Weird Tales #360. Рэй БрэдбериЧитать онлайн книгу.
it will soon dry our trousers out. It’s not much, I suppose, but it may help keep our spirits up.”
He glanced at me, if only for a moment conjuring up a thin, sarcastic ghost of a smile, and with an almost pitying shake of his head said: “Well okay, good, fine!—whatever you say, er, Julian?—but now it’s my turn to spell you. So if you’ll just give that case back to me … ”
Not for a moment wanting to upset him, I handed it over and said, “Okay, if you’re sure you can handle it—?”
“I’m sure,” he told me, as we looked around the platform.
Things were nowhere as bad as Knightsbridge; there had been very little damage here, not on the actual platform, and when I looked down at the tracks I could see them glinting dully under no more than twelve or fifteen inches of water. But both of the arched exits were blocked with rubble fallen from above, making my next comment completely redundant:
“It seems there’s no way up, not from here.”
Henry nodded. “Not even if we wanted to surface here, which we don’t. Next up is Green Park, and following that—assuming we get that far—Piccadilly Circus. But Green Park is right on the edge of the water, and—”
“And that’s Deep One territory, right?” I cut in.
He nodded, frowned and narrowed his eyes, and said, “Well yes, I do believe I’ve heard them called that before … ”
“Of course you have,” I replied. “That’s what you called them, back there where they were splashing about in the water behind us.”
Still frowning, he shook his head and slowly said, “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t remember that.” And then with a shrug of his narrow shoulders: “Well, so what? I don’t remember much of anything any more, only what needs to be done … ”
And with one last look around he went on: “We have to get back down into the water. Just when we were drying out, eh? Be glad Green Park’s not far from here, only one stop. But it’s a hell of a junction, or used to be. It seems completely unreal, surreal now—like some kind of weird dream—but there were three lines criss-crossing Green Park in the old days. I still remember that much, at least … ” He gave himself a shake, and finally went on: “Anyway, for all that it’s close to the lake, it was bone dry the last time I was there. Let’s hope nothing has changed. And after Green Park, at about the same distance again, then it’s Piccadilly Circus—the end of the line, as it were. The end for us, anyway.”
His comment was loaded—the last few words definitely—but I ignored it and said, “And is that where we’ll surface?”
Again Henry’s nod. “It’ll make your skin crawl,” he said, and then, matching his comment, shuddered violently—which I didn’t in any way consider a consequence of his damp, clinging trousers—and when he’d controlled his shaking, finally went on, “but yes, we’ll surface there, right up Bgg’ha’s jacksy or as close as anybody would ever want to get to it. … !”
I waited until we were moving steadily forward again, in still water that came up just inches short of our knees, then said, “Henry, you say our skins will be made to crawl. But is there any special reason for that—or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You shouldn’t ask.” He shook his head.
“But I’m asking, anyway.” It was just natural curiosity on my part, I suppose. And whatever, I wanted Henry’s take on it; because we all see things, experience things, differently.
“Piccadilly Circus as was is lying crushed at the roots of Bgg’ha’s house. That great junction, once standing so close to the heart of a city, is now in the dark basement of the twisted tower, that vast heap of wreckage where he or it lords it over his minions—and over his human captive, his ‘cattle.’”
“His cattle … ” I mused, because that thought or simile was still reasonably new to me. At least I’d never heard it expressed that way before coming across Henry.
“As I may have told you before,” the old man said, “that’s all they are: food for Bgg’ha’s table, fodder for his stable.”
We were moving faster now, under an arched ceiling that was aglow, seemingly alive with luminous, swirling shoggoth exhaust. And the closer we drew to Henry’s goal or target, the more voluble he was becoming.
“Do you know why I’m here?” he suddenly burst out. “I think you do—or rather, you think you do!”
Nodding, I said: “But haven’t we already decided that? It’s revenge, isn’t it? For your wife?”
“For my whole family!” he corrected me. And the catch, that half-sob was back in his voice. “My poor wife, yes, of course—but also for my girls, my daughters! And my eldest, Janet—my God, how brave! I would never have suspected it of her, but she was braver than me. Inspiring, is how I’ve come to think of it; that my Janet was able to escape like that, and somehow managed to crawl back home again. But she did, she came home to me, and then … then she died! Not yet twenty years old, and gone like that.
“She died of horror, and of loathing—because of what had been done to her—but never of shame, for she’d fought it all the way. And it’s mainly because … because of what Janet told had happened to her that I’ve kept coming here. It’s why I’m here now: for Janet, yes, but also for her younger sister, Dawn, and for their mother; and for all the other females who’ve been taken and who are still there, maybe alive even now … in that twisted tower!”
“Still alive?” I repeated him. “You mean, maybe they’re not just fodder, after all?” At which I could have bitten through my tongue as it dawned on me that it was probably very cruel of me to keep questioning him like this. But too late for that now.
Sobbing openly and making no attempt to hide it, Henry replied: “Janet was taken two months ago. They took her in broad daylight—or what we used to call daylight—on her way back home from an SSR meeting. She’d been a member since the time her mother was taken. A boyfriend of hers from the old days saw it happen. It was those freakish flapping-rag things, those so-called Hounds. I was always telling her to stick to the shadows whenever she ventured out, but on this occasion I had forgotten to warn her against angles. They had taken her on a street corner, just ninety degrees of curb that cost her her freedom, and, as I’d believed at the time, her life, too. But no, Janet’s captors were working for that thing in the twisted tower, something I hadn’t known until she escaped and got home three weeks ago.
“That was when I found out about what goes on in that hellish place. Since then I’ve risked my own life five times making this trip in and out; always hoping I might see Janet’s mother, or her younger sister Dawn, and that I might be able to rescue them somehow … but at the same time making certain deliveries and planning for the future … in fact planning for right now, if you really want to know. But my wife … and Dawn, that poor kid, just seventeen years old: they’re somewhere in that nightmarish tower, I feel certain. But alive and suffering still, or dead and … and eaten! Who knows?” There he paused and made an attempt to get himself under control.
Feeling the need to have the old man continue, however—no matter how painful that had to be for him—I said, “Henry, before Janet escaped, did she ever see her mother, or her younger sister Dawn, there in the twisted tower?”
He shook his head. “Not once. Other girls—plenty of them—but never her Ma. And where Dawn’s concerned, that’s totally understandable. She was taken just three days after Janet found her way home in time to … time to die! In other words, she had been out of that place before Dawn was taken in.” He paused for a moment or two before continuing.
“Now I know it must sound like I’ve been pretty careless of my girls, but that’s not so. And maybe it’s best if they really are dead, because of what Janet … because of what she told me was happening to those … those other female captives.”
And as he broke