The Guest

****

I’m not easily frightened. I’ve always believed that everything supernatural has a very prosaic explanation, merely colored with shades of the unknown and the otherworldly by the fears, impressionability, and excessive nervousness of overly sensitive people. That’s what I thought. Until recently. But this March everything changed—and changed radically.

March was damp and slushy, unpleasant, but my mood was excellent, because despite the early spring weather my sister had come to visit me. I made dinner, a small pie for tea. We hadn’t seen each other for two weeks—she had gone off to the sea, and now, full of impressions, she sipped her tea, showed me photos of fourteen wonderful days in the sun, and shared her stories. It was late, close to one in the morning, and my sister began to get ready to leave. She didn’t have far to go, but her husband had already hinted via text message that it was time to wrap things up.

I decided to walk her out. To be honest, it wasn’t so much hospitality that motivated me as necessity—I needed to take out the trash. During cooking I’d made quite a mess, and the garbage bag was standing in the corner.

I live on the third floor of a nine-story building and have lived there for two years. There is a garbage chute in the building, but it doesn’t work—it was welded shut even before I moved in. So there’s a container under the entrance for that purpose. I decided to combine taking my sister to her car with this little errand.

We went outside, said a brief goodbye—helped along by the cold, damp March night—and I headed back home. Entering the stairwell, I briskly started climbing the stairs. It’s worth saying a few words about the stairwell. Like thousands of other concrete-panel buildings, mine looked quite miserable—not dirty, no, but shabby. Dim lighting that only some floors could boast; the stair flights themselves weren’t lit at all. On the first floor a bulb burned proudly—naturally forty watts; we’re not blind, after all—still better than feeling our way in the dark. On the second floor and on mine, the third, those modest bulbs were also lit.

I flew up to the second floor, passed the dark flight, and found myself on my familiar landing. Jangling my keys, I walked toward my door—but then, for some reason, I stopped. I often replay that day in my head, all the sensations and thoughts, everything I remember about those minutes, but I still can’t understand what stopped me in that second. There was complete silence, the same temperature, the same damp air; my feet had counted these steps a thousand times, my eyes had seen this scene before. Maybe that was exactly it? Maybe my peripheral vision, at some deep level, caught something that hadn’t been there before—something that shouldn’t have been there at all. Fidgeting with my keys, I stopped and turned around. The dim light illuminated the stairs to the fourth floor and part of the landing—everything as usual: gray concrete steps, dull tile. Everything? No. Not everything.

In the area that didn’t fall into the corridor of light, where the welded garbage chute pipe rested in half-darkness, there was something. There, between the wall and the garbage chute, someone was hiding. My eyes, accustomed to the dim light, easily picked out human outlines in the figure standing there. He—and it was a he—stood with his left side toward me; I could partially make out his shape and silhouette. He was thin—very thin. Tall and hunched. At first I thought he was some kind of drug addict: a face pale as canvas, icicles of overgrown hair, extreme thinness. My first thought was a junkie who, in a state of drug-induced hallucination, had chosen such a strange place.

To get a better look at the inter-floor guest, I needed to step back a few paces. Uneasily, I did so—a decision I regret every day.

He stood motionless, which immediately struck me as unnatural, because I didn’t notice even the slightest sway. His arms hung down, and it was those arms that brought the first wave of terror over me. His arms—more precisely, one arm—was unnaturally long. The white-gray hand had impossibly long fingers; the arm hung limp. The hunched figure, like a statue, froze in some unnatural bend. I still couldn’t clearly see his face in detail, but the profile was terrifying—his face was very long, it gleamed pale in the half-light like fabric. I stared at it for several seconds, and then it was as if I’d been doused with icy water—there was no nose on his face. I saw a profile, and the nose should have been the first thing to stand out, but there was nothing there—no protrusion at all, just a completely smooth surface. I didn’t see a mouth, and for some reason I didn’t see eyes either. I saw only a dark hollow.

At that moment, the obvious arguments of logic began to fail me. And then my gaze fell on his feet—bare feet. How? How could he be barefoot when it was cold March outside, ice, melting snow, and minus two degrees? I froze like a statue. For some reason, it wasn’t the absence of a nose that terrified me most, but those feet—those bare feet. They were as white as the other exposed parts of his body, but, like the hands, improbably elongated—an unimaginable length of foot. I swayed. The sight of this motionless entity frightened me so much that I lost the ability to move for several seconds. I just stood there, staring at the tall, pale figure with unnatural limbs, frozen, noseless, and barefoot. I knew only one thing—this was not a drug addict. This was not a human at all.

At some point I came out of my stupor and began to back toward my door, but in my hand—perhaps from an involuntary tremor—the keys clinked. All this time I had been staring without blinking at the terrifying guest. He abruptly turned his head toward me, and now I saw his entire face. Elongated, colorless—there was not only no nose, but no hint of anything through which one breathes; it was as if it had been erased, or not yet drawn. What I had taken for deeply set eyes was nothing of the sort. There were no eyes at all—just two huge black hollows, as if the eye sockets fell straight into emptiness. There was also a mouth. Very small. It looked at me, though it had nothing with which to see. It saw. It studied me.

Turning his whole body to face me as swiftly and convulsively as he had turned his head, he now stood facing me. Dry, very tall, in the same pose, but facing me. He slowly opened his small mouth and emitted a drawn-out, moaning, low and creaking “O-o-o.” It sounded like an exhalation—deep, rumbling, very quiet. In panic, I finally managed to break free of the paralysis and darted for the door. Anyone who knows what stress is will understand—at such moments time seems to stretch, to last an eternity. It felt like I would never get the key into the lock, that I would never open the door. I heard the pulsing blood in my ears and the slapping sound—huge feet slapping rhythmically but loudly against the tile.

The door gave way, and I didn’t enter it—I didn’t even fly in—I rolled into the hallway. I locked it so fast that I smashed my finger against the latch knob. I collapsed on the floor right in the corner of the entryway. I have a good door, strong, but somehow I could still hear those slapping sounds approaching. It was coming, coming toward me; it knew I was here.

Another inexplicable oddity of my own behavior—why didn’t I run into the rooms, or the kitchen, or the bathroom? Why was I lying in the corner of the entryway listening to that disgusting slapping?

It stopped under my door. Silence fell; it stood there. Then slowly, almost soundlessly, it tugged the handle. Down to the stop and up. Then again and again, more insistently. Within a minute the handle was clicking nonstop, the door shaking. I pressed my head into my knees, covered my ears with my palms, and screamed. I don’t remember exactly what I screamed, but it stopped. Silence returned—complete. For several seconds I sat motionless, but no sounds or movements came from behind the door. I slowly stood, approached the door, listened—nothing. I didn’t look through the peephole; I was afraid, remembering how silently and motionlessly it had stood by the garbage chute.

I went to the kitchen. Turned on the light, collapsed onto a chair, shaking all over like a rabbit, poured myself some tea, mentally regretting that I didn’t keep any alcohol at home. I tried to understand what it had been. My battered logic refused to produce even a remotely decent explanation. I didn’t know what to do. I just dragged myself to my bedroom and fell onto the bed.

Sleep was out of the question. I lay there thinking. But I couldn’t shake one sensation—the sensation of danger. Everything seemed over, I’d escaped, I was home, but the anxiety only grew stronger; the feeling of an unseen presence drove me into panic. I looked around. The room was empty; the streetlight illuminated it well enough. What was wrong—room, window, corners… The window. Or beyond the window. What was outside the window?

I jumped as if pushed, slowly approached, carefully peered out so I wouldn’t be visible in the opening. Directly opposite me, craning its neck and staring its bottomless eye sockets straight into my soul, stood him. Sticky sweat broke out all over my body. He opened his unnaturally small mouth, emitting a sound I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t recoil or look away; fear had completely bound my being. Then he staggered back, and his mouth spread into something like a smile—more precisely, a grin. Inside there was nothing, the same emptiness as in the eye sockets, black and tar-like. That grin said only one thing—he saw me through and through, he had found me, and I couldn’t hide. From that grin I reeled back and leapt onto the bed. Panic. I was in panic.

My phone! I needed to call someone! I needed to ask for help! Whom? The police? A psychiatric hospital? An ambulance? An ambulance! Yes—the only “ambulance” that wouldn’t bring orderlies and would actually help: my sister and her husband. I frantically dug into the pockets of my pajama pants, but there was no phone. Of course—it was in the kitchen, where I’d left it before stepping out for a moment with my sister and the trash. I jumped up, glancing at the window, went into the dark hallway. The living room door was open, lighting the room; I went into the kitchen. There it was, lying on the table. I called—silence. No surprise—it was two in the morning. I dialed again. Rings… rings… Out of the corner of my ear I caught some sound from the bedroom.

Completely in the grip of terror, I slowly walked down the hallway. There was the lit doorway of the living room; involuntarily I turned my head toward that meager flow of light and went limp, dropping the phone from my hands. There, right behind the balcony door, stood him. He stood and watched. Bar­ing the bottomless hole of his mouth in a grotesque semblance of a malicious grin, he stood there, leaning his bony hands against the balcony door. I wanted to scream, but fear formed a lump in my throat. I don’t know what would have happened next, but the deathly silence of horror was torn apart by a ringing phone. On the screen smiled my sister’s photo. That moment was enough to break my panicked paralysis. I grabbed the phone and dashed back the other way. I rolled into the bathroom, switching on the light as I went, instinctively hiding from the windows beyond which he waited. With hands shaking like an epileptic’s, I finally answered the unceasing call. My sister was shrieking fearfully on the line; I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I wanted to scream, but I could produce nothing but a rasp. For several seconds I only rasped and sobbed, then my brother-in-law took the phone. He firmly and calmly asked what had happened to me. His voice somehow relaxed me—just enough that I could force out, in a creaky voice not my own:

“Lesha, come quickly. He’s already on the balcony. He’ll come in here. He’ll take me.”

After that I was overwhelmed by hysteria—wild, panicked—I simply howled into the phone. Somewhere far away, as if in another reality, my brother-in-law was shouting; I heard only:

“Who is he?! Where are you now?!”

But all that was far away. Here was me, huddled in the shower stall. A click—the balcony opening. He was here, and he was coming for me… My howling was cut short by my sister’s shrill scream. She shouted:

“Don’t hang up under any circumstances! We’re coming! Put it on speaker and talk to us!”

Like someone hypnotized, I followed the simple instruction. Now I wasn’t verbally alone. And meanwhile my hearing caught the distant but so familiar wet slapping on the parquet floor—steady and terrifying.

I don’t remember what my sister was saying or what I answered. I remember only my frenzied terror and the approaching slapping. It was getting closer. Horror bound my body; my ears rang. He stopped—he was behind the door. That silence drove me mad. After a few minutes I noticed the slow movement of the handle, cautious and soundless. I braced myself for the door to be forced, but suddenly the light went out. I wanted to scream, but could only rasp. The only thing separating me from pitch-black darkness was the phone screen with my sister’s smiling photo. I think I was whispering something to her, and she was trying to calm me, when her voice was interrupted by a powerful blow to the door. Then he scratched at it and emitted that drawn-out “O-o-o.” There was so much menace, terror, and inhumanity in that creaking, low sound—and also some kind of emptiness; the sound seemed to come from an abyss. He kept scratching and scratching, tugging at the handle, trying to break through the door. Then everything went quiet, and my phone suddenly went dead.

Pitch-black, sticky darkness swallowed me. I saw nothing and heard nothing—not a sound. I pressed myself into the corner and, it seemed to me, even stopped breathing. And in that hellish darkness, that unimaginable silence, I heard the sound of metal hitting tile. It was the handle. It was the end. Nothing protected me from him anymore. Now something far worse than death awaited me. His gaze into my soul had told me only one thing—he had come for it. He didn’t need my life; he needed my soul.

My heart pounded wildly, blood hammered in my temples like a bell, the back of my head grew hot, but icy sweat drenched me all over. I heard that drawn-out creaking “o-o-o” again, the door scraping, and I thought I saw a grin and empty eye sockets right in front of me—but at that moment my consciousness swam, the back of my head burned, my heart thudded, filling my entire being, and I simply blacked out.

When I came to, there was blinding light around me—it seemed absurdly impossible. People were everywhere; my sister was sitting nearby. In the doorway stood a man in uniform—a police officer—talking to my brother-in-law. From the neighboring room came the quiet voices of other men (as it turned out, two more officers on duty).

Later my sister and her husband told me that when I called, they immediately realized something was wrong and rushed to help me. As they drove and exchanged fragmented words—if it could even be called a conversation—they began to understand that it wasn’t just someone breaking into my place, that something terrible was happening in my apartment. Even as they were getting into the car, my brother-in-law called the police, saying someone had broken in. They arrived almost at the same time; the police were only a few minutes behind. When they approached the door, they noticed some wet tracks—thought it was melted snow (March slush)—but later it turned out to be something like oil. They didn’t have to struggle long with the door; my sister had a key because of my absent-mindedness—I’d lost my keys five times, if not more.

They unlocked it and went in. Dark, quiet. They called out—silence. They rushed through the rooms; my sister went to the bathroom and turned on the light. I was sitting pressed against the wall, unconscious. They pulled me out and carried me to the bedroom, then began inspecting the apartment. The balcony was open; from it led a trail of the same oily tracks to the bathroom. The bathroom handle was torn out, the door smeared with the same substance—the balcony door too. No other traces. None at all. How and where he disappeared is unclear; presumably he went back to the balcony along his own tracks. Under the bedroom window, where I’d seen him standing, there was a large puddle of that oily sludge.

Experts took a sample. It turned out to be some strange mixture with a large amount of resins. I understood little and didn’t want to. I left the apartment that same day. I know I will never return there. I put it up for sale. I live with my sister now; I can’t be alone. I’m afraid of everything. I don’t know what to do.

Several months have passed. I haven’t slept without the light on even once; the curtains are always tightly closed. I’m waiting for him. I know that once he sees a soul, he takes it. I survived; he was scared off. But how long will I remain safe? What if he returns, if he finds me? I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know where those empty tunnel-eye sockets into the abyss, that hellish grin, and those bony fingers of impossible length await me. I live—or perhaps I’m simply waiting to finish living.