A story told by an elderly villager. Unfortunately, the date and place of the incident are unknown. It happened somewhere in Russia, most likely at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I was little, about five or six years old, when a passer-by knocked on my aunt:
- Give me some water, nurse.
- Go further, they will serve you there, - said my aunt in response to the request.
- Well, remember this, my dear, - the passer-by threatened and went on.
From that time on, they began to notice something strange in the house, as if something invisible, but the living thing between us lives and makes a hindrance in everything. Either the pots that need to stand in the stove will be found under the stove, then some dishes will fall out of hands, then some thing will end up somewhere in a place where it should not be, for example, bast shoes in a pot of cabbage soup.
We began to think and guess about this matter with our neighbors. They thought about it and decided to call a sorcerer from one village fifteen miles away so that he would solve the case, but out of my head. The sorcerer has arrived; and before that they set the table, put the samovar on the table, made tea, a decanter of tincture. My aunt's house was well-to-do.
The sorcerer was a tall, stout old man, dressed in a blue robe and a brightly colored hat. He looked around and sat down in the front corner. The uncle and aunt began to treat the guest and ask him to help the grief, which he had previously been told about.
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- Nothing, nothing! This is a trifling matter, we had to break off not such things, - says the sorcerer, and he himself drives glass after glass into his womb.
I sat there for half an hour, or maybe more, nothing. Only suddenly they look, and a pair of bast shoes hangs on the ceiling. And they dangle.
- AND! Jokes … Wait, wait! Here I am! - passed another glass for courage. Then he looked at his hat, and it was all cut up, so you can't put it on your head.
The sorcerer flared up and began to whisper some slander. But it was not there. True, sandals fell from the ceiling to the floor, but the sorcerer had boots and trousers cut up on straps. The sorcerer grabbed the bast shoes that had fallen from the ceiling, ran out into the entrance, put them on there and hurried down the street with a brisk pace.
- Well, breadwinner? Help!
- No, it's stronger than me here, I can't. There is nothing to brag about. - And with these words he left.
Some time has passed. One summer we children were running across the meadow outside the village, when suddenly we saw a girl between us, who had died for a month or so. We are small. What did they understand? She walked with us, played, and we still called her Sasha. Returning home, they told the family that they had seen the late Sasha, and at home the highways (adults) tell us:
- Sashutka has been in the grave for a month, how will she come to play with you?
And we are ours. Here is one of the women and taught us to ask the girl where she came from when she was buried.
The next day we saw this mysterious Sasha again. She began to play with us again.
- Sasha! Why, we died! Have you come out of the earth again? we ask.
- No!.. I was not dying. I am Sasha, but not that one.
- What are you?
- I am the Sasha who lives with Grunya's aunt (that is, in the same “house with oddities” that was described above).
No matter how stupid I was, I thought: what is Sasha? I don't have such a sister, and they (my aunt and her husband) too. Aunt's children also said to Sasha:
- Well, what are you lying, we don't have you, where do you live with us?
- And I'm under the bench, otherwise on the stove.
- Well no. We do not know.
Inquiries about the new game have stopped. As soon as the game was over, Sasha disappeared from somewhere. The aunt's children, upon arrival at the hut, even began to look for the girl and, of course, did not find it.
- Sasha! Where are you? - shouted one of the children.
- I'm here! - there was a thin voice somewhere in the hut, and then it was all over.
Everything was told by the children to their uncle and aunt, and they began to seriously think about this strange event, and meanwhile they quietly instructed the children to ask the strange girl well as soon as they happened to see her. From the questions of the children, my relatives received the following information:
- I am the same Sasha, - said the girl, - who is constantly mischievous. I am the damned mother. My grandfather took me away and sent me here to you because the hostess did not give a passer-by to drink water. I am mischievous because you do not give me food or drink. Let me sleep softer, put me under the bench to eat, otherwise I was worn out.
And the girl showed her peers here and there holes in the linen, and her aunt, having learned about this, began to put food and baby clean linen under the bench. But it's great that none of the big ones (adults) could see her.
Once upon a question of children "When will she leave?" she answered:
- I will leave three years after the fire.
- Will there be a fire?
- Yes.
- Will you light it up?
- No. Such a log will fall.
There really was a fire. A lot of all kinds of goods burned up from my aunt. Only thanks to our relatives did we manage to rebuild soon.
