My girlfriend, damn her

...

My boyfriend travels a lot on business trips; that's his job. I feel sad alone in the apartment, and I often invite someone to stay with me, to visit. So, about three years ago, I invited my friend Angela to stay with me. She always has problems with her parents, both are heavy drinkers, and getting out of the apartment was like manna from heaven for her.

We moved in, and we had a great time, going to the movies, to discos, having fun. One evening, we decided to sit at home and watch "Titanic" and got to talking. I told her we were getting married soon, and I wanted her to be my bridesmaid. She seemed to turn black. She tried to talk me out of it, saying that you'd be alone forever with your husband still alive, and look how often he travels to the north, and if he finds someone else there, you'll be alone. I told her I was confident in my husband, as I was in myself, and that getting married was a conscious decision. She agreed to be a witness, and the conversation naturally drifted off. But Angela had changed somehow, becoming less talkative.

Soon my boyfriend returned, and she moved back in with her parents. A week later, strange things started happening in our house: someone kept knocking on the window at night, even though we lived on the third floor. The knocking made my hair stand on end, and I thought I'd go crazy. I walked around the house with a candle, making the sign of the cross over the corners, but to no avail. I invited a priest to bless the house, and for about a week everything was quiet, then it started all over again. I'd recite the Lord's Prayer at night—the knocking would stop, and it would sound like someone was giggling outside the window. My boyfriend kept twirling his finger at his temple: he wasn't imagining things.

Then the time came when he had to go north again, something I'd been dreading for the past month. After he left, something completely crazy started happening: at night, it seemed like someone was walking around the apartment, the water would turn on by itself, faces in photographs and icons would contort into sardonic grimaces, and the knocking continued, but neither the "Our Father" nor anything else helped. I had a fight with my boyfriend over the phone; he cursed me for the first time and told me to leave my crazy face out of the house when he arrived, otherwise, who knows, I'd stab him in the middle of the night in a fit of schizophrenia. I burst into tears, threw away my SIM card, and went to my mother's. She kept pestering me about the reason for our spat, and one day I spilled the beans. Her eyes widened, and she decided to take me to a healer.

I'll never forget him: a young man with bright blue eyes, thin and very tall, almost two meters tall. Right from the start, he sent my mother out for a walk. He sat me down in a chair and poured me some tea. I was wary of him, probably because I had a different idea of healers: grandmas and grandpas, not guys almost my age. Then he said to me:

"If you don't believe me, then get out, I can't help you."

I had to convince him that I did and needed his help. Then he said:

"You're naked, and your house is being besieged by invited guests. Only they're not invited by you, but by an envious girl. You were close, but recently you've grown apart. She cries and curses you out of envy. She wants to turn your boyfriend away from you."

"How? Who? Why?"

"You know who. If you want your loved one back, you'll have to go back to the apartment. You need to search everything there and burn anything you didn't put there." Don't be lazy, search everything, just don't touch anything you find. And after you've burned it, leave and don't look back. Afterward, invite the priest to bless the house.

I was terrified to go into that apartment, but I went anyway, though with my mother. We began the search. The first thing I found were needles, lots of them, everywhere. Plain ones, with feathers and thread, at least forty of them. Then I found a rag, cleverly hidden in the doorframe, the way windows used to be stuffed with rags for the winter, and coals under the doormat. In the bathroom, there was hair glued to the mirror on the other side, a bundle of unknown contents under the bathtub, sunflower seeds in the pillows, and a knotted rope in the boyfriend's things. And on the windowsill facing the street, under the snow, there was some change—I didn't collect it all, but swept a few away, and they fell into the snow. I collected it all and burned it, along with the broom and rags. I left calmly, without looking back, and nothing terrible happened. That night I dreamed of Angela, her face covered in red spots. I screamed. I didn't speak to her again and didn't explain why—I think she already understood everything. The apartment was blessed. And with that, the "goblins" left.

My boyfriend returned from the north and immediately came to me, asking for forgiveness for what he said. I forgave him. Two months later, our wedding took place, a quiet one, with only our closest friends and family present. And I don't regret it—I don't want to run into "well-wishers" again.