Black apples. Scary short story
Once upon a time there was a girl. One day she became very sick and her mom and dad took her to the hospital.
Doctors tried for a very long time to cure the girl but could not.
"Our medicines don't help," the doctor told mom and dad, "your girl will die soon."
Mom didn't say anything to the girl, but she herself understood everything when she saw her mother's tear-stained eyes.
The girl was transported to another hospital, where other dying children were kept. The food there was delicious, children could play all day long and didn't have to do homework at all, but there were still no happy children.
And if one day one of the children did not show up anymore, then everyone understood what had happened, although they pretended as if nothing had happened.
Some children died quickly, and to some it took a very long time. And those who did not die for a long time knew many terrible stories - about a black shadow that comes during the day to take one of the children, about death that comes at night, sits on the chest and sits, becoming heavier every second, until the one she lands on does not die. Sometimes an eyeless old woman came and pulled life from the body like a rope until she had pulled it all out, and from others death would cut life off in slices, like a butcher, and this was the most terrible and painful of all...
There was also death, hiding in a dark corner on the ceiling. This was the easiest death, and the children put a saucer of milk in her corner, hoping that she would come for them.
"It falls from above and kills instantly," said one boy, "you will still be walking and moving your legs, but you yourself already dead for a long time..."
"Has it ever happened that someone recovered here?" the girl asked one day.
"Even doctors don’t talk about this," answered the girl with chalk-white skin, which is why she was nicknamed the snow queen, "no one returns from here."
But the other boy objected:
"Unless you can get black apples".
"But they don't recover from them, on the contrary, they hide their death there," replied the snow queen.
"And what are these black apples?" the girl asked.
The boy did not answer, only showed his crossed arms. This meant that such things could not be talked about.
But after waiting until the boy was alone, the girl approached him and asked:
"Tell me about black apples".
The boy looked around and said quietly:
"Do you know what is behind our hospital? There is an old swamp there. In the past, it is said, witches used to live there. And now you can sometimes see them if you die very soon. But this rarely happens..."
He was silent for a moment and continued:
"There is a quagmire there in the swamp, where black apples grow under the water, at the very bottom. If you get an apple, you need to carry it with you for one day and one night, and then your death will pass into the apple and you will not die. But only until the apple dries. And black apples dry up for a long time - sometimes ten or even twenty years. And if you water them with swamp water, then even longer...
"How to find this quagmire?"
"It is the deepest and the water in it is so black that if you look into it, you will not see your reflection. But the quagmire is so deep that not everyone will swim to the bottom. And even if you swim and find the black apple, you won’t have enough air to get back."
"But someone did. Otherwise, how did they know about these black apples?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders and said:
"One day a boy was brought here. He practiced swimming. So he went to the swamp and brought from there three black apples - one for himself, and two to be given as a gift. All three recovered and went home. Only one boy was later brought back - his mother threw away the black apple and sent death back..."
The girl did not want to die and decided to go to the swamp. She read in one book that in the old days, pearl divers used to dive with a large stone in order to sink to the bottom faster.
The girl found a suitable stone, put it in her bag, and the next morning she secretly left the hospital and went to the swamp.
She wandered there for a long time, looked into the quagmire, but could not find one where her reflection was not visible. She was about to return to the hospital when she finally saw a quagmire with water so black that it seemed as if there was not water, but tar.
The girl looked into the quagmire, but saw nothing but blackness. Then she threw the bag with the stone into the pool and dived after it, holding on tightly to the handles.
The water in the quagmire was icy, black algae clung to her arms and legs, preventing her from swimming, but the stone pulled the girl down.
"How will I see black apples in this darkness?" the girl thought.
The stone sank to the very bottom. The girl turned her head, but could not see anything in such darkness. Then she let go of the handles of the bag and began to search by touch.
And almost immediately her hand came across something hard and round. The girl grabbed the black apple tightly, pulled it and immediately began to float up.
The apple turned out to be heavy and pulled her down. And the algae seemed to not want to let her out of the quagmire. But still, the girl slowly floated up.
She already saw the light above. There was just a little bit left.
"I made it! I did it!" the girl thought joyfully.
But suddenly something grabbed the girl’s leg and pulled her down strongly. Out of surprise, the girl almost released the black apple.
She looked down. And she saw pale hands reaching out to her from the dark depths. These were the hands of dead children. Those who also dived into the quagmire for black apples, but failed to surface.
Now the dead children did not want to let the girl out of the quagmire.
The girl kicked the hand that grabbed her with all her might and rushed upwards...
She pushed herself out of the water and crawled away from the black quagmire.
Dead children swam near the surface, looked from the depths with black eyes, like fish opening their black mouths, but could not get to the girl.
And the girl sat at the edge of the quagmire and cried...
After all, when she got out of the quagmire, she let go of her black apple out of her hands...
Illustration: Frost7q
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