The clatter of heels

 It all happened in July 2008. I have a childhood friend, Olga. Her mother died about 20 years ago. We live in neighboring houses located perpendicular to each other — standard nine-story buildings. One fine day, I was going to visit Olga. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, the weather was fine outside, and there were a lot of people...

As I walked between our houses, I heard the clatter of heels behind me. For some reason, this knock was incredibly loud, standing out from all the other street noises. I turned around to look. At a distance of about 15 meters behind me was a woman in her mid-thirties, very striking, beautiful, with high heels. The only thing that really surprised me was that in such a heat (thirty degrees) she was wearing a strict black suit with long sleeves. I glanced at her briefly and walked on.

As soon as I turned away, that's when it all started. I don't know how to describe it more precisely, but it felt like a bubble or a glass cap had descended on me. All the sounds of the street disappeared, leaving only the sound of heels on asphalt. The people who passed by me didn't look at me at all. It felt like they just couldn't see me, and that if I screamed now, no one would hear me. Fear appeared. One thought was beating in my brain: "I can't let her catch up with me." I quickened my pace to get to Olga faster. But no matter how much I increased my pace, the sound of my heels did not lag behind me, and at the same time the rhythm of the knocking did not accelerate. My ears were already ringing from the eerie "clack-clack-clack".

At that time, there was a combination lock on Olga's front door. Almost running, I approached the front door, opened the door and rushed to Olga's apartment on the second floor. The front door slammed shut behind me with a loud bang, and the click of my heels disappeared. I took a deep breath. But that was not the case: when I was on the stairs between the first and second floors, this clatter appeared in the entrance just as confidently, without changing the rhythm. Moreover, I did not hear the sound of the door opening. And that's when I was gripped by a real panic, a sense of something inevitable, and such horror that my hair probably stood on end.

I ran to Olga's apartment and rang the doorbell. I don't know why, but I knew for sure that I had to get the door open before this stranger caught up with me. I heard the bell ring, I heard Olga's dog barking, I heard footsteps coming to the door from inside the apartment, I heard the clatter of heels on the stairs between the 1st and 2nd floors. I was waiting for the door to open, and I was afraid to turn back. The footsteps stopped on the other side of the front door, and I heard a question: "Who's there?" But the problem was that it wasn't Olya's voice, but her mom's voice, the way I remembered it from childhood. For some reason, I was not surprised, but answered: "Aunt Lyuba, is Olya at home?"

At that moment, the elevator doors opened, although no one had called it. I heard the sound of heels going into the elevator, the elevator doors closing, and the elevator going up. At that moment, it was as if a hood had been removed from me, and I heard children shouting outside, playing, as a car drove past the entrance, and the wind rustling in the trees. But the most interesting thing is that at that moment I heard, as in the replay, the barking of Olina's dog, footsteps outside the door in the apartment and the question: "Who is there?". Only it was Olga. When she opened the door for me, she was very surprised by my pale appearance. This is the story that happened to me in the summer of 2008. I still don't know what it was.