Face

 I dated a girl last summer. She invited me to spend the night with her. Naturally, I agreed. Her house was in the suburbs, private and a little creepy. Everything was fine — we had tea and went to bed.

At about three in the morning, I wake up to someone calling my name, and very clearly. At first, I couldn't figure out where my name was from for a long time, then I suddenly realized that the voice was coming from under the bed (!). At first I was very scared, but then I decided that the child had crawled under the bed (my friend had a seven-year-old child). I decided to take a look, leaned out of bed and lifted the sheet. A face was looking at me from there. It wasn't human (although it looked like it)—it was more like some kind of mannequin. He didn't say anything, although I could still hear my name. Then the face began to approach me, and black limbs crawled out of the darkness (or so it seemed to me). I was gripped by a wild horror, I couldn't even move my lips. I lost consciousness when it almost reached me.

Towards morning, my friend woke up and found me on the floor in a cold sweat and terribly pale. It turned out that her grandmother, who used to own the house, was a witch or something like that, and strange things sometimes happen in this house.

This creepy image appeared to me in a dream for about three days, after which I woke up screaming. Then it passed. I never went back to that house again.

"Honey, I'm here!"

 I live in Yakutia. Since childhood, I remember very well one scary story that was told in our village.

The story was about a young family (husband, wife and small child) who came to the village and settled in an old house, which, although dilapidated, was still habitable. At first everything was fine, but then the wife began to feel anxious in the house. She didn't tell her husband about it until one night she woke up and saw an old woman with a red face lying on their bed next to her and looking at their child, who was sleeping in a stroller. The wife became hysterical: "Noooo! Get out, don't touch my baby!" Her husband woke up and began to calm her down, and she screamed at him: "There's a ghost lying on our bed!". But he doesn't see it. Meanwhile, the woman with the red face is staring at the child, and the wife is on the verge of madness. While they were busy there, the woman suddenly disappeared.

It is not known why, after such a terrible incident, they did not immediately leave this house, but continued to live as if nothing had happened. Then my husband suddenly died in a car accident. For a young wife with a child in her arms, it was a terrible blow — she fell into prostration for a couple of months. She cried all the time, and when she fell asleep, she dreamed of her dead husband.

And one night, an unhappy widow lies in her bedroom, unable to sleep. And suddenly she hears the door of the house open. She was immediately alarmed, wanted to get up, but something made her stay in place. The floorboards creak under heavy footsteps, and her husband's voice says loudly, "Honey, I'm here!" The wife is in shock — she quickly turns her face to the wall and is trembling all over. The husband once again: "It's me, can you hear me?". Then the footsteps followed into the kitchen, and a voice exclaimed, "Wow, you made waffles! I'm just so damn hungry." And, judging by the sound, he began to eat the waffles that were actually on the table. After that, the footsteps entered the bedroom. The wife closed her eyes so as not to lose her mind. Her dead husband came up behind her, and a cold breath hit her back, and the smell of damp earth appeared. He asked: "Why don't you look at me?" and kissed her bare shoulder. From this kiss, the woman's whole body became numb, she began to lose consciousness. Meanwhile, the voice said, "Well, okay, if you don't want to talk now, then I'll come back later," and the footsteps came out of the bedroom. The door creaked again. The woman lay for a long time, afraid even to breathe, then got up, turned on the light, checked the sleeping baby. My shoulder hurt. She looked in the mirror and there was a big red hickey where the kiss had been. Later it was discovered that the waffles on the table were missing.

The next morning, she invited a local psychic woman into the house. As soon as she entered the house, she was amazed: "What an evil place! How can you live in a house like this with a small child?" According to her, the whole building was teeming with evil spirits. She added that the house is inhabited, among other things, by kind spirits who try their best to protect the residents from the attacks of evil spirits. The widow was "finished off" by the fact that the psychic peered into the bedroom window for a long time and said: "Move out immediately, otherwise there will be trouble. From the side of the forest (and there was a cemetery there) there comes a very strong yuer" (yuer in Yakut mythology is the undisturbed spirit of the dead). The woman was horrified and moved out of the house the same day. She no longer dreamed of her dead husband, and the bad house remained empty.

An old woman in a cassock

 We used to live in a small Orthodox town. We were born there, grew up there, and never traveled very far.

I grew up as a pretty restless and hooligan child. And all these prohibitions and punishments were already sitting in the liver, and dislike of church servants is generally a separate conversation. To us children, all these nuns looked like old, angry, wrinkled old women who would stop us at every little thing and always grumble to themselves with a displeased expression. And we were very afraid of them.

And then one day (I was about 11-12 years old) My parents left late for a visit, and I was left alone at home. The time was about one o'clock in the morning. I was sitting on my bed reading a book when I suddenly heard a very quiet rustle. I look up from my book and see a small (about half a meter tall) old woman in a black cassock standing in the corner of the room, facing the corner. She stood with her back to me and didn't turn around. I just let out an inarticulate squeak, I couldn't even move from fear... Finally, I shouted, "What do you want?!" A wild growl followed in response, but the old woman did not turn to me, only growled.

I quickly jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway, crying, stumbling, and my heart almost stopped. With trembling hands, she opened the door and ran out into the hallway. She screamed so much that a neighbor ran out and invited me to her apartment. She poured me water, made the sign of the cross over me, and asked where my parents were. I said they were visiting Aunt Inna. Then the neighbor called her on her home phone and told my parents to go home faster — allegedly their daughter had a nightmare and she was hysterical. When my parents came home, I told them everything. My mother replied that God was punishing me for behaving badly.

After that, the mother consecrated the apartment. At first, I was very afraid to be alone, and my parents did not leave me and did not visit so late. Three months passed like that, and I calmed down. Nothing like this happened, and I began to think that I would never meet this old woman again.

One Friday evening, my father was on a day trip, and my mother went to a neighbor on the 8th floor - they watched a movie together, which lasted until half past midnight. I was about to go to bed when someone knocked on the door. I thought that my mother had finally come. I opened the door and saw a small black bag on the threshold. Then he moved, and I immediately realized who it was...

I tried to slam the door shut, but something prevented me. I looked down and saw the old woman's ugly bony hand—she stuck it in the crack between the door and the jamb and wouldn't let me close it. I kept pulling on the door, and she was growling and screaming. All I could hear was a shout: "Open up, you scum!" But I managed to slam the door shut, and the hand disappeared.

After this incident, my mother found a few gray hairs on my head. She took me to some healers, they performed rituals, washed me with solutions and oils and told me that I should burn all my clothes that I had, buy everything new and sell the apartment. That's what we did — we started life anew, moved to another city, and everything stopped. But I still remember that ugly old woman.

A terrible revenge

 Our village is quite old — it has been around for several centuries. For many years, it was a peaceful, secluded place surrounded by fields and woods. The only thing that disturbed the peace of this almost paradisiacal area was the railway, which ran about a couple of kilometers from the village. There was a cemetery a little way behind it.

About thirty years ago, a horrific incident occurred here, which is still being talked about. Anna and Sergey have been friends since childhood, and when they grew up, they fell in love and decided to get married. But Seryozha did not live to see the wedding. One day, when he and his friends were celebrating someone's birthday, after getting pretty drunk, the friends started a fight in which Sergei was stabbed. They buried the guy in the cemetery behind the railroad. The culprit of his death, by coincidence, received a short sentence — only a few years. Anna could not cope with such a loss and withdrew into herself, spoke little and spent days at the grave of her deceased fiance. One evening, the girl did not return home, and everyone went in search of her. Anya's body was found on the railway tracks. The girl's body was cut in half. Anna's death was considered suicide, because of superstition they were buried outside the cemetery.

Several years have passed, and Sergei's killer has been released from prison. He decided to celebrate his return in his backyard. I gathered my friends and had a feast. Immediately outside the courtyard, a field began where wheat was sown. When dusk was already hanging, the guy and his two friends, drunk, decided to go to the cemetery. It is worth noting that not only did he feel no remorse for what he had done, but he also hated the late Seryozha for being in prison "because of his fault." Alcohol finally "blew his mind," and the guy went to the cemetery with the direct purpose of desecrating the grave of the murdered man. Having found Sergei's last resting place, the boys broke the cross, tore the mourning ribbons hung on it, trampled the flowers that Anna had lovingly nurtured in the last months of her life. Then they uncorked a bottle of vodka they had brought with them.

— Your health, Serezhenka! — one of them shouted, pouring the contents of the bottle onto a mound, and then smashed it on the remains of the fallen cross.

Having had their fill of fun, the vandals set off back, but their path was blocked by a locomotive passing along the way. When the train passed and the boys crossed the railway, they saw that a freshly trodden path stretched far from it into the field. By that time, it was almost completely dark, and the sight seemed strange, so the boys went home as quickly as possible. But they had not gone more than a hundred meters when a terrible scream was heard somewhere nearby. The friends froze in shock and then saw that nearby the ears of wheat were rustling and bending, as if someone was stepping on them, but nothing was visible. The rustle was getting closer, and when the invisible creature was a couple of meters away from them, the guys started running. It did not retreat and pursued the fugitives with enviable speed. One of them turned around and screamed in horror — something low was chasing them, it was crawling on its elbows, leaving a trail of blood behind it. Long hair matted with blood covered his face. The creature stopped for a moment and threw its hair back, and then the friends recognized Anna in it—or rather, what was left of her. Growling and banging her elbows on the loose earth, she overtook them. Catching up with the two, she grabbed the ankles of Sergei's killer and the one who had spilled vodka on his grave. They screamed, the wheat rustled, and everything abruptly quieted down.

The only surviving guy reached the village only in the morning. Pale and scratched by the corn, he collapsed on the threshold of his house. The corpses of the others were found near the railway. They were cut in half. They tried to explain the deaths of the guys by saying that they died under the wheels of a train after getting drunk. This version was accepted with a stretch. But no one could explain where the trail of blood came from, stretching from the railway tracks to Sergei's desecrated grave.

Furniture warehouse

 That day, as usual, I woke up at two in the morning. My daily routine is completely off track. I took out a cigarette and went to the balcony to smoke. The silence of the night, tightly surrounding the city, caused some kind of disturbing feeling. Only occasionally passing cars diluted the oppressive fear.

Fear—it constantly haunted me. I've been feeling really bad lately. I have no parents, and I lived alone in a large apartment that I inherited. I couldn't find a job in any way — they wouldn't take it because of lack of experience. Of course, I could have gone to work as a loader or the same cleaner, but then a whole bunch of illnesses that I had earned since childhood came into play. But we need money. I could have exchanged an apartment, but the dreams that I would one day have a big family, a beloved wife and a bunch of children did not allow me to do this. But that wasn't the reason for the fear. I felt, instinctively felt, that something terrible was going to happen to me soon...

I went into the store and immediately unfolded a newspaper with ads on the counter. I saw something new among the list of familiar texts. "Work for everyone." On the same day, I called there and was accepted. It wasn't a difficult job. It was necessary to protect a small area — some kind of abandoned workshop. On the first day, they explained to me what and how. In principle, nothing special — the only surprise was that I would not be working alone, but with some other guy.

I immediately examined the area. The workshop was closed, but through the cracks I saw that it was an ordinary furniture warehouse. There was assembled furniture, ready for sale, and disassembled furniture, which was assembled during the day and taken to the store, which was about 200 meters away. There was nothing unusual — cabinets, sofas, some boards, curbstones, mirrors, and so on.

The first night I met a guy, my partner, his name was Volodya. He turned out to be just as much of a loser as I was. I won't go into details, but I will say that even though he was my age, he treated me like an elder, he was always helpful, and I liked it. Every night we talked about life, about our dreams. He played the guitar well, and I painted. We quickly became friends. And the fear that haunted me began to disappear.

And then one day, while we were having another conversation, we heard some noise in the workshop. The fear returned immediately. Thoughts of ghosts and other devilry immediately popped into my head, but I pushed them away and began to convince myself that these were all fairy tales invented for children. We crept up to the workshop and peered through the crack — everything was quiet. It was clear that one of the mirrors had fallen and broken. By the way, I forgot to mention that during the interview I was told that the previous caretaker was fired because someone was constantly damaging the furniture, especially the mirrors. They were either broken or scratched, but they always lay with the reflective side down.

We decided to deal with this in the morning and went back to the gatehouse, but something made me stop. I told Volodya that we needed to check something, and went to the shards.

"Volodya, go get a broom and a dustpan,— I said to my partner.

While Volodya was away, I decided to pick up the large pieces with my hands. Picking up the first one, I held it up to my face because I hadn't seen it for several days. Looking at the week-old stubble, I noticed a black spot on the fragment, as if from soot. I wiped it with my sleeve and looked at it again...

A shudder ran through my body. It wasn't a stain at all. Some kind of black substance was standing behind me. And while I was wiping the shard, she got a couple of meters closer to me. I turned around, but I didn't see anyone. I looked at the shard again, and my hair stood on end. I forgot how to breathe out of fear. I forced myself to inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale. I've never felt such fear. It was right behind me, and I could feel it all over my body. A silhouette could be seen through the black veil. Long and thin arms and legs, a huge head. The eyes are closed, as if it is asleep. I realized that when you look at it through a mirror, it can't move.

Time has never dragged on so long. Where is that damn Volodya? I just stood there and watched. Because I was clutching the shard very tightly in my hand, it bit into my palm like a knife into butter. Blood was flowing down my arm, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the fear I was feeling. The splinter, covered in blood, began to slip out of his hands. Volodya, where are you?

I have never been so happy in my life as that evening when I heard the sound of the door opening.

— Volodya, quickly bring the mirror here!

"What's that?"

"Whatever you can find."

"There's only a closet with a mirror...

"Then get the hell out of him!"

"But you'll have to pay."

— So what?! Do as I say!

While Volodya was dragging the mirror, I was watching the creature. He didn't move.

—Okay, now put it in front of me and hold it," I said when Volodya brought the mirror.

As soon as the mirror was in front of me, I threw away the shard and grabbed the mirror. Holding it in front of me, I headed for the exit. Volodya was walking behind. The creature stood still. Damn, it was so hard to walk! My legs were numb while I was standing, but the most unpleasant thing was the pain in my arm, which prevented me from holding the mirror properly. I felt like my hand was about to open and the mirror would fall out.

I was almost at the exit. "No, Lord, no, not now," I prayed to myself. And then the hand opened...

The last thing I remember is how Volodya's head came off his body and hung in the air. I've heard that a head can live without a body for a few seconds, but now I've seen it with my own eyes. His face contorted into a grimace of fear, and tears welled up from his eyes. I wish it was all just a terrible dream... But it was real.

Suddenly, I felt a surge of adrenaline, and my legs carried me at breakneck speed. I ran for a very long time until I reached my house. I locked myself in there and started smoking one cigarette after another. I thought about Volodya, my parents, and my dreams. I understood that instead of Volodya, it could have been me. I've never had such a desire to live...

Vera

 My best friend Vera and I went to university together. There were no places in the dorm, so we found a cramped "one-room apartment" at some granny's. The apartment was ugly, dark, and neglected, but we paid pennies for it. They've arranged it a bit, and it even seems to have become cozy. Grandma rarely came to visit us, and what was there valuable to spoil — the furniture was old, everything was falling apart, even if you throw it away.

We studied for an excellent year, then Verka got a taste of life without parents. I found a biker guy, disappeared with him at night, ran around the city on a motorcycle. I've never liked her racing.

Vera was especially prepared that evening — the guy was supposed to introduce her to his parents. He picked her up, and she was beaming with happiness. I reminded her that the test was tomorrow and that she shouldn't stay up too late. She invited a classmate to her place — we were good friends, and it was easier to prepare for the test together. We had a very fruitful evening, we searched the Internet, then Leshka ran off for a beer, we wrote cheat sheets, had fun, and figured out where to hide them unnoticeably. We stayed so late that we didn't notice how one o'clock struck. We decided that Lyosha could be put on the floor, and tomorrow we would go to university together, and we would somehow help Verka with the test.

I fell asleep just instantly. I remember dreaming of something so blue, as if some kind of abyss was pulling us into itself, and Vera was being dragged into a whirlpool. I started calling out to her, like I was screaming (maybe I was actually screaming), but then I heard the front door slam. The dream got mixed up with reality, and I felt creepy. The room was dark enough, but the light from the street illuminated it a little. I began to fall asleep again, seeming to realize that my friend had come, so as not to step on Leshka in the dark. There was a familiar creak of floorboards and footsteps. Without opening my eyes, I told Verka to go to bed, otherwise she wouldn't pass the test in the morning, but no one answered. I opened my eyes a crack and saw her figure against the background of the window. She was all shaggy, and her head was turned unnaturally onto her left shoulder, as if she were lying on it. I froze and felt that I was cold— I was shivering. I asked Verka what was wrong with her, but she froze like wax. I stood up and asked her to stop joking. I took my cell phone from the bedside table — the time was 3:17 a.m., as I remember now. Lech stirred, probably woke up too. And then the light from the mobile phone illuminated Verka's face, and I involuntarily screamed — it seemed to me that it was somehow wrong, disfigured. Verka staggered, and her head lay unnaturally on her shoulder. She moved a little closer to me, then said in a barely audible voice that she would not go to the test, and moved into the kitchen. My heart was thudding rapidly, and I was shivering. Lech woke up and asked what was wrong with Vera, and I turned on the wall sconce. The room looked familiar, I followed my friend and was stunned — the kitchen was empty!

Lech came for me — he also saw Vera and also noticed the strangeness. She couldn't get out, we have a creaky front door and a loud rattling lock. But where did she go? What kind of prank is this?

We searched the apartment. Basically, there was nowhere to hide. An old chest of drawers with shutters, a dining table, a sofa and a bed...

We spent the night awake, not understanding what had happened. Each of us felt bad. They even walked around the house—maybe she's saying goodbye to a guy somewhere? But she was nowhere to be found.

We took a test at the university this morning. Verka was still missing, her mobile was disconnected. We just couldn't find out where she was.

I have a headache. When we were gathered in the audience, I was already distracted. Then the dean came in and informed us that our classmate had died that night. Verka and her boyfriend crashed...

Then everything was a blur. They took me to the infirmary, and I was hysterical.

Later, we learned the details that shocked Lech and me: Verka crashed around two o'clock in the morning, her neck was broken, her head was literally dangling, and her face was scratched. The guy's lungs were damaged, and he suffered a brain hemorrhage.

After all this, I started to stutter. I moved out of that apartment on the same day and moved in with Lekha. Then I had a dream about a friend who was carrying a brand-new motorcycle helmet, handed it to me and said she didn't need it, but I could use it.

We started dating Lech. I stayed with him, and then we got married. Sometimes we go to Verka's grave, and I can't hold back my tears, because she was so young, so cheerful and carefree. And on the night of her death, she returned to where she lived...

Kamenny Lane

 After finishing reading another "scary story" that infested the Internet, Alexander Petryshev closed the laptop lid, allowing the room to plunge into darkness. It's a pity for the guy, the main character of the story: he lived quietly for himself and did not create obstacles to the lives of others, and then one day, one day, or not so much, he was attacked by evil undead, right in his own apartment. A Babai came out of the wardrobe and bit off the unfortunate man's head. That's how it happens.

Petryshev got up and went to the window, throwing it wide open. There was a pleasant coolness and a whole bouquet of street smells, including: car exhaust fumes, the sweet smell of tobacco from a random passerby and a light trail of his perfume, as well as the stench from the nearest garbage dump, which is carried by the wind on its invisible wings. However, the main component that gives compositional completeness to the fragrance is a note of night alarm and danger. At nightfall, she is in the air, inviting everyone to join her shadowy network.

The moon rose above the rows of high-rise buildings, spilling a pale orange color onto the roofs of the houses. Her crescent moon, surrounded by many stars, today looked like a slice of orange marmalade spread out on a black plastic container with sugar grains.

The moment has come when the streets of the city are the most interesting and attractive. Everything that is hidden from view during the day is exposed. And at this hour, Alexander leaves the house in search of true adrenaline with the constancy of an old neighbor who goes to the store every morning for fresh milk.

Some time ago, he was content to simply wander around the city, even if not in its most peaceful places. The silent figure in a black hoodie with his face hidden in the shadow of the hood did not arouse suspicion. In this regard, often, being mistaken for his own, he managed to blend into the ranks of large and noisy companies, consisting mainly of motley semi-criminal elements. Once I took part in a mass brawl, getting real pleasure from it.

However, Petryshev soon got bored with this type of leisure and began to choose more and more gloomy and remote corners for his research. Abandoned buildings with a dark past, places where serious crimes took place — that's what really attracted and tickled the nerves.

The so-called dead street was on the visiting list today. These are just two dozen Stalinist houses on the outskirts, once built by captured Germans on the territory of a former hospital. It was not a street as such, but was listed on the map as Kamenny Lane. Absolutely nothing remarkable or out of the ordinary happened in the vastness of this corner, the life of the inhabitants went on as usual: young families were formed, new people were born, representatives of the generation of the past grew old and died — as everywhere else. This was the case until the turn of the second millennium. It is still not known for certain what happened and due to what circumstances absolutely all the residents of the house were resettled in record time. But, of course, there are plenty of versions. They talked about the sudden subsidence of the soil under the foundations, which was confirmed by cracks in most of the buildings and the slope of the houses; conspiracy theorists whispered about some secret experiment at a defense complex operating at that time, but now mothballed. The essence of this experiment was allegedly to test the latest chemical weapons on the residents of this alley, who were chosen due to their territorial proximity. After spraying toxic toxins, the military and scientists, who had not previously realized the true scale of the project and the inevitable consequences, urgently evacuated, heroically preventing the death of people.

There were more fantastic guesses. These rumors are generated by the lack of an official version of the incident. The plans of the city authorities for the land and buildings were also not announced. The former residents of Kamenny Lane added fuel to the fire of curiosity, who did not like to talk about the reasons for the move, trying to avoid this topic.

Anyway, about twenty habitable houses have been empty for the second decade, which is why it is a "dead street". Of course, there are homeless people here, but quite a few, probably the bravest. The reason for this is the frequent discovery of the corpses of these very homeless people; perhaps superstitious fear is also a factor in the small number of the lumpenized population. The fact is that the hospital, which stood here from the beginning and almost until the middle of the twentieth century, was nothing more than a house of mourning. The methods of treating mental disorders at that time were, to put it mildly, not ideal. There were rumors that over the years of the institution's operation, many patients were buried right on the territory, not all of whom died of natural causes. This is how another version of the escape from the alley was formed: during the planned replacement of water supply pipelines, workers accidentally discovered an entire cemetery. They did not make the fact public, but simply took the remains to the nearest suburban dumpster with all the ensuing consequences in the form of revenge of the disturbed spirits, because people urgently needed to be resettled, for their own good.

Without obstacles from street crime and patrol officers patrolling the neighborhood, Alexander Petryshev found himself in the right place, where he expected to receive a portion of extreme sensations. Despite the fact that the city in which he was born, grew up and still lives can not be called a big one, Alexander had never been to this corner of it before.

A typical picture of desolation appeared to the eye: walls decorated with yard paintings and mottled with obscene inscriptions; concrete crumbled and cracked over the years on the roads, with young trees growing through it and weeds making their way to the sun. The glass in most of the windows is broken and lies in small pieces on the road. Of course, there were plenty of lanterns here, but, as expected, none of them worked — Alexander's path was indicated by the beam of a flashlight. Judging by the rusty lamp housings on the poles, street lighting has been inactive for a long time. And who would he work for?

There is still someone for whom. Directing the light of the flashlight in turn into one or the other window of the house he was passing, Petryshev caught movement in the room on the second floor. The shadow, feeling the attention on itself, first stirred, and then slipped deeper into the darkness, where the beam could not reach. The black windows of the house resembled the eye sockets in the skull of a dead man, and the accidentally disturbed inhabitant resembled a cadaver worm in them.

In general, Alexander did not see anything special about this place, although it was not devoid of a peculiar sinister flavor. Just about to turn around and return home, before reaching the end house of the street, he stopped for a moment, turning off the flashlight and peering into the darkness.

—No, it can't be,— he doubted.

On the grass, at the end of the house, there was a whole sheaf of light, which, judging by its position, fell from the window. And he looked in such a way that it was unlikely that his nature could be a lamp or a night light, the candle was even more out of the question. The transformer substation from which these houses are powered was decommissioned almost immediately after the settlement.

Maybe the new residents use a gas generator or other alternative energy source? Although it is unlikely that they can afford such a pleasure.

In any case, this is quite an interesting fact, Petryshev reasoned and, intrigued, headed for the third entrance of the last house of the "dead street".

A terrible stench, including the smell of human feces and a rotting dead cat, attacked the olfactory receptors of the adventurer when he forcefully pulled the entrance door to himself. Staggering back and barely able to stay on his feet, he fought back the urge to vomit. The first thing I did was open the door as wide as I could and move away, let him get some air first.

Looking to the left, at the thicket of grass, I immediately realized what was missing — the light was no longer on in the window. As he headed for the corner of the house, he already clearly understood which window could be the source of the lighting that aroused interest. But when he found himself at the wall of the end part of the house and shone a flashlight on it, he doubted his calculations, himself, and everything around him. The heart was ready to jump out of the chest of its unreasonable master and go its own way, the further away from here, the better. The reason was that there was only one window along the entire wall, tightly boarded up with thick plywood.

—Stop, calm down,— Petryshev said aloud to himself.

After taking a deep breath, he decided to go to the entrance, to this room, by all means. After all, this is what he was looking for. A roaring mess of fear, excitement, thirst for adventure and the otherworldly bubbled inside and pushed forward.

After airing, the smell in the entryway did not disappear, but at least this time it was possible to stay in the house. The steps and staircases are littered with a wide variety of debris: remnants of building materials; rags that were once men's and women's outfits; children's toys, from charred dolls with icy blue eyes to small soldiers in combat poses. Empty bottles of vodka and other alcoholic beverages were scattered in all corners, of course; used medical syringes were in the neighborhood.

The flashlight in his hand blinked frantically and turned off. To walk in the dark, risking gouging out an eye with an infected syringe, or to abandon this event?

The apartment he intended to visit was on the second floor. Remembering that there was still a lighter, he decided to continue on his way. With careful movement, the risk of twisting her neck or bumping into a syringe needle is minimal. Very carefully, Alexander climbed to the second floor, making his way through the mountains of garbage.

Once in front of the door, which is the subject of interest, Petryshev saw a glow coming from the apartment through the keyhole.

"What if one of the families still officially lives here? And would my visit be considered an invasion of private property? Explaining to the police who I am and what I am doing here is an extremely undesirable complication." This was the way to formulate the fragmentary and incoherent thoughts that arose at the moment of being at the door.

"I don't care,— Petryshev received approval from himself. "Even so, I'm not doing anything illegal. And what kind of normal people can live in such conditions?!

Before knocking and entering, he looked into the keyhole that had been torn open with a tire iron or other strong tool.

I saw a small hallway leading into the kitchen. There were several people sitting at the kitchen table. Two elderly gentlemen in snow-white shirts and black bow ties, both with sharp, smooth-shaven chins and mobile eyes peeking out from under thick eyebrows like timid mice. Three women of different ages, the oldest about sixty, she had an expressionless face with an absent expression of impassive eyes, as if she had lost everything she valued in life; the middle-aged was a beautiful woman in her forties, with a shock of shiny black curls; The young woman was looking away all the time, and only her profile appeared before Alexander's gaze. Oh, and there was a tall, smartly dressed man standing behind the group, as if ready to pose for a group photo.

Obviously, due to the special lighting inside the apartment, all the people seemed unusually pale. And their clothes are the same colors, but it hardly depends on the lighting, although it may be.

"If I were you, I wouldn't mess with him," he heard a clear voice behind him, from which his soul sank, not only into his heels, but for a while seemed to go beyond the physical shell in order to put his nerves in order and catch his breath a little.

Without turning around, Alexander took out a lighter with trembling hands and struck the drum several times, the light did appear from the seventh time. Alexander abruptly turned around and saw a girl sitting on the steps. In a light dress that looked more like a nightgown, she sat with her head bowed to her feet, and was diligently tracing something on a layer of dust.

"He's crazy, you better drop it," she repeated, without stopping running her finger down the stairs and without raising her head.

"Who are you?"  Alexander finally managed to catch his breath and asked her a counter question.

The stranger looked up from tracing patterns on the step and slowly her head began to rise in his direction.

"Who am I?" — She repeated the question in a whisper. — Your death! — she yelled in an uncharacteristic bass voice for a girl and jerked in his direction, finally showing her face.

Her face turned out to be unusually pale, with terrible dark blue veins and bruises in places. The eyelids have turned yellow and hang over the eyes; the eye whites themselves are cloudy, the green pupils have gone to the side. The teeth were completely rotten and shaped more like incisors.

If Petryshev had been a little more impressionable, he would have fainted immediately. He had never seen anything like it, except in horror movies. What can you say about movies, when you see such a thing in an abandoned house with a flickering light of a lighter!

Recoiling, he rushed down, praying to both God and the devil for salvation and the opportunity to get out of here in physical and mental health. In a matter of moments, he overcame several dozen cluttered steps and almost knocked the door to the entrance off its hinges.

Without turning around, he ran like never before. My head was spinning from exhaustion and thirst, and my leg muscles were starting to ache. Alexander stopped when the first house of the "dead street" disappeared from sight.

Catching the first ride, he rushed home, where, without undressing, he fell on the sofa, hoping for a momentary nap. However, instead of dreaming, my thoughts were occupied by the picture I saw of a completely creepy physiognomy. After turning around for five minutes, he headed to the kitchen, where he opened a bottle of collectible malt whiskey and poured himself a full glass. This is the only bottle with an alcoholic drink, and in this situation, it is simply necessary to calm down. Feeling a pleasant warmth of reassurance spread through his tense muscles, Petryshev returned to the room, undressed and went to bed, trying not to think about the half-witted lady, who was unknown to anyone — just a distraught person or a real ghost.

In the morning, as usual, everything seen at night was viewed through the prism of common sense and critical thinking.

Thus, it was established that behind the door were some of those homeless people who inhabited the "dead quarter". Why are you dressed decently? Nowadays, there are no problems with clothes, expensive and sometimes practically new things can be found in the trash cans at every house.

The girl who attacked Alexander is an ordinary drug addict. Most likely, she is very ill and will die soon, as far as one can assess her deplorable physical condition. The pain experienced daily could become a factor in the occurrence of insanity or insanity — hence the aggressiveness and the words spoken to her, which do not contain the slightest semantic load, are explained.

He had overlooked the light of the electric lamp from the plywood-boarded window, perhaps simply forgetting about this fact.

A month passed, then another, and Petryshev no longer remembered the incident. Despite the fact that, from the point of view of logic, everything seemed to be laid out in its place, since then the genre of modern "horror stories" has lost one of its long-time admirers. Horror films were also rejected by him. What can we say about the old night trips in search of adventures.

However, the old interest was revived by a chance noticed advertisement in a free newspaper, the issues of which Alexander liked to look through from time to time.

A certain contractor of the city administration informed the population about the imminent demolition of all houses in Kamenny Lane. There were four days left before the scheduled date for the work.

Petryshev thought that if he did not go there soon and find confirmation of his theory about what he had seen, he would never be able to do so. What would he be left with in that case? With untested, far-fetched conclusions? What if he really met with an otherworldly phenomenon, with what he was looking for, and when he met it, he was afraid and came up with a rational explanation? One way or another, there is one last chance to test and prove one of the theories — today. The destruction of the "dead quarter" is scheduled for tomorrow.

After waiting for nightfall, Alexander left the house and, with a determined gait, walked under the acrid light of street lamps. He decided, although it was unlikely that he would find the crazy person alive, to take a gas canister with him as a self—defense weapon - the effect was noticeable, it was quite simple to use, and it was impossible to injure an opponent.

Once on the territory of the "dead quarter," Alexander noted that there were no noticeable preparations for tomorrow's demolition, and he did not see any changes. Except that the feeling of this place had changed — this time it seemed so familiar and at the same time truly creepy, no matter how hard he tried to show off and put on a brave face in front of himself.

Light fell from the single window of the end section into the thickets of already withered and dried grass. When he opened the door leading to the entrance, he smelled an even more nauseating smell than the last time. The dead cat had obviously already decomposed, and the corpse worms had devoured its insides completely, so there was nothing to smell. The stench of human excrement faded into the background. Right now, the stench was dominated by a very distinctive smell. It smelled of rotting human flesh, emitting a sickly sweet scent that made one's head spin.

Petryshev went to the last, third floor of the house, from there he went up to the attic, examining every available square meter with a flashlight to find a creepy girl with a lot of problems. When he decided to go to the apartment itself, it dawned on him: only the entrance and the attic were checked, whereas she could hide in any of these nine apartments, and besides, there was also the basement, which she did not want to go to, if only because it seemed that the smell of corpses was coming from there.

Deciding that he would not check all these apartments and go down to the basement, Alexander clutched a gas canister in his hand, convincing himself that in case of an attack he would surely be able to fight back.

There was a glow coming from the keyhole, as on the previous visit. Now there was only one thing to do: enter the apartment and talk to people, making sure that there was no mystery here. Make sure and go home calmly, no longer remembering about this "dead quarter".

Knock, knock, knock — he knocked on the wooden jamb — the door paneling is too soft.

Knock, knock, knock... knock, knock, came the reply. It seems to be an echo. However, the sound was prolonged, as if of a different key and coming from a different surface.

Nonsense, this is usually the case in confined spaces, it may not sound right," Alexander reassured himself, immediately commanding: go ahead!

With these words, he opened the front door. Instead of a lighted hallway and kitchen, he was greeted by a haze with cool basement dampness. The entire chain of rational explanations for the previous visit was instantly turned out, disassembled into links and thrown in a handful at the feet of its author.

Turning on his flashlight, Petryshev illuminated the room without going inside. The same small hallway and then the kitchen, only buried in dust, cobwebs, with black fungus on the walls.

After closing the door behind him, he decided to do a little experiment. Crouching down to the hole again, I expectedly saw the same picture: a group of people sitting motionless in the middle of a lighted kitchen, in the same poses. When he opened the door, he saw the same dark emptiness of the abandoned apartment. So several times, the result is unchanged.

Being in a somewhat puzzled state, he slammed the door hard and heard a soft glass clink. When the clap was repeated, the ringing was repeated. When he looked through the keyhole, he saw a strange picture: the orientation of objects, people, and the kitchen itself had now changed. The people at the table were skewed and pulled closer to the door, lifting the table and tilting it slightly, as well as the people themselves.

After repeating the door slams a few more times, he made sure that the ringing was coming from the keyhole.

Looking through the hole again, Alexander witnessed even greater changes: the people, along with the table, were already almost on the ceiling.

Thrusting two fingers inside the keyhole, he took out, not without difficulty, a simple optical device consisting of two cylindrical lenses of different thicknesses pressed against each other. Enclosed between them is a small black-and-white photograph, the size of a large coin. The photo shows the very people whom Petryshev expected to see alive, behind this very door.

Now everything is clear as far as the people in the apartment are concerned, he thought. It's also understandable why the image was so faded — the photo is black and white. And how I hadn't noticed or guessed before, that's what's amazing. What about the glow? After all, it has not disappeared — a ray of light is still coming from the gaping hole.

Finally, he decided to open the door again, make sure that the opening was obvious, and explore the nature of the glow. When the door swung open, Alexander stuck his head into the darkness and, wanting to get the flashlight clenched between his teeth out of his mouth, made an awkward movement with his brush, which caused the flashlight to roll across the dirty hallway floor, landing on the power button as it fell.

This was completely undesirable, now I had to look for a flashlight in pitch darkness. Following into the kitchen, he began to grope with his hand around the area of his intended location.

Suddenly, the door creaked and slowly closed. Petryshev, trying not to panic, was looking for a flashlight with trembling hands, having already wiped a third of all the dust on the floor with his palms.

Anxiety and anxiety grew in the locked room like a snowball on a mountainside, Alexander got up from his knees and decided to make his way through the darkness as it was. As soon as he got to his feet and straightened his shoulders, he felt the touch of a cold hand on his left shoulder. His hand jerked into his pocket for a weapon in the form of a gas canister, but it was not destined to be taken out and used: Alexander was blinded by an unusually bright flash of light, accompanied by light smoke and a pop.

In the next issue of an advertising newspaper distributed free of charge, which Petryshev used to read, there was a refutation of information about the demolition of houses located on Kamenny Lane. The city administration did not involve any contractors for this event, and no decisions were made to destroy buildings at this address.

And in the issue of the same newspaper, which was published about a month after the refutation, the following short article appeared in the form of a small column:

"Citizen A., being under the influence of a large amount of alcohol, as a result of a drunken quarrel, stabbed his drinking companion five times in the chest area and, leaving the wounded man to die, fled the scene of the crime. During the operational search activities, it was possible to establish the possible location of the suspect.

This citizen was hiding in the apartment of one of the abandoned houses on Kamenny Lane, where he was detained by operational officers. Due to the large area and the peculiarities of the territory, service dogs were involved in the search for the wanted man. So, with their help, the bodies of several people were found. Only three of the victims were identified. Among them was A.B. Petryshev, who went missing a month ago.

He was found in the last entrance of the last house on the lane, in an apartment on the second floor. Upon inspection of the scene, a simple device with two lenses and a small black-and-white photograph between them was found in the keyhole of the door. So, looking through the keyhole, I saw the projection of the people depicted in the photo in the natural size for this point of view. The photo placed between the cylinders turned out to be the most interesting for the investigation. It showed the deceased in the company of six people; they were all in the room where the corpse was found. None of the people depicted in the picture could be identified or tracked down."

Thus, the story of Petryshev's death was added to the notoriety of the "dead quarter". From people who knew Alexander remotely, the opinion was formed that he liked, as they say, "to get on his nerves" and was a desperate adventurer, deliberately getting involved in various dubious stories.

"So I found it,— they concluded.

It was rumored, however, that since then someone in the "dead quarter" has been walking around the apartments every night with a flashlight, sometimes stopping and listening, then speeding up and running. This information was received from the most desperate residents of the abandoned territory, of whom there are few left — recent finds have contributed to the unwillingness of the population to pass by. There are the most persistent drunkards and the last drug addicts left — who knows what you won't see under the influence of datura?