‘Why do you refuse? It’s the best way to check if it was a dream. Say the spell.’ The demon’s voice insisted.

‘Spiritus inferior,’ Victoria whispered.

‘Keep on’ the demon said.

‘Loco, protinus.’ Vic looked at his amber eyes. ‘Spiritus inferior, loco, momentaneus. Spiritus inferior fatis huc te poscentibus affers.’

‘Where’s the spirit?’ Kharon asked the girl who wasn’t so confident.

‘I… I don’t know.’ Vic looked asides seeking for the creature.

‘Doesn’t it prove that you were in oblivion?’ the demon finally smiled, holding the girl tighter.

None of them noticed the old dog behind them.

With a heavy heart Victoria came into the ward. It was silent. The smell of medicine. The support with the dropping-bottle. A woman lay with closed eyes, the mouth was half-opened. There was no move.

Vic sat on the edge of the bed. The grandma hardly could move her fingers. One leg was totally paralyzed, the second moved somehow. The granny was silent: she couldn’t speak anymore. A half of her face stopped obeying to the brain orders.

Kharon stayed in the doorframe. He was idly interested in looking at what would happen. Victoria’s confusion of feelings and experiences were transferred to him like through some wires. It was just a flurry, the heavy, surprising one of emotions.

Vic said nothing but kept on siting. She looked at the paralyzed old woman and didn’t understand why it had happened to her. She was thinking over it for a long time but didn’t find any answer. It often happened what happened, no one was insured, no one had delays. It just happened for some reasons and unexpectedly. No one was ready to be ill.

The demon was still in the door looking up at the girl and chewed gum. He had no thoughts. He didn’t know and face such grief. He wasn’t neither a sympathizer nor pitiful. Actually, he didn’t care. Despite his power of passion and lust, love mortification he was thick skin.

Victoria touched her granny’s hand and got pierced like by lightning. The girl felt the same feelings and emotions she had had when something had paralyzed her after she had left the bookshop… Then she realized and drew the parallel between what happened and her own feelings. Of course! She might have known it!

‘Kharon!’ the girl ran up to him and took him by the hand. ‘Let’s go!’

‘Is that all? We’re leaving?’ the demon understood nothing, following the girl with fast steps.

‘I’ve got it!’

‘What?’ he shouted after her. ‘What’ve you got? I wanna get it too! Vic!’

She ran to the coatroom. Vic quickly put on seeing no one around.

‘Hey, hey,’ Kharon had caught the girl before she left. ‘Wait. Stop. I’ve got 2 questions. The first one is where you’re running. The second: what did you get?’

‘I felt the thing happening to my granny! Remember? When we were at the bookshop? Then my mum called. Do you remember? I felt the same what my granny felt! But I didn’t understand then…’

‘What idiotic ideas come into your head, Victoria! Why don’t you believe in coincidence?’

‘Kharon!’ Vic frowned. ‘Why are you so sceptical? You’re the brightest representative of what doesn’t exist for people! How can you know anything about scepticism definition?’

‘It’s not scepticism, love, it’s realism. How did you get it and what made you think like this?’

‘When I touched her hand, I understood it. Everything I was getting through after the bookshop, came back to my mind in the shape of recollections.’

Kharon kept cool-headed apparently. But inside he didn’t know what to do. Vic was obviously suspicious of her secret gift and the task for the demon was to remove all her suspicions.

‘Come with me, I’ll show you something that does exist really.’

‘Where?’

‘Give me your hand.’

‘Where’re we going, Kharon?’

‘You told me once that you trust me… Give me your hand!’ Kharon insisted, embracing her tightly. ‘Come closer. You do know why you have to do it, love?’ the man smiled. ‘Close your eyes.’

The girl was overwhelmed with prelibation and looking for. In his mind Kharon was torn between worlds and illusions, being sure that he would be capable of distracting Vic from her thoughts. And he found that certain place.

‘You can open your eyes.’ He said quiet.

Victoria was in no hurry to obey the man’s asking. She listened to the silence. It was terrible and horrible. That was the silence which followed Lucifer’s appearance. Having been afraid of wicked recollections Vic opened her eyes.

There was no one around but Kharon. It was an unusual place: there were big trees with green leaves, curled into a conical shape. The leaves weren’t just green but superdeep and pulsing. Her eyes liked watching it and very quickly got tired of the colour. The foliage stormed full of life and inspiration. But everything around was paralyzed. There was no wind. The air was heavy, massive but you could get a lungful of fresh air. The sky was coloured with bright red with the tinctures and stripes of yellow, transferring into orange and lilac-velvet lines. It was a sunset as silent as everything was around. There was not a single bird in the sky, no one sang beautiful songs. The ears were hurt absorbing that silence.

Grass was under her feet. Her feet were bared. The grass was soft, green and ideally even, not a grass-blade out of place. Nature couldn’t create such perfection. It was impossible. Everything was too perfect. But it was pleasant to walk over the grass. There was just grass around. It was warm. You could say it was good, but you needed some wind blowing.

Kharon was nearby, cast down his head. He was waiting for something. Most likely for reaction. He wanted to understand what Victoria felt at that unusual place. But she kept silence and looked around.

There was a house behind her. It was grey with brick tincture. Three-storeyed. It was a big, log house… with a roof made of like skin. The huge columns on the porch had carved figures of cernuous creatures. Everything was made of wood. It was unusual. Victoria had never seen anything like that before. Log construction was softly sharpened, covered with lacquer or something like that, but there were no circle lines on it instead they were long and expressional. In whole the house was repulsive. Victoria didn’t want to come in.

Vic turned to Kharon again. At least the grasshoppers had to chirp! But no, it was silence. The girl was wheeled round to find any sounds with no comprehension of herself and her own attitude towards surroundings.

She got the feeling that she was in an incubator… or in an aquarium where artificial life bloomed where life seemed to be on the palm but indeed there was no any.

‘Where’re we?’ Vic asked, getting surprised with her own voice sound.

There was no echo, no habitual sound in her head. Even her own voice was unfamiliar. Every uncomprehensive thing made Vic feel more fear.

There was a part of a planet on the horizon. Even with no being educated as an astronomer, Victoria realized that wasn’t the Moon. It was a huge and too close located luminary. It was so unbelievable like in those films about space or in that Photo-shop-made pictures of universe type.

Horrible.

Looking at the big ball on the horizon her heart sank. The planet seemed to be rushing straight to the place which everyone used to call home. One minute or two and then apocalyptic collision was going to happen, the blast wave of which would pull all to quantum particles.

Formidable beauty that was it when Victoria realized not new oxymoron. The eyes want to look, they were interested but the body stopped breathing because of fear.

‘This is my home, Victoria,’ Kharon looked at her.

‘Your home?’ her voice sounded so quiet that you could hardly hear it, but the high notes tried to get out anyway. ‘Am I in hell?’

Vic was scared. The fright fettered her body even worse than when the hellish moon had appeared in the silent sky.