her so much if he broke into an empty house, where there was not even a telephone to call the police. Even ordinary murder does not have the evil that was present in the dream.
Anita went out to the park. You need to walk a little, otherwise she will go crazy from a long stay in stuffy gloomy rooms. Even the puzzles on the walls were no longer pleasing.
Anita did not have her own car, but it was possible to try to get to the nearest village on foot. When Mark drove her here, on the way she noticed something like a tiny town. There should be a bar or pub. Now she needs to sit in a crowded place and talk to someone, but as luck would have it, she could not find a way out of the park. The estate was too large. It’s easy to get lost on paths that diverge in a maze.
Anita almost tripped over the grave under the trees. This is the one she saw from the window. The headstone is black. The piled mound of earth is quite fresh. It was recently loosened with a shovel. Mark said something about the fact that his girlfriend had to be buried nearby. This is probably her. There is no one else to be. Who else has lived and died on the estate in the last ten years? Only her father, that old aristocrat and brother’s friend. But for some reason the inscription on the stone read Etna, not Aspazia. The brother’s beloved was definitely called Aspazia. He even composed a madrigal in her honor, just like a knight from the old days. The poems were dedicated to Aspazia. Anita found them in an album that Mark had forgotten in the house when he left. Or maybe he just didn’t want to take it with him. And who, then, is Etna? Aspazia’s body is definitely buried somewhere nearby. And the thorny garden is an excellent setting for the burial site.
It’s unpleasant to live next to the grave. Anita almost ran away from it. For some reason, something as oppressive with fear emanated from the damp earth as from bright puzzles in the house. But Anita returned to the collection of puzzles. It was already evening, and she did not want to spend the night in the open air.
The house was even darker than usual. Anita had to make an effort to turn on the lamp. The electric light snatched the inscription under the puzzle, hanging in the frame in the hallway: Etna. Isn’t that the very name that is inscribed on the tombstone.
The puzzle depicts a pretty young blonde who has fallen into the clutches of some mythical creature with horns, wings and claws.
It feels like this plot is a warning. Anita turned away quickly. In many other paintings, where elves danced under the moon or fairies played pranks, one could also find scenes of violence against mortals, which for some reason she had not noticed before. And now she looked at them, and the floor trembled under her feet. Has an earthquake started? Anita was frightened. It seemed that the walls were shaking, and the puzzles were striving to fall out of the frames and again crumble into pieces. The living creatures inside them seemed to demand to be released. The sound of the thunderstorm that had begun outside the windows reminded of a hundred voices screaming for vengeance.
What will not seem when you are left alone for a long time with the gloomy gray walls of an abandoned house. It was time to go to bed. And it was scary to fall asleep. Dreams, like a door, led to something that she did not want to see. Anita wandered around the house for a long time, delaying the moment when she had to go to bed. We need to get out of here. But where? Where else would she be given a free overnight stay? The hotels are expensive and uncomfortable. And here is an old bed under dusty canopies, as if made for a princess. But lying on it, Anita stubbornly felt like a victim, not a princess.
In the third dream, she came close to the woman. Up close, she no longer seemed so beautiful. On the contrary, she hunched over, hunched over, shriveled like an old woman, and the romantic cape behind her turned out to be two sagging black wings.
“Why are you torturing me?” The question arose by itself, as if Anita’s tortured soul had asked her with her lips.
The woman looked up. Not a woman – a fairy. And she had no eyes. A gnarled, strong hand grabbed Anita’s hair and made her bend over the unfinished tapestry.
The fairy’s whisper seemed meaningless.
“I gave my eyes to them to follow you humans from the tapestries. And you will give me your eyes for this. You’ve always loved reading fairy tales. Time to pay!”
The pain was burning. Blood dripped onto the tapestry, and the fairy looked prettier.
The awakening was painful. The sunlight burned. The eyes of the spies looked from the puzzles. Now she knew for sure that they were spies.
“Everything, as in the case of Etna,” Mark whispers over her deathbed. “I shouldn’t have brought people close to me here. There must be some kind of infection in the house”.
– She won’t live long!”
These are the words of the doctor. And the sigh of a brother. The latter smiled maliciously. It seems…
And then there was a dark space in the rainbow picture. You can’t get out of here. Either threads are twisting around, or parts of a puzzle. Is she inside the puzzle? It looks like it! Only here it is not as rosy as it seems from the outside. It’s cramped and cold here, and it hurts the eyes to look into the outside world. And it is possible to make out only the house, through which Aspazia is again walking, for some reason wearing her dresses. In any case, Mark and his few guests call this woman Aspasia. She’s alive again, and no one finds it strange. The brother, as if hypnotized, follows her, and even serves as a knight to his lady. His mother could not expect such tact from him, but this fragile woman, like a medieval fairy, conquered him. Or maybe she was a fairy to whom stupid charmed guys sacrifice their sisters and girlfriends. A workshop for either restoration or weaving of tapestries appeared in the corner room of the house. And in the garden under the thickets of juniper now lies a tombstone with the name Anita carved on it. It seems that Etna had the same before. In the same place. Two graves cannot fit in one place at once. But the inscription can be the same under the tapestry in the museum, and on the gravestone in the garden. Anita is also written under one puzzle in the house. And inside this puzzle is cramped and dark. Anita herself knows that for sure.
Nettle wreath
“I’m going to dance with the fairies tonight,” Lida said with a conspiratorial look. After that, she did not return. The pharmacist’s daughter, who went to the same dances under the moonlight, did not disappear, but she was now sitting in her father’s shop motionless and deaf, like a doll. She was not even able to open the door to customers or serve potion. And what is most surprising, her father was unable to help her with any medicine. The girl fell into a stupor. Everyone thought that she had been abandoned by the guy she met at dusk, but Lotte knew for sure that the girls from the village went to dance with fairies at night. Not all! Only those who met strange strangers on deserted roads and invited them to dance. Lida talked and, apparently, now found herself in captivity of the fairies. Is it worth trying to rescue her from there, or upon returning back to the people, she will become stiff and indifferent to life, like Mimi, the pharmacist’s daughter. Lotta deliberately went to the pharmacy to look at her again, inventing a stupid excuse that she needed capsules for insomnia. As the pharmacist looked for them, she stared at Mimi, sitting motionless in the rocking chair at the entrance. The window beside her was curtained. For some reason the girls were hurting from the sunlight. And now a burn, not red, but black, was burning on her cheek. The skin itself disintegrated like ash.
“A rare skin disease,” the pharmacist explained.
From what disease can the skin become thin like a spider web, acquire a deathly porcelain color and disintegrate as ash from the rays of the
