Each city has its own Secret. The city without it loses its individuality and nighttime appeal - this is the core, having lost it, the city dies. Perm, a city not on the Kama River, with a population of 1.5 million, the homeland of Zarathustra and the mythical Golden Woman, the Perm anomalous zone of Molebka and the Chud people who disappeared in the taiga, also have their own Secret. Founded 280 years ago, Perm was built on the site of Old Slavic pagan sanctuaries and temples, absorbing their spirit and, willingly or unwillingly, defining the identity of the Permians. Under sidewalks, restaurants, cultural centers, residential buildings, squares, a network of ancient pagan passages stretches at a depth of several tens of meters. Retaining the spirit of three hundred years ago, they remain unknown and unattainable, only a few initiates know the hidden passages along which one can get to the shrines of the ancient Russians. The mystery of Perm is the lost knowledge of the city's past, hidden deep underground and rolled up with asphalt …
* * *
- We found a pagan temple! - my interlocutor threw his long blond hair from his face, lit a cigarette. He had a resounding nickname that reflected his interests and extravagance - "Mulder." Do you like to watch the X-Files? - I asked him at the first meeting. He nodded his head. Diggers usually did not use real names. - Temple of Chernobog, altar and other ancient passages leading to the city.
"Are you saying you found the entrance to the ancient tunnels?" - I specified.
- Almost so. Found and lost. It happened three years ago …
* * *
Cool August wind from the bank of the Kama drove the foliage beginning to turn yellow along the sidewalk. The early dusk slowly descended on the city, enveloping it in a misty haze. Three figures were moving along the embankment in gray shadows: guys of about twenty-five, dressed in camouflage, with small backpacks on their shoulders. Having rounded the Gallery, they turned into an old Perm street, which was embedded in the ground by the foundations of houses along the windows of the first floors.
At the ruins of a two-story mansion, they stopped, hastily changed into army ankle boots, pulled bandanas and hats over their heads, hiding their hair, mittens on their hands, and pulled lanterns from their backpacks. Carefully dismantling a pile of rubbish and bricks, they uncovered the neatly folded boards hiding the passage to the dungeon. Looking around, we went down to the basement of the mansion. In the light of the lanterns near the far wall, a half-buried arched passage leading towards the Gallery became visible as a dark hole. The collapsed masonry formed a narrow hole-skinner.
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Pushing the equipment in front of them, the diggers crawled forward, moving one after the other. After a few meters, the course began to widen. Soon it was already possible to get to your feet and take your time to look around. They were in a vaulted tunnel lined with red bricks with a "cross" masonry characteristic of the late 19th century. The move went forward and rested against a wall lined with rubble stone. A small breach was made in the wall. It looks like the ancient builders stumbled upon an even older tunnel.
The breach led into a long gallery that was noticeably different from the first tunnel. The masonry here was coarser, the stones were covered with a network of cracks and some kind of whitish coating: either mold or moss. And the smell, strange slightly sour, unfamiliar. The gallery gradually rounded and descended, passing into a spacious hall with a diameter of about ten meters. In the center of the hall is a stone dais resembling an altar. There are unusual signs and drawings on the walls: an image of an old man with a crooked stick in his hands, ants and crows at his feet, and many skulls and bones around him.
Several more passages fanned out from the hall in different directions.
Diggers slowly walk around the hall, examining ancient drawings and looking into new passages. In one of the tunnels, the movement of air is felt, it is noticeably drawn by a draft, somewhere nearby there is another exit to the surface. Suddenly, there is a rustling sound in the tunnel and strange noises like deep breathing and snoring. The beams of flashlights rush madly along the walls, snatching out of the darkness a large, dark figure crouching to the floor and two red eyes wide apart.
- Volkodlak! - one of the diggers cried out in fright and, throwing his equipment, ran to the exit of their dungeon.
Stripping elbows, knees, backs in blood, they pressed each other into the skinner, trying to get to the surface as soon as possible. The guy who had crawled last suddenly screamed and jerked back sharply, hiding in the darkness of the passage. The second tried to go back, but something grabbed his leg and began to pull. Escaping with difficulty, overcoming the burning pain, he worked desperately with his elbows and a few minutes later jumped out among the ruins of the mansion.
It was already completely dark, and only the horned moon looked down gloomily at two frightened figures running along the night streets of Perm …
* * *
- Beautiful fairy tale! - I chuckled when my interlocutor finished his story.
"This is not a fairy tale …" Mulder calmly pulled a new cigarette from the pack. - The underground temple exists. And these diggers also exist, one is now lying in the durke, the other, whose leg was torn off, went to Moscow, they say, he got drunk …
- So what's the problem? We take equipment, cameras and go!
Mulder shook his curls in dismissal.
- The only known move was filled with PGS immediately after this incident …
- And what, there are no other moves?
- Yes, but we did not find them. Should be … - the digger thoughtfully brushed the ashes under his feet and puffed on the smoke again. - I heard that the merchant passages of the late 19th century in some places intersect with ancient pagan tunnels.
- So, if we want to find an underground temple, we need to look for merchant passages? Well, you zhediggers! What is in mind?
- We only know about the old passages, but we haven’t found a single one yet … Basically we use bombarms.
- Everything is clear with you! Will seek…
* * *
It turned out to be not so easy to find information about underground passages. A whole week of searches in the archives of GAPO (State Archives of the Perm Region) did not give any results, as if someone deliberately seized all documents related to underground communications. We managed to find only one mention of a merchant horse-drawn route - an underground tunnel through which raw materials were delivered from the bank of the Kama on carts. The passage belonged to several merchants, connecting the cellars of their shops and providing an inconspicuous supply of goods. The tunnel was quite spacious - a horse-drawn carriage passed freely through it. There is a known case when the axle of a carriage carrying barrels of beer along a horse-drawn track broke, the barrels fell and rolled back to Kama, crushing several workers.
However, there was no shortage of legends, myths and rumors. The general picture was as follows: in the area of the embankment there were at least five portals leading to horse-drawn passages. More myths were collected at the underground passage that went under Sibirskaya Street to the Central grocery store (at the beginning of the 20th century there was the largest bookstore in the city), then under the Space Jam restaurant and further to the old brewery built in the 80s of the 19th century … Other passages went into the city from the side of the river station.
The diggers themselves told several unusual stories about how they met a huge white tailless rat several times underground in the Motovilikha area in old abandoned mines. Every time she blocked their way, when they tried to find the underground base of the robbers. References to the "dashing men" were found in abundance in the documents of the GAPO. In this area, at the end of the 19th century, the Lbov gang was naughty, which they could not catch for a very long time. Each time they hid themselves in ancient passages. Local historians talk about underground halls, lined with carpets, in which daredevils kept stolen goods. Some of the peasants were caught in 1905, but the secret of their treasures was never revealed. Local treasure hunters still do not give up hope of finding the hiding place of robbers.
Motovilikha is all dug up by mines, the total number of which, according to various estimates, fluctuates around 600. It is very dangerous to explore them, the soil in this area is clayey sandstones with great mobility, there is no chance of getting out of such a landslide alive.
It is possible that miners may have found entrances to old pagan tunnels, but we have not been able to find any mention of this. Only a scant record that during the laying in 1723 of Perm on the site of the river station there was a monastic hermitage and a two-meter wooden figure of some ancient deity, spoke of the sanctity of this place.
Of all the objects, information about which we managed to collect, the most accessible was the brewery, the cellars of which could be examined in search of the surviving horse-drawn passages. And if Mulder was right to follow them towards Kama, we could find the entrance to the ancient pagan temple.
* * *
On an inclined board, attached to the wall of the house, we climb into the window located about 2.5 meters from the ground. We waddle over a rotted window sill, crumbling into brown dust, and find ourselves inside an old four-story building, built at the end of the 19th century. Previously, a brewery was located here, supplying more than a dozen varieties of delicious beer to the cities of the Perm region and far beyond its borders.
Looking back …
Overhead - twelve meters of emptiness. Everything that could rot and decay - rotted and decayed. The tree turned to dust, crumbling down and exposing the broken and cracked floor beams, blackened from time to time. The sky is visible through the huge gaps in the roof. On the remains of the slate, pigeons are rolling about, looking curiously down at the uninvited guests.
Underfoot is a cracked concrete floor, strewn with rotten boards, some boxes, construction waste, plaster, and debris of old equipment. In some places one can see gaps and holes leading to the basement. But they are too small to squeeze through. The columns and walls peeled off to brick, exposing the "cross" masonry.
Green carefully, trying not to make noise, walks over to the overturned iron cabinet, lifts a sheet of plywood and puts a backpack with clean clothes inside, inviting us to do the same. We approach Green, who has already managed to get the miner's lantern, attaching it with a belt to his head. Fragments of slate crack underfoot. Male voices are heard from the yard. Someone walks up to a boarded-up door that leads into the courtyard, which now houses a private car park. We scatter in different directions, hiding in the shadow of the columns. A man stands at the door for a few seconds, obviously trying to see what is going on inside, then we hear his receding footsteps. You need to move quieter, it is not dark yet and there are many people on the street.
There is an unpleasant sweetish smell in the air, familiar and at the same time eerie. Its source is at one of the columns - a mongrel of medium size, thin, bald, dead … A brooding green fly slowly crawls along its nose.
“She wasn't here last time. Mulder says, heading into the far dark corner of the building. - Apparently, she came after us and died.
“We haven't been here for only two days, and already it smells like it,” says Green, stepping aside disgustedly rubbing his nose.
- Well, it's hot! Mulder throws laconically over his shoulder, stopping over a small gap in the concrete floor.
During the last sortie, the diggers neatly widened the hole, choosing a very good place for it: right above the black mouth of the gap, a metal knob protrudes from the wall, which is very convenient to grasp with your hands when descending and ascending. I take out a hologen lamp, converted from a video camera lamp, bright, almost daylight tearing the basement darkness to shreds, leaving no unlit corner. At the bottom there are boxes, fittings, a lot of empty plastic bottles, doors torn off the hinges, some kind of incomprehensible garbage and … a light brown dog collapsed with alarm, squinting at us and a dozen black squeaking lumps poking into its saggy belly. It makes no sense to go down: the dog lies directly under the breach, it will not be possible to go around it without disturbing it. She's probably going to make a fuss to protect her puppies. We didn't want to attract too much attention.
- Maybe throw something at her. - offered Young, looking down over my shoulder. - Will be scared and leave …
- She will not abandon the puppies. Will bark. - Roman took out a pack of cigarettes, sat down on the door, thrown by someone on the floor, lit a cigarette. - Let's try to go on horseback …
The "upper path" meant a passage on the second floor, to which a water pipe led. It was possible to climb it only by carefully climbing up the boards leaning against the wall, then pull up on your hands and walk two meters to the entrance to the corridor. To be honest, I was not ready for such an acrobatic stunt.
Green sighed wistfully, threw off his excess equipment and began to slowly climb up. The boards creaked and crackled under his weight. Grabbing onto the pipe, he climbed onto it, holding onto the pieces of reinforcement sticking out of the wall with his hands, and reached the passage. Kostya followed him. The passage was closed by a lattice door, but someone had already managed to make a hole in it, bending it inside the bar.
We went to explore the walls and floor for other entrances to the basement. No doubt they were, but the pile of rubbish on the floor made it impossible to see them. On the opposite wall, Mulder found a small arched window, boarded up from the inside by boards. They tried to shake it up. The boards succumbed to the effort, but, bending inward, rested loudly against some obstacle. It was impossible to knock out the boards without noise, and we had to leave this option of penetrating the basement.
We returned to the breach and began to shine down with flashlights, trying to scare and drive away the dog. She just tossed and turned restlessly, and the puppies squeaked in fright. Directly opposite her in the wall was visible the entrance to a corridor, half blocked by a horizontally inverted door. Voices were heard from below, and lantern beams flashed in the corridor. Roma and Green found a workaround to the basement by going downstairs from the second floor.
The close extraneous noise completely disturbed the dog. She raised her head and started looking around in fear. Roman leaned carefully out of the corridor, shook the door. Unexpectedly for all of us, the dog slowly got up, leaving the puppies, and trotted deeper into the basement.
- Get down, - Green whispered from below, getting out of the corridor after Roma, - she's gone!
The young man lay down on his stomach and hung down, looking for a dog with a flashlight, but she hid somewhere. Left alone, the puppies began to squeak harder, poking into each other in search of mother's warmth. They did not know how to crawl yet, having been born, apparently, quite recently, and seemed completely helpless.
We carefully went downstairs, carefully walked around the puppies and ended up in the basement. There was even more garbage here than above, but it was possible to move more boldly, without fear of being heard. The entire floor was littered with full and empty bottles of Snegi mineral water, which crunched unpleasantly underfoot.
We were separated from the old passage only by a ten-meter "skinner", along which we had to crawl. Once upon a time, when the plant was operating, it was a tunnel connecting the basement with a system of underground passages. But now it was covered almost to the very top with earth, plaster, boards, and cuttings of pipes. There was only a small gap between the embankment and the ceiling of the tunnel.
Roman was the first to squeeze through the gap, pushing a backpack with equipment in front of him. We tried to shine after him. Several times shuffling his back on the concrete, catching himself on the pipes sticking out of the embankment, he overcame the "skinner" without any special adventures, sliding into an earthen crater at the other end of the gap. Then you can already crawl on all fours. Green followed, then me. Laz turned out to be somewhat cramped, and I noted for myself that I had relaxed my physical form quite a lot over the past two years. Smeared with earth and limestone, it fell out on the other side of the manhole, rolling down the earthen embankment. I got up, dusted myself off, turned on the gologenka and froze …
In theory, I was ready to see it, but practically everything turned out to be somewhat different, real, tangible and visible. The documents that I came across in GAPO, working on the theme of the Perm Prison Castle, told about a system of underground horse-drawn passages that led to some large shops and factories. They allowed merchants to deliver raw materials and goods from the quays warehouses. The passes were made large enough for a horse harnessed to a cart to walk along them. According to other sources, horse-drawn tunnels were used for covert transportation of contraband goods.
We stood in a spacious, vaulted tunnel lined with red brick. On the left and right in the walls there were darkened niches of the laid side passages.
- Something is wrong here. Mulder gazed thoughtfully at the laid portal leading to an unknown corridor or niche. - In my opinion, this corridor is longer than the passage behind the wall …
A few words about what Mulder meant. The underground passage, into which we entered, communicated with another basement located behind the right wall. The passages were low arched vaults about one and a half meters high. There were three such passages in total. All of them were neatly laid with "corks" one brick thick. Quite an unreliable construction in the understanding of an experienced digger. Someone started to restore the cellar on the right and it was possible to enter it through a civilized door, punched in the wall of the old passage. In the wall of the neighboring basement, the endings of the aisles were clearly visible, only from this side they were roughly hammered with boards. And it was here that one little nonsense lurked … There were THREE entrances from the passage to the basement, and TWO exits …
- Let's count down in steps! - suggested Roman, and, without waiting for our answer, stood with his back to the wall of the laid gouzhevik and confidently moved into the darkness, counting the steps.
As a result, we got the number 26, with which we went to debit with credit in the next basement. Debit did not converge with credit for 8 steps …
Mulder began to rant about the fact that he immediately found the first passage strange, that he needed to "pick it open" and see "what's inside." Having picked up a piece of reinforcement from the floor, we carefully poked "plugs" into the brickwork. Time and dampness softened the mortar that held the bricks together. They easily succumbed to our efforts, and within five minutes we scattered the remnants of the masking wall to the sides. Behind it, another room opened up to the ceiling, covered with earth mixed with broken bottle glass. Between the ceiling and the embankment there was a tiny air bag, 10-15 centimeters. After shining a bright hologen lamp into it, we made sure that the room was about 4–5 meters across. It was impossible to get into it, too much earth would have to be taken out. And there was no certaintythat the effort spent will pay off with the results. It was not clear who needed to fill up this room, because it was located to the side of the road, and the builders (or road workers) could hardly have been hindered by this void in the ground. At the far wall there was an arch of the passage leading to the Kama, the passage was not laid by masonry but to get to it, you had to work hard with a shovel.
I was interested in the shards of bottles. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be unusually thick and dark green with thickened bottoms, which have depressed depressions about 10 cm in size, resembling ancient wine bottles. They were interspersed into the embankment in such an amount that the thought suggested itself: the builders filled up the premises with earth mixed with old bottles, the warehouse of which could be located in the same dungeon.
I involuntarily recalled the story of my friend about how, while digging a ditch for a sewer pipeline, somewhere in these places, workers stumbled upon an underground warehouse with wine bottles sealed with wax seals. We managed to test one box, after which the bosses arrived, arranged a grandiose dressing-up for the workers, the found potion (“very good!” - according to one of the participants in these events) was taken out in an unknown direction. The basement was ordered to fill up and seal. Wasn't my friend talking about this room?.. He also remembered that he was leading somewhere from the underground warehouse, but they did not have time to examine it, tempted by a powerful distraction.
The central cartage was also blocked with a brick plug. We tried to disassemble part of the wall, but behind it was filled soil mixed with gravel. Old pipes, drain gutters and other communications went into the wall, indicating that the course should continue towards the Kama.
There is nothing more to look for here, it is impossible to excavate the passage without special equipment, and there was no certainty that there was no further "traffic jam".
However, the fact that we calculated the horse-drawn move first theoretically, and then were able to find it, encouraged and gave hope that there might be unsealed moves that would lead us to the temple.
* * *
The phone call returned me to the state of the real world, pulling me out of the shaky half-asleep in which I had been for the last half hour, staring blankly at the monitor and trying to find an error in the developed program. A drug potion in the affectionate name "Nescafe" suddenly ended, and I was forced to periodically go into hibernation.
- I'm listening! - I tried to give the voice vigorous intonation, but it did not work.
- Hi, this is Oleg Tikhonov! There is news here …
- Uh-huh … - I rubbed the bridge of my nose and the corners of my eyes with my free hand, trying to make my brain work with the proper percentage of efficiency. - I'm listening!
- Here one firm on Kirov Street bought an old house. They began to do the repairs, found a hatch in the floor, opened it, and down there a huge basement was flooded. Now the water has already been pumped out, the basement is brought to a divine state. They found some way there. Here the thing is … They themselves are afraid to scout him, you never know what … We need to go and see. They have already given "good". I thought you might be interested. Will you write down the telephone number?..
This information fell into my subconscious as a single heavy lump and gradually began to float upward with bubbles of individual words, finally bringing me to my senses. "Old House" … "Basement" … "Move" …
- Sure! - I already had a pen at the ready. - Writing!
Oleg dictated to me the name of the company, contact numbers and the name of the person with whom I should have communicated in order to obtain permission to inspect the basement. A new move and a new chance to come closer to the clues of the Chernobog temple. If the cart went in the direction of the Kama, it could lead us to more ancient tunnels.
* * *
Turning around the corner of the building, we found ourselves in the firm's courtyard. A concrete dome adjoined the wall, hiding the entrance to the basement.
- We recently added it. - Explains Victor, chief engineer of the company. - There was no entrance at all before …
- How did you go down to the basement? - I am interested.
- The first time we went down through the hatch in the floor. There was about two meters of water. There is still a trace on the walls, which shows its level. For almost two months they pumped out the water with a pump, poured it straight into the street. Our pump is still running, it is constantly heating …
We go down the stairs and through an artificial break we find ourselves in an old basement. The breach was made at a height of about one and a half meters above the basement floor. To make it easier to go down, the workers built a neat wooden platform and wide steps. A figured column, blackened and blistered by corrosion, protrudes from the staircase, propping up a load-bearing ceiling beam.
- There are such columns in every hall. Victor stops and strokes his hand over the lumpy metal. - We tried to restore them. They were cleaned of rust, but after a few days they begin to turn brown again. This column was cleaned and varnished. Let's see how long it will last …
- Halls?.. - I asked. - How many rooms are there?
- The basement consists of six large rooms. There are three halls on each side of the corridor. The total area of the basement is about five hundred square meters …
We go down the wooden stairs and finally find ourselves on the stone floor of the old dungeon. We make a few more steps and find ourselves in a long vaulted corridor, stretching for fifty meters. The corridor is divided into three large sections, clearly marked by arched brick nubs on the ceiling. A wide door rounded in the upper part leads to the left and to the right from each section. A round deep hatch is made in the floor of each hall, from which drainage trays extend into the central hall. From the central hatchway, a large drainage chute leads towards the far wall, in which we notice a breach leading to a semi-obstructed passage!
He, too, turns out to be littered with earth mixed with boards. From the blockage there is a frame of either an old fallen hut, or the supports of a horse-drawn drive. The earth in the rubble is heterogeneous: clay is mixed with black earth and gravel. The course goes under Kirov Street and further into neighboring houses.
According to documents found in GAPO, this building at the beginning of the 20th century belonged to the Polish merchant Poklevsky-Kozel. In the basement of this house, he produced wine, beer and maintained a small asbestos workshop. Attached to the documents was a complaint from his neighbor to the City Council that "the merchant of Poklevsky-Kozel conducts his underground construction extremely carelessly, as a result of which my outbuildings are being destroyed." But the basement went beyond the boundaries of the house and could not be the cause of possible land collapse. Maybe the document was about a neighboring house located across the road, which was also owned by Poklevskikh-Kozel, and it was there that the course went.
After a short persuasion, the new owners allowed us to inspect the building, not in the least surprised by our interest in underground structures.
- So we have a hefty basement under the whole house! - the foreman of the pumping shop located in this building says, wiping his oily hands with a rag. - Everything is flooded there and very deep. And let's lift an old boat out of the shops.
Seeing our bewilderment, he explains.
- A hefty wooden boat with a booth. It is unclear how she was dragged there! Two years ago, near the entrance, the earth collapsed in some way, we lowered three Kamaz trucks with ASG, but you can't drag the boat along it. Yes, you can go down yourself and see, we throw garbage there, you can stand on a pile and shine …
The floors in the workshops are laid with large forged slabs with an unusual pattern. In the center of each hall there is a small round hatch with a diameter of about 40 cm. Their purpose is not clear, for cargo hatches they are too small, for ventilation ones they are too inconveniently located.
The foreman brings us to one of the hatches, we open it. Green shines down - below us, a meter and a half away, is the top of a garbage heap, consisting of metal shavings, sawdust, scrap metal. Green cautiously climbs down, Mulder belaying him. The dungeon is exactly like the one in which we have just been, but flooded and covered with garbage. In the depths, shadows of huge barrels are guessed (the documents describe the underground storage of Poklevsky-Kozel, in which the raw materials for making wine and beer were kept). Green gets out upstairs, we go to another room. Green goes downstairs again. An open vaulted passage leading to the Kama is clearly visible at the far wall. It was on it that they could drag a boat into the basement for repairs. Poklevskikh-Kozel owned its own pier and a small shipping company, so the version about the repair was quite logical.
The water did not leave the basement, although there should have been a slope of about 5 degrees towards the Kama, which means that there was also a "plug" in the discovered tunnel …
* * *
The special officer's hands trembled noticeably when he took the map of underground utilities that we had drawn up. The eyebrows went up in surprise:
- Where did you get this information ?! - he pronounced each word very clearly, slowly with emphasis, as if chasing a step.
I felt uncomfortable under this piercing gaze. I shrugged my shoulders, turned to the window and answered:
- Open sources, personal research, popular rumor …
- What the hell are sources! - my interlocutor waved his hand in annoyance. - We've processed all the archives, there shouldn't be any mentions …
He again plunged into the study of the map, shaking his head in displeasure, and muttered to himself: “Moles are fucking! You got divorced here, there is no one to shoot …"
This benign phrase from a retired state security officer made me shiver. I understood that we had acted rather recklessly by exposing the results of our research to the public. The result of such frankness was predictable - the official services responsible for the operation of underground communications could suddenly recall their duties. The consequence of their activity is a decrease in the available points of penetration into the kingdom of Hades.
The special officer, on duty, was engaged in the liquidation and study of the ancient communications of Perm, at least this is how my colleague-journalist introduced him to me, who organized the meeting.
- You know that our city had and still has a defensive value. - The special officer suddenly looked up from studying the map. - Each plant in our city plays a certain role in the military-industrial complex. Each plant has its own underground workshops and a network of tunnels connecting the factories and some other facilities. Any underground facility is within our area of interest, be it old tunnels or modern facilities. Each object can pose a potential threat from terrorists. Some underground communications can go under the whole city, under the main shopping centers …
- So there is a map of the underground levels of Perm?
- Of course there is!
- Are there ancient passages on it?
- Some of them are on your map … You marked them exactly! Did you go there?
- Yes, but they are almost all overwhelmed.
- It should be so. We have processed all available documents on underground passages, starting from the 18th century. Most of the old passages are overwhelmed and blocked …
- Are there old tunnels created before the foundation of Perm?
The special officer looked me in the eyes, and it seemed to me that I caught surprise in his gaze.
- There are no pagan moves near Perm! - he snapped and made it clear that our conversation is over. He took our map for himself.
In our conversation, I never once mentioned the story of the three diggers, our guesses about the existence of an underground temple and about paganism in general. Willingly or unwillingly, this person confirmed the fact - pagan moves exist, and someone else knows about them …
* * *
On Friday we (Mulder and I) met with the editorial office of the Permskie Novosti newspaper with the correspondent Alexei Klochikhin. He was preparing news material based on our research, and he needed to clarify details, names and dates. After the conversation, he pulled me aside and held out a piece of paper on which was written the name and phone number:
- This is the supreme Perm shaman. Try to talk to him about the temple, perhaps he will tell you something totoba …
- Why don't you want to? I asked. - This is a real topic!
- Well, if you succeed in something, then we will promote the "theme". - Alexey smiled back.
* * *
I met with the shaman only at the beginning of the next week. In my opinion, he looked a little like a shaman. A middle-aged man, lean, dressed in jeans and a shirt outside, short-haired, calm. Only the eyes were unusual. When he looked at me, there was a strange feeling of power and extraordinary wisdom emanating from them, it seemed that he knew my past, present and future, reading me like an open book.
- In the area of the Gallery, a pagan temple existed for a long time, others - more powerful - were located in the area of the Mulyanka River. Christian churches were often built on the sites of temples in places where the Power was concentrated. - The shaman seemed to know why I came to him, although perhaps Alexei just had time to call him and tell him about my interests. - On the territory of the future Perm, the cult of Chernobog existed for many hundreds of years, and what you are looking for is its temple - the underground temple of Chernobog. Later they began to incorrectly call him Satan, although these are completely different entities. A similar temple was excavated in the fall of 2002 in the area of the Glyadenovsky bone on Mulyanka …
The shaman talked about the Glyadenovsky sanctuary discovered by the archeologists of Perm back in the 19th century. In this place, numerous cult objects were discovered, products of local craftsmen, reminiscent of works of art from Ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean. According to archaeologists, the age of the sanctuary on Glyadenovskaya Gora dates from the 6th century BC to the 16th century AD inclusive. And only two years ago, during excavations carried out at the top of the mountain, it was accidentally discovered that Glyadenovskaya Mountain is a multi-tiered structure, reminiscent of the pyramids of the ancient Egyptians and Maya Indians. At the foot of the mountain there was a monastic hermitage, and an underground passage, half blocked up, led into the depths.
- The exits of their underground temples were often laid in the direction of ravines and rivers. Have you tried searching along the Kama coast? At least one entrance in the area of the most beautiful house in Old Perm has survived …
Such a house really existed and was located just near the Gallery. Rebuilt again after a severe fire in the middle of the 19th century, it still amazed with its sophistication and sophistication.
- Not everything is worth knowing to a person, - the shaman firmly shakes my hand with a somewhat unusual shaking - slightly grabbing my wrist, - sometimes you need to stop and not go further …
* * *
Having walked several hundred meters along the paths, having photographed several perfectly preserved portals along the way, we stopped in front of Meshkov's house.
We begin to examine the slope overgrown with bushes, and literally a stone's throw from the railway line we find an unusual concrete cap, littered with debris and sprouted through with grass. We clear it and under a layer of last year's dried grass, earth and debris we find a round hole in a square vertical well, reinforced with thick boards that have turned green from time to time. The boards are pierced with large forged nails.
Mulder is the first to jump down the well and begins tossing out debris and dirt, quickly working with a sapper shovel. Having removed the top layer, we find a small cannonball covered with brown rust bubbles. Digger descends deeper and deeper, having already chosen about a meter of ground. I change him in the well …
The ground under my feet shook, I instinctively waved my hands, trying to grab the walls of the well, but did not have time and flew into the darkness, showered with dirt and debris. The blow was quite tangible and painful, losing my balance, I fell to my knees in a liquid mess.
Mulder's restless voice sounded five meters overhead.
- How are you? Alive?
- Uh-huh! - the fall stunned me a little, the flashlight shattered. - Let's get me out of here somehow!
"Now, we'll figure something out …" Mulder rustled the bushes overhead.
- Just give me the light first!
Catching the flashlight, I began to look around. I was in a spacious arched passage, such as we had seen before. Only the vault and walls were faced not with bricks, but with time-cracked stone. Strange musty unfamiliar smell. Dry stone floor. The mud I fell into turned out to be an earthen plug that fell through under my weight. The course went in the direction of the Kama and into the city, turning to the river station.
I moved forward …
The course began to go down noticeably. It became easier to walk. In the light of the flashlight, some unusual signs and pictograms flashed on the wall. I stopped. A few meters ahead, the course widened sharply and … rested against the "plug" of the blockage. The vault in this place subsided, cracked, filling the passage with fragments of brick and clay. I was sure that the pagan temple was located behind this rubble, I practically reached it.
When I got back, I waited for Mulder to lower the rope. Together we examined the blockage, but it was impossible to disassemble it, for many decades the earth, clay and brick were sintered into a single monolithic mass, hard enough to make a sapper blade bend.
* * *
Sitting on the concrete cap of the well, Mulder and I considered our chances of getting across the dam. We felt that the temple of Chernobog was very close, beckoning with inaccessible proximity.
Our efforts were clearly not enough. It was necessary to assemble a team, examine the tunnel, signs, try to disassemble the blockage. Early rains and cold weather interfered with our plans unpredictably. There was very little time left before the collapse of the Digger field season. My vacation was drying up much faster than I expected. The smartest decision was to prepare the expedition for next spring, gathering the necessary information and equipment during the winter months.
The fee we had to pay for the Mystery of Perm was great - a test of patience …
Author: Nikolay Subbotin