point to bring her back to the present time in part.
"Clearly something had been done to him, because his gaze was practically blank!"
It worked, she seems to have calmed down.
"I was on the ground with no strength, they had probably drugged me too. Diego came up to me and picked me up like I was weightless. There was a moment when I thought he was taking me out of there, but I was quickly disillusioned when I saw that he was walking on the opposite side of the exit, towards the centre of the room. Stunned, I realized that I had been placed on an altar only when I saw my clothes, torn with force, flying on the ground."
He looks up and stares at me coldly.
"He raped me in front of everyone, as if nothing had happened." Speechless.
"Eventually I must have blacked out, because all I remember is waking up in a wooded clearing covered only in the shreds of the clothes I had on at the party." Satanic cult stuff.
"I take it you filed a complaint." Husband or not, I would have sent them all to jail and more.
"Of course. Too bad, though, that they all disappeared! Including Diego, who I haven't seen since. God knows how long I looked for him, but in vain. Not for nothing, but just for the sake of smashing his face in!" More than fair.
"And the owners of the villa? Didn't they track them down?"
"From the investigation it turned out that they had moved to the Canary Islands for more than two years, without ever having returned to Italy, and that for six months they had entrusted a real estate agency with the sale of the villa. Six years have passed and now everything has fallen into oblivion."
Six years! Am I wrong or is that more or less how old little Elisa should be? She reads the question in my face and I don't have time to formulate it.
"Yes, Davide, Elisa was conceived that night. She is the only good thing in my life."
Certainly a tragic experience, but I still don't understand how this story can connect to Roberto.
"I had long since, if not forgotten, at least put that day in a corner, until I met Roberto in a chat room."
"The spirits, I guess."
"You know it?"
Right, the one made up of the exhausted group.
"Vaguely... Roberto had told me about it once."
Lately lying is becoming more and more natural to me, maybe I'll run for office in the next election.
"I had started dating her thanks to a friend who had almost forced me, but for Roberto it had become a mania: he was looking for particular information."
"What kind of information?" I pretend to be oblivious to the whole Lilith myth thing. I want to see if he's hiding something from me.
"There's one detail I left out in the story earlier..."
She hesitates. Come on, tell me the whole truth, just the truth.
"When I was in the mansion and those fools were chanting that strange litany, they were doing it to invoke Lilith: the black goddess." Bingo! The stories are finally channelled on the same track.
"Have you ever heard of it?"
If you're referring to that nonsense I read on the PC, yes!
"I know roughly the story..."
"Good, then you'll save me from talking about it. Anyway, the fact is that Roberto's obsession was actually Lilith."
And here I thought it was you who had stupefied him.
"He confided in me privately about the strange dreams he was having. For my part, however, the recondite hope of knowing what had happened to Diego pushed me to delve into the subject.
I thought Roberto might be a link in solving my mystery."
If there weren't idiots on this world....
"He never told me about it. What kind of dreams did he have?"
As I formulate the question, I think of my own and a slight shiver runs down my spine.
"He said they were always fuzzy when they woke up, except for Lilith's name, which invariably rang out in the darkness." That he drank my own beer?
"I provided him with all the material I had collected over time about Lilith. There were also instructions in the handouts to perform an invocation ritual, but I strongly advised him against it."
"Let me guess: he didn't rest until he did it, did he?" I know the chicken and she lights the bonfire for the spit.
"He had convinced himself that only through ritual could he bring to the surface something that was inside him, but which he could not yet bring into focus."
Wouldn't it be better to pay for a good psychologist?
"With the excuse that everything had to be prepared in the right way, I convinced him to at least do it in my presence. In doing so, I hoped to slowly dissuade him."
"What happened during the ritual?"
At least he burned himself with a candle.
"I couldn't witness it." She lowered her gaze.
"Why? He wouldn't let you anymore?"
"Not him...but the man who threatened me. I got a phone call in the middle of the night. He told me he knew everything about me and my daughter; where we lived and especially what I was trying to do, finally advising me to forget everything and disappear from Roberto's life forever. I don't know who he was or why he did it, I only know that the threat was far from veiled and I was scared to death." Another conundrum.
"I only found the courage to phone Roberto one last time to warn him. I was terrified and didn't tell him anything about the threats, but I think he understood that something wasn't right. I begged him to drop everything and said goodbye, doing as the man had told me."
With the responsibility of a daughter, she's hardly to blame.
"Not entirely, though. It was you on the bike the night I had him committed, wasn't it?"
"Yes. I sensed something was wrong and then when I saw you, thinking you were the man in the threats, I fled. I contacted a friend who works as a nurse at the hospital, and she filled me in on your condition, and from what she reported, it's certainly not the best."
And you haven't even seen him.
"He's in rough shape...the doctors still don't have much figured out and I, hearing your story, even less so."
I close myself off for a few moments to reflect.
"I even followed you home, to see how far you were involved." I would add that you're not much of a stalker.
"So, if you told me everything, I guess you cleared me of the charges?" I smile at her.
"To
