“We’re starting late,” Cordelia said again. Nefert preferred to be silent. “The later you come, the better. Moreover, not all high-ranking guests have the opportunity to visit us during the day.”
“I noticed that the clock at the entrance stopped.”
“Time limits us so much,” Cordelia sigh expressed such disdain and weariness. “But don’t worry. The clock will be repaired by tomorrow night. And they will go again. We just need to hurry up the watchmaker.”
Could it be the hunched creature that just slipped down the hallway. Daniel shivered. Cold washed over him.
“By the way, in this costume you look like a very attractive ancient vampire,” blushing slightly, he tried to compliment her. The ability to compliment was never his strong point, but the girl smiled indulgently.
“Not a vampire, but a very skilled seamstress,” she corrected in a whisper. Why whisper? Is it necessary to hide something from someone here?
“So you want to say that you are not playing a vampire, but a seamstress… in a lady’s dress?”
“I have a difficult role,” she replied bluntly. Daniel suddenly began to think that the whirlwinds of sparkles above the playing board were beginning to form into the outlines of screaming faces, making the game resemble a miniature hell of golden sand.
Some suspicious sounds were indeed heard from the already closed auditorium. It looks like sobbing and screaming. They were probably coming from the screen, he consoled himself. Cordelia was wary.
“It’s time for you to go. You cannot stay overnight in this place. It is forbidden.”
“Will they let me in here tomorrow without a ticket?”
“Ticket,” Cordelia frowned. “Maybe you also need a royal crown, plus you need it. Or a loop around the neck is better?”
Nefert made her hold her snide tongue, lightly scratching her shoulder with her claws. Cordelia didn’t bleed, but it squeaked, as if scratching a hard surface, not skin.
“This is for you!” Nefert placed an invitation on the table, edged with gold lettering. The letters on it were half black, half scarlet, but that line was erased as soon as the blood from Daniel’s cheek suddenly dripped onto the cardboard. Everything turned scarlet.
“I messed it up.”
“It’s just a formality,” Cordelia explained.
“That is, at the control it will be easily scanned.”
In response, there was only a playful laugh from both girls.
“Well then…” the young man hesitated, not wanting to leave.
“You have to go!”
He had to leave. The gloomy building suddenly became so pleasant, as if a living fabulous creature that swallowed it in its mouth and protected it from the cruelly world around, where struggle and competition are in progress. And here there is only peace and the feeling that the walls live and whisper something to him ingratiatingly.
“You are back, son of the Rosier family! You have returned to us!”
Who here could know the old name of his family? Having moved to Russia, his family changed their last name to the Rozanovs, and he, in turn, having found a way to foreign cinema, chose a sonorous pseudonym for himself. Nobody knew his old family name, but the cinema did. Or did he have delirium tremens after drinking?
In any case, he didn’t want to leave the cinema. After all, it is so dark, warm, cozy. A good place to fall asleep here forever, dreamless sleep and get rid of all earthly problems.
The impression of peace was interrupted by obsessed cries from the closed hall. He also heard bird cries, sounds of struggle and even gunshots. He turned around. The door swung open again for a moment, and monstrous shadows grappled behind it in battle. It must be reflections from the screen.
He walked away faster. Tomorrow he will watch the film himself. And for some reason they didn’t let him in today? These are probably the rules here. Or was there not enough room for a beginner?
The hall was calm and empty. The fountain suddenly started working. The clock above the entrance began to tick. Someone hunched over seems to be hovering between the ceiling and them. In the semi-darkness it was definitely not possible to see.
“The descendant of Rosier has indeed returned!”
Daniel looked around the hall, trying to find out who said this. But there were only statues around. He bumped into one of them and almost hurt his forehead, but someone supported him in time. The question is who? There was no one living nearby. Only seven marble and somehow ominous angels gathered around.
Before leaving, Daniel turned on them and was taken aback, one of the angels, the one who stood closest to the exit, moved his wing, brought a marble finger to the same marble lips and made a sign to the young man to remain silent.
A tree from ashes
So the children sang in a round dance. Probably, he only fancied in the light of the moon that they all had deathly pale faces, empty eyes and very sharp needle-like teeth under bloodless lips. And what kind of parents would let their children go out so late at night? Are they all from an orphanage, which eventually became impoverished? Will they start begging soon? But they only sang and looked like ghosts.
Daniel nevertheless ran his hand into the pocket of his jacket in search of the little things that were lying there, but he came across only a razor blade and injured his fingers. The pain burned. Despite the dulling sensations of the night’s cold, the pain itself was razor sharp. He recalled inappropriately that as a child, he had been injured on the beach on broken glass a long time ago. It lay at the bottom. In the water, the wound did not even ache, but it was worth getting out on the shore, and the torment became intolerable. Likewise, after leaving the cinema, suddenly the desire to shine and suicide returned.
Enough! Not everything in life is lost yet. He still has a chance to fix everything, even the last one, but it must be used.
“Someone before you thought so too, so they called her, him, them… How can you call it?”
Some kid teasing him hiding behind the roadside trees? Daniel decided to check it, but did not find anyone in the thickets. The only children he noticed continued to dance very far away from him. Moreover, they played right on the highway. At any moment, a car can pass and run over them all? It doesn’t matter that the highway running between the small towns is now deserted. What if a truck or a bus emerges from behind a bend? Even any cyclist or motorcyclist can cause irreparable damage to the guys if he runs into them at this late hour. He need to warn them, or better yet, drive them off the road. Daniel was about to shout at them, but the silhouettes of the children’s round dance became more and more ghostly. It seemed that now they will dissolve in the light of the moon.
Better not to go to them. Suddenly they are all young patients from some lost in the wilderness of a psychiatric asylum. Maybe they even escaped from there. How else to explain such strange behavior, in such a dangerous place, and even at such a late time. And there is, as luck would have it, not a single adult who can explain anything to him. There is not even anyone who could give directions. If the charging on the smartphone had not ended, he would have called a taxi long ago. And so he had to wander along unfamiliar roads, in search of a way to the parking lot where he left his car. Most likely, he went in the wrong direction, because the surrounding places became more and more muffled. No hope of bumping into the settlement ahead. Hence, we must go in the opposite direction.
And it occurred to him to go to an abandoned cinema for the night looking, without a guide who knew the area and, in the end, even without a navigator. He would have happily hiked back now, but the back road was deserted. And the children’s counting-book was still ringing in my ears. The chant sounded ominous.