Читать книгу The Secrets of Names. Snow Chronicles. Book 1 - Ар'лан ис'Дрекхэм - Страница 2

That night, nobody in the house on the embankment was properly asleep.

At least, that was how it seemed to Domino, lying on the windowsill with his eyes mostly shut and one ear turned to the world. Out by the river, the streetlamps were trembling. Not in the ordinary way, when the wind worried them or a car sent light sliding across the glass. This was different. It was as if the lamps had suddenly become doubtful, and were no longer sure whether shining was really their business.

Domino would not have put it like that, of course. He was a cat, not a philosopher. Still, he knew when a thing was wrong. And tonight, something was.

For one thing, the hall clock had stopped.

It was an old clock, and usually it ticked with a faint, put-upon effort, as if counting time was work it had never properly agreed to. Now it was silent. Its hands stood fixed at half past eleven, and nobody had noticed. Not even Vera, who normally heard every creak and whisper in the flat, chiefly because suspicious noises gave her an excellent reason for not going to sleep. Tonight she had gone off at once, as neatly as a lamp being switched out.

On the bedside table, her phone lay face-up in the dark. Domino watched the little bright shapes on the screen fade, one by one. First the messages disappeared. Then the apps. Then there was nothing left but a black pane of glass with the moon in it.

Domino dropped from the sill without a sound. Cats can do that when they choose, especially if they have decided the floor ought not to be told they are there.

He padded over and sniffed the phone.

It smelled as it should: warm plastic, smooth glass, the faint familiar trace of Vera’s hand cream. And under that was something else. Something thin and cold, like the draught from a window that looks shut until you go near it.

Domino’s eyes narrowed.

In the dark mirror of the screen, where there had been only moonlight a moment ago, something moved.

Not his reflection.

This thing had no tail. No ears. It was too smooth altogether – blank and pale, like a sheet of paper waiting for words that had never been written.

One of Domino’s ears flicked back. Behind him, from the bed, came the soft sound of Vera breathing.

Only it was too soft. Too even. Too peaceful. As if her lungs were taking orders from somewhere else.

Very slowly, Domino turned his head.

In the corner where the wardrobe shadow joined the shadow on the wall, the air had gone thick. Not dark, exactly. Dense. As though the room had folded there, and hidden something in the crease. And inside that thickness was a tiny pulsing, so faint that he might almost have imagined it – like a heart trying very hard not to be heard.

He ought to wake Vera.

That was simple enough. He had done it dozens of times before: jump on the pillow, push his nose against her cheek, tread once or twice on her shoulder if she was being particularly difficult. But now he found he could not move.

It was not fear. Domino knew fear, and this was not it. It was the certainty that if he broke the silence, something would answer. And whatever answered would not use a voice.

«Mrr,» he said under his breath.

The quilt seemed to swallow the sound.

The silence quivered.

And for one brief second Domino saw it plainly: a colourless shape standing in the corner, faceless and still, turned towards the bed where Vera slept.

Then it was gone.

At once the room came right again. The hall clock began ticking. Vera’s phone blinked back into its ordinary lock screen. Vera herself rolled over and muttered something sleepy about faceless things.

For a long while Domino stayed where he was, staring at the empty corner.

Then he sprang on to the bed and curled himself behind Vera’s knees, tucked close as a guard posted in a nest.

That night Vera dreamed that a cat was defending a girl from a pale, faceless shadow.

Domino did not sleep until dawn. He lay listening while the world outside slowly filled up again with its usual noises: the river shifting in the dark, a train far away, and at last the first tram grumbling into morning.