‘Tell ‘em…’ she heard a quiet voice.
Victoria lifted up her eyes. There was a living girl’s spirit near its body… Moreover, it could speak. It was difficult to get its words, but she understood. It sounded like a TV or radio electronic interference affecting its words.
Victoria shivered and ran home, praying under her breath. But the more she spoke the pray the stronger her tattoo hurt on her blade and the quiet voice of the cadaver affected by metallic sound didn’t leave her head.
‘No!’ Vic screamed as she came home and slammed the door.
‘What’s up? What are you screaming?’ Olga Vladimirovna appeared in the hall.
‘Nothing. I’ve been speaking on the phone.’ The girl lied along the way.
‘You look very alarmed. Vic?’ her mum called her and added some more light. ‘You’re pale… Are you ill? Vic!’
‘It’s ok, mum.’ Vic answered finally.
‘It doesn’t look like it’s ok…’ Olga Vladimirovna was about to touch her daughter’s forehead, but Victoria stopped her.
‘I told you, I’m ok.’ Vic tried to smile. ‘Ok. Go back to bed. Work tomorrow?’
Victoria had to pull herself together not to let her mother be suspicious.
‘Are you?’ Olga Vladimirovna felt that something went wrong.
‘Mum!’ Vic screamed, stepped back from the door at least. ‘I did tell you! Why shall I say it fifty times in a row?’
‘That sounds that you’re ok. I’m gonna back to bed. I work tomorrow… and please, don’t scream like this.’
‘Ok, mum.’ Victoria smiled, closing the door behind herself in her room.
‘Dinner’s in the kitchen. If you’re not hungry, take it to the fridge.’ Her mother said after her.
‘Yes, I will…’
A half of the night Vic was turning around in her bed trying to fall asleep. There was a real apocalypse in her head like a horrible war of thoughts. Everything connected with Kharon destroyed everything connected with the terrible vision. Her heart and soul wanted to think of her beloved man, his beauty and hellish existence, him in all his way. But her head tried to get what was going on to her exactly. What was the reason that spirits worried her? Was Lucifer’s mark to blame? What attracted spirits to her? She didn’t get struck by lightning and face apparent death. Nothing of those happened to provoke that vision…
… Or could she be crazy? A crazy fool who made up different nonsense, believed in it and pile of questions was breaking her mind at that moment. She had to believe none of those had happened. It was just her mind games.
5
th
September 2013 (Thursday)
Having successfully completed her plan, Victoria came out of tax agency building. She was going along the street trying not to look at people, being afraid of seeing again empty eyes of lost souls. She was afraid of facing someone supernatural.
Victoria was heading to metro to get to Arbatskaya station where Kharon and she had agreed to meet.
There were different thoughts because of which the girl felt uneasy. Victoria had been already tired of thinking, but her mind kept on its weak-willed terror.
There was music playing in her ears not to listen to the outward things. She didn’t want to listen to anyone not to get crazy completely. She was scared to feel her own mind leaving her body. Vacuum. She could understand nothing but perfectly see her own mind walking without saying goodbye.
What could she do? How was it possible to make her own mind to stay? It was terrible just because of one thought that she was a mindless cretin. A vegetable that was going to be fed on medicine in an asylum.
Victoria was in a good mind nobody had to know of her new ability otherwise an asylum would be exactly for her. Nobody had to know who Kharon was and where he had come from and what had been done for it. Nobody had to know of the meeting with Lucifer…
The girl was walking ahead with no lifting her head up, doing her bag right over her shoulder. She sniffled, tucking her hair behind her ears and talked to herself. She persuaded herself: “let’s keep it in a secret?”, “Sure, we will! It’d have been blindly to blub out about what happened”, “Right, but you had to tell about the killed girl”, “No, no, I’d be put into prison. What would I tell the police? A spirit of the dead girl came up to me, threw me a little bit in the past and I saw the murder in detail? That some psycho cut up carelessly the poor girl like confetti just because he confused her with someone else because his mind dived into madness? What if this madness will come to me? No, none of that happened…”
Victoria dared to look up when she was near the very Arbat and bumped into Kharon with her eyes.
He was standing near the first building, looking up at something there.
He looked like an angel, looking at the heaven which he had been thrown down from for a long time ago. Here he was, wearing the black, having a bunch of bright blood-burgundy roses and a strange smirk, looking at the azure clouds.
The hot sun was gently touching his black shirt, feeding with its unmerciful warmth, tendering his face which was so unscrupulously looking at it and even didn’t narrow his eyes.
The man saw nobody, he was interested in nothing but in the blue height.
Victoria was stock-still and staring the demonic creature of an unbelievable beauty and unusual behaviour.
There was a woman wearing a swinging dress in the wind. It was light turquois colour and shining. The woman passed by Kharon so closed that beneath of her dress grabbed the demon’s legs into its tender embraces. Kharon gave a smiling look at the smoothing dress over his trousers and then at the woman walking away. She looked at him back playfully and disappeared in the underground passage.
Victoria, staying near the passage, was waiting for the fabulous woman to obtain a better view of her. But she didn’t appear like if she disappeared into a thin air.
Suddenly Kharon sharply turned his head in the direction where Victoria was, his frown took her, and he smiled. Victoria smirked, shook her head and went down to the underground passage. She was rushing to her beloved at full speed and even didn’t notice her bump into a man.
What astonishment was when she understood that that man was Kharon who had been staying at the Arbat with no motion for a moment ago.
‘Are you running to me?’ he asked, embracing her.
‘How did you get here?’ Vic closed her eyes, pressing herself to him. ‘People can notice your sudden appearance.’
‘No, they can’t. They are too busy with their life streams where they must dabble. You noticed me at once, didn’t you? I felt your devouring stare at me. How strange it was crawling over my face, shamelessly trying to look under my shirt… Victoria… Your thoughts are luxurious, I’m looking forward to your letting them come out… no, capture the reality.’
The man kissed her. Victoria was melting in his arms, because of his curious kisses, of his words and whispers. She enjoyed every second that Kharon gave her.
‘Let’s have a walk, you’ll tell me how wildly you hated people in queue in the tax agency.’ Kharon slowly took her by the hand and led to the exit out of the passage in the direction of the Arbat. ‘Oh, I’ve forgotten,’ he stopped and stared at the girl at the loss. ‘I saw men give the woman flowers… Is it romanticism?’
Kharon stretched the bunch of flowers to Victoria. Finally, the girl had a chance to examine the flowers and she was shocked with the beauty of their petals. They were really of blood colour like if someone put a brush into a venous stream and then painted the flowers. The tips of the petals were velvet literally. There were specks of dust, weightless but visible ones of endearment