THE MYSTERY CITY

CHAPTER 3

He was afraid of the city. I was afraid of the nightfall. He was afraid of the younger witch Hope. I was afraid to make a wrong move and be pulverized. He was afraid that, without doing anything, he, like a banderlog, would helplessly approach his own death under the bewitchingly frightening dance of Kaa. Who will play the role of Kaa himself in this case, Thomas did not want to decide. Each of the applicants did not suit at all.

The day invariably ended at night. And at night the nightmares came again. Heavy, suffocating, throwing a trembling and frightened librarian like a helpless fish onto the fog-covered streets of the night city. Each time further and further away from the saving library. And getting closer to an abandoned part of the city, from where it will be extremely difficult to return at night, especially after a sticky nightmare, especially in fog, especially when monsters are sneaking around.

Thomas tried to tie himself by the arm or leg to the furniture of the library, locked and barricaded the doors and windows, but after a severe nightmare he ended up on the streets of the city, and the locked doors eventually turned into a barrier between him and the safe haven. How he still remained in a sane state, the guy himself could not explain to himself, but, crossing the next border of horror, he overcame panic and found a small reserve of strength to get to the shelter and tremble until dawn.

As if mocking the librarian, Hope began to often run into the library for small volumes of books, which she read in the shortest possible time. Invariably in their retro dresses, invariably with a polite smile and a falsely sympathetic phrase:

- Thomas, you look bad, drink chamomile tea and all your worries will be taken away!

Invariably, she gave small bags smelling of herbs, which the librarian immediately got rid of. Enough of the first time with a partial loss of the last memories. But is it the first?

"Go to hell, witch!" he mentally answered her, but outwardly remained calm and politely thanked her for her concern.

“Perhaps I won't live to see tomorrow's dawn. I tried to find a way out of the city during the day, but there is no map of the city in archival documents, and I can’t get around the city on foot. It seems small only from the center, but in reality it is much larger. The farther from the center, the thicker the fog. On the border of the city, it is dense even during the day ... "

The night has come. Thomas, without much hope of holding her in his bed, nevertheless dutifully laid his head on the pillow, pulling his knees to his chest. As soon as he covered himself with a blanket, the librarian fell into a sticky nightmare.

In this nightmare, his name is not Thomas, he has three friends, but something irresistible overtakes them and devours one by one, something dark and terrifying. Having devoured everyone, it whispers the name of the guy, stretching thin sharp fingers to his shoulders. Fingers? Or something else? He knows for some reason that after a single touch his life will end, he runs, panting. Faster. Even faster. Jerk.

He woke up. The horror of the nightmare completely gave way to the waking nightmares. Thomas is in the worst place in town to wake up in the middle of the night. The farthest area, closed in time immemorial for a complete restructuring. Brantford. Not a single residential building, only abandoned buildings intended for demolition. There is a long road to the residential part of the city through a dilapidated bridge. Too many open areas. No shelter. It is enough to run, and Lovecraftian monsters reigning in the night fog will instantly overtake a new toy. The fog covered all the roads to salvation. Thomas froze in horror. Where to run? Is there at least one among these abandoned houses that can hide from monsters?

And behind the back, the gnashing of claws is already clearly audible. A long elongated body, the front part of which can be mistaken for a human if it is previously burned and broken through with something heavy, long paws with sickle-shaped claws. Fast and evil. Luckily, it's also very noisy. But next to him often wanders no less terrible creature, almost silent. The concentration of many tentacles, covered with a white cloth in the place of the alleged head. They hunt together. The first ones Thomas could see in his nocturnal awakenings.

"Two deaths will not happen!" the librarian threw aside the panic, wondering which of the abandoned houses it would be better to retreat to.

Silently crawling, pressing to the ground and diving into dense fog is the only recipe for survival at night. The nearest house is already visible, there is no front door. Bad - no protection, good - it won't creak. On all fours, like a frightened cat, he crawled into the house. Rustles, rattles, rumbles, heavy steps and ragged breathing of many creatures are growing. Thomas silently climbed up to the second floor of the house. The house is empty. There are no monsters. On the second floor, except for beaten furniture, there is nothing.

“We can hide under the bed and wait until dawn,” he decided, finally looking out the window to assess the scale of horror.

In the mist here and there appeared frightening shapes of creatures that only Howard Lovecraft would have dreamed of. Huge and small, slow and fast, phlegmatic and impetuous, noisy and quiet. Perhaps true locals. But suddenly, under the very windows of the house, he saw ...

"Can't be!" the librarian almost gasped.

Under the windows stood the youngest witch Hope herself.

Neither the nightmares, nor the monsters, nor the constant stress of being held captive by the city, nor the fear of losing his memory again, had evoked as much emotion in him as the dark-haired girl had evoked that night. Her appearance in pajamas among the fog and monsters was the last straw. Something inside the librarian seemed to crackle, break, and, finally breaking the shell named "Thomas", the thought "My name is Alex!" burst into consciousness like a bright star.

Thomas was shattered into pieces. Like a shell, it crumbled and disappeared. In Brantford, the most remote and dangerous area of ​​the city at night, a man named Alex woke up. A man with a past, with memories of life outside the city, of friends and of himself.

"Incredible!" - mentally repeated the guy, plunging into the bottomless source of his own past. The further he went into his memories, the more primitive the image of Thomas seemed to him. A shell, a facade, but not a real person.

Shock, delight, euphoria, anger, confusion and a host of other indescribable feelings and emotions swirled in a crazy whirlwind in the guy, casting fear so far that no monster could scare him at that moment.

"My name is Alex!" — these words flowed like honey in his head, giving peace to the soul, exhausted by throwing. It was incredibly rewarding to be myself again.

Children. They were once children. One summer day, they happened to be in the same place at the same time. Not here. Not in this city. In a completely different, but the name, although it spins somewhere in the subcortex, you can’t remember, in a bright and clear city, where there are seasons, holidays and the unpredictability of life. There are four of them. There were always four of them from the very first meeting. The inseparable four "Musketeers", who know each other so well that no one could ever dilute their quartet with a fifth or sixth person. All jokes are internal, every thought seems to come to everyone at the same time, and all impulses are so harmonious, as if they are one person in four bodies.

Alex, Zoey, Charlie and Lis. Together since childhood and inseparable. Eternal tomboys. Perfectly complementing each other parts of the same mechanism of thirst for adventure. The sober chess leader Zoe, able to see their every trip, adventure and prank as a well-honed strategy for a chess game. Calm, reasonable and able to negotiate with any person, like a diplomat from God, Charlie, a master of smoothing corners and preserving nerve cells. Enthusiastic philanthropist Lis, with an enviable talent, finds sudden adventures and unexpected ways out of hopeless situations, largely due to the ability to win over the interlocutor with one smile, and then talk. Explosive choleric and passionate room detective Alex with a dream to conquer the whole world and a little more.

No attempt by the outside world to separate them was successful. Parents could go to different cities, schools and universities could be in different parts of the planet, but the Four seemed to be attracted to each other like a magnet, blazing with the fire of another prank. With or without parental permission, they always found their way to each other to get together and come up with next outings. Going to conquer caves with unfamiliar and suspicious-looking amateur speleologists - yes, of course! Living like real Buddhist monks without all worldly goods, waking up at dawn, is a must! Get acquainted with diggers and immediately rush to explore the forgotten subway tunnels with a view of inborn nocturnals - always ready! Illegally cross the border of the country in the trunk, perhaps drug couriers, to get to some local festival, or maybe and on the feast of the last tribe of cannibals - yes, at least every Saturday. Conquer the entire planet Earth and put visiting flags on the entire globe - oh yes, that's all we live for. The whole world is a sandbox of four adult children.

They could plan a trip for a year or run to the airport in a sudden impulse, starting the next trip without preparation. One call in the middle of the night with a proposal for a general meeting, and let the rest of life fade into the background and third plans. It was equally natural for them to walk decorously through the museums of the Vatican and the Winter Palace or with a loud cry of “Forward!!!” to overcome the thresholds of the fifth level of the Katun, to absorb another's ancient culture or to dissolve in the beauty of virgin nature. Happy in their half-mad impulses to live here and now. The world existed only when they got together, life took on colors only with a backpack of a tourist over his shoulders, the meaning of existence shone as a guiding star, the lamps in the abandoned houses barely cooled down.

Crazy Four. The memory of them warmed the heart so much that any Lovecraftian monster was in danger of igniting by getting too close to Alex. But the latter were in no hurry to look for the guy, while he, sitting motionless on the floor of an abandoned house with a blissful face, plunged into the halls of his memories. Holidays, birthdays, the change of seasons in their hometowns and other countries they visited with hype. The lives of four truly close people. Relatives to each other without blood ties and unnecessary romance.

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