I was nothing more than an old man, gnawed by regret and sadness. Alone, in that vast, silent house, lost on the outskirts of a village that time itself seemed to have forgotten.

  As I did every day, I sat on the porch, a box of matches in hand. I struck one against the yellowed nail of my thumb, and a pale flame flickered to life. I brought it to an old Prima—those cheap Soviet cigarettes I’d smoked since Brezhnev’s time—and took a slow drag, savoring that outdated luxury like one savors a final memory.

  My wife had died long ago, in a stupid, brutal accident. Since then, I’d been nothing but a shadow. A withered, worn-out silhouette, irritated by everything—especially other people’s lives.

  When the cigarette was reduced to a smoldering stub between my fingers, I reached into the sky-blue cooler at my feet and pulled out a can of Baltika beer. A long gulp. Then another match, like an unchanging ritual.

  My days repeated themselves, all the same. All empty. Nothing broke the silence. Not even death.The house, too, bore the scars of the past. Three floors, a ground level, a basement, and even an old Soviet elevator that creaked like a sickly old man. It was vast, abandoned, exhausted. Like me.

  The paint peeled off in patches, revealing gray plaster beneath. Dark stains stretched across the walls, like forgotten scars. The windows, cracked or missing, let in the icy winds from the Volga. And yet, despite it all, this house was mine. It had witnessed my joys, my shames, my pains. It was the last witness.

  The village kids had nicknamed me the "Bogeyman." They said my house was haunted, that my presence was a living curse, a poison that had been eating away at the village for years. Sometimes, I’d catch glimpses of them hiding in the bushes, their furtive eyes fixed on my home. They dared each other with stupid challenges to venture closer, hoping to catch sight of something frightening. But the house didn’t react. It didn’t growl, didn’t groan, didn’t erupt in a piercing scream. It stood there, still, almost frozen in a heavy slumber, as if time no longer held sway over it. It waited. Waiting for something—or perhaps nothing at all. It was the same as me. The years had stripped away its shine, just as they’d erased so much of my life. And in that heavy silence, that shared inertia, there was no punishment. Not for the children, not for me. Just waiting. An endless wait, where the world passed by without touching us.

  My life was nothing but a long string of sorrows. No respect. Not even a thank you for the service I’d given to our homeland. I’d been a soldier. Two campaigns. The last one left me with a dead leg, riddled with shrapnel. I’ve limped ever since. Like a rusted rifle. I still remember my mother, tears in her eyes, proud that her son was joining the Red Army. She still believed in the grandeur, the posters, the glory of the people. She didn’t know that the army breaks more men than it makes. I was just a grunt. No medals. No speeches. But I’d have liked, just once, to step up onto a stage. Just to shake Gorbachev’s hand. He was a real man. A dreamer. Perestroika, glasnost… we believed in it. I believed in it. I’d have liked to say thank you. And maybe, that day, I’d have been happy.

  On the porch of the house, I was just an old man, full of thoughts and silences. The sun was already dipping behind the hills, painting the sky a pale, almost ashamed red. A dozen empty Baltika cans littered the rickety little table beside me, mute witnesses to my daily shipwreck. When I finally stood, my legs faltered. I staggered, nearly tripping over the stone step, and stumbled into the cool darkness of the house. Each step echoed like a sigh. I groped my way forward, muttering into the void, my hand brushing the damp walls to find the old sofa. When my fingers grazed its threadbare back, I collapsed onto it without grace, like a sack of ashes. The fabric scratched my skin, but I didn’t care. My skull buzzed, my eyes closed. Moments later, I was already snoring, my breath rasping, lulled by the slow, weary beating of my tired heart. Outside, the wind picked up. It was cold. But I slept. Like every night.

  As I drifted off, the house seemed to suddenly come alive. At first, it was barely perceptible, a tremor brushing against my senses, dulled by exhaustion. A faint scratching, as if something—an insect, perhaps, or some equally discreet creature—crawled slowly behind the crumbling walls. The sound, barely audible, slid along the cracked partitions, fading into the rotting wood. It was just a whisper at first, a fleeting breath in the thick torpor of the night. But little by little, the house’s silence fractured. A deeper, denser breath emerged, a cold, almost glacial wind that seemed to rise from the depths of the Volga itself. That wind swept through the rooms like a vast inhalation from nowhere, an odd exhalation, as if the house were awakening from a long sleep. The wood creaked under that icy breath, the beams trembled, the windows rattled under its supernatural force, while the scratching, once so subtle, grew more urgent. The sound intensified, became more frantic. Footsteps, at first faint, brushing the floor like a caress from the unseen, grew clearer. It was as if something—or several things—moved in the shadows, just beneath the surface of reality, threading their way through the walls and under the floorboards. Muffled rasps, inarticulate squeaks, mingled with those footsteps, escaping from the very guts of the house, as if nameless creatures stirred within its entrails, slithering between the walls like snakes. The air, thick with palpable tension, seemed to vibrate almost imperceptibly, like a string stretched too tight, ready to snap under the pressure of the invisible. The house was no longer content to stand frozen in the shadows; it was transforming. It breathed. It quivered. Every room seemed to swell with that uncanny energy, coming alive in a macabre dance that only the darkness could reveal. The walls, the floors, the wooden beams holding up the structure seemed to bend, twist, move under some unknown, unseen force. A heavy presence materialized with each passing moment, growing stronger, expanding. The things in the walls were neither human nor animal. They were other. And there I was, in the dim light of my room, watching in silence. Or rather, I couldn’t watch, for my eyes were closed, swallowed by a sleep so deep, so heavy, that I no longer knew where my thoughts ended and my dreams began. I was there, frozen, yet not truly there. I was the only witness, but there was no one to bear witness. Outside, the wind that had blown moments before fell suddenly still. There was only a cold, heavy silence—the silence of a world holding its breath, letting the house breathe and move in its own way. A strange, oppressive silence, where each breath of the house seemed to ripple through the air, a gust of dread passing through the walls, unstoppable by anyone. Nothing could break that moment, neither shadows nor light. In that void, in that icy stillness, the house lived, animated by ancient, invisible forces. The scratching grew more desperate, the footsteps more numerous, faster. Things kept moving, climbing, sliding, slipping into every corner. It was as if the house twisted under an unseen burden, as if it were trying to shake off something living within it, all while opening and closing in a slow, disturbing dance. And there I was, still asleep, unsure if I was a witness or a prisoner of a dream too real, feeling the house draw closer, coiling around me, invisible yet omnipresent, like a creature waiting in the dark, ready to swallow me whole. The wind outside had stopped. But the house kept breathing.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The next morning, when I awoke, the house seemed to have fallen back asleep. A silence hung over the rooms, dense and suffocating, like a leaden shroud. The icy wind from the Volga whistled softly through the broken windows, howling between the decaying walls. The village brats had once again amused themselves by throwing stones at the facade. Several panes had cracked under the impacts, starred like poorly healed wounds. I’d bought this old house for a pittance, shortly after the Wall came down. It had once been a grand hotel—luxurious, imposing, alive. Influential men and women had walked these halls, drunk in these lounges, slept in these rooms. But that belonged to a forgotten era. Now, it was nothing more than a husk of memory, a skeleton of history eaten away by time. It had lost all its splendor.

  Sometimes, you could still hear the ghosts of the past. Echoes of life from another time. Laughter, glasses clinking, bodies waltzing across a parquet now covered in dust. Shots of vodka slammed on counters, shouts, songs. There was still, within these walls, the echo of a vanished joy. But today, this place had been stripped of all its finery. Its grandeur had been gutted. The gold, the silver, the chandeliers, the mirrors—all gone long ago. All that remained was the skeleton: the creaking wooden frame, the bare walls, the blackened beams. And yet, sometimes, in the grand reception hall, a laugh would cut through the space. A sudden burst, followed by a murmur, a breath. Men and women, laughing, dancing, kissing, getting drunk—as if time had refused to erase their passage.

  How much had this house seen? How many eras had it endured? How many men and women had trodden its floors, left the fleeting imprint of their presence? How many whispers had it heard, muffled laughs, awkward silences? This old house had seen more than many men on this earth.Upon waking, I grabbed a bottle of Baltika and poured it into a chipped glass where a raw egg already floated. A long swig of that amber, viscous brew burned my throat. The taste was foul, but it woke me better than any coffee. I stood with a groan, my joints creaking, and approached the old elevator. A Soviet steel beast, as temperamental as an old drunk. It whined as it opened its doors, as if reluctant to let me in. I pressed the button for the third floor… but something caught my eye. There was an extra number. An additional floor. An absurd digit, slipped in by mistake or malice. A 4, half-faded, rusted, as if it were never meant to exist. The engineers must have slipped up. A simple oversight, perhaps. But on that foggy morning, in that sickly house, that small anomaly tasted strange. It tasted of vertigo.

  That floor didn’t exist. It wasn’t on any map, any blueprint. Since the fateful fire, the house’s records were patchy, eaten away by oblivion as much as by flames. That button that shouldn’t have been there—I’d noticed it years ago. An anomaly, a stain in the fabric of reality. And that morning, without really thinking, driven by a strange weariness or a curiosity too long suppressed, I pressed it.

  The elevator groaned. It lurched into motion, creaking like an arthritic old man. The numbers ticked by, slow, hesitant. One, two, three… then nothing. And yet, it kept rising. Higher still. Far beyond what the house should have contained. The old lift shuddered, wheezed, rattled. It seemed to suffer. Then, a dull thud. It stopped.

  The doors slid open with a sigh of steel.

  Before me stretched a hallway. Long. Unnaturally long. Shrouded in thick, suffocating darkness. The walls, covered in faded floral wallpaper, seemed to weep tears of dampness. A scent of wax, ancient dust, and dead flowers hung in the air. And somewhere, far off, a laugh echoed. High-pitched, distorted, grotesque.

  Then the music began.

  A waltz.

  Slow. Obsessive. Strangely familiar.

  And the past, like a curtain drawn back, began to unfold. Silhouettes appeared in the hallway—blurry, ethereal, dancing to the ghostly notes. Dresses twirled, tattered suits bowed in forgotten courtesies. Faceless visages, mouths frozen in eternal smiles. It was a dead era. A fossilized memory. And yet, it danced on. As if the hallway itself refused to forget.

  I stood there, rooted. A spectator to a ball that time had banished.

  And at the far end of the hallway, very far, a door. Closed. Still. But I had

  the terrible feeling it was waiting for me.