The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy полностью

The twins were the colour of the sheet. Their mouths were wide open and their screams tore inwards at their bowels for lack of natural vent. They had become congealed with an icy horror, their hair, disentangling from knot and coil, had risen like pampas grass that lifts in a dark light when gusts prowl shuddering and presage storm. They could not even cling more closely together, for their limbs were weighted with cold stone. It was the end. The Thing scraped the ceiling with its head and moved forward noiselessly in one piece. Having no human possibility of height, it had no height. It was not a tall ghost – it was immeasurable; Death walking like an element.

Steerpike had realized that unless something was done it would be only a matter of time before the twins, through the loose meshwork of their vacant brains, divulged the secret of the Burning. However much they were in his power he could not feel sure that the obedience which had become automatic in his presence would necessarily hold when they were among others. As he now saw it, it seemed that he had been at the mercy of their tongues ever since the Fire – and he could only feel relief that he had escaped detection – for until now he had had hopes that vacuous as they were, they would be able to understand the peril in which, were any suspicion to be attached to them, they would stand. But he now realized that through terrorism and victimization alone could loose lips be sealed. And so he had lain awake and planned a little episode. Phosphorus, which along with the poisons he had concocted in Prunesquallor’s dispensary, and which as yet he had found no use for – his swordstick, as yet unsheathed, save when alone he polished the slim blade, and a sheet. These were his media for the concoction of a walking death.

And now he was in their room. He could watch them perfectly through the slit in the sheet. If he did not speak now, before the hysterics began, then they would hear nothing, let alone grasp his meaning. He lifted his voice to a weird and horrible pitch.

‘I am Death!’ he cried. ‘I am all who have died. I am the death of Twins. Behold! Look at my face. It is naked. It is bone. It is Revenge. Listen. I am the One who strangles.’

He took a further pace towards them. Their mouths were still open and their throats strained to loose the clawing cry.

‘I come as Warning! Warning! Your throats are long and white and ripe for strangling. My bony hands can squeeze all breath away … I come as Warning! Listen!’

There was no alternative for them. They had no power.

‘I am Death – and I will talk to you – the Burners. Upon that night you lit a crimson fire. You burned your brother’s heart away! Oh, horror!’

Steerpike drew breath. The eyes of the twins were well nigh upon their cheekbones. He must speak very simply.

‘But there is yet a still more bloody crime. The crime of speech. The crime of Mentioning, Mentioning. For this, I murder in a darkened room. I shall be watching. Each time you move your mouths I shall be watching. Watching. Watching with my enormous eyes of bone. I shall be listening. Listening, with my fleshless ears: and my long fingers will be itching … itching. Not even to each other shall you speak. Not of your crime. Oh, horror! Not of the crimson Fire.

‘My cold grave calls me back, but shall I answer it? No! For I shall be beside you for ever. Listening, listening; with my fingers itching. You will not see me … but I shall be here … there … and wherever you go … for evermore. Speak not of Fire … or Steerpike … Fire – or Steerpike, your protector, for the sake of your long throats … Your long white throats.’

Steerpike turned majestically. The skull had tilted a little on the point of the swordstick, but it did not matter. The twins were ice bound in an arctic sea.

As he moved solemnly through the doorway, something grotesque, terrifying, ludicrous in the slanting angle of the skull – as though it were listening … gave emphasis to all that had gone before.

As soon as he had closed the door behind him he shed himself of the sheet and, wrapping the skull in its folds, hid it from view among some lumber that lay along the wall of the passage.

There was still no sound from the room. He knew that it would be fruitless to appear the same evening. Whatever he said would be lost. He waited a few moments, however, expecting the hysteria to find a voice, but at length began his return journey. As he turned the corner of a distant passageway, he suddenly stopped dead. It had begun. Dulled as it was by the distance and the closed doors, it was yet horrifying enough – the remote, flat, endless screaming of naked panic.

When, on the evening of the next day, he visited them he found them in bed. The old woman who smelt so badly had brought them their meals. They lay close together and were obviously very ill. They were so white that it was difficult to tell where their faces ended and the long pillow began.