Dark Silence

18 days (2)

On Saturday, the mall became really crowded. While maneuvering between focused shoppers, Darnell didn’t notice how he somehow ended up in the toy section instead of going to the one where he intended to pick a new latch. He started looking through the stuffed animals on one of the shelves not even thinking much about anything particular. Back then, Madeleine made Darnell buy a really creepy toy. More precisely, she just grabbed the first thing that came to her hand and began to beg to buy at least something with all her looks. Darnell wanted to choose something more appropriate for her. In one hand he held a rather realistic brown dog and in the other - a white unicorn with pink mane and horn. What do ten-year-old girls like more? The dog seemed too sad to Darnell having a dozen wrinkles on its muzzle, and the unicorn had incredibly huge lilac glass eyes with perfectly centered pupils. This gave the impression that from any angle the toy was constantly watching the person looking at.

“Choosing for your daughter?” A woman's voice interrupted Darnell's thoughts. The man came to his senses and turned to the speaker. He noted with a shudder that with a plump middle-aged woman there were three children: two of them were five or six years old, and they ran around her, and a one-year-old baby was sitting in a cart and wobbling his legs while the woman looked at the toys on the shelves. Darnell felt unwell when for some reason he imagined himself in her place, surrounded by such a crowd of his own kids.

“No,” he replied, returning to the two objects in his hands.

“For the girlfriend?” The woman nodded in understanding.

“It's none of your business,” he snapped, pursing his lips in irritation. Some people were too nosy with their assumptions and opinions when no one asked them. Darnell poked the dog with his hind legs out into the pile of toys and went with the unicorn to look for tools and the necessary equipment.

“What a cad!” came to his back.

 ***

Darnell had a hard time getting the big bags to the apartment. He already started thinking that he shouldn’t have bought so many things. He was almost ready to buy bricks to lay the window and door openings. 

Madeleine greeted him happily on the doorstep. Darnell smiled, noticing that this time it looked like she had enough sleep and she was more cheerful than before.

“Look what I’ve got you,” he said, rummaging through the bags. He hardly dug up a little bit crumpled unicorn from the very bottom of the bag and handed it to the girl. Madeleine opened her eyes with delight, not believing the unexpected gift. She looked at the unicorn from all sides and suddenly leaned towards Darnell, hanging on his neck. “Oh, come on, it’s just a toy,” the man muttered in embarrassment. “Hey, I have a lot of work to do today,” he patted the girl on the shoulder to let him go, and she ran to the sofa to play with her new toy.

Before starting to upgrade the door, Darnell decided to have a little rest and to search on the Internet for information about the newly appeared possible enemy. The man sat down at the table and pressed the button to turn the computer on, but it did not respond to his actions.

“Is there electricity off today or what?” Darnell said in surprise.

“You fool, you pulled the wire out of the computer and carried it away,” Cole replied.

“Oh, really, the cable is in my room.”

Darnell went to his room and spent a full hour looking for the cable, which he forgot where he had hidden while he was in an inadequate rage. Returning to the living room, he addressed the spirit with a solemn voice.

“Congratulations, Cole, now you are officially renamed from the weather station to the voice organizer.”

“Go f**k yourself!” Cole spat back. Darnell laughed as he plugged the computer into the network.

“I could have done that but you, on the other hand, can’t go anywhere.”

“You bastard, I won’t tell you a single word from now on!”

“What a blessing it would be in the house if you really shut the hell up,” Darnell replied. He finally sat to look for information on Raymond Mayerson.

According to the Internet, Mayerson led a fairly active life, and he loved to show off. On the social network, he regularly updated photos in which he either held meetings with business partners and shook hands with various big shots, whom Darnell actually never heard of, or posted pictures of his vacation on yachts and resorts, surrounded by beauties. Darnell's attention was drawn to Mayerson's smile: Raymond had exactly the same facial expression in all the photographs. And the same he had during their meeting. His lips were stretched in an absolutely identical neutrally-polite smile, whether he was holding a glass of wine in his hands, standing in the sunset in some luxurious villa, or making a presentation of the project. It made an expression as if it was cut from one photo and copied to all the others. It seemed that Mayerson had memorized and secured this classic smile on purpose so as not to show any other emotions. His real emotions. All in all, for the audience, he led the typical life of a good-looking, happy money-bag.

Darnell gave up looking at photographs that sparkled with luxury and gloss and started looking for data on the business that Mayerson ran. By the age of 38, this man achieved quite a lot. Not without his father's start-up finances, of course, but he was able to grow his startup real estate business into a full-fledged diversified corporation through mergers and acquisitions of small and weak businesses, which he raised, remade, and multiplied his income with their help. Darnell hadn't found here anything suspicious either. Mayerson ran his business quite transparently and honestly, even though Darnell had doubts about the man's ability to be sincere and open.

After thinking for a while, the man called Madeleine over to him. When the girl approached, Darnell opened one of Raymond's photographs and asked:

“Do you know this person by chance?”

Madeleine moved Darnell away from the keyboard and climbed on his lap. She snatched the mouse out of his hand and began swiping through the photographs. After snorting to herself for a while, she finally turned to Darnell, slapping him in the face with her golden ponytails. She jabbed her finger at Mayerson’s photograph, where, as usual, he was smiling charmingly, pressing another beautiful busty lady to himself. She moved her open palm in front of her face, collecting the fingers together, and then opened them all together abruptly.

“So what does this mean?" Darnell asked. “Do you know him or not?”

Madeleine sighed wearily, opened a notebook on the computer, and typed “I don't know him, but he's handsome!”

“Great, this is the extremely important information,” the man grumbled, shoving Madeleine off his lap. “I asked, whether you know him or not, not whether you like his appearance or not.”

The girl waved her hands at the man and went to the sofa to play with the ugly hamster.

“By the way,” Darnell added, “if you ever see him anywhere nearby, let me know right away. And don't go anywhere with him under any circumstances, understand?" He looked at the girl strictly, but she only waved him off not caring much. “You'd better take my words more seriously,” Darnell sighed. “He might be the one I'm looking for.”

He spent some time more searching the Internet in vain, trying to come up with what could connect Mayerson and Madeleine. Maybe the girl's father had some business with him. Darnell grimaced at the fat folder on the table, which he had never read. He still didn't know what Madeleine's parents were living on. Darnell entered the names of Mayerson and Wordson into the search, just out of curiosity, but did not see a single match.

Darnell decided to leave information searches for a while and to occupy himself with strengthening the lock on the balcony. He slowly took everything he had gotten in the mall, wondering why he had bought so many things. As he unpacked the door closer, Darnell turned the plastic sticks in his hands and sighed, glancing up at the ceiling above the balcony door. Probably that was too much.

“What’s this crutch?” Cole could not resist asking, sticking to the glass of the dome.

“The closer,” Darnell explained, putting it aside. “To make the door shut by itself. Probably, I don't need it.”

“Why did you buy it then?” The spirit asked.

“Got too excited.” Darnell pursed his lips. Could it be so that Mayerson scared him subconsciously so much that he started buying up all sorts of nonsense? “I think I'll get by with a magnet and a second latch.”

“We need more latches!” Cole announced happily.

“The most important thing is not to forget to close them from the inside,” grumbled Darnell, going to collect the tools required for his occupation.

***

Darnell went down some city. The pavement, gleaming in the sunlight, was lined in the middle with rails on which nothing was riding. And the further the man went, the darker the street became. The sky was darkening. Bright, cheerful houses were replaced by tall concrete boxes with hollow black windows and doors. Darnell looked back. The sun was still shining behind him, and life was in full swing. But for some reason, he had to go further into an abandoned area. He was waited for there.

Darnell passed by buildings that pressed on him with their emptiness. He felt that in the darkness accumulated in their bowels, there was someone: someone who was evil, enraged, and wanted to cause harm. Suddenly Darnell saw a familiar figure in the middle of the street ahead. Madeleine stood on the rails and looked at Darnell warily. He quickened his pace and held out his hand to her, but did not make it in time to reach her. Mayerson appeared by her side and led her into one of the concrete boxes. Darnell shouted, hoping to stop the man, but only a choked hiss came from his throat. He ran after Mayerson, hoping to catch him in the building. The endless staircase inside stretched up with many, many steps, and it seemed to Darnell that they would never end. Their surface seemed to be made of sticky quicksand, grabbing Darnell's feet, preventing him from going up faster.

He finally reached the last door and burst out onto the roof. Looking around, the man realized that the flat court was completely empty, although he was sure that Mayerson had taken Madeleine here. Darnell walked to the edge and looked down. From a height of several floors, he saw only ghostly figures, slowly moving along the gray faceless pavement crossed by rails. Darnell turned around. Mayerson stood before him, stretching his lips into a white smile.

“You’ll lose,” he said and pushed Darnell in the chest with all his might. He screamed soundlessly and waved his hands, falling into the leaden abyss.