Devil’s Cinema. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

like a creature that never slept with anyone. This is probably why she behaved with such royal dignity. What if it’s just a game, just more skillful than everyone else? She can just pretend. Daniel immediately dismissed the thought. It’s incredible to have the talent to play like that. And yet, if he were a producer, he would have spent any money to invite her to the role.

      “Do you want to give your soul for success?” voices from the abandoned cinema sounded in his head again.

      Such a question could be asked to someone who has not yet had success in life. But Daniel has already experienced his peak of success. When you fall from the top of Olympus, not even the devil can help you climb back. And in general, all these tales about how to sell a soul, it is better to tell starlets and extras from the crowd. Some of them may still buy into dubious promises. And Daniel already knew the cost of the way up. More often than not, it is worth the body, not the soul.

      “But your family thought the opposite.”

      What did he know about the family? And what demon speaks to him through his mind? Is it possible to pour alcohol into the voice of a demon?

      But besides the demon, there was also Cordelia. She played charades and said that she knew about the Rosier family. In Russia, they changed their surname to Rozanovs. She also said that Daniel could have come here to find his relatives’ estate. He knew nothing about the estate. Even if it existed somewhere nearby, it was destroyed during the revolution. Even in troubled times, the first thing they do is begin to destroy the houses of those about whom the notorious sorcerers and warlocks are in the neighborhood.

      The Rosier family has surpassed this glory. You could move to different countries and change your surname as many times as you like, but at any time and in any territory the same story was still repeated. The family began to be associated with the devil.

      Daniel was not affected by all these family problems. He was born in an era when the ancient curse and dependence on the ancestral line were already considered ridiculous. Try to tell someone in modern Russia, long gone through the revolution, that you are a descendant of a princely family. They’ll just laugh at you and that’s it. There were simply no aristocrats left in the country, and if they did, it was more profitable for them to keep quiet about their origin. Daniel only benefited from this. Indeed, along with the memory of belonging to the nobility or princely families, the memory of ancestral curses was erased.

      Until now, Daniel considered all curses to be fairy tales. He was not cursed. He just happened to go through the stages in life through which all the actors go. First, the peak of success, then gradual oblivion. True, he has not yet been completely forgotten, and he still has not had such strong competitors as to be afraid of them. But attention to his films suddenly began to wane. This means that without the next strong work, he will simply fly out of the rating of world stars.

      Atenais probably didn’t have such problems. Or did she die before she showed the weakness of her talent? How amazing that she died at the height of her genius. And the film, capable of shaking everyone, never made it to the world distribution. Or the screening for Daniel was preliminary, and the film will eventually be launched in cinemas around the world to make the audience crazy.

      How cleverly thought out! There is no psychiatric syndrome in the film, nor any other violations that you can find fault with in order to ban it for wide distribution. However, viewers will be 100% victims. A strong impression arises already when he left the auditorium. You feel that you cannot get out of the world that you saw on the screen.

      “Do you want your next film to be the same? Then you will be unmatched again, descendant of Rosier.”

      Again voices in my head! Daniel closed his eyes. How to drive them out of consciousness? Voices had lingered on him since he was near the cinema, and now they teased him in every way.

      This time they were definitely lying to him. It is no longer possible to shoot something like that film about Egypt. There is something devilish, irresistible in that film, something that you can’t jump higher. You can just bruise your forehead trying to repeat it.

      “Alais can do anything,” several voices whispered at once, more like fantasies.

      These fantasies need to be distracted. Daniel couldn’t concentrate on studying the script. Thoughts constantly returned to Athenais, from which one charred corpse should have remained in reality. And on the screen, a living and impressive demon remained from her.

      Is it easy to cross the line between cinema and the real world? Or is that something only crazy people can do?

      Now he’d better think about the scenes with Medea Shai and the director’s growing daughter Eugenia, who will presumably play a young lady who falls in love with the main character, tries to snatch him from the Queen of Hell and naturally sacrifices her life. Unless the scenes with Eugenia are deleted from the script altogether for lack of funds. But it’s up to the producers to decide.

      Usually Daniel thought only about his own role, but now he was suddenly very intrigued by the Queen of Hell. Who is she? Where did it come from? There is something serpentine and angelic in it at the same time, as if the writers decided to combine a cobra and a black angel into one. Does she look like Alais? And what would happen to the audience if the dead star suddenly resurrected even for a short while to play this role, and then go back to hell.

      “Someone before you already had such thoughts,” whispered again the annoying disembodied voice. “There was a man who called the demon to play a role, and then drive him back. And do you know how it all ended?”

      He did not know and did not want to know where these voices were coming from. Even if they are generated by his consciousness, He did not want to discuss this problem with a psychologist. Psychologists exist only to help sort out family problems or get out of depression caused by career breakdowns. You only need to fight demons yourself – this was the motto of all the ancestors of Daniel. But why did he decide that these voices were demonic? Demons have a place near cemeteries, churches, crypts and abandoned chapels, but not at the filming.

      Daniel himself did not notice how he fell asleep for the script. For the first time in his life, he dreamed of something pleasant: Jane was replaced by Alais in the role of Medea Shai. Only Alais didn’t play. She performed magic tricks without any special effects. Everything was going well, until some terrible creatures began to crawl out of the darkness behind her.

      “I’m not alone,” Alais said to Daniel as if apologetically. “I never come alone. What’s a queen without an army?”

      Someone in a purple robe

      What if dreams are brighter than reality? Visit a doctor? Taking antidepressants? When you want to go back to the world of dreams, and there is only everyday routine around, you begin to feel like a dog on a leash. Who would have thought that such emotions are experienced by a movie star? In fact, Daniel considered his occupation to be similar to working on an assembly line: you need to play the same scene until the director announces that there is enough for today. In the process of shooting, there is absolutely no romance that the audience will see in the finished and edited film.

      “Probably, that is why they take money from the public, but you get it, on the contrary,” the manager once mockingly explained to him. “Work is work. We all adapt.”

      However, the film about the Ancient Egypt seemed to have been filmed in one moment. It was impossible to imagine Alais posing dejectedly in front of the camera and playing the same scene madly. In the film, everything happened so naturally, as if he had not been filmed at all, and he created himself.

      “Do I even understand my thoughts myself?” Daniel asked himself, looking in the mirror at the hotel. What do you mean, the film made itself? How is this possible? This is the same as saying: the cinema has rebuilt itself. It was naturally rebuilt by people. But for what purpose? So that this film goes on forever, completely fooling the audience’s brains. Were there any other films in the repertoire? You