Hello, Uncle

 I was lying in bed, but my eyes wouldn't close. There was no sleep in either eye. It was getting annoying, but was it worth getting angry at yourself? I don't think so. I relaxed, replaying the events of the day in my head. Sleep was still in no hurry to wrap me in its arms, and I gave up, got up and went to the kitchen.

The door creaked softly when I opened it, and I flipped the light switch. The living room, combined with the kitchen, was filled with soft yellow light. I still haven't replaced the old incandescent bulb with an energy-efficient one. The bills come in small, and that's fine. I pushed back my chair and sat down heavily. There were no crickets, although the windows in both the bedroom and the kitchen were open.

I've never been afraid of the dark, but it seemed especially mysterious this evening. Somewhere out there, in the pitch darkness, people are sitting now — without light, without fire, and not even in their homes. It's sad that this is becoming more and more real nowadays.

I sighed, got up, took the kettle, poured water into it and put it on the stove. I'm still not going to buy an electric one, I have to make do with what I have.

Finally, the kettle whistled and the water began to boil. I turned it off and made tea. I drink without sugar, so I don't waste it. At night, even the most ordinary taste of tea feels special.

Glancing at my watch, I realized that it was almost one o'clock in the morning. Got to work tomorrow If I don't fall asleep now, the alarm clock is unlikely to save me. I quickly finished my tea and was about to return to the room when I noticed a silhouette in the window out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think much of it, but I realized it only when I left the hall and entered the bedroom.

A shudder ran through me, and I hurried back. There was no one in the window where the silhouette had been a second ago.

"Yes... I'm really tired if I'm imagining this..." I muttered.

I've always been a skeptic and didn't believe in anything supernatural. He liked to voice his thoughts out loud sometimes. When I returned to the bed, it suddenly became unusually dark.

I didn't realize what had happened to the lighting until I noticed that the streetlights had gone out. They always worked properly, giving low lighting at night up to the third floor, and I just lived on the third floor.

I thought it was the power outage. This is not a rare situation for our country. I tried to turn on the light in the apartment, but to no avail. When I returned to the window, I was dumbfounded.

That silhouette was standing there. A skinny boy was tapping on the glass and pointing at the window handle.

Not understanding what was going on, I opened it automatically.

"Hey, what's up?" - I asked.

— Hello. I can't find my parents. Can you come out here, outside?

- what?

— I can't find Mom and Dad. We went out for a walk, and I didn't notice them leave.…

— Okay, I'll be right out.

I put on my jacket and slippers and went out into the cold, damp hallway. Going downstairs, I suddenly wondered: how did a boy of about eight reach the windows of the third floor? Moreover, it was up to my waist.

A new wave of trembling went through me... but I still recklessly opened the door.

There was indeed a child standing in front of me.

"So where are your parents?" Where did they go?

"In hell!"  He shouted and burst into hysterical laughter.

I didn't appreciate the joke and asked again:

— It's not funny. Where did your parents go?

He continued laughing for another minute, then suddenly calmed down and croaked in a strange voice.:

"You'll see them soon!"

I was shaking. I didn't understand how he could change voices so skillfully. And then his skin began to turn purple. Not literally, but as if out of rage.

I couldn't stand it and slammed the door in his face. To say that I wasn't scared is to lie.

I was about to go up to the apartment, but it was not there. This little psycho started breaking down the metal door! Soon, a dent appeared on it.

My neighbor Oleg came out from the third floor to the noise. It looked like he wanted to yell at whoever was knocking, but when he saw that the door was bending, he froze next to me.

"What is it?"..

—A boy... a little one...— I replied.

A little more, and the door would have been blown off. But she held on! Finally, the upper part bent back, and we saw his face... if you could call it a face.

It was swollen and covered with blisters, and the head was twice as big as usual. And the eyes... are completely black, without pupils. He burst out laughing again, and Oleg and I rushed upstairs.

Oleg ducked into the apartment and locked the door. That coward. I also ran into my room and started praying, even though I had never believed in religion before.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see almost everything. He hid under the bed like a child playing hide-and-seek. I could have gone into the closet, but I didn't have time.

Suddenly, the door was torn off its hinges.

"Uncle, where are you?" My parents have been waiting for you! — it sounded in the room.

My heart was pounding so hard that I almost fainted. The boy was standing in the middle of the room, looking in the closet mirror. It reflected both him and the bed. And in the reflection I saw myself lying under it.

He said:

"Hello, Uncle".

The Dead House

 The story I want to tell happened to a family I know in 2007. I lived in a country house, and they were my neighbors. They were such a cute typical couple of young people with children. It's like a decent family, where everything goes according to the rules and in a measured manner. No shocks. In the morning, take the children to school, go to work, return at seven o'clock, pick up the children from school on the way, then sit down to dinner together. "You can die from such calmness," I often thought, watching their measured life. I often saw their faces in the window when they sat down at the table in the evening. It wasn't that I was peeking, I was just coming home late from work and couldn't resist the temptation to peek through the ever-ajar window (and they still need to be curtained). Moreover, I don't have a family myself — at least to see how other people live, hehe.

Only, as it turned out, not everything was so smooth. One night, I was woken up by a heart-rending scream coming from the house next door. At first I wanted to go back to sleep, because it's not in my nature to meddle in other people's business, but it hurt to scream too long. You have to have a conscience.

I got up, got dressed and left my house, building up curses in my head, which are now going to splash out in a dirty stream on the heads of the poor neighbors. But that didn't happen, and here's why: when I approached the neighbors' gate, the last ones flew out like a bullet, almost knocking me off my feet. I was stunned by the sight of them: in their nightgowns, their faces were white. The children clutched at me and began to cry. "What the hell is going on here?" I thought, and I asked in a calm tone, addressing the woman:

"What happened?" I heard screams.

"There's someone in our house!" — the woman began to speak quickly, her tongue slurring with excitement. — I... at first I heard that someone was walking in the kitchen...I was scared, I was afraid to go check... then I heard someone coming up the stairs and opening the door to the children's room... then Katerina, my daughter, screamed. It was so scary! I immediately ran to them, and we ran out.

"Did you see anyone there?" - I asked.

— No, the children ran out of the room, and I didn't check it.… I'm very afraid, I need to call the police," she said, anxiously glancing at the house.

Obviously, her fear had passed, giving way to anxiety. I looked at the children, who were still trembling with fear, and asked:

"Where's their father?"

"He's working the night shift today," the woman replied.

"Go to my house and call the police, while I check your house," I said and handed the keys to the neighbor. She looked at me in surprise, and there was gratitude in her eyes. Taking her offspring by the arm, the woman left.

It was the first time I was alone with this house. The dark tones didn't suit him very well—he looked gloomy. I remembered the days when he was white, gray, whatever he was! But for some reason, no one stayed in it for long. I looked at the empty windows and the open door, and suddenly it seemed to me that the house was also looking at me, taking a closer look.

"It's a trap," said an inner voice.

"What the hell? What should I be afraid of?" I asked myself. It usually worked, but not this time. Humans, like animals, have an instinct for self-preservation. I do not know what came over me at that moment, but I was afraid. I was afraid of the unknown. I was afraid that the eyes of the dead were looking at me now—they were looking from every dark corner of this house.

—Damn it, I'm not a kid anymore," I said out loud. "Nothing's going to happen to me. We just need to check the house.

I decided to take a step per second, and for each step I repeated to myself: "I'm not afraid of the dead...I'm not afraid of the dead...I'm not afraid of the dead... you have to be afraid of the living... I'm not afraid of the dead..."

As I walked, I looked at the asphalt path and counted the steps. Suddenly, I saw that the asphalt was illuminated by a reflection — a light came on in one of the windows, although according to the neighbor, there was no one at home. I looked out the lighted window and saw no one behind it.

"And yet there's someone there," an inner voice whispered treacherously. "And he's not afraid of being found." He WANTS it."

I was stunned. Now I've definitely decided that I won't check a damn thing until the police arrive. I froze two steps away from the door. The situation itself seemed absurd to me. An adult man is afraid to enter the house, because since childhood he has been afraid to see a ghost!

"If it's a burglar, then why did he turn on the light?" I thought.

Click. The lights went off.

"What the hell?"  I thought and took a few steps back.

I still couldn't see anything in the pitch darkness, but I could feel on my skin that a dead man was looking at me.

Click. The light turned on.

What I saw in the window almost gave me a stroke. My sister, who died three years ago, was standing there. She looked at me with glazed eyes and smiled a dead smile.

Click. The lights went out.

I ran as fast as I could to my mansion. When I ran into my room, I felt better, but not much. My neighbor (her name was Lisa) looked at me with fear and concern.

—Water, please," I said, leaning on my kitchen set and breathing heavily. My heart was pounding so hard that I was afraid I might have a heart attack.

My face must have been so pale that the children started crying again. I pulled myself together and tried to smile. But, apparently, it turned out badly.

— Mom!  Katerina shouted.

Lisa came into the kitchen with a glass of water (I had a pump outside, so she had to go out) and handed it to me. I drank for a long time and painfully, I didn't want the water to run out, because I already saw a mute question on Lisa's face. After draining the glass and seeing that Lisa was about to ask me, I stopped the question.:

"Have you called the police?"

"She's on her way,— she said. "Have you checked the house?"

I answered in a voice that didn't seem to belong to me, but to another person.:

—Um... I don't see the need for that... the police are coming anyway."

Lisa looked at me incredulously and worriedly. I looked away—I didn't want her to read everything in my eyes. At that moment, I couldn't vouch for my mental health.

Ten minutes later, the police arrived and searched the entire house in search of the thief. But no one was there anymore. Did I know? that they wouldn't find anything because my dead sister was the "thief"! The police spent another half hour combing the neighborhood, asking the neighbors, especially me. There was no question of telling them what I had seen. When asked, typically in such situations, if I had seen anything suspicious, I replied that I had not. But the image of a dead woman smiling with a terrible unearthly smile and looking at me kept coming back to my mind.

The police, having found no trace, left on their more important business, perhaps laughing along the way at the ridiculous situation with the "invisible" thief. Only me and the family next door weren't laughing. By seven o'clock in the morning, the head of the family, Mikhail, arrived (as he introduced himself to me later). At the sight of his father, the family cheered up, and they all returned to this house. I tried not to look at him, especially at the upper windows.

After that crazy night, I didn't sleep well. As soon as I closed my eyes, I immediately saw the dead. It was only a month later that I was able to live normally. And the neighbors seem to have calmed down, returned to their rut. Mikhail set up cameras and alarms everywhere after this incident, so that everyone could sleep peacefully. And I was happy—no one screamed at night, and I didn't see corpses in the windows. Life was a success!

But a month later, one afternoon, someone started knocking on my door. Moreover, the knock was confident and strong. Someone was persistently trying to literally break through my door. I went up to her and looked through the peephole. Damn, it's Lisa!

"Is something wrong?"- I asked.

- yes. Can I have some water, please?  She said in an unusually plaintive voice.

"Well, we've lived! Don't you have enough water of your own? Or does it taste different?" I thought, but I opened the door anyway.

Lisa smiled. And that smile seemed so creepy and inhuman to me that a shudder ran through me from head to toe, but I quickly got over it and motioned for her to come in. I didn't have to ask a second time — Lisa came in and went into the living room uninvited, never turning around, still with the same frozen smile on her face.

"Well, great, now I also have to pour water for her! And she's waiting in the living room!"— I cursed in my mind, heading for the kitchen. It all seemed strange to me. The irrationality of what was happening bothered me as I filled a mug with water.

It was hot, and the kitchen window was open. Birds were singing, and the weather was fine. I could hear the voices of the neighborhood kids playing catch-up, and…

Stop! What's it?

I froze, listening to the voices, and couldn't believe it. Lisa was there! She was outside the fence, playing with the kids.

I dropped the glass from my hand. My whole body felt like it was paralyzed. I couldn't move. There was only one question in my mind.: WHO'S SITTING IN MY LIVING ROOM?

I don't remember getting out of my house—I think I jumped out of the kitchen window. Of course, I didn't check who was sitting in my living room. I ran to the neighbors and just asked them for a phone, called a taxi to the city. I never returned to my country house again.

Now I live in a city where there are more people and fewer dead people. The neighbors, as far as I know, also moved out after a while. People said that the reason was insanity. And a group one. "They thought the house was haunted, the fools!" my friend laughed. And damn it, I was laughing with him. Maybe even louder than him.

The Invisible Man

 In 1993, during the winter holidays, I came to visit my aunt in St. Petersburg - I wanted to "test the waters" before going to university. My relative lived on Vasilyevsky Island alone in a huge three-room apartment. She was very happy to see me, because, according to her, she felt some kind of danger and was afraid for her life. In those days, which were rather vague, I must say, there really was something to be afraid of — "black realtors" were operating everywhere and probably noticed a single woman with real estate in the old fund. For this reason, my aunt, and her name is Alevtina Lvovna, immediately said that I should stay with her during my studies. In principle, it coincided with my plans.

Every morning my aunt went to work, and I stayed in the apartment alone. At first, it was difficult for me to get used to the huge rooms and high ceilings, but after about three days I adapted. The apartment seemed to have a life of its own — here and there the parquet boards creaked, there were some rustles and sighs. I began to understand Alevtina Lvovna — it was scary to live alone here. At night, the strange sounds became even clearer, and it seemed that a ghost was about to appear out of the darkness. Besides, in my sleep it seemed to me that someone was walking in the kitchen, flushing the toilet, turning on the taps.

One day on the weekend, when my aunt stayed at home, I decided to ask if she noticed anything strange in her apartment. Aunt Alya reluctantly supported this topic and first told about the strange sounds, and then suggested a walk. On the street, she bluntly stated that "someone" was living in the apartment. Some kind of creature that has the property of invisibility and is not averse to stealing food from the refrigerator. The strangeness started only a year and a half ago, and she is very afraid that this "someone" will kill her if he finds out that his secret has been revealed. Therefore, this topic should not be raised in the apartment. Alevtina Lvovna also told me that, on the advice of the priest, she sprinkled holy water on all the corners before my arrival. And in response to this, a terrible male laugh rang out from the kitchen. She didn't do anything else.

To put it bluntly, I didn't believe my aunt, but my youthful curiosity was aroused. I decided that for the rest of the week I would definitely solve the mystery of this "creature". A recent incident came to my mind. I was coming out of my aunt's apartment onto the stairs, and the door was ajar. At that time, a German Shepherd dog was being led for a walk from somewhere above. The dog almost escaped from the mistress's arms — she wanted to get inside so much. The girl barely dragged her away from the door, and the barking could still be heard on the street.

On the same day, I ambushed Lena — that was the name of the owner of the shepherd dog — on the street and directly asked her for help. I should have let Guy in and seen what was making him so angry. Lena was my age, and apparently she liked me, so she agreed to the experiment.

When the dog had had a walk, we went up to my aunt's apartment together (my aunt herself had gone to a friend's house), and I opened the door. Guy rushed forward barking and rushed into the kitchen. Then he started running around the apartment and eventually stopped at the pantry door. At the same time, his barking began to alternate with growling — he tried to open the doors with his paws. As soon as I opened one of the doors, the shepherd dog rushed into the darkness and clung to something with its teeth. There was a scream, and something shapeless fell out into the corridor. I turned on the light and saw a bearded man on the floor, trying in vain to unclench the dog's jaws.

Grabbing a knife in the kitchen, I put it to the stranger's throat, and at that moment Lena pulled Guy away. And then, right before my eyes, the man seemed to melt away — objects became visible through him. Lena and I couldn't believe our eyes. The knife fell out of my hands, and my mind went blank—I temporarily lost my sense of reality. All I could hear was Guy barking.

I don't know how much time has passed, but I've come to my senses. Apparently, Lena felt the same way. There was a knife on the floor, a dog was rampaging, the floor was stained with blood — red footprints led to the door, which was wide open. The wounded "invisible man" disappeared.

There was nothing to discuss — Lena and the dog went home, and I started cleaning. My mood was depressed, as if someone had messed with my brain. By the time my aunt arrived, there were no signs of a struggle. Listlessly, I told Alevtina Lvovna that the "creature" was no longer in the apartment and asked her never to leave the door to the stairs open again. He went to bed and slept for twelve hours. It was only after that that I was able to explain something to my aunt. But it seems, in turn, she didn't believe me. However, since then, the oddities in the apartment have disappeared.

Six months later, I came to study, and three years later, Lena (Guy's hostess) and I got married. And we're still together. We remember the hunt for the "invisible man" now with humor, although it was not a laughing matter then.

The ambush

 Outside the city, in the gardens, where life is teeming in summer, and no one lives in winter, I have a cottage. And then one winter, my friends and I agreed to go there and organize barbecue gatherings. Since there was no heating, I moved out earlier to heat the cottage with electric stoves, while the others had to pick up the girls, then go to the store and come to me.

After buying cigarettes, I got in the car, turned on the music and drove off. The gardens were a thirty-minute drive away, there were no traffic jams, and I got there quickly. It was only six o'clock, and it was already getting dark outside. When I reached the entrance to the gardens, I turned off the highway and drove along a dirt road to my cottage. Arriving at the place, I got out of the car, lit a cigarette, looked around: the cottages are covered with snow, the lampposts are not lit (no one needs it in winter), the stars are beginning to appear brighter in the sky...

The phone rang. It was Ilya, who was the only one who knew where to go. He called to clarify something about shopping at the supermarket. After talking to him, I took the keys and went to open the cottage. The snow was knee-deep, so I had to take a shovel and clear a small place for a barbecue. Then, opening the cottage, I went inside, turned on the light, turned on the heater. After that, I walked around the cottage and looked around. I found some old clothes and decided to change my clothes so that I wouldn't be afraid to get dirty. Then he went out into the courtyard, started making preparations — he brought firewood, a barbecue, paper, turned on the street lighting...

Meanwhile, it was completely dark outside. The sky was full of stars. There was nothing to be seen beyond the gate, which was reached by the light of the lantern. Clutching a cigarette between my teeth, I started trying to light a match with my frozen hands, when suddenly I heard the alarm sounds of my car, which was parked on the central road that passed on the other side of the cottage. "What the hell," I thought, and, taking a flashlight, walked towards the car. Walking up to the car, which was squealing and flashing like a Christmas tree, I turned off the alarm and walked around it from all sides, trying to figure out what caused it to go off. When I didn't find anything, I thought maybe a cat jumped on the hood and ran away, or something... I was about to return to my station when my cell phone rang again. It was Ilya again, who, as it turned out, had been driving around the highway for ten minutes and was looking for a stop at my gardens. We agreed that I would go out on the highway and he would see me by the headlights. I got into the car, which by that time had been swept by a light snowball so that nothing could be seen through the windshield, turned on the wipers, cleared the snow from the windshield and immediately turned on the high-beam headlights.

What I saw in the headlights stunned me. About five meters from my car, there was a creature on two legs, with arms hanging down to its knees, and with thin and unusually long fingers. The body was wrapped in some kind of rags, apparently once used as clothes. He had a bald head, completely black eyes, two holes instead of a nose, and a mouth with thin, long teeth protruding from under his upper lip... It stood and stared at me, squinting slightly in the headlights, and I stared at it and couldn't move from the horror that overwhelmed me. The first thought that flashed through was — maybe it's just a sick homeless man, an alcoholic, maybe a burned-out... I was trying to find at least some logical explanation for what I saw right in front of the hood of my car. And then this creature blinked—blinked not like a human, closing its eyelids vertically, but in an unnatural horizontal way.

Then I came out of my stupor, put the car in reverse gear and pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor. The car roared into reverse, and I, not even watching the road through the mirrors, but only watching the receding silhouette, somehow taxied to the intersection, turned sharply and accelerated towards the highway. I was driving at about 60 kilometers per hour (the usual speed of driving through the gardens is 10 km/h). When I reached the gate (there is an exit from the gardens), despair overwhelmed me, because I could not have imagined this in any way: the gate was closed and wrapped with a chain. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw that the creature was not only running, but actually rushing towards me like a huge dog. At the same time, I could even hear the creature's breathing or growling from the car.

I shrank back into the seat. My heart was pounding like crazy. I started crying, the hopelessness of the situation was squeezing tears out of my eyes. I couldn't make a sound out of horror. I just sat and stared at the impetuous figure approaching in the darkness of the night, which was already very close. It was a little more than seven meters to the highway, along which a passing car is very rare at such a time... and an iron gate wrapped with a chain. I thought about ramming them, but I knew it wouldn't do any good. When I saw that I was very close, I pressed the door lock button, pressed into the seat and squeezed my eyes shut.

He sat there for half a minute. There was no movement. Silence. I couldn't stand this insane tension. I opened my eyes and looked out my window. There was no one there. I turned back and looked out the back window—the headlights illuminated only the snow. Sitting up straight, I already wanted to go somewhere from this place, but I noticed in the left window, a few dozen centimeters away, black eyes looking directly at me. The creature was standing right next to my car, hunched over so that its head was right at my level. His breath melted a patch of frozen ice on the glass. I just didn't have the strength to feel terror or panic anymore. I froze and waited. The creature looked at me with what seemed to me to be a predatory gaze and occasionally blinked in the same way as I described above...

The headlights hit me in the face and brought me to my senses. It was Ilya who saw my car at the turn. The creature immediately jumped aside and, making a sound resembling the whining of a dog, tore towards the depths of the gardens, while running its "paw" over the car and leaving a scratch. Ilya drove up to the gate, untied the chain, and drove into the gardens. He came up to me and had a smile on his face, it was obvious that he was in a good mood. Music was playing from his car, and the guys were laughing. Another car pulled up next. The whole company was assembled. When Ilya saw me in a deplorable state, he tried for several minutes to make me understand so that I would open the door. When I came to my senses, I persuaded everyone to leave this place. It was only the next day that I was able to explain to them what had happened. They saw my state of mind and the scratch on the car, and I don't think any of them didn't believe me.

The next day, Ilya went, turned off the heaters, closed the cottage, seeing nothing suspicious. Soon I sold the plot for next to nothing, and I never showed up there.

A woman in the garden

 I live in the village of Kostino, Moscow region. The village is small — there won't even be a hundred people. I don't have a husband (he died 4 years ago), I live alone, my children have grown up and live separately.

I woke up very early that day because I was suffering from insomnia. It was about half past four in the morning, and there was a thick fog. At that time, the strawberry blossom season began. When I woke up, I got up and decided to take a breath of fresh air.

When I left the house on the porch, I saw a strange picture: an unknown woman in her fifties was picking strawberries in my garden. Moreover, she was dressed very strangely — in a red robe with a strange hat on her head and strange shoes in the fashion of the 1940s. I shouted in disbelief for her to leave (in obscenities). After she turned around and noticed me, I saw her dark black eyes and a look of fright on her face.

From what I saw after that, I was in deep shock. The old woman's legs somehow bent, and not at the knee, but in the opposite direction, and, jumping over the fence, she disappeared. Realizing that it was some kind of devilry, I flew into the house, took valerian and lay down to rest - I was shaking all over with fright. When I woke up at ten o'clock, I went outside with the same fear and great curiosity and saw the same woman picking strawberries, but in different clothes. Speechless with fear, I began to recite a prayer, after which the woman, barking something obscene, for some reason fell to the ground and disappeared. And she never came back.

I became very ill, lost weight, and even prepared to die. I knew for sure that I was seriously damaged. I asked my friend about what I saw, and she replied that there was a boarded—up house on the edge of the village, in which sounds could be heard every night, wild screams and whistles.

Everything that caused me wild fear passed after the local men burned down this damn house.

The night guests

 As a student, I rented an apartment. An ordinary neighborhood, a new building. No one had lived in the apartment before me, so I didn't even have a thought to be afraid of anything. However, even in this quiet apartment, something incomprehensible happened to me.

It was the night from Thursday to Friday. I couldn't sleep. Tomorrow was an important exam, I was preparing poorly and the excitement made itself felt, resulting in insomnia.

I was lying there thinking about my life when I heard a soft rustle from the hallway. I don't have any animals, and I live alone, so I pricked up my ears and listened. There was a feeling that someone was scratching at the door. I wanted to get up several times and check what was going on, but it was too scary.

Then the rustling was replaced by footsteps. Very quiet, barely noticeable.

I was so afraid that I couldn't bring myself to turn around (I was lying with my face to the wall). Someone was standing in front of my bed, I could feel it on my skin. A light breeze passed over my cheek — I was sniffed!

And then I heard a voice, almost a whisper.:

— Not there. It's not her.

And I felt it move away from my bed. I don't know where my powers came from, but I turned around. Two silhouettes floated out of the room into the corridor — a woman and a very young girl. I watched them go for a few minutes, and then I just turned off.

She was obviously nervous.

The next evening, I found out that a young woman had died in the apartment below me. She died of a heart attack while sitting on a stool by the window. She had a cigarette in her hand.

Apparently, it was her.

Sweet fear

 He took a drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke rings. They slowly melted away into the ceiling.

—Fear, you say?" Fear has nothing to do with it. When I say "I'm scared" or "I'm afraid," it doesn't mean that it's fear. More precisely, not the kind of fear you're used to.

"What kind of fear?"  The boy looked at Him blankly. — I'm afraid of monsters under the bed. Well, I was afraid. I'm afraid of twos. But this is one fear. Although there are different things. I'm sweating, my legs are shaking, and probably these hamstrings, I don't know where they are, but they're definitely shaking. How is it not such a fear?

He looked at the boy with a grin. Small, bruises under the eyes, skinny. Smart guy, but still a kid.

"You'll understand when you grow up," he took another drag on his cigarette.

— That's what everyone says. Explain it."

The boy was offended and sat sulkily, but the interest made him ask Him further.

"It hurts when she talks." No, it's not like that. There are too few words in human languages to describe it. I don't sweat, I don't shake. I just want to sink deeper into the floor, into the wall, seep through the pores of the earth and hide from this screeching, from this thunder. It pours like hot caramel... Didn't you touch the melted caramel?

— I touched it. It hurts," the boy grimaced. "But she's sweet."

— Exactly! Sweet. Pain and sweetness, those hands, that voice. Fear is like a roller coaster ride, but you want to disappear," He mused. — No, that's not it again.

—Ah...— the boy began, but soft, stealthy footsteps sounded in the corridor. The boy froze, staring at the door of the room. The door slowly opened.

— My little masik, baby, my beloved cookie, you are my candy. Why aren't you sleeping, malipusik?

"That's what I'm talking about," He whispered, hurriedly disappearing into the darkness of the dressing room.

— Mom, the monster under the bed said that he has a sweet fear from you. How's that?

Mom hugged her son tightly, kissing his forehead and face.:

"Sleep, sweet baby, there are no monsters, my sweet darling." And who lit a cigarette under the window that stinks so much in the room?

Fellow traveler.

 One chilly November evening, work dropped me off at the regional town of N. I had to take the train. I boarded in the evening, and the train arrived at N in the morning. I took a compartment for business trips. There were three or four other people in the carriage besides me and the sleepy conductor. Everyone was sitting quietly in their seats. It was cool, apparently they decided not to heat it too much, since there were practically no passengers, so I decided to leave my jacket and woolen turtleneck sweater on. The train jerked and, gaining speed, left behind the illuminated, noisy island of the city. The train was surrounded on all sides by the silent night.

Occasionally, in the monotonous rattle of wheels on joints and the noise of movement, the rustle of an opening door and the bang of a vestibule door lock crept in. The dim light bulb in the compartment only outlined the shelves and the table, she clearly did not have enough strength for more. It was impossible to read. It was boring to look at the blackness of the window with the occasional flickering lights of distant, rare houses in this direction. I didn't feel like sleeping either. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and listened to the knocking, gradually merging and transforming into a kind of melody. The melody of the railway. And, apparently, dozed off. I was awakened by the sharp whistle of the train and the noise of the oncoming train that cut into the music of the wheels. Like filmstrips, bright spots of windows of an oncoming passenger train flew by the window. It was only when the darkness of the night and the monotonous sound of the wheels returned that I saw Him. He was sitting across from her, lost in the darkness of the shadow from the top shelf. His hands rested open on his knees. It was impossible to see the face, but the attentive gaze was felt literally physically. We sat in silence for about half a minute, looking into each other's eyes.

—I'm sorry, you seemed to be dozing, I didn't want to wake you up," the night passenger broke the silence.

 I glanced at my watch, trying to determine how much sleep I'd had, but I couldn't determine when I'd fallen asleep. After some effort and calculations, it turned out to be about an hour - have you been here long?

— No, a quarter of an hour, no more.

— Oleg.

— Viktor Petrovich. You can just say Victor.

I was about to shake hands with my fellow traveler, but he continued to sit with his hands folded in his lap, only nodding his head slightly. To hide my awkwardness, I asked:

— Are you going to N?

— No, to Myasnitsky forest. It's much closer.

"I haven't heard."

— A small village. Several houses.

— Do you live there?

It seemed to me that a smile flashed across Victor's face.

— No, rather, on a business trip.

— And what can you do in a small village on a business trip?

— Communicate with people.

Here, he smiled again before answering. They usually smile like that when they're not telling the whole truth.

— Are you an ethnographer?

"Something like that."

I wasn't going to pull answers out of the fellow traveler with a pair of tongs, apparently, he didn't want to communicate, and I didn't ask him further.

Several minutes passed in silence. I looked out the window and wondered if I should go to bed or continue to sit.

— I collect and research mysterious and paranormal phenomena.

Wow, Viktor Petrovich decided to let me in on his business.

— An interesting activity. Is it a hobby or a profession?

— Modus vivendi.

— Lifestyle.

— Do you know Latin?

— Just a few catch phrases. I learned it at school to impress the girls.

"Was it successful?"

— You are the first one who appreciated it.

This time the smile was friendly. Strangely, the shadow did not allow one to see the features of the fellow traveler, only an attentive look or a smile appeared separately.

— So what is the mysterious thing that happened in... meat, I think... forest?

— Myasnitsky.

— I'm sorry, Myasnitsky forest. Was someone hacked, perhaps?

— Yes, during the war. More than one thousand soldiers perished in the swamps in the Bora region. The fighting was so fierce that there was no time for the dead, and there was no one to clean up, and they lay around the neighborhood. Later, when the fighting shifted to the west, the locals who returned to the village buried the fallen. But since then, men's voices are heard in the forest, and there is a smell of shag, then a soldier knocks on the hut, asks for water to drink or a loaf of bread. Or even someone will see the whole battle scene in some ravine. Few people want to live in such a place, so the people ran away, only a few old women and old men survive.

It gave me the creeps. No, you can't scare me with stories, but in the semi-darkness of the compartment, where glass separates from the pitch darkness of the night, and only one dim light bulb saves, the images of the restless soldiers flashed through my mind too clearly and realistically.

"Aren't you afraid of ghosts?"

Once again, a smile emerged from the shadows.

— As in the joke — "why be afraid of us?". No, it's not scary. Sometimes the living are scarier and more dangerous.

— I agree.

We sat in silence for a minute. The fellow traveler continued to examine me, and I, looking out the window, digested what I had heard.

— Have you been to many anomalous zones?

— I've traveled all over the Sverdlovsk region. It is rich in anomalous places. For example, in the poultry farm area, on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg, there is an unfinished four-story hospital, which has the reputation of being a bad, cursed place. There, for no reason, bricks fall on the heads of the curious, the floor falls under their feet, and concrete stairs threaten to collapse at any moment. Everything is crumbling, the walls are collapsing, there are holes in the floor... The building is covered with modern legends. The construction site is no more than 15 years old. It was abandoned due to the mysterious death of the director. But even during the construction process, people were constantly dying there... According to rumors, the construction of the hospital began on the site of the old cemetery. And over the years, several children and teenagers have lost their lives inside the gloomy room. Among other things, ghosts have been seen materializing in it, strange bluish flashes of light in window openings, as well as new brickwork and fresh cement coatings, although no one is even thinking about resuming construction. Damn, in a word.

"Is there really something there?"

— Yes, the place is gloomy. At first, melancholy comes over, and after an hour in the building, depression covers. It always seems that someone is watching you, some rustling, sighing. And this is during the day. No one dares to go there at night.

"Where else were you?"

— I was on the TV tower. All in the same Yekaterinburg. The building of an unfinished TV tower. It towers over the city near the circus. It's not a good place. Until the entrance was sealed, it served as a gathering place for Satanists. All kinds of extreme athletes who like to look at the city from a bird's-eye view often fell from a height and fell to their deaths. The feeling there is similar to that in an unfinished hospital.

— But all sorts of bad houses, I heard, priests consecrate, and ghosts or whatever is bad there disappears.

"It's happened before. Only a bad place is not a dirty room where the floors are washed, the dust is wiped, and there is nothing, everything is clean. There's not much you can do here with holy water and prayers. Are you a believer yourself? I see you're not wearing a cross.

— It's hard to say. I believe in God, but I don't go to church. And the cross is an attribute, its presence or absence does not increase or diminish a person's faith.

I patted my chest to back up my words... wait a minute, how did he know?

— And what makes you think that I don't wear a cross?

— By the way you asked about the consecration. The slight disparagement of the word "priest" led me to this, otherwise the word "priest" or "father" would have been used.

— Do you believe in God yourself?

Now I've tried to catch him in the answer now.

— As Jung said, "I don't need to believe it — I know it exists."

"What's the difference?"

— Faith, one way or another, implies the presence of further evidence, and knowledge is an axiom.

— What's the scariest place you've ever visited?  I tried to steer our conversation away from the shaky ground of the Theosophical debate.

The fellow traveler was silent, my question clearly awakened some unpleasant memories in him. His hands nervously moved up and down his knees. For a moment, his neighbor's body leaned forward, and his face slid out of the shadows. It seemed to me that fear flashed in his eyes. But the face immediately disappeared into the shadows. There was no smile, just one attentive look from unblinking eyes.

— This is the village of Rastess. The now uninhabited settlement of gold miners, located about 25-30 kilometers west of Kytlym, is still in the same Sverdlovsk region. Previously, the famous Babinovsky highway passed through it. Mysterious lights are seen in the sky every now and then. There are many stories about evil spirits and evil spirits. Tourists and hunters avoid these places. There's not a soul in the village these days. All its inhabitants seemed to have disappeared somewhere, leaving all the things in the houses. And there are open graves in the cemetery. It could be attributed to folklore, but I saw it with my own eyes. The Babinovsky tract has long lost its former significance, and the road to Rustess is completely lost in the forest expanses. I got there with a local guide, and then I almost got lost a couple of times. We went out early in the morning and arrived in the evening. It was summer, so it was still light. The place is creepy. We walked around the village. All along the way, it felt like people were all here, only everyone was hiding from us, lurking nearby and watching. And most importantly, there are no birds.… The silence is dead. It was already getting dark, and at first we planned to spend the night near the village. But as dusk began to fall, fear drove us away. Well, we were confused during the day, but at night… Anyway, we got lost and went back to the village. The sky was clear then, and the moon, which was almost full, was shining well. Everything seems to be quiet around us, we are standing on the outskirts of the village: it's scary to go somewhere unknown, and it's creepy to go to the village, and it's impossible to stand still. We see that everything seems to be the same in the village, but on the other hand, something is wrong. It looks like an ordinary residential village. And we went out near the cemetery of the settlement, I looked and felt the hairs on my head move, and the graves were standing whole. The crosses are even, not skewed like in the daytime, and in some places there are flowers on the mounds. I nudged the guide, pointing to the cemetery, but he saw and let's cross ourselves, and he began to whisper a prayer very quickly. I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye, turned towards the village and... horror seized me, my legs immediately became wobbly, I want to run, but I can't. People were approaching us silently, unhurriedly—women, men, old people, children. And all this in deathly silence. Dozens of eyes stared at us without blinking! And no one said a word. The guide pulled my sleeve and started running along the overgrown highway. His jerk brought me out of my daze, and I rushed after him. We ran for a long time, and soon I lost sight of him. Panting, scratched all over, wet, I flew out onto some kind of road. It was only there that I collapsed to the ground and lay there for maybe half an hour, gasping for air.… And I never saw the guide again.

The fellow traveler fell silent. His voice trembled at the last words of the story, apparently reliving all that horror. I was also impressed by the story. I wanted to say something to lighten the mood and change the subject, but nothing came to mind. I pressed my back against the wall of the carriage and stared out the window. Somewhere out there, in the blackness of the night, a creepy village with its silent night inhabitants flew by. The music of the wheels was soothing. Dark. Pillars flying out of it for a moment. Sparse lights flying in the distance. And a knock, a steady, soothing knock. Knock... knock... knock… uk…

I must have dozed off again. I was awakened by the sharp whistle of the train and the noise of the oncoming train that cut into the music of the wheels. Like filmstrips, bright spots of windows of an oncoming passenger train flew by the window. I thought of my fellow passenger, who had been so unceremoniously left alone with his terrible story, and looked at the seat opposite. It was empty. There was no one else in the compartment. I stretched, got up, and went out into the hallway. The carriage was asleep. There was a rustle at the beginning of the carriage, and the sleepy conductor appeared from her compartment.

— Tell me, how long ago was the Myasnitsky Bor station?

"How should I know?"

— How, there should have been a stop there.

— Yeah, about five years ago.

"What do you mean?"

— It's been five years since we stopped there.

- Why?

— Because no one has been living there for five years.

Pouring herself a glass of boiling water from the tank, the conductor dived back into her compartment, letting her know that the conversation was over.

— Wait, what about my traveling companion?

"What traveling companion?"  A sleepy and now angry face poked out of the compartment.

— Well, the one who got hooked at the station and recently got out.

The head disappeared.

"What traveling companion?" We haven't stopped anywhere yet. So no one came in or out. You should go to bed.

The door buzzed shut.

And I was standing in the narrow corridor of the carriage, completely at a loss. And somehow I didn't want to return to the empty and dim compartment at all. A shudder went through my whole body at the terrible thought of the nature of my interlocutor.

An evening at the summer house.

 The summer of 2012 turned out to be extremely hot and dry, so almost everyone moved from the city closer to nature. Naturally, I followed suit, and on June 10, with a huge suitcase of things, I stepped over the threshold of a small two-story house. The cottage belonged to my relatives on my dad's side — an elderly couple and their three children, who occasionally appeared there. It was surrounded on several sides by fences from other summer residents, but on one side it was in contact with an abandoned plot, and the only thing separating them was dense thickets of nettles, willow tea and other nonsense mixed with raspberry and currant bushes. The toilet, as it should be, was on the street, at the very end of the site, and, to my great regret, there was not a single light source on the way to it. Therefore, in the late afternoon, I tried not to drink or eat anything, so that I would not have to leave my cozy bed at night.

One day, the owners of the house were invited to spend the night, and I was left alone. Having nothing better to do, I screwed up a whole can of ice cream for some kind of comedy on TNT, which nevertheless violated the holy rule, and I had to go conquer the impenetrable darkness. Anyway, after fifteen minutes of self-persuasion, I somehow gathered all my willpower into a fist. It even seemed to me that with every step I took, I could hear the clink of my steel balls... if I had any.

After opening the front door, I rushed to the toilet like a bullet, and only when I found myself in a small, bright stall could I catch my breath. I knew in my gut that something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Having done all my chores, I turned off the light and had already moved two meters away from my "shelter" when suddenly, somewhere in the bushes, I heard a barely discernible rustle. Since there are hedgehogs in these parts, I didn't attach much importance to this, but I accelerated the step anyway. And, apparently, for good reason, because the next second there was such a deafening crackling of branches that even a herd of these cute little animals could not have done anything like that. I swear, I even heard someone breathing heavily. Without waiting for what could get out of these thickets, I rushed to the cabin like a bullet. I faintly remember how frantically I tried to turn the ever-jammed handle, trying to get to the other side of the door as quickly as possible. The only sound was the loud cracking of branches and the rustling of grass behind him. When I flew into the hallway, I immediately closed the front door and, trembling, pressed myself against the lock.

The noise stopped, and there was an oppressive silence. Apparently, something or someone was standing right behind the flimsy wooden door. Looking around every minute like a hunted animal, I tried to calm down for a long time, and then I heard a barely audible noise outside the door. It was a soft scratching sound, the kind that usually occurs when a cat scratches its claws on a door. It was unbearably scary. I thought I was dreaming and having a nightmare, my head was blurred with fear, my eyes were foggy, and my ears were ringing. After about ten seconds, the scratching stopped, and I heard a faint unintelligible murmur and some kind of giggling.

Apparently, I went into a state of shock, because, muttering something like "get the hell out, you disgusting creature," I flew up the stairs to the second floor, lowered the hatch and passed out as soon as my head touched the pillow. I woke up—or rather, I woke up—when the predawn colors took over the firmament with might and main. After lying down for a while, I tried to piece together the fragments of memories. But my brain stubbornly refused to accept as reality what had happened yesterday, and hunger, mixed with the stress I had experienced, made itself felt.

Well, I had to go down. With shaky limbs, I barely opened the hatch and, having descended to the middle of the stairs, stood rooted to the spot. I looked around cautiously—everything was as before, nothing had been touched. Although my fear was strong, my curiosity turned out to be stronger, and after standing near the door, listening to the sounds from outside, I nevertheless opened the door. My legs gave out, and I fell, bleeding my knees.

There was a mess around: flowers were trampled, country trash mixed with garbage was lying wherever possible, but perhaps the main thing in this circus was the door. Scratched, dented, and with traces of dried mucus, it spoke for itself.

All my hopes were dashed in an instant. It wasn't a dream! Everything that happened was real…

On the same day, I packed all my things. Of course, I didn't say anything to the old people, I just warned them not to go out at night, arguing that a pack of vicious stray dogs had appeared in the vicinity.

When I returned to the city, I tried to forget about everything. But about a week later, I had a strange dream.

All the same events: ice cream, a dark night, an incomprehensible feeling of anxiety, rustling behind my back, but with only one difference — I'm not running away, but waving affably into the darkness to an unknown being. There is a roar, and something that looks vaguely human appears from the undergrowth. It was thin and tall. The eyes look like human eyes, only bigger, and the skin is grayish, with bits of rotten flesh falling off in places. His bony arms were of varying lengths. The creature was dressed in dirty, torn clothes. The creature waved back at me and stretched its lipless mouth into a creepy smile, revealing rotten teeth. At first, it only made an incomprehensible hiss, and then I distinctly heard:

— Well, finally! You run very fast, we haven't even met!

The creature came right up to me and hissed right in my ear:

— Come visit, bitch, you won't regret it!

Then it put a piece of paper in my hand and disappeared.

When I woke up, I almost fell out of bed when I found this piece of paper in my hand. With hands trembling with fear, I unfolded it, then reread over and over a single inscription in clumsy handwriting: "I AM WAITING."

Aunt Lyuba

 I'm walking home from the village club one day. I always walked along the same road. It was midnight. I saw a granny sitting near the gate.

— Aunt Lyuba, why are you sitting here at night scaring people?

— Yes, I'm waiting for them to take me to the cemetery.

— Ahhh, well, I see.

I think Grandma's lost her mind, the old one.

The next day in the afternoon I went to get bread. I pass by this house again. I look — there are a lot of people in the courtyard, and the coffin is standing.

I come home, I tell my grandmother:

— Aunt Lyuba, it turns out, is dead. She was still alive yesterday.

"What was it yesterday?" She died a week ago. The corpse has already begun to decompose. Okay, the postman came to her, otherwise she would have been lying further away.

I never went through that house again.