At that time I was thirteen years old, and during the holidays I was sent to my grandmother's dacha - to breathe fresh air. In the village where my grandmother bought the house, there was a farm, milk was brought from there, and I remember how I was forced to drink it - warm, fresh.
Who can argue - in the summer it is good at the dacha, only in the evenings there was nothing to do, and my neighbor girl Zina and I went on an expedition, as we called it, walked to the nearest big village to a club where young people were dancing. And this, by the way, is about six kilometers one way.
If my grandmother found out about these hikes, we would not be well. But we said that we were going to the hayloft to read aloud. And she, naive, believed. In one of these marches, a rather strange event happened - we were scared, I remember, it was terrible! And no longer traveled that far.
It was only as an adult that I realized how unlikely that episode was. Just mystical. It was like this … That Saturday evening, I put a couple of apples and a packet of cookies in my backpack, added a bottle of iced tea - this is our tradition: we always took something to eat. At seven Zina was already waiting for me at the gate, waving an oiled bag of pies.
We went outside the outskirts and wandered, chatting incessantly, to the forest through which our path lay … Gathering flowers and strawberries, we reached Lake Deaf - it marked about the middle of the way, here on the shore we usually had a meal. We rested, and then walked for another forty minutes. Stocky Zina took out of her bag an old tablecloth, which she pulled in her mother's closet, and spread it on the slope. Having settled comfortably, we began to gnaw cookies and apples, seizing them with pies with cabbage.
The evening was stifling, quiet, warm - as if before a thunderstorm … “Well, it's time! Get up, sloth. And then your gentleman will get stuck there! " - Laughing, Zina pushed me, and I must say, I almost fell asleep. “Aha, let's go! And stop calling him a beau. I don't like him at all! " - I got to my feet and then, looking at the sky, froze with an open mouth …
A shiny metal disk hung directly above the lake; I find it difficult to estimate its diameter. A bright red beam was beaming from the center of it, going somewhere deep in the dark water. I silently pulled Zina's hand and pointed her finger at the wonder. "What is it?!" she screamed, frightened. “It's a UFO,” I said almost soundlessly, my breath caught in my throat.
I never thought about the existence of these things, but there was no doubt about it - before us hung "it". I was scared wildly, although in principle I was never afraid of anything. Zina held my hand so tightly that my hand became numb. She finally broke down and started to run. I still stood looking after her and thought: “What is she doing? And what exactly should be done?"
Promotional video:
But after a couple of seconds I also ran - along the steep bank, scratching my knees and scraping my fingers on the thorny grass. Then I heard - no, I did not hear, I felt the wind blowing. Something whistled near the ear, probably this is how a bullet flying past is perceived. I fell flat on the ground, and when I turned around cautiously, I saw a bloody trace in the sky - there was no more iron, but the clouds in its place were somehow strangely boiling and changing color from poisonous red to orange-brown.
I could not take my eyes off this sight, and Zina, standing not far away, shouted to me: “Nastya, why are you sitting? Let's run! Well, get up! We rushed like crazy all the way to the village. Gasping and stumbling and falling. There, on the shore, in a panic, we threw our bags and things … But we remembered about them only when we rushed to my house.
After catching our breath, we sat on the porch, and then our grandmother saw us. “Did you see the dead man? What are disheveled? Fathers! Nastya, you tore your pants! Where have you been? We did not tell her anything, but the next morning she came to my room, shaking my backpack and Zinka's jacket.
“Did you go to the lake? Why were your things found there? I told you not to go there! This place is not good. Some drowned people are caught there a year at a rate of five! What carried you there? " She angrily threw our things onto a chair. "Who found them, bah?" - I sleepily tried to soften her anger.
“Vaska, a neighbor, went fishing there early today, but he says all the fish are dead there,” Granny stared at me attentively. "How died?" - I sat up in bed. “And so. Crucian carp and roach swim upside down … And the birds are dead on the shore. And you saw something there yesterday, right? " - the grandmother looked at me searchingly. I shook my head stubbornly. Zinka and I never confessed. For some reason, I did not want to talk about what I saw. But I didn't want to go to the "bad lake" either …
Anastasia TUMANOVA, Kazan