I was nothing more than an old man, gnawed by regrets and sadness. Alone, in this vast, silent house, lost on the edge of a village that time itself seemed to have forgotten.
As I did every day, I sat on the porch, a box of matches in hand. I struck one against the yellowed nail of my thumb, and a pale flame flickered to life. I brought it to an old Prima—those cheap Soviet cigarettes I'd been smoking since Brezhnev's days—and took a slow drag, savoring this outdated luxury like one might taste a final memory.
My wife had died long ago, in a stupid, brutal accident. Since then, I'd been nothing but a shadow. A withered, worn silhouette, irritated by everything—especially other people's lives.
When the cigarette was reduced to a burning stub between my fingers, I grabbed a can of Baltika beer from the sky-blue cooler at my feet. A long gulp. Then another match, like an unchanging ritual.
My days repeated themselves, all the same. All empty. Nothing broke the silence. Not even death.
The house, too, bore the scars of the past. Three floors, a ground level, a basement, and even an old Soviet elevator that creaked like a sick old man. It was vast, abandoned, exhausted. Like me.
The paint peeled off in patches, revealing gray plaster underneath. Dark stains stretched across the walls, like forgotten scars. The windows, cracked or missing, let in the icy winds from the Volga. And yet, despite it all, this house was mine. It had witnessed my joys, my shames, my pains. It was the last witness.
The village kids had nicknamed me the "Boogeyman." They said my house was haunted, that my presence was a living curse, a poison that had been eating away at the village for years. Sometimes, I'd catch glimpses of them hiding in the bushes, their furtive eyes fixed on my home. They dared each other with stupid challenges to venture closer, hoping to catch sight of something frightening. But the house didn't react. It didn't growl, didn't groan, didn't erupt in a piercing scream. It just stood there, still, almost frozen in a heavy slumber, as if time no longer had a hold over it. It waited. Waiting for something, or perhaps nothing at all. It was the same as me. The years had stripped away its shine, just as they'd erased so much of my life. And in that heavy silence, that shared inertia, there was no punishment. Not for the children, not for me. Just waiting. An endless wait, where the world passed by without touching us.
My life was nothing but a long string of sorrows. No respect. Not even a thank you for the service I'd given to our homeland. I'd been a soldier. Two campaigns. The last one left me with a dead leg, full of shrapnel. I've limped ever since. Like a rusted rifle. I still remember my mother, tears in her eyes, proud that her son was joining the Red Army. She still believed in the grandeur, the posters, the glory of the people. She didn't know the army breaks more men than it makes. I was just a grunt. No medals. No speeches. But I'd wanted, just once, to step onto a stage. Just to shake Gorbachev's hand. He was a real man. A dreamer. Perestroika, glasnost… We believed in it. I believed in it. I'd have liked to say thank you. And maybe, that day, I'd have been happy.
On the porch of the house, I was just an old man, full of thoughts and silences. The sun was already dipping behind the hills, painting the sky a pale, almost ashamed red. A dozen empty Baltika cans littered the rickety little table beside me, silent witnesses to my daily shipwreck. When I finally stood, my legs wavered. I stumbled, nearly tripping over the stone step, and shuffled into the cool darkness of the house. Each step echoed like a sigh. I groped my way forward, muttering into the void, my hand brushing the damp walls to find the old sofa. When my fingers grazed its frayed back, I collapsed onto it without grace, like a sack of ashes. The fabric scratched my skin, but I didn't care. My skull buzzed, my eyes closed. Moments later, I was already snoring, my breath raspy, cradled by the slow, tired beats of my weary heart. Outside, the wind picked up. It was cold. But I slept. Like every night.
As I drifted off, the house seemed to suddenly come alive. At first, it was imperceptible, a faint tremor brushing against my senses, dulled by exhaustion. A soft scratching, as if something—perhaps an insect or some small, discreet creature—crawled slowly behind the crumbling walls. The sound, barely audible, slid along the cracked partitions, fading into the rotten wood. It was just a whisper at first, a fleeting breath in the thick torpor of the night. But gradually, the house's silence fractured. A deeper, denser sound emerged—a cold, almost icy wind that seemed to rise from the depths of the Volga itself. This wind swept through the rooms like a great inhalation from nowhere, an odd exhalation, as if the house were awakening from a long slumber. The wood creaked under this frigid breath, the beams trembled, the windows rattled under the supernatural gust, while the scratching, once so subtle, grew more urgent. The sound intensified, becoming frantic. Footsteps, at first faint, brushing the floor like an invisible caress, grew more distinct. It was as if something—or several things—moved in the shadows, just beneath the surface of reality, weaving through the walls and under the floorboards. Muffled rasps, inarticulate squeaks, mingled with the footsteps, escaping from the very insides of the house, as if nameless creatures stirred within its bowels, slithering between the walls like snakes. The air, thick with palpable tension, seemed to vibrate almost imperceptibly, like a string stretched too tight, ready to snap under the pressure of the unseen. The house no longer stood frozen in shadow; it was transforming. It breathed. It quivered. Every room seemed to swell with this uncanny energy, animating in a macabre dance only the darkness could reveal. The walls, the floors, the wooden beams holding up the structure seemed to bend, twist, move under some unknown, invisible force. A heavy presence materialized with each passing moment, growing stronger, expanding. The things in the walls weren't human, nor animal. They were other. And there I was, in the dim light of my room, watching in silence. Or rather, I couldn't watch, because my eyes were shut, swallowed by a sleep so deep, so heavy, that I no longer knew where my thoughts ended and my dreams began. I was there, frozen, yet not truly there. I was the only witness, but there was no one to bear witness. Outside, the wind that had blown moments before fell silent. There was only a cold, heavy stillness—the kind that holds its breath, that lets the house breathe and move in its own way. A strange, oppressive silence, where each breath of the house echoed through the air, a gust of dread passing through the walls, unstoppable by anyone. Nothing could break that moment, neither shadow nor light. In that void, in that icy stillness, the house lived, animated by ancient, invisible forces. The scratching grew more desperate, the footsteps more numerous, faster. Things kept moving, climbing, sliding, slipping into every corner. It was as if the house twisted under an unseen burden, as if it were trying to shake off something living within it, all while opening and closing in a slow, disturbing dance. And I, still there, asleep, unsure if I was a witness or a prisoner of a dream too real, felt the house draw closer, coiling around me, invisible yet omnipresent, like a creature waiting in the dark, ready to swallow me whole. The wind outside had stopped. But the house kept breathing.
The next morning, when I awoke, the house seemed to have fallen back asleep. A silence hung over the rooms, dense and suffocating, like a leaden shroud. The icy wind from the Volga howled softly through the broken windows, slipping between the decrepit walls. The village brats had once again amused themselves by throwing stones at the façade. Several panes had cracked under the impacts, starred like poorly healed wounds. I'd bought this old house for next to nothing, shortly after the Wall came down. It had once been a grand hotel—luxurious, imposing, alive. Influential men and women had walked its halls, drank in its lounges, slept in its rooms. But that was an era long forgotten. Now, it was just a husk of memory, a skeleton of history gnawed by time. It had lost all its former glory.
Sometimes, you could still hear the ghosts of the past. Fragments of life from another time. Laughter, clinking glasses, bodies waltzing across a parquet now covered in dust. Shots of vodka slammed on counters, shouts, songs. There was still, within these walls, the echo of a joy long gone. But today, this place had been stripped of all its finery. Emptied of what made it grand. The gold, the silverware, the chandeliers, the mirrors… all gone long ago. All that remained was the skeleton: the creaking wooden frame, the bare walls, the blackened beams. And yet, sometimes, in the grand reception hall, a laugh would cut through the space. A sudden burst, followed by a murmur, a breath. Men and women, laughing, dancing, kissing, getting drunk—as if time had refused to erase their presence.
How much had this house seen? How many eras had it endured? How many men and women had trodden its floors, left the fleeting imprint of their passing? How many whispers had it heard, stifled laughs, awkward silences? This old house had seen more than most men on this earth.
Upon waking, I grabbed a bottle of Baltika and poured it into a chipped glass where a raw egg already floated. A big swig of that amber, viscous brew burned my throat. The taste was vile, but it woke me better than any coffee. I stood with a groan, my joints creaking, and approached the old elevator. A Soviet steel beast, as temperamental as an old drunk. It whined as its doors opened, as if reluctant to let me in. I pressed the button for the third floor… but something caught my eye. There was an extra number. An additional floor. An absurd digit, slipped in by mistake or malice. A 4, half-erased, rusted, as if it were never meant to exist. The engineers must have messed up. A simple oversight, perhaps. But on that foggy morning, in this sick house, that little anomaly tasted strange. It tasted of vertigo.
That floor didn't exist. It wasn't on any map, any blueprint. Since the fateful fire, the house's records were patchy, eaten away by oblivion as much as by flames. That button that shouldn't have been there—I'd noticed it years ago. An anomaly, a stain in the fabric of reality. And that morning, without really thinking, driven by a strange weariness or a curiosity too long suppressed, I pressed it.
The elevator groaned. It lurched into motion, creaking like an arthritic old man. The numbers ticked by, slow, hesitant. One, two, three… then nothing. And yet, it kept rising. Higher and higher. Far beyond what the house should have held. The old lift rattled, wheezed, shuddered. It seemed to suffer. Then, suddenly, a dull thud. It stopped.
The doors opened with a sigh of steel.
Before me stretched a hallway. Long. Unnaturally long. Shrouded in thick, suffocating darkness. The walls, covered in faded floral wallpaper, seemed to weep tears of dampness. A smell of wax, ancient dust, and dead flowers hung in the air. And somewhere, far off, a laugh echoed. Sharp, distorted, grotesque.
Then the music began.
A waltz.
Slow. Obsessive. Strangely familiar.
And the past, like a curtain being drawn back, began to unfold. Shapes appeared in the hallway—blurry, ethereal, dancing to the ghostly notes. Dresses twirled, tattered suits bowed in forgotten courtesies. Faceless visages, mouths frozen in eternal smiles. It was a dead era. A fossilized memory. And yet, it danced on. As if the hallway itself refused to forget.
I stood there, frozen. A spectator to a ball that time had banished.
And at the end of the hallway, far in the distance, a door. Closed. Still. But I had the terrible feeling it was waiting for me.