Brian Lumley Necroscope 03 The Source

Odnośniki

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

appeared to be feeding, using taloned hands to tear its food and stuff strips
of raw red meat into its mouth. Its face was mainly hidden, but Tassi could
see the way its jaws worked, and the baleful glare of the very human eye that
peered back over its shoulder.
Hunched down, crouching or squatting there on the sandy floor of its tank, the
thing might have been an ape; but its leprous skin was corrugated and its feet
gripped the floor with too many hooked, skeletal digits. An appendage like a
tail - which was not a tail - lay coiled behind it; Tassi gasped as she saw
that this extraneous member, too, was equipped with a rudimentary, lidless,
almost vacant eye.
The thing was entirely freakish, and as for what it fed upon . . .
Tassi gave a massive start, jumped back from the tank. The creature had
snatched up more food from the floor of its glass cell - and a human arm had
suddenly flopped into view, dangling from its terrible hands! As Tassi's eyes
bulged in horror, so the thing commenced munching on the dismembered arm's
hand and fingers.
'Steady, my dear,' said Khuv quietly, as the girl moaned and reeled beside
him.
'But... but... it's eating a . . . a -'
'A man?' Khuv finished it for her. 'Or what's left of one? Indeed it is, yes.
Oh, it will eat any sort of meat, but it appears to like human flesh the
best.' And to Agursky:
'Vasily, do you have something for Tassi?'
The strange little scientist came forward, pressed something - several
somethings - into her hand. A wallet? A ring? An ID card? And however familiar
these things were, for a long moment her mind wouldn't recognize them, refused
to make the final, terrible connection. Then-
She felt dizzy and put her free hand on the glass wall of the tank to steady
herself, and her eyes went from the items in her hand to the thing where it
crouched. Horrified but at the same time fascinated, she stared and stared at
it. Were these men trying to tell her that . . . that this creature was eating
her father?!
file:///G|/rah/Brian%20Lumley/Brian%20Lumley%20-%20Necroscope%203%20-%20The%20
Source.htm (127 of 252) [2/13/2004 10:15:03 PM]
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
1
Agursky had gone to one side of the room, where suddenly he switched up the
lighting. Everything sprang into sharp, almost dazzling definition. The
creature threw its food to one side and turned snarling toward Khuv and Tassi
where they both shrank instinctively back.
And that was when she fainted and would have fallen to the floor if her wrist
hadn't been cuffed to the Major's, and if he hadn't turned quickly to catch up
her sagging body in his arms.
For the thing in the glass tank was ... oh, it was something hellish, yes,
nightmarish. But the greater nightmare was this: that however monstrous and
warped, however altered and alien that thing's caricature of a face was when
it had snarled at her, still she'd recognized it as the face of her father!
Jazz
Simmons's Georgian terrace bachelor flat in Hampstead was colourful,
cluttered, and when Harry Keogh had first moved in a little over twenty-four
hours ago it had been bitterly cold and the telephone was off. He'd had
E-Branch clear it for him to use the place as his base, and he'd warned them
not to come bothering him. He had
Darcy Clarke's word that he could play the entire game his way, without
interference.
His way had been to attempt to absorb something of the atmosphere of the place
first. Maybe he could get to know Simmons by understanding how he'd lived: his
tastes, likes and dislikes, and his routine. Not his work routine, his private
routine. Harry didn't believe that a man was what he did professionally; he
believed a man was what he thought privately.
The first thing that had impressed itself upon him was the clutter. Privately,
Jazz Simmons had been a very untidy man. Maybe it was his way of relaxing.
When you're trained to a knife-edge you have to have a place where you can
sheathe yourself now and then, or else you might cut yourself. This had been
Jazz's unwinding place.
The 'clutter' consisted of books and magazines dropped any and everywhere,
more off the bookshelves than on them. Spy-thrillers (not unnaturally, Harry
supposed) lay alongside piles of foreign language publications, most of the
latter being Russian. There was also, beside Jazz's bed, a dusty, foot-thick
stack of
Pravdos -
topped by a copy of the latest
Playboy.
Harry had had to smile: hardly the most compatible meeting of ideologies!
Also in the bedroom were dust-free framed photographs of Jazz's father and
mother; on the wall a life-size Marilyn Monroe poster; a cabinet standing
close to the window, containing cups won in various ski events; and again
affixed to the wall a battered pair of bright yellow skis and sticks which
must be of some special significance. A
recessed cupboard in a narrow passageway had showered Harry with an
accumulation of skiing requisites, and beside Jazz's video cassette recorder
were haphazardly stacked films of all the main winter athletics for the last
five years. While Jazz hadn't been available to participate, still he hadn't
been willing to miss out entirely.
There were photographs of girls, too, quite a pile of them, in one corner of a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

angamoss.xlx.pl