Living shadow. Scary short story
One girl moved with her parents to a new house.
In the new house, she had got many new girlfriends and friends. The house stood on the very edge of the city, but there was a river and a forest nearby for swimming and going for berries and mushrooms.
The children who lived here often played all together, as everyone knew each other, and their parents always went to visit each other.
Only one boy never played with them, although he often went outside. He would sit on the bench just like an old man and sit there doing nothing until it was time to go home.
"Why doesn't he play?" the girl once asked her new friends.
"He got sick and he can't run," said one older boy, "he used to play with us, but now he is not allowed to play."
One day the girl went out for a walk. Mom said that soon they had to go on business, and she should not go far from home.
But the yard was empty, only a sick boy was sitting on the bench. He waved at the girl to come over.
"Everyone went to swim in the river," he said when the girl came up.
"It's a pity," said the girl, "my mother told me not to go far."
Then she thought for a moment and asked:
"Are you really not allowed to run?"
"True," the boy nodded, "something happened to my heart. But soon I will have an operation and then I will be able to play together with everyone again."
The girl sat down on the bench next to him.
"Aren't you bored of sitting alone?"
"No," the boy answered, "I look around and see how many things are happening that other people do not notice."
"Yes?" the girl was surprised, "and what did you see?"
The boy shrugged his shoulders.
"Different things. For example, the sun has eyes, only it rarely opens them."
"Really?" surprised girl and looked at the sun. But she didn't see any eyes in the sun.
The boy laughed softly.
"You have to look very carefully to see it. And if you look closely at the clouds, then after a few days you will see that they are repeated. And also..."
He suddenly fell silent.
Frowning, the boy followed the man who was walking by with his eyes. The girl has already seen this man. He lived in an old house, which was overgrown with thick blackberry bushes around. But for some reason, the children never picked blackberries there. The girl did not like this man very much, but she could not say why.
"Did you see it?" the boy asked when the man had gone.
"Did I see what?" the girl asked.
"His shadow twice as long. Stay away from it. If you don't want to have heart surgery too."
The girl did not understand what the boy wanted to say by this, but then her mother called her.
After that, the girl saw the sick boy several more times. But he didn't say anything more. And then he stopped showing up. At first, the girl thought that he must have had an operation, but then the children in the yard said that he had died - his heart had collapsed.
And for some reason, the girl immediately thought that the boy did not die because of the heart.
After all, she also tried to look carefully. And she also noticed that the clouds in the sky are repeated. And the long shadow of the man who lived in the house overgrown with thorny blackberry bushes. The shadow was not only very long, but it seemed to move in a completely different way. As if she lived separately from the person. And the girl even thought that the shadow was watching her.
The girl was afraid to look at this living shadow, and she asked other children about this man.
"Shh..." one boy interrupted her, "don't talk about what you saw. Adults won't believe you anyway. My brother tried to talk about it, and a few days later they fished him dead from the river. At first they thought that he drowned, but then they learned that he died before he fell into the water."
"What should we do then?" the girl asked quietly.
"We will do everything ourselves," replied the boy, "we will get rid of this man with a living shadow..."
A few days later, the children snuck to the house at night, doused the blackberry bushes with kerosene and set them on fire. The fire was so strong that even firefighters could not put it out. And it burned until morning. And in the morning, only ashes remained on the site of the old house. Burnt human bones were found among the ashes.
The children were delighted that their plan had succeeded, but one of the boys died the next night. The next night, another one. And someone died every night. Only children. And the adults couldn't do anything.
The girl's parents took her away and took her to another city. But a few days later they woke up at night from a loud scream. When they ran into the room, the girl was already dead. She had a thick stalk of prickly blackberries wrapped around her neck, and her arms were badly burned, as if she had held her hands on fire.
Illustration: Frost7q
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