JК
Desperation :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 406 из 422It had seemed wiser not to tell the others that, though. Safer.
Now he could hear the soft groaning sound of which David had spoken: the squall and shift of hornfels, as if the very earth were speaking. Protesting his intrusion. And now he could see a dim zigzag of red light up ahead. Hard to tell how far away in the dark. The smell was stronger, too, and clearer: cold ashes. To his left, a skeleton-probably not Chin—ese, judging by its size—knelt against the wall as if it had died praying. Abruptly it turned its head and favored Johnny Marinville with its dead, toothy grin.
— Get out while there’s still time. Tak ah wan. Tak ah lah.
Johnny punted the skull as if it were a football. It disin-tegrated (almost vaporized) into bone-fragments and he hurried on toward the red light, which was coming through a rift in the wall. The hole looked just big enough for him to squeeze through.
He stood outside it, looking into the light, not able to see much from the drift side, hearing David’s voice in his head almost as a trance-subject must hear the voice of the hypnotist who has put him under: At ten minutes past one on the afternoon of September twenty-first, the guys at the face broke through into what they at first thought was a cave…
Johnny tossed the flashlight aside-he wouldn’t need it anymore-and squeezed through the gap. As he passed into the an talc, that murmuring elevator-sound they had heard at the entrance to the drift seemed to fill his head with whispering voices… enticing, cajoling, forbidding. All around him, turning the an tak chamber into a fan-tastic hollow column lit in dim scarlet tones, were carved stone faces: wolf and coyote, hawk and eagle, rat and scorpion. From the mouth of each protruded not another animal but an amorphous,
reptilian shape Johnny could barely bring himself to look at… and could not really see, in any case. Was it Tak. The Tak at the bottom of the mi. Did it matter.
How had it gotten Ripton.
If it was stuck dOwn there, exactly how had it gotten Ripton.
He suddenly realized he was crossing the an tak, walking toward the mi. He tried to stop his legs and dis-covered he couldn’t. He tried to imagine Cary Ripton making the same discovery and found it was easy.
Easy.
The long bags of ANFO swung back and forth against his chest.
Now he could hear the soft groaning sound of which David had spoken: the squall and shift of hornfels, as if the very earth were speaking. Protesting his intrusion. And now he could see a dim zigzag of red light up ahead. Hard to tell how far away in the dark. The smell was stronger, too, and clearer: cold ashes. To his left, a skeleton-probably not Chin—ese, judging by its size—knelt against the wall as if it had died praying. Abruptly it turned its head and favored Johnny Marinville with its dead, toothy grin.
— Get out while there’s still time. Tak ah wan. Tak ah lah.
Johnny punted the skull as if it were a football. It disin-tegrated (almost vaporized) into bone-fragments and he hurried on toward the red light, which was coming through a rift in the wall. The hole looked just big enough for him to squeeze through.
He stood outside it, looking into the light, not able to see much from the drift side, hearing David’s voice in his head almost as a trance-subject must hear the voice of the hypnotist who has put him under: At ten minutes past one on the afternoon of September twenty-first, the guys at the face broke through into what they at first thought was a cave…
Johnny tossed the flashlight aside-he wouldn’t need it anymore-and squeezed through the gap. As he passed into the an talc, that murmuring elevator-sound they had heard at the entrance to the drift seemed to fill his head with whispering voices… enticing, cajoling, forbidding. All around him, turning the an tak chamber into a fan-tastic hollow column lit in dim scarlet tones, were carved stone faces: wolf and coyote, hawk and eagle, rat and scorpion. From the mouth of each protruded not another animal but an amorphous,
reptilian shape Johnny could barely bring himself to look at… and could not really see, in any case. Was it Tak. The Tak at the bottom of the mi. Did it matter.
How had it gotten Ripton.
If it was stuck dOwn there, exactly how had it gotten Ripton.
He suddenly realized he was crossing the an tak, walking toward the mi. He tried to stop his legs and dis-covered he couldn’t. He tried to imagine Cary Ripton making the same discovery and found it was easy.
Easy.
The long bags of ANFO swung back and forth against his chest.