Do Not Answer the Voice from the Ravine

You see this deep gash on the windowsill? It was left by one guest, a charcoal burner from the Horhany, who spent the night here five years ago during a long thaw. He smelled of wet ash and pitch. He kept silent all evening, and only when the fire in the stove began to die down did he tell us why he never answers a strange voice in the forest.

It happened in that nameless season when the forest stands bare and black and the snow has not yet dared to cover the earth. An ice rain came down. The charcoal burner was working alone in a remote ravine, preparing a pit for the burning. The silence was so thick you could hear every drop falling on the frozen ground.

Suddenly, from below, from the deepest part of the ravine where nothing grew but dense blackthorn, he heard his wife's voice. She was calling him by name, softly and with pain, as if begging for help. But his wife was at home, ten versts away, with the little children. The charcoal burner froze, the heavy axe in his hands.

He knew it was not her. The air turned to ice in an instant, the smell of pitch vanished, and in its place the ravine breathed out stagnant water and old copper. The voice kept calling, but now it sounded slightly different. As if someone were trying to imitate familiar intonations but kept getting the stresses wrong.

Then the voice changed. It was no longer a woman. Out of the darkness of the ravine, in his own voice, with his own habitual little cough, something began calling his name. It begged him to come closer to the edge, to take just one step into the fog. The charcoal burner shut his eyes and began whispering a prayer, gripping the axe handle hard.

The voice grew angry. It began to scream, mimicking the crying of his children, and then the sound changed into a wet, heavy breathing right beside his ear. The charcoal burner felt something cold and damp just barely touch the back of his neck. Without thinking, he spun around and swung the axe with all his strength into the emptiness behind his back.

The blade passed through air, but the icy weight was gone. Until morning he did not dare open his eyes. When he returned to the hamlet, his neighbours did not recognize him, for in a single night his hair had turned white as winter snow. He gave up his trade and never again went into the deep forest. The charcoal burner left us before dawn, but his words have stuck in my head forever.

So listen to me carefully while the wind howls outside the door of the inn. If you walk home along a dark road and hear someone calling you by name in a familiar voice from the bushes, do not look back and say nothing.