But You’re Dead!”

**“**

Many mystical things have happened in my life, but despite regular contact with supernatural forces, none of them ever did me any harm. Trouble came, as they say, from where it was least expected.

My grandfather, while alive, was a very despotic man, and by the end of his life only my mother and I remained by his side. He died slowly and painfully, bedridden for a long time, his entire body wracked by convulsions. We fed him by force, and throughout that time he barely spoke. On the last evening of his life, I was sitting with him in the room, trying to feed him some porridge. He turned away and stared at the wall. Suddenly, he arched sharply, exhaled, “He’s here!” — and began to turn pale.

The doctors arrived surprisingly quickly. After examining the body, they said something strange: “Why did you only call now? By the looks of it, he’s been dead for several days already.” In the end, they attributed it to the fact that he had been practically immobile for a year and a half.

Three days later, strange rustling and creaking began in the house. Out of habit, I scolded the house spirit, telling it to quiet down, but the cats’ behavior was alarming — they started crawling under the blanket, as if hiding from something.

Four days later, the “memorial” vodka that one of the relatives had put out was covered with mold. “Wow, they didn’t even accept him into Nav,” my mother remarked with a certain malicious satisfaction.

The real trouble happened about a month later. I was sleeping alone. My husband was on shift, and my mother had gone to visit a friend for the weekend. I woke up to the cats softly howling. With a hazy, half-asleep gaze, I scanned the room and caught sight of a silhouette in the doorway. At first, I wasn’t even frightened, not understanding who was standing there. Then he suddenly moved closer to me. In the face twisted with malice, I recognized my grandfather. I remember saying or thinking (I can’t recall exactly): “Go away, you’re dead!” In response, my grandfather rasped distinctly: “I will kill you.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him. His eyes seemed too large, filled with hatred. I felt his cold fingers tightening around my throat, yet I couldn’t even raise my hands. The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was the loud howling of the cats, some gray shadow, and the light in the storage room turning on by itself…

When I woke up in the morning, I noticed several strange things in the room: the storage room door was ajar, chairs were lying on the floor, and upon examining the cats, it turned out that one of them was missing a fang. On top of that, bruised marks were found on my neck and chest.

I called my mother. During the day, we performed all the rituals recommended in such cases. The dead grandfather never appeared in our home again. I hope he never will.