Читать онлайн «The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories / «Цвет из иных миров» и другие мистические истории»

H.  P. Lovecraft

The Color out of Space and Other Mystery Stories

© Шитова А. В. , адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2020

© ООО «ИД «Антология», 2020

Cool air

So you want to know why I am afraid of draughts of cool air, why I shiver more than others in a cold room, and why I faint when I suddenly feel the evening chill of a mild autumn day. Some people say I react to cold as others react to a bad smell, and maybe it is true. I will tell you about the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me, and you will see for yourselves if it explains my fear.

In the spring of 1923, I had found some hard and low-paid job in the city of New York. I could not pay any big rent, so I began moving from one cheap boarding house to another, looking for a room which would be clean, furnished, and would have a very low price. I soon learned that I had almost no choice, but after some time I finally found a house in West Fourteenth Street which I disliked much less than the others I had seen.

I had been there for three weeks when the first strange incident happened. One evening, at about eight, I heard something dripping onto the floor and suddenly realized that I had been smelling the stench of ammonia for some time.

I looked around and saw that in one corner, on the side toward the street, my ceiling was wet. To find the source of the trouble and stop it, I ran downstairs to inform the landlady, and she told me that the problem would be solved quickly.

“Doctor Muñoz,” she cried as she rushed upstairs with me. “I think he has spilled his chemicals again. He is too sick to take care of himself, getting sicker and sicker all the time, but he will not ask any other doctor for help. He has a very strange sickness: all day he takes bad-smelling baths, and he should never get warm. His little room is full of bottles and machines. He does not work as a doctor now, but he was great once. Even my father in Barcelona heard of him. He never goes out, only on the roof, and my boy Esteban brings him food, and laundry, and medicines, and chemicals – the ammonia that man uses for keeping himself cool!”