lift from Redpath’s soul.It’s just like looking through an astronomical telescope, he thought.Why, for God’s sake, that could almost be the Earth and the…Abruptly, without warning, the flimsy word-edifice of his rationalization was swept away in a torrent of primitive emotion.Fear mingled and spumed with hatred and disgust and anger, but always the fear was predominant, always fear was the underlying matrix, the cataract which carried all else rushing onwards and downwards in its dark bores and fluxes, fear, fear, fear…NO! The voice threatened to explode Redpath’s skull.NO! NO! NO!He awoke shivering in the coldness of the bedroom, and for a moment almost smiled as he took in its commonplace ambience of pink plastic lampshades and flowered wallpaper.The great thing about nightmares was how one felt on wakening up.This was the real world, a world which might look tired and shabby, but which at least had the advantage that as long as one remained securely locked into it nothing very far out of the ordinary would ever …Leila!Redpath’s eyes widened and he groaned aloud as he recalled the true extent of the nightmare his life had become, a nightmare from which there were to be no respites, waking or sleeping.He threw back the quilt, got out of bed and went to a tallboy which supported a speckled circular mirror.Resting his forearms on the varnished wood, he stooped forward until he could see himself in the glass [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]