Part 1
I always dreamed of living in a remote place: in a field surrounded by vast expanses or in the middle of a wilderness in a tree house merging with nature and reflecting on the unknown. Most people are not destined to understand it.
Thoughts about this fascinated me, my mind, but I understood that there was no escape from city worries and routines. Especially if I live in a Russian village.
I reprolached myself many times for daring to complain. Some people have to endure constant noise being on the streets of big cities. But the place where I lived is difficult even to call a village. This is one apartment building surrounded by local farms and dilapidated uninhabited one-story houses.
After the collapse of the USSR, in 1992 developers wanted to demolish the village. They even got permission and started the demolition, but due to the unstable financial situation and the crisis raging in those days, the company went bankrupt and stopped the demolition process. It remains only this lonely, three-story building. Most of the people living here are old men who have no relatives left and people like me who were born here have grown up and do not want to leave.
But I still had to leave. My wife Marta, whom we met in this village when we were children, did not want our potential future children to grow where they have no chance of getting a good education and becoming successful people. We had a couple of small quarrels about this, but in the end, I agreed as I understood that for the sake of family happiness, and the happiness of children, something had to be sacrificed.
We lived a wonderful 3 years together. All the bright feelings, which I experienced while being near her, completely interrupted the unpleasant aftertaste from the bustle of the city until she went missing. The police were powerless. Nothing that would help to find her alive or dead ... The police just shrugged. I was depressed and confused. The one, who was the meaning of life for me, has disappeared and will never return
After her disappearance, I visited my mother, who lives in our apartment in the village. However, i soon moved there. My mother gave the keys to the apartment and left, leaving me standing with a lot of keys in my hands.
I did not understand why there were so many. There were from the pantry, door, bedroom, closet, safe. And besides, several of them were clearly excess since they did not fit any lock. I put the keys on а table and began to move the furniture so that I could accommodate this damn wheeled freezer that I brought with me. It couldn't squeeze anywhere.
"And why did I just take it," I thought, and decided to leave this pile of metal in the stairwell, so that I could calmly rearrange it the next day. However, in the morning it was not already there. Apparently, it was stolen. But I could not blame them. Putting a freezer overnight is an idiotic act, and times were tough then.
In fact, if you do not pay attention to apartment 3, this is a great place with incredibly decent, but at the same time simple and open people. I settled in well there. I even tried to build my own small farm. However, after several months of using it, i almost died when its roof collapsed with a bang due to poorly connected metal supports.
But one day, in 2005, a year after the move, everything changed dramatically.
I woke up earlier than usual due to the screams of people coming from the stairwell. I reluctantly got out of bed and walked to the door. As soon as I went out into the staircase, I felt a very unpleasant smell of molten iron. It guarded me. I thought a fire could happen and quickly went down the stairs. Almost all residents of the building crowded at the exit of the apartment building.
It was strange to watch how many emotions were imprinted on the faces of these people. There was misunderstanding, fear, hatred, indifference mixed in one small room.
For a long time not understanding what was happening, I still try to stop the chaos that was going on there. I asked in the loudest and demanding voice:
"What the hell is going on?"
The noise of the crowd stopped in an instant. "The door is welded shut," Someone said in a clearly surprised tone. I came closer and saw a sloppy metal seam. The one who did this was not a professional.
My thoughts were interrupted by the exclamation of the neighbor. "I found something," Leonid said.
Everyone turned around and watched him unroll a piece of paper folded many times over, we began to expect. Something in this atmosphere of tiring expectation frightened me. I went to a neighbor to see everything with my own eyes. This is a note. All letters were printed, but handwritten. Their bloody, dark red color complicated the task of recognizing the author and what he or she wanted to write. Despite this, I still managed to read this ugly text:
"You better not go out. With love "
I immediately thought it was a hoax. Without waiting for the reaction of others and the end of this circus, I began to climb the stairs to the roof to check the condition of the fire escape, which could help me to leave the house. The closer I was to the roof, the stronger I felt this unpleasant smell of iron. My knees involuntarily began to tremble. I was afraid the door to the roof would also be welded shut. Then it would not be funny at all. I got to the last floor.
What I saw in the small window on the third last floor was forever imprinted in my memory. I will never forget that. The woman was visible in the window. A rope was tied around a neck. There was a dark red stain of blood on her forehead. This woman was brutally murdered and hanged. Despite my incredible shock, I recognized her. That was my wife.
Part 2
I barely remember what happened the next few minutes after I saw that. Everything went black, a head was spinning and I felt my knees get weak. There were vague images of my neighbors desperately trying to help me.... Unintelligible screams coming from everywhere....And finally darkness.
A moment later, I fell asleep.
I didn't realize then that I was lying unconscious in front of my wife's hanging body. Everything that was in my head while I was sleeping seemed to me so real.
Here is all that I remember from that dream:
I'm in an apartment ... a poorly lit and almost dark apartment. Interior
looks like mine. The same old Soviet chandelier against the stretch ceiling, a wooden closet, which hangs a calendar on.
Looking at the details, I am distracted by a heart-rending scream coming from the kitchen. I begin to feel a familiar sense of growing anxiety, as if something terrible is about to happen. My legs are shaking and I can't breathe, but even so, I run desperately toward the source of the sound.
When I open the kitchen door, I see Marta. She smiles. Her brown hair, which I can recognize in the dark, covers her forehead. With an elegant movement of her hand, she pushes them back, revealing that bloodstain. Suddenly, her beautiful smile is replaced by a scared grimace. My wife begins to stare in horror at something behind me.
I turn my head slowly and see the damn freezer that was stolen when I moved into this apartment complex. There was a bloodied captive bolt gun inside it.
At this point, the dream ended and I woke up in my room surrounded by people I knew. The neighbors, as it turned out, were able to move me here because my door was unlocked.
I had hoped that everything, which had happened before I lost consciousness, was a dream or hallucination, But the sympathetic glances told me otherwise.
Leonid brought me a glass of water, trying to squeeze out another comforting phrase.
"I...We...We are always close. Let us know if you need anything"
I knew he didn't know what to say.
We weren't close friends, but he's a good man. This man lives in 2 apartment, right below me. Sometimes he drove me to town when my car was being repaired.
Whatever happened, Leonid always helped everyone around him.
However, I needed to be alone, alone with my thoughts, so I asked him and the others to leave. As he left my apartment he added:
"The door to the roof.... It's closed"
Apparently they guessed why I went upstairs.
I spent the rest of the day thinking about what had happened, staring at the ceiling. Everything seemed so surreal. I kept asking the same questions:
Who killed and hanged my wife like an animal ?
Who wrote the note and is he the killer ?
How can I continue to live?
And does communication with the outside world work?
As soon as the last question came to my mind, I jumped out of bed and quickly ran to the old Soviet phone on the small table.
In 2005, Russia was lagging far behind the world's technology, so most villagers used so-called" dial phones " with a rotating dial.
I frantically started dialing 112 and put the phone to my ear. There was only silence. The telephone cable on the roof was probably cut. My remaining hope of getting out of that place were gone. I was overcome with emotion. I didn't understand why this was happening to me. Holding my head in hands and putting my elbows on the table, I just started crying, looking at our wedding photo on the nightstand.
The contrast between the happiness depicted in the photo and the grief I felt, drove me crazy.
I was thirsty, so I went slowly to the kitchen to drink some water. As I raised the glass to my mouth, my mind suddenly focused on the keys my mother had given me. I remembered that I never found out the purpose of one of them. I kept forgetting to ask my mother about it. And I ended up losing it. But it didn't matter then. Looking back, I realize that I should have paid more attention...
As I'm about to go to bed and kill myself with worrying thoughts again, I suddenly hear a soft metallic rasp, followed by a thump. Looking out of the window, I saw one of my neighbors. A skinny man of 40 years old, who lives in 4 apartments, ran away from our apartment complex with a slight limp. The window grating, which had been installed on the ground floor when the building was built, was lying on the ground. Apparently he managed to get it out.
At that moment, I think many people were faced with the dilemma of whether to follow him, leaving the elderly people who could not escape alone with the killer, or stay there, knowing that at any moment we could be killed.
Still, The sound of curtains being closed, which I heard a couple of seconds later, made it clear that they had chosen the second option. It remains to be hoped that he will be able to get to the nearest settlement and call for help...
I supposed the fact that the killer would be angry that someone had escaped. So I kept my big kitchen knife in plain view. However, given that note, there was still a small chance that the real evil was actually outside.
After a couple of hours, some residents still realized that if they stick together, the chance of becoming a victim decreases. And soon, a few people who trust each other, moved in together. They knocked on my door and asked me to move in, but I didn't take any chances. I knew I couldn't trust anyone.
It was already 11 PM, and there was a dead silence in the stairwell. Despite the ideal sleeping time, I couldn't sleep. The realization that I was probably the next victim kept me from doing it.
I sat in a chair with a knife in my hand until 3 a.m., when I started to hear a repeated thud from somewhere. I looked out the window and saw nothing. My attempts to find out where the sound came from were unsuccessful.
This continued for several minutes. Then the house fell back into an uneasy atmosphere of silence.
I usually sleep a lot, but I didn't get a NAP that night.
But for the first time in a long time, I met the dawn in this place. Never before had it seemed to me so magnificent. Piercing through a small fog, the sun's rays dispersed and created a soft light. This increased the sense of comfort that I lacked at the time.
Even though it was morning, I still didn't feel completely safe, because I didn't know how many people were still awake, or if they could help me.
I shouldn't have slept for at least another couple of hours, so I steeled myself and made coffee. I took a sip and spat it out. The taste was disgusting. It probably went bad.
To cheer myself up, I started cleaning. I remembered that since I moved here, I have not sorted out the things in the storage room. It was a small room to the right of the apartment's exit. The amount of junk that was there discouraged me from putting things in order. However, it was a good time to do it.
I took a deep breath and entered the room. I immediately noticed my old dusty children's toys, some boxes, a small closet on which lay a stack of paper vaguely resembling a notebook. The last one caught my attention the most. As I got closer, I blew the dust off the papers and developed the inscription "Medical card No. "747".
I opened it and quickly flipped through the contents out of curiosity.
On one of the pages was written:
Date: 1975, March 4
Diagnosis: schizophrenia
Symptoms: Auditory hallucinations, paranoid delusions, disorganized speech and thinking on the background of impaired performance.
But what I read next shocked me even more:
Patient name: Nikolai Kast.
Country: USSR.
City: Starobelsk.
Address: Kolomensky street, Apartment building 2, apartment 3
It was my father. I recognized him by name. All the time that I thought that he just left the family, he once lived in the same apartment complex with me, in the same 3 apartment that I was told about.
But why was this hidden from me?
Is he alive now?
Why have I never seen him?
Why did my neighbors say that
apartment 3 is a terrible place?
Does this have anything to do with my wife's murder?
I had so many questions then.
I ran to Leonid in search of answers. I banged my fist on his door. It opened abruptly and the barely alive body of my neighbor fell right in front of me. Foam was coming out of his mouth. He was coughing madly. I was scared and didn't know how to help him.
"Water... Is Poisoned, " Leonid whispered.
Before I could do anything, his eyes rolled back and his breathing stopped.
Despite the fact that I knocked on other apartments and desperately asked for help, no one answered me.
There was only one option left that could clarify this confusing situation: to find out for myself what was in my father's house.
I picked up my knife and a small hammer, and without a moment's hesitation I began to beat on the lock in the hope of breaking it. After several attempts to open the door to apartment 3, it still gave in to me and I found myself in a dark room.
The interior was similar to mine. I immediately noticed the same old Soviet chandelier hanging on the ceiling of the corridor. Everything there seemed so familiar.
Trying not to lose my vigilance, I slowly began to look around the room holding a cold weapon in my hands. Now I realize that I should have taken something more serious.
The queue reached the kitchen. This was the last room I had to check. The absence of something strange in the rest of the apartment scared me even more.
As I entered, I saw a man... or rather, something that looks like a man. It looked as if human skin had been stretched over the skeleton. There was a spot of blood on his forehead, just like my wife's.
I couldn't recognize him then. The man didn't look like any of my neighbors.
That body was lying next to a fairly large object. It took me a few seconds to recognize it. It was a freezer...that freezer.
The feeling of deja vu came over me as quickly as the panic. The realization that this was the place I had seen in my previous dream could compare to the shock that my father was, I thought, a psychopath who had brutally murdered several people.
Suddenly, a voice comes from behind me,
"Well...Hello, my son
Part 3
Suddenly, I hear a voice behind me,
"Well...Hello, son"
"Mom?" I asked in a very surprising and trembling voice.
I turned around and what I saw made me doubt the reality.
My mother was standing in the doorway. In one hand, she held an axe that was dripping blood, and in the other hand, she held the Captive Bolt Gun.
"It's good to see you, too," she whispered, as I was dumbfounded and unable to do anything with fear.
"What's going on? What did you do, mom?" I asked as a tear rolled down my face.
"I have fulfilled your dream. I freed you," she said, "She was spoiling you. These people were spoiling you. They were bothering you. I killed them. I made you happy."
"Did you ... did You kill her?"
"Aren't you happy?" she asked, "Marta made you leave this village, the village you loved. That thing didn't give a damn about you, about your dreams. She was like your father."
After a few seconds she continued,
"By the way, your father... He was pathetic and wanted to get out of here too, But I didn't let him to do this . I turned him into a slave and locked him in the third apartment, telling your neighbors that he was mentally ill. In order to avoid questions from others, I paid a Little money to someone and "made" him schizophrenia in the medical record... it was worth it. He deserves it...He deserves it, " she said the last sentence with a special madness in her eyes.
I Shouted, forgetting for a moment that she had an axe, "where is he?"
The mother pointed to the dead man, who looked like a skeleton, lying next to the freezer,
"He was useless, so I killed him."
"By the way, I'm sorry we stole your freezer," she said with a grin.
"WE?" I asked.
"Me and your father," she replied, "I didn't train him for nothing, he helped me get this down to the apartment 3."
"You're probably wondering why I need a freezer," she continued, " 3 years after you moved to the city, I couldn't stand it and killed Marta. I wanted to keep her as a trophy, so the refrigerator was the perfect place to keep her body. But the police might have found it on me. So I decided to store it in the apartment 3, but it was difficult to bring the freezer there without you noticing. And I just stole it from you when you moved in."
"Why... Why did you hang her?" I Asked the question while the emotions of fear, anger, and grief were mixed up in me.
She answered, " I wanted to intimidate the residents of the apartment complex. I wanted them to stay inside so that I could have more time to kill them, more time so that I could understand how i can put the poison down the plumbing in the basement."
"I deliberately poisoned the water in the morning so as not to poison you," she added, "because I knew you usually Wake up late."
"Do you realize that one of the residents has escaped and will soon call the police?" I said trying not to lose my composure.
"You mean him?" she asked with a Creepy smile, pointing to the bowl of meat that lay next to my father's body.
I was shocked. It was just awful.
"Why did you choose Captive Bolt Gun?" I asked while I was getting the shivers from the realization that she was slowly approaching me.
"That's a Brilliant question, son. I was hoping that you would ask it to me," my mother said, "first it is silent, and second it is insanely effective: One shot and the person is paralyzed."
"YOU ARE A CRUEL PSYCHOPATH WHO KILLED MY WIFE," I shouted. It was a stupid thing to do, and I immediately regretted it.
"How dare you call me that, you ungrateful thing?" She whispered.
Her eyes opened wide and her mouth began to drool. She threw out the Captive Bolt Gun and took the axe in both hands, walking slowly in my direction. I backed away until I hit the wall.
Slowly lifting the axe above her head, she began to speak, gradually becoming louder, "I have done so much for you. I freed you. I took care of you. I was protecting you. And what do I get in return? I get insults," shouting the last words, she tried to hit me with the axe, but at the last moment I was able to dodge
I got out of the kitchen and ran to the door of the apartment and with shaking hands began to pull the handle nervously. The door is locked.
I rushed into the storage room to my left and closed the lock, trying to find something to protect myself with.
Suddenly, the screams stopped. It scared me, because I didn't know what she was planning. I leaned my ear against the door, hoping to hear something.
A second later, a couple of centimeters from my head, the tip of the axe sharply pierces the wooden door.
A few more blows and she would have gotten to me, so the only way to protect myself is to hide.
By the time my mother broke through the door to the storage room, I was already in the closet among the dusty clothes.
"Son, I'm here. Get out," she whispered cheerfully, going closer to my location.
I could see it through a small crack in the wall of the closet. Her eyes were wide open and she was smiling and held the axe in her hands and looked around.
The clothes in the place where I was hiding were covered with a layer of dust, and I SNEEZED. My whole life flashed before my eyes. Through the gap I saw my mother slowly turn around and start laughing looking right at me
I abruptly jump out of the closet and run as fast as I can to get out of the closet while she chases me. She tried to hit me again, and then her axe got stuck in the wooden doorway.
Suddenly I see the Captive Bolt Gun that my mother threw away a couple of minutes earlier. It was my last hope of survival.
While she was desperately trying to pull out her jammed weapon, I grabbed the Bolt Gun and did what I had to...
Finally, that hell is over...
Despite the terrible events that occurred in this apartment complex, I still live here, even though it has been 15 years. And only now, when I am alone in this place, meeting the dawn, merging with nature and thinking about the unknown, I understand how much my mom did for me.