Setterfield Diane by The Thirteenth Tale

Author:The Thirteenth Tale [Tale, The Thirteenth]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Published: 2013-03-10T16:20:30+00:00

We stepped gingerly through the debris of rotting food on the floor if the old nursery, stirring clouds of flies up into the air as we passed. Charlie had been living like an animal. Dirty plates covered with mold were on the floor, on the mantelpiece, on chairs and on the table. The bedroom door was ajar. With the end of the battering ram he still had in his hand, John nudged the door cautiously, and a startled rat came scurrying out over our feet. It was a gruesome scene. More flies, more decomposing food and worse: The man had been ill. A pile of dried, fly-spotted vomit encrusted the rug on the floor. On the table by the ed was a heap of bloody handkerchiefs and the Missus’s old darning needle.

The bed was empty. Just crumpled, filthy sheets stained with blood id other human vileness.

We did not speak. We tried not to breathe, and when, of necessity, we inhaled through our mouths, the sick, repugnant air caught in our throats and made us retch. Yet we had not had the worst of it. There was one more room. John had to steel himself to open the door to the bathroom.

Even before the door was fully open, we sensed the horror of it. Before it snagged in my nostrils, my skin seemed to smell it, and a cold sweat bloomed all over my body. The toilet was bad enough. The lid was down but could not quite contain the overflowing mess it was supposed to cover. But that was nothing. For in the bath—John took a sharp step back and would have stepped on me if I had not, at the same moment, taken two steps back myself. In the bath was a dark swill of bodily effluence, the stink of which sent John and me racing to the door, back through the rat droppings and the flies, out into the corridor, down the stairs and out of doors.

I was sick. On the green grass, my pile of yellow vomit looked fresh and clean and sweet.

‘All right,“ said John, and he patted my back with a hand that was still trembling.

The Missus, having followed at her own hurried shuffle, approached us across the lawn, questions all over her face. What could we tell her?

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