Mutilated. Crypt of the Seven Angels

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

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.