Restless duty

 As I promised somewhere, this is a story from my life that happened when I was a "consulting watchman" at a stone processing organization. Stone processing refers to the creation of vases, bowls, simple sculptures, fences, tiles and, in addition to all of the above, tombstones. I went to work there shortly before graduation (I'm generally drawn to adventures in my life), because the place is quiet, in the private sector, not far from my house. There are tram tracks nearby, and behind them is a park with a parking lot. I was on duty there from 21:00 to 8:00, every other night. There wasn't much to protect the products—even if you lifted the stove, you couldn't run far with it. Equipment and tools were guarded, and drunks and teenagers were chased away once a year.

This office is called "Stone Flower", and, by the way, it still exists, it is a guardhouse, a doghouse, a trailer where artists work, and a courtyard in which blanks, simpler product samples and ready-made orders are placed, mainly tombstones. During the busiest months, which happened more often in summer than ever before, the courtyard looked like a cemetery: gravestones with and without portraits, vases of black granite and marble were placed in neat rows in front of the guard booth. The window of the gatehouse, illuminated only by a desk lamp and a video surveillance monitor, overlooked this idyll, and I soon got tired of contemplating it all night long. On the advice of my shift supervisor, I began to spend the night in the artists' trailer, where there was a lot of light and there was often someone to talk to.

Almost every night, one of the artists stayed working until morning. The fact is that people, as you know, tend to die without stopping, and our office was located 300 meters from one of the largest city morgues, and our business cards were in the reception desk there, so there was no shortage of work for artists. Sometimes, 3-4 tombstones were knocked out per night. In the evening, the movers will bring a polished slab, unload it, and the girls will work on it all night.

That night, I went on duty as usual. I called my superiors, identified myself, and said that I had accepted a shift. I watched the closed gate in the camera, made my rounds, fiddled with the shepherd Jim, my permanent colleague, and went to the trailer to the artists. It was 22:40 on the clock.

Oksana, a girl about 4 years older than me, was sitting in the trailer. She usually did not stay overnight, as she had a small child at home, whom she raised herself. After questioning her, I found out that my son went to the sea with his grandmother, so Oksana is trying to earn some extra money. We sat and chatted. She captures some kind of granny in granite, checking the photo from time to time, and I look out the window, listening to Jim. Oksana finished some big stage of her grandmother's portrait, and we sat down to drink tea and cookies. We talk about this and that, we tell jokes.

At midnight, as usual, I decided to go around the territory. The fact is that customers still happened before midnight: either crying relatives waited for the autopsy to end but stayed too late, or some guy in an expensive car on the way from work would look in. After midnight, as a rule, only drunks and hooligans from the park wandered in, so we always let Jim loose at that time. It was enough to cool the ardor of all sorts of midnight adventurers.

I lowered Jim down and returned to the trailer. Oksana continued to work on the portrait of her grandmother, and I sat on a chair by the open door of the trailer and began to watch the street, chatting with the artist and listening to the measured tapping of her hammer, sometimes interspersed with the buzzing of a doormat.

At first, Jim caught my attention. The dog just ran in circles around the yard, but I, who did not remember a time when I did not have a dog in my house, knew that healthy, and most importantly, calm dogs do not behave like that. Jim went round and round, and I called him over. The dog came up, ears flattened and tail wagging, and I heard our brave guard dog whining thinly.

I patted Jim, said something soothing to him, took out of my pocket a Duchess lollipop with a soft filling, which he loved very much, unwrapped the wrapper and handed it to him. Jim sniffed the candy, opened his mouth to take it, but suddenly, pricking up his ears, he looked towards the dark bulk of the park across the street. The dog whined even louder, and, flattening his ears again, hid in the booth.

Getting up from my chair and muttering to Oksana something like "I'm on my rounds," I went out into the courtyard, illuminated by a single lantern hanging on the wall of the gatehouse. Movement in the park caught my attention. A well-dressed guy came out of a dark alley, looked left and right, and jogged across the roadway. The young man was heading towards our gate, and I was standing in the middle of the courtyard as if rooted to the spot. It was only when he opened our gate and walked towards me with a friendly smile that I realized that both the baton and the pepper spray had been left in the artists' trailer.

— Hello, — the guy extended his hand to me. "They make stone products here, don't they?"

—With us,— was all I could say. I was taken aback and didn't shake his hand.

—Can I watch it for now?" — the night guest asked, and I noticed in his gaze some kind of subtle "glazing", which I immediately attributed to the alcohol he had drunk or the substances he had consumed.

"Look, please,— I replied. — Just don't touch it with your hands.

The young man raised his hands, palms facing me, in a protective, almost comical gesture. Jim never came out of the booth, and I didn't warn the guy that we had a dog in the yard. He was kind of weird, it seemed to me. And, as they say, "it turned out, it didn't seem."

I carefully walked into the trailer, trying not to lose sight of this guy. He walked between the rows of products, examining the stones, tombstones and vases. Once he even reached out to touch it, but pulled his hand back with a smile, as if he remembered that I had asked him not to touch anything. I took a baton and a pepper spray, hanging them from my belt. He took a heavy, powerful flashlight in his hand, which could both dazzle and "dim" if necessary. Oksana was passionate about her work, and I wanted to warn her to call the police if I didn't come back, but at the last moment I relied on my own strength and went out into the night.

The guy was squatting by two polished slabs of red and black granite. When he heard me, he turned around and, giving me a smile, asked:

— What do you personally think, which monument is better? Black or red?

The question caught me off guard. I didn't expect such a question from a young guy barely older than me.

"I've always liked black,— I finally replied. — And the portrait is more clearly visible on it, and the image will last longer. But black ones are more expensive.

At these words, the guy waved away:

"Oh, come on! I just want the quality. To be remembered. To look like a living face.

— It will be! "He said it wasn't me." It came out somehow unintelligibly.

The guy laughed, got up from his crouch, and, taking a business card and pen out of his breast pocket, asked him to write our phone number on it. I replied that I would bring him our business card now, but the guy, looking at his expensive watch, said that he didn't have much time, so he asked me to dictate. I dictated it, and he wrote it down and put the card back in his pocket. I managed to make out the name printed on the business card.: Paramonov V. V.

The young man said goodbye to me and turned around, taking another look at his watch. Jim barked, so loudly that I turned to his booth and shouted at the dog not to scare the customer. When I turned around again to say goodbye to the overnight guest, he was gone.

I returned to the trailer, boiled a kettle and poured boiling water into a cup, sending three tea bags to the same place.

— Who have you been chatting with for three hours? I already thought you'd left me here completely," Oksana's voice sounded deliberately offended. — The girl is sitting alone in the middle of the night, and there is no one around to talk to.

I once laughed it off, surprised that I had been away for so long. Oksana finished the portrait of granny a long time ago and has already filled in most of the image of some shaven-headed chubby man. So I've been away for a really long time. It was beginning to get light outside…

In the morning, the shift worker and I watched the surveillance camera footage. So I get out of the trailer and give Jim a piece of candy. The dog runs into the booth, and I turn my back to the camera and look towards the gate.

So I point at the products and go to the trailer.… From one in the morning until four in the morning, I walk around the courtyard alone with a lantern in my hand, pausing at two empty slabs of red and black granite. My lips are moving, as if I'm talking to someone, but no one is there.

I returned home in a depressed state and fell asleep. Then I took two days off and spent the whole week walking like a somnambulist. In the end, blaming everything on overwork, he returned to work and took over the shift.

The evening rounds went as usual. Dima, another of our artists, was working in the trailer. I didn't talk to him much, he was introverted, meticulous and uninteresting. All the topics boiled down to how badly he was living in the world. Anyway, I sat in the gatehouse until morning, and at 6:40, as usual, I looked into the trailer where Dimon was sitting and dozing. Having shaken Dmitry awake and exchanged a few words with him, I went out into the courtyard and ran my gaze over the finished slabs and suddenly was stunned: the same guy was looking at me from the tombstone, and under his smiling face an inscription was carved in smooth letters that read: "Paramonov Vyacheslav Viktorovich, / some date, I don't remember already / 1985 — 07/14/2009".

My legs gave out, and I barely made it to the gatehouse, staring blankly at the wall calendar. The night of July 13-14 came just when he came to our yard. I rolled my eyes and poured half a bottle of cold mineral water on my head.…

Later, sometime during the next shift, I found out that Paramonov was either a businessman or a candidate for deputy, and that night he died in a fight in the park across the street. The guy was stabbed in the neck, and before his death he managed to run 40 meters further down the alley. When his wife came to order the monument in tears, she asked our staff which one was better — red or black. Without waiting for an answer, she chose black. Just as he wanted.

The brown door. Part 1

 After graduation, I decided to move out of my mother's house to a rented apartment. The job was available then (and I worked as a "watchman consultant" in an organization dealing with all sorts of stone gizmos, which will be a separate story). I looked for options, looked at apartments and chose a one-room Khrushchev in the city center, half an hour's walk from my old apartment. Firstly, the price was fine with me, and secondly, the apartment was in fairly good condition, and the granny hostess thought to install cable TV and Internet there. Of course, there was no computer or TV, but I brought my own from home.

Life seemed to be getting better. He took his dog, Max, out of the house, brought his girlfriend Dashka to visit, cooked dinners for her and himself. Then we finally moved in together. I didn't notice any oddities. Except that my dog whined in the evenings and couldn't find a place for himself. I still put it down to the fact that he just missed his mom, because the animal loves the owner. He runs and runs, but after midnight he calms down, he goes to sleep at his feet.

It all started exactly from the day when Mom asked to bring Max home. They say she's bored at home, and the dog, as I mentioned, missed his mother. Well, I returned it and returned it. After work, I stopped by, walked him, and then walked slowly to the apartment. The road past the park, the coolness of the morning, a young lady in a bathrobe waiting for breakfast in the apartment — beauty!

When I arrived at the apartment, I found my lady crying and pale. When she saw me standing on the threshold, she immediately rushed to hug me. Kissing, crying. I was wary.

"What's wrong, honey?" — I'm asking.

"Honey, they're screaming so much, they're screaming so much! They're fighting, quarreling, running around the stairwell! And he's banging on our door, shouting: "Open up, bitch, or I'll take out the door!" — the girl burst into sobs.

— Wait, I don't understand. Who's shouting, who's running?  I asked, perplexed.

— Suck-ee-ee-ee!.. — Dasha drawled through her sobs.

Without thinking twice, I armed myself with a baton made of oak, which I still keep at the door just in case, and went to the neighbors. There were four apartments in the stairwell. There was only one wall in common, and Dasha claimed that it was behind the wall that people quarreled and fought, and it was their wooden door that slammed when they ran up the stairs. The only wooden doors were in our apartment and in the next one — the other two were made of iron.

And now I'm standing under the neighbor's door, clutching a baton in my hand. The door is not upholstered, covered with peeling brown paint. There are two old locks embedded in the door for a large "bearded" key, and a worn iron handle-bracket is nailed. "Greetings from the alcoholics of the 90s!" — I thought. Smiling mirthlessly, I pressed the bell. When he didn't hear any sounds outside the door, he knocked on it with his fist. Dashka's sobs and sniffling could be heard from behind our door, and my gut was filled with even more hatred for the negligent neighbors. I knocked on the door even more insistently, this time with my foot. There is no response.

After swearing at the ill-fated apartment, I rang the doorbell of the next apartment. The door was opened by a young woman in her thirties, whose name was Alyona. Alyona was divorced and lived alone with her young son. When we moved in, she came to visit us regularly once a week. She opened her mouth to say something, but when she saw me, she smiled.:

— Oh, it's you. And I thought that someone was breaking into these rooms," the woman nodded cautiously towards the brown door. Come on in, why stand on the threshold! And call your Daria, I'll pour you some tea.

After settling into Alyona's kitchen, we started talking, cursing the bad apartment and its inhabitants. Alyona told me that she also sometimes hears some kind of scuffling going on behind the wall, screams and swearing are heard, and in the morning the lights are on in the windows. By the way, the dirty, broken windows of that apartment faced the courtyard, and one of them, completely broken, was covered from the inside with a soiled baby blanket. In general, the picture is unpleasant.

After talking like this for about two hours, we shed some of the accumulated negativity. The only thing that was alarming was that neither Alyona nor I could remember the appearance of the tenants of the apartment behind the brown door. Alyona said that a married couple, heavy drinkers, lived there. When everything is quiet, it means they either leave the apartment, or the binge ends. But when they come to the denouement, that's when the Arctic fox comes to everything! According to the neighbor, the only person who saw the man was her son Kostya, and even then he was playing in the window. He said that "Uncle scary" was watching them, and then "hid." That's when we said goodbye to Alyona.

They moved on with their lives. Consistently, once or twice a month, the farce of knocking on our door was repeated, but only when I was not at home. I come in, Daria is covered in snot, crying, shaking. Every time I tried to reach the neighbors, the result was zero.

One day I had an idea. I took the day off from work, but I went out in the evening anyway, as if to work. Then he sneaked into our apartment, sat by the door and let's wait. I just sat there, but nothing happened. Well, I think I'll go to bed. We lie with Dashka, we chat, we discuss social mores, and as soon as the earth wears such drunks.

And so, at about 11 p.m., voices begin to be heard behind the wall — male and female. You can always hear it perfectly in Khrushchev, but the hostess hung a carpet on that wall (and, by the way, a wooden cross), so you can't make out the words, but clearly a scandal is brewing. He's yelling something, swearing at a woman. She snaps, starts using heavy objects — you can hear something falling to the floor with a thud and rolling. Well, I threw a saucepan at an alconaut, well, it happens. I spent my childhood with similar neighbors — a schizophrenic teacher on top, a moonshiner on the right, drug addicts on the left through one apartment. It was just nostalgic.

We are lying with Daria, listening, she is pressed into my shoulder — she is afraid. You can hear the lock opening in the next apartment, and then footsteps on the concrete steps — slap-slap. It's like someone is running with bare feet. Then other steps, someone bigger and heavier. So the woman ran away from the man, but he's catching up. Heavy footsteps retreated up the stairs, then down. Then I distinctly felt that he stopped at our door. It's like I can hear him breathing. The silence was so heavy, and then Dasha whispers, "I'm scared..." but it sounds unbearably loud in the silence around us.

And it began. Almost immediately, they began pounding on the door with fists and feet — yes, the man probably jumped with his whole body!

"Come out,— he shouts, "you bitch!" I'm going to fuck you! Did you hide at your Nadya's?! I'm going to fucking burn you alive, you hear?!!

My heart started pounding, but I got up and pulled on my trousers. The fear of a jerk outside the door pales in comparison to the desire to protect my life, which has become habitual. I grabbed my trusty baton and shoved my bare feet into my sneakers. My hand reached for the lock, but then I heard the door of the neighboring apartment slam shut. I looked through the peephole and saw no one outside the door. I decided not to take off my sneakers and trousers, called Dashka, and we sat down at the kitchen table, putting the kettle on the fire.

Dishes were breaking behind the wall, and something heavy was falling. The man took out his anger on furniture and other objects that came to hand. Dasha and I nervously drank tea and listened to the farce in silence.

The neighbor's door slammed again, but more quietly. Apparently, the drunk's wife had returned. Well, I think it's about to start. And it started to happen, which still makes my blood run cold when I think about it. Almost immediately, a woman's scream pierced the silence, in which there was such pain and horror that it seemed that the eardrums were ready to burst voluntarily, just not to hear these sounds. It was as if it wasn't a woman who was screaming, but a circular saw that was cutting live pigs was working. The scream only subsided for a second, only to return with even more creepy sticky notes.

Dasha dropped the cup, and it shattered into dozens of pieces with a clang, showering my sneaker-clad feet with hot tea. I put my cup on the table, otherwise it would certainly have repeated Dashina's fate, because my hands were shaking like they had never shaken in my life. It was really uncomfortable. I picked up my cell phone and dialed the police. The sluggish voice of the attendant sounded on the phone, like angelic singing in the midst of all the sound nightmare that surrounded us.:

— Duty Officer, Petty Officer Lipchenko, I'm listening to you.

— Come quickly, a man is being killed here! Address: Metallurgov Avenue, building so-and-so.

— The car already left ten minutes ago, stop calling! — the attendant blurted out irritably and hung up the phone.

The screams gradually subsided, turning into intermittent sobs. Dasha climbed into bed and covered her head with a pillow, echoing the sounds from the neighbor's apartment. The doorbell rang. They didn't knock, they rang the bell. I heard the bell of Alyona's apartment and the clang of the iron door. The police arrived. With relief, I went out to the stairwell, where people in uniform were crowding. There was an outfit of ordinary police officers in blue shirts and with a folder, as well as three burly guys from Berkut (this is our special police unit, they additionally patrol the streets at night) with machine guns and a sledgehammer. Alyona called the police to our address before me.

The brown door. Part 2

 A mustachioed police officer with the rank of lieutenant asked us about the neighbors from this apartment, about which of us had called the police, scribbled something in a notebook and knocked on the ill-fated brown door. As I expected, there was no response. The policeman loudly warned that they would break down the door if the owners did not open it. Zero reaction. "Break it down!" the mustachioed man shouted, and one of the Berkut soldiers slammed a sledgehammer into the door. The lock shattered, and the door slowly opened and began to crawl towards us. The guy with the sledgehammer yanked open the door and stood behind it, looking puzzled at his colleagues, who, instead of breaking into the apartment, stood rooted to the spot.…

I pinched my side. No, it was clearly not a dream. The passage behind the door was bricked up. It was so tightly packed, only at the top there was a black gap about three centimeters wide. The guards exchanged glances, and then glared at us angrily: some at me, some at Alyona. We just spread our hands, and the lieutenant, twirling his finger at his temple, was about to turn around and walk down the stairs, when a distinct stifled sob was heard from the apartment.

We all turned to the brickwork at once. The lieutenant turned white and gave the order to smash the masonry. The guy with the sledgehammer persistently pounded the bricks for about ten minutes, sleepy, angry neighbors ran to the sound, demanding to stop the noise immediately. Most of the tenants present in the entrance were my age or slightly older, and they could not say anything about the apartment's inhabitants when the lieutenant questioned them. The lieutenant quickly signed me, Alyona, Dashka, and three other guys, who had floated out of our apartment like an obsession, as witnesses, and the Berkut soldiers, shining flashlights into the darkness outside the door, disappeared into the doorway, creaking the broken brick with their boots.

Behind them, clutching a Makar's service pistol, the lieutenant stepped into the darkness. Two sullen police officers stayed with us. Footsteps could be heard from the apartment, the clatter of special forces equipment, and the beams of lanterns flashed in the doorway, picking out bizarre silhouettes from the darkness. There was a quiet "All right, stand down" — and one by one the tall Special Forces soldiers came out of the opening, and then the mustachioed lieutenant. His shirt was smeared with something black.

"Do you have a flashlight?"  The moustached policeman asked me. I nodded and brought my powerful camping flashlight, and I also took a large circular lamp with a built-in radio. We entered the doorway with the police officers, the witnesses, and one Berkut soldier.

— It's neat here. Keep your light on," the lieutenant warned, and I followed his advice. There were charred floorboards, some shards and fragments, crooked rusty nails underfoot. I looked around. The walls were covered in soot, but there were fragments of antique wallpaper with silly flowers under the ceiling. My heart was pounding alarmingly, and I wrapped my free arm around Dashka, who was hobbling next to me, nervously gnawing on a nail, looking around with wide eyes.

"Now, someone explain to me," the lieutenant began, turning to face us, "what the fuck is going on here?"

Naturally, we couldn't explain anything. The police officers let us go to our apartments, having previously collected the data and sealed the apartment with a brown door. The next morning, I called my grandmother, from whom I rented an apartment. She agreed to come and tell me everything she knows.

We gathered in our kitchen: me, Dasha, Alyona and her son Kostya, the guys who were signed up as witnesses, our district police officer and the lanky investigator who was assigned to lead the case. Everyone was waiting for Baba Nadia, the owner of our apartment. She arrived much later than promised. I sat down at the table, dripped some drops for myself, and drank. The policemen were nervously sorting through the papers, Alyona and Kostya went to our gym to play. Baba Nadia began her story.

I will omit unnecessary details of family life and the origin of Nadezhda Pavlovna's family, I will leave only what is connected with the apartment. Anyway, her sister and her husband lived in that apartment. Her husband worked at the factory, and she drove a tram. One day, my husband was injured in the foundry — his face and hand were burned, so much so that the skin on his face was badly burned, and only one eye remained. The arm was amputated altogether. Medicine did everything it could at that time, but the young man was crippled for life, and, as they say, "the roof went off." He started drinking, he beat his wife, because she was pretty, but he turned into a monster. I loved him, no matter what, I felt sorry for him. When he beat me, I used to run out of the apartment in my clothes, but I always came back.

And then one day, when he was really raging, the unfortunate girl ran away from home and hid until morning with her sister, Nadezhda Pavlovna, that is, in our apartment. Before dawn, her husband broke plates, broke furniture, knocked on the door of Nadezhda's apartment, but she did not open it, and ordered her sister to sit quietly. In the morning, Baba Nadia went to work, and her sister returned to her house, to her husband. When Nadezhda came home for lunch, she saw a fire truck, an ambulance and a police bobik near the entrance. It turned out that the son-in-law first tortured his wife, cut her face and chest with a knife, and then tied her to a radiator and set fire to the apartment. Both spouses died.

After that incident, an old brown door was put in the apartment, donated by one of the neighbors, but soon the tenants in the stairwell began to complain that it rattled and slammed from the draft at night, and glass was put in the broken windows, and where there was not enough glass, they nailed the same baby blanket to the frame. The passage was bricked up so that it wouldn't blow and stink of burning. The apartment has not been entered for twenty years.

After listening to the rest of the grandmother's story, the young district policeman laughed, and the investigator, with a deliberately serious look, said: "We'll figure it out." I escorted the law enforcement officers to the door, and all our guests left, except Baba Nadia. I closed the door and out of the corner of my eye I saw the landlady in the kitchen, I heard her saying softly to someone: "Well, what are you... hush, hush... It's all over. I'll come to you soon too..." Nadezhda Pavlovna noticed me and smiled sadly, going home (she lived somewhere in the private sector).

"If you move out this month, I won't charge you," Baba Nadia said goodbye to us and hobbled to the bus stop. When I returned to the apartment, I noticed oblong black spots on the carpet in the hallway. I took a closer look and realized that these were bare footprints somewhere in size 36. I felt sick.

The next day, we moved out of that apartment, and my old workmate moved in almost immediately. Then he told me that he also heard sobbing outside the door in the stairwell, and rustling, banging and dissatisfied booming grumbling behind the wall. It was only when he was informed of Baba Nadia's death that the sobbing stopped, as did the extraneous sounds behind the wall. And that apartment with the brown door was bought out for some kind of office.…

Under the bed

 It happened at night, in the month of March. Yes, I live alone. And, as usual, I read a book in the evening, finished by about eleven o'clock and was going to fall asleep. Well, I decided to pour some water before going to bed, otherwise you never know, so as not to walk at night. My apartment is big enough, and to get to the kitchen, you have to go through the living room, and the light switch is on the other side of the room. Well, I moved blindly, guided by memory. I got to the kitchen, turned on the small light, poured water.

I turn around and the window reflects a girl standing right in front of me, although there is no one there. I think I thought I rubbed my eyes, the girl wasn't missing... I started to get scared... I decided to slowly return to my room. I walk, naturally looking at the reflection in the window, and she follows me. I start to accelerate gradually, almost running out of the kitchen. I hear footsteps... I run into my room, slam the door, prop it up, run and jump into bed, just like when I was a kid.

The door handle twitches a little for just a couple of seconds, I don't know why I didn't turn on the light, but the switch remained next to the door, and it's scary to go back. Then the handle stopped moving, there was a lull, it lasted no more than 5 seconds, then a sharp blow with something sharp on the door, and with unreal force.

I got under the covers and passed out, I don't know how it happened. I wake up in the morning. I stand closer to the bed and notice that there is a knife under the bed, and I have never had such a thing. Well, I was seriously scared, tore some clothes, ran out of the apartment and ran to a friend. As always happens, he didn't believe me, but he refused to spend the night with me. I was in no hurry to return to my apartment myself...

A girl with a doll

 I want to tell you a story about a girl with a doll. My grandfather told it to me. He's very old, but he's seen a lot in his life, but he remembers this girl forever. 

It was back in 1939, I was 16 years old, well, like everyone else at that time, I was a jerk, so to speak, and I, like everyone else at that age, was drawn to adventures, so I was walking home from school and noticed how some family moved into the house nearby. They were an adult man and a woman, about 38-40 years old. And they had a little daughter, about 6 years old, she was wearing a cream dress, white socks and black shoes, her hair was long and black as pitch, she had a doll in her hands, medium-sized, the doll had blonde hair, with a wedding hairstyle and a white, fluffy wedding dress. I stood for a couple more minutes and, shrugging my shoulders, went home.

Every day I saw this girl, she always followed me with her eyes. One day, friends came to me, I went out to them, we were judging something for a long time, and I noticed that girl again: "was she really standing there all this time and watching me?!", without taking her eyes off the girl, I thought, and when my friends noticed it, they jokingly They said:

- And Kolka has a new girlfriend, but seriously, who is she?

- This is my new neighbor, she watches me all the time...

my friends just shrugged and left.

I couldn't sleep that night, but I fell asleep at 7 o'clock. But even that didn't last long, I had a very strange dream, its contents were that girl with the doll, but the others, they were saying something and seemed angry, both of them, but I want to note that one of them is not alive. It went on for several nights, I didn't get tired of it and I went to one of the local old ladies who know everyone and everything. And she told me:

- Oh, my son, don't mess with them, they're not good people, I've heard that they move very often, they don't stay anywhere for long, they say that their daughter is engaged to a demon. And the doll is hers, it's not a doll at all, but a demon in her guise.

I just waved it off and left. Oh, I was stupid, stupid, I shouldn't have listened to the old lady, but I'm so brave, I went home to that girl to prove that everything was fine with her and her doll.

She wasn't in the courtyard where the girl usually sat, so I decided to knock on the door, and the girl's mom opened it for me, and then I started talking.:

- Hello, I am your neighbor and I would like to meet you.

"Sure, come on in," the woman replied amiably.

- Thank you, my name is Nikolai, and you?

- And my name is Zinaida Lvovna.

- Nice to meet you, Zinaida Lvovna, you know, I often saw a girl in your yard and I understand that this is your daughter, would you mind introducing this baby to me?

- Of course, her name is Lisa, I'll bring her now.

When Zinaida Lvovna brought Lisa, the girl had completely black eyes, even the whites were black. And again, this doll is in the hands of a girl, and the doll is creepy, no, don't think that it's cracked or something is wrong with the face, no, it's just creepy in itself, Lisa's ice-cold hand brought me out of my thoughts, who took my hand and asked me to play with her, I agreed. When we went into her room, I felt sick, I started to feel sick, the smell was peculiar. I played with her for 20 minutes and told her I had to go, and she screamed.:

- No!!! You will stay with me forever now!!! And we will play all the time!!!

I was scared and wanted to leave the room, but it wasn't there, I tried to turn the door handle, but it wouldn't budge, I started screaming, calling for help, but to no avail. I ran to the window to knock it out, and then jump off and never come back here. But the window wouldn't budge, wouldn't open, and wouldn't break out.

And then I remembered the old lady's words and began to hate myself for not listening to her. And since demons and the like can't stand God, I decided to read Our Father. When I started, the girl screamed so loudly that I thought I would go deaf and covered my ears with my hands, but I did not stop saying the prayer. The girl let go of the doll, this doll came to life and came at me, I kicked her away from me, she hit the wall so hard that there was a dent there, and a crack appeared on her cheek (my grandfather was a football player, a striker and he had a powerful kick). Then the doll started smoking, and when I finished reading, the doll was gone, and Lisa was lying unconscious in the middle of the room. Her mom ran in and ran up to Lisa, and when the girl came to, she said she didn't remember anything, she didn't remember anything at all, and her eyes were already bright, bright blue.

Three years later, when Lizonka was 9 years old and I was 19. And I even took her for walks with me, considered her my little sister and loved her. But she died, and there was a picture of her and the doll pasted on the mirror in her room, and on the back it says "I'm back with her and whoever calls us will be cursed forever!" This family moved in just a week after Lisa's death. And I never saw or heard from them again... that's all.

Grandpa frowned a little, and after a couple of minutes they turned on the light, he immediately cheered up and said:

"Well?" What are we going to watch? - he was smiling, but it was clear in his eyes that he missed this girl very much, I turned on the comedy for him, and I wrote this story here. It may not be as scary as you would like or not, as much mysticism and all that crap, but it's real and it's purely your right to believe in it or not.

Persecutor

 My friend and I were sitting in my room and talking about something, my father had already come home from work and was doing something, my younger sister was walking with her friends outside, and my mother apparently went to the store after work and therefore stayed late. At that time, the time was about seven or eight o'clock in the evening.

Suddenly the front door opened, my mom ran in and screamed: "Sasha, Sasha! (that's my father's name) Where's Lena?! (this is my sister) Run, she needs to be taken off the street!"

From this cry, my friend and I left the room. Her father calmly asked her what had happened, but she couldn't come to her senses and kept shouting that Lena needed to be brought home. And then she said: "Death is standing there."

I was an athlete, like my father and my friend, and now we're going outside. Grandmothers are sitting on benches near each entrance — it was still light. We were living in the third entrance at the time, and we see an old lady standing near the first entrance. She was wearing a white robe, white leather slippers on her feet, and a white headscarf on her head.

We got closer. She was facing the window (the first entrance of the house is located very low relative to the ground), her legs were absolutely straight at the knees, she swayed in different directions without bending her knees. I didn't immediately pay attention to her skin, because the attention was focused on her as a whole. There weren't any grandmothers near this entrance at that moment, although there were plenty of them near the others and they were sitting and cooing peacefully. My father called this woman, and she (I note — still not bending her knees, but swaying) She turned to face us, if you can call it that. When I saw this, my hair stood on end. She slowly, swaying, began to approach us. My father told my friend and me to move away, and we started backing away without question.

I tried to look at her face several times, but for more than a couple of seconds I couldn't fix my gaze on her face. What was clearly visible was that the eyeballs had completely sunk into the skull (as in a corpse long after death). Her skin was bronze in color, and her skull was completely covered with dried skin, but this did not prevent her from constantly and very quickly adjusting her handkerchief. Her clothes were brand new, as if they had just come from a store, and she was slowly approaching her father. As I said, my friend and I moved back, but my father was standing, and she was approaching. And so, when she was already about two meters away from him, I saw that my father was seized with horror, and he crossed her and said a prayer loudly.

The monster stops dead in its tracks, but still sways from foot to foot, and suddenly begins to make sounds resembling a groan. It went on like this for a long time, then my father turned around, stood on the curb and walked towards us. This decrepit something also stood on the curb and, swaying, confidently followed him. So they walked for several meters. All the grandmothers, whom I have already mentioned, saw what was happening. We walked slowly along the houses, and as soon as we approached the next entrance, the old women ran screaming to their homes. Several hours passed like this: we walked on and on, and the "grandmother" followed us. I noticed that she was exactly following our footprints, but she wasn't looking at the road, and her head was always in the same position.

It soon got dark (it was probably 11-12 o'clock), and this creature was still following us. And suddenly, at one moment, all three of us were seized by animal terror, and without saying a word, we began to run fast. I turned around, but the creature was not far behind, and its legs were still bent at the knees. Exhale completely, switch to a slow step. I look at her, and she's still treading carefully on our tracks.

We were walking along, and then a group of several people came across us. When these people saw her, they scattered in different directions in fright. She abruptly turned in the direction where they ran away, and we, taking advantage of the moment, ran in the other direction — into the bushes. Then she began to spin around, and it was already obvious that she was looking for footprints with her feet. She turned around like this for several minutes — her head was always in the same position —and soon slowly walked in the other direction until she disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Run!

 It was in 2009. On an autumn day, I was sitting at home, reading websites on the Internet. Then my friend Anton called me and invited me to go with him to an abandoned nine-story building on the outskirts of the city, to climb, as we like to do. Having agreed to meet at the place at seven o'clock in the evening, I continued to sit at the computer.

In the evening, at the appointed time, I went to that building and met Anton there. The building, by the way, was built a long time ago and looks quite depressing from the outside, even from the inside. We chatted for a while, walked through the corridors of the nine-storey building, then climbed onto the roof. When we got tired of it, we started going downstairs. By that time, I noticed that my friend was behaving strangely - he was usually energetic and cheerful, but that evening he was unusually quiet, as if he was constantly thinking about something.

As we were going down, my phone rang.

"Hello?"

— Hello!  Anton's voice came over the speaker. — Sorry, Serega, I was with my mom on business, I was terribly late, so I'm not going...

I turned to my friend in complete confusion. Anton, who was standing next to me, looked at me and grinned. The grin on his face (whoever he was) was so scary that I literally fell into a stupor.

My memory has not preserved what happened after that. The only thing I remember is that the creature said one word to me in a thin, squeaky voice.:

"Run!"

I don't remember how I got home. 

To this day, I can't figure out what it was.

Photo

 Returning home from school, the girl found a stack of polaroids lying in the gutter. Out of curiosity, she picked them up and began to look through the pictures on the go. The first photo showed a silhouette of a man standing in the distance against some kind of uniform gray background, so that it was impossible to even distinguish his features.

The girl pushed the photo down the stack and began to study the next one. It showed the same man, but standing a little closer.

The girl quickly flipped through several photos. In each subsequent picture, the man was standing a little closer, and his appearance was becoming clearer.

By the tenth photo, the expression on the man's face began to appear — he was clearly insane, and his face was distorted in a terrible grimace. His mouth was open, and fangs like those of an animal could be seen in it. This scared the girl, but she continued to look through the photos.

By the nineteenth photo, the man was already standing so close to the lens that his face obscured the entire frame. Walking up the driveway, the girl looked at the last photo.

Instead of an image, there was only the inscription: "Now it's close enough."

Hearing the scream from outside, the girl's brother rushed to the front door. But there he found only a stack of photographs on the steps. It looked like his sister was in the picture, but she was too far away from the lens for him to be sure.

Dressing gown

 When Yuri and I got married, we decided to use the donated money to make repairs and bought new furniture. He inherited the apartment from his grandparents, who have been dead for several years. And so, sorting through tons of junk and all sorts of junk, I came across a gorgeous silk robe. Very erotic, with black lace. I asked my husband if my grandmother was wearing it. I was surprised at first, but then I believed him, because he was buried deep in the mezzanine, and his ex was wearing nothing but tracksuits. But I liked this robe so much that I decided to keep it for myself. The husband said, "For God's sake, wear it if it doesn't scare you that it's your grandmother's.”So I washed it, put it on, stood in the kitchen, cooking. The husband is lying in the bedroom with a laptop. Suddenly I hear breathing behind my back and the floor creaks, well, I think my husband's conscience tormented him, he came to help. I turn around - no one! My heart went out of my mouth! I run into the bedroom, I tell him in horror, he is silent…

Further - worse. The light in the hallway started turning on at night, I thought I was going crazy, but my husband saw it too. Even with such a click, it's already creepy… There was also a cabinet with grandfather's tools in the hallway, which was locked. Lock it up! When we come home from somewhere, the door swings open.... No matter how many times it's been closed, it's always open anyway. We took the closet to the cottage. Images and shadows began to appear in the doorways. In general, some unthinkable things began to happen, which made it scary to sleep in the dark, and they bought a night light. Moreover, (maybe I'm being paranoid, of course), but I noticed that as I put on this robe, everything starts to shake....

I bought candles in the church, lit them, started walking around the apartment, and I saw black smoke billowing in one of the rooms in the corner… And the candle burned down instantly... that's when my husband split up, he says this has been happening here for a long time, even before I met him, my father was called twice to put things in order. And where the smoke was, Grandma's bed was where she died in terrible agony.… And before she died, she asked to put her robe in the coffin with her. But we didn't comply with her requests... anyway, whatever it is, it doesn't mean us any harm. It's just creepy sometimes.…

Come with me.

 My mother told me about this incident. In the village where she spent her childhood, there lived a very prominent peasant Timofey with his beautiful wife Tatiana. For some reason they had no children, but they loved each other enviously.

One winter, Tatiana caught a cold, fell ill, and died. Timofey buried her, and since then things have been going wrong with him: he doesn't leave the house, he doesn't really work, he just drinks vodka and pours tears for Tatiana. And the old people had already warned him that he shouldn't grieve so much for the dead, it wasn't good. The man didn't listen to them.

And one evening, in the Epiphany frosts, Timofey was sitting at home and pouring vodka over his grief, when suddenly the door opened and Tatiana entered his hut. And Timofey was already drunk, so he wasn't too surprised. He was overjoyed, rushed to his wife, hugged her, kissed her... And she says to him, come with me, just don't take a sheepskin coat or a hat. Timofey, as he left the house, realized for himself that warm clothes were unnecessary: it was summer outside!.. And then three black horses rolled up. Tatiana got into the carriage, and Timofey put his foot on the step, and then, as usual, crossed himself.

At the same moment, everything was gone — neither troika, nor Tatiana, but Timofey sees that he is standing near the cemetery gate. Undressed, and there's a snowstorm, frost all around, and it's going to be at least three kilometers to the house. It's good that I figured out to run to the nearest village, to a friend. That saved him.