Chapter I.IV

Written: August 01, 2023

Translated: September 10, 2023

**F**inally to his ears came the characteristic sound of a subway train rushing along the rails. Galbraith slowly moved away from the column and began to wait for it to stop its movement. However, when the massive iron doors, emitting a loud hiss, helpfully opened the way into the carriages flooded with yellow light, the inspector had to stand at the cold stop for some more time - for he, as a male being, had the right by birth to give way to the better half of humanity.

He watched as mothers picked up their babies and squeezed through the doors of the underground carriage. Very nice, Galbraith thought with sarcasm, he was very lucky to get on the subway just when mothers were rushing home, in order to instill in their children the habit from early childhood that during the lunch break they must sit down at the table and almost forcefully consume tasteless, but so healthy porridge... He understood that in his thirty-one years of life he could no longer remember what it was like to be a child, but, being an ideological bachelor, Galbraith did not particularly respect - or whatever, just despised - whole life in the family circle.

When the inspector was able to enter the carriage and take a seat in the corner, he continued to think about it. Children, for flip's sake. Who are they? Ordinary people who, according to the law, have not yet reached the age of majority. Persons who, by the mere fact of their existence on this earth, bring a lot of trouble to both their parents and others around them. The smaller the creature, the more problems it brings, inspector continued to think, looking at the tacky posters that were pasted on the walls of the carriage. It was funny for him to realize that the longest prison sentences imaginable were associated with these tiny beings... Galbraith caught himself thinking that in his thoughts he had gone so far as to divide all of humanity into two castes - adults and underages, and his attitude towards the latter was not even positive.

- Lord, where am I drifting? - exclaimed Galbraith, forgetting that he was in a crowded subway car.

He heard laughter and caustic comments directed at him. It was a group of several teenagers who seemed amused by his somewhat frightened expression. Galbraith looked at them with the stern look of a servant of the law, but they did not shut up. In fact, why should they be afraid of a man who does not show at all that he works for the police. This is the essence of his work - trying not to attract suspicion, searching for information.

But God will be with them, Galbraith thought about the teenagers calling him names. Still, shouldn't have shouted like that, he needs to control himself in public... The inspector crossed his legs and began to look at the opposite corner of the car. Trying not to pay attention to the nippers' words, Galbraith suddenly felt disturbance begin to circulate through his blood vessels. His subconscious seemed to be screaming to its owner - "Some tragic accident has happened!". It's not clear what exactly and it's not clear when, but anything wrong and inevitable occurred...

Without taking his eyes off the opposite side of the carriage, he realized that a familiar face had come into his field of vision. Glancing over his fellow passengers, he finally settled on a man who, with his head thrown back against the partition, was sleeping in his seat. Galbraith squinted. This man's body swayed rhythmically to the rhythm of the train. The left hand, which had previously been lying on the knees of the dormant, suddenly hung at the moment of the next turn of the carriage and began to sway, like a dry leaf of a tree in the wind, while the lower jaw gradually dropped downwards slowly.

Galbraith, without losing sight of this man who had attracted his attention, thought that he was sleeping like the dead. Along with this thought, the feeling of uneasiness in his veins gradually turned into a burning dread. The inspector began to go over the moments of today in his head, how did it suddenly dawn on him - the face of this man, who at that moment was sleeping at that end of the carriage, he had already seen this morning in the ward at Portland Adventist Medical Center.

Inspector felt as if someone had whispered right into his ear "See him, really see him". Galbraith turned his head around - no, everything is okay. But in his mind, like an obsession, a strong desire arose to go up to this dormant, wake him up and, if he gets scared and runs away, rush after him...

- Looks like somebody is having fun with me, - he muttered quietly.

At the same time, his common sense woke up, and gradually he was able to suppress this wacky wish in himself. And at that time the carriage had already stopped at the stop it needed. Galbraith stood up and, waiting for the mothers and children to come out, looked at the sleeping man. He, without opening his eyes, continued to sit with his mouth open. The inspector went outside and, rising to the surface, began to have a discussion with himself regarding this occurrence. Well, what would he have gotten if he had run up to this man? What, he would ask him "How did you end up here, mister Yonce?", or would have him under surveillance? Neither one nor the other made absolutely no sense. Inspector reassured himself that it could all be that his depressed mood after the meeting was influenced by today's trip to the hospital, easy peasy.

Galbraith, lost in his thoughts, did not even notice how he found himself on Abbouts st. Here is the house, where he lives. Three-story building, made in English style. On the second floor of this house there was his cozy two-room apartment - what else is needed for a police inspector who spends most of his time outside its walls? Having entered the house, he went up to his staircase and, stepping over the threshold, closed the door with a key, after which he did not fail to take off his shoes. Putting his feet into slippers, Galbraith decided that instead of the new patent leather shoes he bought a couple of days ago, it would be better to go to work tomorrow in good old leather loafers. Yes, they don't go particularly well with his strict gray suit, but that's completely not important - he's not going to a fashion exhibition, just to the police department...

After an eventful day, Galbraith did not particularly want to begin studying the materials that were his friend distributed in the chief inspector's office. He just wanted to relax, so when he found himself in his own environment, he didn't waste time. Galbraith went to the kitchen and, filling a small enamel pan with water, put it on the stove. As he picked up the opened package of macaroni and cheese, he recalled with some annoyance the incident at the grocery store today. Well, what he needed to look for was not some pathetic sandwich, but this creation of the hands of McInerney and Rieck... Okay, the inspector reassured himself, he can fill himself up a little with the remaining amount of macaroni, and new products he will buy near the house tomorrow morning. Just so he doesn't faced again with a pickpeanuts, that they fall under the ground...

Before throws macaroni into the water, he had to wait about nine minutes. To avoid standing like a pillar at the stove, Galbraith went into the bedroom and, sitting directly on the carpeted floor, turned on the television. The inspector didn't really care about the contents of the broadcast channels - all he wanted was to fill the silence in his apartment. People's voices and music were quite a good background for such lonely gatherings. It was already dark, but in the bedroom, which was half-lit by the television screen, Galbraith didn't turn on the light - since childhood he had a love for the dark. Memories were fresh in his memory of how he used to climb out of the window at night and run into the yard to climb onto the ladder and sit there, looking at the street, until his father, awakened by the creaking of the shutters, chased him back.

What did little Galbraith get from these nightly forays? Perhaps the realization that the usually crowded streets seemed to die out after dark? Or the pleasant feeling of the night breeze blowing from all sides, which, as it seemed to the boy, at night seemed to become quite tangible and became like moisture hanging in the air? But the child who could answer this was no longer in the world - he was replaced by an adult, unbeliever in the wonders man. More precisely, the faith in them itself had not gone away, but with age it had noticeably dulled and now only very occasionally made itself felt.

Without turning off the television, Galbraith got up from the floor and went to the kitchen, where water was already boiling in the pan that he had put on the stove ten minutes ago. Throwing all the macaroni into boiling water, he stared at their blue cardboard packaging. A He remembered the advertising description of this product - "A comfort food". Well, yes, for typical Americans, this cheese-flavoured macaroni is something so pleasant, nostalgic, something that is familiar to them from childhood... Galbraith smiled gloomily - the magic of similar advertising did not work on him, because he was not an American.

His homeland was Gloucester, the town that gave this world the author of the poem "Invictus". It was there, nearby the river Severn, that Galbraith spent his carefree childhood. In his father's small wooden house, the future Portland police inspector most of the time he spent reading all sorts of books that his mother gave him for his birthdays, and also at times tried to express himself artistically, but alas, the strict father wanted to raise the heir in the same severity as the boy's grandfather raised him, therefore, when the father saw his son doing this, sheets of paper painted with watercolours were immediately sent into the fireplace... It was still a little painful for Galbraith to remember this.

Finishing the macaroni, the cheesy smell of which had already become a little boring to him, the inspector began to decide whether he should now begin to study the material received today from Pharqraut's hands. His daily routine was never particularly disciplined, but Galbraith usually did not allow himself to be lazy, always trying to do his police work even at home. He mainly did this because he suspected that once he got slumped, it would be difficult for him to return to normal work mode, which, being a policeman, he feared just as an electrical appliance fears being disconnected from the electrical network.

However, on this day he decided to cheat his usual rules. His head, overflowing with today's impressions, was practically pulling his entire body down, like a lead ball. "Well", Galbraith said to himself, placing the now empty plate under the stream of water, "I’ll spend tomorrow morning reading the materials". With this thought, he went into the bedroom and, glancing at the television that continued to show some soap opera, picked up the remote control that was lying on the floor and pressed the button. The silence that reigned in the apartment seemed to pierce his eardrums. The inspector turned his head to drive away this feeling and sat down on the bed. For good measure, he thought, he should go to the bathroom now, but as soon as he took off all his clothes, he immediately fell asleep.

The dream he visioned then was quite curious. In one's sleep, he found himself in some huge underground canyon or trench. Standing on a metal platform, the inspector looked into a bottomless pit, from which came a strange hum, as if somewhere there, in the center of the Earth, a wind was blowing. He turned away from the edge and walked towards the underground hangar, which seemed to have grown into the surface of the red rock. As soon as Galbraith approached the heavy doors with strange patterns painted on their metallic surfaces, they immediately climbed up with a hydraulic hiss, allowing a person to go inside. After hesitating for a couple of seconds, he took a step forward - beyond the threshold a corridor went somewhere into the distance, on the walls of which stretched iron pipes and thick electrical cables in multi-coloured plastic sheaths. An eerie blue glow emanated from the tiny, albeit numerous, light bulbs that ran in even rows along the curved ceiling. Galbraith moved forward along the corridor, delving into the impenetrable darkness of this incomprehensible underground structure.

So he walked forward in a completely straight line until he ran into glass, which blocked his further path. Behind it there was a view of a huge room, like a warehouse, where plastic barrels stood in neat rows and cardboard boxes lay disorderly on the floor strewn with broken glass. The exact size of this room was difficult to determine because the darkness obscured the corners, and the only source of light was a dim light bulb hanging from a metal pin on the high ceiling. Galbraith began to look for the entrance to the warehouse, but there was neither a door nor even a small crack in this thick glass. The inspector walked to the very left edge. On the other side he saw a pipe similar to the one that hangs near the walls of houses and serves to drain rainwater. Even from behind the glass, Galbraith could hear a loud seething, which, as he understood, was coming exactly from there. Without taking his eyes off this inappropriate indoors element of the interior, he squatted down.

And then suddenly, as if under pressure, beige and red streams began to flow out of the pipe, looking either like resin or very dense kleister, a paste. They slowly flowed, like some kind of amorphous worms, from the black hole and fell with splashing sounds onto the metal gratings of the floor. Galbraith noticed that this kleister, reaching the floor, instead of spreading out in disorder, on the contrary, began to mix with each other and take on some more or less obvious form. He sat on his haunches and looked at this movement of an incomprehensible semi-liquid substance - this spectacle was both repulsive and captivating with its harmony.

Soon this kleister formed something like paws with four fingers, the tips of which began to darken before observer's eyes, taking the form of short claws. "How similar these are to dog paws", he thought. These limbs moved a little to both sides in order to make room for new streams of substance, which did not stop flowing with a disgusting sound from the pipe, which in Galbraith's mind began to be associated with the birth canal. A kind of grotesque birth of a strange baby, and Galbraith himself plays the role of obstetrician to this creature...

Meanwhile, between the kleisterkind already almost hardened paws, a new clot appeared, slightly extended forward. There were two small ledges protruding from the sides, looking a little like tusks. Suddenly this "head" jerked up, and its surface at the end was drawn inward. The creature was devouring its "flesh"... Galbraith saw how two rows of sharp teeth appeared in place of the burst skin. It turns out that the mouth of this strange creature was hidden behind a thick layer of outer flesh, and only by devouring its edge could the kleisterkind begin to breathe...

It was an extremely disgusting sight, but Galbraith suddenly experienced a strange emotion when the creature began to twitch its legs and shake its eyeless head to the sides. Kleisterkind itself did not make a sound, but the pipe that gave birth to it, with a gurgling sound already familiar to inspector, continued to spew out the material that made up the flesh of this newborn creature, which had already come to life and began to wriggle at the very end of this stream. He clearly wanted to go forward, but begetter him soulless metal structure did not give him such an opportunity. Galbraith suddenly felt something like pity for the kleisterkind, as if he felt himself in the place of this unfortunate, ugly creature who could not really leave the womb, because the legs were still there, hidden inside the pipe that gave life to him...

All of a sudden kleisterkind stopped twitching convulsively and, turning his eyeless head towards inspector, froze in a strange position, like a puppy who had spotted a mouse in the tall grass. Although, to be honest, the tusks, which were already more clearly protruding from the sides of the creature’s mouth, gave it a much greater resemblance to some kind of mammoth, albeit terribly deformed - with grayish-pink skin, devoid of any hair, but with clawed paws... Yes, the parents would feel uneasy if they looked at their son now, Galbraith thought, as if we were not talking about a strange creature from nightmares, but about an ordinary human baby.

Those were last thoughts of inspector. Kleisterkind, who had previously been motionless in one place, suddenly jerked forward. His front half of his body - that is, his paws, head and what could be called his chest - were torn away from the stream of thick liquid flowing from the pipe. With a deafening grinding sound - like the squeal of an animal processed by an electronic filter - kleisterkind broke through the thick glass and sank its sharp teeth into the neck of Galbraith, who was taken in by the silent wonder...

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