… Suddenly, Mikhail stumbled, although there seemed to be nothing to stumble on. There were no potholes in the smooth concrete floor of the underground corridor. And nevertheless, Babkin's left leg, according to him, flew into some kind of pothole, a recess in the floor. gave a short cry, and Nikolai Leontyev, walking a step ahead, looked around, surprised
Misha screamed, I sharply turned my head back, looking at him, and saw something that I just could not believe my eyes? Misha, I see, falls to the left. His shoulder plunges into the concrete wall and goes into it like a knife in butter. Following is hidden in the wall and his whole body …
Rostov resident Mikhail Babkin, who is a little over thirty years old, spent several nightmarish minutes in some other world. His account of the walking (!) Journey to somewhere unknown is indirectly confirmed by the testimonies of two other Rostovites - Nikolai Leontyev and Vitaly Kravchenko, Mikhail's peers. Both of them saw with their own eyes how Babkin … fell into a concrete wall and disappeared into it! And how, about an hour later, he jumped out of the wall with his face twisted with horror.
After a long, detailed conversation with Mikhail, I visited the place of the unheard-of incident and carefully examined, and also tapped that wall. The wall is like a wall. Monolithic. No hidden voids and visible flaws. This is how everything, according to Babkin, Leontiev and Kravchenko, happened. In Rostov-on-Don there is a water port complex "Oktyabrenok", which operates all year round. Theoretically, it is intended only for children, but in practice there is a sauna in Oktyabrenka, and with it - a hall with a refrigerator, TV, bar, beautiful furniture.
Representatives of the urban elite are the only visitors to the sauna and hall. They steam in the sauna, drink and eat in the lobby, then frolic in the sports pool and then drink and eat again … It is almost impossible for an ordinary person to get into the sauna. You need connections, you need a great pull to get in here. Mikhail Babkin had such a pull. One of his friends worked at Oktyabrenka as a shift night watchman. Late in the evening Babkin, Leontyev and Kravchenko, at that time eighteen-year-old boys, entered the premises of the sports complex, admitted there by the watchman. We steamed for our pleasure in the dry heat of the sauna, swam in the pool, steamed again and swam again … And so the night passed.
At six o'clock in the morning, the night watchman invited the guys to go home. He led them to the service exit from the building along the so-called "backdrop" - an auxiliary, purely service corridor with concrete walls without windows. A corridor ran along the basement of the building next to the pool wall.
“We walked in the following order,” says Mikhail Babkin. - Our
guide, the watchman walked in front, Leontyev followed him, I followed, and Kravchenko stomped behind me.
The corridor was very narrow. I remember thinking then: I was going as if to be shot. Two guards - in front, the third - behind …
Suddenly Mikhail stumbled, although there seemed to be nothing to stumble on. There
were no potholes in the smooth concrete floor of the underground corridor. And yet the left leg
Babkina, in his feeling, flew into some kind of pothole, a recess in the floor. Mikhail gave a short
cry, and Nikolai Leontyev, walking a step ahead, looked around, surprised. Leontiev:
- Misha screamed, I turned my head back sharply, looking at him, and saw something that I
just could not believe my eyes? Misha, I see, falls to the left. His shoulder plunges into the
concrete wall and goes into it like a knife in butter. Following is hidden in the wall and his entire body.
Kravchenko:
- I walked along the corridor and absentmindedly stared straight at the back of Mikhail's head when he was shaken
and he screamed. The next second Mishka fell to the left and dived with his whole body into the wall, as if into water. He disappeared, disappearing into her. I was stunned! Threw myself against the wall and let's rummage around
her hands. What? Maybe there is some kind of secret door somewhere in this place?
I did not find the door. My hands slid over the monolithic rough concrete
surface.
Babkin:
“I hit my left shoulder against something that seemed to be a door. The door flew open, and I flew into a tiny dark room, barely able to stay on my feet. On the left, there was an object that looked like a medical bed. And right in front of me was the next door, slightly ajar. A narrow window was cut in the right wall of the little room. It could be seen the tops of trees, all covered with dense green foliage. It was a clear sunny day outside the window. The tops of the trees swayed in the wind. I was completely taken aback. Now it's six o'clock in the morning, but here, outside the window, the day is in full swing. In addition, I walked along a corridor located underground. And from the window in this little room there was a view from at least the fourth floor. Finally, it was January. Well, it was a summer day outside the strange window.
Moving as if in a trance, Mikhail stepped forward and pushed with his palm the door looming in front of him, slightly ajar. He stepped over her sill and entered the next, also small room, again enveloped in semi-darkness. A tiny round flat plafond gleamed faintly on the ceiling. There were no windows. Near one of the walls there was exactly the same couch as in the first room.
And again Babkin saw another door in front of him.
“My head was in complete confusion,” he says, remembering. - I felt like Alice in Wonderland. He was already resolutely ready for everything - right up to the meeting with Satan himself. Acting like an automaton, I strode forward, threw open the door and tumbled into a very strange room, or, if you like, into a certain space.
Absolute darkness stood there. And in this inky gloom some bright points glittered regularly. Their uniform glimpses had a depressing, hypnotic effect on Mikhail.
“I'm a little crazy,” he says. - I can't take my eyes off the blinking dots. I feel my consciousness begins to float … Suddenly I see: against the background of flickering lights, black humanoid silhouettes appeared in front of me, faintly illuminated from behind by pulsating lights. The heads of all the silhouettes were square! The figures stood in front of me in chains. There were five of them.
In the center of the chain, Mikhail Babkin noticed, one of the silhouettes froze in a slightly bent position. He hovered over a certain small luminous apparatus. The apparatus looked like an ear of corn, pointed at Mikhail. It shone very brightly, but for some reason it did not illuminate anything around it.
Babkin heard a man's voice, as if it sounded right in his, Mikhail's, head. The voice said with an interrogative intonation:
- This one?
He was answered by another male voice, again coming not from the black space in front of Mikhail, but a booming echo that rolled inside the skull of our involuntary contactee. He said:
- No. Not that one.
The voice that rang out first, uttered immediately:
- Erasing memory is necessary.
The phrase made a frightening impression on Mikhail Babkin. With deafening clarity, he realized who exactly would now be erased, most likely, the memory.
While black square-headed figures exchanged their monosyllables
With remarks, Babkin - no one knows how - came out of the state of semi-hypnotic trance, in which he stayed before the appearance of the figures. Clarity of thought returned to him. Horror filled his whole being when he heard the phrase about erasing memory.
- I thought these scoundrels would erase all my memory now and I would turn into a complete
idiot with brains like a baby's …
Mikhail rushed as fast as he could, flashing his heels. One door after another slammed shut behind him.
Vitaly Kravchenko:
- Almost an hour has passed since the moment Misha fell into the wall. We searched the entire
sports complex. The disappeared one was not found anywhere. We returned to the "backdrop", to this underground
corridor, and in complete despair began to tap the wall. We didn't understand anything. We were
in panic. We were about to call the police, although we were aware that they would hardly
believe us there.
Nikolai Leontiev:
- I slowly walked along the concrete wall and pounded on it with my fist, looking for a secret, carefully hidden hole. And suddenly Misha
Babkin flew out of the wall head first as a cork, shouting "… your mother!" He collapsed on all fours to the floor, nearly knocking me off my
feet.
Mikhail Babkin:
- I fell out into the corridor, turning my head madly and shouting something wild, inarticulate. I clearly heard the door slam shut behind me with a loud bang. I looked around - there was no door in the wall! … The guys said that they were looking for me, running back and forth around the sports complex, for about an hour. And according to my personal feelings, I stayed in some crazy other world in no case for more than five minutes. These are miracles, right? It turns out that time flows there at a different speed than here on Earth?