Nearby

One night, around one in the morning, my apartment doorbell rang. Half asleep, I tore myself away from my computer, wondering, "Who the hell is here at this hour?" It was a friend of mine, let's call him Alexander—a perfectly ordinary guy, unremarkable; we grew up in the same neighborhood. We've known each other since childhood, since we were about fifteen (or rather, we used to). He doesn't seem to use drugs or other junk, and he doesn't drink to the point of delirium tremens.

So, Alexander showed up one autumn night—disheveled, wet, wearing factory overalls. He was speaking some unintelligible gibberish, from which I only understood that his apartment keys were in his bag at work, where he wouldn't return under any circumstances. Then he asked me if I had anything to drink. One bottle of vodka later, he told me the following story (I'll recount it in the first person, with some artistic detail).

As usual, I arrived at work with my partner in a rickety PAZik bus, smelling of something only old buses can smell. I said goodbye to the driver and went to the utility room to change. My partner was smoking at the checkpoint, sheltering from the light rain under the canopy. Our job was as follows: our workshop, and therefore us, monitored the operation of various shutoff valves on the pipelines, as well as the pumps and everything related to them. We supplied heat, drinking water, pumped out sewage, and so on and so forth.

After accepting the shift and dismissing our replacements, I began studying the shift log for any incidents that had occurred during the day. My partner cleaned up the mess left in our room and made tea, jokingly cursing the previous shift for their carelessness. After tea, we had to make our rounds, but my partner suggested I do them alone while he cleaned up the mechanic's room and filled out the log. I happily accepted this generous offer, as I had no desire to tidy up and rearrange various tools and other equipment. The typical mindless, predetermined walk seemed far more tempting. Grabbing all the necessary items and throwing on my "pea coat," I immediately set out into the cold, damp embrace of the autumn night, hoping to get through my rounds quickly and go to bed peacefully, leaving the paperwork to my partner.

The autumn night welcomed my arrival, slapping me with a gust of cold wind and increasing rain as a sign of my attention. I pulled up my hood and trudged through the mud, following the well-worn route, which, after 20 minutes, was almost complete. But one detail caught my attention: under the tin canopy, a red light blinked invitingly on the control panel of the Sewage Pumping Station (SPS—a large cylindrical tank about 3-4 meters in diameter and 7-15 meters long, buried almost entirely in the ground so that only the top and lid protruded. It collects wastewater from nearby buildings, stormwater, and so on, and is then pumped out by pumps located inside the tank). The automatic system had shut off one of the pumps to prevent it from burning out; apparently, something was stuck inside. I cursed, looking forward to the exhilarating descent into the foul-smelling, damp tank in near-pitch darkness to retrieve something sticky and disgusting from a pump nozzle. After shutting off the power, thereby stopping the second pump, I opened the tank lid and shone a flashlight down. The smell of methane hit my nose, and I decided I should "air it out" a little first. The tank was almost empty—the pumps were barely covered by water, and even from above, I could see something dark and spherical near the nozzle of one of them. Slinging the flashlight around my neck, I carefully began my descent down the flimsy, slippery ladder. Reaching the pump maintenance platform, I winced slightly, rolled up my sleeve as high as I could, dipped my hand into the unpleasant-looking and -smelling liquid, and grabbed hold of something stuck in the pump—something resembling a large clump of thread or wool. I pulled it out and shone the flashlight on it.

Silence, the sound of dripping water. Stupor. My head felt like a bell that had been hit with a hammer. I abruptly threw it away and, thinking, "No, don't scream!" I bit the sleeve of my jacket and screamed into it at the top of my lungs. A booming moo rolled along the walls of the tank. And my partner's head, gently rocking on the waves, stared back at me with empty eyes. After a while, when I ran out of air, I stopped screaming. "What the...? What the hell?!" Panic gripped my mind. Thinking at the bottom of the pumping station about who, why, how, and when did this wasn't the best idea, so I ran up the ladder, slammed the hatch behind me, and began frantically shining the flashlight around me and into the distance. I thought I was alone. A ton of thoughts were racing through my head: “I was only gone for twenty minutes! Who did this? How did they get into the station’s territory, how did they open and then close the hatch?!” And what was I supposed to do?What should I do next? Go up to security and tell them I found my partner's head in the SSC, the keys to which were mine alone, and which was covered in my fingerprints?

I didn't have time to finish my thought: the chaotic battle of my thoughts was interrupted by a phone call. When I pulled the phone out of my pocket and saw who was calling, a shudder ran through me. It was MY PARTNER calling. Three seconds before I picked up, a thought popped into my head that calmed me down a bit: "It must be security calling from his phone—they must have heard a noise in our room and come there."

I answered the call, and all my shaky calm vanished into thin air—my partner was speaking on the other end:

"Hey, bro, what's taking you so long? Come on, come back quickly, I made some tea."

The connection was interrupted by some static. After a five-second pause, I replied in a trembling voice that I'd lost my keys and was looking for them, that I'd be right there, and that he shouldn't lose me. They replied, "Let me help you, I'm just around the corner."

The phrase "just around the corner" seemed to come from several voices, creaky and mournful. At the same time, something pounded against the walls of the SCS, rising higher and higher, as if running straight up the wall. A second later, it began pounding furiously against the lid, shaking it.

That was the last straw. I ran like crazy, screaming loudly, as if that would give me speed. Adrenaline raced through my body, and it felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I no longer thought about anything else; I just wanted to get away from there—no matter where, as long as I got away. I flew through the checkpoint, jumping over the turnstile and waking a sleeping security guard, who ran out after me and shouted something. I didn't care.

I was shocked by the story I'd heard. I had no reason not to believe Alexander—nor was I to believe him. What if he'd killed his comrade in a fit of rage and now had no memory of it? Sasha said the police should have arrived at the plant by now, probably called by the security guard, and that no one would believe him. And going home wasn't an option—they were probably already waiting for him, and he didn't have his keys. I gave him my bag, some clothes, and some money, and then he retreated.

I didn't know his fate until today, when he called me. Without explaining any details, he offered to meet, to which I replied that he was currently on a business trip in another republic in the middle of nowhere, to which he replied, "No problem—I'm just nearby."