The Albino

**“”**

I have no rational explanation for what happened. And most importantly, I don’t know why it happened to me. There’s no logic in it at all.

I am certain that by winter, when the days become much shorter than the nights, I will no longer be alive.

My name is Pavel. I’m 17 years old, soon to be 18. I live with my parents in a two-room apartment near Aviamotornaya. My mother is a former doctor, my father a former process engineer. They are both retired now. I am not their biological child — I grew up in an orphanage. They adopted me when they were already close to fifty.

My parents used to spend most of their time at the dacha anyway, and after I finished school they said they would stay there permanently. We have an insulated house there, practically built by my father with his own hands, with all utilities.

I don’t have a girlfriend yet. And I don’t have close friends either — at least not close enough that, if they heard my story, they wouldn’t think I’d lost my mind.

After finishing school, on my parents’ advice, I enrolled at MEPhI. Almost all my friends left Moscow for the summer, while I stayed behind. Hanging around at the dacha with my parents felt too childish, so I mostly stayed home, chatted on social networks, and occasionally went drinking in the city center with random guys.

There wasn’t much to do. I was waiting for classes to start as soon as possible. Then, about two weeks ago, one of my former classmates messaged me — he was also bored in Moscow.

We talked about where people from our class had enrolled, discussed TV series we were watching and where we downloaded them, agreed to get drunk at my place sometime that week. Then he told me he was really into creepypastas and sent me links to a couple of websites.

At that point, I had no idea what creepypasta even was. He started describing how he liked to stay alone in his apartment at night, turn off all the lights, and read creepypastas — and afterward he’d be too scared to even go to the kitchen for water.

I laughed. It’s just text — how can you be afraid of text? I usually laugh at horror movies too, and this was just letters on a screen. He got offended, said I should at least read some before arguing, and stopped replying.

I clicked one of the links he’d sent, completely sure none of it would scare me. I read about five of those stories, but even food labels in the grocery store sometimes scared me more. I barely remembered anything — except for the last story.

No, I wasn’t scared while reading it, but the facts interested me. It was about Africans with albinism — people born without melanin, the pigment that gives color to skin, hair, and eyes. Albino Africans are brutally murdered by their own people — literally hacked to pieces and harvested for organs — because they believe body parts of albinos grant strength and health. Legs, arms, genitals, eyes, hair — everything is sold as amulets.

Because of their corpse-white skin, Tanzanians call albinos “zeru,” which means “ghost.” The creepypasta described how hunters armed with machetes killed a local fisherman. They slit his throat, drained his blood, cut open his belly, gutted him, then dismembered him, taking everything valuable — tongue, arms, legs, head. Like a butcher carving a pig. But the “zeru” returned from the dead and slaughtered everyone who carried amulets made from his body.

I admit, it was engaging — but nothing more. I calmly closed my laptop and went to sleep.

I dreamed of a recursion of my own sleep — as if I were lying in bed, but something was waking me. I couldn’t tell what. I was overwhelmed by an inexplicable anxiety. I got out of bed and went into the hallway — something pulled me there like a magnet. I knew the source of my fear was there.

The hallway was dark, everything in its usual place, but my attention was drawn to a glowing point — the peephole in the front door, filled with light from the stairwell. I walked slowly across the cold floor, staring at it. With every step, my anxiety grew into panic, even though I saw no threat.

Finally, I looked into the glowing hole.

The stairwell was empty. Still, terror flooded me as I stared into the distorted space of the peephole. I wanted to turn away and run back to bed, hide under the blanket like a seven-year-old. But my eyelid — it was stuck to the peephole!

And suddenly someone… though no one was there… someone covered the opening!

I woke up drenched in sweat. For a long time I listened to my heart pounding so loudly it felt like it filled the room. Somewhere deep in my mind was the certainty that this hadn’t been an ordinary nightmare — though I couldn’t explain why.

I didn’t try to. Instead, I tried to drown the thought out with all my strength. I even quietly sang a lullaby my mother used to sing to me when she took me from the orphanage.

I fell asleep again only after dawn. The sleep was shallow and restless, but dreamless. I woke up early anyway, exhausted, like I’d been drinking all night.

All day I felt boiled. I took citramon for my headache. Even though I desperately wanted to sleep, memories of the peephole dream kept me awake as long as possible.

Until about 2 a.m. I scrolled through VK public pages with memes, hoping to cheer myself up. Eventually I gave up and dropped my head onto the pillow.

And again, the same dream recursion. I woke in bed and, shaking with unbearable fear, crept toward the peephole to find the source of my terror.

For minutes — or maybe hours — I stared through the peephole at the ominously empty stairwell. Suddenly I realized I needed to stop looking and return to bed.

I turned and walked back. A grave-like cold washed over me. I was freezing so badly my teeth chattered like my jaw muscles were spasming — I was afraid I’d bite my tongue.

I was relieved I could finally crawl under the blanket and warm up.

I lay down, covered myself, and tried to sleep — but felt something hard under my pillow. I reached my hand beneath it. I touched something strange that made everything inside me clench. I threw the pillow aside—

I woke up screaming.

Or rather, I thought I was screaming, but in reality I was moaning and wheezing — my throat had seized up and my body was rigid with terror.

I was completely paralyzed. I couldn’t move even a finger. I thought I’d suffocate and die — nothing in my body felt like it was working properly. For several seconds I lay there, stiff as a board, eyes rolling, wheezing.

What did I see under the pillow? In my dream, it was a severed hand. White like a maggot. Fingers curled in their final spasm, black dried blood caked under gnawed fingernails.

Sleep was out of the question. It was only 3:30 a.m. I turned on my laptop and played a movie people in the comments said was hilarious.

I don’t remember its title now — back then I just stared at the screen like it was a wall, not processing anything.

Still, the night passed. The next day I moved through a fog, exhausted after two nights of brutal insomnia. I went to the grocery store and stood there for nearly an hour, unable to decide what to buy.

I went to bed early, before 10 p.m. I know it was stupid, but I mechanically checked under my pillow. Nothing was there. To calm down, I remembered how my dad and I once carried things to the attic at the dacha and he fell off the ladder onto me. It hurt then — now it’s funny.

I slept for twelve hours. Absolute bliss. When I opened my eyes, I was ecstatic — no dreams. The cursed nightmares didn’t return.

I would’ve slept longer, but my phone rang. It was gone. It kept ringing and ringing as I searched — long ringing usually means something’s wrong.

I clearly remembered putting my phone on the bedside table. But now the sound came from a dusty corner behind the bed — as if someone had thrown it there while I slept. I hadn’t touched it. Realizing where the sound came from made me nervous. I reached for it and saw it was my mom calling.

My parents were calling from the dacha, asking how I was. That morning, my mom noticed a missed call on her phone — from deep in the night.

And you know what? They said that missed call was from me.

I wanted to rush to the dacha, but for some reason I was afraid I’d bring danger to them — and I loved them more than anything. Besides, I convinced myself it was just a phone glitch. After all, I hadn’t had nightmares that night.

I calmed down. Realized I hadn’t seen any friends in a while, called an old buddy, and arranged to meet the next day.

I spent the evening binge-watching a full season of a show about people with superpowers — garbage, but I wouldn’t mind having some. Before bed, I took a shower to sleep better.

I lathered shampoo into my hair and stepped under the shower. As water ran over my face, even through closed eyes I noticed movement in the bathroom. Something blocked part of the light.

With foam still in my eyes, I wiped my face with one hand and reached forward with the other, trying to find the shower curtain. But instead of fabric, my fingers touched bumpy skin.

I nearly died of terror. I recoiled, slipped, lost my balance, and crashed into the tub, hitting my head on the wall. I blacked out.

I must’ve been unconscious only briefly. Water was pouring onto my face when I woke up. The bathroom was empty. The back of my head hurt and itched — I suspected a concussion.

I dried off and collapsed onto my bed. I was thinking how absurd it would be to die by smashing my head in the bathroom when I heard a strange noise from the kitchen. A rustle. A slap. Another slap. Like wet feet walking across the floor.

Then the lights went out throughout the apartment.

God. I nearly cried. From fear. From the fact that all this shit was happening to me.

Someone was in the kitchen.

I turned on my phone flashlight and, like in a nightmare, walked down the hallway — not toward the front door, not toward the peephole, but toward the kitchen.

Because IT was already inside my home.

I held the flashlight in one hand and covered my mouth with the other so I wouldn’t scream.

I turned the corner and stood at the kitchen entrance.

A dark silhouette.

A horrific dark silhouette was waiting for me. A huge man. So huge I couldn’t possibly fight him — he could kill me effortlessly if he wanted to. I couldn’t feel my body from fear. My hand treacherously raised the beam of light from the floor upward.

IT stood barefoot on my kitchen floor — slimy feet stuck with fish scales. Dirty rags instead of clothes.

Pale skin showed beneath the rags, covered in disgusting bumpy red and brown pigment spots — nevi. Instead of a left hand, a rotting stump hung.

The flashlight revealed its face — ulcerated, covered in nevi. White hair. And the eyes…

He was looking at me. With frozen, light-blue, transparent eyes.

The creature moved its lips, but I couldn’t understand a word. Instead, nauseating gurgling came out, and slime began to pour from its mouth — algae mixed with half-digested weeds.

IT picked up a kitchen knife.

I was paralyzed, ready to die.

But it stabbed itself in the belly. Guts spilled out — along with live fish. The fish flopped on the floor, gasping for air, writhing, beating its tail, splattering slime from the intestines onto the walls and onto me.

Drops hit my face. Sensation returned — and I ran.

I ran from the kitchen to my room, shoved a chair against the door, and collapsed. I vomited, shaking violently. Everything spun — I barely knew where I was.

Since then, I often hear him walking at night. Sometimes from the next room, sometimes from the kitchen. One slimy step, then another. If your eyes are closed, he comes very close.

And I know what he wants. Because eventually I heard his voice — I understood what he’d tried to say back in the kitchen.

Late one evening I was on the subway platform, watching for the train in the tunnel. Aside from a bum on a bench, I was alone and stood close to the edge.

“Will you die on your own, or should I push you?” I heard a dull voice say.

The bum lifted his head. A white face, light-blue frozen eyes, covered entirely in nevi.

I jumped into the arriving train.

Another time, I ran when I heard those words crossing a bridge at night.

Will you die on your own, or should I push you?..

Maybe I’ve gone insane. Maybe it’s all in my head. But when you read these stories online — how do you know what they awaken in your subconscious? What if what authors think is fiction actually exists?

I’ve learned one thing: IT avoids daylight.

So I decided to sleep during the day.

But what will happen later, when I have to go to university?

Somehow, I know for certain: when the night becomes long and the shrinking day too short, I will no longer be alive.