Dark Silence

25 days (3)

When Darnell was already sinking into despair, a black shadow flew by and landed on the chair opposite to him. Darnell looked at the arrived creature. A figure was dressed in loose clothes that seemed to be woven from living black smoke. The torn edges of the clothes were constantly swaying as if they were touched by a restless wind. The figure lifted its black empty face and looked at Darnell. Inside a big hood, there was something that looked like a blank perfectly polished mirror that reflected nothing. The man silently moved the bottle to the newcomer, and he tilted his head in its direction. He lifted his hand and slowly moved it through the bottle, leaving it empty. The spirit tipped back on his chair and put hands on his knees, probably staring at Darnell although he never saw his eyes.

“Well, what were you waiting for me for?” his scarcely audible voice was vague as if he was speaking at a distance. Sometimes there was a quiet rustling accompanying his words.

Darnell frowned in irritation.

“I’ve been waiting for you for two hours, Nex, and I don’t have much time today. Why do you always need this stupid ritual the main point of which is making me wait?”

“We didn’t agree on when I must appear. I come when I can,” the spirit waved his hand and stared at his fingers blown around by an invisible insensible wind.

“And what so important kept you busy?” asked Darnell in the heat of the moment, leaning to the table with cracked lacquering.

“I was thinking about how to finally destroy you. I can do this in the blink of an eye. You will not even notice this.”

Darnell felt how his heart inside his chest was being wrapped with cold. Sharp claws started to slowly press it, and the man gasped.

“You can’t do this until I break the contract myself,” Darnell barely mumbled, trying not to lose his temper. The icy hand released his heart, and the spirit relaxed on his chair again.

“I’m older than everyone present here all together. I’m so old that you will not even manage to realize my age. And considering all this you are the only creature whose thoughts I can’t hear. Whose intentions remain hidden for me.”

“Yeah, you already told me that when you’ve lost that bet,” Darnell exhaled with relief. “So now be so kind to perform the contract. I need some information, as always.”

“You, humans, are such funny creatures,” Nex swayed again to Darnell, bringing his empty face closer. “Your lifetime is so short. Your shell is brittle and hurtable as well as your consciousness. You don’t know why you were brought to this world. And what are you doing?” The spirit waved his wide black palm, and Darnell leaned back. The man felt like he was touched by Nex’s shadowy sleeve. “You try hard to approach your end by all possible means. You poison yourself. With a liquid poison,” the spirit suddenly put Darnell’s flask with whiskey on the table, making him surprised, “a burning poison,” a pack of cigarettes joined the flask. “A heart poison,” the last item that joined the row was the lighter, Karen’s birthday gift. “But you continue to fuss. Can’t decide what is more important for you: to find yourself or to destroy.”

Darnell felt anger waking inside of him. Looking at his stuff placed on the table, he seemed to see the whole pointlessness of his life in three simple items, and all those sufferings it brought him. And what pissed his off the most was the fact that the spirit was right. There was no point in all this. Just living his miserable life until it comes to an end, trying to make this day closer. Darnell had nothing else remaining to do. He suddenly felt the urge to push this shitty table over to make all the garbage laying on it hit the bottomless black face of the eternally old spirit. To make him shut up and disperse like a black smoke he resembled. To make this ethereal creature feel the fear of death, the fear that one day all this may end, and there will be nothing ahead. To make him feel for at least a moment what it means - to be locked inside a shell, like Darnell, and not have another way out.

“By the way, your friend, Cyril, lies to you,” said the spirit quietly. “He can’t know the date of your death. He can’t know anything about you, as well as I do. And I’m a thousand times stronger than him.”

Darnell’s face twitched, and he grabbed the edge of the table. He stared at his thin pale fingers, breathing heavily, and imagining vividly the image that would appear if he lost temper now. Nex would surely immediately vanish into thin air leaving to some other personal ethereal dimension. The company of succubuses at the next table would start to shriek. A huge red demon with a triangle beard and four horns, probably a guard, had already been staring at Darnell for a whole hour. He would be the first to rush at him and the first to catch a bullet into the forehead. There would be 6 bullets more left. The next one would be…

“So, what did you want to know?” Nex interrupted his thoughts. “You said that you are short of time, but you don’t say a word.”

“I fell to thinking because of your retarded philosophizing,” Darnell muttered through clenched teeth. The jaws were aching from the tension. He hardly made himself let the table go. The man raked up his stuff and started to put them back into the pockets. At least some activity helped him concentrate on the goal of his coming here.

“I’m not in a hurry. I have enough time to philosophize till the end of the world,” Nex stopped talking expectantly.

“Don’t you dare touch my stuff ever again,” Darnell growled in return. “My life doesn’t concern you.”

“These are just inanimate objects, they have only that very meaning you put into them. For me, they have not more meaning than the void.”

“If I suddenly want to discuss the limitless depth of meaning and its absence in my flask of whiskey, I’ll call my shrink, not you,” Darnell answered angrily and gulped from his flask. He felt a small relief although he shouldn’t have been mixing medication and alcohol. “It’s about a girl, Madeleine Wordson. Approximately three years ago some demon deceived her, took her voice and memories, killed her parents, and turned her mind off for long. What do you know about this? What have you heard?”

Nex tilted his head and grabbed his shoulders. It seemed that he went deep into his thoughts, staring with his empty face into Darnell. He was waiting. The spirit needed time to phrase the answer, and he always tried to do it the way to make Darnell scratch his head over the received information. Finally, the spirit spoke.

“Something broad-scale is brewing that is connected to her. Something interesting.”

“And?” Darnell hurried him.

“That’s all,” answered Nex with certainty.

“What do you mean - that’s all?” Darnell started to boil up again. “I showed up here just to hear this nonsense?!”

“You asked a question. You received my answer. Everything is fair,” whispered the spirit. He lifted from his chair and started to disappear. “And don’t get so stressed out,” he added before leaving the place.

Darnell put his elbows on the table and pressed his palms to his closed eyes. A red veil of rage was throbbing in front of his sight. The effect of the medicine was almost over, and Darnell started to feel the weight of the demon world on him. He shouldn’t have come here, just wasted his time, and was at the edge of losing control and making this shitty bar even with ground. Three succubuses were disgustingly giggling near him. Their shrieking voices were grating on ears like chalk on the blackboard, setting the teeth on edge. He needed to leave, but Darnell couldn’t stand up. His body was shivering, demanding to release the suddenly appeared energy inside him. But he understood that if he moved in such a condition, he wouldn’t manage to stop himself. He groped for his ring on the left hand which he never took off. Darnell turned its central part, and two circles of sharp needles inside it pierced his finger. His brain immediately turned from emotional problems to the more vital one - the aching flesh, and Darnell moaned quietly, feeling pain. Blood dripped down his palm to his wrist, and he turned his ring back, removing the needles. Darnell stood up abruptly and quickly went to the exit. He cast an angry look from under his hoot at the irritating guard. But he didn’t have much time until the adrenaline wore out and redirected back at his rage.

Darnell almost ran to the Portal. He kicked some small imp on the go. The creature burst with curses and shut up immediately after Darnell turned around and showed him teeth in fury.

Suffocating from fast walking and pain bumping inside his skull like a hammer, the man dropped into the wreathing abyss of the Portal. Darnell almost didn’t feel moving from one world to another and fell on the other side. He hardly got on all fours and vomited on the ground. The whole body was shivering like from a heavy fever, his back was covered with cold sticky sweat. Some demon passed him by with disgust on his face.

“Since when do humans crawl into the Portal?” he asked, looking at Darnell for a moment.

“f**k you,” he answered from all his heart.

“Ah, some nutter,” the demon seemed to calm down and went to the checkpoint turning into a human disguise.

Darnell made himself stand up and get out of the fenced territory of the Portal. Waggling, he reached his car and fell into the back seat. He locked the door and lay on his back, relaxing on the seat. He exhaled with relief. The world around him started to wobble, and he decided to close his eyes for a second, but as soon as he did that, he passed out.

When Darnell came to senses, there was pitch-black darkness outside his car. He opened his eyes and stared at the roof that became yellow from his cigarette smoke. The purple gleams of the Portal were moving on it like the glow from water. Darnell tried to get out of his car but failed at the first attempt. His body grew numb, his back was aching, and he didn’t feel his left hand. He grunted and managed to move to the front seat. His hip was aching especially fiercely, and he took a cellphone from the pocket of his jeans, on which he was sleeping for the previous several hours. Darnell looked at its screen and sighed: it was dead of night. Agnes was probably too nervous or gave up and left home. Darnell opened the door and went out in the street. It met him with a light cool breeze. Not a single window in the buildings around was lit up, and only yellow coni of street lamps light, wrapped with mist, were standing on the empty road. Darnell took out a pack of cigarettes and smoked. The well-known bitter smoke shook him up a little and cleared his head. It almost wasn’t spinning, but he felt so tired as if he was carrying bags with cement all day long. When the first cigarette smouldered to ashes, he lighted the next one from it and decided to walk around the car to limber up. He went to the hood and noticed a white piece of paper sticking from under a wiper.

“What the hell is that?” He snatched the paper and unfolded it. “A parking fine?! What the…?!”

Darnell felt that he would burst now. Rage rolled to his throat, took his breath away, and knocked in temples. He crumpled the paper and threw it on the ground and kicked it into the darkness. Next, he spitted out a half-smoked cigarette which filter he accidentally bit through in anger.

“Screw you all,” he snarled going to the driver’s seat. He jerked the door, sat inside, and lighted another cigarette. “A fine for parking in such a place? Do they fine in the desert too?!” The man started the engine and drove home.

***

Darnell unlocked the door of his apartment trying not to make noise. When he entered, he thought that he could have behaved the way he wanted in his own home but not to sneak like a thief. When he got from the lighted hall into the darkness of the room, he stopped and tried to find the switch. The discontented voice of Cole stopped him.

“You should have loafed around till tomorrow! Don’t wake them, I’ve just started to rest from this mess.”

“Agnes didn’t leave?” Darnell whispered like Cole and carefully went past the coach to his room. He noticed that there were two people sleeping on it.

“Madeleine tried to show her the door, but she started to bawl that you’ve ordered her to protect the girl and that she will sacrifice her life and some other insanity blah blah. She didn’t listen to me either. So, they are both sleeping now for a few hours.”

“Didn’t listen to you?!” Darnell hissed and stopped near his door. “I told you to keep silent!”

“Who could keep silent with her! Don’t let her in here ever again! I’ll tell her in the morning that you came back, and she will run off at work, as far as I understood.”

“Fine, so be it, prater,” snapped Darnell and hid inside his personal shelter.

He turned on the light, and it showed Darnell his yellow walls with black symbols on them. The man slowly undressed and put his cellphone, lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and the flask on the bedside table. He moodily shoved a cigarette in mouth, lit it, and stared at his bed, always in the mess. For how many years did it greet him with its cold empty embraces? Darnell didn’t bring anyone home since his breakup with Karen. He took a pull at the cigarette and puffed the smoke out into the ceiling.

“Why the hell do I need a double bed then?” he asked himself.

He somehow poked the stub into the ashtray promising himself again and again that tomorrow he will clean it. Darnell turned off the lights and crashed in his bed. When he touched the pillow with his head, he felt the day pressing on him with all its weight: each minute spent behind the Portal, the effect of the medicine, the previous sleepless night, irritation, and anger. Darnell sighed and closed his eyes, hoping to finally get enough sleep on Sunday.

***

Darnell felt that someone grabbed his hand. He opened his eyes but didn’t see a s**t around him. Only the feeling on someone’s palm holding firmly his wrist. Darnell panicked and tried to get it from himself. He grabbed the hand but felt that there was nothing higher. Darnell got poured over with the wave of fear. He felt another hand on him, then another and another. Dozens of palms stuck all over his body, squeezing, grabbing, scratching, pulling every which way. One grabbed his face, closing his mouth, and Darnell tried to bite it, getting the other hand away. He felt soft warm flesh under his teeth as if all this was real…