He was puzzled by the way neighbors passing by his new house looked at him mockingly, greeted him loudly, and then whispered quietly among themselves, nervously glancing at the house before hurrying away.
"Some strange people live here," he thought to himself.
He changed his mind somewhat when Mikołaj, the local forester, an old friend from the days when Janek was at vocational school in Trzcianka, visited him on Friday. They hadn't seen each other for several years, and Janek didn't even know that Mikołaj, who had previously lived in Jędrzejewo, had moved to Zielonów.
The forester was handsome, quite tall, and slim, with blond hair. He had a small, pointed beard, quick, slightly nervous movements, and a burn mark above his right eye.
The forester came with a half-liter of vodka, wanting to chat about the good old days over something stronger, but Janek politely declined, wanting to go home for the night.
"We'll have plenty of opportunities to drink again," Janek said.
"What about hunting? We'll go tomorrow night," the forester suggested. "The first snow has fallen, and the animal tracks will be clearly visible. Maybe we'll manage to shoot a deer or a wild boar?
" "Well, I don't know..." "
Come on, you'll see, we'll have a great time! I don't like going hunting alone. I'll give you a shotgun with night vision, and we'll have some vodka and sausage for a snack." I remember that in school you were the best in your class at shooting with an air rifle, so maybe you'll hit some bigger game?
"Okay, I'll go with you," Mika smiled broadly.
"By the way, you know you bought a haunted house, right?
" "Don't tell me such nonsense. There are no ghosts," he replied calmly, watching his friend closely.
"It's not nonsense at all. But if you don't believe me, that's your problem."
*****
The next day, as dusk began to fall, Janek Mika and forester Mikołaj entered the forest, searching the snow for traces of larger game. The moon was full, and in its silver light, the snow-covered pines looked beautiful and mysterious.
The hunt wasn't going too badly – Mikołaj killed a fox and three hares, while Janek only caught a grey hare. However, they didn't catch either a deer or a wild boar, which they had most hoped for.
It was approaching midnight when the forester spotted a handsome deer through his night vision scope. He gestured to his companion to remain silent and handed him his night-vision goggles. Janek admired the animal's impressive antlers for a moment. Then he set off after the forester, who was trying to catch the deer from downwind. When they were less than fifty meters away, Mikołaj stopped, raised his night-vision rifle, took aim for a moment, and finally fired. A dull boom echoed through the forest, and the stag fell on his side, his heart pierced.
When they reached it, it was already dead. They sat on the still-warm animal, took out their hip flasks, and each took a few sips of vodka, followed by a sausage. Then Mikołaj stood up.
"I'm going to relieve myself. A man must be thirsty at a time like this... Will you wait here?
" "Sure. I'll warm up with some vodka."
Mikołaj walked away and disappeared from his sight after a moment, as his vision couldn't reach very far in the dim, silvery light. Janek glanced at the large, round moon and at that moment heard a faint howling somewhere in the distance.
"Damn, that couldn't have been a wolf? There aren't any wolves in this area..." He glanced at his watch and muttered. "Exactly midnight – witching hour. Plus, it's a full moon, a wolf is howling somewhere nearby, and I'm sitting alone in the middle of the forest on a dead deer. It's a bad situation. What's Santa doing so long? He should have relieved himself by now..."
Suddenly, a gusty, cold wind sprang up. Suddenly, it became much darker, and a thick fog appeared low above the ground. He looked back at the moon – it was now almost completely obscured by a large cloud. Janek shivered with cold and stood up to warm himself. He looked around, searching for his companion from the night's adventure, but he was nowhere in sight. He called out in a loud voice.
"Nicholas, you're coming!"
"Janek!" he heard a shout from the opposite direction to where the forester had gone.
"What?" Come here!
- Janek! Come! Come to me!
Reluctantly, Mika headed towards the voice. He had walked about fifty meters when he heard the call again, this time from even further away than before.
"Janek! Janek! Hurry!
" "Stop, damn it!" he shouted back. "Are you kidding me?! Stop playing around, it's not funny!"
He heard no reply. He ran in the direction from which he'd heard the call. He pushed through the dense grove, looked around, but his friend was still nowhere to be seen.
"Mikołaj! Where the hell are you!
" "Here, Janek! Here! Come on!"
He walked a little further and stood helplessly in the middle of a large clearing.
"Stop this now! Don't play hide-and-seek with me!
" "Janek! Why didn't you wait for me by the deer?" he heard the forester's voice from the direction he least expected, from behind.
He turned, and Mikołaj reached him, panting.
"Why didn't you wait?" – the forester repeated his question.
– Why? – Janek was very surprised and irritated. – But you shouted for me to follow you, so I did! And you drag me, for some unknown reason, several hundred meters into the forest, and now you ask why I didn't wait?!
– What are you talking about, buddy? I didn't call you at all. You were the one shouting after me! I thought something had happened to you. You shouted to me, but instead of coming closer, you retreated deeper into the forest, and then you turned aside and started running! What's the point of these stupid games?
– What are you talking about? I didn't call you, you shouted at me as if something had happened to you!
– If I had shouted at you, I would have admitted it, right? I clearly heard you shouting: "Mikołaj! Come! Come to me quickly!"
They looked at each other, completely confused. They stood in silence for a moment, until the forester finally spoke up:
"Perhaps there's a third person here who called us out to draw us away from the deer?"
"Who? I think I would have recognized it from the voice if it hadn't been you shouting?
" "I don't know who. Maybe a poacher. I can't think of anything else. Let's get back to the deer."
They retraced Janek's steps to the spot where they'd left the dead animal, but the deer wasn't there. There was only a large trail in the snow that disappeared between the trees.
"Look!" Mikołaj pointed at the trail. "Someone was dragging the deer this way. They must be very strong, or there must be several of them.
" They set off along the trail, which wound between the trees and bushes. They walked briskly, intending to catch up with the poacher. But after a few hundred meters, the trail suddenly ended, as if the deer had either disappeared or taken off.
"What the hell!" Janek shouted. "Where's that damn animal?"
A loud, eerie chuckle answered him from the bushes. It lasted for at least a few dozen seconds and sounded as if someone was mocking him for having deceived them. Janek felt his heart leap to his throat with fear. He could have sworn this mocking, cruel, inhuman laughter came from the same throat as the eerie chuckle he'd heard a week ago at the house in Zielonów. He couldn't contain himself and fired several shots into the bushes, where someone or something was clearly mocking them. The nightmarish cackle continued, and a moment later it came from the opposite direction. Then it began to recede, until it finally stopped abruptly. The forest around them was silent as if by a spell.
"You know what, Mikołaj?" Janek looked at his companion. "I've had enough of this hunt.
" "Me too," the forester replied. "We're going home!"
*****
After this adventure, Janek didn't return to Zielonów until a week later. He arrived with his wife. Irena was washing the floors and windows, and he was repairing the crumbling fence. A few small details puzzled him. They were trivial, but thought-provoking. He found the juice he'd left on the kitchen table during his last visit in the living room. His wife couldn't have done that, because Janek was the one who opened the door and entered the kitchen first. He could have sworn he'd locked all the windows, but one was only slightly ajar. The wind wouldn't have blown open the large, heavy window. What surprised him most was that he'd left the bed carefully made and covered with a smooth, evenly smoothed bedspread, but today the bedspread was wrinkled, and the pillow and duvet had a large dent, as if someone had slept on them.
"What the hell?" he muttered to himself. "I'm not that old, I know what state I left the house in. Does someone come in here while I'm gone or what?"
Janek didn't tell his wife anything about his observations, thinking she wouldn't believe him anyway, not to mention she'd call him an old fool. However, he decided to check something out. As they were getting ready to leave and his wife had gone outside, he hung several very thin threads, almost invisible to the naked eye, on the doorframe between the living room and the kitchen. He attached one at a height of one hundred and sixty-five centimeters, and each subsequent one five centimeters higher. There was no fear of his wife breaking the threads, as she was just over five feet tall, and Janek remembered to bend slightly when passing through the doorway to avoid breaking the lowest one. As they began to get ready to go home, he sent his wife to the car, while he closed the front door, stuck his hand through the gap between the door and the frame, and leaned the broom against the door from the middle of the hallway.
A few days later, he arrived without his wife. He carefully swung the front door open so as not to tip the broom over, then stuck his hand through the gap. He groped for it, but his hand only wandered fruitlessly around the door. He pushed it open further and noticed a broom lying on the floor about a meter from the door.
"Damn it! Someone's been here again! Why does someone keep coming here? There's nothing in this house but beds, wardrobes, and chairs!"
He checked the threads on the doorframe. The bottom two were broken, meaning someone between five feet seven and five feet seven—taller than himself—had walked through the door. He burst into the bedroom and immediately noticed that the duvet, pillow, and bedspread were all in disarray again, and one of the chairs was pushed out of the way.
"Oh no!" he shouted. "No one's going to be messing around my house. I won't sleep for a week, and I'll catch that burglar!"
He called his wife and told her he'd sleep in Zielonów and wouldn't be home until morning. Then he went to buy something for dinner. As he was leaving the store, he was accosted by an older man standing on the sidewalk with a beer in his hand.
"Did you buy this cottage?" Slurring a bit, he pointed with his bottle at Janek's house, which was visible from here.
"Yes, and why do you ask?
" "Why did you buy it?" the drunkard bared his crooked, rotten teeth in an ugly smile.
"What do you mean—why? I'll renovate the house and move in with my wife in the spring. Why are you asking?" Janek was already a little irritated by the stranger's prying.
"Because I'm surprised. Very much so. Didn't anyone tell you it was haunted?"
"Spooky?" Janek smiled uncertainly. The stranger was already the second person to mention it to him.
"Of course! And why do you think that cottage was so cheap, huh? Because no one wanted to live there!
" "What's haunted there?" The new owner of the property began to take his interlocutor's words more seriously.
"The ghost of a young German woman who lived there during the war. The Russians tortured her to death when they were marching on Berlin. Now she's running around the cottage, screaming, howling, laughing like a madwoman."
"This is nonsense! I don't believe in ghosts," Mika was visibly upset.
"You don't believe? You still will. Get rid of this shack as soon as possible. I advise you!" the older man said this with the air of a man who knows everything, and then took a few sips from a bottle of beer.
Brak komentarzy:
Prześlij komentarz