PRIYATEL — PART 3

Uzhas (The Night Terrors)

While settling into the farmhouse, the heroine is woken up from her sleep one night by the sound of someone moaning….

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Previously: Where the heroine is introduced to a beautiful but suspiciously empty farmhouse, where things are not all well….

Things at the farmhouse were all right for a few days.

Svetlana fell into a routine of filling out medical charts three times a day, cooking and mostly chatting with Sergey and Grigori asking them about their life, something they were very happy to talk about.

Sergey loved to go off into reminiscing tangents, talking about his family life. He particularly loved to talk of his grandchildren, whom he rarely got to see yet simply dotted on.

Grigori too loved to talk about his life on an army base, where he had got his astronaut’s training. Sometimes, when Igor would come up in the conversation, he would throw a guilty look in direction of the sleeping figure. But even Grigori seemed to be realizing that Igor might not wake up as they expected him to. He was visibly getting worse day by day.

Though with obscure references, both from Sergey and Grigori, Svetlana was able to piece together the mystery of the astronauts staying at the farmhouse. It seemed that if Igor did not recover, it was going to be a bad lookout for the government. The country which was barely over the last war, had raced to send the two men into space in a bid to amaze and distract the people from their woes. And the government, despite its might, was secretly worried what would happen if the people found out that of the two men, whom the entire country adored, only one had returned alive.

The doctor too kept in touch. The farmhouse had one of those big black telephones, whose shrill scream reverberated around the empty house, whenever it rang. It always made Svetlana jump, because there was no telling when the doctor would call.

He would always be in a tetchy mood, clearly not happy with the circumstances. He had no help in the hospital. He was now handling three people’s job on his own. Svetlana could not blame him if he didn’t sound particularly concerned about the…