my hand casually, ending the topic.
– Better ask if we’ll get there, after all it’s March, snowdrifts and snow, – I said.
– We’ll get there, I have a jeep, after all, – smiled Delilah.
It seemed to me that she wanted to show herself off as a really cool driver, but I didn’t want to see it, much less participate in it. So I asked her not to “drive recklessly” and not even try to drive where it was impossible to drive because of the snowdrifts.
– What do you think of her “farewell” note? – I asked.
– I don’t know. It’s kind of strange, – answered Delilah, confirming my thoughts.
– That’s true.
Two strange lines, written on a torn piece of paper and left on her desk:
“This world is like a ball filled with reinforced concrete.
It haunts me.”
It was hard to understand from this note what she was writing about and who was stalking her. Since Lilya Kolyuki was a stand-up comedian, she could well have written something else, for example, poetry or something similar. These are just two lines that hardly qualify as a farewell note, but since Lilya Kolyuki had disappeared, all versions were considered.
***
Surprisingly, we arrived safely, without getting stuck or stuck anywhere on the road. This happened by pure chance, because the road had been cleared literally a day ago and had not yet been covered with snow, and this, as I learned from the Internet, rarely happens.
“Is this the same house?” asked Dalila, getting out of the car.
“I think so,” I said, looking at the navigator on my phone.
I prudently took a shovel from home with me to clear the road or dig it to the house. The house was small, one-story.It was clear that no one lived in it. To get to him, we had to jump over the fence. Delilah did it easily, but then fell into the snow almost waist-deep and immediately emerged from there. Her light lilac down jacket looked like a bright spot in the middle of the white snow.
At first I threw a shovel over the fence, because pole vaulting was not part of my plans. I myself, however, also jumped over the fence quite deftly, but only so as not to lose face in front of Delilah… and my shoes, which I was afraid to leave in the snow.
We tried to walk around the house, drowning in the snow, to get inside. The matter seemed stalemate. If in Moscow the weather was almost above zero, and there was almost no snow, then outside the city the picture was completely different. Delilah was frozen, and so was I. But none of us were ready to give up.
“We need to break the window,” said Delilah. “Give me a shovel,” she said peremptorily.
The house was made of wood, as if it had been warped, the windows were kept on the word of honor.
“Let’s try to enter through the door,” I said, not realizing at all that this was a brilliant idea.
We probably could have found the keys to the house in advance, but it would have taken a lot of time, because Aunt Lily Kolyuka didn’t have them. Our stay here was also marred by the fact that we could be arrested for breaking and entering private property, although this was unlikely.
I went to the door and knocked on it. It was closed, but held on flimsily; I pushed it more than once. Delilah shouted to me: “Get away!”, and with a running start, which she could afford in view of the snowdrifts, she attacked her from her feet. It didn’t work out. I knocked on the door again, and then again and again, and in the end the dilapidation of the structure did its job, the door gave in under our common pressure.
***
It was quiet and cold inside, but quite clean, as if someone had tidied up the place. Closer to the window there was a wooden table, next to it there was a refrigerator, and on it was a microwave. We were surprised that there was electricity in the house. It looks like someone has been here, albeit rarely.
We had little information; we ourselves didn’t know why we had come specifically, because there was no one here. We may have acted on a whim, because we didn’t have any other options yet.
“It’s cold,” Delilah said, shivering from the cold.
It really wasn’t much warmer here than outside.
– Maybe we should go down to the basement? – I suggested.
– Is he here? – Delilah was surprised. – Well, there must be something? – I said, meaning that the size of the house is too small and such houses usually have some kind of continuation below.
We searched around the house and indeed found a small door on the floor leading to the basement. I was afraid to let Delilah there. I pulled the wooden door open and looked into the dark space below, illuminating it with the light from my phone flashlight. Delilah sighed, and through her sigh I could sense that she was very tense.
“There’s probably nothing there,” I suggested. – It is very small, but there is a wooden staircase. I don’t know how reliable it is.
– Maybe we should go down? – Delilah suggested to me.
I was afraid that the ladder would not support my weight, or Delilah’s weight either, so I abandoned this idea.
“We’d better inform the police,” I told her, “and they’ll check everything themselves.”
We were about to leave, but for some reason Delilah hesitated. Finally, she decided to look around again.
“Wait,” I heard her say muffledly as she approached the second part of the house, divided by a closet. – This can’t be! – she exclaimed.
I immediately approached her. Delilah was sitting on a wooden bed, which was covered with an old blue checkered blanket without a duvet cover, and she had two notebooks in her hands.
– These are notes from Lily Kolyuka! – Delilah exclaimed.
I looked around the room.
– Where were they? – I asked.
“Right here, on the bed, under the covers,” she said excitedly.
And indeed, everything looked as if no one was hiding these notebooks. They just lay there, as if Lilya herself had put them there in order to reread them for bedtime or write something down in them.
We never understood whether these were diaries or drafts, because everything was mixed in there, but sometimes there were dates. The last one was December 23, 2023, that is, two months before her disappearance, which means she was here quite recently. Now we had such valuable information in our hands that still had to be studied and deciphered.
One notebook was caged, on a spring, there were ninety-six sheets, but some of them were torn out. The cover was dark red with a huge lime green
