The Ghostly Bride

 In July, we had a rest at our dacha near Ufa, in the village of Milovka. We have a small plot there. There is a well, one for two with a neighbor. Anton Pavlovich is 57 years old, a widower, and he has no children.

We decided to clean the well. It was already evening when we started lifting the gravel. At the bottom of one of the buckets, they found small photographic ceramics, such as are usually installed on monuments. It showed a woman in her thirties with dark long hair and a very pretty face. Guessing how she could have got into the well and not coming to a definite conclusion, I just threw her into the rest of the slag. But her neighbor was much more interested in her. Explaining to me that it was inappropriate to treat the find like that, he took it for himself. I didn't even object.

The next morning, his legs were paralyzed and he was taken to the hospital by ambulance. A month later, he returned home. As it turned out, there was no one to take care of the disabled person. My wife and I decided to help Anton Pavlovich — cook food, keep an eye on the house.

One day his wife came to see him. Going into the kitchen, she heard a voice from the room. As she got closer, she saw that the old man was talking to a photograph. And he made long pauses in the conversation, nodding his head as if listening to the answer. After a while, I personally noticed this. It was the same camera! When I asked what was happening to him, I received a harsh answer: they say it's none of my business. After that, when we visited him, the neighbor hid the photo. He's completely out of his mind, I thought. But he didn't stop helping him. And in conversation, he began to mention more and more often about marrying some Lyudmila, and how she would return from somewhere far away. And when I asked him about People, he answered in monosyllables or didn't say anything at all. And before that, the unsociable man was increasingly withdrawn into himself.

One day I went to see him in the evening. He was just about to knock when he distinctly heard a loud female laugh. He knocked. Two minutes later, a satisfied, smiling neighbor opened the door to me and said, "It's a pity that you missed Luda, she just left" (it's worth noting that the neighbor does not have his own exit to the road. To get out, we need to overcome our area, where a large guard dog, Jack, is sitting by the fence).

After that, I already forgot why I came... When I got home, I told my wife about it. Grinning, she said that I had contracted schizophrenia from my grandfather.

It was a restless night. There was a thunderstorm, but there was no rain, a strong wind was blowing. Jack was running amok on the chain, howling loudly, which kept me awake for a long time.

The morning was overcast. When I went out on the porch to smoke, I noticed that the dog was nowhere to be seen. I called the dog, but there was no reaction. I looked into the booth and saw Jack dead... with a piece of long black hair in his mouth. I went to the neighbor to see if he had heard anything. He knocked. No one answered me. I knocked for another five minutes, thinking he was asleep. He took the spare keys that were hidden in his bathroom. When I opened the door and went into the room, I saw my neighbor sitting in an old armchair, dressed in a formal weekend suit. There was a half-finished bottle of wine and two glasses on the table. The neighbor showed no signs of life. After feeling his pulse, I was convinced that he was dead. He called an ambulance, which ruled death by asphyxiation (mechanical asphyxia). A search of his home did not reveal the very photograph he treasured so much.