Mammoth Books Presents More Than Human by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472102461
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

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And something a little over a month later – after reading in my Exeter newspaper about a hotel fire in a certain resort: an unsolved case of arson in a disused, derelict building, according to a police report – I called McCann on the number he’d given me to find out what he knew.

“Aye, that old place on the hill,” he told me, guardedly I thought. “I was in the bar and heard the sirens. Janet was out in the town doin’ some late shoppin’ when it went up. She came in and we watched the blaze taegether. But it was arson, definitely. Why, we could smell the petrol fumes right down there on the balcony o’ room number seven! And do ye know what? That poor woman’s been right as rain ever since!”

So there you go. I’ve told myself I can stay off the booze and avoid further imaginary confrontations, or I can take the occasional drink and suffer the consequences, whatever.

But you know, when my mind is clear and the night is dark, I lie in my bed and turn things over in my head, and then it’s as if I am fully in touch with unnatural Nature. I’ve heard of the octopuses that imitate coconuts to “stroll” on their dangling tentacles through dangerous shallows. I’ve read of insects that imitate leaves, and seahorse fishes that are indistinguishable from the seaweeds they live in. There are so many kinds of insects, plants and animals that pretend for their security or, as often as not, their fell purposes to be other than they are. And there are thousands of small species that aren’t even catalogued as yet.

And that’s only the small species . . .

As for me and my problem, if indeed I have a problem other than the alcohol, can it be coincidence, pure and simple? Or is it that I am in fact a lodestone, a lightning-rod for the weird and the wonderful? Because if the latter is true, then it seems I’m actually destined to be drawn to such things: to these thin people, these clowns-on-stilts, these nuns and nonesuches.

In which case so be it.

But if I can’t avoid them, you can at least be sure I’ll be looking out for them!

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