Kitabı oku: «Film About the Demon. Daughter of the Dawn», sayfa 5

Bloody process

Egypt, excavations, Valley of the Kings

Something went wrong. Routine archaeological excavations have become hell. Voices were heard in the night over the tents, vague monstrous silhouettes flashed in the distance.

Several employees disappeared. And Leah was so passionate about her work that she didn’t even notice it. It is much more important for her to dig another discreet artifact out of the sand and mud than to contact the authorities and inform that people are missing from the excavations.

How could a girl be appointed head of the expedition? As expert as she is, she is still a woman. All her academic degrees do not change this.

Neil decided to take matters into his own hands. All you have to do is make a few calls or get to the city.

Leah, although not a white-handed, but a terrible bore. Sometimes you can’t get a word out of it. It’s a pity, she’s a young woman with great prospects and good looks, except for a strawberry patch on her cheek. Neil would have an affair with her, even though he was not a supporter of office romances. At home his wife and son were waiting for him, and Leah turned out to be a real ice statue. She didn’t like men at all, but she was not a lesbian either. She is asexual, like most scientists, who so much burden the brain that the attraction to carnal pleasures disappears. In addition, Leah did not abuse her connections at embassies and consulates. This means, as from a girlfriend, there will be no benefit from her. She also preferred not to disturb the police, holding a weapon for self-defense near her sleeping bag. She is ready to attack the camp. But Neil did not want to become a victim of robbers or terrorists.

He thought that by evening he would reach the settlements. It wasn’t like that. The city of the dead did not seem to let him go. All around are dunes and pyramids. Wherever he went, the road either turned back, or stretched forward indefinitely.

He probably turned the wrong way. When the whole expedition got to the excavation, it took much less time than now. Doesn’t he know how to use a navigator? It was also difficult to navigate the map. It seems that he was driving in the right direction and would have continued driving if the gasoline had not run out.

It was getting dark. Neil had to get out of the comfortable car and walk. Leah was probably right when she didn’t want to let him go. Cellular communication has been interrupted. Neil was left trapped in the sands alone.

The time was too late to receive sunstroke. The sun is no longer at its zenith. It’s getting dark too fast in the desert. So why does he have the feeling that his brains are melting from the sun? A figure in red flickers between the dunes. A monstrous face flickers under the red hood.

It seemed to Neil that real gold jewelry and coins were sparkling in the sand under his feet, but leaning over he found only bones there. He hoped they weren’t human.

Are jackals or some other predators roaming around here? He hadn’t heard the howl yet, but it got dark instantly. The constellations that poured out in the sky resembled bizarre inscriptions.

“Go to the session,” someone whispered. “There are many cinemas. They have films about us.”

If anyone was around, Neil would have punched him. How can you scoff at the unfortunate stray traveler like that?! He, of course, would like to sit in a comfortable chair, eat popcorn and quench his thirst with Coca-Cola. Only all this is impossible. After all, there are definitely no cinemas in the desert. They, for sure, are not present in most of the Egyptian cities. He didn’t check it himself, though. In Luxor he was passing through and did not see a single cinema there. And here lay the desert. It is located somewhere in the Valley of the Kings area, or at least not far from it. It is also called the City of the Dead, because the pharaohs were buried here for centuries. Each pyramid is a tomb, not just an exquisite museum for tourists. This should be remembered. The dead are all around. They must be respected. Well, robbers of royal tombs can also hang around here. Neil remembered them when he noticed something like a party near the opened tomb. A bright electric light poured from the opening that replaced the entrance. Someone inside was laughing. The dancing shadows resembled horned mythical creatures.

Robbers don’t behave like that. Most likely this is an alien group of archaeologists who made an important discovery. And now they are celebrating. It’s worth joining them.

He entered the pyramid and seemed to go to hell. A bloody mess was squelching underfoot. Either creatures, or jackals ate the remains of human bodies. Some bastards were crawling on the sand. Someone was drawing hieroglyphs on the floor. But the most terrible were the murders – real murders and tortures that he saw with his own eyes. A camera was working somewhere. Hence the light. Who has not heard of torture studios, where the real torture of the actors-victims is secretly filmed. And this happens not in some nook, but in dilapidated tombs, where tourists can appear during the day. Bloody debris flopped under his feet, clearly thrown from above. Something was crawling and groaning along the ceiling. The other dexterous creatures on the floor only vaguely resembled charred monkeys. They not only tormented the victims, but also devoured them alive. These are some kind of mutants, not otherwise. A whole horde of sand mutants. One beautiful creature among them nevertheless appeared. It bent over a completely opened and still living body, and cut it not with a knife or scalpel, but with its own claws. It sparkled like gold. All of it was completely phosphorescent, including the growth behind the back, like wings. Even the nails, sharp as knives, were gold. And the victim under them either lost his tongue, or could not scream.

He was dumbfounded. This is a crime, not archeology. Even in the middle of a wild country, which he stubbornly believed today’s civilized Egypt, it is still a crime.

“What are you doing?”

The handsome creature chuckled, and the creatures under his feet giggled insolently, as if laughing.

“Do not you see?” it raised a questioningly golden eyebrow. “We’re making a film.”

He actually noticed several other portable cameras in the corners. One of them seemed to hang in the dark. Shooting is so shooting, but they are documentary. The bodies writhing in agony are not a fake. They are bleeding. The sand absorbs blood. The cameras work, absorbing the scenes of hell like a sponge.

He did not have time to accuse anyone out loud of murder and sadism, but the handsome creature answered his unspoken question with the same mockery:

“Art requires sacrifice, as you can see.”

How easily it altered the meaning of established earthly expressions.

Not such victims, he wanted to say. Although it depends on what art to keep in mind. Something hellish was filmed here.

He didn’t have time to guess, because the golden creature finished with its victim and was there. Long gold nails reached out to his chest.

Demon’s role

Russia, center of Moscow

It was pouring rain. Denis quickly clicked on the automatic button on the iron handle, opening an umbrella of a low-key shade. It is strange that it is during the rain that such freshness emanates from the city asphalt, as if you are in nature. If you close your eyes, it seems that there is a meadow all around, and the concrete walls smell of green grass.

Today is a non-standard evening. He goes to a press conference to criticize another arrogant celebrity (far from the first on his long list of debunked movie idols). Why, instead of sober thoughts, he is haunted by illusions? He never drinks during work hours, so where do the visions come from? He sees a fantastic meadow of sedge, reeds and ears of rye, and suddenly a flame falls from the heights of heaven, as if a dragon had died on the field. A huge fire burns out both grass and ears, and the entire surrounding nature. And something bursts out of the ground that has fallen asleep under the meadow, as if under a grassy cap. This polyphonic and multi-armed something has claws and wings.

Denis almost suffered a heartbeat when he noticed that smoke vapors were hovering between the rain streams. How like dragon breathing!

Stop! He is old enough not to believe in fairy tales, and the critic’s education makes him look at the world extremely realistically. There are no dragons or winged figures. The fairy with wings that he sees in the alley is just a play of shadows.

And so it turned out upon closer examination. As soon as Denis came closer, all illusions were dispelled, but he was shocked all the same. The movie star herself, whom he was in a hurry to meet, stood under the canopy of a gloomy building and smoked. Athenais was alone. Exactly the same as on the screen. There were no bodyguards or press agents with her. There was no cigarette in her fingers either. She probably managed to put it out and throw it out. But she still exhaled the smoke. This he took for the breath of a dragon.

The smoke was atypical for cigars with an orange hue and sparks. The smell is also not tobacco at all.

“It seems that smoking on the streets of Moscow is prohibited,” Denis reminded cautiously. Such a law really existed, but was almost never observed, because lazy law enforcement officers were in no hurry to incriminate anyone.

“I don’t smoke,” said Athenais.

She speaks Russian as her mother tongue! Who would have thought? Denis was ready to take off his hat in front of her out of respect, if he was wearing a hat now. But in Moscow in the summer season it is not fashionable to walk with your head covered.

Athenais wore real gold jewelery with rubies worn on his arms and forearms. And she is not afraid that she will attract the attention of the robbers?! For such jewelry they can kill.

Denis belatedly wondered where the smoke came from if she didn’t smoke. Burnt holes are visible in the canopy frame. Maybe there was a fire? But now nothing is burning. This means that calling the firemen is probably no longer worth it.

He focused on the lips of a young movie star. They were as delicate as rose petals and did not match the memories of acrid smoke at all.

“Never smoke?” Denis still expected that she would laugh impudently and breathe a new stream of smoke or even flame into his face, but Athenais behaved with royal dignity.

“Never. I don’t like tobacco. Wine is another matter. When you drink it, you feel like you are flying again with your former brothers. Their souls were left to live in wine. But this revelation is not for the press. You understood me?”

He nodded. Wow! She knows who he is. And he thought he had a privilege before the stars. After all, he saw their photo, but they did not. And now the usual incognito criticism in front of a movie star is broken. Did someone tell her about him? Some of the ill-wishers? Although, if she has already been notified of how evil his style of expression is, then why is she acting so confident?

Denis could not take his eyes off her. Athenais is like an unearthly creature that gradually enslaves you, without making any effort at all. She has something of a queen and an angel at the same time.

“Write about me!” She suddenly demanded.

“That’s what I came for.”

The movie star shook her golden-haired head.

“Write the truth about me,” she clarified, “the truth that no one dares to tell, but everyone sees.”

“And what?”

“That I am a demon!”

To say that the answer dumbfounded him is to say nothing. She really wants him not to go to the press conference at all, but to write only one insane denunciation. But Athenais had already passed him and seemed to dissolve in the rain. Her slender figure in silvery streams of moisture began to seem ghostly.

Although the umbrella was new and durable, it suddenly broke. Denis felt copious drops with solid hail on the back of his head and shoulders. And Athenais suddenly turned around and exhaled a whole stream of fiery smoke that did not go out even in the rain.

You could convince yourself as much as you wanted that this was a clever trick, but the heat from her breath reached Denis’s cheek, leaving a painful burn. As if the beauty branded him.

Many burned hands were stretched out from under the umbrella. They grabbed its lapels, ripped off its cufflinks, left traces of ash on a brand new shirt. Denis was trying to throw away the umbrella.

Something is wrong here. The world was changing, becoming like a horror movie.

“Let us in!” whispered rustling voices. “Let us recover from the greatest fire in the entire universe.”

The feeling was that he was on the other side of the screen and was participating in a horror movie himself. He threw the umbrella onto the high benches in front of the TASS building. Let yourself lie in the rain.

Nothing unusual was happening in the building itself. The journalists were carefully searched after they were passed through a metal detector. Ordinary situation. All measures are being taken to prevent the entry of terrorists. But the impression was that the terrorist had already entered. And his name is Lucifer – the same terrorist who staged the first act of rebellion in the entire universe.

Denis shook his head. He’s just seen enough creepy movies. The girls at the reception and the guards looked at him suspiciously. It was necessary to drag the umbrella with you and throw it on the table in front of the guard. What would they do if they saw the crippled hands inside? Or would they not see anything at all? What if its hands seemed to him?

As in a dream, Denis went to the second floor to the press conference hall. He usually never used the elevator. Why wait for an elevator when you only need to climb a couple of flights of stairs. But Athenais will definitely use the elevator. What if she’s already in the conference room?

A gloomy narrow corridor led forward. The walls were decorated with simple framed gray photographs. And this is the place that many celebrities and politicians have seen! For some reason, the feeling was that the true star came here only today. And from her presence here the whole building will burn.

What did he actually know about her? Denis remembered. She played Lucifer in such a way that it shocked the whole world. At the same time, she made the head of the fallen angels not a villain, but a victim. The heroic image of the devil, presented by her on the screens, deserved a prize for uniqueness. If the audience hadn’t started dying. How many young men and adolescents have already committed suicide at the exit from the cinemas. Nevertheless, Athenais continued to spin like a star. As if she needed this promotion! Someone, but she does not occupy popularity! She is the number one diva in the whole world.

Denis took his place at the edge of the side exit, as if he feared that she would see him. There were ash traces on the gray carpet by the chairs. It feels like something burned down here. Athenais’s voice, pouring into the microphone, was like a siren singing. Denis could not understand the words, because the dazzling visions hit his brain.

They were brighter than the stills from the movies. Archangel Michael brings a fiery sword to her neck and realizes that he cannot kill her. Lucifer in maiden form is too beautiful to be destroyed. These frames were not in the film. So why are they spinning in his head, as if some devil’s reel is spinning, inserted right into the brain.

He is a rational, sober person, and now his brain is inflamed from some kind of nonsense of filmmakers. Denis made urgent notes in a notebook. No, he won’t call it nonsense in the article. Otherwise, the crowd of angry fans will tear him apart! He will make an objective assessment. These are all horror films with a biblical bias. Only the Bible is upside down in them. Lucifer is deified, the brightest of whose names is Alais – the ruler of demons and pharaohs.

These horror films turned out to be sensational, because they portray Lucifer not as evil, but as a leader who was the first in the whole world to fight for his independence from the highest tyranny. This is a hero like Spartacus… Or rather a heroine, because the role is female.

Athenais! Just a name. No surname, no hint of one. It’s like the name is taken from the Bible, but it’s not there. Although who knows what they could have done in the modern edition. Something is always crossed out, something is added.

Fact – each of her films is the glorification of Lucifer. The names change, the essence remains.

The press conference was not over yet, but Denis hurried out with the knowledge that he would write and publish everything about her that she herself wanted.

Demon at a press conference

A severed head with blond curls and a delicate girlish face lay on the table between microphones and plastic cups of coffee. This head had ears, pointed in the shape of wings and such azure eyes, when looking into which thoughts of the sky began to frighten. After all, the sky was associated with their azure and with the fall. Looking into the eyes of this head, Constantine seemed to wake up from a dream. Boredom and laziness instantly disappeared. He felt the sensation was near.

Athenais brought the severed head with her and tossed it casually on the conference room table. Just a dummy? A trick to impress the TASS guests, which the press was usually called. Konstantin almost lost his plastic pass, without which it would be impossible to leave the building. There are capricious turnstiles and meticulous guards who search the things of each invitee with a flashlight. You never know: what if the journalist turns out to be a terrorist! Athenais’ safety was the most worried about. At the entrance, the operators sent from TV channels were searched several times and forced to open the bags with portable cameras. He himself was carefully checked, and he was sure of one thing: people need protection from the star, and not vice versa.

Athenais not only tempts. It suppresses by its mere presence. The head she brought as a toy suspiciously resembles the face from the icons. This is how Constantine always imagined the Archangel Michael. Do others see this head? He looked back at the hall. Nobody seems to panic. Only a correspondent named Denis unexpectedly ran out of the hall in the middle of the press conference. Probably rushing to another event. Many colleagues try to get to several places at once. What can you do? This is the job of a journalist. There are so many events happening in the world that there is not enough time and space for everything in the newspaper. But Athenais for some reason everyone paid special attention. It suddenly turned out to be more important than floods, fires and terrorist attacks. Nobody except Denis thought to leave.

Was the head on the table really alive or was it imagining it?

Athenais took her place in the center. The feeling that she left the screen was a little shocking. Trailer footage spun in his head. It is good that he did not watch films with her, otherwise he would have fallen into a stupor now, like other media representatives. All the seats in front of him were occupied. There is rarely such a rush here. Usually full of free places. Even those journalists who have been accredited in advance do not always come. Too many interesting things are happening. There is always room to rush instead of meeting pop stars, but for some reason everyone considered meeting with Athenais as an event of paramount importance.

Whom did she play there so stylishly that she suddenly became the idol of everyone? The head of the rebel angels. Simply put, Satan. Looking at her now, one could admit that she justifies her title of the most beautiful angel by more than one hundred percent.

The beauty of Athenais burns and freezes and makes you shiver. The ancient inhabitants of the planet felt something similar in relation to their gods. The roots of antiquity and there were stories about it.

By the way, who is the director of her films? In the credits it was not specified, otherwise he would have known. With Athenais came a producer, PR-agent and two strange gloomy subjects, apparently former bodyguards.

Their capes reminded him of ragged wings. All these are methods of promotion. From thoughts did not go the scene of how Athenais in the film cuts off the head of the Archangel Michael with a sword. Does it seem to him that some thing on the table in front of her is a severed blond head? A moment, and the head opened its eyes, preparing to breathe fire into the conference room.

He turned away. It just seems to him as if he was sitting on some pills. You need to focus on what the star is saying. And she said something about her films that no one expected from her, but everyone listened with bated breath.

Konstantin felt dizzy. The words reached him like a tape being played somewhere far beyond the world.

“The art of cinema is a kind of magic. It is capable of letting some forces into the world. It seems to viewers that the plot of the film was born out of nothing. But he comes from the side where eternity began. Cinema is a way of influencing minds. A drug, for the distribution of which, you cannot be attracted. But they can poison everyone.”

Is she really saying that or is he ringing in his ears? Someone annoying, sat down behind, and squeaked something in the back of the head. Constantine turned around. An empty chair in the back. Probably, the annoyance left or moved to the front rows. All journalists today were in a hurry to move to the first row, which, as a rule, was intended for photographers.

Athenais reeked of magic. He wanted to believe in her words.

“Making a film is a unique art. And not a picture, and not a book worth the effort to read. A film is something that is clear and pleasant to everyone. We do not always think about the meaning put into it without looking at the last frame. And then it no longer makes sense to look back and regret. The movie has already been watched, the demon has already been released.

The film is like a gilded lamp releasing a demon like a genie. As soon as you turn on the screen, the demon flows from it into your minds, settles in your head. You can’t drive him away.”

Konstantin looked around the serious faces of his colleagues from the press and television. No one smirks sarcastically, or scribbles offensive comments in a notebook or laptop. Everyone listens as if spellbound. Athenais impressed them despite all the delirium of what she said. Do they believe her?! This is probably because they watched her films, but he did not. All of them, wise and experienced, managed to fall under her charm. So what to expect from the general public, teenagers, punks and outsiders who usually go to cinemas? That’s what she’s easy to control.

Does it seem to him, or is the cape behind her slender back two large folded wings? And where did the cape come from? Athenais came in a lace one shoulder top and exquisite bracelets with ancient Egyptian symbols. Even with the naked eye, you can determine that this is real gold. And it seems that the jewelry is ancient, museum, and not bought in cheap jewelry stores, where gold is of the lowest standard, and diamonds are often replaced with cubic zirconia.

Athenais was perhaps the only star who never wore jewelry or bragged about the value of her jewelry. And their cost was probably exorbitant. Who gave them to her? The star herself, even the most successful, hardly earns enough to buy rarities from a museum showcase.

Athenais suddenly looked straight at him, and he drowned in her eyes, began to slide into some kind of terrible abyss, like into the funnel of the twenty-fifth frame.

Her words sounded from somewhere above, like a golden echo in hellish darkness.

“Cinema is a kind of magic. The film captures what is happening on the set, someone’s claws are adding special effects to the frames. We do not shoot, but we conjure, we recreate the knowledge that is forbidden by the Bible, but now there are no fires of the Inquisition to burn us on them along with all our works. You can only submit to us.”

After all, there is a live broadcast of all this on dozens of TV channels. Is the audience seeing a well-staged mini-horror film or a press conference? What do the gloomy companions of Athenais drink: water in plastic cups or something red, thick. In front of her was not a plastic bottle with mineral water, but some rare precious goblet. The thing looks like a sleeping dragon coiled in a bowl. Its walls are its wings, a tail stand, decorations made of rubies, emeralds and sapphires are its many eyes. And they seem to be looking at the conference room, winking slyly. A magnificent vessel intended for a museum showcase, and not for a white TASS table, decorated on the side with only an inconspicuous globe! He saw a picture of this cup on a poster for a movie. Athenais seemed to have sipped red wine from it. How fortunate that red wine is the same color as human blood. Thus, it seems that wine is blood.

“I create, and you watch! I cannot guarantee that any of you will survive or remain sane, but I guarantee that the truth will be revealed to all of you. It’s not my fault that heavenly revelations are too painful for the human mind. I saw civilizations being destroyed and created. The film is created as a separate window into another world, but with the help of a single film you can destroy absolutely everything that was created by the god with whom I am in conflict. And what you see so far only on the screen will eventually become reality.”

What was there? In the frames of her films? He remembered only the cuts from the trailer: the battle of angels, the burned troops rising from the ashes, the demons living in the treasuries, the golden entrails of the pyramids and angry genies, the fallen angels seducing and killing people, the clatter of the black horses of hell and the bloody sickle. The sickle seems to represent a sign of cruel fate.

He suddenly felt sick from the fact that the star of all this chaos was present nearby. Athenais has a crushing gaze and a burning beauty, from which it becomes sickening, as from proximity to the sun. It seems that now you will burn alive. He began to vomit blood, but no one paid attention. Probably because he was sitting on the edge. Red vomit spilled onto the gray carpet by the aisle. Nobody thought to call a doctor. Nobody even paid attention. Everyone looked at Athenais: someone with admiration, someone with horror. Surely, this is how the servile Egyptians looked at their pharaohs and gods – with awe and reverence. Athenais was nearby, like an ancient deity from a time when science and technology did not exist yet, but there was something more terrible. And he got scared.

Meanwhile, the press conference was drawing to a close. It’s time to ask questions.

He kept waiting for someone to come up to the microphone stand to ask directly:

“Are you the same Alais, from whom the whole family of fallen angels went? Has your biography been recreated in your books and films? And what do you want to achieve with them?”

But nobody asked about it. Everything was clear anyway. Him in any case. She finished speaking, and the numbness of the journalists, like a dream, passed. Representatives of various publications began to pour in questions about everything in order to prolong the moment of solitude with the star. She answered succinctly. And her beautiful, bottomless eyes, rimmed with golden lashes, looked directly at him. Why, when looking at these eyes, does he feel as if he is being lowered to the bottom of a gilded and luxurious ancient Egyptian tomb?

It was only when her angels became monsters that she realized that she loved them. In the film about Egypt, Alais returns to the desert to mourn them, and the sand rises in a black whirlwind over her golden head. The scenes of torture of the fallen angels are layered on the golden splendor of the dunes, royal palaces and the already earthly troops of the pharaohs.

The heroic image of Lucifer, deeply grieving over the suffering of his fallen army, pierces to the depths of the soul. Good and evil are reversed. He would call it surrealism, but the language does not turn. After all, you involuntarily understand: here everything is in its place. The bible lied, the Athenais films don’t lie. They lift the veil over what is hidden in eternity. Watching them is like looking through a keyhole into heaven and hell. Only Athenais can tell about how everything really happened. Because she is…

He opened his mouth in amazement. Could this be? Or did the scary movie affect his psyche too much?

The star’s speech ended. The time has come for the final questions. He prepared several topics that he wanted to ask about. All you need to do is get up and go to the microphone so that everyone can hear his question. Konstantin realized that he could not. Legs buckled. The tongue went dumb. He seemed to have fallen under the power of the same deity, in whose claws all the pharaohs were in the film about Ancient Egypt.

“And his name is Dennitsa” read the title of the film. Although it was not about “him”, but about “her.” A girl played the role of an ancient demon. She was now sitting in front of him in a very modern press conference room, not in a museum Egyptian palace. Nevertheless, he realized that he wanted, throwing all the conventions, to rise and ask her just one crazy question:

“Are you the same archangel Lucifer, who even before the beginning of time led his troops into battle against the Almighty?”

He did not dare to ask, but Athenais suddenly caught his gaze. Words were not needed. Her eyes answered eloquently “yes”.