Chapters of the Beginning II

The only difference between the Being and the Void is just one left turn.

As a child, Volodya Pisetsky could win a contest for being ordinary. He wasn't the first one at school and not rowdy enough to be noticeable as a trouble child. He took up sports when everyone did, failed at sports when everyone did, same with music, drawing, writing and many other things. The only thing he was good at was getting troubles. He hanged out with a company of ordinary boys like himself, doing ordinary boyish stuff: burning up tires, they found at a junk, playing football and exploring all sorts of abandoned buildings and basements. There was always room for exploration, so there was no time for them to be bored.

In his older years he sometimes felt eerie about some event at a point of his life he couldn't recollect. He never asked his friends about it though, he knew they felt the same way. Something was out of place or something odd was there in his childhood. From time to time he felt close to remembering the thing, mostly he wasn't just thinking about it. But the strange talk at the beer-house struck him with memories which were clear enough for everything to fall in its place or get even more confusing.

That was when he was exploring the basement of another block of flats with his friends. That was a typical five-storied apartment building, looking like a giant box in which Schrödinger's cat could die or not die, and it had a typical basement, with gas, water and central heating pipes. Except for one small detail: there was a door with a temptingly weak lock on it. Volodya was there with his friends: Maks, Pasha, Zhenya and Zhora. They tried to open the door by themselves but failed and decided to come back here the next day and avenge the lock with a crowbar.

It was a rainy afternoon when they entered the basement, armed and ready for adventures. The lock broke at the first try and behind it there was a dim corridor. It was old, but the caged lamps on the ceiling still worked. The sign on the wall said: “CAUTION. Avoid the left turns”. Volodya and his pals moved forward through the corridor. It stretched for a good hundred yards and ended with stairs, leading into complete darkness. The friends hesitated for a while at the top of the stairs, while their cowardice was fighting their curiosity, and decided that they were curious enough to come back with a flashlight.

The third endeavor was undertaken on the same day. The stairs seemed to go endlessly into the deeps of the basement. There were two more warning signs saying “beware of the dog's owner” and “do not look into mirrors at night”. The place was getting creepier, but the curiosity was getting even stronger.

At the end of the stairs there was one more corridor, which ended in a left and a right turn. The friends decided to take the right one: here the curiosity was defeated by the suspense of the caution. When he was passing turning, Volodya looked at the left turn. It lead into darkness, that seemed to be alive and pulsing, so he hurried to avert his eyes.

As they went on, they started to hear a slow rhythmic sound of metal hitting metal, something so heavy, that soon they felt the floor vibrating from the hits. There was also some noise, similar to the noise the TV makes when it isn't in the mood, but not exactly the white noise. “That's where we ought to stop,” Volodya thought, “It's quite enough”. But they were walking on until they stumbled upon a door. Pounding sounds were still coming from under their feet, or maybe it were their hearts beating so loud.

Volodya's sane life stopped here with the thought: “Why are we even doing it?”

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Dead Man on the Moon