Dark Silence

30 days (4)

Darnell absolutely didn’t want to communicate now with his neighbor crazy cat-lady. She took up her residence in the opposite flat a couple of years ago, and since that moment chose him as an object of her secret idolarity that was so obvious that Darnell was sick of it. Agnes was following him on the quiet, tracking when he was leaving and returning home, tried to feed him with her homemade food and was going as red as a beet starting to giggle every time she ran into him in the hall. Darnell was avoiding her in all possible ways, so everything he knew about her was that she was a typical geek, approximately 25 years old, was watching all popular stuff and had the adscript “series”, and that she lived with an enormously huge beast named Mr. Muffin who hated Darnell with his whole cat soul.

“Oh, but who is this?” asked Agnes leaving her flat. “Such a cutie!” She was looking at the beetle-browed Madeleine with curiosity. Suddenly she turned all red and began to stammer. “Is this… is she… your… daughter?!”

“Who?” Darnell was genuinely surprised with such an illogical conclusion of Agnes. “Are you insane? She is the blue-eyed blonde, and I’m the dark-haired, how could you…”

“With green eyes,” Agness interrupted him dreamingly.

Darnell sighed and rubbed his face.

“Listen, if this matters so much for you, this is Madeleine. My boss at work obliged me to protect her during the next month. And now I’m terribly tired, so we’re leaving,” he finally coped with the lock, took the girl’s hand, and drew her inside, accompanied with the glance of Agnes, full of adoration.

Darnell slammed the door and clicked the switch.

“Darn, here you are, my dearest half-blooded monster, you son of a bi…”

“Shut up!” yelled the man in panic into the depths of his flat.

“I shout what I want, I’m in your living place!” answered the offended gravel voice somewhere from the right.

“I’ve got a kid pinned on me at work,” explained Darnell taking Madeleine to the sofa. He crumpled and threw down all the garbage from it and sat the girl, continuing to clean the place up. “She’ll dwell here for a month. Maybe less if I’m lucky.”

“A child? A tasty one?” pointed out the voice.

“No! And you’d better belt up or I’ll place you back into the closet. Madeleine, meet Cole,” Darnell waved at the shelf. There was a glass dome approximately 40cm high. “You may go and take a look, but don’t touch the glass.”

The girl stood up from the sofa and came up to the dome with curiosity. There were lots of ornaments and symbols etched on it. Inside flew a small black ball. Madeleine came closer and noticed a tiny grumpy face on it. When it saw a girl so close, it made a face, chuckled hoarsely, and poked its tongue at her.

“I’m the fire demon,” the ball introduced itself. “I eat children.”

“He’s not a demon but a spirit, and he doesn’t eat children,” explained Darnell. He finally found the trash bags and started to shove the pizza and fast food boxes into them, cleaning the room. “I caught him by chance. He was having fun in a shop, burning all around him. According to the rules, in that situation, I must have eliminated him, but I felt somewhat sorry for him. I extinguished him and used him as a guard of the flat, against evil. See? There are scribbles going from the dome across the walls. These are the ward spells, I drew them all over the flat. So don’t you dare to touch or especially to erase them.”

“By the way, my name is not Cole,” said the spirit in a bad temper.

“I don’t give a f… I don’t care what your name is,” answered Darnell, “and you know that. If you said your name right away, I would have used it. But otherwise, I like the way I named you. So witty, you’re black as a piece of coal...”

Madeleine was shifting her gaze between the interlocutors. The man has almost finished cleaning and dragged the second huge trash bag to the entrance door.

“I’ll throw this away tomorrow,” concluded Darnell. “Now, the new rules,” he turned to the ball and the girl. “Cole: no swearing and fu… and excessive communication, during the nighttime you shut up. If Madeleine complains at you, I’ll place you in the closet, you know I can. If you behave well, when the case is completed, I promise to redraw the inscriptions and displace you to the window.”

“Oh, the window! I have been asking you to do that for so long! But, maybe, you would buy me a TV-set, at least the cheap one? I can’t stand looking at this wall anymore!”

“No. Either the window or nothing,” said Darnell in a firm voice. “Now Madeleine.” The girl lifted her eyes at him. “It is prohibited to touch any of the inscriptions, they are all important and must be at their places. Don’t take the dome off Cole no matter what he says, even if he claims that he’s dying. He’s a big liar. Next, come here,” he came up to his closet and opened one of the doors, “I give the left part to you, it is empty anyway, you may use it as you wish. But please, don’t poke your nose into mine. Here I’ve got the kitchen,” he crossed the room and came up to the first door opening it. “Near it is the bathroom, and that door,” he pointed at the furthest one, near the closet, “is my room, I forbid you to enter it. You’ll sleep on a sofa,” he pointed at the center of the room and turned back to the closet starting to rifle through it. “Everything’s clear? Any questions?”

Darnell pulled the bedsheets from the upper shelf, a pillow, and threw them on the sofa. He cast a look at the girl, and she shook her head at him. Madeleine obediently went to make the bed.

“Perfect, then, till morning. Tomorrow we get up early and get back to the Agency, we need lots of stuff to do. Cole, you do remember: no chatting,” he pointed at the black ball.

“Sure thing, I’ll be mute as a fish,” he pronounced happily.

“Cole!” Darnell gasped when he saw Madeleine turning to the spirit and frowning angrily at him.

“What? I’m silent now.”

The man heaved a sigh. 

“That’s it. I’ve had enough for today. There are too many of you for only one me…”

Darnell went to his room. He slammed the door and locked it behind himself. He leaned against it and sighed deeply. His room was his refuge from the outer world that was constantly demanding something, and waiting for from him, and blaming for everything. The only window was closed with thick drapes, and the glass was covered with cardboard with inscriptions written on it. Each of the grey walls was completely covered with various protecting spells. It’s not like Darnell was paranoid, but he preferred to fall asleep and wake up alone. And only his room could provide him with such a possibility for 100 percent. The man pulled the packet of cigarettes from the pocket and took off the coat. He stroked the lighter, dragged the cigarette and puffed out the smoke, sitting on the floor near his clothes. The plume was curling like a little grey snake between his fingers, changing its shapes every second. Darnell gazed with admiration at this ghostly dance. The click of the switch sounded from behind the door. Looked like Madeleine decided to go to sleep. At least, Cole rationally stayed quiet and didn’t bother her. Darnell screwed up face: his habitual migraine started knocking at the temples, reminding how much effort he put to constantly control himself and not lose his temper. He stood up heavily and put the cigarette out on the overfilled ashtray. A few stubs fell off it with a quiet rustle on a floor, and Darnell looked at the new grey stain from the ash appearing on the old carpet that joined the previous ones. When was the last time he cleaned up here? A month ago? Half a year? Surely a good while ago.

Darnell didn’t undress and fell with his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling that turned yellow because of the constant smoking inside the room. Wandering around it with his eyes, he noticed a bug in a corner. It moved its antennas slowly and crawled into some c***k.

“I can barrier the room from any demon. But I can’t protect it from a damn insect,” pronounced Darnell aloud.

He threw back his head looking at the huge dreamcatcher with a dozen grey feathers that were hanging above the bed head.

“Maybe today you will deign to kick in?” Asked the man and flicked the switch on a small bedside table. The room got wrapped up in the heavy impenetrable darkness. Darnell closed his eyes waiting for the upcoming torture. Each night was filled with unbearable nightmares. Either it was something from his past, or his demon trying to take over him, or just a weird mess brought from the everyday life to the subconscious delirium. Darnell could hear those voices. Ugly shouts of people from this past, from his childhood, filled with unbearable inexplicable hatred towards him. 

“He’s uncontrollable!”

“In place of his parents, I would abandon such a child too.”

“He nearly beat up the boy with a stone on the head half to death!

“He should be sent to a boarding school, there is no place for him among normal children…”

“Did you see that? Did you? His eyes were shining red! This is a real demon, a devil under the guise of a child!”

“You little freak, if you don’t want in a good, then I’ll beat all the rules in you, and you’ll obey them!”