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Stephen King & Peter Straub, Black House

Doch fast eine Woche, immerhin. Das Buch hatte sich nicht so fest eingeprägt wie 'The Talisman', aber ich erkannte etliche Passagen wieder, manche kamen mir sogar kürzer vor oder leicht anders als in meiner Erinnerung. Nur die richtig verstörenden Teile im Showdown, u.a. Henrys Ende (warum müssen immer die besten Charaktere draufgehen?) hatte ich wohl verdrängt, zumindest war mir davon fast garnichts mehr präsent.

What an extraordinary moment; he is laughin while he rubs tears off his face. The paradox suddenly makes him feel as though he is being torn in half. Beauty and terror, beauty and pain - there is no way out of the conundrum. Exhausted, strung out, Jack cannot hold off his awareness of the world's essential fragility, its constant, unstoppable movement toward death, or the deeper awareness that in that movement lies the source of all its meaning. Do you see all this heartstopping beauty? Look closely, because in a moment your heart will stop.
In the next second, he remembers the swarm of golden bees that descended upon him: it was against this that they comforted him, exactly this, he tells himself. The blessing of blessings that vanish. What you love, you must love all the harder because someday it will be gone. It felt true, but it did not feel like all of the truth.

(Stephen King & Peter Straub, Black House, 2001
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