At the demon’s ball. Gothic. Natalie Yacobson

its arms, embraced by the gloomy, but incomprehensible and magical witchcraft that eternally reigned here.

      THERE WHERE LOVE DIED

      The bitter dream

      Runs away with life

      The heart drowns

      In a whirlwind of witchcraft

      Death of sad love

      Where darkness is light

      Fills with mystery

      Everything where there is no life.

      All where life has crashed

      There is only fate again

      Surrendered to darkness

      But not you, love.

      Happiness escapes

      Into the quivering darkness

      But it saves

      A free dream.

      That dream forever

      In the heart of beauty

      It contains all the darkness of the river

      Love will not be killed.

      Below, the sea was quietly rustling. High on the coastal rocks stood a dark and gloomy ominous castle in the gloomy beauty of its grandeur. A bright lightning, which for a moment cut in half the black sky above the castle, illuminated all its beauty, it was an invincible fortress on an impregnable rock, and only lightning dared to look at its mighty walls. All mortals were afraid even to go into the shadow cast by a high rock, because they knew that devilish evil dwelt in this bloody hell, and there is nothing worse in the world than to face it, as happened with the beautiful Maerlin. People were afraid to approach the rock and the castle where bloody death lurked, and darkness prevailed over the light, where bloodthirsty vampires lurked in the darkness of the night, and he reigned, their terrible master. On this night, as always, eternal darkness reigned, and in it were visible the sharp white fangs of the nightmarish monster, covered with hot human blood.

      The black bat, screaming, flew away from the castle. An inhuman scream escaped from the beast’s mouth, but even more terrible was the cry of its dying victim.

      In the high tower of the castle, as if preparing to throw herself down, at the very edge of it stood a beautiful girl with pearly blond hair. Her face seemed like the face of a marble statue: cold, insensitive, lifeless, but still retaining the pain of a dead heart. The clawed paw of the monster lay on the shoulder of the beauty, and for a moment her face, clouded with thought, lit up with even greater sadness and pain.

      – Why did you do this? – She whispered as if every sound caused her unbearable pain. – Why did you ruin my life?

      The wind whipped furiously into her face, showering with drops of rain, threatening at any moment to throw the beauty from the tower of the castle into the raging sea. She did not notice this, for her everything had lost its meaning, and her heart did not care whether to live or die. The monster’s clawed paw, moving on her shoulder, gave her back the pain of life.

      “You have forgotten what forces live in your soul,” said a deaf and lifeless voice behind her.

      “I know that,” she whispered, “but I don’t want to be what I have become and what you have become. You brought all the horror of the depths of hell to the surface of the earth in your guise, you are a monster, you are evil, you are a vampire, like many of your own creatures”.

      The girl involuntarily shuddered when the monster ran its long claws over her beautiful face and gently stroked her golden hair in the light of the thunderstorm.

      “But you are always beautiful, immortal beauty,” it whispered, “sad, lonely, beautiful, who has lost her love. Your beauty lives in the hearts of people, my princess, but your heart is even more black and cruel than mine, and darkness lives in it longer than in me.

      “You grow stronger every day, every minute, bloody demon, king of vampires, and you crave even more.”

      “It’s fate itself.”

      “Yes, this is your destiny,” came her voice, and a sharp dagger flashed in her hand with a flash of lightning.

      “Die forever,” the girl whispered and plunged the dagger right into the heart of the monster. A wild scream escaped him, and blood gushed from a huge wound, but he was immortal. Slowly he pulled the dagger from the bleeding wound and flung it aside. The demon’s eyes glittered with fire, and his mad laughter echoed across the gloomy sky.

      “You cannot kill me, Emily,” he hissed maliciously to the beauty retreating in fear, “no one can kill me. Today, on this sacred night, you gave me new strength, and the blood from your heart will make me invincible. Remember, no matter what happens, I am forever the lord of vampires, the lord of death, the bloody demon, and you will regret that you disowned me.

      “Never,” she shouted, “never”.

      She pushed him away from her and dashed out of the castle, down the stone stairs. Every step she took was accompanied by the frantic laughter of a bloody demon. But now the last step of the staircase was already behind, and she ran out of the castle into the stormy night. Sharp thorns dug into her flesh, and blood gushed from her scratched palms. A cry of pain and despair escaped her. As soon as Emily ran out of the castle, a terrible black bird flew into the sky, it was even darker than the night itself. Emily looked around with a wary gaze. The monster’s laughter and threat were still ringing in her ears:

      – You see, you cannot get away from me and from your own heart, you are my destiny”.

      The beauty’s eyes widened in horror. In front of her, by a stone staircase, lay the bloody body of a young girl, a recent victim of a violent vampire.

      In the dark dungeon of the castle, where the gloomy halls turned into gloomy caves, another, even more ominous darkness reigned. The light from the distant fire barely scattered her. A beautiful girl was standing by the fire in the back of the cave. Her hair, pale red like fire itself, seemed black in the darkness of the night, light clothes were waved in its violent gusts by the wind of darkness and fire, her slender body trembled every moment, as if in dying convulsions. She looked like a corpse, but she herself was death, resurrected by evil from the darkness of the grave. The fire witch, the victim of the vampire king, the forest sorceress, who sees in the flame of fire all the secrets of death and life, but on that night she herself was a lifeless death. Her unseeing eyes looked at the flames, and it was reflected in them in a fierce green fire. Her hand clenched in a mute witching gesture, and slurred words escaped from her lifeless lips. The flame flared up with renewed vigor, and a gloomy man slowly emerged from the darkness of the distant caves. His footsteps echoed through the caves, over the stone floors, over the cold walls, over every stone, and over the entire huge cave where the girl was, in an eerie threatening sound. It was as if she did not hear the steps and did not know about the presence of a strange person, on whose cold and white face some kind of cruel and evil expression was frozen. He looked like a statue, with a white mask of anger instead of a face and fiery eyes full of inhuman cruelty. He himself looked like an eerie statue made of stone, insensitive, cold and evil, deprived of the last drop of the joy of life and living only by the evil of his stone heart. His pale lips twisted in a devilish grin whispered:

      “Rise from death!”

      His ominous voice echoed like a fatal and terrible echo through the witch’s darkness:

      “Let the darkness leave you, you no longer belong to the kingdom of darkness, come here, resurrect your heart, your soul in this fire, let it reveal everything to you. Rise from death.”

      She shuddered all over at the bewitching command of his words. Now she no longer seemed dead, a drop of life settled in a dying corpse, but she was given to her by the forces of darkness. Now the