A Flash Drive

Recently, an old acquaintance of mine, Mishanya, brought me a flash drive with the words, “Take a look—maybe you can recover something from it?” I work in IT (my employment record proudly says “engineer”), so the request itself wasn’t anything unusual: people often bring me computer equipment to fix, and if I succeed, they reward me with alcohol, trinkets, and, far less often than I’d like, money.

In any case, the flash drive was successfully recognized by my computer and the data was restored without any major issues, though not completely—the recovery program marked several of the restored video files with yellow icons. I couldn’t determine what exactly had happened to the device. Apparently, it hadn’t been deliberately formatted; more likely, the information had been lost due to some unfortunate set of circumstances.

Naturally, I didn’t watch the recordings without Misha, so that same evening he came over with a bottle of good whiskey, and we settled down in front of the monitor.

Judging by what we saw when we launched the first file, the flash drive belonged to some girl trying to get into the trendy world of video blogging. She couldn’t have been older than fifteen—the perfect age to become convinced of your own uniqueness and genius. Nothing interesting was happening on screen, as the girl clearly lacked acting skills, so I’ll only recount the text she was speaking into the camera.

“Hi, guys! Marceline Dark here, and today we’re going to try one of the simplest rituals—we’re going to summon a spirit. My parents left me home alone, so it’s unlikely anyone will interrupt us, and I hope everything goes well. I’ve prepared everything we need—look: first, a letter board that I made myself from a piece of wallpaper. It’s really not hard; there’s an instruction in my previous video. So. Next, we have fourteen black candles. Actually, there should be thirteen, but I decided an extra one wouldn’t hurt. I’m so clumsy—I’d definitely lose one! To be honest, I couldn’t find black candles at first, so I bought some regular ones at the nearest church and painted them black with the nail polish I use for my manicures. By the way, I also show you how to do a real witch’s manicure in one of my videos! Alright, let’s go to the room!”

At that moment, the girl began taking the camera off the tripod and the image started shaking. I took advantage of that to pause the video and looked at my friend.

“I hope that’s not your girlfriend? Because first of all, there’s no Tesak to deal with you, and secondly, she clearly has issues.”

“It’s… it’s my girlfriend’s younger sister’s flash drive,” Misha replied after a brief hesitation. “Vika gave it to me. She said her sister threw it away.”

“Does she always pick up flash drives her sister throws out?”

“Listen… She started thinking that Nastya—you know, the one who calls herself Marceline—was acting strange. She thought maybe there was something on the flash drive, asked me to help. But there’s nothing bad on it, right?”

“Yeah. Just a crappy-quality video blog of a silly teenage girl.”

I tapped the space bar with my fingertips, and we continued watching. The girl carried the camera into a room, placed it on a couch, and sat down on the floor in front of the lens.

“Now we’re going to summon a spirit! I thought a lot about whom to summon, and I decided we should call someone mysterious and ancient. And you know what? I decided to summon Frankenstein!”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“He’s really scary, stitched together from pieces of dead bodies… And very ancient! The book about him came out several centuries ago. I haven’t read it, though—I just watched the movie. Believe me, it’s truly terrifying!”

“What terrifies me is your level of development…” I muttered under my breath, taking a sip of whiskey.

Contrary to my expectations, I got no response or chuckle from my friend, while the girl kept talking.

“So… Oh, right, I won’t turn off the lights, or you won’t see anything! So… Come!”

After the girl’s final shout, the image on the screen flickered and turned into white noise, and a piercing screech poured from the speakers. Misha and I both jumped up and rushed to the computer to turn off the video. I reached the keyboard first and slammed the space bar. A ringing silence filled the room.

“Was that a screamer? Are you messing with me?” I asked irritably.

“I almost had a heart attack myself…”

“Yeah…”

We sat there for a while, drank some more, and the situation with the first recording even started to seem amusing. If the girl had only been playing dumb to lull the viewer before scaring them at the end, I was even ready to praise her. After all, a well-made screamer at fifteen is still an achievement.

“Watch the second video?” I asked lazily.

My friend just shrugged, leaving the choice to me. Well, alright then…

In the second video there was no image at all, but the girl was talking just as much as in the first.

“Hi, Marceline Dark here again! I have no idea what happened to my camera, but I couldn’t finish filming yesterday’s ritual. So I’ll tell you about it instead. It worked! Can you believe it? He came to me! Of course, you couldn’t see or hear him, and the saucer didn’t move across the board, but I could really feel that he was standing next to me, can you imagine?”

At that moment, an image flickered on the screen—apparently a preserved fragment of the video. For literally a second we saw the girl’s face. She was obviously telling something enthusiastically, but as always with an unfortunate freeze-frame, her face didn’t look very good. Still, there was something about it…

I paused the playback and rewound until the image appeared again. Yes, it was clearly a frame of an excited teenage fan of mysticism who wasn’t experiencing any negative emotions at all. And yet her facial features seemed strangely deformed. As if she were melting alive. It could have been editing, if we assumed what we were watching was fake. Or just a bad angle. Still, I have to admit, a chill ran down my spine.

I resumed playback.

“It was exactly like they write on the websites. The feeling of someone else’s gaze, the chill down your spine, and… Well, everything! Everything exactly like that! I’m terribly sorry I can’t show you the ritual itself—just trust me, it was awesome!”

The girl paused, then continued.

“In the next video I’ll show you a special kind of fortune-telling! Fortune-telling with blood! I can’t tell you where I got the recipe for this ritual—just know you won’t find it on the internet! That’s all for today. Like and subscribe to my channel. Bye-bye!”

The video ended. We looked at each other.

“She’s not exactly a genius…” I muttered, staring thoughtfully into my glass.

In response, Misha only sighed quietly.

“Keep watching?” I asked.

“Nah… I don’t see the point, honestly.”

Shrugging, I pulled the flash drive with the restored files out of the port and handed it to my friend. We went to the kitchen to finish the whiskey, but the conversation didn’t really flow, and very soon Mishanya left for home, and I safely forgot about the incident for about a week.

Many writers like to begin the chapters of their books in which key events take place with a description of the hero waking up at the start of the day. And this morning I felt like the hero of exactly such a book. The awakening was far from pleasant: a burly man in a strict suit kicked me off the bed onto the floor and, aiming the barrel of a pistol at my forehead, asked:

“What did you manage to see in those videos?”

I would be lying if I said I started hedging or protesting. Or that I didn’t immediately understand the essence of the question. When you’re lying on the floor of your own apartment in nothing but your underwear, staring at death in the dark muzzle of a gun, your thought processes move surprisingly fast.

“I don’t know! Some idiot girl with mystical tricks!” I squealed far less manfully than I would have liked.

“Fortune-telling?”

“No, that—what was it… She was summoning a spirit!”

The man studied my eyes for a while longer, then, apparently believing me, nodded and tucked the pistol under his jacket. Instead, sitting down on the edge of the bed, he pulled a sheet of paper and a simple plastic pen with a transparent body from his pocket, then handed both to me:

“This is a non-disclosure agreement, Citizen Morozov. With no statute of limitations.”

With a trembling hand, I tried to sign the document, while the stranger in the strict business suit continued in the most matter-of-fact tone:

“You did not see any storage device or its contents. Your friend did not come to you. In fact, you haven’t seen him in a very long time, and you are not interested in his fate and will not attempt to find out what happened to him.”

Having finally signed, I nodded.

“We are confiscating your computer, along with all storage devices. Your equipment will not be returned. I trust this does not cause any protest?”

There were, of course, no protests, so the man, rising to his feet, unexpectedly nodded goodbye and left the apartment, and I remained sitting on the floor, staring at the corner of the room now empty of my computer.

It’s evening now. I’m sitting in the kitchen, finishing the whiskey Mishanya brought and typing this text on an old laptop I swiped from work. Today Misha hasn’t shown up online even once—neither on the blue site nor on Skype. I didn’t dare call him, but for some reason I’m sure he wouldn’t answer.

I suppose if I were a slightly different kind of person, I might become the hero of events resembling the plot of some action thriller: I would go looking for my friend, confront a secret organization of “men in black,” and surely emerge victorious, uncover the secret of blood fortune-telling, and become famous—at least in certain circles…

But none of that will happen. I’m just a modest IT specialist. An engineer. So now I’ll finish the whiskey, which I hope will help me not think about my friend’s fate, and go to sleep.

I suggest you do the same.