The Dark Gateway: A Novel of Horror. John Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ her head. Nora wished her father would get rid of the books.

      Her reflection moved gently and ethereally in the glass, wavering like a ghost over the books. There was no colour in it: the dark hair that blazed defiant auburn when the light caught it was nothing now but a darker shadow, and for once her features looked pale and elusive; Nora had always been glad that her eyebrows did not look as pale and thin as the eyebrows of so many red-haired people seem, and that her skin did not freckle easily—except, she admitted unwillingly, in the corners of her eyes and sporadically down the sides of her nose. The solemn wraith in the glass stared back at her. Overhead, she could hear the sound of her brother moving reluctantly about. She gave the bookcase one last venomous glare, seeing her grimacing reflection and realising how silly she was being. She went back into the kitchen. The kettle was beginning to sing.

      “Why don’t we get rid of those old books?” she said after a few minutes.

      Her mother, leaning over the fire, said: “Where would we get rid of them?”

      “Burn them.”

      “Your dad would never let us burn them. He says they’re worth a lot of money. He wants us to keep them until he knows what they are worth.”

      “If anything.”

      “Simon’s found them interesting enough.” She smiled as she spooned tea into the pot. “Is that why—?”

      “No, mother, it’s not. I just think it’s silly to clutter up the house with old books. We ought to sell them, or give them to the chapel for the next jumble sale.”

      “I don’t think they’d be right for chapel jumble sale,” said her mother dryly.

      “Well, why not try and find out what they’re worth? I think Dad just likes to sit and watch the lamplight on the bindings.”

      Her mother shrugged. For some reason her husband was attracted to the books that the previous owner had left behind, though she had never seen him reading one. Men had whims: Rhys Morris had plenty of them, and you could do nothing but accept them.

      “If he wants to find out, he’ll do it in his own good time. Someday—”

      “Someday!”

      Nora could have choked with disgust. It was always the same. Someday. Someday, someone will mend the front gate, swinging loose on one hinge; someday, someone will see about the hot water system, that has always been queer. Someday…it was the old story.

      She heard her father coming downstairs. She said: “Nothing ever gets done in this house.”

      “A fine mood you’re in this morning, my girl.”

      Nora picked up a cup of tea that had been poured out. She walked over to the small side window, looking down the slope. The narrow lane up to the farm was stifled with snow.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had a bad night, and I feel awful. Mother, don’t you ever feel that this house is getting you down?”

      Her father came in. A cheerful man at most times, he was taciturn and remote in the mornings. He would not waste a word, and there would be no murmur of his deep, characteristic chuckle until breakfast-time. He peered into a cup, added more sugar without tasting the tea, and sat down with a sigh by the table.

      Nora stayed by the window, staring out until her eyes ached. To get away from this house; to go somewhere and see things. But what? This was the sort of place from which you did not break away. She knew the girls of her own age in the district, nearly all farmers’ daughters, tied down until old age: even those who married usually married farmers, and life was still the same, and there was another family in the district, and the same routine to go through in the house—on and on and on.

      She knew that her mother was looking at her. Turning from the window, she said with forced casualness:

      “I wonder why Mr. Jonathan wants to come down now? We don’t usually get visitors at this time of year.”

      Her father got up and opened the door, admitting a knife-edged gust of cold air.

      “Better get the buckets from the dairy,” he said gruffly.

      Nora put her cup back on the table and went into the dairy, the clean, sterilised smell annoying her by its very familiarity. This was all part of it. On her way back through the kitchen she could not resist glancing once more towards the small window. Her mother said gently:

      “No silly ideas, Nora fach. And it’s no good lookin’ out yet: he won’t be here till this afternoon.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      The man who ploughed his way up from the village through the snow drifts, heaped up before and around him like fantastically-shaped meringues, was not suitably dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a dark suit, a sober black overcoat, and a black hat, and looked as though he had come straight here from some city office. He was carrying a small case that brushed against the snow along the side of the lane, and his trousers were soaked up to the knees.

      Nevertheless, he was smiling as he looked up at the farmhouse and the shattered castle beyond. Small, black, and incongruous, he stood at the foot of the slope up to the house and looked with apparent equanimity—almost with satisfaction—at the waist-high drifts through which he had yet to fight his way. About him and below, the dazzling, painfully white glaring fields sloped and reeled away, the village itself almost lost in what appeared as an uneven hummock of snow broken only by occasional grey roofs or patches of street that had been cleared.

      The man pushed onwards. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the front gate of the farm, his face an unhealthy colour. He coughed—a hoarse, smoker’s cough. It took all his strength to open the small gate, cutting a wide swathe through the white carpet that lay evenly and indiscriminately over the front lawn—its untidiness now hidden—and the gravel path. There were no marks of footsteps up to the front door and the ramshackle porch because no one who knew the family ever used the front door. The house was shaped like a large, grey L, two doors opening from the back into the farmyard. Everyone came and went by means of the door that gave access to the kitchen. The path that led around the side of the house by the once ornamental hedge was overgrown in summer, and was now choked with snow. It was rarely used; only strangers came to the front of the house.

      The visitor took his last few steps, glancing around with a smug look of satisfaction, and knocked.

      The use of the large brass knocker invariably created confusion throughout the house. Anyone who knocked at the front door must be a stranger, and that, according to Mrs. Morris, meant bad news. She would turn white, clutch her pinafore to dry her hands—even if they were not wet—and say: “Oh, dear. Now what? And I haven’t done my hair neither.” She would tremble and fiddle with her hair…even today, when she must have known who it would be. In the end it was, as usual, Nora who went to open the door.

      “Good afternoon, Mr. Jonathan. We didn’t expect—”

      “Good afternoon, Miss Morris.”

      “We didn’t really expect you. We thought the weather would have put you off.”

      She pulled the door open wide; it creaked a squeaky protest. Mr. Jonathan entered and stood in the narrow stone passage, holding his case away from his damp legs and grimacing.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ