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.