Читать онлайн "The Book of Cthulhu [calibre 0.9.16]" - Гейман Нил Ричард - RuLit

Miller had nearly pissed himself at Dr. Kalamov’s reappearance. He forced his throat to work. “You’re asking for my child.”

Dr. Kalamov chuckled and drummed his claws on the wood. “No, Mr. Miller. I jest. Although, those wicked old fairytales are jolly good fun, speaking such primordial truths as they do. Be well, be fruitful.” He scuttled backward and then lifted vertically into the shadows, a spider ascending its thread, and was gone.

∇

Years later, Miller married a girl from California and settled in a small farming town. He worked as a gunsmith. His wife gave birth to a boy. After the baby arrived he’d often lie awake at night and listen to the house settle and the mice scratch in the cupboards. When the baby cried, Miller’s wife would go into the nursery and soothe him with a lullaby. Miller strained to hear the words, for it was the deep silences that unnerved him and caused his heart to race.

There was a willow tree in the yard. It cast a shadow through the window. As his wife crooned to the baby in the nursery, Miller watched the shadow branches ripple upon the dull white oval of wall. On the bad nights, the branches twitched and narrowed and writhed like tendrils worming their way through fissures in the plaster toward the bed and his sweating, paralyzed form.

One morning he went to the shed and fetched an axe and chopped the tree down. The first tree he’d felled since his youth. The willow was very old and very large and the job lasted until lunchtime.

The center was semi-rotten and hollow, and when the tree crashed to earth the bole partially split and gushed pulp. Something heavy and multi-segmented shifted and retracted inside the trunk. Water gurgled from the wound with a wheeze that almost sounded like someone muttering his name. He dumped kerosene over everything and struck a match. The neighbors gathered and watched the blaze, and though they gossiped amongst themselves, no one said a word to him. There’d been rumors.

His wife came to the door with the baby in her arms. Her expression was that of a person who’d witnessed a dark miracle and knew not how to reconcile the fear and wonder of the revelation.

Miller stood in the billowing smoke, leaning on his axe, eyes reflecting the lights of hell.

∇

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the hard work, support, and encouragement of the entire Night Shade Books team: Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, Tomra Palmer, Dave Palumbo, Amy Popovich, Allison Stumpf, and Liz Upson. Thanks, I couldn’t have picked a better bunch of folks to work with.

To the editors and anthologists I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with over the last few years—John Joseph Adams, Scott Connors, Ellen Datlow, Marty Halpern, Ron Hilger, John Klima, Tim Pratt, Jonathan Strahan, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer—Thanks, it’s been a Master Class. Thanks to all of those who helped out, made story suggestions, or offered advice while I was putting this anthology together, particularly John Betancourt, Matthew Carpenter, Stephanie Hartman, Jill Henderson, Michael Lee, Barbara Roden, Mike Roth, and Jerad Walters. Thanks as well to Obrotowy, for his outstanding cover art (Iä! Cthulhu!), Claudia Noble, for her breathtaking design, and Allan Kausch, for his copyediting prowess. Thanks also to all the authors whose work appears within these pages, and to Grandpa Theobald—Howard Phillips Lovecraft—for inspiring those authors.

Special thanks to my wife, Jennifer, for her patience as this anthology drove me to the brink of madness… and beyond! To my parents, for raising me in a house filled with books. And to Maddie the Shih-Tzu, the best listener an editor could have.