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Mutilated. Crypt of the Seven Angels
Natalie Yacobson
In the mirror of the young artist, Claire dwells the demon. He is now beautiful, now terrible. Because of him, people die, but for some reason he is afraid of Claire’s pain. Why? The solution lies in medieval Venice, full of predatory mermaids and living masks, and in the aristocrat-sorcerer.
Mutilated
Crypt of the Seven Angels
Natalie Yacobson
Translator Natalie Lilienthal
© Natalie Yacobson, 2021
© Natalie Lilienthal, translation, 2021
ISBN 978-5-0055-1587-2
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Prologue
The blade slid on the skin, and there was a pain: a sudden, cutting, burning. Claire frowned and put aside the knife. The pain was stronger than usual, but the visions immediately retreated. The mirror in front of it became empty, only tiled walls of the bathroom reflected in it, her own clean, similar to the angelic face, assembled in the tail golden curls and the bleeding cutting wound on the elbow. Traces from several already healing cuts remained near the shoulders. Good angel! Claire crookedly grinned and immediately became serious. In the angels there is something mystical. The innocence is not so beautiful as the mystery, hidden in them and the debt of the cruel roaring other people’s sins. What is good here? Not only in the fallen angels, but in the real, some kind of cruel, inexplicable power is hidden. What makes them so attractive. And what makes people, externally similar to the angels, get involved in their own fears and even implement them? Something fascinating is how the blade dissects the skin, as some people are applied to the bottom of the razor blade on their own toungue or skip the skin from the lips. For the last she would not have decided. Scars remaining in her body, you can hide, putting the jacket. The blade cannot be touched her face.
Claire touched with finger tips the last cut, and the pain burned even more. But the vision is disappeared. She wanted to make a certain demon inside her consciousness to keep silence, and he kept silence. For a while! As long as the pain becomes less strong, and then he will return again and she knows how to stop him. The knife always lies near the mirror and there is her blood remaining on it. But in the mirror itself reigns emptiness.
Where is the face that she has recently seen? An attractive, charming, with nothing comparable face. Claire stretched her hand and touched the mirror. And where is the face with scars? A terrible mask from the stripped skin and cuts. Claire with disgust turned her back on. Where is the one she loves? Who is he? What awaits her on his way, where does he keep her so diligently? She did not see his scars now, but others will see: those whom he will kill tonight. And no one will even understand that these people died not by chance, but thanks to him.
«Donatien!» She called. It was the name that she gave him herself, she took it from some boulevard novel or a second-class horror film, which she was looking in the childhood. Nobody knew this name, even he himself, unless he was looking at her through the mirror. What if this name is his own? Who is he really? Mutilated or beautiful? But for some reason his name in her memory remained under the importance of mutilated. Claire knew nothing about the evil spiritss, but he appeared, and she had to learn… until everything remained a lot in secret. He came increasingly, and only the pain scare him. Her pain. But the pain of other people he even enjoyed. Why did he not want to make her suffer? Scars have already been a lot. On her body will soon be no living space. Does she ever touched the blade of hers face? Only in case of extreme need. In the meantime, the demon disappeared. It is only worth calling him a demon, because in fact he is something much more terrible.
Chain of victims
Month before
There is morning in London. Together with it came the usual noise of traffic and people hurrying to work. Claire didn’t like bright sunny rays. She was not used to getting up early. Recently the night began to attract her. If it was not for business, she would not have risen from bed.
So it all started. Study, work, thoughts about classes… Everything was mixed in a solid cocoon of the usual and annoying routine. She did not wait for something unusual today. The most unusual thing happened to her was an early rise and a cup of coffee at breakfast. She did not want to tear off her head from the pillow, but the stack of sketches in the folder was waiting. Claire has long been going to take her work on the studio. Today’s morning was suitable for this. She needed money. And the idea of returning to the University didn’y like her. Claire hated studies. She was not allowed to comprehend systematic sciences. But creativity brought her a small profit. She was enough for her. Even quite. Clair got used to live modestly. The only luxury that she possessed, perhaps, was her face. People often accompanied her with delighted glances. Not often you will see something so beautiful in the middle of the usual urban fuss. Clair was accustomed to her beautiful appearance so much that it was not for her the special gift of heaven. Up to this day! Today she realized that everything could change in one moment.
There is nothing stable in this world. Even wonderful things in one minute can turn into ashes. The same rule applies to people. They are also easy to destroy, as some museum rarity of the Renaissance’s era. And only a terrible skeleton will remain.
Claire was tired and sleeping. The tram was half empty. She sat on a double seat and leaned off his forehead to the window. The travel ticket lay in her pocket. The smell of hot dogs and mustard tickled the nostrils, but Claire did not feel hunger. Maybe it only seemed to her that a thin aroma of freshly cut roses was mixed to the daily smells of perfumes and sweat of the crowd. Absorbing eyelids, Claire presented to herself this rose, just cut into any magic garden. Someone’s fingers squeeze the stem, and suddenly blood appears on the spikes.
It looks like her ordinary dreams! Claire with difficulty opened the eyelids. How bad do not get enough sleep in the morning! She forced herself to be held on the seat and look at the melted urban landscapes.
London is a nice City. It is so calm and good. The proximity of the Thames does not inspire a danger. And there are no prisoners in Tower today. And yet… somehow is it too quiet today.
Claire looked at her beatiful reflection in the window glass. She looked great. Only today, some shadow flashed in the window. As if someone else’s reflection was laid on her own. And although the seat close was empty, Claire turned around. Nobody. But she was almost sure that she sees someone…
Suddenly something similar to the solar strike occurred. Claire did not even expect this. The tram made a stop, and a couple entered the wagon. The most common teenagers are in appearance, but she even almost dropped the folder with sketches. Yes, what about her? These people… She had previously seen a couple, but this… The girl in appearance was the most common with a mouse tail and a nonsense makeup on her face. Claire could not tear the eye from the boy. What is it in him? In this guy? She didn’t even like him. However, something in the bend of his eyebrows, in the lip lines, even in a slightly female laid hair seemed vaguely acquaintances.
Effect similar to shock! On one moment Claire lost a sense of time and orientation. Even when the couple came out from the tram, she still felt herself bad. The time as if stopped. With difficulty Claire turned around. A new boy immediately attracted her attention.
Clair caught his breath. She felt as if she had just appealed to the statue. Pain! That’s what she was covered by the form of an unfamiliar young man. The pain piercing like a knife. Pain like a strong sunlight. But why? After all, it was not love, and not a passion, and at the same time, the head was burning like fire. Claire covered eyelids to cope with it. The face arose in her mind remains beautiful only a moment. Probably, this is her own pain, playing with the memory of the joke. A beautiful face burned like on fire, covered with scars and injuries. Claire has become scary.
She has an excellent imagination. It was that allowed her to paint. She knew how to invent characters and plots for drawings, which no longer succeeded anyone. However, now the fantasy was at nothing. Probably, insomnia affected. Non-sleeping people always become the most impressionable. As well, drunk. Or taking drugs. Claire, fortunately, belonged only to the first category. But she heard about visions that are pursued by drug addicts. Today’s vision was like it. It was worth covering the eyelids, and she saw the face of an angel in the fire. She preferred to draw more relaxed plots: fairies and elves in the garden, Undines and mermaids in the lagoons, Leprekhuns on flowers. Fabulous plots were intermitted with the pictures of nature and bright exotic birds. Claire loved to imprint on paper something beatiful. In her works there was no mystics. Anything ominous! It was her main principle: only please the eye, and not scare the viewer. Taboo on any sinister hints! But today she suddenly wanted to break all the rules. Take and draw something so terrible that it scares everyone. As her own, a beautiful face was frightened, which is gradually covered with burns and scars.
Danger to sleep on the go. Everything can continue anything. Claire did not want to destroy the usual stereotypes, and yet the fingers themselves reached for a pencil. She just had ten minutes to the desired stop and several clean paper sheets for sketches. It is necessary to try to spend time that remains for the trip. The tram moved smoothly along the rails. She tried so much to reproduce exactly the person saw in the crowd, that she almost missed the desired stop.
She was lucky to sell all the work and even get an order to illustrate several magic fairy tales at once. She has never been so lucky in her life. Firstly, it will be necessary to draw on her favorite topic, secondly they will pay her well. Claire has already received an advance and was going to sit at dinner in some cafeteria. She just looked through the most pretty building among street eaters when her gaze again attracted a passerby.
The stranger seemed to look at her and at the same time he looked somewhere past. Oh God, he is so beautiful, flashed in the head, as if a prayer. Hows so beautiful boy can be alive! It’s a place for him, nor in London, but in some palaces of Italy or France, in the museums, among the gallery perfect sculptures… Yes, something like that can meet there. But only not here. Not on the passerby part of the street. Claire almost screamed, noticing that some bus moves right on him. But the young man did not pay attention to the transport stream. He looked back at Claire. Now it is for sure. His blue eyes flashed like a blade in the sun. Claire did not even have time to carefully consider his features. They collapsed like paper under the head of fire. Literally! Here it is harbing his skin and burns, here are terrible cuts of depth to the bone, here poisonous ulcers eat forehead… and nothing remains from beauty. Only a terrible mask of the Russian Academy of Sciences. But it’s still he! The one who attracted her attention is like an angel from heaven. The one for another minute ago was so strikingly distinguished by its beauty from a nondescript crowd. And here it is mutilated.
Claire wanted to scream and could not. The lips did not obey. In the throat, it was stuck cold com. She saw a stranger of all instant, and here it is no longer. Is it really stamped? Maybe yes.
The girl was tired of shuffled, turned around and went away. Itself is not knowing where. How strange that the imagination plays with her such jokes.
However, the noise on the next street were not imagination. Something happened. The pillar of a peaceful street, according to which she just passed, did not speak anything good.
Claire with difficulty squeezed among the people. She did not really know what happened, just saw the chips, felt the smell of something burning from the charred bodies, which were hidden on the stretchers of Sanitars. Before the corpses wathered in cellophane bags, she still managed to consider that the people of the dead turned into terrible masks from the bones, burns and wounds. Nobody recognized them. But Clare recognized. She was rushed into the eyes of bizarre bracelets on the hands of a dead guy and a skirt of a teenage girl. According to the signs, this is the same couple that she saw in the tram in the morning! But how can it be? They hurt her with their appearance, and in the evening they are already dead… It looks like a work of the demon!
«How?» She herself did not notice that she said it loud.
«Neon sign caught fire, there, at the top,» someone from the idle onlookers standing next to her, helpfully suggested. Blissful! He did not even understand what she had in mind. Claire looked at the wreckage of the signboard, as on her own catafalque. Why should this have happened that she turned her close attention to those who were doomed? Could her wish to get rid of pain killed them. Pain, which arose like a flash, at the sight of these people.
Labyrinths of dreams
Claire recalled her today’s conversation with the employer at the studio. He praised her. In her works there was something new and unusual. Even when she painted on the same topics as others, she did it with some amazing novelty.
Claire did not like when she was praised, so she did not listen, but she studied the paintings hanging on the walls. They were beautifully combined with purple lambrequins. There was no contrast, only the fusion of gold frames and luxurious tones of a wall sheat. Her view attracted one picture written in a terrible Gothic style, but with elements of the Renaissance era. It dramatically stand out among the landscapes and still lifes. «Remember the death» – as if her plot reported. If it were not for the terrible elements of the painting, then it could be adopted for the ancient museum exhibit.
«Who is it?» Claire asked, nodding on a terrible portrait. Her lips almost did not obey.
«Who do you mean?» A polite question is slightly amazed. Is it not immediately visible. After all, a canvas with a portrait so stands out on a monotonous background of other paintings that decorated the walls.
«Aristocrat with a skull,» Claire brought her hand to her throat. This man squeezed in his hand a knife. There was a dead beauty in a luxurious old outfit in the corner of the canvas. The pearls crumbled around the corpse. The same as her. Claire has on the throat fine pearls of a thin necklace, which she almost never removed. She always liked pearls.
«You know, you need to start drawing in the Gothic style,» noted her tenant, it seems he was in a hurry to push her to something. «Now it brings a lot of profit and benefits. Fashionable direction,» he glanced at the portrait. «Death and beauty! Just what is required by the public for the severity of sensations.»
«I’ll think about it,» Clair promised. In fact, she thought about something similar for a long time. In her room hung reproduction of gothic paintings. Beauty and death really attract when they are presented in a uniform combination. And of the fact and the other equal: and the magnificence, and horror.
Claire was looking for contrasts, collecting at home and wonderful things, and scare away. Tragic masks moved on the walls with luxurious Venetian. Antique mirrors reflected the skulls from shops, where they traded with whiskers and lush paper roses. It is the contrast of bundes and luxury created a strong effect. It should make this effect in her work. It will not be difficult. The fairy tales, which she illustrated, will become only a transition to something more ambitious. The fabulous basis itself was already becoming a link. In her pictures, the gnomes kept their gold among human skeletons, the trolls carried severe heads of the princesses in the bags, the fairies in cemeteries drank blood of mortal knights. Even the most beautiful fairy tale must be something terrible to make a proper blow to the perception of people. The work of art should be unforgettable. Claire fell asleep with these thoughts.
Venetian masks from the walls watched her sleep. Shadows ran through the picture overlooking the bridge of the sigh in Venice. Claire often regretted that she was not there. She was drawn to the channels. Today she dreamed the noise of water, the drying of the silk curtains and the sharpness of the blade. In a dream, someone raised the knife to her neck, reconcile to cut or the skin, whether the pearl necklace with whom she did not part. Either one or another… Claire sighed in a dream. A hand with a blade was burned. So horror!
The girl woke up. It was night. Claire even regretted that she did not turn on the desk lamp before bedtime. The room was so quiet and dark that goosebumps running on the skin. In addition, it seemed to her that someone sits nearby. Right on the edge of her bed.
Satin bedspread slightly stretched under whose weight. Claire dropped her hair strands from her forehead and stared in the darkness. The fact that she could see seemed to her continuation of sleep. At the bed, someone sledged, as if dwarf. He had a manner of an evil gnome, even though figure and had a giant dimensions. Almost everything, except for hands and face, hid a cape, the same black as the darkness around. One thing was impossible to distinguish from the other. And yet, Claire managed to see that this man was strongly maimed. According to his movements, according to his deep sighs and convulsive gestures, it was possible to decide that he had just left the chamber of torture. But now it was impossible to be called him the victim. He longed for blood himself. Claire wanted to shout, call for help, but she could not. A hand with a knife leaned toward her shoulder, as if playing, spent the blade on the bending of the neck. The knife did not wounded until, but the chill began, in contact with the lively flesh, caused the feeling of intimacy of death. What a brutal game! True! And Claire for first glance regretted him for how he was crippled. It is a pity that it did not prevent him from hurting other people.
How is he just penetrated into the house? Does she forget to close the door? Or is the window too low above the ground level? Why did she not occur to pick up the windows with lattices? Someone could get here through a balcony or reveal the window through the unclosed file. If only before it is not a creature of sleep. Claire was waiting for what will happen next. The knife froze at the pearl necklace on her neck. The stranger looked at her as if he was waiting for something. Some kind of recognition. He asked if you would remember me? But she did not remember. Even if she saw him somewhere on the street among London’s beggars before, she could not remember him.
He waited, the blade froze on her throat, and suddenly his voice came: a hoarse and dry, as if escaping from the labyrinths of sleep and grave land.
«You can’t even imagine how valuable: have beauty,» he whispered and the blade, caress, touched her cheeks. «In untouched form!»
He intentionally stressed the last words. All the moment and he could displease it, having kicked the blade along the cheek. All was in his power. She will not have time to dodge. And even if she has time, she does not break out of his hands. Claire has shovel breathing. One moment will solve her fate. Whether she will have to die immediately or live further, and covering the cheek with the scar. Before that, she really didn’t think that it was valuable for a person, that his face was intact. One wave of the knife could change everything.
But the hand with a knife did not make any sharp movements. Claire felt like a chill of the blades distinguished from her, like the man who was sitting next. If only this miserable similarity could be called a man.
«Wait!»
But he has already gone into darkness. Claire did not hear a sound of steps. She felt like a nightgown clenches from the shoulders. The knife managed to cut lace straps, but did not touch the skin. All things in the room also remained intact. Although there was a lot of valuable things, the attacker did not take anything. He only wanted her. Her face. But for some reason not touched. Claire instinctively touched her cheeks. There are no scratches on the skin. And yet frost sobbed to the bones.
Who was this night guest; High, but hitched, like a dwarf, the whole dark, but covered with a ball of bloody scars. The guest with a knife! He brought his knife directly to the bed of Claire, but, leaving, left on the bed, not a blade, but a red rose. It was not difficult to guess that the rose was in her garden, and someone’s blood remained on the spikes.
Hallucination
The bright sunlight expelled bad memories. Claire woke up early and examined the windows and doors. She did not find any signs of hacking. There were also no traces of the house penetration. Nothing was damaged or stolen. Everything remains in their places. The night guest could consider the creature of nightmarish dreams if…
If it were not rose.
It still lay on bed, with a fresh cut on the stem and bloody spikes. Someone cut off the flower with a knife with a bush in her garden. She herself raised these roses: purple-red, large, with velvety petals. The roses demanded a lot of care. Claire never cut flowers in vain. It is excluded that she herself could forget and disrupt the spiny flower. This did someone else. But who and how?
Claire wanted to take and throw a rose, but only wounded her fingers about the spikes. Her blood ran out on the bed. On the blue atlas there were sloppy strokes, similar to paint drops. What a pity! Dear fabric was ruined. Claire shuddered. In her soul, some long-standing memories of the luxurious passage commissioned by blood was moved. That was someone’s wedding dress stitched by the pattern of vintage mod. Claire rushed for a long time in her memory, but it was not able to remember whose dress it was, and why blood dripped on it.
She left attempts to raise a rose with bare hands. There was nipper in her garden basket. You need to go, get it and take the rose. The fingers were wounded. Claire was offended Why did she take care of the flowers! At the same time, the pain gradually appealed to some kind of pleasant burning in the tips of the fingers. Claire was even surprised. Previously, pain was frightened, but now… now she even felt the relief from the fact that someone’s blood on the spikes of roses was mixed with her own. As if it was already once a long time ago. As if it is so nice and exciting – to divide someone else’s pain. The pain of whom she does not even know.
A wonderful face, a glimpse of the scary incident in the crowd, shifted yesterday in the crowd, again flashed in her subconscious. Only now it did not burn her. She even remembered where she saw something similar. Of course, in the church. Only there, on the frescoes, the faces of the blond angels were simultaneously strict and suffering. She didn’t have to repeat this expression in the paintings. As artists of antiquity only went out to breathe in those faces something unearthly. Angels, carefully discharged with a brush on the walls of the church, simultaneously inspired fear with their desire to shake everyone and at the same time source was out of the strange flour for everyone who watched their terrible eyes. And punish, and suffer… expression in halftones. Claire wanted to repeat it and could not.
She’s not such a good artist, as masters who lived in old dark epochs. She is a person of the future.
Claire did not understand herself. Why should she imitate someone? It is better to engage in photography and computer graphics in paintings than to mess with brushes and paints. It is necessary to become more modern. All the same, for some reason, she liked the emerging from fashion, but the usual methods. Canvas, watercolor, gouache… Paints, similar blood. She presented how millions of various lack of tones are mixed at the palette. What a divine and fantastic vision. The blood of her enemies, prompted the mind. Such a wonderful combination can only give birth to it.
«Blood of our enemies!» suddenly the helpful voice corrected. A beautiful tenor with barely noticeable hoarse. Claire turned into horror, but there was no one in the house. Only her own frightened reflection in the mirror with fear looked at her with a far wall of the hall. Sometimes even self reflection can scare. Especially considering that the hall was drowned in the semidarkness. It was necessary to take away heavy curtains that did not miss the sunlight. Claire did it, and yet it seemed to her that in the mirror managed to spit out some kind of dark shadow. Right next to her reflection.
True, all this was more like an optical deception or hallucination. Surely, long loneliness badly influenced the mind and contributed to the generation of different frightening fantasies. Claire must have her privacy to work well. Annoying relatives and friends would only crack her nerves and tear off from creativity. Employers require the quality and rapid work time. Claire realized that loneliness is her friend, and not the enemy. She liked the silence of an empty house and the complete lack of need to chat with someone about the trifles, walk to friends for lunches and dinners, maintain a conversation and cope with tedious birthdays. It is better to always be alone. When you are alone, the doors are open to inspiration and for someone else who hides in the dark. But she considered the last as a fantasy.
Demons do not exist. Claire did not remember how long she did not go to church. It was due to the fact that the temple was not allowed in jeans and with a uncoated head, but today she decided to violate all the conditions. If God is, he doesn’t care what is dressed in parishioners. After all, the main soul, not an appearance. And if the outer shell really corresponds to the soul, the Claire was as beautiful as angels on the frescoes. If not even better.
She turned into a bustling bushes of roses, who had fallen a wrought hedge around her house. Spiky branches were additional protection against robbers. It is unlikely that someone would have decided to climb through them. She bought this house and made a lush pink garden with abundant spikes especially in order to feel herself at rest and security. No one could penetrate here, do not pour out on the spikes.
Often looking in the mirror, Claire noted that she, too, like a rose with spikes. Beautiful, but far from being compliant. You will try to disrupt – we will erase the blood. In her pocket, she specifically wore a folding knife for self-defense. Such are usually only fur guys, but it has not doubted that in case of danger, she will be able to use it perfectly.
Claire pulled a knife from her pocket to feel his weight in hand and chill blade. Her oppressed the feeling that something terrible is approaching. Maybe it seemed because of the gloomy atmosphere, which was created around the house too crushed roses. A little more, and they will stop skipping daylight into the windows.
Claire squinted on a bright sun. She remembered that today is Sunday, and in the church must be full of people, but, to her surprise, there was a few parishioners. They just took the communion. Claire managed only by the end of the service. In a strange way, no one paid attention to her causing teenage outfit: a narrow jeans and a short top that opened a tattoo in the form of roses on the stomach. All behaved as if Clair was not here. She could not remember when the last time the parishians in the church showed such politeness. It must only be in the Middle Ages in Venice, when it was allowed to go to the church even to the courtesans to look among the parishioners their future customers. But here it was necessary to be different.
Claire leaned to the marble column in the shade and began to consider the angels drawn in simpleness and under the dome of the temple. She had to head her head to see the drawings that she liked the most. Unfortunately, they were set too high. If you look at them for a long time, the head begins to break.
But they were drawn to masterfully. Claire almost heard the rustle of the angel wings, when she looked at the frescoes. Beautiful faces looked strictly and with indescribable torment. How their beauty is contradictory.
Claire looked down and flinched. It seems to be burned fire. Again! A young man with blond hair and a surprisingly beautiful face came from a bowl with communion. He did not even look toward Claire, but she could not take a glance from him. What is in him, in this young beauty? She saw young men and much more nice, but from the type of this she was like shocked. The feeling was as if she was thrown into the fire, and she could not move in it. Punch in the head, kick in the heart! So people are driving crazy. But it was not love at all and not even sympathy. The face that she had long tried to restore in memory was completely different. Nevertheless, this stranger seemed like this similar.
Claire was worth a lot of effort to get out of the church and sit on the bench in the courtyard. The feeling of fire and sunburn in the mind did not disappear. And what is the actually, she saw? She became somehow alone. she wanted this feeling gone. She did not even know how to describe such a strange state. You see someone, you pierces you like a fiery pin and you are not alive, and neither are dead. The light of the day is fading before this sensation. You wonder for a moment cease to live.
It never happened to her. Until recently. They said that something similar happened to people who are too often going to the sacrament – the devil begins to tempt them. But today she did not even approach the bowl. The priest vainly turned a look at her. Claire did not allow herself to lure. She loved to consider the churches because of the abundance of sculptures and paintings in them, but church rituals revered on it. As well as what women need to cover their heads in humility. She was not going to humble before anyone, even before God.
«You are so similar to him,» the voice whispered just the samely recognizable. «He also did not want to humble before anyone.»
Claire nervously shook her angel curls. This time she knew firmly that there was no one near. There is not even a mirror that can scare her. But the pool of water directly under her legs reflected something strange. Claire got up from the bench and went away.
Horror Museum
The sun just stood in Zenith. Claire squinting from bright light and immediately noticed a dark shadow. At the portal of the church just stood a stranger, who in the first moment seemed very beautiful to her, and only then she noticed the ugly scars on his face. He passed past Claire, as if he did not notice her at all. But she turned around to look at him again. He was dressed somehow old-fashioned and squeezed in his hand some sharp object. Claire even checked, whether her own pocket knife is in place. Didn’t this man stole him? The knife was still lying in her pocket, and the stranger just disappeared into the passage of the church. A second Claire fought with the desire to go behind him. For some reason it seemed to her that this should not be done, no matter how much she wanted. Some inner instinct warned her: «Run!». This time she listened to it.
Today’s warm day was worth spending in the city center among majestic buildings and fountains. Claire went to look at Big Ben. Moving hands of huge clocks always attracted hert strongly. Clock! Time! Natural and countdown. Fairy tale about stolen time every time went to her memory for a long time. Today, some birds flew away from the Big Ben. One of them scratched Clair on the shoulder. Everything that happens more resembled sleep. Claire did not even immediately feel pain and blood. She recovered the ruffles of a short top so that they were not smeared and went to wash off the blood in the first fountain, which turned up on the road. Water pleasantly cooled the wounded skin. Claire did not immediately notice the dark reflections in the fountain. Wherever she go today, it seemed to her that some kind of gloomy shadow was moving everywhere after her.
Looks like the consequences of the sunshine. Claire ran his fingers along the bare abdomen. She recently decided to make piercing. Fancy earring over the navel looked pretty elegant. Near the tiny tattoo – rose in the fingers of the skeleton. Black gothic on lily skin! An innocent angelic appearance she attached something dangerous. Claire is tired that everyone looks at her, as at a harmless angel. She wanted to be at least something defiant, and not innocent. A little bit it succeeded. Tattoo and piercing were a kind of rebellion against angelic indispensability. Claire would not dare to paint her golden curls in black or red color, but thought that it would be nice to braid a pair of braids or to make dreadlocks. Her beauty attracted admiring views of the majority of passersbys. Women looked with envy, male with delight. As far as Claire remembered herself, she always enjoineds an increased attention. She did not even fit in her head, as someone from the crowd could suddenly attract her herself, and even before pain.
Claire still felt some alarm. She was scared that something like this could repeat again. This pain…
Claire frowned. Where does this pain come from? You can understand when her beloved person or knife provokes it, but just strangers in the crowd, with whom you do not want to have anything in common… Is it not strange?
Claire remembered a flash of pain, a shortage of air, a fiery current throughout the body and a vague feeling of the unreality of everything that is happening. And then you needed to come to youself for a long time. She was afraid of repeating all this, as people to be afraid of a fluttering fire. Burned once, and the second is already afraid of approaching the flame. But it cannot be shifted at home and no longer go outside to see someone in the crowd.
Sit days for a long time for creative work – it’s great. But only the work can be crazy. Sometimes you need to be distracted. Claire thought that today it would be nice to go to the museum, then sit in a cafe. She pulled away from the fountain, and someone passing by perfectly pushed her. Claire was surprised to turn him out. Yes, it was clearly not a member of the «Whites» club, she concluded with humor. And really not a typical Englishman. The inhabitants of England are usually distinguished by politeness and cold restraint. The rude person looked more like a foreigner. What an unpleasant type! Be she a guy, and would give delivery. But the girl of a fragile physique is better not to get involved in a fight. Perhaps the guys from her school company were right, and she would have a defender with her, but Claire did not want to sacrifice the sake of it even a part of her daily independence. So what had to be squeezed.
She thought where to go: in Tower or in British Museum. And in the first, and in the second she was already many times. Clair walked down the street, throwing off the coin. Heads or tails? The coin suddenly slipped out of her hands, just at the door of some unfamiliar building, seemingly similar to the museum. Claire drew attention to how beautiful doors are. Gilded bas-reliefs on them created the effect of fabulous luxury. Instead of a handle or a head of a lion with a ring, they decorated a certain mythical creature with a triangular ring in the mouth. Beautiful and a little frightening. She spent trembling fingers over the connecting wings and the horns of a fabulous head. The chill of copper turned out to be pleasant.
«Beautiful, yes?»
Claire reluctantly nodded, not even turning to the voice, which sounded right behind her back.
«This is a water dragon – Vivern.»
«What?» She was frightened by hearing almost the scientific name of fantastic creature. How can a fairy tale study like science.
There was no one behind her. Only creatures similar to black cats ran away from a neighboring building. Such quick that they were impossible to consider in detail.
Claire entered the museum and was surprised by how it was empty. Curators and controllers were so fixed, which seemed part of the exhibits. Although she entered without a ticket, no one stopped her. Probably today is a free passage.
Claire rose through the front staircase, covered with a red carpet. She looked around marble walls with niches, crystal chandeliers, burning even in the afternoon, and bizarre tiles. In the span of the stairs rose a statue, not a typical muse or an antique goddess, and the most dragon-like maritime deity, as before the entrance. Only here it was portrayed in full growth and in exquisite clothes, with a mask on a monstrous face and watery tails, discovering from under the cloak. The sea dragon was similar to Venetian. Capturing spectacle!
Claire did not regret that came here. The museum was very different from all those she visited before in London. If only it was a museum. Of course, closed frames, velvet barriers and illuminated showcases with inscriptions exactly copied the atmosphere of the museum, but there was also something that made it forced her to feel like in the palace, full rare, and not at the exhibition.
Art galleries, uprisites, shows of historical modes – everything that she saw before, did not make any comparison with the exhibits collected here. Claire expected to see a couple of Egyptian halls with mummies and other relics of ancient civilizations, but here everything was sustained in the spirit of Venice: masks, decorations, paintings, parts of the Gondola, Domino and Baututes, are suitable for mannequins. All items here were clearly old, and at the same time something inexorably attached to the museum atmosphere of Lafcraft stories. Next to the verses and beads, the figurines of some incredible marine deities were minted. Beautiful and exquisite half masks alternated with fabulous masks and suits that look like heads, cut from the torsoism of mythical and terrible creatures. The masks pushed on Clairer with fish and dragonfle eyes, released the mermanese of the membrane, abounded by the tentacles of octopus. Next to the masks of owls, heat-birds and peacocks, terrible faces of Krakens, Mavel and the Scaly Sea Devils were sheltered. Claire did not imagine that corrigans and mermaids could be so frightening. Even the mask of the tragedy would not impress the way they are.
It was better to concentrate attention on something harmless. The museum had full luxurious and elegant items. Pipe tubes, musical instruments, capes and hats, decorated with feathers of a wide variety of birds. In one of the halls, even the golden gondola was equally placed. Velvet’s shrink was raised, and two discarded devil masks could be seen on the seat. They were very luxurious, framed purple feathers. But even they were not frightened as the masks of marine creatures. Instead of the gondoller on the nose stood the stuffed of the same sea deity in a dark cape and with an oars in the form of a water snake. Vivern – so called someone at the entrance. Claire carefully looked at it and seemed to see something vaguely familiar in it.
Sheets were lying on the stern with the words of ancient barcarol, and some parchments, similar to spells or a contract with the devil.
