kirik82: переводы

→The darkness split in two the instant I plunged into it. I glimpsed a fleeing something or other to the right, darting down the side of the nave.

→I raced at the coagulated, blackness, shouting my head off. I've no idea what I shouted. Some token defiance, I suppose.

→Another flip of the coin and I'd have run in the opposite direction just as fast.

→Fear can make you act like a hero as easily as a coward. The spun of terror drove me to attack, not retreat.

→That's when I tasted raw dread on my tongue.

→Let's just say the back of the church was black as sin.

→Then the blindingly obvious struck me. If I hadn't been enfeebled by my week in Limbo I would have realized earlier. There were scores of candles in the rest of the church. More than enough to enlighten the blackness around the door. As they put it in the very worst of novels - some blasphemous, tenebrous miasma lay upon the benighted air.

→I admit I was scared. Maybe you think you wouldn't have been. But you weren't there. I hesitated, not knowing wether to advance or retreat.

→Answer came there none, as the poet would say. But there was a powerful sence of - what shall I call it - BAD PRESENCE. Yes, a bad presence in the dark at the back of the church.

→"Anyone there?" I called out.

→The waiting game got too much for my jangled nerves.

→Nothing.

→I waited there, near the alter rails, for someone to move, speak, even BREATHE...

→Although two individuals acting in synchronicity, extinguishing at least twenty flames each, and all in a microsecond, was as wild a notion as a single man with twenty-foot-span arms.

→I spun round at the instant the back of the church went dark in a sputter of dozens of candles. There were two candle-racks at the rear of the church, one each side of the door, some twenty feet apart. And the candles went out at the same moment. Whoever was back there had quenched the flames SIMULTANEOUSLY. Then I thought, there must be two people back there.

→When you're inside a church, you walk quietly, don't you? I moved softly all the way down the nave eyes fixed on the alter. Then I heard muffled steps behind me.

→I'm SURE I wasn't.

→The door of St Septimus was open. Wide open. At first I thought there was a late service, but I discovered the lights where off when I slipped inside. There were plenty of candles, congregated on the alter, in shrines, at the feet of statues. Not a soul in sight, and those lighted candles. What church leaves it's doors wide open at night with the light off and the candles burning? Make sense to you? I know I wasn't mad at the moment.

→Imagination, you say? The imagination of a madman? I don't think so. You weren't there. You don't know what happened next.

→I went out three, maybe four hour ago. I must have eaten - my stomach feels full. Enough of that. I went to the church - to St Septimus. While I was climbing the Italian Steps I heard following footsteps. Didn't take any notice at first - no reasons to. Then I stumbled over a step. The footfalls stopped. I looked back into the dark. The dark was too dark, it hid whoever was there. I carried on. The tracking footsteps started again. I stopped. They stopped. I continued on. They followed. Just like in the movies.