Brian Lumley Necroscope 02 Wamphyri!

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one. Perhaps we're in for a storm.' At the foot of the door a bolt dragged
squealingly along the groove it had worn in old stone flags, and thudded down
into its bolthole as the vicar gave the door a final push. 'There!' He wiped
his hands, nodded his satisfaction.
'Not such a boring old fart after all,'
all three thought the identical thought as he led them inside and up to the
font.
In his time, the old clergyman had baptised Georgina; he'd married her, too,
and was aware that she was now a widow. This was the church her parents had
attended for most of their declining years, the church her father had attended
as a boy and young man. There was no need for long preliminaries, and so he
began at once. As George and Anne put the cot down, and as Georgina took up
Yulian in her arms, he began to intone: 'Hath this child been already
baptised, or no?'
'No,' Georgina shook her head.
'Dearly beloved,' the vicar began in earnest, 'foreasmuch as all men are
conceived and born in sin - '
'Sin,'
thought Georgina, the old man's words flowing over her.
'Yulian wasn't conceived in sin.'
This had ever been a part of the service that got her back up.
'Sin, indeed! Conceived in joy and love and sweetest sweet pleasure, yes -
unless pleasure were to be construed as sin...'
She looked down at Yulian in her arms; he was alert, staring at the vicar as
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he mumbled over his book. It was a funny expression on the baby's face: not
quite vacant, not exactly a drool.
Somehow intense. They had all kinds of looks, babies.
'... that thou wilt mercifully look upon this child; wash him, sanctify him
with the Holy Ghost;
that he, being - '
The Holy Ghost. Ghosts had stirred under those stirless trees on the cruciform
hills, but in no way holy ones. Unholy ones!
Thunder rumbled distantly and the high stained glass windows brightened
momentarily from a far flash of lightning before falling into deeper gloom. A
light burned over the font, however, sufficient for the vicar's eyes behind
their thick lenses. He shivered visibly as he read his lines, for suddenly the
temperature had seemed to fall dramatically.
The old man paused for a moment, looked up and blinked. His eyes went from the
faces of the three adults to the baby, paused there for a moment, blinked
rapidly. He looked at the light over the font, then at the high windows. For
all his shivering, sweat gleamed on his brow and upper lip.
'I... I...' he said.
'Are you all right?' George was concerned. He took the vicar's arm.
'A cold,' the old man tried to smile, only succeeding in looking sick. His
lips seemed to stick to his teeth, which were false and rather loose, and he
was immediately apologetic. 'I'm sorry, but this is not really surprising. A
draughty place, you know? But don't worry, I won't let you down. We'll get
this finished. It just came on so quickly, that's all.' The sick smile
twitched from his face.
'After this,' said Anne, 'you should spend what's left of the weekend in bed!'
'I believe I will, my dear.' Fumblingly, the vicar went back to his text.
Georgina said nothing. She felt the strangeness. Something was unreal, out of
focus. Did churches frown? This one was frowning. It had been hostile from the
moment they'd arrived. That's what was wrong with the vicar: he could feel it
too, but he didn't know what it was.
'But how do know what it is?'
I
Georgina wondered.
'Have I felt it before?'
'... They brought young children to Christ, that he should touch them; and his
disciples rebuked those that brought them...'
Georgina felt the church groaning around her, trying to expel her. No, trying
to expel... Yulian?
She looked at the baby and he looked back: his face broke into that unsmile
which small babies smile. But his eyes were fixed, steady, unblinking. Even as
she stared at him, she saw those darling eyes swivel in their sockets to gaze
full upon the old vicar. Nothing wrong with that - it was just that it had
looked so deliberate.
'Yulian is ordinary!'
Georgina denied what she was thinking. She'd had this feeling before and
denied it, and now she must do it again.
'He is ordinary!'
It was her, not the baby. She was blaming him for Ilya. It was the only
explanation.
She glanced at George and Anne, and they smiled back reassuringly. Didn't they
feel the cold, the strangeness? They obviously thought she was concerned about
the vicar, the service. Other than that, they felt nothing. Oh, maybe they
felt how draughty the place was, but that was all. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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