Wallpaper

Two years ago, a friend and I were hanging out drinking wine on a winter evening. Time flew by, and we missed all the public transportation. But she was determined to get home, so I hailed a taxi, first looking the driver in the eye (and the number, of course), and making her promise to call as soon as she got there.

At home, I quickly fell asleep, and about an hour later, I was awakened by her call. She said she'd arrived safely and told me the following. As they were driving through the city center (we live in St. Petersburg), the driver asked her if she believed in ghosts. She said no. He paused and then said, "Well, I don't know, after one incident." He then told me that, as a student, he'd rented a room in one of the old buildings. A typical house, straight out of Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg. Everything was there—the urine-scented courtyard well, the communal apartments with their endless corridors and myriad rooms. He didn't live there for long, really, and nothing bothered or frightened him. But one night he had a dream. A realistic one, somehow nasty and drawn-out one. He dreamed of the room he rented. And in the dream, remarkably, there were no distortions—everything in it was furnished just as it was in reality. He seemed to be lying on a bed with his eyes open, the light on, but he wasn't alone. A guy in some strange clothes, like a frock coat, with black hair and a beard, was walking around the room. He touched the books on the table, opened the closet, rummaged through the student's things, and walked around... The student was lying on the bed, and for some reason he felt uncomfortable, sad, he really wanted to wake up, but in this dream he couldn't even move or look away. Meanwhile, the bearded man had gone through all his things and walked up to the bed. He walked over, sat down on the chair that was always there, and began to stare at the student with a heavy, unwavering gaze. And all this in silence. Then, suddenly, he leaped up from the chair, walked over to the wall, and, looking the student straight in the eye with a stony gaze, began scraping the wallpaper with his nails, moving his hands faster and faster. And the sounds he made were so nasty: "shr-shr-shr-shr..."

At that moment, the boy woke up. He saw no nail marks on the wallpaper or black spots on the ceiling. But he still felt uneasy there ever since, and he found another place to live, farther from the historic center. And just as he was about to move out, his neighbor, the old woman, peeked out from the other room and asked, "So, did he kick you out too?" He tried to look puzzled, but it must have come off poorly, because his grandmother, whose ancestors had lived in this apartment since the building was built, explained, "A guy. The hanged man. About a hundred years ago, he hung himself in this room out of an unhappy love affair. Since then, the tenants have been changing. He can't stand other owners, he gets angry."