A Doctor's Story

I work as an emergency room doctor. Among other things, I have to attend death verifications. I'll tell you about three cases now. Nothing united these three people in life: a pensioner, a representative of the old Moscow intelligentsia; a middle-aged man, likely without a specific occupation other than professional alcoholism; and a student at the same technical university. What united them was their deaths under extremely similar circumstances.

The first was an elderly woman. She lived with her husband, who the day before her death had gone to their dacha on some business. He decided to spend the night there and return to the city in the morning. Upon his return, he found his wife dead in the bathroom. She was lying on her back, her head toward the wall opposite the door (where the shower is). The old woman died of acute cardiac arrest. The main thing that struck me when I crossed the threshold of the bathroom was her expression. Corpses usually don't have any particular expression, but here a dead-eyed face stared back at me, distorted by some inhuman fear, the quintessence of horror. It was the most terrifying grimace I'd ever seen in my life. It's impossible to forget, impossible to confuse, difficult to describe, and I don't think any actor, even if their teacher was Stanislavsky three times and Nemirovich-Danchenko four times, could portray it. It was unpleasant to be there, and I tried to quickly complete all the formalities. I didn't notice one important detail: when my grandfather returned, the bathroom door was not only unlatched, but also wide open.

The next incident happened about a month later. An unemployed alcoholic, about forty years old. No one wanted him, he lived alone. When such people die, they're usually only found when the smell of death begins to emanate from their apartment. But then his drinking buddy, a neighbor, noticed the apartment door ajar in the morning. He peered inside, saw his friend's corpse, and called us and the cops. The body lay in the hallway, the same indescribable expression of inhuman fear on his face. His eyes were looking toward the slightly open front door. A cursory examination revealed no signs of foul play. Apparently, sudden cardiac arrest (SCD). The dead man's face was a dead ringer for the old woman's. At first glance, I broke out in a cold sweat, and goosebumps crawled across my body. In my mind, the two incidents merged into one. I imagined this man already in bed (he was wearing pajama bottoms, but naked from the waist up), hearing some noise from the front door, walking out of the room into the hallway, and seeing something that could kill a strong, rather callous man with just its appearance.

The call to the student came a couple of weeks after the drunk. He wouldn't have been discovered soon either, but his landlady came to check on him on a specific day every month. It turned out that this particular month, the day followed the night the student died. His body was lying in his bed, but his head was hanging down, away from the pillow. It was as if he was trying to jump away from something, toward the window (he lived, by the way, on the second floor, so escaping through the window was entirely possible). Why did I think he was trying to escape something unknown? The same expression of animal terror, the eyes staring at the half-open closet door. It was all painfully familiar...

I don't know what happened to those people. I don't want to think or imagine WHAT could have cracked the door of a room or the front door in the middle of the night and appeared before their eyes. WHAT kind of creature could have killed with just its appearance or its gaze. I couldn't write on the call sheet that these people died of FEAR, but that's exactly what happened. On that fateful night, they found themselves alone in their apartment, facing something unknown, face to face with SOMETHING so terrifying that it made their hearts fail...