Monitor

During my student years, I lived with my parents in an apartment near the train station. My parents were from the countryside, and relatives of varying distances would periodically visit the city. One day, the son of a second cousin I'd only met once before (let's call him Kolya) arrived. He was my age (I was 20). He said he was moving to the city to earn money and didn't want a place to live, only asking if I could keep his things at our house for a couple of days until he brought the rest and sorted out his rented apartment. I agreed. My parents had just gone on vacation, so I simply left his things in a corner of the hallway—an inflatable mattress, a bag of clothes, and a pretty decent CRT monitor for the time.

After putting his things down, Kolya went about his business, and I returned home that evening and went to bed. That night, I heard some strange rustling sounds in my sleep, but I wasn't alarmed—I thought the cat was scratching the couch again.

In the morning, I got up as usual, washed my face, had breakfast, and turned on the computer. Only later, and then only by chance, did I notice a thin, red, spiderweb-like blotch appearing behind the monitor's glass. No suspicious thoughts crossed my mind at the time—I figured it was some kind of malfunction. Later that day, Kolya dropped by for a minute, dropped off another bag, and ran off. I didn't have time to tell him about the monitor, but I noticed he looked unwell—pale, with dark circles under his eyes, darting eyes, and a rather worn-out appearance.

I went to bed—and in the middle of the night, I started hearing rustling sounds again. I didn't get up, wasn't even scared, just propped myself up on my elbow. Something bright seemed to flash past the open door into the hallway. There was another rustling sound and then it died down. I decided I was dreaming it all (I'd had these experiences before, imagining sounds and movements at night), and fell asleep again.

The next day, I noticed the monitor again—the web-like blot had become clearer and slightly resembled a human figure, and several white threads were caught between the glass and the plastic frame. I was surprised, but again, for some reason, I wasn't scared.

Kolya hadn't come home, but his family called from the village several times. They sounded hysterical and didn't want to explain anything, only asking if Kolya had come home and for me to call them if I saw him. All this strangeness sent me off to bed a little tense, and I didn't sleep properly—I was more like dozing and tossing and turning, which is why I clearly heard scraping sounds during the night.

In the morning, with a vague premonition, I approached the monitor in the hallway—and froze. The spiderweb had disappeared, but all the plastic around the screen and the glass of the monitor were smeared with small red handprints. Some of them looked very strange, and could only have been made by grabbing the plastic from inside the monitor. But the monitor itself was perfectly intact.

And again, I wasn't scared at all! I went looking for a rag to wipe away the handprints, walked away for literally a minute, and came back—and they were gone. I stood over the monitor for a while, and then went about my business.

I didn't hear any more rustling noises that night, and a few days later, Kolya's relatives came and took my things. A policeman came with them. He asked me about Kolya. He himself told me that they found him in an empty rented apartment, on the floor, in a very nasty state. It was as if he had been tortured before his death, and he had been dying for a long time. I was shocked, of course, but I didn't say a word about the strangeness with the monitor.

 Then his parents returned from vacation and told him a lot of bad things about this Kolya. It turned out the guy was crazy—he drowned kittens, abused dogs, and tortured animals. He'd even moved to the city because of some dark and unpleasant affair he'd had with a girl in the village. I didn't pry for details, and I didn't want to.