Graham Masterton Death Trance

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

harshly but the cut on his head appeared to be superficial
70
and there was very little blood. Neil tugged his neatly three-cornered
handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabbed at the wound as gently as he
could.
The medics said four minutes,' Wanda said, coming across the office. She
stopped and looked down at Randolph. 'Is he unconscious?'
'Shock or concussion, maybe both. Whichever it is, he's probably better off.'
'I still can't believe it.' Wanda pressed her hand against her mouth. 'How
could all of them be dead?'
The rangers didn't say?'
Wanda shook her head. They kept repeating "serious accident," that's all.
Perhaps there was a fire.'
Neil said, 'Hand me that cushion, would you? He'd be better with his feet
raised.'
Wanda did as she was told and then turned away, her face covered by her hands
and sobbing in silence as if she would never stop.
CHAPTER FOUR
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He woke up and the afternoon sunlight was spread across the ceiling in fanlike
stripes. His head no longer seemed to belong to his body and there was a
steely taste in his mouth, but he felt peculiarly serene and wondered if he
had been involved in a serious traffic accident.
After all, hadn't someone been talking about the brakes on his car only a few
minutes before, describing how they had failed?
He tried to raise his head off the pillow. It was an effort and it hurt his
neck, but he managed to see that he was in a large, plain room decorated in
the palest of greens. There was a modernistic print on the wall, not very
distinguished; a sickly yucca stood in a woven planter on the opposite side of
the room, its leaves tipped with brown as if it badly needed watering. The
light was filtering through a parchment-coloured Venetian blind that had three
broken slats.
He let his head fall back on the pillow. It had not occurred to him yet to
wonder who he was or what he was doing here. It seemed enough that he was
alive.
He slept for a while and then woke up again. The stripes on the ceiling had
faded, and he had the feeling that someone had been in the room to look at him
as he slept. The bedside table had been moved.
He began to try to piece together the recent events of his life. For a brief
flicker of an instant he thought he could remember tyres squealing and metal
crunching, that terrible smash-bang sound of serious accidents. Yet he was
sure that somebody had told him about that and that he hadn't experienced it
for himself. His brain must be making
72
excuses, trying to divert his attention from what had really happened.
It began to enter his mind then that something truly terrible had taken place,
not simply an automobile accident. But what was it? He kept trying to form a
coherent picture of it in his mind's eye, but it always seemed to refract and
break up, like the shadow of a huge shark deep underwater. He frowned and
concentrated, but the shadow slipped away.
Twenty minutes passed. From somewhere in the distance he could hear the sound
of shoes scuffling, and amplified voices. He slept, and then he awoke. It was
growing dark now and the blinds had turned to blue. He groped around beside
him and found a trailing light switch, which he clicked on. A bright bedside
light shone into his eyes and he turned his face away.
After a while he slowly lifted his right hand so he could examine it. He was
wearing a wide-sleeved gown of pale yellow cotton, obviously industrially
laundered to judge by the inaccurate but well-starched creases in it, and
there was a plastic band on his wrist. When he twisted the band around, he
could see that it was carrying somebody's name, written in ball-point pen. He
squinted hard at the writing, trying to decipher it, but after two or three
minutes he decided that he must have lost the ability to read. The squiggles
of the pen refused to coagulate into letters and the letters themselves
refused to assemble into comprehensible words.
He thought: / can't read. I must have suffered brain damage. There was an
automobile accident and I suffered brain damage. He even believed that he
could remember his forehead striking the walnut cocktail cabinet in front of
him. Howling tyres. Splintering decanters.
But that shadowy shark was rising out of the depths, bearing that shadowy,
threatening truth that his mind was desperately trying to keep submerged. He
had half an idea of what it was, more than half of an idea. And he knew that
when it broke surface, he was going to be faced with
73
the absolute reality of what had happened, and why, and what he was doing here
lying in this bed. The shark was rising swiftly now. At any moment he was
going to have to accept the truth it brought, and he knew that he would not be
able to bear it. His brain would not let him articulate what it was even
though his mouth was struggling to form the words that would describe it.
Suddenly his hands flew up before him as if he were trying to protect himself
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
from a blizzard.
He shouted, 'Marmief But at that very moment a dark-faced man in a pale blue
overall walked into the room and abruptly called out, 'Mr Clare!'
Randolph opened his eyes and saw that his hands were lifted up. Slowly,
dazedly, he lowered them and turned his head to stare at the intruder who had
interrupted his nightmare. A dark-faced man, but not black; an Oriental with a
flat-featured face and peculiarly glittering eyes. Randolph thought that
perhaps he was still hallucinating and that this man was not real. Perhaps his
brain damage had gone far beyond affecting his ability to read and write;
perhaps he was clinically mad.
'Mr Clare,' the man repeated, his voice more gentle this time.
'Mr Clare?' Randolph queried, his mouth dry.
The man approached the bed. 'I am Dr Ambara.' He stood looking down at
Randolph and then, without warning, he bent forward, peeled back each of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy