Читать книгу Lady in Black - Юлия Алпагут - Страница 6

Saturday. Around midnight. Diana was going to a disco with her friends. Alice chatted with friends on social networks. Calib was watching TV. Marcus played his game in the phone. Eleanor lay in one of the rooms on the couch. Wearing her big glasses, she read a book under the dim lighting of a floor lamp.

Suddenly the woman felt a strange cold. As if someone ran icy fingers over her face. She abruptly sat on the couch. The book fell out of her hands and fell on the floor.

Eleanor looked at where this “someone” was supposed to be. But nobody except her was here.

The woman looked at the small room several times as if she was looking for someone or something. She gazed into every shadow, but found nothing unusual.

“It’s late… I’m just tired…” – glancing at the clock on one of the shelves of the bookcase, she thought.

– I’m going to bed, – Eleanor said out loud.

Taking a deep breath, she wanted to pick up a book from the floor, when suddenly there was a deaf bang and the light in the room went out, plunging the woman into total darkness. Eleanor screamed and jumped on the couch in surprise and fright. She began to look around, but nothing was visible. Absolutely nothing. It was so dark around that the woman did not even see her own hands. The dim light of the street lamp, which was supposed to penetrate into the room from a non-curtained window, also went out. It seemed that their whole small town “D” was plunged into darkness or she just blinded in an instant.

– Marcus! – Eleanor suddenly screamed, – Marcus!

After a moment, the door to the room opened abruptly. The woman jumped to her feet and looked in the doorway. There, in the dark, high above the floor, something shone. Eleanor staggered with surprise, surprise and fear, and held her breath.

– Nora? Are you here? – Marcus’s voice rang out.

– Damn, – finally breathed a woman, – You scared me!

– It was you scared me! – said the man and came closer.

He shone a flashlight on his mobile phone in her face. The woman automatically struck his arm, drawing the light aside.

– You screamed so much, I already thought that someone was killing you here! – he said.

– I was just scared, – confessed woman.

– It seems all over the city turned off the electricity, – paying no attention to his wife’s frightened expression, Marcus said.

– Where are the children? – after a brief pause, Eleanor suddenly asked.

– In their rooms, – her husband answered her, – Disco for Diana, apparently, is canceled…

– Yeah, – gasped woman.

– Are you going to sleep? – Marcus asked.

– A little bit later, – Eleanor answered him, – I will sit here for a bit. I need to think.

– About what?

– No matter. Shine on me, I’ll get the candles, – asked the woman and went to the closet.

Marcus followed her.

Eleanor took out a few candles and a lighter from the box. She placed them in the candlesticks and set them on fire.

– Ok, you can go, – looking at her husband she said.

– Thank you for allowing, – he said dismissively.

– You are welcome, – she answered quietly.

– I will sit a little on the veranda. I’ll breathe the fresh air, – Marcus told her and leaving the room he slammed the door behind him.

– Sometimes you annoy me so much… – quietly, barely audible, said Eleanor when the door closed behind her husband.

The woman tiredly plopped down on the couch and wanted to pick up a book from the floor, which she dropped before the lights went out, but it was not on the floor. Eleanor looked around the room for her book.

– I do not remember that I lifted you, – she said out loud like a book could hear her.

Suddenly something splashed next to her on the couch. Eleanor shuddered, turned and looked beside her. There, on the couch, next to her, lay her book.

The woman stood abruptly. She looked at the most ordinary book as if it was not a book at all, but something terrible. She could not remember that she was picking up a book from the floor. Yes, and this slap… Like someone just dropped a book on the couch next to her…

Eleanor suddenly felt cold again. It smelled like winter around. Woman scared even more. She wrapped her arms around herself and wanted to turn in the direction of the door to leave the room, but something seemed to stop her. She looked at the book again, and to her surprise and horror the book opened itself. The words on the pages began to fade until there was only one word “YOU”. Then the pages of the book turned over and all the words on them, too, seemed to evaporate. All but one: “SOON.” The book turned over the pages again and it all happened again. On the pages there is only one word: “DIE”.

Eleanor in horror rushed to the door. But how much she pulled the handle, the door did not open. Door did not even shudder from the blows when the woman began to beat it with her fists. It seemed that it was not at all a thin wooden door, but a blank stone wall.

“Help me!” – Eleanor wanted to shout out, but before she could open her mouth, in the room, somewhere behind her, a resounding, unnatural, chilling soul, feminine laughter rang out.

Eleanor swung around and looked where the sound came from. There, not far from her, there was a lady in black.

About a minute passed before the strange woman, in a long black dress and hat, stopped laughing. Wiping tears with her fingers under her eyes, spilled out of laughter, the lady in black looked up and stared with her black, like the night, eyes, at Eleanor.

– You are so funny, – she said softly and smiled.

– How… How did you get here? – with a voice shaking with fear, asked Eleanor.

– How? Simply. Entered the door, – grinning, the lady in black answered her.

– But the door was closed…

– So what? Do you think this can stop me? – the lady smiled again.

– Who are you? What do you need from me? – a little emboldened and taking a step forward, Eleanor asked loudly.

– Ооо! – lady in black said, – What? Not afraid of me anymore?

– What do you want? Kill me? – even more loudly asked Eleanor.

– Kill? Oh no my dear… It was just a joke… Or maybe… – the lady in black was silent and somehow strangely grinned.

– Who are you? – once again asked Eleanor, – Ghost? Spirit? Demon?

– No, no and NO, – the lady in black answered her, – Although the word “Demon” would probably suit me…

– Who are you?

– I already told you who I am. I am a pain. I am Suffering. I’m what your miserable, worthless, vile family spawned, – the lady in black this time rudely and evil answered her.

Then she slowly took from the bookshelf a frame with a photo and gently ran her finger over each one who was captured in the picture, quietly pronouncing their names.

– Eleanor… Diana… Alice… Calib… Marcus…

A deathly silence reigned in the room for a minute. The lady in black looked at the picture, and Eleanor looked at her. It seemed to the woman that tears flowed down the cheeks of a strange, frightening, uninvited guest.

– Marcus… – the lady in black once again said Eleanor’s husband name and looked at this, as she thought, wretched woman who stood just a few steps away from her.

The lady in black looked at the mistress of the house with such hatred and pain in her eyes that Eleanor even caught her breath from horror.

– What do you want? – squeaked Eleanor.

– I want… I want to never exist. You or Marcus… Can any of you go back in time and fix something that shouldn’t have happened? – viciously cried out the lady in black and threw a frame with a photo directly into Eleanor.

The woman managed to bounce to the side and the frame hitting the door and broke with a terrible noise.

– Can you go back to the past? – already quietly, calmly, and even imploringly, said the lady in black.

– Not, – Eleanor shook her head quietly.

– Then you have to pay for everything!

– For what? I did not do anything wrong!

– That’s what you think! You all think so! If you didn’t steal, you didn’t kill… Does this mean you have done nothing wrong?! Not! This is not true! And… You know me! You know me! You knew everything! You knew everything, and did not even try to fix something…

– I do not understand what you’re saying!

– You just do not want to understand anything! But, if you did not kill anyone, it does not mean that you didn’t do anything wrong! You… If you at least asked me for forgiveness… But you will not do this!

– I do not know who are you! Why should I ask for forgiveness?!

– You know everything, – grinned lady in black, – You know everything… But, if like that… Welcome to Hell! I will kill you all one by one…

– Get out of my house! – Eleanor suddenly screamed and grabbed a figurine from the nightstand, rushed at the lady in black, but swept through her, as if the uninvited guest was just a vision.

– Fool, – grinned lady in black, – You can’t do anything to me! But I… I can do a lot… But… I have an offer for you…

– Damn… What are you?! – quietly whispered to death scared and at the same time furious Eleanor.

– I am your worst nightmare! And… You are not listening to me! – the lady in black said loudly and in an instant she was next to Eleanor.

The terrible guest grabbed the woman with her icy hand by the wrist of the hand in which she held the statuette, and squeezed it so tightly that the pain pierced the woman’s entire body and she opened her fist and dropped her “weapon”.

– You do not need it, – quietly, looking straight into Eleanor’s eyes, said the lady in black.

Then she grabbed the woman by the throat. Eleanor was much taller than her and twice as large, but the lady in black easily lifted the large woman slightly above the floor.

Eleanor just managed to cling with both hands to the hand of the lady in black, as she threw her on the couch like a light rag doll.

The woman grabbed her throat with both hands and trying to catch her breath, she did not look away from the terrible guest.

– What do you want? – caught her breath again asked Eleanor.

– Maybe kill you… – the lady in black answered her calmly.

– It is not true, – Eleanor retorted quietly, – If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it already. What do you need from me?

– It’s strange that you still think that this is just a dream, and I am a figment of your imagination… – not paying attention to the question of Eleanor, said the lady in black.

Then she slowly walked to the door and slowly picked up a photograph of the Ramirez family from the floor.

– You are all so vile, – quietly said the lady in black and went to the coffee table, which stood in the corner of the room and carefully sat on it.

On the table in the candlestick burned a candle. Near there were some papers. These were some documents. The lady in black took something out of the pile and threw it away, away from the table.