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?
.jpg)
.jfif)
.webp)
