Бесплатный фрагмент - Dark Stories

The Village Beyond the Bend

I love the road. I love the sensation of movement itself, when you are behind the wheel, the engine humming steadily, and the miles winding themselves onto the odometer one by one. It is a rare state: you are busy, keeping an eye on your lane, your mirrors, the signs, and yet at the same time your head clears. Thoughts stop pressing. They stop demanding answers. They drift into the background.

My father has an apartment in the settlement of Syava, in the Nizhny Novgorod region. A few times a year I drive there from Ufa. It is almost a ritual. The place is deep in protected country, with a river and a suspension footbridge literally a hundred meters from the building. You cross the bridge and there is a small beach, a clearing, and then the forest. No, not forest. FOREST. The moment you step into it, it gets darker, that is how dense and beautiful it is. When the city wears you down, driving almost a thousand kilometers for three or four days does not feel like a burden at all. Just the chance to step out and shout into the forest is worth it. No psychologists, no alcohol, just the trees and your own head settling back into place. You pack without hurrying, check the oil and the tire pressure, throw tools, warm clothes, food, and water into the trunk in case you need to fix something or grab a bite, and then you go.

The trip takes almost the whole day if you do not push it. I do not like pushing it. That highway is not the kind where you test fate, especially after Kazan. After a certain marker the cities end. First come the district centers, all with the same stores, tire shops, and roadside markets. Then villages. First the living ones. Then the half-living ones. Then the ones that stopped living a long time ago.

In the living villages you can see life: smoke from a chimney, laundry on a line, a dog by the gate. In the half-living ones, two or three neat houses against a backdrop of ten empty ones. In the abandoned ones, only sagging fences and black windows that no longer reflect anything except sadness.

That stretch of road had always attracted me a little. Probably because I love horror and the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. too much. The places feel similar. A lot of space, very few people. If your car breaks down, help can take a long time. The signal disappears in places. Gas stations are rare. But that is exactly what I like about it, the feeling of being far away from the usual noise.

That day started normally. I left in the afternoon. The sky was bright, not the slightest hint of a storm. The road was dry, the traffic smooth. I kept my speed, took my time, and did not dart out to overtake unless I had to.

The farther I got from the city, the calmer I felt inside. The monotony of the highway works almost like hypnosis. The steady hum of the engine, the faint vibration in the steering wheel, the lane markings slipping under the hood. My favorite audiobook was playing through the speakers.

Toward evening the sky grew heavier. The clouds thickened, the air turned dense. I noticed it automatically, but did not think much of it. Summer does that. Calm all day, then toward evening it suddenly breaks.

The downpour began without warning. Not a drizzle, not a gradual build, just one second of normal driving and the next the windshield was a solid wall of water. Even on full speed the wipers barely kept up. Visibility dropped to a few dozen meters. The headlights of oncoming cars smeared across the glass as if someone had dragged them there with a wet finger.

I eased off the speed. Increased my distance. Made no sudden moves. In weather like that the main thing is not to panic. The car kept moving, the tires held the road.

The rain lasted twenty minutes, maybe thirty. In conditions like that, time feels wrong. When the torrent finally eased, I actually felt relieved.

It did not get any easier.

The temperature dropped sharply. The windows began to fog a little from the inside. Then the highway was swallowed by fog, which in itself was not surprising. Forests, rivers, marshes, they all started around there. But this was not the kind of fog that drifts prettily over a field. It was dense, low, sticky. It hung right at the level of the headlights. The beams hit a gray mass and bounced back. Space shrank. The horizon disappeared.

I slowed down again.

In that kind of weather, the smartest thing is to tuck in behind someone ahead of you. A little farther on, through the fog, I noticed the red tail lights of a heavy truck. Big, solid, confident. I carefully settled in behind it, keeping a decent distance so I could see its lights and still have room if it braked hard.

The truck moved evenly. No sudden lane changes, no strange maneuvers. That calmed me. In fog, someone else’s tail lights become a landmark.

I drove behind it, kept my distance, and let myself relax a little. I knew that road. I knew roughly where the turns should be, where the exits were, where the gas station was. I did not even turn on the navigator. After ten years, I knew the route by heart.

The first thing that changed was the sound under the wheels.

Not sharply. I just felt that the asphalt had changed. Less smooth. More muffled. I registered it somewhere at the edge of my mind and explained it away at once: roadwork, a temporary patch, nothing unusual.

The lane markings became harder to see. Then they vanished altogether.

I kept following the truck.

Dark shapes started flickering by on either side. Not guardrails now, but silhouettes. Fences? Poles? Houses?

The realization did not come all at once. I had already been driving for some time along something that definitely did not feel like a federal highway.

The truck ahead kept moving without hesitation. I drove a little farther before it finally hit me: we had turned off.

Not at an exit with a sign. Not at a normal junction. We had simply turned off.

I blinked and squinted, trying to punch through the fog with my eyes. There were definitely houses on both sides now. Low fences. Gates. A roof here and there.

All this time I had been driving through a village.

And I had not even noticed where the turn had happened.

The truck ahead slowed a little, then turned left and vanished between the houses. Its tail lights dissolved into the fog.

I was left alone in the middle of an unfamiliar street.

The fog still hung there, flattening the world, shortening every line. The road under the wheels was no longer asphalt, more like packed dirt, broken in places.

I rolled forward another twenty meters and understood once and for all: this was definitely not the highway.

I had driven into a village.

I sat behind the wheel for a while, staring into the fog while the engine idled evenly, and the feeling was that I had stopped in the middle of something alien and not entirely understandable. The street stretched ahead, but visibility was no more than a few dozen meters. Low fences and equally low houses stood on both sides, and not a single sign or road marker was anywhere in sight.

I killed the engine, and the silence dropped at once. Not absolute silence, somewhere a branch creaked, something dripped off a roof, but still far too dense for a living village. The inside of the car cooled quickly, as if the warmth had only existed as long as the motor did.

I took out my phone and turned on the navigator. The map took a while to load. My position blinked uncertainly, as if it could not decide where I was. The name of the village appeared, but meant nothing to me, and the route to Syava built itself in a strange way, through dirt roads I had never seen before.

Turning around in that fog on that road did not appeal to me, so I decided to get out and take a look around.

The air was fresh, damp, and cold. The fog stood thick, drifting slowly along the street. That was when I noticed the light. One window farther down the road was glowing with a warm yellow light, not brightly, but enough to stand out against all that gray.

I got back behind the wheel, started the car, moved it over by a fence so it would not sit in the middle of the road, killed the engine again, and walked toward the house. The gate opened without a squeak. As far as I could make out, the yard looked kept up: grass trimmed, path beaten flat, an ordinary metal bucket standing on the porch.

I knocked. A few seconds later I heard footsteps behind the door, a lock clicked, and the door opened.

A woman in her sixties stood on the threshold, her hair tied back in a bun, her face calm.

«What do you want?»

«Hello. I got lost. I was following a truck and missed the turn. The fog is so thick I can’t even see the highway. Could I stay here till morning?»

She looked at me a little more closely.

«Following a truck, were you?»

«Yeah. At least I could see it.»

«In fog, a big vehicle is convenient to follow. Trouble is, they are often not headed where you are.»

«I thought it would stay on the highway. Turns out not.»

A pause.

«Where are you going?»

«Not far from here, I hope. To Syava, near Shakhunya.»

«I know the place. Easy to miss the turn there at dusk.»

«I was not asleep.»

«I wasn’t talking about sleep.»

She stepped aside.

«Come in. Just wipe your feet.»

Inside it was warm, homely. It smelled of the stove and something boiled. The kitchen light was on, and the table was laid simply: potatoes, bread, pickles.

I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook.

«You drive there often?» she asked, putting soup down in front of me.

«A couple of times a year. I know the road.»

«Everyone says that. Right up until they take the wrong turn.»

«I just got distracted.»

«In fog, you can’t get distracted. Even a familiar place turns strange there.»

She sat down opposite me.

«We used to have a bus through here. New driver came once, very sure of himself. Said everything was clear on the map. One evening he went the wrong way, and when he got back he kept saying the street had become longer than it should have been.»

«Did he find his way out?»

«He did. Came back a day later. Laughed at himself, said he’d been driving in circles while thinking he was going straight.»

She shrugged.

«At night, distances change.»

I gave a short laugh.

«What does that mean?»

«It just all feels different.»

She poured tea.

«Your car running all right?»

«Yeah.»

«It’s damp here. Sometimes cars don’t want to start in the morning.»

«I’ll get it started.»

«Everyone gets it started. The question is on which try.»

She said it calmly, without a smile.

«My son liked driving after dark too. Said the roads were empty and peaceful.»

«And?»

«One time he came back pale. Said he’d been following someone, then realized he didn’t remember that road at all.»

«A truck?»

«I don’t know. Just some tail lights ahead.»

She looked at me.

«If you leave in the morning, don’t rush. Around here, if you hurry, it’s easy to take the second wrong turn too.»

A pause.

«And if it seems like you’ve already passed this house, don’t be afraid. In the fog, everything looks the same.»

«Thanks. That’s reassuring.»

«I’m not trying to scare you. I’m telling you not to fuss.»

She got up.

«You can sleep in the room. No need to lock the door. There’s no one here to come in.»

«And if there is?»

She looked at me calmly.

«Then all the more reason not to lock it.»

She smiled and went out.

The room was small. Old sofa, but clean. Fresh sheet. Heavy blanket.

I lay down. At first it was warm and quiet, and I even thought I had worked myself up over nothing, just the fog. But after a while it got colder. Not sharply, gradually. The blanket was big and heavy, yet the warmth seemed to drain through it. I rolled over, adjusted the pillow.

Sleep came in scraps. I dreamed I was behind the truck again, its tail lights burning ahead of me. I blinked and the lights were suddenly closer than they should be, then farther away, then gone.

I woke to the feeling that someone was moving through the house. Not shuffling, not creaking, but steady steps in the corridor. I went still and listened. Silence. Then again, as if someone passed the door and stopped.

I did not get up. I decided it was the hostess, or maybe the stove, or old boards. Old houses are always making sounds.

The cold deepened. I pulled the blanket higher.

The last thing I remember is the feeling that the air in the room had grown denser.

I woke sharply, for no reason at all. I just opened my eyes and understood at once that something was wrong. The light was gray and dim. I sat up.

The sheet beneath me was faded and gray. The blanket was thin, lumpy, and smelled of damp. The room looked different.

I ran a hand over the sofa. Dust. Not a faint film, but a thick layer. A spiderweb hung in the corner. The wall behind the headboard had gone dark, with patches of crumbling plaster.

I got up slowly. The door into the hallway stood slightly ajar, and I stepped out.

The house held the true cold of an abandoned wooden building. The air was damp and heavy. No light in the kitchen. The table empty. No tablecloth, no dishes. The stove cold, speckled with rust. A thick coat of dust on the windowsill.

No trace of last night’s dinner. No trace of life.

The house looked as if no one had lived there for years.

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to understand where I was, and the silence pressed down on me.

I went to the front door and opened it. The same fog stood outside, but the yard had changed. The grass had grown higher, the fence leaned, the bucket on the porch had rusted through and was lying on its side.

I turned back.

The house behind me was ruined, abandoned, and empty.

And at that moment it finally sank in that last evening should not have existed.

A real chill crawled through me.

I stood on the porch, staring into the fog, trying to pull my thoughts together. Fine, the house was abandoned. Fine, somehow I had spent the night in a wreck and failed to notice, and that alone already sounded insane. But the mind is stubborn. It keeps looking for an explanation and keeps failing to find one. Maybe I was tired. Maybe I blacked out for a minute. Maybe I mixed something up. Rationality holds longer than fear, even when the picture starts cracking.

I stepped off the porch and headed for the car. It stood exactly where I had left it, body wet, glass fogged, as if it really had sat there all night. I got in, turned the key. The starter spun the engine briskly. It coughed, rattled, almost caught, then died.

«Come on,» I muttered, already feeling irritation rise. «Not now.»

I turned the key again. Same thing.

I let out a breath and actually laughed.

«Perfect. Just perfect.»

Humidity, night, a temperature swing. Nothing supernatural. It happens. It does happen, damn it, and I know that. I got out and shut the door harder than I meant to because the anger rose faster than logic.

Fine. I’ll go on foot. It’s not the taiga. The highway can’t be that far.

I set off down the street in the direction I thought I had come from, and almost immediately realized the houses were too alike, the fences too alike, everything somehow too alike, as if someone had copied and pasted the same set piece over and over again.

At one point I started memorizing details. There was a house with a red roof, paint peeling, but the color still vivid, and a bench out front with a crack in the backrest. Great, I thought, an anchor. I’ll go past it, go farther, and check.

I passed it and kept walking, counting my steps, gauging the distance. About ten minutes later I saw the red-roofed house again. At first I did not believe it. I thought it was just another similar one. But when I noticed the same bench, the same crack, I stopped.

«Oh, come on…»

I turned around, but the fog had blurred everything to hell, and the houses behind me looked exactly like the ones ahead, as if the street had simply multiplied itself.

«Did I turn somewhere?»

I kept walking, slower now, deliberately not hurrying, trying to stay cool. But a few minutes later I saw the red roof again, and this time there was no room for coincidence.

«What kind of joke is this?»

Something unpleasant pricked beneath my ribs, and I tried to breathe evenly.

Fine, maybe the street loops around. Maybe I missed a turn in the fog. Maybe I’m an idiot and overlooked something. Anything, as long as it wasn’t this.

I took a deep breath.

«Easy. Just easy.»

And kept going.

A little farther on I noticed a child’s toy car on the road, small, plastic, missing one wheel. I actually smirked.

«Sure. Gotta keep the atmosphere going.»

I picked it up, turned it in my hand, felt how light and old it was, set it back down exactly where it had been, and kept walking, trying not to attach any meaning to it.

Five minutes later I saw the toy car again, except this time it was standing upright, balanced on its three wheels, not lying on its side the way I had left it.

I stopped, and my heart hit harder.

«No. No, no, no.»

I went closer, crouched, looked. Same crack, same missing wheel, same thing.

I slowly looked around. No one there. Quiet fog. Not even the wind moving.

«This isn’t funny anymore,» I said aloud, and my voice sounded too muffled.

What rose inside me was not panic yet, but irritation, that special kind that comes when reality starts behaving incorrectly and you cannot figure out where the mistake is.

«Am I walking in circles? That’s impossible.»

I sped up without really noticing it, my steps stretching wider.

Then suddenly a light came on in one of the houses ahead, and I felt real relief.

«There. Finally.»

A shadow moved in the window, clearly, someone passing by, and it looked far too plausible to be a trick of the light.

I nearly ran. A second window lit up. A curtain stirred slightly. Everything in me latched onto that picture like a lifeline. Living people. A normal explanation. Someone would come out and tell me I had simply taken a side street.

I went up onto the porch and pulled the door. It opened at once.

And inside there was darkness.

The smell of damp hit me. The floor gave under my foot right by the threshold. The boards had rotted, the walls were peeling, and the light I had just seen simply vanished.

I froze.

«You’ve got to be kidding me…»

I looked back toward the windows. They were black now. No light. No movement. Nothing.

«What the hell…»

And then, behind me, I heard a sound, short and distinct, like a footstep on gravel, and cold ran down my spine.

I whipped around. The street was empty. Dense fog. No one.

«All right. Enough. Enough.»

I came down off the porch faster than I would have liked to look, and headed back. Not running, but my stride got longer and my breathing deeper.

A few minutes later my car appeared ahead of me, and I stopped, because I was sure I had been walking in the opposite direction.

«No… again…»

The street did not fork. There were no crossroads. No turns. I was certain of that.

I walked up to the car slowly, ran a hand over the hood, feeling the wetness and the dirt, and looked around. The same street. The same silence. Only by then the silence no longer felt like the mere absence of sound. It felt dense, pressing.

And that was the first moment the thought stopped being a possibility and became a fact: I cannot get out of here.

There was nothing funny about it anymore.

Something cold dropped inside me. Explanations were running out, and something else was beginning, something I still had no name for.

I stood beside the car and tried to breathe evenly, because if I let my mind snap now, it would start drawing pictures I would never fully recover from.

I got back inside and sat still, staring through the windshield into fog that seemed denser than before. The old woman, the warm kitchen light, her voice came back to me. If the house had been a ruin, then she had not been there. And if she had not been there, who had I been talking to?

I ran a hand over my face and remembered fragments of what she had said: the turn, how in the fog it was easy to take the second wrong one without noticing, and how I should not hurry. Then I had taken it for ordinary caution. Now the thought hooked into me and would not let go.

I got out of the car and started walking slowly, almost forcing myself to slow down because of her don’t hurry. The red-roofed house stood ahead. I passed it, counting steps, keeping my pace even. After a while I looked back. The roof was far behind me now, almost at the edge of sight. I sped up, and almost immediately found myself standing in front of it again.

There was no sensation of jumping or turning. At some point the house was simply there again, as if the street had quietly folded into itself.

«What the fuck…»

I stopped, trying to understand where exactly the space had buckled, but logic could not find the break. I started walking again, slowly. The street stretched, the distance seemed to lengthen. The moment I sped up, I was back at the red roof within a few steps.

I swore again, this time without anger, just marking the fact, and kept walking, determined to keep my pace even. After a while I began to feel as if someone was walking just behind me, two steps back. Not a sound, not a rustle, just presence. I slowed. The feeling did not disappear. I turned around sharply.

Nothing.

Fog. No one.

I turned back and found the car standing directly in front of me, though I was sure I had gone farther. I approached it slowly. On the fogged inside of the window, someone had traced a word: WAIT. I had not written it. I would remember if I had.

I walked around the car, trying to spot anything, footprints, dirt, a scratch. As I passed the driver’s window, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. At first I thought I had imagined it, but I stepped back and looked closer.

The glass reflected the street behind me, only in the reflection there was no fog. And deep along the road people were walking. Slowly, calmly, about their business. One near a fence, another by a gate.

I spun around.

The street behind me was empty. Dense gray fog, not a single figure.

I looked back into the glass. In the reflection the movement went on.

Then an old woman with a shopping bag shuffled past, stooped, slow, with exactly the same familiar gait. She passed the car without looking around. When she came level with it, she stopped and slowly turned her head toward the glass.

Toward me.

I could not see her eyes clearly, the glass distorted them, but it was obvious she was looking. She stood still for a few seconds, then turned away and walked on.

I snapped around.

The street behind me stayed empty.

I looked back at the glass. Now it showed only me and the fog.

No people. No old woman.

I had nearly accepted that the street was just running me in circles when I noticed a narrow path between two crooked fences. It definitely had not been there before. I would have remembered it. By then I had wandered this street enough to memorize every fence and every gate. And now the grass was trampled, the earth beaten down, as if people had walked there often, and not very long ago.

Even the fog around it moved differently, leaving the path clearer than the rest of the street.

I stood there looking at that strip of earth, trying to decide whether it was another trick or finally some shift in the pattern. Going back was pointless. Standing still even more so. So I stepped forward. The path was narrow, my shoulders almost brushing the fence boards, some rotted, some still solid. Wet earth sucked quietly underfoot. I slowed down, listened to my own breathing, and muttered:

«Great. Just great.»

A light began to take shape ahead. Ordinary, warm, homely light. And with it came sound: a door slamming, someone shouting something loudly, though I could not yet make out the words. I sped up without meaning to.

The path opened onto a small square. The closer I got, the clearer the fragments of speech became:

«Kolia, shut off the water!»

«Wait a second!»

«He’s not coming!»

I stopped dead.

It was not whispering. Not voices in my head. It was ordinary living speech.

I took a step forward and the light dimmed slightly. Another step and the voices grew muffled. By the time I was almost at the end of the path, everything ahead went out at once. The light vanished. The voices were cut off. The windows turned black. In front of me lay a damp square: cracked asphalt, the stump of a headless monument, fog creeping at the edges. No life.

I let out a slow breath.

«You have got to be kidding me…»

Something flickered in one of the windows to the right and I turned sharply. An old face appeared behind the glass, motionless.

I blinked, and the window was empty. In the house opposite, a figure flashed behind another pane, then another one. They did not move. Did not knock. Did not wave. They just stood there and watched.

Then they vanished.

The fog began to crawl slowly toward the center of the square.

And then I saw her. She was standing by the monument as if she had been there the whole time.

I took a step closer.

«Was that you?»

She looked at me calmly, not surprised.

«Who did you think it was?»

«I honestly have no idea anymore. Am I seeing all this? Am I asleep? Did I spend the night at your place, or did I imagine it?»

«You spent the night.»

«Then what is happening to me now?»

She shrugged.

«Right now this place is trying to keep you here. With us. The way it tried to keep many others who came after us.»

I let out a nervous laugh.

«I’ve been wandering around for God knows how long, ending up in the same places again and again. Feels like I hit my head somewhere.»

She smiled faintly.

«If you had hit your head, you would not have woken up. And the village would most likely have taken you.»

I came closer, feeling anger slowly give way to dread.

«Explain it to me properly. Why can’t I get out of here?»

She looked at the houses, where silhouettes were already returning to the windows.

«This place does not let go of those who have been forgotten,» she said quietly. «Not even the place itself, really. The people. Sometimes a person dies and what remains are a house, belongings, photographs, but no one remembers them anymore.»

A cold heaviness settled in my chest.

«And then what?»

«And then we stayed,» she said. «We would like our relatives to come at least once. Do things properly. Or simply remember.»

In one of the windows a curtain stirred, as if someone stood behind it.

«The forgotten ones?»

«That is us. The people who lived here, in this village.»

«And what are you now? Ghosts?»

She gave a quiet snort.

«You have too much imagination. People. Still people. Or… what is left of them.»

I looked around the square. There were more figures in the windows now than before.

«What happens to me?»

«The village hasn’t taken you yet,» she said. «You still have a chance to leave.»

I looked sharply toward the path. It seemed narrower now.

«Then tell me how.»

She was silent for a moment.

«In the house where you spent the night, there is an old envelope under the oilcloth on the table. I left it there, but no one ever took it. Maybe my son does not even remember how to get here anymore. Or maybe he simply does not want to remember.»

She raised her eyes to mine.

«Take it. Deliver it. Remind him where he came from, and that once he had a mother.»

«If I take the envelope, will this place let me go? Will all this end for me?»

«Possibly. But you will have to hurry.»

There were more faces in the windows now.

I turned, and for one second I saw my reflection in one of the panes.

It raised a hand and bared its teeth.

I had not raised my hand.

When I looked back at the monument, she was gone.

Only a quiet voice out of the fog:

«Go. While you still have time.»

I turned and went toward the path. It really had narrowed now, and the fences seemed to have shifted closer. Mud sucked at my shoes. The air grew denser. I came back out onto the street. The houses stood differently now. The door of the house was ajar, though I remembered clearly that I had shut it. I went inside. The table was where it had been. The oilcloth lay smooth. The air in the room felt thick, heavy. I lifted one corner of the oilcloth. Under it lay an envelope, old, yellowed, one corner torn.

I took it.

Something creaked behind me.

I turned and saw the doorway beginning to narrow, as though the walls were slowly moving toward each other. I stepped toward the exit and realized there were no footprints of mine on the floor.

My heart was ready to burst out of my chest. I bolted outside. The fog had thickened. The houses seemed closer. My car stood ahead.

And I stopped.

The light was on inside, though I had not left it on.

Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. The figure slowly turned its head.

It was me.

My face, my features, only the look in its eyes was calm and empty.

He stared at me through the glass, and his lips began to move. I could not hear the words, but I understood the meaning.

Stay.

The light went out. The figure vanished.

I lunged for the car, yanked the handle. The cabin was empty.

But the driver’s seat had been pushed farther back.

Something moved in the side mirror.

I lifted my eyes.

In the reflection, a figure stood behind me. It looked like me, and it was much closer than it should have been.

I spun around. Nothing behind me but thick fog.

I clenched the envelope in my hand. I had to get out of there now.

Because the faces in the windows were no longer disappearing.

They were waiting.

I gripped the envelope so hard the paper edges bit into my palm and headed for the car, refusing to look at the windows again. Faces were pressed up against the glass now, and there was something insistent in their stillness, almost proprietary, as if I were the intruder and had already overstayed.

I opened the door, got in, and shut it behind me as though that thin sheet of metal could change anything. Inside it was quiet, but the quiet felt different now, like a pause before a storm. I put the key in the ignition and turned it, feeling resistance in the mechanism. The cylinder gave reluctantly, as if something inside were holding it back. The starter clicked, the engine turned heavily, unwillingly, as if the ignition were happening not here but somewhere deeper, through a layer of thick air. On the second try the engine finally caught, but the sound was dull, muffled, as though the hood had been covered with heavy fabric.

The car moved, but with effort. The gas pedal felt as though it were meeting resistance. The steering wheel felt dense. The space around me felt compressed. The headlights carved a short segment of road out of the fog, and beyond it everything dissolved into gray.

Figures began to take shape along the street edges. At first in the windows. Then between the fences. They did not move, but their presence became palpable the moment I looked away. When I looked straight ahead the road seemed empty. The instant my gaze slid sideways, someone was already standing there, just beyond the edge of the light.

I tried to remember where the turn to the highway should be, but the houses repeated with frightening precision. Then I recognized the house with the peeling red roof and the bench with the cracked backrest. I had passed it too many times. Same blotches in the boards, same crooked fence, same dark line under the eaves.

I eased off the speed.

A few meters farther on, at the edge of the road, stood a car.

The same car.

The same dent in the rear fender. The same license plate I could have recited from memory. My breathing turned shallow and quick. I stopped without shutting off the engine and stared ahead, trying to force some explanation out of the sight.

The engine kept running, but it sounded far away.

I looked down at the dashboard.

The scratch under the stereo was gone.

The surface of the panel was smooth, with none of the wear I knew too well. I ran my fingers over the plastic, and the smoothness gave me an ugly feeling, not of newness, but of substitution.

Static crackled through the speakers.

I had not turned on the radio.

The screen remained dark.

The noise slowly gathered itself into a voice, quiet, as if breaking through interference.

«Don’t hurry. Stay.»

A pause. The static thickened, as though someone were slowly searching frequencies.

«Stay with us. It’s good here.»

I went still, staring at the panel.

«You’ve already understood…»

The last words came almost in a whisper.

I turned my head toward the window. People stood outside the glass. Their faces were visible now, but the features were slightly blurred, as though the image itself were unstable. They did not knock. Did not shout. Did not beg. They simply watched.

I looked forward again.

The second car stood motionless.

And then something truly cold moved through me: I was looking at my own car from the outside.

And sitting inside a different one.

The radio hissed again, and through the static I heard, barely audible:

«Stay… you won’t leave now.»

I exhaled slowly, feeling the last illusion of control go out of me with the breath. The car under me responded to the pedals, to the steering wheel, but it was not mine. And if I kept driving, if I accepted that as normal, the road back would stop existing.

I sat absolutely still, my hands resting on a steering wheel that felt slightly thinner and lighter than it should have. The engine kept running evenly, but there was no familiar vibration in it. It sounded as though someone were replaying it from far away, without the true life of machinery behind it.

My real car stood ahead in the headlights. Now the differences were obvious. The dent in the fender. The old scratch. The wear.

I killed the engine.

Silence came instantly, thick and heavy. With the sound gone, even time seemed to stop. The street froze, neither shifting nor breathing, as though waiting for my decision.

I opened the door and stepped out. The air was thick and wet, like the atmosphere before a storm, only without wind and without sky. The door closed behind me by itself, gently, without a slam, as if that were the natural end of the movement.

I headed for my car.

The distance between the two vehicles was not great, but each step felt strange. With every meter it was as if the road underfoot thickened slightly, refusing to let me close the gap too quickly. Space was not openly bending, but it resisted.

Shapes began to move at the edges of the street. Before they had stood still. Now they slowly shifted, taking positions closer to the road. No one rushed me. No one blocked my way outright. But the invisible corridor was narrowing, forcing me to walk straighter, faster.

Then I heard a sound behind me.

The click of an ignition.

I did not turn at once, but the sound came again. An engine had started behind me.

I looked back.

The headlights of the false car flared and dimmed. Someone was sitting inside. The face was mine. Same features, same expression, only the eyes calm, almost indifferent. He watched me without moving.

I turned away and quickened my pace.

My own car was only a few meters off now. I could already make out the dent in the fender, the dirt on the sill, the uneven paint, all the little flaws I knew too well. This was it. The real one.

I grabbed the handle, yanked the door open, and got in fast, slamming it shut behind me. The inside was dark and cold. The smell, the dashboard, the little defects, everything matched.

I shoved the key into the ignition and turned it.

The starter clicked. Nothing.

Outside, footsteps approached slowly and confidently. Someone came right up to the windshield.

I turned the key again.

The engine rolled over but would not catch.

A low noise came from the dead radio, as if someone were dragging a finger slowly across the speaker grille. Then a voice, quiet, almost tired:

«You chose…»

A pause.

«Now you won’t leave us.»

I lifted my eyes.

Faces stood before the glass, no longer vague but clear, with distinct features. Not all of them old. Some wore modern jackets. Short haircuts. Familiar outlines of people who had most likely ended up there much later.

I turned the key again.

The engine shuddered and died.

Something struck the trunk from behind, not loudly, but insistently.

I tightened my grip on the wheel and tried once more.

The motor finally caught. The headlights blazed brighter. At that same moment the faces came so close to the windshield that I could no longer see the road through them. They did not look angry. They looked indifferent. To everything.

I slammed the gas pedal down.

The car lunged forward.

Behind me the headlights of the other car flared.

I did not look back.

The fog in front of the hood suddenly turned white, as if the frame had been overexposed. The sound of the engine broke off. The wheel went strangely light. Then everything dropped into darkness.

And just before consciousness went under for good, I had time to think: this is it. I didn’t make it.

Consciousness came back slowly, as though someone were pulling me up from a depth where there had been no light, no sound, not even time. First there was a hum inside my head, heavy and drawn out, like a large engine somewhere far away. Then my body returned: an unpleasant weight in my chest, a soreness in my neck, numbness in the fingers that were still clutching something.

I opened my eyes and saw the windshield of my own car.

The cabin was still, quiet, empty of any other light. No flickers. No reflections. No one else. Beyond the glass lay an ordinary village street: gray morning, wet asphalt, motionless houses. The fog was gone entirely, as if it had never existed.

I did not move right away. My heart was beating too fast for an ordinary morning. I looked at my hands. Between my fingers was the envelope, yellowed, one corner torn, the same crooked fold. The paper still held the imprint of my grip.

It had not been a dream.

I slowly turned my head toward the houses. Their windows were empty. Black openings, cloudy panes, peeling frames. Nothing but ordinary abandonment. No faces. No silhouettes. No movement of curtains.

Only then did I notice the engine was off. The key was still in the ignition, but the panel was dark. I could not remember when the motor had died.

I opened the door and stepped out. The air was cool and ordinary, without that pressure that had seemed to squeeze the world. The road looked exactly like an abandoned street should look: wet, old tire marks here and there, grass pushing up through cracks in the asphalt.

I glanced at the house with the red roof. The bench with the cracked back was still there. The paint was peeling in the same places. Everything was normal again, and that made it almost more disturbing, because it had become normal too easily.

By the front wheel of my car lay the little plastic toy car, still missing one wheel. I bent, picked it up. The plastic was dry and warm, as if it had not spent the night on wet asphalt. I set it back down and looked toward the crossroads.

That was when I heard the heavy rumble.

A truck.

At the end of the street, where before there had been only a wall of white fog, I could now see an ordinary exit back to the highway. A dump truck loaded with gravel moved along it slowly, following its route.

I got back in, sat behind the wheel, and turned the key. The engine started on the first try, without resistance. I pulled out and headed for the junction behind the truck.

As I drew closer to the road out, it seemed to me that people were standing on both sides. I did not stop, but I eased off because the sensation was too strong to ignore.

Figures were indeed taking shape along the shoulders. They were not solid or sharp, more like remnants of fog trembling in the morning air. Their outlines flickered, like weak reflections in glass. There were many of them, different silhouettes among them.

They did not reach for me. Did not try to block the way. They simply stood there, forming a narrow corridor leading toward the highway.

I slowly pressed the gas and drove between them. The car moved calmly. As I crossed the junction and merged back onto the road, the figures rippled slightly, as if a gust of wind had passed through them, and for a second I thought I heard not words, but the faintest whisper, the sound of memory moving.

In the rearview mirror the road back to the village was still visible. A few seconds later a passenger car appeared at the bend. It slowed and turned toward the village I had just left.

And at that moment the flickering figures formed again along the edges of the road, standing on either side as if greeting a new driver. I saw it in the mirror: the corridor of fog closed behind the car, and then vanished, as if it had never existed.

The truck ahead kept going at the same steady pace, and only then did I allow myself to breathe.

A few days later I sent the envelope by registered mail to the address written on it. I did not put it off. I simply went to the post office, filled out the form, and made sure it was properly logged. I do not know whether the man it was meant for is still alive, and I do not know whether the letter ever reached him. But the promise was kept.

About a month passed before a small envelope appeared in my mailbox with no return address. The paper inside was yellowed and wrinkled, with no postmarks, and the handwriting on the front looked uneven and clumsy, as though written by someone who had not held a pen in a very long time.

Inside there was only one line:

«Thank you. I wasn’t forgotten.»

No signature. No date.

I read it several times, trying to understand where exactly it had come from and to whom it had truly been addressed. Since then I have often thought about roads, and about how many villages like that have vanished from maps without vanishing completely, how many places have been left without light and without memory, where the houses still stand and no one remembers the people anymore.

And every time I turn off the highway onto an unfamiliar road, I find myself glancing into the rearview mirror a little longer than usual.

Because you never know who will be standing on either side of the road.

Or which driver they need next.

The End

Apartment No. 28

They had bought the apartment in a brand-new building, and on the whole they did not regret it. Yes, it was a studio. Yes, there were not many square meters. But they had only recently gotten married, and they had neither the habit of living large nor any desire to pretend they were rich. They needed a place of their own, without landlords, without «just don’t drill after eight,» and without the feeling that tomorrow they might be asked to move out because «a nephew has come to stay.»

The developer’s finish was standard: level walls, plain tile, the most ordinary plumbing, doors that shut with that dull plastic sound. Lera had said outright during the viewing that she did not care what the tile looked like or how fashionable the laminate was, as long as it was clean, bright, roach-free, and had a decent window. Igor had silently agreed. He was not planning to stare at tile for the rest of his life. He was planning to stare at numbers.

The window, though, got off to a bad start. The courtyard was still being finished, and the view was a little depressing. Machinery stood below, pallets lay scattered around, part of the grounds had been put together, and part of it looked as if someone had forgotten it halfway through. Mornings came with the usual soundtrack of a new development: clanging, metal shrieking, the noise of something heavy being dragged across concrete. The only blessing was that the work started after nine, so at least they had time to sleep before the bright little anthem of construction kicked in and life began to boil.

Seventh entrance, twenty-first floor. A proper anthill. A whole row of doors on the landing, all identical, as if someone had copied and pasted them in The Sims. The numbering had already reached that stage where you did not immediately register it as an apartment number, but as some kind of part serial: one thousand eight hundred and something. Theirs was 1855. Lera had even taken a picture of the plaque and sent it to her mother, as if it were an achievement and not just numbers on a piece of plastic.

There were so many people in the building that you could feel it in the mornings. There were three elevators, and still there came a point when you stood by the doors with a bag or a backpack in your hands, watched the display, and understood that you were not alone and would not be alone for a while. Someone was going down with a stroller, someone with a dog, someone in headphones wearing the expression that said, do not speak to me under any circumstances. In the elevator there was always someone breathing right next to you, always someone smelling of somebody else’s detergent or coffee. Lera laughed and called it a beehive of a building: if you wanted something, you ordered it, went down, picked it up, came back up. Ozon, Wildberries, a coffee shop, a pharmacy, all of it downstairs.

«You could basically never leave for the city at all,» she said one evening with a little laugh. «Order, pick up, eat, get treated. Your whole life in one courtyard.»

Igor muttered:

«Yeah. And then one day we’ll realize we’ve never even seen the neighborhood and never go for walks.»

«We don’t go for walks anyway,» Lera said. «Because you work, and I’m tired.»

There was no point arguing with that.

On the first day they hauled boxes and cursed the elevators they kept having to wait for. Lera directed the entire operation, where to put the armchair, where the table would stand, why the fridge needed to be shifted five centimeters because otherwise the door would catch and that would annoy her every single day. Igor kept quiet and did as he was told. He liked that with things like this you could simply carry out instructions, not think, not decide, not run through options. Lera decided for him, and that was actually pleasant.

That evening they ate delivery food right on the floor among the boxes because the table was not properly in place yet, and because they were too tired to care.

«Listen,» Lera said, poking noodles out of a plastic container with her fork. «The apartment really is good. For two people, it’s perfectly fine.»

«For two people, yes,» Igor said with a nod.

Lera shrugged and said:

«Later, when we want kids, we’ll have to trade it in. Well, not trade it in exactly, sell it and buy something bigger. We’ll have to start thinking about that little by little.»

Igor nodded again, though he was not thinking about children. He was already calculating how much a new mortgage would cost, what size down payment they would need, how much money would vanish into renovating «something bigger,» and how many nerves another move would consume. But that was later, and later was the kind of thing that lived conveniently in the future and demanded no action today. He did not want to spoil the evening with numbers.

The studio was laid out simply: a kitchen along one wall, a large window, a divider, and behind it a bed and a small sofa so that if one of them was home alone, they did not have to live on the bed. There was a downside too. You could hear even the things that, in theory, you should not have been able to hear. The walls were thin, and sometimes it felt as if neighbors two or three apartments away were having conversations right there in your kitchen. At first they woke up to drilling, then they got used to it. Then Igor realized he was hearing not only drilling. He could hear someone dropping a spoon, someone arguing, someone’s child crying. Not all the time, but often enough to remind him: you did not live alone, and even in your own apartment you were still inside a shared organism.

A few days later the vacation ended. Lera went back to work, and Igor stayed home and began easing himself back into his own rhythm. He set up the laptop, put the monitor in place, fixed the power strip so that the cord would not dangle underfoot and drive him mad. He hated when things in the apartment were done «for now.» If you did something, do it properly so you would not have to come back to it later.

Lera left in the morning and came back in the evening with groceries, stories about yet another place opening downstairs, or complaints that pickup was always a mess. Igor listened with half an ear. What mattered to him was something else: that in the evening they ate together, exchanged a few words, and the day ended without frayed nerves. The building was huge, life around them noisy, and inside he wanted at least one simple thing: we are home.

The first odd thing happened on a weekday, closer to six. Igor stepped out to take out the trash, nothing heroic about it. The floor was quiet, as high floors often were: everyone was either at work or tucked away in their apartments, out of sight. The corridor lights were motion-activated. Take a step and they came on, stop and they went dark again in a minute.

Igor walked to the trash chute, dropped the bag, turned, and headed back. Their door was far from the elevators, all the way at the end of the corridor. Lera liked that. Fewer people passing by, less stomping, fewer strangers’ glances. Igor hated the long corridor. It pressed on him. It felt too long, too samey, too full of doors, with theirs somewhere down there at the dead end. You walked, and it seemed the way never ended because there was nothing for the eye to catch on.

He walked along thinking about work, not looking around, and then at some point caught himself on the thought that there should have been ten steps left to the door by now. He lifted his eyes and realized there were still fifteen or twenty. This was not the kind of thing you imagined. He had walked it often enough to know the distance.

Igor slowed down and looked ahead. At the end of the corridor there was a window.

There should not have been a window there. At the end there should have been the last stretch of doors and the turn toward the stairs. But the window was real: windowsill, dirty handprints, the courtyard below, and the construction noise rumbling as if the window were open. He blinked and looked at the doors. The doors stood where they should, but something about them was wrong, and he did not immediately understand what.

Then it hit him: there were no numbers on them. Usually there were numbers, even if they were screwed on crooked. Here, nothing. Just identical doors with identical handles, as if somebody had removed the plaques or they had never been there in the first place.

He looked right, then left. No numbers anywhere. Clean doors, as if they had only just been installed and no one had gotten around to attaching anything yet. Same handles, same peepholes. And the worst part was that there was not a single familiar little detail for memory to catch on, no sticker, no doormat, no scuff on a frame.

Igor took out his phone and switched on the flashlight even though the corridor was already well lit. It was the kind of thing people did when they felt unsettled: put more light into their own hand, as if light might restore control.

He ran his fingers along the wall, over the seam between the panels, over the little imperfections in the plaster, as if the wall could be read. Nothing. An ordinary wall. The usual chill of an apartment building corridor. No trick to the touch.

Fine.

He turned around and walked back, faster this time. Reached the turn that should have led to the elevators, turned it, and saw the window again.

The same one. The same sill. The same courtyard. The same construction site. The same truck dragging gravel. Even the sound was the same, with no delay, no echo, as if he had not moved at all.

Igor swore under his breath and went back again, this time almost at a run, ridiculous as it looked. A grown man sprinting down his own corridor as if he were about to miss a train. On the third circuit he stopped, planted a palm against the wall, and forced himself to breathe evenly.

«All right. I’m tired. I could have mixed up the turn. I could have come out onto the wrong floor. I could have… anything.»

He closed his eyes for a second and opened them.

Their door stood right in front of him.

The doormat was there. The number plaque was there. Even the little grime in the corridor was there, same as always, because one of the neighbors was forever trailing sand in on their shoes. Igor stood staring at the door as if it were proof he had not lost his mind. Then he unlocked it and went inside quickly, as though the building might change its mind and rearrange the corridor again.

He said nothing to Lera because he knew how it would go. First she would laugh, then ask what was wrong with him, then suggest a doctor, and after that the whole thing would become unpleasant and heavy. He wanted it to stay in the category of must have imagined it.

A couple of days later he cast out a line anyway, casually, as if he were asking about a lightbulb.

«Listen, doesn’t the corridor feel a little too long?»

Lera shrugged.

«Not really. Seems like a normal corridor. Why?»

«Nothing. Just thought so.»

She looked at him more closely, but let it drop.

A few days later Igor went to meet her at the metro, just so they could walk home together while it was not too late yet. The weather was damp, the wind chased dust off the construction site, Lera complained about work, and Igor listened more than he spoke. They stopped briefly by the entrance because around that hour there were always people clustering by the intercom: somebody could not get in, somebody was waiting for a courier, somebody had frozen in the doorway in mid-thought.

Inside they called the elevator. Lera was bent over her phone, trying to catch some signal in that internet-proof metal box, scrolling, cursing the connection. Igor held the grocery bag.

The elevator arrived quickly. They stepped in. Pressed 21.

The elevator started up.

To pass the time, Igor watched the floor display and counted: 16, 17, 18, 19, 20…

and instead of 21, 28 lit up.

He lifted his eyes to the panel.

There was no button for 28. None at all. According to the plans, the building only went up to twenty-five.

«Ler,» he said calmly. «Do you see that?»

«What?» She looked up.

The elevator doors opened.

Beyond them was a corridor, not theirs. Too long. The light was even and cold, with none of the warmer bulbs they were used to. No plaques, no numbers. The doors were identical, smooth-faced.

Lera took a step out, and Igor grabbed her by the elbow at once.

«Don’t.»

She looked at him and said exactly what any normal wife would have said:

«Are you serious?»

«This isn’t our floor.»

«No kidding?» Lera leaned out, looked around…

and fell silent.

She stopped smiling. She had seen the same thing he had: a strange corridor, strange light, and no sign anywhere of human life.

«That’s… weird,» Lera said.

The elevator gave a short beep. The doors began to close.

Igor hit 21 again, then jabbed the close-door button as if that could hurry their return to normality.

The elevator moved.

And then it got stranger. The count did not continue from «their» floor. It began descending from the number that had just been lit.

28… 27… 26…

Lera looked at the display, then at him.

«That’s really strange.»

«Maybe it’s glitching,» Igor said.

«I mean, really, maybe it was programmed badly. We could have been on the twenty-fifth and it’s showing nonsense. Maybe there’s some floor they still haven’t finished after construction, so it’s empty, that’s all. A malfunction.»

«Could be,» Igor said.

The doors opened on twenty-one. Their floor, their corridor. Somebody’s stroller against the wall, somebody’s shopping bag outside a door, everything as usual. Back in the apartment, Lera took off her shoes, dropped her keys on the table, and went to the window. She looked down into the courtyard, where people were still carrying things around and finishing something.

«I don’t like this,» she said. «But let’s not wind ourselves up. The building’s new, the elevators are new, the wiring’s new, everything is new. It could have glitched.»

«Yeah,» Igor said. «You’re right.»

He agreed too quickly. Lera noticed, but did not press. She simply went to wash her hands and started unpacking the groceries, because unpacking groceries was the sort of thing that restored the feeling of normal life.

Igor slept badly that night. His brain kept grinding like a bad mechanism, trying to find an explanation for two incidents that refused to fit. Trying to force them under tiredness, under a glitch, under bad calibration, under the building still not having settled. He fell asleep near dawn, already angry at his own thoughts.

When he woke up, Lera was gone. She had left for work. Igor decided to run down to the coffee shop for breakfast. In the corridor he looked around, just in case. Everything was in place. The numbers were on the doors, the corridor was theirs, the elevator showed floors the way it should.

He went downstairs, bought a cappuccino and a couple of pastries. Why two, he himself did not know afterward. He simply wanted something normal, so the day would feel like one lived by ordinary people. The construction site thundered in the courtyard again. People walked past again. Someone was arguing with a courier by the entrance again. The anthill was alive with its own business. Igor calmed down. In the presence of the ordinary world it was easier to pretend nothing had happened.

A day later Lera texted that she would be late from work. Igor sat down at the laptop, decided to finish a task before evening, and got so absorbed that he lost track of time.

At some point he heard a key turning in the lock.

«Hey, Ler,» he said without turning around.

«Hey,» she answered.

«Still working?» Lera crossed the studio and took off her jacket. «Have you eaten at all? Had dinner?»

«No.»

«All right. I stopped by the store. I’ll unpack and start cooking. Finish what you’re doing.»

She came up behind him, bent down, and kissed his neck.

«Go on,» she said. «A little longer and then at least we’ll have a proper meal.»

«Yeah, just a second,» Igor said, and turned back to the screen.

A few minutes later he heard her unpacking the groceries. Bags rustling. The refrigerator door thumping shut. Water running. A knife tapping the cutting board. Oil hissing in the pan. Lera in her element. She really did cook well. Igor smiled and kept working. He sat at the laptop a couple more minutes, finished a comment, closed the tab, and stretched, ready to wrap up and get up.

The phone rang.

He picked it up automatically without looking.

«Hello.»

«Hi, love,» Lera said. In the background a car went by, a door slammed somewhere. «Listen, I got held up at the store. The bags are heavy. Could you come down and meet me?»

A pause.

«Yeah,» Igor said. «Of course.»

Cold.

He turned around.

The kitchen was empty. The table was clean. The stove was cold. The sink was dry. No bags, no food, not a trace of anything. He stood up, took a few steps, looked at the table, at the stove, opened the trash bin. Empty.

The phone was still in his hand.

«Igor?» Lera said. «You there?»

«Where are you right now?» he asked.

«At the store. I just said.»

He looked at the front door. The lock was closed. Their sneakers stood where they had in the morning.

«Did you come home?» he asked.

«No. Why?»

A pause.

«Wait for me,» Igor said. «I’m coming down.»

He ended the call and stood still for a second, then turned. He went through the apartment once more, slowly, without rushing, as if inspecting a stranger’s place. Nothing.

He put on his jacket, took his keys, and went out. Downstairs everything was noisy and ordinary. Light, people, carts. Lera stood at the entrance to the store with the bags, shifting from foot to foot.

«Took you long enough,» she said. «I’m freezing.»

«Come on,» Igor said, taking the bags from her.

They headed for the entrance.

«You’re acting weird,» Lera said. «What happened?»

«You were home,» he said.

She stopped.

«No.»

«I heard you.»

«What did you hear?»

«You cooking.»

Lera exhaled slowly.

«Igor. I was at the store.»

«I heard the bags. The water. The stove.»

«You fell asleep over the laptop.»

«No.»

They walked to the building in silence.

In the elevator Lera said:

«If this is a joke, it’s a stupid one.»

«It’s not a joke.»

The elevator rose. The numbers changed smoothly. Inside the apartment Lera went straight to the kitchen, stopped, looked around.

«It’s empty,» she said.

«I know. But I’m telling you I heard you.»

She stood there for a moment, then started unpacking the groceries, slowly, cautiously, as if checking whether they, too, might vanish.

That night Igor woke several times, listening to her breathing, checking with his hand that she was there.

The next few days were normal.

But then one day Lera asked:

«Our floor is twenty-one, right?»

«Yes. Why?»

«I saw twenty-eight.»

He did not answer.

That evening they went out together to take out the trash. They walked to the chute, turned around.

There was a window at the end of the corridor.

Lera stopped first.

«Igor…» she said quietly. «There wasn’t a window there.»

They stood still.

«Let’s go back,» he said.

They turned.

Their apartment door was gone.

The corridor stretched farther than it should have.

«Igor,» Lera said. «Where’s our door?»

He said nothing.

They stood in the middle of the corridor staring at the place where their door should have been.

Lera took a step forward.

«Wait,» Igor said.

«What do you mean, wait? The door was right here.»

She took a few more steps. The corridor did not change. The doors were there. Identical. But without numbers.

«Stop,» Lera said. «We were on our floor.»

«Yes,» Igor answered, his voice harder now. «We walked out of the apartment, that’s all.»

«Then where are the plaques?»

He walked along the wall, running his fingers over the doors. No signs of removed numbers, no holes, no glue, nothing.

«Maybe this isn’t our floor,» Lera said.

«Except we didn’t go anywhere. We just walked to the trash chute and threw out the garbage.»

«Are you sure?»

«Are you making fun of me?»

She gave a nervous little laugh.

«And what does that get us?»

«Nothing yet. We go to the elevator.»

«Fast,» she said.

«And if it isn’t there?»

«Then the stairs. But first the elevator.»

She turned sharply and headed toward where the elevators should have been. Igor caught up with her after a few steps.

The corridor did not get any shorter. The elevators were nowhere in sight.

«We just passed the elevator,» Lera said. «It can’t work like this.»

«Work like what?»

«Like this!»

«Ler, calm down. We’re not in a forest. This is a building. That means there’s either an elevator or a stairwell.»

«We got lost on our own floor?»

«If we got lost, it’s by a couple of doors at most.»

She stopped abruptly.

«There are more doors now.»

Igor looked around. It seemed that way to him too. But he did not say it out loud.

«All right. Phone.»

«I’m calling someone.»

Igor opened the building chat and quickly scrolled through the list of residents.

«There,» he said. «Apartment 1856.»

He hit call.

Ringing. A long time. No answer.

He tried the next number. More ringing.

Silence.

«Wonderful,» Lera said. «Just wonderful.»

The corridor lights flickered.

«That’s it, stairs,» Igor said. «If the elevator’s gone, we go on foot.»

«Gone?» She looked at him. «Did you just say that seriously?»

«I said if. Come on.»

They turned where the door to the stairwell should have been.

The door was there. Igor yanked it toward himself. It opened.

They burst out onto the landing and stopped.

On the wall hung a sign:

28th Floor.

They looked at it in silence.

«Our building has twenty-five floors,» Lera said slowly.

«I know.»

«Then where did twenty-eight come from?»

Igor stepped closer to the sign. Ran a finger over the number. Metal. An ordinary sign.

«Maybe there are service floors?» he said.

«They don’t number service floors like apartments.»

He exhaled.

«All right. Our apartment is below us. We go down.»

«You’re sure?»

«I’m sure we definitely don’t need to go higher.»

They began to descend.

Next landing: 27.

«All right,» Lera said. «Fine.»

Another flight: 26.

«Well, there you go.» She nodded too quickly. «We are going down.»

Another flight: 25.

They stopped.

Lera let out a breath.

«That’s it. Last floor. Next comes twenty-four, then twenty-three, and so on. It’s fine.»

«Don’t celebrate yet,» Igor said.

They took another step down. The light flickered sharply. For a second everything dimmed.

Lera turned around and froze.

Where they had just come from there was no 26th-floor sign. No flight up. There was a short landing and a door with a sign:

Roof Access.

Lera slowly turned back to Igor.

«We were just upstairs.»

«Yes.»

«And right now there should be the twenty-sixth floor up there.»

«According to logic, yes.»

«Then what is that?»

He looked down the staircase. It was ordinary enough. It continued downward.

Then he looked again at the door with the sign: Attic Access.

«This is some kind of devilry.»

«Looks like it.»

She gave him an irritated look.

«Could you stop answering like this is a routine problem?»

He blew out a breath.

«How exactly should I answer? Panic? Start screaming? Would that help?»

«Do something.»

He walked to the roof-access door.

«All right. Something it is.»

And he pulled the handle.

The door opened at once with a metallic groan.

Igor stepped through first. Rough concrete met his feet. Cold wind struck his face.

It was the roof.

Flat, broad, with ventilation shafts and metal ducts. A low concrete parapet ran around the edges.

«Lera, careful,» he said, turning back.

At that moment a gust of wind seized the door.

It slammed shut behind him with a dull bang.

«Ler?»

He spun at once and grabbed the handle.

Locked.

«Hey,» he shouted, pounding the metal with his fist. «Enough.»

No answer.

He bent toward the door and listened.

Silence.

«Lera!»

He pulled the handle again, harder.

Nothing.

He stepped back.

Maybe she had not come out. Maybe she had stayed on the landing. Maybe she had decided this had gone far enough.

«Lera, open up!»

He struck the metal with his palm.

The wind hit him in the back again.

Igor looked around.

The roof was ordinary. A flat rectangle divided into sections by concrete partitions. Several vent outlets. No slopes. No shelter.

«Lera,» he shouted louder. «This isn’t funny anymore!»

He started forward, circling the ventilation shafts, peering behind the concrete protrusions.

No one.

«Ler!»

He went to the edge of the roof and looked down.

The courtyard was below. Cars. The playground. Windows.

Everything looked normal.

He turned and headed the other way, toward where there might have been a passage to the neighboring entrance.

«Lera, if you’re there, come out.»

The wind was getting stronger. It tugged at his jacket.

He had covered nearly half the roof when he noticed movement at the far edge.

At first it seemed only a shadow.

Then he stopped.

A familiar figure stood on the parapet.

She was walking along the very edge, barefoot, placing each foot carefully on the concrete lip.

«Lera,» he breathed.

She did not turn.

The wind tore her hair back.

«Get down from there,» he said, moving toward her. «Lera, enough.»

She kept walking.

One step.

Another.

He quickened.

«Lera, stop!»

She stopped.

Then took another step.

Her foot slid on the concrete edge.

And she swayed.

Igor froze.

Something in his chest clenched so sharply it felt as if the air had been ripped out of him in a single jerk. The sound of the wind vanished. The world went muffled.

«Lera…»

He took a step forward, but his legs no longer seemed to belong to him.

Everything blurred before his eyes. The roof tilted with her. His heart slammed.

She wavered again.

Cold ran down his spine.

His temples filled with noise.

He tried to shout and could not. His knees buckled.

The world went dark all at once, as if someone had switched off the light.

Igor staggered, took one more clumsy step, and collapsed onto the concrete.

Consciousness cut out.

«Young man… Igor… Igor Alexandrovich, can you hear me?»

The voice was coming through the dark.

«Open your eyes.»

He drew in a sharp breath, as if surfacing from water.

Light stabbed his eyes.

Masked faces bent over him. White coats. Gloves.

«Good. We have contact.»

He was lying on the floor of his own apartment.

«Where is she?» he breathed.

«Who?» the doctor asked calmly.

Igor turned his head.

A neighbor from his floor stood in the doorway, shifting uneasily from foot to foot.

«I saw the door open,» the neighbor said. «I called out to you. No answer. I came in to check and found you lying on the floor. I called an ambulance right away.»

Igor followed his gaze.

On the floor beside the sofa lay an empty bottle of alcohol. An opened blister pack of sleeping pills. Tablets scattered around it.

«You took too much,» the doctor said. «Good thing they found you in time.»

Igor slowly sat up, bracing himself against the wall.

The room pressed in on him.

The same table. The same laptop.

He looked at the desk.

A photograph in a frame.

Lera was smiling in it. Her hair windblown. Her eyes narrowed in the sunlight.

In the corner of the frame was a black ribbon.

Below the photograph, a date: August 28.

August 28.

The first day after they moved in.

The same roof. Hot concrete underfoot. Food bags by the ventilation shaft. Plastic cups. Wine. Sunset.

They had been laughing.

Lera had said it was the best evening of her life. That at last they had something of their own. That now everything would be different.

The wind had been a little stronger than anyone would have liked.

She wanted a beautiful photograph.

She hopped up onto the parapet.

«Don’t get up there,» he said. «Don’t.»

She waved him off.

«Oh, come on. I’m being careful. Take a picture of me with the sunset.»

And she stood there.

At first she was simply balancing, laughing, arms spread.

She stood two steps away.

«Lera, enough.»

She turned to him, still smiling.

«I’ve got my balance, see? I’m fine.»

The gust hit out of nowhere. He saw her shoulders jerk. Saw her foot slip along the edge. Saw the smile vanish and surprise flash across her face.

He managed one step.

But not enough to reach her.

«You need to go to the hospital,» the doctor said. «Observation is mandatory.»

Igor stared at the date beneath the photograph.

August 28.

He closed his eyes.

The wind was still sounding in his ears.

The End

Navigator

Alexei pulled out of Tver a little before eight and decided, while he was still in the parking lot, that he would make it home in one go. The day had been lousy, but the thought of a short overnight stay in some hotel felt even worse. Tomorrow morning would bring the same calls, the same people, the same site, the same paperwork, and at least this was simple: get in, drive, arrive, collapse. At the gas station he bought a large coffee, splashed his face twice with cold water in the restroom, tossed his jacket onto the front passenger seat, clipped the phone into its mount, and rolled onto the highway.

For the first hour and a half, that was exactly how it went. The music played low, the heater hummed on level two, a black ribbon of road stretched ahead, and the white lane markings flashed one after another in the beams of his headlights. His eyes were already starting to ache, his neck had gone stiff, but it was still manageable. He took a couple of work calls, answered his wife once with a quick «I’m driving, I’ll be late,» then put the phone down and spoke to no one else. The navigator muttered under its breath only at interchanges, and the rest of the time it stayed quiet, and Alexei barely listened to it.

Then the roadworks began.

First came the cones and the yellow signs. Then an arrow flashed on an illuminated board mounted on a trailer. The highway narrowed, the speed dropped, and ahead the hazard lights of road equipment started blinking. One after another, the cars were forced off the highway onto a temporary detour, and Alexei, swearing under his breath, slowed down and followed them off.

At first the detour looked normal enough: a narrow two-lane road, fresh signs, gravel at the edges, then asphalt again. Alexei glanced at the screen and only then turned the navigator’s sound back on.

«In four hundred meters, continue straight,» said the usual faceless female voice.

«Good girl,» Alexei muttered, taking a swallow of coffee.

He hated detours like that. In daylight, fine. At night, you never knew where the temporary route ended and where you’d been quietly dragged off onto some local road to nowhere. He turned up the screen brightness, zoomed the map out, checked where the route rejoined the highway, and calmed down a little. The blue line ran straight. Nothing suspicious.

For another couple of minutes, it really did look exactly like that. The road stretched between a few scattered houses, then the houses ended, the dark fields began, and beyond them sparse tree lines. Alexei skipped to the next track, cracked the window open by a hand’s width, flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the darkness, and looked at the map again.

The route recalculated.

He had not touched the screen. The phone flickered by itself, the blue line twitched, and slid left, into a road that a second earlier had not existed at all.

Alexei frowned, jabbed a finger at the display, and peered closer.

«What the hell.»

A different road had appeared on the map, narrower and longer, and the point where it rejoined the highway had shifted somewhere farther away. He tapped refresh. The navigator thought for a moment, recalculated, and gave him the same thing.

«Okay… if you know better.»

He opened the route options. First route, second route, third. They all led the same way.

«In three hundred meters, keep left,» said the navigation voice.

Alexei looked ahead. The road really did split: to the right went a strip of utter darkness, while to the left stretched decent asphalt, narrow but serviceable. He kept left.

Detour. Redrawn map. Buggy app. All of it irritated him.

He turned the music up, but the phone immediately turned it back down by itself.

Alexei glanced at the screen.

A message floated over the road: Continue driving.

He snorted.

«I’m driving, aren’t I?»

The screen blinked and went black. A second later it lit up again.

«In eight hundred meters, continue straight,» said the navigator, and Alexei did not at once understand what exactly in that phrase had snagged his attention.

At the next prompt he turned the music down to zero and listened.

The voice was different.

Not the timbre itself, but the intonation. The ordinary navigation woman always had that flat mechanical manner of speaking, unmistakable once you had heard it enough. This time the phrase sounded different: quieter, lower, with a pause in it and something like breath at the end, something that had not been there before.

Alexei listened to the silence for another second, then smirked at himself.

«Great. Auditory hallucinations on the night road. Just what I needed.»

He dug into the settings, opened the voice options. The standard package was selected. No updates, no assistants, none of that junk. He tapped another option, switched to a male voice, and returned to the map.

Silence.

Then the phone said:

«Leave it as it is.»

Alexei snatched his finger back from the screen.

Nothing had changed on the road ahead. The same narrow strip, sparse utility poles, ditch to the right, darkness to the left. Only now everything in the cabin seemed suddenly audible at once: the heater, the hiss of the tires, the faint rattle in the door panel.

«What…?»

The phone fell silent.

Alexei turned the screen off, waited, turned it on again. The map was there. The route was there. The settings were there. Nothing in the history. He closed his hand around the phone, already ready to delete the app to hell, but a sign flashed ahead, then another, and he had to put his eyes back on the road.

«In two hundred meters, don’t look right,» said the woman’s voice.

Alexei swore out loud and automatically looked at the screen. There was nothing on the map but the blue line and the next bend.

«Very funny. The AI finally decided to entertain drivers?»

The phone stayed quiet.

He looked back at the road and, just to test it, flicked his eyes to the right.

A woman was standing there.

Very close, beyond the white edge line, on the narrow strip of gravel. Light-colored jacket, dark pants, strands of hair stuck to her face. She was not waving. She was not stepping into the lane. She was not spinning around. She was simply standing there and looking at the car.

Alexei hit the brakes too hard. The car lurched forward, coffee splashed out of the cup onto the lid. He let the pedal up at once, straightened the wheel, caught the lane again.

«Do not stop. You won’t be able to help her,» said the phone.

The woman fell behind. Alexei yanked the mirror toward himself and saw in it only a piece of road, the edge of the shoulder, and the empty night.

He dropped to sixty.

«Fuck.»

His hand was already going to the hazard lights. Stop. Reverse. See what was going on. Maybe there was a car in the ditch. Maybe she had been in an accident. Maybe her phone was dead. Maybe anything.

«Drive,» said the voice.

Alexei switched the hazards on anyway, but did not stop. His fingers drummed on the wheel, his gaze jumped from mirror to road to screen. There was nowhere to reverse here: the shoulder was narrow, there was darkness to the left, and turning around would have been even worse. He drove another two hundred meters, then three hundred, and finally smacked his palm against the steering wheel, hard and angry.

«There’s a person standing there.»

No answer.

He turned the hazards off, stared ahead for another minute, and waited for some kind of explanation to appear: a glitch, an ad, a voice assistant, anything at all. Nothing came. Only road and route.

Then his mobile phone rang.

The number did not show. Just a gray rectangle, an empty name field, and accept or decline.

Alexei stared at the screen for a second, then answered and put it on speaker.

At first there was only crackle in the speaker. Then static. Then a woman’s breathing, heavy and quiet, too close, as if she were holding the phone directly in front of her face.

«Hello?» Alexei said. «Hello, who is this?»

Static.

He was already about to hang up when a voice came through the noise. The same one. Quiet, slightly hoarse.

«I’m sitting on the right.»

The line went dead.

Alexei twisted around so sharply that he jerked the wheel and the car drifted. He corrected, swore, and stomped the brake all the way down. The tires squealed and the car stopped.

The passenger seat was empty.

Jacket. Pack of cigarettes. Bottle of water in the door pocket. Nothing else.

Alexei sat there gripping the wheel and staring at it for another three seconds, then exhaled through clenched teeth and switched the hazards on.

«That’s enough. Enough. First motel I see, I’m stopping. My mind’s gone to shit from the strain.»

He reached for the phone, opened the recent calls list.

There was no unknown number there.

None.

Just two work calls, his wife, a client, and then nothing.

He closed the list, opened it again. Same thing.

«No. No. That doesn’t happen.»

«In six hundred meters, continue straight,» said the navigator in the same new voice.

He looked at the screen.

«Who are you?»

The answer did not come at once.

«Watch the road. Start moving.»

He laughed once, short and angry, without the least bit of humor in it, and held the power button to restart the phone. The screen went dark. Alexei set the phone on the passenger seat, leaned back, closed his eyes, and counted to five.

Outside there was nothing. No oncoming headlights, no tail lights ahead, no sound of another engine. Only his car, his hazards, and an empty road.

The phone switched itself on.

No splash screen. It went straight to the map.

The blue route line had not gone anywhere.

«The coffee is cold,» said the voice.

Alexei opened his eyes slowly.

The cup was indeed in the holder with the lid slightly ajar, and the spilled coffee was running down the side of the cup onto the console.

He picked it up, took a sip, and set it back down.

«Are you talking to me right now?»

«Yes.»

«You’re not a program.»

The phone said nothing.

Alexei looked through the windshield. The road ahead was empty. Going back to the place where the woman had been standing no longer appealed to him in the slightest. Sitting in the dark in the middle of nowhere did not either. He took the handbrake off, pulled away slowly, and drove on without turning the hazards off.

«If this is a prank,» he said, «I swear to you, I’ll find whoever did it.»

«You won’t.»

He cut his eyes toward the screen.

For several minutes she said nothing. Neither did Alexei. He turned the hazards off, lit a cigarette, cracked the window open, and all the while kept watching the passenger seat out of the corner of his eye. It remained empty. The jacket was still there, the cigarettes still there, the phone in the mount, the route in front of him.

Then a gas station appeared up ahead.

A small one, with two pumps under a white canopy and a dark little shop to the side. Alexei registered it automatically and was already about to drive past when the voice said:

«You’re almost out of gas.»

He glanced at the instrument cluster at once.

The fuel light came on that very moment.

Alexei leaned forward, looked again, as if the needle might somehow jump back because he glared at it. It was impossible. He had plenty before the warning light. He remembered that exactly. He had filled up before leaving, specifically so he would not have to mess around with this in the middle of the night.

«Oh, come on.»

«Stop.»

He slowed and turned toward the pump. The car stopped neatly, its headlights pointed at the dark storefront. Alexei did not hurry to get out. He sat there, gripping the wheel, and stared ahead.

The station was operational, but it looked as if time had stopped there at the exact second he turned in.

He got out of the car.

Outside it was quieter than he had expected. No distant highway noise. No humming station equipment. Nothing. Only his engine idling and the weak crackle of the lamp above the entrance.

He pulled the nozzle, opened the fuel cap, and inserted it into the tank. He squeezed the handle. The pump began feeding gas at once. The numbers on the display started running.

Alexei looked at the shop, then back at the nozzle.

«Sure. Naturally. Post-pay.»

He closed the cap halfway, walked to the door, and pulled it open.

It was unlocked.

Inside was brightly lit.

The register was on. The fridge was humming. On the coffee machine counter stood a paper cup of black coffee, and steam was still rising through the hole in the lid. The microwave timer was counting down in glowing numbers. Next to it, on a plastic tray, lay a sausage roll with one end bitten off. At the open register the payment screen glowed green. The display blinked, then chirped.

Alexei stopped in the doorway.

«Hey!»

His voice bounced off the refrigerators and went into the back.

No one answered.

He walked farther in, swept his gaze over the counter, looked behind the candy display, down the aisle between shelves, and toward the half-open stockroom door. There was light behind it.

«Is anyone here?»

Silence.

The microwave kept ticking down. The coffee machine hissed softly as it built pressure. The cash register chirped again.

Alexei came up to the counter, leaned over it, and knocked his knuckles on the plastic top.

No one.

He pushed the stockroom door.

It was a tiny room with boxes, a sink, a chair, and a gas station jacket hanging over the back of it. An open receiving log lay on the table, and beside it was a phone on a charger with a black screen. On the windowsill stood a mug. The tea inside was still dark, not yet filmed over.

Alexei slowly pulled the door shut again.

He went back into the shop. The microwave gave three short beeps and fell silent.

He stared at it for several seconds, then looked at the coffee cup, then at the register.

The screen showed an amount.

PAID

«What…?»

He strode back outside and looked straight at the pump.

The nozzle had clicked off by itself.

The tank was full.

Alexei seized the nozzle, put it back in place, and stared at the display: 55 liters, 3500 rubles. Then the screen blinked and went dark.

He spun toward the shop.

The lights were still on inside. Through the glass he could see the counter, the register, the coffee machine, the cup. Everything looked frozen in the same unfinished moment.

The phone in the car said:

«Get in.»

Alexei did not move.

«Who paid for that?»

No answer.

He walked up to the car door but did not touch the handle. He looked from the shop to his reflection in the side window to the pump.

«What in the fuck is all this?»

The voice answered quietly:

«Everything is fine. Keep driving.»

Alexei opened the door, got behind the wheel, and slammed it harder than he needed to. His fingers still smelled of gasoline. The map was still there on the screen. The blue line continued onward into the dark, without names, without markers, without anything.

He looked at the full tank, then at the shop in the mirror.

And for the first time he truly regretted not staying the night in Tver.

He pulled out from the gas station slowly, without jerking the wheel, the way he always did after long stops. Then he slowed again and sat for several seconds at the exit, looking into the rearview mirror, because one simple stubborn hope was still alive inside him: any second now some sleepy cashier would come out of the dark doorway, pop his collar, spit on the concrete, and yell something about the terminal, the night shift, how he should have waited. No one came out. The storefront stayed lit. The white canopy hung over the pumps. Inside, everything remained in that same absurd everyday incompleteness: unfinished coffee, warm sausage roll, open register, light in the stockroom. It was worse than cheap horror. Not blood. Not a corpse. Just a living scene with the people removed and everything else left running.

Alexei swore, switched on his turn signal, though there was not a single car within dozens of kilometers, steered back onto the road, and drove on. At first he tried not to think at all, because the moment he started sorting what had happened into boxes, each box collapsed under its own weight. Full tank. Empty gas station. Voice in the navigator. Woman by the roadside. Call with no number in the log. Any one of those things alone might have been explained by something. Together they already looked bad, far too bad for fatigue and far too coherent for chance.

The road went on into the same mute, colorless darkness, except now Alexei watched it more closely and began noticing things he might never have noticed before. The markings under the wheels were uneven: bright and fresh in places, worn almost down to gray ghosts in others, as though one section had been patched last week and another was in its last days. To the right there was first a black field, then low bushes, then open wet ground again cut with dark bands on which his headlights lingered longer than they should have. To the left crooked poles appeared now and then, some right beside the ditch, others out in the middle of the field with no wires, no buildings, no purpose at all, and because of that the whole road looked not abandoned but badly assembled, unfinished, as if someone had quit halfway through making it.

The phone was silent.

That silence irritated him more now than the rare things she said. When the voice spoke, he could hate it, curse it, argue with it, at least hold onto the fact of another presence. When it fell quiet, there was only the engine, the tires, the heater, the pack of cigarettes on the next seat, and his own thoughts.

He looked at the fuel gauge again.

Full. Alexei shifted his gaze from the needle to the road and back again, then stubbornly, pointlessly started flipping through the trip computer: range, consumption, and other junk he normally never looked at.

And at that exact moment the voice said quietly:

«Don’t get distracted.»

No irony. No game in it. It was said the way one person speaks to another at the wheel when they can see the other starting to lose it from fatigue and anger.

Alexei put his eyes back on the road and said out loud, without raising his voice but with perfect clarity:

«Then explain this to me like a human being. Explain it properly. No more riddles, no more „don’t look,“ „drive,“ „later.“ What is this?»

No answer.

He waited a little longer, then smirked, but the smirk came out twisted and ugly.

«Yeah. Of course.»

A few minutes later a road sign appeared on the right. Alexei automatically prepared to read a village name, a route number, at least an arrow, but when the car drew near it turned out the sign was blank. Just a white rectangle on two metal posts, stained with dirty streaks, with scraps of old paint on the edges, but no letters, no numbers, no trace of torn-off plates. He drove past, looked through the side window, and for another second saw that empty white plane against the black field before it dissolved behind him.

A few minutes later the bus stop appeared again.

This time he saw it from farther off and immediately knew it was the same one. The same concrete shell with the flat roof. The same peeling bench. The same tilted lamp striking down with hard white light. The woman stood directly beneath that light, almost dead center, and now he could see her without excuses and without speed. Her pale jacket hung open, dark sweater underneath, wet hair plastered to her temples and neck, the right side of her forehead smeared with something dark that had already dried. Again she did not wave. She did not step toward the road. She did not call for help. She simply stood and looked toward him with such still, patient certainty that Alexei did not even notice when he took his foot off the gas.

«Do not stop,» said the voice.

There was something new in it now. Not harshness. Something tighter than that, almost physical tension.

Alexei did not answer. The car slowed further and further, and he had already seen it in his mind: he would stop at the shelter, jump out, run over, ask what had happened, where the car was, whether anyone else had been there, whether she had a signal. But at the same time he understood something else: she was not behaving like a normal person. No living, injured, frightened person would stand that quietly and that straight two steps from the road when a car finally passed.

He came level with the stop and saw one more detail that made his fingers clench on the wheel by themselves: her eyes were open too wide, and there was no plea in them, no panic, not even confusion. Only waiting.

«Fuck.»

He did not brake. He hit the gas and shot past the stop faster than he meant to. In the mirror he caught the lamp, the concrete opening, and her pale shape, still motionless under the light.

«There is a person there,» he said through his teeth now, not so much arguing with the voice as keeping himself from turning around. «If you interfere one more time, I’ll…»

«Drive.»

He slammed his palm into the steering wheel and stared forward.