Максим Князев – The white door (страница 1)
Максим Князев
The white door
BOOK ONE: THE WHITE DOOR
Book One of The Sentence Trilogy
PROLOGUE: THE ANTIQUE SHOP
The old man had no teeth. That was the first thing
Thomas Keene noticed. The second thing was the
smell—gin and mothballs and something older,
something that might have been grave dirt. The shop
was tucked between a laundromat and a closed-
down video rental in Bangor, Maine, and it looked like
it hadn't seen a customer since the Carter
administration.
Tom had wandered in out of boredom. The divorce
had left him with nothing but time, and time was the
enemy of a man who couldn't write. He'd been
staring at a blank screen for six months. His agent
called it "creative hibernation." His ex-wife called it
"what you deserve."
"Looking for something specific, son?" The old man's
voice was wet, like he had too much saliva and not
enough teeth to hold it back.
Tom shrugged. "Just browsing."
The old man nodded toward the back corner. "Got a
beauty back there. Royal E-6000. Smart machine.
Knows what you want to say before you say it."
Tom almost laughed. A typewriter that knew what he
wanted to say? He'd been a best-selling horror
novelist for fifteen years, and
what he wanted to say anymore.
But he walked to the back anyway. And there it sat.It was sleek, black, and surprisingly modern-looking
for something from the 1980s. The keys were crisp
and clean. The small digital screen glowed faintly,
even though it wasn't plugged in. Tom touched it. The
plastic was warm. Too warm, like it had been sitting in
the sun, even though the shop was cold enough to
see your breath.
"How much?" Tom asked.
The old man showed his gums in what might have
been a smile. "Two hundred. But I'll tell you
something, son. This machine... it chooses its owner.
Not the other way around."
Tom pulled out his wallet. "It's just a typewriter."
The old man's eyes went dark. "That's what they all
say. Right before they start typing."
Tom didn't ask what "they" meant. He handed over
the cash, carried the machine to his car, and drove
back to Jerusalem's Lot. The snow was already
starting to fall.
CHAPTER ONE: TUESDAY
The snow started falling on a Tuesday, which seemed
appropriate. Tuesdays had always been the day when
shit went south for Thomas Keene. His father had
died on a Tuesday. His first marriage had ended on a
Tuesday. And now, on this particular Tuesday in
December, the sky decided to dump three feet of the
white stuff onto the town of Jerusalem's Lot—or 'The
Lot,' as the locals called it, spitting the name out like
a cherry pit.Tom stood at the window of the old farmhouse,
nursing a cup of coffee that had gone cold twenty
minutes ago. He watched the flakes spiral down,
thick as dandruff from God's own scalp. The wind
howled around the eaves, making the old timbers
groan like a man with arthritis getting out of bed. It
was a sound he'd grown used to over the last three
years, ever since the divorce had forced him to buy