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.