Edge of End by Suren Hakobyan Read Free Book Online

“Thank you,” she muttered
modestly, quickly pulling my shirt on. I stood before her with just
a white vest on my bare chest. “By the way, thank you for saving me
from that monster.”
    “ Never mind that,” I cut
her off with a gesture. “They are still following us,” I noted,
glancing back. Several doglike animals, keeping their distance,
were on the street watching us. “They don’t attack us. They just
want us to go in this direction,” I told myself.
    “ I don’t think they’re
doing this for our good, though,” she muttered. “Maybe they are
pushing us into the trap?”
    “ You want to turn back?” I
asked.
    The look my words put on her face
instantly read otherwise. I wondered what she was afraid of–facing
the beasts or staying alone, without me.
    “ I didn’t say that,” she
said sounding resentful.
    I sighed. “Okay. Let’s just figure out
what lies outside the city and start over this craziness from the
beginning of the town.” I smiled at her slightly adding,
“Again.”
    She answered my smile. I
peeked back again. The light coming from the sky had laid some kind
of brightness onto the town . The dingy grayness hanging
above us became bearable.
    “ I have never seen such a
phenomenon in my life,” I remarked pointing at the fiery
light.
    “ It’s a really weird thing
indeed,” she murmured forcing me to rest my eyes on her again. I
chortled. “What?” she asked me.
    “ Everything is weird in
this place, don’t you think?”
    Her face lit up with a thin smile. The
corner of my mouths twitched, but I held my smile, and we started
off.
    “ Do you have a name that I
can call you?” I changed the subject.
    “ Elizabeth, yeah, you can
call me that,” she said dubiously. “You?”
    “ Jonathan.” At least the
woman in my mind had called me that. “Why did you enter that house
Elizabeth?”
    “ It felt familiar to me. I
saw a man and a girl at the house door who called me in. I was
confused and remembered nothing.” Elizabeth paused, pursing her
lips. “I needed help,” she added vaguely.
    “ Didn’t you notice the
guard dogs when you entered?”
    “ There wasn’t any,” she
said quickly. “The whole street was empty, no living soul nearby. I
was scared, and, seeing a man, I hurried to him for
help.”
    “ But the house was empty.
I didn’t meet anybody but you and that monster inside,” I
remembered. “From what you’ve told me, I saw only a photo album on
the table.”
    “ I didn’t find them inside
the house either,” she swept her hair out of her face, allowing it
to fall loosely on her shoulders. “I wandered into the house in
search of that man. I tried the telephone, but it didn’t work.
Then, I just, I…” her face crumpled as she looked at one of the
houses, her thoughts drifting back.
    “ How long were you in the
house for?”
    She looked at me thoughtfully. “I
don’t know. I had no strength to get out. The house seemed to force
me to stay in. It had a strange influence on my mind. Every time I
reached the door to get out, several mysterious pictures flashed
before my eyes, probably from my past, but they were
torturous.”
    “ What did you
see?”
    She averted her eyes aside
and trailed off. I was pretty sure she was crying soundlessly. I
heaved a silent sigh and glanced back again. The dogs were still
following. Don’t you have anything else to
do? I thought arching my
eyebrows.
    “ I was upstairs in the
study looking out to the garden,” she resumed without facing me,
“The monster sneaking into the house unnoticed and pounced on me
from behind. I wonder why I didn’t faint just from seeing it. It
was the worst nightmare that could even occur.” Elizabeth trailed
off tilting her head.
    Inscrutable silence fell
upon us. Even the sound of our footsteps deadened a bit. Nature
seemed to be a living and mindful thing in the town, watching our every little
step, our every move and listening to every single word we
exchanged. Could it