A Beast with Steel ClawsThis story happened about twenty years ago.

This story happened about twenty years ago. I was courting my future wife at the time and decided to arrange a romantic candlelit evening at my parents' dacha. I had everything prepared in advance, put champagne in an ice bucket, and was sitting there rehearsing my speech: "Will you marry me?" I looked up and saw Maya arriving, dismissing the taxi. I proposed to her from the doorway, and she burst into tears of joy. Then we drank a glass, danced... We went out onto the porch to catch some air before bed, and I lit a cigarette. The moon, I remember, was huge and so bright, as if candles were burning inside. Maya was captivated, uttering something poetic and enthusiastic, and then we noticed something stirring at the neighbors' dacha.

Maya said to me with a smile:

"They're probably having a romantic dinner there too?"

 "Hardly," I replied. "They wouldn't be out at half past two in the morning; an elderly couple with their grandson lives there. They're very quiet."

"But there's definitely someone there," Maya insisted. "Look, something's glowing in the dark. The owner must have gone out for a smoke, too."

Exactly, a light is clearly visible in the darkness, even two. But the neighbor doesn't smoke—I know that for sure: he had a heart attack last year and quit overnight. Marya Kirillovna, his wife, probably never even smoked. So who's standing there under their windows? I tried to make out the outline of a figure and wondered if it was time to intervene.  The thing is, someone was always breaking into someone's house at our dachas: drunks would break into the house for a drink or two, homeless people would steal the TV, or a drug addict would rummage through everything looking for money...

I decided I absolutely had to scare off this late-night visitor, even if he'd just drunkenly made the wrong house, otherwise he'd keep breaking in and scare the old folks. I had to get him off their property. I motioned to Maya to stay quiet and moved toward the neighbors. I managed to take two or three steps. Suddenly, we heard a loud growl, and some dark mass rushed through the raspberry and jasmine bushes toward us, sweeping away everything in its path, ruining the garden beds.

It looked like a boar or a bear, for example—the heavy carcass snapping branches with a crunching sound.  I grabbed Maya by the hand and pulled her into the house from the porch. I barely had time to slam the door shut when someone struck it from the street—I don't even know what kind of weapon, judging by the sound, a metal instrument. And judging by the marks I saw in the morning, it was steel claws, leaving five deep cuts in the wood.

While I was reviving my future wife, someone struck the door a couple more times. Thank goodness our dacha is an old one, the door is solid oak, not plywood, so breaking it down isn't easy. Then everything calmed down, and Maya and I drank a glass of cognac to relieve the stress. She was barely able to stand, but with trembling lips she said:

"What an adventure... Now I will definitely never forget how you proposed to me."

I always later discovered in her amazing courage in the most difficult situations.  She's scared, but she's trying to make fun of it...

When we were exploring the garden that morning, searching for evidence of the monster's nocturnal raid, we saw impressive claw marks in the flower beds my mother had lovingly tended. Then, examining the old hanging ladder to the attic, we found something interesting there too: it was askew and even slightly warped, as if someone had tried to wind it up like a spring.

Wow! What strength that must have been! And if it was an animal—and Maya and I had thought so until now—then how dexterous its paws must have been to mangle a piece of iron like that?! I stood rooted to the spot until my thoughts were brought back to me by my neighbor, Uncle Sasha, on whose property we had spotted the nocturnal monster.  He put on his glasses, pensively examining his rain barrel, musing to himself:

"Who on earth would want to ruin it like that?! What a hooligan!"

I looked around—the barrel was crumpled like an empty cigarette pack. My God! What on earth does this mean? I showed my neighbor the stairs and the marks on the door. He clicked his tongue and rubbed his beard for a long time—I can't say if he was scared, but he was certainly puzzled. We decided not to show his wife the aftermath of the raid at all: she's a nervous woman, and already afraid to be alone in our village at night.

"Maybe we should keep an eye on him tonight? I have a hunting rifle…" the determined old man suggested.

"Uh-huh," I nodded, though not quite as confidently.

 And we sat in my car the entire following night: Uncle Sasha had rightly guessed that if we waited for the monster in the garden, it would sense an ambush. And from the house, we might not notice it if it didn't bother our dachas, but, say, visited the neighboring one... So we spent many hours in my old Moskvich, entertaining each other with scary stories—though none of them were as frightening as the one that had played out the night before.

Towards morning, probably around five o'clock, we both fell asleep without having seen anyone. The next night, I refused to go on guard duty, and Uncle Sasha, I think, was again sitting in ambush with a gun. But it was all in vain—the steel-clawed beast never showed up in our dacha community again.