She Wasn’t There

****

In the autumn of 2011, I started drinking heavily. Not around the clock, but every evening when I came home from work, I’d buy a bottle of vodka, drink it alone with dinner, and sink into a twilight state of mind until morning. Then I’d drag my hungover head off the pillow and go to work. Sometimes I was late, but never so late as to skip the whole day. You can judge me if you like, but I had a “valid” reason for my binge: that autumn, I lost Karina.

By that time, Karina and I had been dating for two years. She was extraordinary—a girl people would call “not of this world.” At twenty-six, she was still essentially a child: naive, trusting, crying and laughing at the smallest things, amazed at everything around her, hopelessly scatterbrained. Even her own parents felt a little awkward around her. But this childlike nature was the thread that bound me to her: in my thirty-five years, I’d lived with many women and endured all their cunning and complexity. With Karina, everything was simple and bright. She loved me sincerely, and I was head over heels for her. That’s how we lived, probably on the verge of getting married, when that cold autumn took her from me. Her own carelessness was to blame—she was lost in thought, as usual, and stepped into the street on a red light. I wasn’t there with her; otherwise, I would have stopped her, as I had dozens of times before. Every time I warned her to be careful and not drift through life in a daze, she’d smile apologetically and promise to improve.

She didn’t. The driver of a Toyota couldn’t stop in time. He called an ambulance. Karina was taken to the hospital with a severe traumatic brain injury and two spinal fractures. She survived three days. On the second day, she briefly regained consciousness, and we spoke. I told her she would recover, and she believed me. She worried about having caused me so much trouble and begged me not to blame the driver—after all, it was her fault for not noticing anything stepping off the curb. Then there was a new hemorrhage in her brain; Karina went into a coma and died.

I kept my word to her and didn’t lash out at the driver. It was obvious he wasn’t at fault; he was driving in his lane at a legal speed and following the traffic signal. His name was Yegor; at the hospital, he approached me tearfully asking for forgiveness. I, feeling like a stone had replaced my heart, told him to forget it and move on.

Weeks and months passed. I drank and drank, somehow teetering on the edge of collapse. Then, in early November, Yegor called me. When we met the first time, he had asked for my number “just in case”—probably to verify Karina’s words in case of a police investigation. Hesitantly, he asked if we could meet soon. I brusquely refused, but he insisted, claiming he needed help from me. I sensed genuine fear in his voice and agreed to meet him that evening at a small cafe downtown.

Yegor came alone, looking worn-out, sleepless. We sat down and ordered food. He mumbled and circled the point, but when I demanded he explain, he confessed that strange things had been happening in his apartment, and he thought it was connected to Karina.

Two weeks earlier, he’d started hearing footsteps in his hallway at night. At first, he saw nothing, but after a few days, he noticed a shadow slipping along the wall. It resembled a female figure. Naturally, Yegor was terrified, but didn’t initially link it to Karina’s death—until he heard screams. The same scream, every night. He recognized it: it was Karina’s scream from that fateful day. He would never mistake it.

“She wants to harm me,” Yegor said, hopelessly. “Each time she comes closer. I tried staying at friends’, but I have only a couple, so eventually I must return. Where else can I go? This is my only apartment, and my relatives are far away, in Blagoveshchensk…”

He wanted me to spend the night in his apartment, to see the shadow of Karina and somehow calm her—explain that Yegor wasn’t to blame.

At first, I was furious. Karina hadn’t wronged anyone in life and had even said before her death that she bore Yegor no ill will—so how dare he slander her in this way? But the guy looked genuinely scared, and I suspected he might have cracked under guilt. When I suggested a psychiatrist, Yegor shook his head, insisting it was real.

“You’re the only one who can help me now, the only one who could make her leave,” he begged. “Would I have called you otherwise if I weren’t desperate?”

Of course, I could have walked away. But I agreed. Looking back, I think it wasn’t just to help Yegor—it was a mad hope to speak to Karina one last time, to say the words I never got to at her bedside. A foolish hope, because until that moment, I had never believed in the supernatural. But my love hadn’t faded, and I clung to that straw.

So I found myself in Yegor’s apartment. A two-room flat on the third floor in a quiet neighborhood. Spartan furnishings. I arrived late and immediately asked to sleep. Yegor made a bed for me on his mattress while he slept on the floor. I undressed and lay down. Sleep was slow in coming, my head crowded with useless thoughts, but eventually, exhaustion won.

I woke to Yegor shaking me. The bedroom light was on, and he was sweating.

“She’s here…” he whispered, barely moving his lips.

I sat up. Someone was walking across the linoleum in the short hallway between the rooms. I shivered. The steps were nothing like Karina’s.

Pale Yegor stood by the bed, watching me, waiting for me to step out and speak to the ghost. Half-awake, I took a few steps toward the door—and then a loud scream erupted in the hallway. That was Karina’s voice. I knew it for certain. The scream was full of pain and terror. I charged forward, forgetting she had been dead for months. I flung the door open. It was dark, but in the dim light from the bedroom I saw a gray shadow frozen near the doorframe. It stirred, turned, and slid toward the kitchen, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. I froze.

It was her. The silhouette of the woman I had loved for two blissful years—and still loved. Her gait, hair, shoulders, height—all matched. It was Karina.

What happened after that is fragmented in my memory. I ran after the shadow, as if catching it could do something. It sped up; I kept pace. The chase continued nearly to the hallway. I almost caught up to it by the wall. Then… the shadow’s form blurred, no longer human. A coldness like no other struck me to the bone, crushing my chest and clouding my mind. If I’d stepped closer, I think I would have died on the spot.

The shadow flickered along the wall toward the entrance and vanished. I stood frozen until Yegor, finding courage, shook me awake. I didn’t answer his questions about speaking to the ghost; I went to the bedroom, dressed, said a curt goodbye, and left. I never returned.

Ten days later, Yegor was found dead in the bedroom. His heart had stopped during the night. I know this because my work allows me to find such things quickly. I wasn’t surprised. That entity in the shadow would eventually get its victim.

I remember that dreadful night whenever I read stories about ghosts terrorizing their loved ones, despite having been kind in life.

I refuse to believe it was my Karina. She was pure and good. I don’t know what happens after people leave us, but such horrifying transformations are impossible. That creature on the wall may have worn her shape, sounded like her—but it was false.

The real Karina is in heaven.

And she wasn’t there.