**Rocky Shore**

As a child, I often visited my grandparents in Krasnodar Krai, while I myself lived with my parents in a city somewhere near the northern capital. Those “business trips” were pure joy for me—three whole months outside with friends, sun, heat, watermelons for ten kopecks a kilo. After the vile climate of the northwest of our Motherland, it felt like paradise. Many years have passed since then, and now I live with my girlfriend in that same city. In the summer of 2010 she told me that our climate was awful and that we should go rest somewhere down south—Egypt or Turkey, she suggested. And then it hit me: why Turkey, when I have relatives living in our own southern regions? That’s what we decided. A couple of weeks later we were already drinking tea in a train car rattling along the rails. Our destination was a stanitsa with a population of seventy thousand, five hundred kilometers from the Black Sea. After spending two days at my grandmother’s place, we were sent to the sea by bus. Honestly, that part of the journey was far less pleasant: nearly ten hours on a bus, in the heat, without air conditioning—pure torture.

We arrived at a Soviet-style pioneer camp located east of the settlement of Novomikhaylovsky. It was clearly built a long time ago, but the management took good care of it. The old cabins, though made of warped, dried-out boards, had been freshly painted. Overall, the camp was neat, well maintained, and didn’t give off any feeling of abandonment or decay. A few words on how we got there: in the stanitsa where my grandparents lived, there was only one machine-building plant, and one of its managers was a friend of my grandfather. Through him, my girlfriend and I were given a week-long stay at this camp almost for free. Essentially, we were sent there as factory workers on vacation.

The camp itself was located fairly high above sea level; from the edge of the cliff there was a magnificent view of the sea, and at night it was hard to imagine a more romantic place: a perfectly straight moonlit path appeared on the surface of the water, as if one could walk along it. The descent to the shore, however, was hell for anyone overweight (which, thank God, neither my girlfriend nor I are): a huge, long staircase winding through dense trees growing on the mountain slope. Just before the beach—about ten meters from the bottom—the stairs emerged from the foliage, so from the shore you could see who was coming down. Sometimes parents stood there, watching to make sure their children didn’t swim too far out. To climb the entire staircase took about fifteen minutes. Still, every five meters or so there was a lantern hanging above the steps, which made nighttime walks quite romantic. In short, everything was perfect for a young couple. The beach itself was a couple of kilometers from the resort settlement—if memory serves, it was also called Novomikhaylovsky—but it lay between two rocky ledges, creating the feeling that there was no civilization around for miles. My girlfriend and I loved that sense of isolation.

At the camp I ran into an old acquaintance of mine—Zhenya. He was originally from Krasnoyarsk, I think, and he too came every summer to his grandmother in that same stanitsa in Krasnodar Krai. As kids, we spent every summer together. I stayed in his cabin, while my girlfriend went to ours. While chatting with Zhenya, a seemingly hilarious idea popped into my head at the time: to scare my girlfriend. Laughing, Zhenya and I came up with a plan. On the last night before our departure, my girlfriend and I were going to take a nighttime walk along the beach. At that moment, Zhenya would emerge from the bushes wearing a black mask from *Scream* and start chasing us. We also agreed that while running away, I’d lead my girlfriend into a dead end among the rocks, and then Zhenya would take off the mask and we’d all have a good laugh.

The next night, just as planned, my girlfriend and I went for a walk on the beach. The weather was absolutely perfect: no wind, the water smooth as glass with a moonlit path across it, silence broken only by the gentle movement of the sea. We walked along the shore, pebbles clinking under our feet. Slowly, we began to approach the bushes, and I was already chuckling to myself. Suddenly Zhenya stepped out of the foliage—and I have to admit, he did it impressively. I was afraid he’d make noise or trip while climbing out of the bushes and ruin the prank from the start. But he didn’t let us down: he walked out in steady, straight steps, pebbles crunching beneath his feet. I felt my girlfriend’s nails dig into my hand so hard I almost screamed. For a second we froze. Then Zhenya suddenly moved toward us (he was about fifteen meters away at that point). At the same moment my girlfriend screamed and ran back the way we had come—toward the stairs—dragging me along. We ran very fast; my flip-flops flew off my feet, and she kept pulling me with her. I glanced back and saw Zhenya following us—walking with a quick, confident stride. In the moonlight he looked terrifying: he had found something like a long black robe reaching the ground, with a hood over his head. I smirked to myself and sharply pulled my girlfriend toward the dead end we had agreed on. In reality, we hadn’t run very far at all—the staircase with its lanterns was clearly visible from there. Reaching the dead end, I dragged my girlfriend into a corner hidden from the moonlight. We pressed our backs against the cold stone and froze. I covered her mouth with my hand and gestured, “Shh.” I was already bursting with laughter, ready to neigh like a horse at any second. My girlfriend, meanwhile, was trembling so hard I thought the rock behind us might start shaking.

Suddenly we heard pebbles crunching under footsteps very close by. The steps approached at the same steady pace. Zhenya appeared among the rocks, stopped abruptly, and seemed to peer into the darkness. My girlfriend clawed into me again. Zhenya began moving toward us, but now more slowly. After a few steps, he stopped again and started turning his head from side to side.

And then, for some reason, my urge to laugh vanished. The amusement was replaced by confusion, and a chill ran down my spine: I heard Zhenya sniffing as he turned his head. Yes—sniffing, like a dog tracking a scent. A thousand thoughts raced through my mind, and my body began to tremble. Still unable to fully believe what was happening, I froze and couldn’t move. And then my brain delivered a blood-chilling realization: the *Scream* mask Zhenya had—though black—was made of glossy plastic, which would have reflected the moonlight at least once, even under a hood. But under the hood of the thing standing in front of us, there was only solid blackness.

Now fully realizing that what stood seven meters away from us was not Zhenya at all, I knew I had to act. I turned and looked at my girlfriend—her eyes were squeezed shut, she was shaking, but making no sound. With my bare foot, I carefully felt around for a pebble, terrified of making the slightest noise. I managed to place one of the stones under my foot. The thing in front of us kept turning its head and sniffing, but didn’t move from its spot. Horror paralyzed my entire body, but I knew we couldn’t stand there all night without making a sound. Suddenly, one of the lanterns on the staircase flickered. I stared harder and realized it hadn’t flickered at all—someone passing by had simply blocked its light. And then cold sweat broke out all over me. In the distance, I saw Zhenya, holding the mask in his hand. I was ready to scream in terror, but thankfully restrained myself and in the next second kicked my leg and sent the stone flying forward. The pebble rang loudly—and at that very instant, the thing in front of us soared upward (I can’t even call it a jump) a couple of meters into the air and crashed down where the stone had landed.

My girlfriend screamed. Without losing a second, I grabbed her with all my strength and bolted toward the staircase. She kept screaming, her echo rolling across the beach, while all I could hear was the wild pounding of my heart and the thunder of pebbles behind us. The creature realized it had been tricked, and now it was charging after us—not the way it had moved before, but running, covering two or three meters with a single stride. I squeezed everything I had out of my body, and soon we were already running up the iron staircase…

When we reached our cabin, my girlfriend was sobbing uncontrollably, deep in hysteria. I rushed to calm her down and said it had all been a prank—that our pursuer was my friend Zhenya, whom I’d arranged with to scare her. I have to admit, I didn’t think she could hit that hard—but a second later I was sitting on the floor, my vision swimming from a solid punch to the jaw. She collapsed onto the bed, still sobbing, but after a while the sobs stopped and she fell asleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, still unable to believe what had happened. Why had Zhenya and I—

Zhenya! I had completely forgotten about him—he was still out there with that thing. I wanted to run back, but couldn’t. Fear wouldn’t let me get out of bed. I stayed there, staring at the ceiling, until exhaustion finally took over and I fell asleep.

The next day we packed our things and prepared to leave. My girlfriend didn’t speak to me, and the packing was gloomy. Fear still gnawed at me. While stuffing our bags into the luggage compartments, I ran into Zhenya. At first he didn’t want to talk to me either, but then he said that, as promised, he had gone down to the beach and hidden in the bushes. At some point he felt the need to relieve himself and went deeper into the shrubbery. Then a wild scream from my girlfriend echoed across the beach, followed by the sound of footsteps on the staircase. When he came out of the bushes, the beach was already empty. He thought we had scared him on purpose. In the end, Zhenya was offended, my girlfriend didn’t speak to me for two more days, and for a long time afterward I couldn’t sleep at night, shaking with terror.