When my cousin and I were children, our parents often sent us to our relatives in a village in the Irkutsk region. It was the best time, filled with joy and cute pranks. But there was one in a series of carefree days, which I remember with a shudder to this day.
Dasha and I were ten years old. By country standards, grown-up girls. Our peers have already fully helped the adults with the housework. But our aunt and uncle felt sorry for the city's nieces and gave jobs, more for fun than help. One of our favorite duties was meeting and corralling the calves home. We did this every day at about five in the evening so that the calves did not meet with the cows and did not suck out all the milk. We named two motley 3-month-old heifers Burenka and Alenka, and we were looking for them that day. It was very hot, so we assumed that the animals took refuge in the shade of abandoned buildings - "kamenki", as they were called in the village. Earlier, back in Soviet times, these were comfortable 3-storey apartment buildings, but then for some reason everyone moved to the ground and the houses came to an abandoned, dilapidated state. But in the heat, livestock willingly lay here. Adults mostly sprawled lazily in the shade of houses, and calves climbed right inside. Sometimes the stupidest cow children climbed onto the roof and getting them out of there was a disaster for the whole village. Therefore, my sister and I were most afraid that our Alenka and Burenka climbed there.
For an hour we crawled over the "kamenki", but we never found the cattle. Suddenly I heard plaintive crying, or mooing. Dasha and I rushed to the sound. In one of the houses, in a hole under a collapsed floor, we found a crying girl about our age. She smeared tears on her dirty face and called for help. We held out our hands to her, but she refused to grab them, offering to go down to her. Of course, I refused to climb into the hole, my sister followed my example, sensibly suggesting: "Come on, we'd better run after adults." For some reason, this proposal infuriated the captive, and she began to swear terribly, showering us with curses.
We were at first dumbfounded, and then jumped out with a bullet and ran into the village. On the way, a thought suddenly occurred to both of us, and we, having looked at each other, said in a voice: "Did you see HOW she was dressed?" Goosebumps ran through the body, both suddenly realized that the failed girl was dressed in a warm fur coat and a fur hat (on a hot day!). And one more thing: we did not know her! You understand that all the kids communicate with each other, and we were sure that we had never seen such a child among friends before. All this we, of course, told the adults.
After 15 minutes, already together with my uncle and aunt, we were at the very pit. And there was nobody there.
Stroking over the heads of us, shaking from the shock we had experienced, my uncle carefully said that a few years ago a girl who had also come to visit her relatives for a vacation had failed and died in this place in winter. Apparently, the unfortunate woman did not notice an abyss under the snow embankment (this "stove" has almost no roof left) and fell there, breaking her neck. Apparently, it was with her spirit that we met. And something tells me that the ghost had far from the best intentions, because it got very angry when we refused to share his fate with him …
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Ludmila Savelyeva