JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 333 из 359They have pressed the wrong button,too many times. They have been seized by those who shuffle through the caverns, and they have been . . . treated. Now they ride the cages. They never speak, and they cannot meet your gaze. They stare up at the numbers as they light and then go off, riding up and down even after night has fallen. Their clothes are clean. There is a special dry cleaner who does the work. Once you saw one of them, and her eyes were filled with screams.
London is a city filled with narrow, secure stairways.
And, finally: H is for HAMADRYAD The Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions of hamadryad. The first is: a wood nymph that lives and dies in her tree. The second is: a venemous, hooded serpent of India.
The third definition is improbable. None of them mentions the mythic origins of the word.
The tree in which the Serpent lived was the hamadryad. Eve was poisoned. The wood of which the cross was made was the hamadryad. Jesus did not rise, he never died. The ark was composed of cubits of lumber cut from the hamadryad. You will find no sign of the vessel on top of Mt. Ararat. It sank. Toothpicks in Chinese restaurants should be avoided at all costs.
So now . . . tell me. Did you hear it? The sound of one hand clapping in thin air?
10
I began this chapter-one hundred and twenty-four manuscript pages and two months ago-by saying that it would be impossible to effect an overview of horror fiction during the last thirty years without writing a whole book on the subject, and that is as true now as it was two months and all those pages ago. All I've been able to do here is to mention some books in the genre that I like, and hopefully draw short arrows in the direction these novels and stories seem to point. I haven't discussed I Am Legend , but if you should be intrigued enough to read The Shrinking Man as a result of what I've said here, you'll probably get to it, and find Matheson's unmistakable trademarks on that book as well: his interest in restricting character to a single person under pressure so that character can be fully examined, his emphasis on courage in adversity, his mastery of terror against what appears to be a normal, everyday backdrop. I haven't discussed the work of Roald Dahl or John Collier or Jorge Luis Borges, but if you exhaust Harlan Ellison's current stock of offbeat, jivey fantasy, you will find these others, and in them you will find many of Ellison's interests repeated, particularly his examination of man at his worst, most venal . . . and his best, most courageous and true.
London is a city filled with narrow, secure stairways.
And, finally: H is for HAMADRYAD The Oxford English Dictionary has three definitions of hamadryad. The first is: a wood nymph that lives and dies in her tree. The second is: a venemous, hooded serpent of India.
The third definition is improbable. None of them mentions the mythic origins of the word.
The tree in which the Serpent lived was the hamadryad. Eve was poisoned. The wood of which the cross was made was the hamadryad. Jesus did not rise, he never died. The ark was composed of cubits of lumber cut from the hamadryad. You will find no sign of the vessel on top of Mt. Ararat. It sank. Toothpicks in Chinese restaurants should be avoided at all costs.
So now . . . tell me. Did you hear it? The sound of one hand clapping in thin air?
10
I began this chapter-one hundred and twenty-four manuscript pages and two months ago-by saying that it would be impossible to effect an overview of horror fiction during the last thirty years without writing a whole book on the subject, and that is as true now as it was two months and all those pages ago. All I've been able to do here is to mention some books in the genre that I like, and hopefully draw short arrows in the direction these novels and stories seem to point. I haven't discussed I Am Legend , but if you should be intrigued enough to read The Shrinking Man as a result of what I've said here, you'll probably get to it, and find Matheson's unmistakable trademarks on that book as well: his interest in restricting character to a single person under pressure so that character can be fully examined, his emphasis on courage in adversity, his mastery of terror against what appears to be a normal, everyday backdrop. I haven't discussed the work of Roald Dahl or John Collier or Jorge Luis Borges, but if you exhaust Harlan Ellison's current stock of offbeat, jivey fantasy, you will find these others, and in them you will find many of Ellison's interests repeated, particularly his examination of man at his worst, most venal . . . and his best, most courageous and true.