Siberian Light Mages: Chupacabra died on the Oka River (Story two). 18+

Evening – about nine.

Fields of wheat, which are only meant for cattle feed, rush past. It’s a good thing I brought a journal with me, but the pen is running out of ink.

Clouds are crawling across the sky. And on the horizon it has turned into a bloody sea – the sunset has flared up. The colors are unusual, provocative, they are of different shades: crimson is predominant there, and complex, beautiful, ecologically clean, webs of wires cross the horizon, adding black to the landscape. Nearby, the tops of trees turn black. Power lines appear before your eyes, like giant stick insects. They rise above a lonely field. A perfect combination of past and present. It’s both scary and interesting: what is this really? They are installed everywhere – all over the field, this is actually the case. They are installed everywhere – all over the field, tiny, pretty fir trees grow nearby. Iron structures even in the forest: sticking out of the forest like a station, the wind humming in the wires… And the radio is playing in the car. Finally, my head fell on the seat, and I fell into a pleasant sleep. We stopped again… And it was wonderful: why wear yourself out?

August twenty-ninth. One o’clock in the afternoon – probably just because my watch stopped for no apparent reason, and not just mine!

Egor is sitting on a stump near the car, playing the guitar. Enerik is singing – finally! Otherwise he’s driving and keeping quiet, like a partisan being interrogated. Let him sing about everything… Especially about women. Oh yes, he loved them! In every sense of the word. Closing his eyes, the Most Serene Magician of Bratsk sang quietly, beautifully, heartfelt. Aren’t you tired of reading poetry on almost every sheet of paper, huh? By the way, if you’ve read this far, then no. I’m saying this to those who dare to stick their noses into my notebook without asking.

Egor put his musical instrument aside, reached out and took the skewer with shashlik off the fire, and began to eat with the chef, burning his lips and washing down the meat with low-alcohol beer. Having finished his portion, the golden-haired man threw his head back, inhaled the fresh air with pleasure, picked up the guitar and looked at us again.

– And now I will play. This is a story about a girl who lived five hundred years ago. I loved her, beautiful and smart. It hurts to love and see how people dear to me sooner or later grow old, are sent to another world. Okay, I’ve opened up a bit. Probably because it’s cold…

«Play, Enerik!» Valyuk asked.

«You’re standing there, naked…» the young man said tenderly, but sternly and quietly. He unzipped his bag and took out a warm white sweater. Then he raised his head, and his big eyes suddenly, for no apparent reason, opened wide.

– This is… This is… – he couldn’t speak from amazement.

– What did you see there? An airplane?

The guy waved his hand, pointed his finger somewhere up. The boss looked at the sky with his inner vision, smiled. But there was no joy in that smile.

– It’s okay, friends. A flying saucer, a UFO. A saucer, a small one, that accidentally got into our world through energy holes. Therefore, we are approaching the village «X».

After these words, something seemed to snap inside me. If Nature is so raging here, – or whatever (or not?), then what will begin going on in the village where Enerik is rushing to, as if possessed? All these poems are nothing other than the Call… The Call that is impossible to resist. The melody from The X-Files immediately came to mind… And the title sequence, depicting a photograph of a man pointing his hand at a UFO. An hour passed. The plate by – still hung in the air, blinking its white lights. What next?

– Enerik… And in «X» there is more than enough of such stuff? – Yegor asked very carefully, looking with bulging eyes at the unidentified flying object.

– Yes. There is an anomalous zone there. Every winter, huge wolves roam the roads. These werewolves of people and Mages – Light ones in general They don’t touch you, but you should take some vodka with you just in case: they can’t stand alcohol. Throw it in their face if they attack – that’s enough for them. The population will not agree to drink at the celebration under any pretext. The good news is that not all of Russia drinks.

Another hour passed: the UFO managed to fly away towards the field, and began to descend. The saucer first flew above the ground, and then disappeared. It has begun. It seems that we will see more than this. And let no one say that the valiant Headquarters of the Light is not like the others! Let’s move on. Someone was finishing his shashlik, singing, and was silent. But the Celt became more and more joyful. Without thinking at all WHAT awaits us in the village of creatures and magicians! The Call has really grabbed him! Probably, his godson missed him. It became scary.

At five o’clock in the evening, the gas station sign flashed. It’s time to fill up again. No matter how much our conscience gnaws at us, the workers will have to brainwashing… And this is bad, very bad. And the Call still does not lag behind the boss. The Call of the Dark Mage. I wonder WHAT happened in this wilderness, if the Archmage rushed there, as if possessed?! Sorry, I repeat, – emotions.

The night from the twenty-ninth to the thirtieth of August

Two o’clock – the clock finally turned on

…Rays of light from headlights pierce the darkness. They look like a starry sky: There is more than enough darkness around, but the white on black in the form of dots looks amazing. But there are brighter luminaries – in the city: spotlights, street lamps, three-color traffic lights. There is, unfortunately, an unwritten truth: for fun, you can break a lamp. Or unscrew a light bulb in the entrance. A nasty rule is always fulfilled. Freezing rain is pouring down. No one is sleeping. It is impossible to drive: the road is so slushy that the wheels cannot turn. Drops are knocking on the roof and glass, there are so many of them that the windshield wipers are no longer able to clean the window. And the knocking on the roof gives rise to suspicion: the water is about to bore a hole. Whether you give the power engineer a clean window or a dirty one, his it doesn’t bother me at all: it looks through the invisible World to the sides. And in front of us are walls of water.

It’s warm – the stove has been working for an hour already. Sleep disappeared as if by magic in the evening, when the clouds covered the sky – everything somehow gathered internally, feeling a threat from outside. It was born in the subconscious, grew with every minute. It felt like there was something above my head something is flying. Big and dangerous, hanging overhead…

The radio is also on, «Nashe Radio» is playing.

Suddenly it crackles and stops playing. The machine is acting up at first, then there is a pretty powerful jolt – that’s it…

They finally stopped.

We’re almost there. The boss looked at the gas gauge in amazement: full! He sat silently for two minutes, and then… only then… Then he started swearing so much that we were all scared out of our wits. I won’t write down all the swearing in the diary.

– …M… Mother! Start up! Start up! Darkness… so… Start up! -He starts the car, turns the key – no use. He looked at the map from the forties – just a little bit left.

– Enerik, calm down! Why react so sharply – maybe the engine overheated? You turned on the heater so much – we got boiled! You were driving the car at an inadmissible speed even before the storm!

– Maybe… – The boss calmed down a bit. – Although…

– We arrived, since the car suddenly stopped for no reason. Huh? «X»? – Yegor asked in a whisper, without moving.

– There are about ten kilometers left to the village. If, of course, you believe the map. Let’s wait a bit – maybe we’re crossing the anomaly zone. When that happens, all the equipment comes to an end. Here some kind of strange radiation comes from the ground. But not always, but in short pulses. I cursed, not out of malice, but out of amazement – we drove, drove, then that’s it. As if there was an invisible wall ahead of us. And… Ugh! My watch stopped! Everything turned off! Just like twenty-six years ago! As soon as I entered the village «X» – my watch brand new, gold, stopped working immediately! Returned to Bratsk – let’s go!

– The equipment is very sensitive to anomalies. We will wait until the nature of the unknown radiation stabilizes. This will take two or three hours.

– And we did not end up in a time hole?

– No. This also stops the equipment. Only with one difference: it breaks down later.

The rain continued to fall, dying down. Sometimes lightning flashed in the clouds, and in its instantaneous flash, small houses were visible in the distance, of which there were probably only twenty thousand. It is hard to believe that such a large village, which once flourished, became something incomprehensible. Where the invisible World claims its rights and supports life. Or not life. But still, hostility emanated from the village called «X». Mysticism! And the lightning is strange: it flashes scarlet, then green. Flying saucers: they want to land, but they can’t yet – it’s dangerous. Well, that doesn’t concern us.

Three hours later

I stared at the road, not understanding anything. The car still wouldn’t start. It was drizzling. After thinking for a moment, the boss opened the door, got out and started walking on the wet grass nearby.

«Here I am, village „X“…» he exhaled. He looked at the sky. The clouds weren’t parting. The green and scarlet lights stopped blinking, a warm wind blew, and there was a smell of ozone.

Suddenly, over the field, almost at the very ground, far, far away, luminous dots appeared. Enerik was happy, thinking that cars were coming towards him, but there was dead silence. Five minutes later, it turned out that these were simply spherical clots of energy unknown to man. Five balls of regular shape were flying, as if playing with each other. with a friend in tag. Apparently, they appeared during a thunderstorm, and now they have descended. But no.

«What the invisible World will not give birth to…» Valyuk sighed.

Or maybe there is a special point there that attracts them and feeds this UFO. In addition, the Archmage noticed huge circles and patterns on the field in the glow of the five objects. Now it is clear why The car wouldn’t budge: cosmic radiation had put it out of order. And our heads were aching. Oh! We’ll have something to tell in Moscow! Twenty-five minutes later the balloons rose into the air and disappeared behind the clouds. Far away on the horizon, where there were no clouds, a new day was being born as a scarlet stripe. My watch with its hands showed the time: two hours, thirty-five minutes and seven seconds of the night. Cold, damp, grey.

I put the pen aside and fall into a deep sleep. And I hear, almost asleep, the engine starts, the car moves on…

What should we do now?

August 30

Nothing like that happened. We discussed what happened, slept after an interesting night, having driven into the thicket.

THIRTY-FIRST OF AUGUST

We pondered over what the boss had seen at five in the morning the day before. We hadn’t managed to get anywhere, but the vacation had been extended until mid-October. Summer had passed.

First of September: Knowledge Day

For some it is, for others it is not. For all of us it is a simple day. We finally got out of the forest – hungry and sleepy. Kelt drove onto the road, we walked side by side. The state is as if someone hit me on the head with a bag.

The village is located almost on the very bank of the Oka River, the most beautiful, calm, wide. Blue and mystical: only ours live on its banks – of all stripes. At least here. What I don’t know what’s going on in the area that’s far from «X». And why should I know? The autumn forest was turning crimson on both banks. Sometimes there was a green tint: pines, cedars. The sound of an axe was heard, then a crackle – someone was preparing firewood. It smelled of fish and mushrooms. But in the fresh air there was something heavy, incomprehensible – it’s always like that where non-humans live. Where there is no man… But here’s what what was incomprehensible was – he couldn’t understand. I was so tired after three days – my head was a complete mess. At first glance, the huts were nothing. An ordinary village.

The boss parked the car by the river in an abandoned barn, cast a spell on the lock. He ran up a small hill near the cliff, from where the vastness of nature was visible, pulled off his shirt… What is it him!? We have come to this… The wind played with his golden hair, caressed and kissed his young, elastic body. His hair reciprocated the wind, swaying like waves. At first it seemed to me that Enerik was about to jump, transforming into a seagull in mid-flight and flying away. But His Serene Highness sat cross-legged, and, resting, began to meditate. Now the reason for the strange behavior – he adapts to the aura of these places, gets used to it. So that various kinds of Force do not press on the soul. I also sat in the Lotus position, froze. The Invisible World hesitated at first, then calmed down and became quiet: two different energies accepted each other. So now you can communicate with everyone – both with the Dark and the Light.

Deuter’s lovely melodies, painfully similar to The Call, were playing in my head. When I hear them in my head or in real time, for some reason I imagine a field – a summer endless field, with one single birch tree, overgrown with grass or clover. A warm breeze is blowing and a white butterfly is flying. The body flies up, plays with clouds… Plays until you open your eyes and feel that several hours have passed. That all the negativity has evaporated and it has become light.