Victor Bacau - Russian Horror Book

We then laughed to tears. My Mom could have pulled a joke like that.

And then I found myself in a cold sweat.

The fridge.

I saw something on the hag’s fridge! The same I saw in Max’ pictures!

I started flipping through them again, clicking my mouse like a madman.

Not here.

Not there.

Maybe Marina’s pics?

That’s right. Marina had posted a picture from her office, their whole working team all together. The table, some documents on it, business cards and…

Cards. Green and white business cards. I saw a card like this on the hag’s fridge. A small card, clamped under a magnet. I, too, had those cards, – Max brought me alot of them when he got that job.

The hag definitely met one of my friends.

Maybe Max. He would never refuse to drink tea for free and he could talk endlessly to anyone, even to annoying old ladies. He could have left a card for her grandchild, or just forget it. He was there anyway!

Unless, of course…

It had to be found out. Definitely. I didn’t care if I would be called paranoid, I had to go back to that house.

***

On the way there I was sure of being ready for anything. But when I was finally close to her house I realized that I was afraid. It was about half past ten. Not a window in the house was lit.

I scheduled a day and lied to my mother about going on duty at night. I took with a flashlight and a knife with me, as if I’d going camping. I was ready to record everything and, among other things, I bought a small recorder, just in case.

And though I had not fear inside, the closer I was to my goal, the more I was shaking. Literally shaking, with the rush of adrenaline.

The door of the second entrance was wide open – there was no light.

I enabled the video mode of my smartphone, putting it in a special pocket. I turned on the flashlight and went up the creaking stairs.

Those stairs! When we visited the house together with the district police officer (by the way my friend is a real giant, unlike me) and the bulbs were lighted up at the entrance, I didn’t pay attention to the stairs. But that moment, with every creak giving a deafening echo from every corner, – I remembered the stairs from my childhood nightmares; I ran, choking with fear, and the stairs fell under my feet…

In was chilly inside – that made my skin crawl badly.

What nonsense, I repeated to myself, I am only going to visit a lonely old lady to learn a little more than I know now.

When I reached the third floor, I knocked her door. My heart was pounding like a tambourine. I heard a small shuffling, then a faint creaking as she looked through the peephole to see who was knocking.

I pointed the flashlight to my face and waved my hand.

“Hello!” I said, trying to do loud enough to be heard from outside.

There came a clang of keys, and finally the door opened.

“Electrician?”

***

There was no any light in the whole house, so the hag’s apartment was dark as a grave… I put on the flashlight the way it was bright enough, but without bothering eyes.

“Hello! Remember me? I was here with the district police officer, you treated us to tea!”

The old woman looked at me with her big, colorless eyes.

“So what?”

“I am… I want to thank you. And ask a few more questions.”

“Can’t you fix the light?”

“Well… I’m not a master at this, to be honest.”

The old woman looked at me and was silent, as if waiting for something else. Then she shook her head and waved her bony hand.

“Come in then, don’t let the cold in here.”

I was tempted to ask her, “Aren’t you afraid to let me in? What if I’m some kind of maniac?” but I kept my mouth shut.

There was pitch black everywhere, and if I hadn’t my flashlight, I would have tripped over something and smashed my nose. The old woman shuffled to the kitchen, and I followed her.

There she lit the candle. She struck a match, and it became even lighter, and it turned out that was the third candle she lit. Two short candles had melted right onto the table.

“Some tea, if you want,” she muttered, but I refused.

I felt uncomfortable. I felt stupid, blaming myself for coming there!

What’s going on in her old brain? She’d probably already thought of something wrong. If the tale my mother told me was true, even a part of it – that poor old woman didn’t have expect anything good from a guest like me. She knew, for sure – what kind of rumors were about her. And she might think I’d come to ask more stupid questions, pumped up with those very rumors.

I could tell by her sad sunken eyes that it was true.

“What have you got to say, luv?” she asked with some sad resignation. “Well?”

The candle on the table lit our faces.

I lowered the light of my smartphone and threw the beam on the fridge. So there it had been: on the fridge’s door. A business card of the pension fund. I carefully pulled it out from under the magnet adorned with the name of some far city.

“This card,” I sat opposite her again, “my missing friends had a lot of them.”

“That girl, a friend of yours gave me it,” the hag nodded.

“The girl? Not a guy? Are you sure none of them came to see you?”

The old woman looked at me with longing in her eyes.

“Luv, do you know how old I am?” she pointed a finger at her head, with a light white hair on it. “Imma ninety-two, luv. And I’ve seen a lot over the years. You wouldn’t believe the things I heard, the things people did to me… Different people. It happened, they could offend me, an I could, too. But what do you think of me ? I’m an old woman. No need to keep being angry with me, if so… I know they say I’m old and crazy. And when you’re ninety, if you are, you’ll be the same like me.”

She sighed.

“Well, maybe I’m crazy… I don’t have anyone at all… I’d forgotten how young I was. I can’t remember my own face. And if anyone came to me – maybe I forgot who’d came to me… or not. But you’re young, do you really think that I’m able to do something bad? The old woman…”

Her lips trembled and she turned to the window.

I felt sorry for her, my heart ached. She was defenseless in her old age. For some reason she reminded me of my mother.

My mother was still young, with a rosy face, with only few wrinkles, as tiny rays, near her eyes and lips, and on the forehead. She always looked younger. She liked to joke and to laugh, but she sometimes cried. My mother was not afraid of her furture old age. But it certainly was incomprehensible and frightening for her to think that her time, too, someday could pass.

I reached out to the old woman’s hand and touched her cold dry skin. Feeling my touch, she turned to me and smiled.

And that moment I felt I was going mad.

A black shadow was rising in the corner behind her. Not a trembling shadow of candlelight, but something that had become a dense blackness, a darkness that moved on its own. I felt some chilling fear had awakened within me. The adrenaline hit my brain at the same moment and made the heart beat like mad. I was afraid to look upwards, I was terrified. That was a truly deep fear that made every hair on my body standing and made me want to get on all fours and to howl with fear like a frightened dog.

I saw that. I looked up though, and it seemed to me that something was shifting in my head, as if trying to protect me from madness.

I saw a face coming out of the blackness.

I saw a face. My friend’s face. She silently shouted to me, just with her lips: “RUN!”

I jerked my hand away a second before the hag rushed towards me across the table. I fell down from my chair with a crash. The light in front of me jumped up and went out – I dropped the flashlight. The candle, too, was out, and immediately there came the crash of the table falling. In the flickering light I saw something even more terrible than a ghost. I saw the hag’s face changed dramatically, how it becoming bestial, indescribably dreadful.