**A Stormy Night**

It was last autumn. A stormy night—wind howling, rain lashing down, lightning going berserk. I was coming back from a relative’s wake (naturally, a bit drunk). I parted ways with a friend at a turnoff and ducked into a 24-hour shop because I planned to “top up”: it was too early to go home, my little daughter hadn’t gone to bed yet, and I didn’t want to show off in front of her while drunk.

After buying 0.25 liters of vodka and pouring it into a juice carton, I sat down on a bench by a Khrushchev-era apartment block to wait it out. My mood was awful—the relative who’d died was very close to me, and he wasn’t the first dear person I’d lost lately. So I started a drunken monologue—more precisely, a “conversation” with God—boiling down to one question: “What do you want from me? Why are you testing me like this? Say it straight—what do you want? Or at least give me a sign!”

At the end of my rambling monologue, a powerful gust of wind burst into the closed courtyard and knocked over my bag with the “vodka juice.” In my drunken delirium it seemed to me that the gusts were pushing me in a specific direction—like, go there, that’s your sign. It was around ten o’clock, but the weather had made the city feel dead. I walked about a kilometer along empty streets until I came to the Republican Children’s Hospital. For some reason there was no security in sight, and I climbed over the joke of a fence (only up to the neck).

The long building was being blasted by the wind so hard the wooden frames were creaking. I went up to the nearest door (which turned out to be an entrance to the basement). I started fiddling with the lock using my key ring. I worked as a locksmith, so I popped the simple lock in two minutes by loosening the cylinder. I opened the door, went inside, and started going down (almost sliding) the steps. The corridor was dim, lit by a single bulb. Bundles of mattresses, gurneys smeared with dirt… I sobered up a bit and realized that for a stunt like this I could get “locked up” for breaking and entering. But then another gust of wind rushed in through the open door behind me, and at the same time, from the dark end of the corridor, I heard a child crying.

I ran down the entire staircase in an instant and around the corner collided with two silhouettes. One small, crying; the other huge—almost two meters tall—wrapped in a gray, cloak-like robe. Seeing me, it stretched its unnaturally long arms toward me, fingers tipped with curved claws. I threw a right hook, then a left. The body under my fists felt unnaturally soft, like jelly. The thing reeled back. I kicked the devil-knows-what in the knee and it fell flat on its back—but managed to grab my boot, slicing it open with its sharp claws so that I started bleeding. I smashed down with an elbow; it flew left into a corner. Meanwhile the child slipped between me and the wall and ran up the stairs. In the murky light I saw it was a girl about ten years old.

Distracted by the girl, I lost track of the filth. The creature crouched and sprang at me from the corner—animal-like, pushing off with all its limbs. I barely dodged, and it slammed into the wall, tearing my jacket a bit (and that jacket even a knife couldn’t cut!). I ungracefully kicked the thing in the backside and started beating it with all my proletarian hatred. A heavyweight I knew would’ve been knocked out cold from blows like that. This one jumped up and ran for the stairs. I chased it—what if it grabbed the girl again? But no—it bolted for the fence and vaulted over it with incredible agility; any track athlete would’ve been jealous. The girl was nowhere to be seen. After standing there alone for a bit, I closed the door and, limping, went home.

At home I showed my wife the torn jacket, ripped combat boots, and battered hands covered with some black crust (I assume it was the creature’s blood). That night I dreamed of a cemetery. I saw a grave with the photograph of that girl and a name: “Maryanova I. M.” Year of death—2009. The grave opened, movie-style; workers pulled out the coffin, opened it; the funeral played out—everything in reverse, basically…

The next day I saw a police patrol near the hospital. I was afraid to go any closer.