Distortion

 Tosha stared at the peeling leather of the door and sighed heavily. Everything that has happened to her lately is like a mousetrap with cheese. It's not a thrill to enter an inherited apartment with a load of misunderstandings, unfulfilled obligations, and in general... Although what obligations can there be between people who have never seen each other? Well, they sent a notification from the police: we inform you that Kuzma Kuzmich Rodionov was taken to the hospital with a heart attack. And who is he Better, this Kuzma Kuzmich, even for his father, even for his mother? My parents haven't been alive for six years, there's no one to ask. Maybe there was a mistake. But there was a call from the notary's office, and Tosha was hesitating at the door.

There was a strange feeling, as if someone was glued to the peephole on the other side. It's kind of disturbing... What if it's an old man who hasn't waited for anyone to come to his deathbed, waiting to claim his soul or his life? What kind of thoughts are these? I should have stayed in the village and not coveted the inheritance.

In general, you shouldn't have refused to accompany your aunt from the housing and communal services department. But she ran from one office to another for so long, so reluctantly shifting things from table to bag, from bag to table, that she reminded a naughty first-grader who delays the moment of showdown with his parents. And then the aunt grabbed the ringing mobile phone like a magic wand.

I had to say that I could do without her services. The aunt was delighted and handed Tosha the keys. In the cramped, multi-columned hallway, the girl stopped to get her luggage more comfortably. She heard a conversation:

— It's a pity. Just a girl.

— Maybe it will be okay...

Tosha still didn't understand who they were feeling sorry for, because the door closed and the words turned into an inarticulate babble.

Ouch! It was somewhere inside the locked apartment that the door slammed. Or was it just my imagination?

Very lucky — someone is coming up the stairs. Let's wait.

The stylishly dressed woman looked around at Tosha's things, smiled affably, but said nothing, and headed for the next flight of stairs. And Tosha decided.

— Hello. I came on a call from the notary office. This apartment is mine now. The housing and communal services gave me the keys. Could you help me out by coming in together? You never know what... — She asked.

The woman stopped, but her smile was gone.

At this time, a howl like a spring cat chant was heard in the depths of the apartment: "Wa-a-uh." Something crashed, and the howling stopped.

"Was it my imagination, or is there someone there?"  Tosha said.

— What makes you think that? The apartment has been empty for many years," the woman replied coldly, turned around and began to rise.

But Tosha saw her eyes widen in fright. She heard it too.

What should I do? My thoughts were interrupted by an urgent need: drinking coffee in the morning completed its cycle in the body. Tosha rattled the keys resolutely.

Oh, and the dust in the hallway! It's like poplar fluff, only gray. Tosha put her things on a rickety stool and a bedside table. She rushed to the bathroom, hastily unbuttoning her jeans. If only the plumbing was in working order! Fortunately, everything turned out to be fine. Rinsing her hands, Tosha turned her attention to the mirror. The surface, cloudy from dried plaque, looked like an eyesore. Well, it's okay, everything will be sparkling clean here soon.

There was a pounding on the front door. Tosha hurriedly headed to the hallway, glancing briefly into the room. So, what is this? The knocking resumed with such force that dust fell from the jambs. Okay, then we'll find out what kind of thing it is, otherwise someone can't wait, the door is about to rip off its hinges. Tosha opened the lock and staggered back.

"Help me!" For God's sake, help! My daughter, Sasha! She's not breathing!  A disheveled young woman shouted and burst into tears.

"I'm sorry, I'm just checking in and I don't know if there's a phone here," Tosha muttered in confusion, came to her senses and rummaged in her bag in search of a mobile phone, trying to somehow calm the distraught neighbor. — I'm going to dial an emergency call.

But the woman forcefully grabbed her by the arms and pulled:

"Help me!" Well, please!

Tosha reluctantly followed her to the wide-open door to the apartment opposite.

"I beg you! My baby... At first she wheezed, turned blue all over... It's cold... And then the eyes rolled back. My dear child!  The woman howled and dragged Tosha across the landing and into the cluttered hallway.

There was a girl lying on a low sofa in the room. His head was thrown back, and his blueberry-colored mouth was open, as if in a scream. There are dark spots and dried scratches on the neck.

Tosha stopped dead in her tracks. It's not an ambulance that's needed here, but the police. Wow, my daughter stopped breathing. Someone contributed to this. Isn't that the mother? And she can be dangerous! Only now did Tosha realize that she didn't feel the woman's tenacious grip. Where did she go? Tosha looked around warily. The neighbor disappeared, leaving her alone next to the dead child. I'm in such a mess, Tatiana Ivanovna!

Tosha looked around the room, a small, lifeless body. The poor girl has been unable to help for a long time — ominous spots have "blossomed" on her thin little hands. I need to go back to my apartment and call the police. Tosha went into the hallway and froze again. On stools and a bedside table — in someone else's apartment! — there were her things. There are no others to be confused with them. Especially the bag full of cosmetics, and on top of it — her own mobile phone! So where is Tosha herself— at home, with a child killer, or in a nightmare?

His chest convulsed several times in an attempt to breathe, and it was as if a noose had been tightened around his neck. If the numbness doesn't go away, Tosha will fall to the dusty floor. And two corpses will be found here. The air suddenly rushed into her throat, and the girl leaned against the bedside table with relief. We need to get out of here.

Someone touched my back lightly. Tosha turned around.

There was a dead girl standing next to her.

Her blacklist curled pitifully on her bluish face, and her eyes with yellow whites oozed brown tears.

And then it was as if a curtain had been drawn in front of Tosha.

When she woke up, the hallway was filled with misty twilight.

The girl stood up. His arms and legs were shaking, and his head ached. It took Tosha forever to walk three meters to the door. Finally, she crossed the threshold. Get out of here! And yet she turned around. Empty hallway, dilapidated furniture. Things are missing. There was not a single trace on the floor, which was covered with lumpy dust.

She immediately turned on the light in her room. She did not touch the bags and suitcase, but hesitated a little before entering the room. What if?.. But there was no little dead woman. But the squat sofa and bulky antique furniture—the same as in the monstrous apartment next door—were in the same places. The difference was in a stuffed huge cat under a giant glass hood. That's what struck Tosha when she first heard a desperate knock on the door.

I wish I could get out of here, but where am I going at night? A strange city, no relatives, no acquaintances. And this apartment is really a mousetrap. Although if you put the incident down to rampant nerves? Just give them some free rein. You will be left without a home, you will wither away without a normal job and the opportunity to arrange a personal life in a village that is not on the map yet. In general, so, Tatiana Ivanovna: the morning of the evening is more complicated. Now the cleaning is at a furious pace, then sleep. And after thinking about it. And no nerves!

I couldn't sleep. Tosha spent half the night fidgeting on a new set of underwear, thoughtfully purchased at the station store. The illumination, arranged for calmness, prevented me from forgetting — aha, you can't sweep away nerves like dust. I had to turn off the lights first in the room, then in the hallway and in the kitchen. Paradoxically, the darkness cheered me up even more. Tosha got up and went to the window, from which she peeled the tulle fluffy from the nets during cleaning. Did she open the frames? A fresh wind blew the strands off her sweaty cheeks, blew the lightest silk of her nightgown off her shoulders.

Rather, to where the restless night rustles its robes in huge lilacs, where the anemic light of lanterns timidly clings to the asphalt, where someone is ready to give hot blood to the strong flexible body of a predator... Hurry up!

Damn it! She almost jumped from the fourth floor!

Tosha climbed down from the windowsill, calmed her trembling, straightened her shirt. In the kitchen, I washed the kettle again and put water on to boil for coffee. What's going on with her? As a child, they said, she had a lot of extravagance. But at the age of ten she outgrew her eccentricities. She was known as a sensible and calm girl. Slightly on his mind, but not without reason. The sudden death of his parents did not break him, but only hardened his character. And more: she knew in advance who wanted to hurt her and when. And I could always resist it. It was worth wishing evil in return, as the plan was realized. It's not always the way we'd like it to be, but still... Was she a psychic? And if she stays away from all the nonsense and gets closer to the point, then she has only two options.

First, the headache pills she had been taking for two weeks turned out to be useless, even harmful. Does it happen that drugs get mixed up or the shelf life expires? Hence the glitches. Secondly, her childhood quirks returned, which did not leave anything in her memory. Tosha only found out about them from relatives at her parents' funeral. They say she was a dreamer — she made up things that you wouldn't read in books. She also made everyone believe in nonsense. Was she hallucinating again? And the food for visions was provided by this truly strange house. Tomorrow, that is, today, we need to talk to the neighbors about whether a crazy mother killed her daughter here. And what was Kuzma Kuzmich like when he bequeathed his apartment to her.

Osha stood at the window all morning, looking out at the neighbors. Some went to their cars, some hurriedly headed to the bus stop. Mothers with children hurried to the kindergarten. And here's the woman she met on the stairs yesterday, walking her dog. Tosha immediately got dressed, grabbed the bag and went out. She glanced warily at the door opposite and literally ran down the stairs. On the street, she imitated the joy of meeting and greeted the woman.:

— Hello, I'm Tatiana. For friends and neighbors — Tosha. Let's get acquainted!

—Alyona," the woman muttered and tried to calm the angry dog.

The tiny dog wheezed and tore at the leash, kicking dead leaves with its hind paws.

"What's the matter with you, Narcissus?"  Alyona said in annoyance and picked up the pet in her arms. — Be quiet, otherwise Mikhailovna will get upset again that her head hurts from barking.

An ambulance arrived at the entrance at the end of the house, followed by the police.

"Good day," Alyona hurriedly threw at Toshin's address and almost ran home.

Tosha stubbornly followed her, openly imposing on her:

— Maybe we should get to know each other better? Would you like to have some coffee?

Alyona just shrugged her shoulder. But then an obese old woman floated out of the entrance to meet her and blocked her escape route. "Mikhailovna,— Tosha immediately thought for some reason. The old woman put her hands on her hips, and then said in a bass voice:

— Yes, keep your mouth shut! If you can't raise them, put them to sleep. Such a lying dog, I can't save you from barking!

Alyona silently squeezed between Mikhailovna and the door jamb.

"What's that?" "What is it?" the old woman asked, and cupped her sausage fingers over her eyes, looking at the Ambulance and the policeman.

"I don't know,— Tosha replied.

"Who knows?" — the old woman asked, apparently purely for rhetoric, and added: — Nina Mikhailovna. Are you from the fourth, a tenant or a possessive?

Tosha did not have time to answer, as the formidable grandmother made a strangled sound and backed away. Her cheeks, which looked like poorly stuffed pillows, were completely saggy and gray. Tosha followed Mikhailovna's fixed gaze.

An orderly and a young man carried a stretcher covered with a sheet out of the entrance.

— Holy saints, again...  Mikhailovna muttered and crossed herself.

Tosha felt the opportunity to profit from the information and cordially invited the old woman.:

— Nina Mikhailovna, come to my place. If the pressure allows, let's drink coffee. Or tea...

"Isn't there anything stronger?" — almost whispered the loud Mikhailovna.

"I'll find it," Tosha smiled and slightly pushed the clumsy grandmother towards the stairs.

At the table, noisily sipping tea with lemon liqueur, which Tosha's second cousin had given her to celebrate the housewarming party, Mikhailovna began to talk. It turned out that people were dying in their house in a terrible and inexplicable way. Every seven years.

—I'll tell you, it's kabachupra,— Grandma said significantly and quietly, probably so that this one wouldn't hear.

 Tosha was surprised.

—Kabachupra,— whispered Mikhailovna. "Grab your neck with your teeth, that's all."..

Tosha realized who the grandmother was talking about and smiled. And then she asked a question that was supposed to shed light on what had happened to her.:

— Nina Mikhailovna, wasn't a child killed in our building? A little girl.

—That's what Aunt Alyona has,— Grandma replied, smacking her lips and pointing at the ceiling. "Since the fifth." Not right above you, but next to you. She's been crazy ever since. She's always running around with her boyfriend, kissing his nose. Well, the child is gone, but you need to love someone.

"At Alena's?"  Tosha was amazed. — Did the baby die in the apartment opposite mine?

"No,— Mikhailovna said firmly. — Your floor is exactly like an uninhabited one. Someone appears, moves out unnoticed... A caravanserai, in a word. I've been living in the house for about thirty years, I don't remember a single tenant.

— And you don't even remember my relative, Kuzma Kuzmich Rodionov? He bequeathed this apartment to me," Alyona said, puzzled.

"There was no Kuzma Kuzmich here,— Mikhailovna got angry. — By the way, I've been the eldest since I moved in. I used to collect money for all kinds of needs, so I know everything about everyone.

Despite the nightmares she had experienced, it was only now, in the peaceful moments of tea drinking, that Tosha realized that the mousetrap had snapped shut. The whole world dimmed and fell silent. The old woman's lips moved soundlessly, and a fat autumn fly darted soundlessly around the kitchen...

—Are you getting sleepy from your drink?"  Mikhailovna's bass voice suddenly popped into her ears.

—I think so,— Tosha said faintly.

—Well, then I'll go,— Grandma said. — The police officers will be doing a door-to-door inspection now. You get some rest. Shall I take a look at the room? I've never been there in all these years.

Tosha nodded, got up, leaning heavily on the table, and followed Mikhailovna.

Grandma turned her head and grunted disapprovingly. She walked over to the empty glass case and clicked on it with a yellow convex fingernail:

"What's that?" Some kind of jar.

"It's the dome that was used to cover the scarecrow," Tosha replied, barely moving her lips.

"Where is it?"  Mikhailovna asked, and made fun of it.

The girl just sighed. It really escaped. It's just unclear when. In the evening, she wiped the glass part of the case, looked at the master's skillful work. And then I stopped paying attention to the scarecrow. And so...

—Well, I'll go," Grandma said, clicked on the glass again and added. "It's a big jar. I guess the whole kabachupra will fit.

Having escorted Mikhailovna out, Tosha dipped the rest of the brandy into a mug and drank it. No, you can't do that, or you'll go crazy. The loss of the sawdust—stuffed hide will again be attributed to glitches - well, she imagined it. Just like yesterday's guest with the dead daughter. Alyona, whose child really died, does not live opposite at all. The strong liquor made my head spin, and my stiffness disappeared. What if you pay a visit to the ill-fated apartment? Oh, she wasn't! Tosha grabbed her keys and resolutely went out onto the landing. She rang the bell and knocked. She pushed the door open slightly. She gave way. Tosha took a deep breath and entered.

Kuzma Kuzmich stood in the middle of the room and, turning slowly, examined every corner of the furniture, every fold of the curtains, every shadow. The creature will be here soon—he can feel it. The heavy crowbar, once taken from the janitor's closet, trembled in his hand. Star Kuzmich — over a hundred, a dozen more ran up. Three wars are behind us, and you will have to look into the eyes of your death right now. Wounded five times at the front, he knew he would survive. And when his truck and a half went under the ice, he was sure that he would get out. Two heart attacks didn't come down. And so.

Claws scratched at the front door.

Kuzmich put his hand to his chest — his heart was fluttering badly. No, he couldn't stand it. We need to delay the last battle somehow. It doesn't make sense, of course. But he's not ready.

There was a sound in the hallway, as if something soft had fallen from a height.

Kuzmich, gathering all his strength, rushed and threw a crowbar into the corridor.

— Wow!  The darkness howled.

Well, now the creature will hide for a while. There were so many of them, these breaks in the exhausting hunt. The price of each is someone's life. More than once I had the idea to expose my throat to a hot fanged mouth. Either a hinge or an open window. But what happens after that, when the last hunter dies? He didn't become one by choice. But I'm not sure about the creature. Was it through his complicity that this reptile came into the world?

It all started right after the war, when he, a veteran, was given a separate apartment. There were so many residents in the neighboring communal apartment that you couldn't even remember their faces. He immediately became friends with the family of Igor Rusakov, the engineer of their fleet, who, with his wife and daughter Tanya, huddled in eight squares. Therefore, the doors of Kuzmich's odnushka were always open for a friend and a three-year-old fidget. The evenings when he and Igor listened to a captured radio, and Tanya was building something out of cubes on a rug, replaced family life, which was cut short by the explosions of the forty-first. Sometimes Igor, hearing the noise and screams from behind the adjacent wall, rubbed his face with his hands and said, "Hell." Kuzmich objected sternly: "You haven't seen hell. That's when it's a hundred times more, and they're silent... And they don't move... That's when hell begins." "Your truth," his young friend replied.

One day Tanya found a red-haired kitten freezing on the street. She burst into tears so much that Lena, Igor's wife, allowed her to bring the baby home. Igor was indignant for a long time, argued, tried to sell the animal to Kuzmich, but could not resist his daughter's happy, somehow enlightened face as she played with the foundling. And then the slightly grown-up cat got sick. Igor came alone that evening.

— Foam is coming out of the mouth, the belly is rattling. I wanted to take it away, Tanya, in a scream," he said.

Kuzmich understood what was the matter.

"It's rat poison. I should have been firm right away. And now there's nothing you can do," he explained.

In the morning, I saw through the window how Igor walked with a bundle in the newspaper behind the boiler room, which was then located right in front of their house.

However, after work, a friend showed up with Tanya, in whose arms a red cat was floundering.

"I don't understand anything,— Igor whispered to him. — I pushed her under some boards. I come home, and Lena tells me that Tanya missed the cat, cried, and then screamed that Toshka was walking in the yard! They went to get Toshka.

— Maybe it's another one?  Kuzmich didn't believe me.

—No,— Igor replied, rubbing his face as if he wanted to wake up from an unpleasant dream.

Kuzmich took a cloer look: a ribbon with a bow made of a piece of "gold" was tied around the kitten's neck. This wrapper was used for sweets received on special rations for front-line soldiers.

All evening they watched the games that Tanya had arranged.

Kuzmich secretly talked to some of the neighbors, and the communal war against the kitten temporarily subsided. For six months, no more.

At four o'clock in the morning, there was a quiet, insistent knock on the door. Kuzmich was alarmed for some reason and ran to open the door without putting on his slippers. Igor literally stumbled through the door. In his hands is a rolled—up towel with purple spots.

—Kuzmich, you're like a father to me,— Igor said dully. —Here we go again! Uncle Lyosha, with a crutch. Drunk as a fiddle, as always. Kuzmich, help me, I won't be able to. I'm afraid, you know? What if he comes back again?

"Come into the kitchen," Kuzmich said, and began to dress. I thought for a while and grabbed a sapper shovel. It should be in the ground, as it should be.

He buried the Toy under a bush. For a long time I could not get rid of the feeling of crushed bones that rolled under the skin, which had lost all its red luxury. Oh, and Tanya had infected him with her tenderness for the little animal. Then I drank two hundred grams with a friend. Igor suddenly got carried away, and Kuzmich dragged him home to Lena in his arms. Quietly closing the door of the Rusakovs' room behind him, Kuzmich walked down the long corridor to the niche where Uncle Lyosha was snoring, letting green snot run down his mustache. I didn't lose my leg at the front — I was crushed by a drunkenly overturned tractor before the war. You bastard, you couldn't get to your room. Kuzmich shook him by the shirt front and asked in a whisper choked with rage:

"You bastard, don't you have anyone else to fight?" Why did you kill the cat?

Uncle Lyosha woke up and, in a completely sober voice, although it smelled of dead meat all over the corridor, said:

— Damn it, not a cat! Heck! She came to me every night. She drank my blood! Don't you believe it? Here!..

The disabled man wanted to undo the mismatched buttons on his shirt, but his fingers wouldn't obey. Then he yanked at the collar so that the buttons rattled like peas on the floor.

There were purple wounds on his neck and collarbones. There were dried and fresh scratches all over his chest.

— He will appear... from the dark... He'll claw and bite... And licking the blood...  Uncle Lyosha said, twisting his lips and shaking with tears.

Kuzmich even choked with indignation, shouting louder than he should have:

"Drunk as hell!" You're a crazy drunk! The cat is lapping up blood, and you're lying there watching, right?

There was a draft. Kuzmich wanted to say that Uncle Lyosha would have to answer for Tanechka's grief, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the front door had opened a crack. I looked and felt the floor give way under my feet.

Toshka slowly entered the hallway. It was exactly her, a red—haired hide covered in blood and earth.

The cat sat down and began to lick itself, looking at Kuzmich and Uncle Lyosha, who was wheezing. Kuzmich carefully walked around Toshka and rushed out. In the evening of that day, he learned that the disabled man had been found dead in the hallway. I got drunk.

Igor did not appear at his friend's place anymore. And when they met at the car park, he announced that he was leaving the family — the quiet and meek Lena turned into a fury when she heard the ultimatum: either him or the cat. Kuzmich just spread his hands. And that was the first mistake.

He committed the second one when he failed to connect a series of strange deaths in a communal apartment with a cat. A scandalous young woman, a mother of two children, committed suicide when the last of her babies suffocated in her sleep. She slashed at her throat with a kitchen knife. The unfortunate woman's face and hands were covered with scratches. One of the loud old women suddenly went crazy and scalded herself with water from a tank in which the laundry was boiling. But Toshka turned out to be persistent. No one has managed to lime it. The apartment began to be considered disastrous, a bad reputation, like an unpleasant smell, crept through the city. Kuzmich, as best he could, took care of and protected the family of a long-retired engineer.

Then there was the third mistake, the most terrible. Tanya has grown into a fifteen-year-old beauty. But in terms of behavior, she remained the same little girl with a tender attachment to her cat. Lena barely persuaded her daughter to go to a summer camp. A few days later, Toshka disappeared, and death walked out of the apartment. Three residents of the building died one after the other.

Kuzmich and Lena went to Tanya's house and, as expected, found the cat at the owner's. They brought the enraged animal home. Kuzmich went on a business trip, and when he returned, he learned about the tragedy that had just happened: Lena, along with the cat, rushed under a dump truck. Igor came to the funeral and insisted that his daughter not be informed about her mother's death until the end of the camp season. Kuzmich felt that Tanya could not survive two losses at once and ordered a scarecrow. He ruthlessly suppressed speculation and superstition, and reasoned that all the anger that had befallen the cat had turned against the people themselves. The wild mores of the communal apartment — and not only in relation to the animal — have caused something that is repugnant to life itself. But he would not leave Tanya, he would help her finish her education in another city where Igor's relatives lived, and he would give her an apartment. To her surprise, she did not grieve for long, but left a stuffed animal of her pet at parting. She studied, got married, had a son, and became a happy grandmother. And she quietly left this world, as happened to all of Kuzmich's acquaintances. But he remained the guardian.

Then I had to hunt. It sucks, I must say, he was good at it — age. Or fate. Or something else.

Tosha looked around and sighed heavily. It's just like last time. Maybe this apartment is some kind of mirror? Cloudy from dried plaque. In which there is distortion instead of reflection?

She felt the girl immediately.

And sure enough, the deceased went out into the corridor, beckoned with her hand with her nails already completely black.

For some reason, Tosha wasn't scared at all. She's probably asleep.

Just like when she was a child, when she saw strangers in oblivion. And the death rattles in my ears. And then their blood on their lips and palms.

Tosha slowly moved into the room along the endless corridor, the walls and ceiling of which were unsteady from the shifting haze.

My feet sank into an invisible substance, and voices rustled in my head. A female figure blocked the way. It appeared as if out of nowhere. She shook her blood-soaked, half-scalped head, spread her hands with the nails torn off on her fingers, as if not letting them go any further.

But the girl was drawn forward. She knew she couldn't stop. And she stepped forward.

The woman, if you could call this creature that, threw back her head, causing a flap of skin with matted hair to slide down her back, let out a scream and suddenly grabbed Tosha.

The bones of the mutilated dead woman's fingers slipped out of the rotten flesh and bit painfully into her forearms. Bared teeth in rags of decomposed gums approached Tosha's face. An almost black, wrinkled tongue wriggled, and the words rang out:

"Die, you bastard!" I won't give you Tanya!

At first, Tosha felt that she was falling somewhere with the creature. And then everything started spinning, Tosha felt the blows, the crunch of someone's, or maybe her bones, and a wild heaviness.

And darkness fell.

Tosha came to her senses and realized that she was free. No one can stop her anymore. There's not much left. She stumbled over a thick piece of metal, which immediately turned to dust. She looked back and grimaced: corpses were piled up in the haze-cleared space. Nothing, it's all over. Tosha entered the bright room.

She's in her room. Everything is washed and tidy. Except there was an unfamiliar chair by the window. It's disgusting. It's obnoxious. Empty, but somehow dangerous. Tosha, stepping carefully, came closer.

It was as if some kind of veil had covered the worn plaid upholstery. And then, like in the movies, the sleeping man gradually began to appear. The old man. Wasn't he the one who had once lived here before her? I've been waiting. He wanted to take away Toshin's sanity or his life. He set traps. Lured by inheritance and...

— Tanya? — the old man woke up and stared at Tosha incredulously. "Darling, how did you get here?" Wait a minute... but you... Yes, it seems that my time has come. Thanks to the Creator, He sent me consolation at the last moment. Come and hug Kuzmich... How I missed you!

Tosha wanted to say that even though she was named after her grandmother, she had never been here before. And anyway, it's better to call her Tosha, Tosha. That's what she decided on her own. And if this is her apartment now, then let the old man get lost, or else...

— Baby, I remember how you used to play here. I did my homework. And I... I... watched and imagined that you were my granddaughter," the old man said in a trembling voice, raising his shaking hand to his eyes. — How many years have passed... And I'm still alone...

Toshin's irritation reached its limit. It seemed that even the air was pierced by electrical discharges. But a hiss came out of his mouth. Out of anger, it must be. The old man bulged his colorless eyes and fumbled with his hand near the chair. He probably wanted to reach the glass hemisphere that was standing at a distance. Then he went limp and said:

"Is that so?" Was it you the whole time? Well, that's understandable... When they spit into the purest soul, they will poison it with hatred. What can germinate? What will a poisoned, crushed, murdered purity turn into? But me, me for what? Why innocent children? Why is God's love not enough for everyone?

The old man tried once more to reach the huge glass dome, but could not. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and muttered:

"Retribution is inevitable. Guilty. I didn't know that people needed to be protected from themselves. Where can I find such a dome to lock up all evil?

Tosha grinned. I can't lock it! The old fool made a mistake. I caught a shadow, but I missed it. But if it had happened otherwise, would you have raised your hand against your beloved Tanya? A whirlwind swirled around Toshi. The throat let out a powerful howl. And she rushed to the chair.

Korenikha

 Tikhvin district of the Leningrad region is known as the bear corner. The places here are remote and sparsely populated, which makes them attractive for hunters and fishermen. Last fall, Yakov Aizeman, a leading engineer at the Electrosila plant, came here to hunt. He stayed with his friend in the village of Volozhba.

In the morning, Aizeman went into the forest and got lost. The latter circumstance did not frighten him, but it upset him a lot, since the engineer considered himself a good tracker and a good connoisseur of the Tikhvin forests. All day he wandered through completely unfamiliar places, and in the late afternoon he came out on a barely noticeable forest road. "It will lead somewhere," Eiseman decided, and set off down it.

The road led him to an abandoned farm on the edge of a large swamp. Apparently, the farm was abandoned quite a long time ago. Aizeman went up to the porch and pushed open the front door of the hut. It creaked open. There was nothing remarkable inside the house, except for the traces of someone's long-ago sleepover: several empty cans, a bottle of vodka and an armful of firewood thrown near the couch.

It was getting dark fast. A whitish mist was creeping in from the swamp, and there was a dank dampness. "I'll spend the night in the house, and in the morning I'll find out where the hell I've gone," Eiseman decided and began to settle down for the night.

In the middle of the night, he suddenly woke up, feeling through his dream that someone was shuffling next to him. For the first few moments, the engineer lay motionless, but then, startled, he sat up on his bed. Nothing could be seen in the pitch darkness, but Aizeman sensitively sensed someone's presence in the hut and realized with horror that the one hidden by the darkness was deadly. He hastily flicked the lighter. A wavering tongue of flame picked out the corner of the couch from the darkness and the stooping figure of an old woman standing a few steps away from it.

Aizeman screamed in surprise. The old woman slowly, as if blind, leaned towards him, spreading both arms. A sweet smell of decay flowed through the hut, and Aizeman clearly saw what was approaching him... A corpse!

In desperation, he threw a Neva lighter at the deceased, still Soviet-made, hefty and weighty, like a chair. She hit the old one hard in the rotten forehead and, bouncing off, instantly went out. There was a scream in the darkness. Eiseman rushed into the vestibule. Fear gave him strength, and with one jerk he tore the hook and the hole out of the closed front door and jumped onto the porch.

He spent the rest of the night running over some shaky hummocks, falling into the peat muck every now and then. At dawn, I felt solid ground under my feet and collapsed exhausted. After catching my breath, I looked around and realized that I was not far from Volozhba.

When Aizeman appeared in the village, he caused a stir among the locals — his appearance was so wild. However, everything he said did not surprise the villagers at all, since there had been a bad rumor about the farm in the swamp for a long time.

Before the war, a lonely old woman named Korenikha lived there. No one really knew how old she was or what she was doing. It was rumored, however, that the old woman was a witch and kept an ancient book on witchcraft in her house. Once, they even saw a Rootling wandering around the village churchyard, scraping moss from crosses on abandoned graves and collecting cemetery grass in a purse — wet convolvulus. They were afraid of the old woman and avoided her farm.

In 1941, during the fighting in the Tikhvin direction, a German infantry unit entered the area of the village of Volozhba. The Germans shelled the farm where our outposts were entrenched with artillery fire. A shell fragment struck Korenikha to death. "Damn fascists, they killed my grandmother," the soldiers sighed after the fire raid and buried the dead woman right there in one of the craters.

Since the 50s, hunters, berry pickers and mushroom pickers began to tell terrible things about the abandoned farm. Some heard footsteps and groans in the crumbling house, while others noticed a stooping, gray-haired old woman in its windows. Grisha Volobuyev, an atheist Komsomol member, was found in Volozhba, who decided to dispel all superstitious fears, for which he went to the farm. A couple of days later, in the Volozhbinsky swamp, they came across a Volobuev cap and a kirza boot — all that remained of the atheist. There was no doubt that Grisha had fallen into a quagmire and drowned. However, the reason that drove him into the swamp remained unclear.

Over time, the farm and the road to it became overgrown with forest and grass. The locals did not go there, and it was possible to find the old woman's house only with a guide or by chance, as happened with the engineer.

Aizeman left Volozhba for St. Petersburg, without even remembering about the backpack, bandolier and double-barreled shotgun left on the farm. Upon arrival in the city, he turned to Andron Friedman for clarification. The expert's opinion was as follows:

— In the northern regions of Russia, according to an ancient witchcraft rite, a sorcerer or witch had to find a successor in order to pass on to him all the secrets of his forbidden knowledge before his death, usually in the form of a handwritten codex. Otherwise, their black souls could not find peace and were doomed to eternal torment. Korenikha's sudden death may have disrupted this rite and caused the witch's ghost to appear.

The Queen of Spades

 I'm almost sixteen, and I'm going to die soon, not from an incurable disease or a deadly virus, but because of my own stupidity, thanks to which my friends and I opened the door to the other world, releasing evil from there.

At my age, the word "death" is just a word you hear in movies or find in books, a kind of abstract concept. It never occurred to me to use it in relation to myself. I was always sure that if I died, it would be very, very soon, at a very old age. However, to be honest, I didn't really believe in my own old age, and even more so in death. At the dawn of life, no one thinks about its decline. I've never gone on a date with a guy, not even kissed yet.…

Tears stung my eyes.

Trying not to cry, I took a few shuddering breaths.

Daria was the culprit. She's the one who's crazy about black magic. Spells, love spells. Lesya and I only laughed at her at first, because her witchcraft was of little use. Take, for example, the fact that Sergei from 10 "B" never fell in love with me, despite all Darya's manipulations with his photo and the creepy entourage in the form of thirteen burning candles and thirteen dried roses. That's why, when our homegrown witch suddenly announced that she could use the dark forces to cancel the annual math test, we almost burst our bellies with laughter.

— What, your dark forces will dry the pasta in all the pens?  Lesya moaned through her laughter.

— Maybe our notebooks will self-ignite? — I put forward my version.

Twirling her finger at her temple in response to our jokes, Daria dryly said:

— You'll see!

That Saturday evening is etched into my memory in every detail.

Daria was at home alone, her parents had gone to the country for the whole weekend. Lesya and I came to her at the appointed hour with a box of cakes, which, alas, we were never destined to taste.

Daria opened the door and motioned for us to enter, then, without saying a word, led us through the dark hallway to her room. Slightly discouraged by the mystery of what was happening, Lesya and I were also silent. He made not only a frightening, but also a fascinating impression of Darya's unusual appearance. She was wearing a long black silk dress, black ballet flats on her feet, and a black nylon scarf tied with a tourniquet decorated her head. The makeup was also designed in the "vampire" style: lips in black lipstick, black nail polish, black eyeliner.

Everything in the room was ready for the upcoming "sacrament": the windows were tightly curtained, candles were placed both around the perimeter and around the mirror placed on the carpet.

Daria nodded at the pillows. We obediently sat down on them, forming a kind of enclosed space between the three of us, the center of which was a mirror surrounded by burning candles.

— What kind of folk art is this?  Lesya couldn't resist asking.

A symbolic staircase was painted in black lipstick in a mirrored circle, ending at one end in a closed door.

"This?"  Daria smiled mysteriously. — A ritual image to summon the Queen of Spades!

"The Queen of Spades?" But Herman's not here!  Lesya made a mocking face and, becoming serious, added:

— We're doing stupid things!.. How can you believe in all this nonsense?..

— Wait, you'll believe it yourself soon!  Daria smiled promisingly.

Admittedly, I myself have always been skeptical about girls' stories about the spirits of the Queen of Spades or Bloody Mary, supposedly fulfilling any desires of those who cause them. But it was a pity to upset Daria, the poor thing wanted to surprise us with her ability to do black magic. I supported her.:

— Let's get started! "The devil pulled my tongue!"

Daria held out her hands to us, and the three of us completed the ritual circle, after which we bent over the mirror so low that our heads touched, and repeated the necessary incantation three times: "Spirit of the Queen of Spades, come!"

The main wish was voiced, of course, by Daria:

— Help us, please make sure that we don't write the annual math test!

There was silence for a moment, but the next thing Lesya giggled nervously.:

— It's a madhouse!

—Shh...— Daria stopped her, putting her finger to her lips.

An unexpected sound, like the creaking of rusty door hinges, startled us all. I noticed Lesya tensing up in alarm. Daria's pale face, wreathed in a kind of triumphant smile, looked like a grotesque mask of Death in the darkness. It was cold, as if someone had entered the warmth from the cold, without immediately closing the door. I shivered instinctively. And suddenly there were footsteps, light, swift, like a gust of wind that immediately extinguished all the candles. Lesya screamed in fright. We squeezed each other's hands with all our might. I can't tell you how scary it was! I was afraid to move and almost fainted when a woman's crazy laughter sounded in the pitch darkness. The footsteps were getting closer. It felt as if someone invisible had descended an invisible staircase and passed by us. The door of Darya's room suddenly opened and slammed shut. Everything went quiet. There was no sound, no movement, not even the cold. The chandelier flared up on its own. I don't know how much time passed while we were in prostration. Maybe a few seconds, or maybe even half an hour, as Lesya claimed the next day. By the way, she was the first to come to her senses, and her angry scream still rings in my ears.:

—It's a nightmare! Daria, I'll never forgive you! What was that?!

— The Spirit of the Queen of Spades, which you didn't believe in! — came the victorious reply.

"Stop messing with my head! It's clear that you've played a prank on us!  Tossing aside the pillow she was sitting on, Lesya ran around the room. — Come on, tell me, where did you hide it?..

"Who did I hide?"  Daria screamed, offended by the incredulity. "What are you doing?" Stop going through my stuff!

— Not who, but what!.. Phone, tape recorder, laptop!.. Where was the sound coming from?.. You wrote down all these steps and creaks in advance to scare us, and we idiots fell for it!..

— I didn't write anything down!

— Yeah, tell the donkey, his ears are more authentic!

I stopped the argument by pointing with a trembling hand at the cracked mirror.:

— Girls, look! — The rays diverged at an angle from the painted door, crossing the schematically depicted staircase, in the direction of the exit from the room...

On Monday, in math class, we were informed that the final test in the tenth grades had been postponed to Thursday.

— Okay, at least Darya's witchcraft partially worked!  Lesya laughed.

It was funny to me then, too, but now I realize that witchcraft worked one hundred percent. The Queen of Spades fulfilled Darya's request exactly: none of the three of us are destined to write an annual test... ever!..

Daria didn't show up at school that day. At the last break, we called her, and when we found out that she was in the hospital, we rushed there, but we were too late. The disease developed so rapidly that the doctors did not even have time to make a diagnosis. "It's all blackened, like it's charred!" was all the nurse on duty in the intensive care unit could tell us.

It's Tuesday night.

Lesya died this morning.

I can hear my mom sobbing into the phone, listing my symptoms to the ambulance dispatcher. My fingers and toes became numb, lost their sensitivity, and began to turn black. The blackness is rising higher and higher by the minute.…

And I'm not even sixteen yet!..

The old man

 There was an apartment next to us — my grandfather lived in that apartment, who was ill for a long time and then died. My grandfather had no arms or legs.

The room where my sister and I slept was next to his apartment. After my grandfather's death, it remained empty for some time. The balcony of the empty apartment was located next to ours, at a window distance.

I woke up in the middle of the night and heard some strange noises. I looked at my sister's bed, and she was sleeping quietly. Then I realized that these sounds were coming from behind the wall, from my dead grandfather's apartment. I lay there in silence for a while, but the sounds didn't stop, repeating themselves periodically over and over again. They were very indistinct, but they made me listen anxiously. Then I got out of bed and put my ear to the wall to listen to what was going on there.

Some kind of blows, they were repeated periodically. Then there was some rustling. But suddenly the nature of the sounds changed. The noise was as if someone was jerking a full bag. Moreover, he dragged it towards the balcony. Suddenly, the noise stopped. In the silence of the night, I heard something click behind the wall.

"It's the latch on the balcony," I suddenly realized. And he froze, waiting for what would happen next. But then nothing happened.

The noise was repeated the next night. I told my sister everything this morning.

"Do you know what that is?"  My sister asked after thinking about it.

- no.

— It's a dead grandfather crawling on the floor, then he opens the balcony door and goes outside.

"And how does he open the door?" He doesn't have arms and legs!

"He's dead!" — The nurse replied meaningfully.

The next night, she didn't sleep with me. The noise was repeated. First a rustle, then the sound of a balcony latch coming off, and then silence. The two of us listened to the sounds of a dead disabled person moving. He seemed to us to be some kind of monstrous maggot- maggot — which, writhing, moved across the floor.

The next morning, my sister said:

— So this grandfather goes out on the balcony.

"What if it's not Grandpa?"

— Who else could be in the dead grandfather's empty apartment? Grandfather himself! — the sister answered confidently.

—Well, that's okay," she continued, "the important thing is that he goes out on the balcony. Meanwhile, we can also go out on our own and see what it is!

It was decided that the two of us would go out on our balcony tonight and see who was going out on the next one.

During the day, we reached over the railing and tried to look into the empty windows of the next room. There was nothing to be seen but a yellowed sheet of newspaper pinned to the window.

And then the night came. The scuffle behind the wall began. We waited for the latch to click and went to the balcony door. We were walking together, but it so happened that I was the first. I wish I hadn't done that.

"No one,— I said quietly to my sister.

Yes, the door to the next balcony was open, but it was empty. It wasn't that scary.

And suddenly...

A rounded object appeared at the level of the railing of the neighboring balcony. For a moment, I thought he had fallen from above, because I heard something soft fall on the metal surface of the railing.

And then the sister rushed back to the apartment.

I suddenly realized what kind of object it was. On the next balcony, the corpse of a legless and armless old man hung with his teeth on the railing. His glassy eyes turned and fixed on me.

I rushed inside the apartment. I rushed to the light switch, groped along the wall and couldn't find it, forgetting in horror where everything was located.

—The door! Close the door to the balcony!  My sister screamed and, not waiting for my reaction, rushed to lock it herself.

I rushed to help, and in the dark we almost collided and fell. Finally, the door was closed and the light was on.

We stood in silence — there was silence outside the windows. And with the electric lighting, it already seemed like everything that had happened was a terrible dream.

I turned to my sister, who was staring intently into the blackness of the window.

"That's nonsense.

—Didn't you get it?" — she looked at me, - Do you still have any idea how he opened his door latch? With my teeth. He jumped up and opened it. So he can jump on our balcony!

I felt cold.

— Let's wake up the parents?

"What are we going to tell them?"

My sister was interrupted by a noise on our balcony. We froze. You can't see much in the dark through lighted windows. But nevertheless, I figured out something. On the other side, a dead mask pressed against the window, which was the face of an old man with a disability. Glazed eyes stared at us.

Yelling, we rushed into the bedroom to our parents, who were fast asleep after their shift at the factory.

My parents came with us to our room.

We didn't tell them the details, just explained that something had fallen on our balcony. My father went outside, looked, and found nothing. His sister was looking out with him—the door to the next balcony was closed.

Julia

 That was a month ago. My five—year-old niece Yulia was staying with us (and we live alone with my mother). My sister went on a business trip, and Yulia had no one to leave with. Since Mom works, I had to take care of my nephew. It's not that I don't love her, but babysitting is clearly not my calling. In general, I lasted a week, and then I went to the cottage to dig in the garden beds and returned only two days later, and even then about three o'clock in the morning (the car broke down on the way).

I go into the house, I don't turn on the light, so as not to wake anyone up. I went into the kitchen and almost died of fright: Yulka rushed at me from somewhere in the corner. Pushing me, she ran out of the kitchen and ran crying into her mother's room. I felt ashamed — I scared the girl, and I was scared myself. I was also surprised—what was she doing there?

In the morning I ask my mother — why does Yulka wander at night? Mom looked at me as if I were sick and said that Lisa (her sister) had picked her up the day before yesterday, and there were no other children in our house. But I saw Julia as clearly as I see the monitor now. What was that? ..

To say that I was shocked is an understatement. She ran up to me, pushed me, I felt her touch!

A couple of days later, my mother came home from work worried and asked me to tell her everything again, in more detail. When I told her what Julia was wearing (and she was wearing a white nightgown at the time), Mom said:

"She didn't have any shirt, she was sleeping in her pajamas.

And sure enough, she had such pink pajamas, Julia loves her very much and sleeps only in them.

Mom was upset—she said it was a bad sign. Sure enough, a few days later, Yulia was admitted to the hospital — she knocked over a hot kettle and burned her leg. And when my mom and I came to visit her, she was wearing a white hospital gown, exactly the same one I saw on Yule at night...

The Ghost Train

 Last year I decided to spend a vacation in Yekaterinburg. I live in Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan— which is a picturesque city. I boarded the Nizhnevartovsk train in the morning, which was supposed to arrive in the capital of the Urals around midnight. The hotel room was booked, and the phone number of the local taxi was entered into the phone. All that remained was to lie down comfortably on my favorite top shelf of the compartment and turn on my favorite Leonard Cohen headphones. A family was traveling with me: mom, dad, and a son about seventeen years old. As I read, I gave them the humor magazines, and the train rocked steadily and moved forward.

As often happens, some kind of mishap occurred, and we were held for thirty minutes in Ust-Katava, and then for more than an hour in Chebarkul. So we were an hour and a half late.

Around midnight, I quietly went out for a smoke, so as not to wake the neighbors. I love the smell of trains, I love leaning against the window, watching sleepers, lanterns, rare barracks on the tracks, striped picket posts float away into the distance. Now, for the life of me, I can't remember the name of the station, which stood for three minutes, and the station was a brick shed with an incongruous clock on it.

The conductor came out into the vestibule to see whether to open the door for her or not, but no one was eager to leave this hole for Nizhnevartovsk, which meant there was no need to fuss. Only a girl, definitely from the local area, in a tracksuit and a red puffed jacket was walking, talking on the phone. With a wave of his head, black hair flutters in the wind, and the awkward movement sent the gadget flying onto the sleepers.

The hands on the station clock jumped to ten o'clock in the evening, Moscow time. The local time is zero hours zero minutes. Midnight.

The girl jumped off the sleepers, bent down for the phone, in my headphones Cohen asked me to give him crack and anal sex, Stalin, the Berlin Wall and St. Paul. Even through the music, I could hear the increasing rumble of the train. The carriages were rushing at great speed where the girl was. Every carriage, every window is imprinted in my memory, like the pictures of a mad photographer. Gaping mouths, frantic, pain-filled eyes without irises, the slit throat of a woman knocking on a window. A hanged man was dancing in the vestibule, looking for support. All the passengers were dead and everyone was trying to escape. And in his headphones, Cohen talked about souls screaming, "I repent, I repent, I repent." Cohen didn't know what they were talking about. Cohen was singing in a hoarse voice, and wagons filled with corpses were rushing past me.

A hand pulled me away from the window. The hum of the train subsided, and I cautiously looked at the rails, expecting to see meat, guts, and blood, but the girl in wet sweatpants was staring at us with bulging eyes and muttering something.

The train started moving, and the ill-fated station floated into the distance. I took off my headphones:

— That's what happened? Y-y-you know? You, uh, pushed me away, so you know?..

I stammered and screamed at the same time. Panic seized me. For the first time in less than twenty-seven years of my life.

"Come to my place, I'll tell you everything."..

Five minutes later, we were sitting in the staff compartment and slurping cognac and chocolate out of glasses. Zhenya, that was the name of the guide, helped herself to chocolate, and I helped myself to cognac.

— I've been working here for seven years. The girls were talking about the ghost train. Some saw him, some didn't. I didn't believe it. The first time I ran into him was about five years ago. I closed my eyes and prayed. I thought it didn't happen that way, that it was crazy. I would put it down to glitches, but no—two more girls saw him. And in the third car, a passenger did not get off at his station. He disappeared, leaving his passport and belongings. He just disappeared. We handed over his property and forgot. You never know, maybe the roof went off.  Zhenya exhaled and downed her glass. — I didn't think about the ghost train then. Yes, the horror stories say that you can't look at him for long, or you'll get sucked in, but I didn't believe in horror stories either. And two years and three months ago, I decided to give my friend a ride with a rabbit. She had to travel from Chelyabinsk to Nizhnevartovsk to work, so I put her in jail. The girls said in the morning that they had seen that train outside Sverdlovsk. And I didn't see Oksana, my friend, anymore. And no one saw it.

Zhenya burst into tears—oh, those drunken tears... "I don't want her fired," the thought flashed through her mind.

I stayed with Zhenya all the way to Yekaterinburg. I thought about the train, its passengers, and the unknown Oksana.

I didn't see Zhenya after that night, even though I was on the same flight back in the next car. And the Leonard Cohen song has left my playlist forever.

Granny

 — Lisa!  An irritated falsetto voice rang out from the room.

It was the middle of a slightly cloudy summer day, which illuminated through the battered windows a modest studio apartment, furnished with old, motley furniture; the street light contrasted with all the roughness of the faded wallpaper with an unpretentious pattern, which had once been salad, and the peeling places on the ceiling that had not been whitewashed for a long time. A large clay pot with a withered plant stood alone on the windowsill, pulling a stunted stem towards the window. A thick green fly circled around the three-horn chandelier, buzzing bassily.

— Li-isa-ah! — the same old woman's voice repeated a second later, as if expecting the immediate fulfillment of all desires. "Are you waiting for me to starve to death?"

 A thin girl with a pale, anemic face, dressed in a housecoat, entered the room, carrying a tray with two plates, a cup of hot tea and several pieces of black bread from the kitchen. "Already, Grandma."…

She helped the old woman who was lying in bed to sit up. After settling in, she shot angry eyes, looked into the lunch tray and pursed her thin, wrinkled lips skeptically. But then she picked up a spoon and started eating.

When Grandma reached for the bread, the girl hurried into the kitchen without waiting for her to speak again.

Lisa always addressed her as "Grandma." It wasn't because she didn't know any other forms of the word, it was just that her grandmother couldn't say it. It so happened: for Lisa, grandma and grandma had completely different meanings, as if these words even had ... the opposite meaning — like the same number, only with the opposite sign. Her grandmother did not fit in the girl's mind with that naively pictorial image of benevolent, smiling grandmothers who cherish their grandchildren from the very cradle, and after a few years (after waiting for them to grow up enough, and then without any restrictions in years) pamper them with delicious muffins. And so on… For as long as Lisa could remember, Grandma was always sick, grumbling angrily at everyone who was around, and never smiled. Never. Perhaps she even lacked the necessary facial muscles or had long since atrophied as unnecessary. Grandma was completely convinced (or... was she just pretending? — Lisa sometimes suspected) that the main goal of others is to "put her in the coffin early" because everyone wants her dead. And she talked about it all the time. One day, when Lisa was in fifth grade, her grandmother had indigestion, and she called the police, saying that they had tried to poison her.

Back in the days when Grandma could get out of the apartment on her own, she almost managed to convince some neighbors that her daughter and even her little granddaughter were doing everything possible to send her to the next world, a "helpless elderly woman," accusing Lisa's mother and the girl herself of unthinkable crimes.

In addition, it was never possible to please grandma in anything (had the old woman ever met at least one person?..  Lisa thought), and the house shook dozens of times every day from her curses. Their studio apartment had heard so many of Granny's curses that, if they had real power, it would have been more than enough to take out an entire city. But the flowers did not want to grow, as if sensing the poisonous atmosphere of their home. Fact: he and his mother tried to plant herbs more than once, but within two or three days the leaves would wither and the plants would wither. Even on the balcony.

Returning to the kitchen and starting to cook for herself, as always: first for grandma, then for herself (which, by the way, a perfectly healthy person could envy grandma's appetite), Lisa remembered her mother. A bitter lump rose up in her throat as usual: poor mother, she faded away, caring for her eternally sick mother, meekly enduring all her antics and whims, giving the old woman her last strength. And not once, until the memorable day, without responding to her incessant reproaches. "Except for you two, I have no one else..." my mother said, meeting Lisa's eyes in the most unbearable moments. She was aging right before our eyes, as if she existed in some kind of her own time - this became especially noticeable after grandma almost stopped walking.

Back then, the three of them lived together, if, of course, such a nightmare could be called life. Her father was not with them—in fact, Lisa had never seen him at all; according to her mother, he was the first and last mistake of her youth. When Lisa got older, she accidentally found out that Grandma played a fatal role in her parents' relationship. Perhaps if my mother had remarried, everything would have turned out differently in their family, but…

Could Grandma, having made herself the Center of her mother's life, have allowed such indecency?

...Four years ago, my mother died, literally collapsing at my grandmother's bedside. Barely realizing what had happened, Lisa almost plunged a large kitchen knife into the heart of this ghoul, which she imagined the old woman to be. But she came to her senses in time.

She just graduated from high school and applied for university admission.… but instead of the journalism department, she took her mother's place of worship to an idol. Then she got a part-time job as a cleaner in a government office near their house and started living for her grandmother.

Within a few months, she had lost all her friends; they had become just acquaintances, whom they greeted briefly, bumping into each other on the street, and immediately went their separate ways.

That's about how the last four years of her life passed. During all this time, Lisa has only left her neighborhood a few times. As if in a terrible dream, the world had narrowed to the size of one of their streets, where she lived, worked a block and a half from home and went shopping. Not because she didn't want to appear in the city, but at least once a month she could afford to go to the movies or sit in a cafe with one of her old friends (or, for example, start dating a guy - many of her peers have been married for a long time, they babysit their own children— "not a grandmother- a vampire, ha ha!.."). However, now she could only dream about all this, falling asleep in bed, because she simply could not leave her grandmother alone for a long time.

In addition, Grandma took all the money Lisa earned and hid it, along with her pension, under the mattress of the bed, from which she almost never got up. She always gave it out herself, planning expenses without her granddaughter's participation, and only for the most necessary things. Then she meticulously calculated the change and constantly grumbled that Lisa was cheating on her. Concepts such as inflation, rising prices, and so on — for the old woman, they were the howling of the wind in the attic window, and Lisa had long since given up on it.

That's all. Granny, granny, Granny… And not a single thank you for these four years. She didn't have a grandmother, she had a grandmother.

"Come here!" How many times do I have to repeat myself?!

Pushing aside the plate, which she had barely touched, Lisa hurried into the room, wondering which of the dinner dishes the old woman did not like today.

"Does Your Lordship require a special invitation?"  Granny's eyes narrowed into two narrow slits, and as she spoke, her full, flabby cheeks shook and turned purple like the beard of an angry turkey.

"Have you already called?" I'm not…

"Do you think I'm stupid?" — the "turkey beards" waved.

Lisa knew it was useless to argue.

"Maybe she really called, and I was just thinking about something?" - when they constantly make a scarecrow out of you, you inevitably start to doubt over time.…

The girl took a tray with dirty dishes and went to the kitchen.

— LIZA! — the old woman barked, only she managed to disappear into the corridor.

Lisa left the tray with the dishes on the kitchen table and went back into the room, feeling a long-pent-up rage rising from inside.

- what?

"What's that?"  Grandma mimicked in a squeaky voice. "If only you could get rid of me as soon as possible..." and added one of her favorite swear words in a whisper, but Lisa caught it anyway. — Learn to listen to the end, I haven't said everything yet. Fly… She's bothering me... but send her away! What are you staring at?!

Lisa pulled aside the tulle from the window, giving free access to the window, took off her slippers and stepped towards the fly, which at that moment settled on the closet door, watching when finally these two — a young and an old woman — would bite each other's throats, and who would get the main prize. The stakes are rising, gentlemen!

— Are you going to break all the furniture?!  His purple, flabby cheeks seemed about to burst down, and two poisonous streams would splash onto the floor. — With your hands!.. Or roll up the newspaper!

There were no newspapers in the house, and the old woman was well aware of this; they were not bought out of economy, even those where the television program was printed. However, there was no TV either, or rather, there once was, but it broke down and had been resting in the basement for five years: grandma never loved it.

"...to spite me!"

Lisa remembered that sometimes free flyers were dropped into their mailbox. But suddenly she didn't care. Completely.

"...fuck!" How much more do I need?…

She put on a slipper and looked straight at Grandma.: "Lucky for you, old bitch, that one day I had the great stupidity to swear to my mom: if anything ever happened to her, you wouldn't go to the poorhouse, where in one day there would be no trace of your arrogance, or you would be strangled by one of the staff. Your lucky ticket, old witch, is that... mom was gone the very next day. But, God knows, I've been close for a long time to break even such an oath."

—That's enough.  Lisa said surprisingly calmly, forcing Grandma to stop in mid—sentence. — It will fly out on its own. I still have a lot of important things to do.

"IMPORTANT business?" — The "turkey goatees", filled with crimson, fluttered with redoubled force, — Oh, you trash! She's just as ungrateful as your mother!

At this mention, Lisa felt that all her fragile assumed calm had disappeared somewhere, and a tantrum could happen to her. She rushed out of the room, then out of the apartment altogether and found herself on the street.

Granny's curses followed.

In recent years, her nerves have been thoroughly shattered. It's not surprising if in a few years she'll bend over like her mother, Lisa thought, absently watching the fuss of two twin toddlers who were trying with inexhaustible enthusiasm to turn over their own stroller, while a girl of about thirteen, probably an older sister, turned away and talked to a friend; in the end, one of the hard workers accidentally poked the other in the eye, and both burst into bitter tears. The girl hurriedly wheeled the stroller home.

Lisa suddenly remembered the words spoken by someone who had known their family for a long time: "This old woman will rot you before she dies, I tell you for sure," to which her mother was mortally offended and pointed the guest to the door, after which Lisa never saw him in their house again.

She accompanied the girl with a screaming duet in a stroller, trying her best to imagine a young grandmother who had once pushed her little mother in a stroller like this, or her eighteen or nineteen years ago.… Nothing came out. Lisa knew practically nothing about that period. Just imagine Grandma when she was young.…

It was easier to imagine those two toddlers as old men.

Once, when she was a child, she asked her mother why Grandma was like this. And I got an answer.: "Because she had a very hard life"... and a hard slap on the back of the head. Was it easy for you, Mom?

How many times over the past four years had the sweet and sour desire to kill her grandmother returned to her (it had been haunting her almost daily for the past year) - to destroy this monster, the monster.

But even more often, Lisa thought how nice it would be if the old woman died on her own. God, that would be nice! Such thoughts had long since ceased to seem wild to her. These were her usual thoughts about Grandma. Life WITHOUT her seemed like a fairy tale, an impossible, unreal dream that Lisa, no matter how hard she tried, was unable to imagine to the end. Not even half of it. After all, her grandmother HAD ALWAYS BEEN and lived with them all her life. Lisa remembered her from her earliest childhood, from the very moment when the dark period of time was ending, which she knew nothing about and which even her mother did not want to tell, when it came to their family. It seemed to her that Grandma had not changed at all over the years, remained the same, even externally.

And yet, how nice it would be if she were gone. But she lives, she lives… Mom has been gone for a long time, but she…

After spending about half an hour outside, Lisa returned home.

The old woman met her with a scathing look, but only pointed to the "duck" who occupied post No. 1 next to the bed.:

— Take it out…

The smell of the ship was unbearable. That damn stink! Because of her, it was impossible to invite anyone into the house. It literally permeated their entire apartment—the well—established smell of excrement-especially since Grandma had almost stopped getting out of bed. Sometimes it seemed to Lisa that a normal person would probably have to feed dead rats for six months to do this.… Grandma got up very rarely and mostly in Lisa's absence at home to rummage through her things. Lisa caught her doing this several times, but she was not at all embarrassed and, returning to her bed, each time confidently stated that she would definitely find the money that Lisa steals from the change, taking advantage of the situation, and hiding somewhere. One day Lisa couldn't help but say that she would have been smart enough to hide money outside the apartment if that were the case. The old woman took her words completely indifferently.

Lisa took the boat to the toilet and looked at the clock: the moment will come soon when she will leave for work. Those two special hours she spent in the office, carrying buckets of water and swinging a mop (who would have thought, but now she was supposed to graduate from university with a degree in journalism), served as her only respite from her grandmother, two hours — without which she probably would have gone crazy long ago. One hundred and twenty minutes... seven thousand two hundred moments a day. When the weekend came, she was already living on Monday—a long, three-day Monday, at the end of which she would run away to work.

And Grandma will be waiting for her at home.

The old woman croaked that she wanted tea, and added that Lisa, after washing the ship, would not forget to put it back by the bed before going to the office. A year ago, being late, she really forgot to do it. Grandma lost control of herself and always remembered that incident. Neither did Lisa. Oh, how disgusting it was to wash Granny's flabby body, smeared with branded shit, with her wrinkled, porous skin, as if eaten by thin worms. Lisa hated nothing more than washing her grandmother's body and cutting her nails, and especially that time.

While waiting for the kettle to boil, Lisa looked at the neighboring house across the street: a blond guy lived in it, about her age, or a little older. Whenever possible, she watched him from the kitchen window, watching him leave the entrance, smoke on the fourth-floor balcony, or stop in front of the house to talk to a friend. Lisa couldn't remember exactly when the surveillance from the window had started. Until now, she had never spoken to him or even seen him up close. I think I only heard his name once, when someone called him loudly on the street. The guy's name was Pavel.

Despite the fact that Lisa's time at work served as a respite from the domestic nightmare, she rarely really forgot about her grandmother; for example, she wondered what she was doing in her absence from home (except that sometimes rummaging through her personal belongings, of course). She had to do something! When Lisa was at home, grandma could usually stare at the ceiling for hours, listening to all the programs on the radio in a row, or — which happened no less often and, most importantly, with precise regularity, like a metronome — drove her to white heat with her endless remarks and remarks. Sometimes it seemed to Lisa that grandma's gaze was able to follow her into the kitchen, penetrating through the wall, and even into the toilet.

Grandma loved to ask thousands of different questions, often very strange and baffling in their surprise: she once asked Lisa at what age her periods began, and how much their cycle had changed since then. Or she demanded the immediate fulfillment of another extravagant whim (in most cases, Lisa preferred to obey anyway — the old woman was extremely resourceful in terms of petty revenge), after which she invariably remained unsatisfied and poured out her favorite proclamations.

Oh no, Grandma wasn't crazy at all—Lisa could swear to that by anything. Did you suffer from a severe and debilitating form of senility? In this case, her insanity should have been included in the Guinness Book of Records as the most stable and earliest insanity of the century.

In general, when Lisa was at home, there was always something worthwhile for Grandma to do. But what was happening in that—empty—time? The old woman didn't spend it learning the wallpaper pattern from memory—knowing Grandma, it was hard to believe.

One day, when Lisa was going to the office for another shift, Grandma asked her to find her something to read. The old woman despised books, but Lisa was not surprised by the request; she handed grandma the first one she found on a small hanging shelf. It turned out to be a Bible, which had come to their house from nowhere and had been gathering dust for many years among the few other books. Lisa herself usually used the library's services, visiting it on her way to work. When Grandma brought the Bible up to her eyes to read the title, which had once been embossed on the dark blue hardcover in gilded letters, but now had almost completely crumbled off, Lisa thought the old woman would leap out of bed and grab her by the throat. A moment later, with unexpected force, grandma threw the Writing directly at her, and the book flew right by the dumbfounded girl's ear, crashed into the wall with a crunch, falling apart into several pieces. Then Grandma said in a completely unfamiliar voice: "Jehovah made up these fairy tales for his clay!" And she turned to the wall.

Lisa did not understand anything of what was said, perhaps because she was much more frightened at that moment by her voice than by the sudden throwing of a thick book.

This voice…

In the future, Lisa preferred not to remember that incident, otherwise, in addition to hating her grandmother, she also began to feel fear of her.

On the way home from the office, Lisa almost had an apoplexy attack — she forgot to PUT the SHIP BACK IN ITS PLACE!

As luck would have it, it happened today, after Grandma's special reminder.

"God, if only she wouldn't go down on herself..."

Lisa rushed home as fast as she could.

IF ONLY SHE DIDN'T…

Running up to her house, she almost knocked down a young couple and, ignoring them, rushed on.

If only she didn't

Lisa flew up to the third floor with the key she had prepared in advance and burst into the apartment.

...And immediately tripped over something big, soft, towering across the corridor, and fell.

It was Grandma.

She was lying on her stomach with her arms spread wide. Her long gray hair was spread out in a silver crown around her tilted head; her eyes were closed. There was a huge purple bruise near his temple in the visible part of his forehead.

The door to the bathroom was ajar; it smelled nauseatingly.

So, not finding the ship in place, she decided to get to the bathroom on her own this time; but on the way back, she probably tripped over the threshold and, falling, hit her head on the wall of a narrow corridor... or on the corner of the door jamb of the room located almost opposite... Lisa thought distantly, looking at grandma.

About three years ago, the old woman had a heart attack, she even lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived, and Lisa decided that grandma had died. But now Lisa saw a striking difference between then and now: granny's facial features had sharply sharpened, and the face itself had acquired a pronounced waxy hue. The short sleeves of his nightgown revealed the arms of a drowned man stretching out as if from a quagmire.

Grandma was dead.

Lisa sat on the floor next to Grandma for about ten minutes, numb with shock—grandma was GONE. She was completely unprepared for such sudden changes, although she thought about the old woman's death every day for all these years. The idol has fallen, however, to believe that she is now free…

Finally gathering her courage, Lisa dragged Grandma into the room. Then, one at a time, first the torso, then the legs, I laid her heavy body on the bed. It took almost all of Lisa's strength. Apparently, in her youth (which she could not imagine), grandma was an extremely large woman, and even now she was one and a half times heavier than a girl.

When Lisa finished all the moving of Granny's body, the clock showed around seven in the evening. There seemed to be no need to call an ambulance — most likely, they would tell her that she just needed to take her grandmother's passport and go to the clinic to report her death. "Then to the funeral home..." — Lisa still remembered how she was doing all these procedures when her mother died. If they had a phone installed in their apartment, a lot could be done today, or at least plan tomorrow in advance, but she would only have time.… And I also had to take money for possible expenses. The money, like the passport and other documents, was under Grandma's mattress. Lisa grimaced, which meant she would have to touch the dead body again. However, it was NECESSARY.

She looked at Grandma. There seemed to be a threat in her expression: "Just touch me again." Lisa suddenly imagined how Granny's cool, pale hands would reach out to her face when she got close enough to the bed. Glazed eyes will open, looking deep into her…

And only now did Lisa realize that she had to spend the night alone — in an apartment with a dead grandmother.

She began to move Granny towards the wall, trying to stay as far away from her waxy face as possible. The soft, still warm body seemed pliable only at the first moment: it pushed through, shuddered from the shocks, like a bag full of old rot, but almost did not budge, as if resisting.

"just touch me..."

inch by inch, Granny's body moved to the opposite side of the bed — back and forth... back and forth...-until finally it was right next to the wall, and enough space was freed up to lift the mattress.

Lisa reached in and pulled out a bulging plastic bag from under him. Then she retreated five steps and collapsed exhausted onto her bed in the opposite corner of the room.

A minute later, she cast a wary glance in Grandma's direction and decided that it would be much safer for her to look through the contents of the bag in the kitchen.

It contained a large notebook with a dark brown, worn cover (Lisa had a fleeting thought that it might contain the addresses of relatives who should be informed of her grandmother's death, but she immediately discarded it), a yellowed photograph of a young man in a military uniform (she saw him for the first time, however however, she guessed right away that it was her grandfather; her grandmother had never shown her this photo); There were also some documents in the package, including grandma's passport, several old letters, and another smaller package carefully wrapped in a thin cloth, which Lisa set aside separately to view its contents later. And the money.

There was a lot of money. At least for Lisa, she had never held so much in her hands. About grandma's pension for a year, and maybe more. It was unlikely that she was collecting for her funeral, — despite the situation, Lisa was overcome with sullen irritation: some bills had long been out of circulation, others had been devoured by inflation for years, — and she was used to denying herself everything every day.

However, the amount found was enough to live relatively normally for several months without working. Although it hardly seemed like an equivalent compensation for the four nightmarish years spent alone with Grandma.

Unwrapping the smaller package, Lisa was surprised to find her mother's belongings: several gold jewelry (which she repeatedly tried to find after her funeral and, in the end, decided that they either disappeared without a trace in some mysterious way, or — which Lisa believed more — her grandmother silently laid her hand on them), a handkerchief, In the corner of which Lisa herself had embroidered her mother's name for her birthday at the age of ten, and an unsigned envelope without a stamp. A piece of paper rustled inside him. Lisa took it out and unwrapped it.

It turned out to be a letter... addressed to her.

From my mom.

"My beloved daughter!

The last thing I want is for this letter to fall into your hands. Because it means that you found it by accident while sorting through my things. After the funeral.

(Lisa started to cry, but she just brushed them away mechanically, continuing to read on.)

I hope I'll tear it up myself someday if I get better. Lately, it seems to me that I have cancer. The forces are disappearing somewhere, as if something is sucking... (then the whole line is thickly crossed out in ink) But you probably understand, or you'll understand someday, that I can't now... (crossed out again)…therefore, I prefer not to know for sure.

What worries me most right now is your dislike of Grandma, which is why I decided to write this letter. Remember, you promised me something today (Lisa read the last line again: today you promised me something... - it turns out that the letter was written less than a day before Mom's death), but I'm afraid in a year or two today's conversation won't seem so important. I ask you again: please, Lisa, don't forget that she is my mother. I'll say even more — she's the best mom in the world! Anyway, I remember her like this until that terrible day when she... I don't even know how to explain it to you—didn't die and didn't rise again? I think they also call it clinical death. I was only nine years old at the time, and I only know about this case from other people's stories. Grandma fell out of a boat on the lake and almost drowned. Rather... (crossed out) She had never been able to swim. By the time they pulled her out of the water and the doctors arrived, she was already… She was considered dead and did not even try to do anything, because the time of clinical death has certain limits, and a much longer period has already passed. Much bigger. But on the way to the morgue, she suddenly started coughing, she started vomiting water from the lake, and then she came to her senses. The doctors said it was a miracle.

But she has changed a lot since that day (the last word was highlighted in bold ink). I think it's because of the experience. It's a pity you've never seen her the same. Whatever happens, don't leave her. At least for my sake.

I pray that you will never read this letter.

I love you very much, Mom."

Then, calming down, Lisa read the letter again.

"I kept my promise...— she said aloud, wiping her almost dry eyes with her fingertips. "I kept my promise, Mom.

Her gaze returned to the envelope with the letter, and a look of bewilderment appeared on her face. Why did Grandma hide his existence? And why did the old woman have the letter at all?

But it seems that Grandma took all the answers with her.

In addition to her mother's things, Lisa found something else in the smaller package: a small white cardboard box folded in half, which looked like the cover of a thin book or an entomologist's pocket folder - the resemblance was caused by the low, five millimeters, sides that did not allow the sides to touch when folded.

She opened it. One side was completely clean, and on the other... Lisa froze in amazement.

Because her own face was looking at her. Not only was the image strikingly similar to the original, but at first it seemed alive to Lisa! Perhaps because of the relief, because it was made up of many (hundreds!) yellow-orange translucent scales. Those elongated, thin scales even reminded her of something.

However, upon closer inspection, Lisa noticed that the portrait was not fully finished: the corner of her left eye was missing the finishing touch.

She held the image at arm's length: how much work and time did it take Grandma to... and why?! Hardly, of course, to give her a pleasant surprise.

"Well, at least now you know what she spent those two hours on every day, except weekends."

Whatever it was, Lisa would never have dared to suspect granny of such abilities: the portrait was simply amazing!

Except for those weird scales.…

Lisa suddenly remembered how often she had noticed Prussians sneaking around Granny's bed, and in broad daylight, although there were practically no Prussians in the apartment as a whole, including in the kitchen. Once, I remember, she even thought that cockroaches must love Grandma very much.

Lisa dropped the strange cardboard in disgust; it gently slammed into the air and plopped to the floor.

Time flew by while watching the contents of the package. The sun was already setting; twilight was slowly taking over the kitchen. Lisa turned on the chandelier.

It was too late to declare death.

And she's got a whole night ahead of her with Grandma.

That's right, four years of madness are over—the monster is dead. Soon she will be able to start a new life, now she is free.

Except... this night.

After all, dying makes the monster even more terrifying.

Lisa stopped in front of the room and put her hand on the door handle. But she didn't open it. She suddenly imagined that Granny would not be there, and then cold hands would reach out from behind and lay on her shoulders.…

After spending a full minute in front of the door, Lisa returned to the kitchen. There was nowhere else to spend the night except at home. Visit a friend? Which one of them after these four years? — there were no such people on the list. Maybe to one of the neighbors? As luck would have it, everyone on their landing went on vacation for the summer, and she wasn't familiar enough with the other floors to just come and say, "Let me spend the night, there's a dead grandma at home..."

In extreme cases, of course, you can spend the night in the kitchen. Although... Lisa suddenly got angry: why in the kitchen? The old woman had mocked her for as long as she lived—would she let her do that now?

N! О!

Now she's going to go into the room and do whatever she sees fit, and she doesn't give a damn about this old witch, and she's dead.

However, the closer she got to the door of the room, the less angry she remained. When Lisa took hold of the pen, not a trace of it remained.

But this time she decided to take the fight and abruptly opened the door. Grandma was standing right in front of her in her rumpled nightgown and grinning with purple bloodless lips…

Lisa was petrified for a few seconds. But when her eyes adjusted to the twilight (the light fell over the threshold of the room from the corridor from a forty-watt bulb), she realized that it was only a mirage. She stepped into the room and turned on the light. The first thing Lisa's gaze stopped at was the lying grandmother. Her position on the bed doesn't seem to have changed. Everything is the same. Or... no, nonsense.

"So," Lisa thought, walking around the room. "Now..." Her gaze returned to the dead body. Well, of course, how could she forget: Grandma needs to be covered with something. All of it, from head to toe. Lisa didn't know why it was customary to do this to the deceased, or rather, she had never thought about it, but now she felt the relevance of this procedure. She took a fresh sheet out of the closet and, walking as quietly as possible, as if she was afraid to wake her grandmother, approached the bed. Then, trying not to look at the waxy face, she covered the body.

The result was completely different from what Lisa expected: the figure under the sheet became even more sinister. It seemed as if she had only to turn away and she would slowly begin to rise. In the end, Lisa decided that she could do just that. The main thing is that the body is lying correctly ... although, probably, it would be worthwhile to adjust grandma's left arm, which has slightly slipped off her chest. But that meant touching the body again.

The wall clock in the room showed half past eleven. She definitely needed to sleep at least a few hours—tomorrow was going to be a hard day. And she can only rely on her own strength. She's alone, completely alone. And it didn't happen today, because Grandma died, but much earlier, when Mom left.

Lisa spread out her bed, did not undress, and hesitated for a second before turning off the light. It's all over tomorrow, just a little bit of patience, just a little bit. One night.

Just for one night…

She lay there for two hours, feeling a throbbing tiredness in every cell of her body, but she still couldn't bring herself to fall asleep. Opening and closing her eyes, she turned from side to side. Her vision had long adapted to the darkness, and she tried not to look at where the shapeless elevation on her grandmother's bed was blurring. Lisa was happy to give up several years of her life for the opportunity to switch off now and wake up only in the morning.

It's still three hours before dawn.

At about two in the morning, the neighbors' front door slammed loudly, and excited voices were heard, but the words were indistinct. Lisa assumed that there had been a scandal. Then there was silence again. Lisa bit her lower lip: up there, just a couple of meters away, a completely different life is going on, as if on another planet. I turned around, replacing my side, which was numb from intense insomnia, and began to think about the blond guy who lives in the house opposite. Does he have a girlfriend? And at that moment, Granny's bed creaked.

Lisa couldn't believe it. But the sound was distinctive—she could recognize it from a million others. As a little girl, she often woke up at night when Grandma turned in her sleep. But as I got older, I got used to it and stopped paying attention. The creaking stopped suddenly (she heard a car honk somewhere far away). But Lisa saw that Granny was still moving under the sheet. It looked like she was looking for a way out. Even when Granny's body fell heavily to the floor, Lisa still could not believe that all this was really happening, she only heard how grandma was getting rid of the sheet, in which she was entangled, as if in a shroud. And then the dark mass on the floor clumsily crawled towards her.

Silently.

Lisa finally managed to shake off the icy shell of stupor, and she jumped out of the room, painfully catching her hip on the headboard of the bed and barely managing to slip between her and the creeping mass on the floor.

Already running into the kitchen (and somehow managing to turn on the light at the same time), she heard heavy footsteps behind her.

When Lisa turned to close the kitchen, a massive bulk in a nightgown had already blocked the doorway, advancing on her.

Grandma was terrible.

Her body, overcoming rigor mortis, moved in a series of quick short jerks, like an image from a faulty movie projector; one clouded eye was wide open, the other was only half open, exposing a strip of gray-yellow white. A huge bruise on his pale forehead near his temple looked like a smudge of black mascara, and there was a slow flow from both nostrils.…

Lisa backed away until her lower back rested against the hard edge of the windowsill. Grandma also slowed down somewhat, however, Lisa, trapped between the windowsill and the massive figure advancing on her, already had nowhere to go. With a strained bubbling sound, Granny sucked in the air into her lungs, which her body absolutely did not need for the last few hours, because it was dead.

"It's probably like then... almost like then — on the way to the morgue from the lake... only now everything is much worse..." — Lisa flashed through her head.

Suddenly Grandma spoke up:

"You've ruined everything... you dirty girl!"..  A terrible stench wafted over Lisa. — A few more days!..

Grandma moved towards her again, stretching out her arms as if wanting to embrace her in a loving embrace. A small dead cockroach stuck to his lower lip.

...the best mom in the world…

Suddenly Lisa understood everything.

Now Granny was speaking in the same voice she had heard once before, when she had thrown at her…

... "Jehovah made up these tales for his clay!.."

Grandma—her grandma—DIED a long time ago, drowning in the lake 47 years ago. And all these years, she and Mom have lived…

"...the doctors said... it's a miracle..."

...with someone who, having managed to revive a still warm body, then entered it. And now He wasn't going to leave just like that.

And in the next few days, He planned to…

"Leave us alone!" You can't do anything else, I know!  With all her might, Lisa pushed the pressing granny away from her with both hands and she managed to slip into an empty seat.

As she turned around, Grandma stepped on a cardboard box with a portrait of Lisa made of cockroach wings, and there was a soft, crisp rustle. She looked down at her feet with a disappointed grimace.

— Girl!..

There was a deep rumble in Granny's chest, she regurgitated some gray stuff and fell to the floor.

When the echoes of Granny's wheezing finally subsided, Lisa sank onto a stool and covered her face with her hands.

"What did he do to you, Grandma... Grandma."

She sat like that until the morning. And when dawn broke through the window, her gaze fell on the trampled cardboard, and Lisa thought quite calmly: "I'm just lucky."

Grandma's funeral was quiet, and no one attended except Lisa. No one offered her condolences or consolations about the "death of a loved one."

Grandma was just buried.

In the early days, Lisa suddenly began to fear that she might be accused of murdering the old woman. But the pathologist pronounced it "accidental death." (A little later, in a private conversation with one of his colleagues over a glass of good cognac, he did say that in twenty-six years of practice he had never encountered such rapidly progressive decomposition. And he didn't tell anyone that nine—tenths of the "client's" brain was an old rag web.)

Five or six times her grandmother came to her at night — in a dream — and demanded to return the change, which Lisa stole, collected and hid for four years.

Then everything stopped.

In the fall, Lisa successfully passed the university entrance exams for the evening department of the Journalism Faculty. I changed jobs and started preparing for the first session.

At the end of November, she bumped into Pavel in one of the university corridors.

"Have I seen you before?" "What is it?" he asked, clearly forgetting where he was in a hurry a minute ago. "Your face looks familiar to me."

"Really?"  Lisa laughed sheepishly. "Maybe in the window of the house across the street?"

— Exactly!  He looked at her as if he'd never seen her before, but maybe he had.

— My name is Pavel.

—I know,— Lisa blurted out (and she blushed deeply), "And I'm Lisa.

It turned out that he was studying at the same department, only in his senior year.

We drove home together.

The next day, he invited Lisa to the cinema, and since then they began to meet regularly.

A few weeks later, they were returning home from university as usual, chatting about various little things. Pavel escorted Lisa to the entrance.

"Don't you finally want to invite me over?"  Lisa asked.

She was the only one who had them before.

He smiled in momentary embarrassment and shrugged his shoulders.:

— We live together. Do you want me to introduce you... to my grandma?