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Автор: Anastasia

This night I couldn’t sleep and I was still awake when I received a call from the police. The inspector on the other side of the wire seemed apologizing: "Mr. Axon, I’m sorry to wake you up so late but there’s been an accident and we need you here."

"I’ll come over," I promised.

Within fifteen minutes I was at the police station.

"We need you to identify a corps," the inspector explained, "there was your telephone number in his pocket and so we called you. He’s got no papers with him."

I needed no explanation, I knew who the man was before I threw a look at him.

"Frank Elsinger," I said, turning away.

"Thank you, Mr. Axon, a colleague of yours?" inspector politely inquired.

"Was," I replied. "May I go home now?"

"Of course, you can, thank you for coming."

"Not at all."

Outside in the rain I slowed down my steps. Elsinger was dead, he committed a suicide and now I felt guilty. That was a part of his plan, he wanted that I kept on thinking, it was my fault. And it was. And I knew I had to live now, knowing that Elsinger could still be alive if I behaved in a different way. And Rachel was right: his death didn’t bring back Doyle and Sunray, it only intensified the pain. Frank committed a suicide and it was my fault.

V. Anne Julia

There was Christmas coming. Another Christmas without my parents. Pete didn’t tell me that they wouldn’t ever come back again but somehow I felt it and it filled me with despair. My parents I loved so much! I remember how Christmas used to be with them around: I was only four then but I still remembered every little detail of our life together. I saw the picture: a crispy winter evening, short before sunset when every house and every tree in the street threw long blue shadows on the snow. The air was filled with blue shadows and with the Christmas spirit. And I was going down the street, holding my Dad’s hand. I guess we’ve been out shopping for I could remember holding parcels and a pack of sweets: my Mom never allowed me to eat too much before dinner but my Dad, always so wise and sensible, let me go away with it and used to buy me sweets once we were on our own. I remembered snow crunching under our feet. The sun was hanging in the winter sky like a big orange and I remembered asking Dad whether someone could eat this orange. He laughed and although I couldn’t understand why he was laughing, I joined him because I wanted to be like him in so many ways. We weren’t talking, just walking in silence. Dad was so different from Mom! It was impossible to be silent with her: she was always joking, hugging and tickling me, full of life and laughter. Dad was different: quiet and sensible, with attentive blue – gray eyes. I always wondered whether God my Mom told me about was just like Dad, to me Connor seemed omniscient. We finally reached our house and I ran up the stairs, only to be greeted by Mom, who immediately swooped me up into the air. She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, the woman I worshipped. Even Dad seemed to be different when she was around, he used to smile and even if he stayed serious I could see amusement dancing in his eyes. "Just guess what I cooked!" she asked me, helping to shrug off my coat. "Goodness, that means we again have to go out for dinner!" Connor moaned, though I knew he was joking for as far as I knew my Mom was really good at cooking.

Of course Lindsay couldn’t let this unanswered: "Mr. Doyle, I put some arsenic into your coffee, so I guess you won’t be able to go out anyway." I thought that if Peter was around, she would throw my hat at him but she always behaved different with Dad.

Then she bent to kiss me: "Honey, go and wash your hands. And don’t forget to take Sunny down, he must be starving."

I smiled broadly cause I knew that Sunny would rather be down than waiting in my bedroom upstairs. Lindsay knew this as well, she was again teasing. Nevertheless I ran upstairs.

A tear ran down my cheek. Nothing will ever be the same. Of course Pete and Rachel did the best they could to distract me, I guess someone else would have forgotten the parents and called Rachel "mother" but I just couldn’t. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw them, so young and so vital, the way they’ve been before they went to the Bermudas. I loved Pete and Rachel but I have never been able to forget. I hated mirrors: Peter once told I was my Mom’s copy except that I had the same black curly hair my father had. Each time I looked into the mirror, I saw her, Lindsay Donner, my mother I loved so much that it hurt. I had no close friends: nobody really understood me. They considered Peter and Rachel my parents. Why shouldn’t they? It all happened twelve years ago, the day they shipped away and never returned. The day they went to rescue a ship: one of Elsinger’s tricks, as it turned out. Now Elsinger was gone as well: he committed a suicide but it didn’t bring them back. Neither Mom nor Dad.

"AJ, AJ, do you hear me?" only now I realized I was at school and the whole class was staring at me. The teacher was almost finished with giving us back the composition in English.

"Anne Julia," the teacher repeated, "here’s your work. It was good though the story is not trustworthy. I asked you to write about something that happened, not a fiction. You can’t prove that people disappear in the Bermuda Triangle, it’s a legend."

"It isn’t," I answered firmly.

"Oh, come on, AJ, you’re old enough to stop believing fairy tales."

"Fairy tales?" I exploded, forgetting all Pete’s warnings, forgetting my self - composure. "It was a fairy tale that killed my parents??"

Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any more, none of this: the school, the class, and the teacher.

I stood up: "With all respect, you should better not speak about something you don’t know."

And then I left the room, leaving all of them staring after me. It didn’t matter. They were dead.

"AJ," there was Peter calling but I didn’t get up from the bank. I knew he would come. Then I heard him approaching.

"AJ, why did you run away from school?" there was concern in his voice and I guessed it was not easy to raise me up.

"I don’t owe any explanation to the students or to the teachers, you know," I answered without turning to look at him.

"But you owe one to me," he squatted down in front of me and looked into my face.

I turned away: "I know. But I don’t want to speak about it."

"It has something to do with Lindsay and Connor, doesn’t it?" he asked.

I merely nodded.

"What was wrong this time?"

I could keep silence any longer, I had to tell someone about it: "Pete, she told us to write a non – fiction and then I wrote a story about the Bermuda Triangle, their story. She didn’t understand, she says that it’s fictive. The death of my parents is fictive," and I again burst into tears, unable to hold them back.

Peter hugged me, trying to console: "There’ll be a lot of people like this, AJ, telling you it’s a fiction. The main thing is you believe. You’ll live to become happy, AJ, you’ll marry one day and have children."

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