Abandoned village

I love this village. I've been coming here every summer for almost twenty years. Everything is nearby here: forest, field, and river. The village is relatively large, three kilometers to the nearest village through forests and fields, and about fifteen kilometers to the highway. About three years ago, they began actively buying houses (what to do, people are getting old and dying) for suburban plots.

As long as I can remember, my grandmother was always happy about the arrival of her grandchildren and invited them to visit her, presented gifts. But just six months ago, everything changed. At the beginning of January, my grandmother started calling us and asking us to take her to us: they say she is already old. It's hard for her to live alone (grandfather died two years ago), and the sooner the better.

The "family council" in the person of dad and mom decided that grandma would not be a burden on them — she was kind and good, economic. I live in a separate rented apartment. My parents have three rooms — there is enough space for everyone.

When Dad went to pick up Grandma, it turned out that he was late — grandma died...

I will omit the details of the complexity of funerals on New Year's holidays; I will only say that Dad has since become somewhat withdrawn.

At the beginning of May this year, I started asking my parents what would happen to the village this year: will we go or not? Maybe the house has already been looted there. After all, no one has been there for six months. Dad suddenly, abruptly and categorically began to refuse to go there and, moreover, to let me go myself. He didn't want to explain the reason.

I decided not to say anything to my parents and went to the village with my best friend. I visit Mom and Dad once every couple of weeks, so they won't notice my absence, and you can call from there. We took with us, as usual, drinks, snacks, meat for barbecue and more money (fortunately, there is a shop there) and left in an old BMW of a friend, bought by him six months ago.

To get to the village, you need to turn onto an inconspicuous road on one highway (there may be witnesses or those who have heard something about the events described below). From the turn to the entrance to the village, as I wrote above, about fifteen kilometers. Although it was the middle of June (we left on June 15, 2013) and, in principle, it would be time for summer residents, vacationers and just villagers to go there, we did not see a single car on the way.

I can't say that the village looked abandoned: everything was as usual. The only difference is that on the way to the house we did not meet a single animal, not a single person, and the store was closed. The latter was at the very beginning of the village, and my house was at the end. And therefore, after the store, we drove much slower, because a friend was here for the first time, and the roads were in terrible condition (I remember all these pits from childhood).

Soon I noticed something else: many gates and doors leading to courtyards with high fences and gates were open or broken. Fortunately, everything was in order in my grandmother's house, although the same could not be said about the neighbor's gate.

In the yard, of course, there was darkness: everything was overgrown, grass above the waist, mosquitoes, midges. The roof of the gazebo collapsed. I knew that the keys to the house were kept under a canopy — they were always hanging there. Whether they were basic or spare, I didn't know. But I remember these keys from childhood. Having barely opened the front door with a rusty key, we entered and began to put things in order: all the tools were stored in a closet in the house. By the evening, pretty tired, we decided to rest. At the same time, I wanted to show my friend all the beauties of my beloved village.

We reached the end of the village (to the river), and only now I felt uncomfortable and a little scared: doors and gates were open or broken here and there, and along the way, we did not meet any people, cats (of which there really were many), or any other animals. There was silence in the village, as if it had died out. But how could this happen if summer residents came here last year, cows lowed, and pretty girls walked around the village in the company of cheerful guys?

A friend nervously lit a cigarette and asked if it was always so gloomy here. I replied that I was surprised myself and didn't understand what was going on.

We decided to return home, and when we returned, we were amazed: the door to the house was wide open (although I closed it, however, not with a key. but still, it could not open itself), and all our belongings were scattered around the rooms. Food was scattered on the floor. Raw barbecue meat was gone.

I don't even know which feeling prevailed in me at that moment—fear or anger. I took an ax and walked around the whole house, yard, vegetable garden, even looked over the fence to the neighbors: there were no traces of our guest anywhere.

I can't say that I used to be very friendly with my neighbors (after all, they are old grandparents. Their grandchildren are ten years old; I rarely saw them), but this time it was decided to go to them and ask if anyone had seen anything. A friend stayed to guard the house.

I came back an hour later. The door was locked from the inside. I knocked "Hi, it's me, open up"

The sound of a latch was heard (I must say that it is quite powerful on our front door). I opened the door and saw a friend standing with a stool in his hands, and he was holding it as if he was going to hit. He was breathing heavily and was pale. However, in this respect I was not much different from him at that moment. We bolted the door again and entered the room (it was evening, but we decided not to turn on the light).

I sighed and told my friend about what I had seen. I must have walked about twenty yards in that hour, and I didn't see any signs of people anywhere. All the courtyards are overgrown, as if no one was there this year. The doors in some houses are broken. The roof of some buildings has collapsed.

I'm willing to bet that at that moment we both wanted to leave this village immediately and return to the city, but it was getting dark. I don't know how to drive a car, and my friend never drives a car in the dark: he gets tired quickly, and everything blurs before his eyes.

He told me what he saw while I was visiting the neighbors, "I locked the door behind you, just in case, and started collecting scattered things. I hear the door to the courtyard open. I was surprised, I thought why are you so early. And then suddenly immediately (and I must say that from the entrance to the courtyard to the front door to the house ten meters, and at the same time the door to the courtyard is VERY creaky) someone tried to get into the house. I backed away because someone had just entered the yard, he couldn't walk home so fast! There was no knocking on the door, someone was just trying to get in, the handle was twitching like crazy. I took a stool, but then I heard the creak of the exit door from the courtyard again, and silence fell. And half an hour later you came."

"And what, you stood in the hallway for half an hour with a stool in your hands?" I began to ask him with interest.

The friend just nodded.

And then we heard a loud knock on the window at the end of the house, in my bedroom. My friend and I just exchanged glances. None of us dared to go and check what was there.

An hour passed. It was dark outside. We sat in silence, afraid to move. From the moment of this knock, nothing else happened. We just sat and were silent, listening to each other's heavy breathing.

We didn't talk. It's hard to say what my friend was thinking, but personally I was only thinking about how the morning would come as soon as possible and we would leave here. The morning would come sooner. The dawn would come sooner; I would rather leave and not return…

Suddenly, a car alarm sounded. A friend's car was parked next to the yard, but there were no trees there, so something accidentally fell on the car. As soon as the alarm stopped howling, it immediately resumed, as if someone was standing near the car and just waiting for the owner to come out to her.

It lasted about half an hour. The sound was incredibly annoying; I wanted to go out and turn off the alarm, as well as slap the ears of the one who turned it on, but something told me that we would be hit in the ears.

We were sitting in the main room (from there there were three doors leading to different parts of the house — one to the exit, another to the bedrooms, the third to the dressing room) near the table by the window, and outside this window we heard someone's footsteps. Someone was walking under the windows and tried to do it quietly, but the crunch of dry branches gave him away.

I probably washed my face afterwards, although it was cool in the house — after all, the house is old, it hasn't been heated for six months. To my surprise, there was no mobile connection here, although there had been no problems with it before. It was still only 22:22. It was still so far before dawn, and whether we would be able to get out of here at all is unknown...

"And what happens if he punctures the wheels?" I asked, startled. But in fact, if someone who wanders in here punctures the wheels in the car, how will we get out of here? There are fifteen kilometers to the highway, and five hundred to my hometown in general...

The friend did not repeat his question. He realized that I asked again, not because I didn't hear, but because now I was also thinking about it.

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