Читать книгу Mutilated. Crypt of the Seven Angels - Natalie Yacobson - Страница 5

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.