скачать книгу бесплатно
Who knew what happened to the girl but at that moment she was interested in depths of her mind? What if Kharon would come to her and she would be able to know who he was? One part of her was waiting for an adventure, the other was laughing aloud. If Vasilisa had come to Vic and said that she was going to raise a ghost, Victoria would never miss the opportunity to laugh at her friend.
Finally, the girl tore herself off the laptop and got dressed. Suddenly she stopped in tracks like a statue. The girl was preoccupied with a heap of questions, prowling her mind. The first question was how to call a thing if you didn’t know anything about it? What was he? A deuce? A vampire? A demon? An angel? What was he? The second one was what you needed to use to summon him? Maybe to do that obeah you would need a glass frog leg or an oarfish fish-maw… Vic didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know how to read in Latin that text written on the medieval parchment. Fortunately, the Latin reading issue could be resolved with the help of a dictionary and unfortunately things were worse with gills and legs.
Vic was gazing at drawn circles and symbols for a long time and then her subconsciousness gave a hint – that picture had to be re-drawn on the floor! Yeah, sure! That’s what it had to be. But what to use? Highlighter? If Olga Vladimirovna saw it, she would send her daughter into an asylum with no delay, and, perhaps thanks to good connections, she would be placed into a good ward. Maybe chalk? But there was no chalk. That was okay, where would the chalk come from?
Why did the circle have to be on the floor exactly? It could be minimized…
The girl took an ordinary pencil, sat to the table and re-drew the even circle onto the table, in size of 30-40 centimetres. She put into it all the symbols, drew more circles inside of it, placed signs, numerals and, being satisfied, started to wait.
She had to read the spell! It could take a lot of time to sit and wait, for life even, for something to happen. Vic took the paper and started reading written words with underlined stress.
She read the text several times, but nothing changed: not the weather, nor voices, neither lightning… Having sighed Vic declaimed the text slowly and started waiting again. Nothing happened. What did she expect? She should forget it, she just wanted to have fun.
The girl rose from her chair, covered the shamanistic circles and she would have gone to the kitchen to have breakfast, doing magic she quite forgot that she had eaten nothing, but she failed to leave her room as she bumped into a man, stumbling against his chest of steel with her forehead.
You might have said that the man scared the crap out of Vic – but it would have been nothing. She sweated, felt sick, her legs were shaking… She was backing slowly, keeping her eyes locked on the man. She had never been so scared before! There was a reason for the fear. There was a man in her flat, in her room, near her bed… The girl could hardly breathe, she seemed to be almost choked. She wanted to ask what the hell he was doing in her room, but her tongue was stuck. She wasn’t able to get if the tongue was in her mouth. The fear went right through her. The horror reached her legs, Victoria almost didn’t feel her heart beating. It didn’t just leave her cold feet, but it seemed to leave her body at all…
But the great horror began next. Shitted blue lights, her mind was about to guess what the man was in the room!
‘…It can’t be’ her whisper held an edge of fear, while she was backing with no understanding that there was a wall and radiator behind and no way to escape.
That was impossible! Even in that exact moment she could not believe her eyes: the man could not appear from nowhere just because a text was read. Someone was kidding her. Someone who knew about the book and the note in it, and someone was putting her on. That was Daniel!
Suddenly an idea dawned on her that the young man probably hadn’t gone any business trip but sent a man to put the fear of God into his girl. But no. That was too much and unreal. It was more unreal than a real man appearing in her flat. No. she couldn’t believe! Could she be out of her mind?
The girl was blinking, trying to drive away that intrusive image, but it proved very difficult. He was standing without moving, gazing into her eyes and his look was so terrifying and cold that Vic was more afraid that it could be possible.
The man was silent, and his eyes burned into her. He was sullen, maybe even angry. Being in a stupor of dismay she perceived his face to be very handsome. His amber-brown eyes burned into the girl’s face and eyes. His mouth was screwed up and there was no hint at a hidden smile. He had black hair and his fringe was long, hung down about his eyes but didn’t stop him from destroying the girl with his heavy stare… He was too attractive and at the same time her forehead broke out in a cold sweat.
The terrible agony of fear consumed her, as Victoria realized: it was something before her. Was it alive? What kind of substance was it? How to accept the creature? An animal? A human?
‘What are you?’ she whispered not wanting to ask anything.
The man was like a stone sculpture. Was he capable of speaking? What if he had a special alien language? The girl kept on sitting under the table and built the guesses.
‘Whom have you conjured up?’ he asked in a low but secure tone.
‘Me?’ her voice trembled. ‘No one. I’ve conjured no one.’
‘Kharon!’ he said loudly.
‘Kharon?’ the girl re-asked, got surprised as if she had heard the name for the first time.
The man smiled, with impressive walk he came up to the girl, sitting on the floor, took her hand and clasped in his arms, held her close.
‘You don’t know whom you’ve conjured up, do you, Victoria?’ he whispered in her ear.
The girl was captured by a strange feeling. She had never felt before. Something was embracing her, touching her, speaking with her but the primal instinct to be feared was gone. She suddenly became so light and easy. She just wanted him to go on holding her closer to him… Idiot!
‘No’ Vic said softly.
She didn’t know what was going on with her, why she became flabby like a washed handkerchief, in some demonic creature’s arms.
‘Oh, Victoria’ he said, pulling her closer to him, ‘An incubus is in your flat and you seem to have no idea what you’ve done, girl, have you?’
She shook her head, but the fear wasn’t coming back for some reason. In the embrace of the man she felt so peacefully. The creature smelled of sex…
‘You’ve called a demon to you, Victoria… With your blood. Why?’
‘With my blood?’ like being high Vic re-asked without understanding anything.
She didn’t cut her veins and let the blood run. Could the demon miss the flat?
He let her go and followed her leg with his eyes. There was a cold single track of blood on her ankle. Where was it from? Victoria exactly remembered not to cut there… Suddenly she got why the blood was there. While she was taking a shower, she could cut with the razor by accident and didn’t even notice it.
‘You don’t remember why the blood is there?’ he asked slyly.
Then Kharon appeared near her. All it took was one soft, but rapid hand movement and the girl turned out to be in bed. The demon stroked her leg, rained kisses upon her inner side of thigh. Vic was hardly capable of managing invading emotions.
‘…Victoria…That was the steel…the sharp one…Cut your little leg when you were in the bath’
The man touched the cut with his lips. She could read a craving in his eyes, but the girl didn’t understand the craving for what? She wanted to wave him away, but her hands didn’t listen to her. On the contrary they embraced the man, wanted to be touched. The warmth of his lips touching went through her body like electricity with a minimum voltage.
But Kharon stopped. Having gazed the girl with cloudy eyes he got up and stared at her again. He was serious.
‘I can take your life for one millisecond’ he grabbed the girl and she slung in his hands like a kitten. ‘Do you need your life?’
Fear came back imminently. Her body was numb, horror paralyzed her mind. The girl stopped getting what was going on: firstly, she was starving with an idiotic desire to bed with the mystic man, secondly, she was in cold sweat because of fear.
‘Yes, I do’ she answered under breath.
‘Do you?’ he whispered being surprised.
His face expression was changing and frightened her, Victoria couldn’t follow up any exact emotion. She got the feeling that Kharon didn’t know how to rule his face as if he put on masks and observe his body and mimic abilities.
‘If your life is so precious then why did you read the text on the paper?’
‘I didn’t believe…I didn’t know you…You exist. That you would come’
‘You? Me?’ Kharon laughed.
He let the girl go and walked around the room, casting treacherous glances at Victoria.
‘Have I frightened you, human child?’ Kharon came up and took the girl’s hand. ‘You should not be afraid of me. I’ve been created to bring great pleasure… at a price. Are you ready to pay me?’
Kharon gently kissed the girl, investigating every inch of her neck with his lips. Vic closed her eyes and left the reality again. The demon didn’t stop driving her crazy, burning her skin, charming with his words. She was almost choke because of unexpected pleasure and enjoyment which the creature was bringing to her, when Kharon stopped.
‘Are you ready to pay me?’ he asked the question again. ‘I shall keep on… I shall show you these things none of men will be ready to show you. I shall open the arras into light-hearted enjoyment, that you will never be able to come up from. I shall present you a light and shining which will never leave your mind. There will be no pain, fear and melancholy… Only the desire… Unrestrained, full of madness, destructive, drying and reckless one… The desire which you will be spluttered in and accept it with all the gratefulness in life. You will get a hidden part of your consciousness, look at yourself in a different way… Are you ready to pay?’
Kharon stopped, took his hand out of her shorts. Victoria opened her eyes and amazingly stared at the man. She couldn’t understand why she allowed him to do what he was doing.
‘Pay you?’ she re-asked without getting what was going on in her crazy head.
‘A night costs your life’ he smiled.
‘Are you sure that it’s worth it?’ Vic spewed out with no thinking.
‘Worth it?’ Kharon fluently looked at the street and then shifted his gaze on the girl again.
Her hair was in badly messed batch, there was a frustration in her eyes, her clothes were wrinkled, and her naughty hand was smoothing out the shorts. There was fear and misunderstanding on her lips and a wild desire to be kissed by a part of hell. She had a vandalizing love to life, saying “run”. The girl was in prostration.
Kharon lowered towards her, snapped his fingers before her nose and Victoria shuddered.
‘No, no, no. Don’t do. I don’t wanna anything’
‘Lying to the demon…oh, that’s so bad. Well, you know how to find me. I’m not saying farewell. We shall see… Victoria’
The man kissed her cheek and disappeared.
Victoria was sitting like a statue for a long time trying to find out what had happened in her flat. But she couldn’t get her own feelings and emotions.
On the one hand she was scared catastrophically. She couldn’t still believe that the real mysterious creature had visited her house. Her scepticism became a silent cropper. Vic didn’t even try to get a little part of it back.
All that she had believed for twenty years now was gone. Demons? Witches? Vampires? Could it really exist? Living in secret from people, from their minds and perception… Maybe it wasn’t a secret. Maybe people were so interested in their own stormy lives that even during breaks between identical hours they didn’t see what was happening before their eyes. Perhaps, today all the supernatural creatures didn’t have to hide. Because now, living in the modern world you could stand among crowd during rush hour, plaintively crying in voice not your own because of pain, calling for help and in response you would be pushed away and someone would say: ‘why the fuck are you standing on the road, freak?’ Sliding around people, like a snake in grass, a demon, of course, in a human shape, would be unnoticed. The girl was shocked, having realized how many things were unnoticed and lost in that world.
Victoria was sitting at her table, looking at the symbols, drawn on the desk top. What was it? Was it a dream and she was about to wake up and breathe a sigh of relief? Kharon… The demon. A phone call interrupted her reflections. Her friend was going to come to Victoria.
The girls were in the room. Vasilisa was twittering about what had happened while she’d been dating her boyfriend, describing animal lust and platonic love. Vic still had been thinking of the mysterious guest, his face, which was before her eyes, his hands, smoothly sliding down her waist into the shorts… his lips, almost touching her lap and words that they were whispering… his winy, foggy and deep voice… his amber-brown gaze. Voluptuousness. Was Vasilisa able to distract her friend from those recollections?
‘What’s wrong with you, Vic?’ Vasilisa bumped on the chair, aggrievedly stared at her friend.
‘What?’ Vic came back to the reality again, having sunk next paranoid part of fantasy.
‘Are you listening to me? I’ve come to you to share my emotions and feelings, I wanted you to be happy for me… but it seems that you don’t care.’
‘No, Vasilisa, no, I do… I just…’ Vic stopped speaking.
‘You just what?’
‘I’ve had a bad dream’
‘Really? You’re worrying about something, but not looking sleepy. Will you tell me this story? Is that because of Daniel?’
‘What’s up about him?’ Vic was surprised.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ Vasilisa asked.
‘What I don’t know?’
Vasilisa looked away. She blabbed out and it was obviously.
‘I was told that he left with a girl…’
Finally, Victoria abstracted herself from recollections and surfed into the present imminently.
She didn’t love Daniel. She could speak about love when they had started dating but it was too long ago. The feeling faded away, love fell asleep, then died. Everything was trite and simple like everything else about others. However, she didn’t want to be kept in reserve: go on vacation with another but bed with Victoria? Rubbish!
Before making a scene, Victoria wanted to wait for Daniel to come back from his so-called business trip. What if someone made balls of the truth? What if someone overlooked or overviewed? Maybe someone shouldn’t poke their nose in someone else’s business. She hated all those gossips and people who were savouring them, wanting to find out who did and what that night. If you did nothing, they would always make up something.
Victoria wanted to ask Daniel face to face what was going on in very deed and see if he was brave enough to confess the truth.
‘With a girl? He’s on business trip…’ Vic said, seemed off, understanding in horror that such sensitive matter was displaced by epileptic morning recollections.
At that time the girl got she didn’t actually care whom and where her boyfriend was spending his time with. She just decided that apart from the truth they were going to break up.
Yes, they had two perfect years. There were two years of egoism, self-absorption and self-development. They had a perfect beginning. Victoria often remembered the beginning.
A long time ago they went to common parties. He opened doors for her, gave his jackets to her when she was cold, held her hand when she was walking over kerbstone imagining herself a funambulist, carried her in his arms over the puddles.
A long time ago they laughed looking at each other, holding hands, kissing in the parks… A long time ago and it had already passed.
It seemed to them it was love, that they would be together till the end of life, that no one and nothing would be able to part them. No one and nothing would be, but time did.
Having felt the other man’s touches Victoria realized that she didn’t want to feel Daniel’s anymore. Even in the very beginning she hadn’t felt with Daniel what she felt in ten-minutes communication with Kharon. He was the one who made a decisive end to her thoughts to be or not to be.
Now Vasilisa was re-telling gossips and Vic was trying to exorcise the demon out of her mind.
Olga Vladimirovna came back in the late evening and focused on her own business. Victoria was having a burr under saddle.
I gotta speak to him. No matter what will happen, but I have to…
The girl told her mum that she was going to take a spin on a bike, took it and rushed towards Serebryany Bor.
Vic was cycling through the evening park looking for a quiet corner. She didn’t need any witnesses. What would people think if they saw a girl in twilight with candles, drawing something on the ground and whispering Latin words? They would laugh at best… What would people think? What would people say? Those synonymously bloody questions made others impossible to live. Why did you need to think what people would think of you? Why couldn’t you just live without thinking of public opinion? Those people didn’t even know you personally so what’s the difference what they would think of you? Why did you need to be an object that sweetened someone’s glimpse? Was that all for five-seconds glimpse of a stranger?
Vic didn’t want to make a fool of herself. Before the incubus visited her, she would have laughed with pleasure at a person calling for rain in a forest.
A little connecting thread was nicely floating between oneself and others: we didn’t want to be treated in the same way as we treat the others. I didn’t want to be mocked in any situation but if I were to be behind these situation frames then I could afford myself to mock others.
After re-drawing signs on the ground that was getting cold after the hot day, Vic took a razor tip. The demon said there should be blood… It meant if she wanted to see him again, she needed to spill her blood. But here everything stopped. The girl couldn’t pull herself together to cut and hurt herself. She was frightened. But the desire to see Kharon overcame the fear for cutting herself.
Having closed her eyes Vic slit her finger and cried in pain at once. Dark-red blood was dropping on the ground, the faltering voice was reading the spell.
After having read the girl looked over her shoulder: nobody was there. Convulsively remembering everything that she had done before, she was looking for mistakes. She started reading the spell again. In response nobody appeared.
Something went wrong… Why didn’t he come? What was wrong? The signs, the numerals, the circles, the triangle, the blood, the spell were the same as in that morning. Why? The girl was tortured by questions which she had no answers for.
She had been in the park for an hour and a half, waiting but nobody appeared, and Victoria went home. She was slowly riding the bike, sorrowfully looking at the road, trying to get through her emotions.
