2 hours 40 minutes. My companion, Moscow architect Yevgeny A., lights a new cigarette: it seems, the third in the twenty minutes that we are here.
- Are you worried? - I ask him.
“Okay, okay,” he replies with a joking threat in his voice. - I'll look at you now …
We are standing at the crossroads of two small lanes in the Patriarch's Ponds area. Quiet. Only from the Garden Ring, which is just a stone's throw away, from time to time, the noise of a passing car comes. In the house behind us, a small child walks in crying. I imagine how a mother, disheveled from sleep, bends over his crib, how she mutters words of consolation …
- Quiet! - Evgeny grabs me by the hand, although I stand motionless even without his command, - Rides.
I begin to peer intently. First, nothing. Then the sound of a running engine is heard from afar. At first it seems to me that the sound is coming from Sadovaya, but its source is getting closer and closer, and I understand that the car is rolling down the alley straight towards us. Mechanically, my eyes search for an approaching car. But the street is deserted, just like a minute and five minutes ago …
I forget about all the warnings and warnings made the day before by Eugene and repeated today. A wave of irresistible fear rolls over me. Along the narrow alley almost towards us - we are standing on the edge of the sidewalk - just sound is moving: otherwise it is impossible to describe. Now I can perfectly distinguish the calm, even noise from the operation of a powerful car engine. I can even follow him with my eyes: here the car is approaching, now it is almost level with us, then it passed us and drove on. And all this is just one sound. The pavement is empty, as the pavement of a tiny Moscow lane can be empty at about three o'clock in the morning …
Out of the corner of my eye I notice a column of ash growing on a cigarette in Yevgeny's motionless hands. He, like me, enchantedly watches a moving point from which a mysterious sound emanates. Meanwhile, her movement had stopped. An invisible car - nothing else it could be - froze at the door of a small mansion. You can hear the powerful engine idling. Then things happen that make me feel cold. The sound of the door being opened is heard. Calm steps, a voice saying something (the words cannot be made out). The lock in the car door clicks, after a few seconds the door slams. The engine revs up … the car starts, and after half a minute the last sounds melt into the night.
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All this mysterious performance takes, according to Evgeny (I, of course, forgot to look at my watch), about three minutes. And, probably, for about the same amount we stood motionless: I was paralyzed by fright and an unexpectedly vivid impression, Evgeny was enjoying my reaction.
- What did I tell you? - he says triumphantly when my ability to articulate speech returns to me. I must, however, note that reality transcends all conceivable descriptions.
To make my shock more understandable, I must add that the mansion, near which we are on duty and in front of which the invisible car stopped, is known to the old residents of Moscow as "Beria's house." This bloody man lived here. However, is this circumstance directly related to a strange sound ghost, three or four times a month, according to Eugene, appearing in the alley?
Evgeny is the unofficial leader of a small amateur group that has set out to study the inexplicable phenomena that are observed on the night streets of Moscow.
“We're interested in the streets,” he says. - What is happening in houses, basements, attics is no longer our diocese.
For several years, Evgeny and his associates, including two students, one physicist, one worker and even one policeman, have carefully recorded, checked and analyzed the mysterious sound and visual phenomena that dozens of people have witnessed during this time.
- Much, of course, in fact turns out to be nonsense, - continues Evgeny. - Someone seemed to be drunk, well, the ringing begins. We have made it a rule to enter into our card index only those anomalous phenomena that have been recorded by us at least two times in the same place.
We continued our conversation in his apartment in the area of Mayakovsky Square, over the strongest tea. Eugene unfolded in front of me the usual scheme of Moscow, which can be bought in any store. However, it turned out to be covered with strange icons.
“This is a diagram of the appearance of sound and visual phenomena in the city, which could not find a rational explanation,” Eugene comments. “The shape of the icon indicates the type of phenomenon, and the digital code carries information about the frequency of“visits”and the duration.
- What is this? - at random I point my finger at a cross somewhere in the area of the Big Kolkhoz Square.
Eugene peers for a second or two.
- Oh, it's a black shadow. The guest is quite rare. Bolshoi Sergievsky lane, house three, in the yard. Imagine
a huge black silhouette of a man, up to the second floor. Stands all night until dawn: eerie, but not offensive. … But this, for example, you know what? - He moves his finger to Zamoskvorechye. - Very cute cats.
They cross the street from house to house, leave the wall, and return to the wall. Even funny at first. But if you find yourself on their way, you will lose your mind …
According to Evgeny, all anomalous phenomena in the city can be divided into four main groups. The first is just sounds. This, he believes, is the safest. The second and third groups are mobile and stationary phantoms, but without sound.
“There’s no harm from meeting them either,” he said. - The matter did not go further than fainting.
Meetings with voiced phantoms are fraught with the most dangerous consequences.
- I am convinced, - Evgeny proves, - that some of them are simply fatal to humans. It comes to the surface of some completely alien world from which we should stay away. I suspect that some of the unsolved disappearances of people are precisely on the conscience of these monsters.
Abnormal phenomena are unevenly distributed across the map of Moscow. Signs are noticeably denser in the areas of Taganka, Yauzsky gates, lanes around Pyatnitskaya, as well as in areas between Herzen Street and Bronnaya Streets. They are less common on the Arbat, almost not on Polyanka and Plyushchikha. They are completely relieved of the risk of encounters with incomprehensible residents of new areas.
“I don’t think we should rush to explain such phenomena,” Evgeny rejects my request. “This is generally a very common mistake of many people who are carried away by various anomalous phenomena: to scatter versions and hypotheses without any reason. Well, I'll tell you about the intersection of biofields and the world soul: will it give anything? First, I need to accumulate sufficient statistical material, conduct a series of experiments, and only then will I feel that I am ready to draw conclusions.
From the book: "MYSTERIES OF THE TWENTY CENTURY". I. I. Mosin