Lurker

Начало книги

STEFAN PETRUCHA dedicates this book to the dead—Martin, Felicia, Amelia, Michael, Frank, Mary, Joseph L., and the many others he does not know. He hopes you’ve all got a great game going somewhere.

PROLOGUE

At the end of a long field of dead grass otherwise surrounded by forest, the six-story Georgian mansion jutted up on the horizon. Huge and vacant, glass gone from most windows, it seemed held up by the pregnant clouds that swirled in the darkening sky. Its rotted front doors, tall and wide enough for an SUV to pass through, were bracketed by flattened columns. Atop these sat a triangular cornice, the letters on its lowest beam still reading Lockwood Orphanage—a name that had seemingly outlived its purpose, for now the house appeared as abandoned as its former occupants.

When evening approached and the rain began, when the winds yowled and the thunder boomed, the dark inside the gutted rooms became a great and wonderful thing. Deeper than the storm, deeper than the growing night, it covered everything completely: moldering furniture, rotted toys and schoolbooks, the history, the decay, even the bits of nature that had creeped in over the years.

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