Don't Open When the Heart Calls

There is a kind of darkness that does not stand outside the window - it learns to beg in your own voice to be let in. The most terrible guest is not the one who comes with a knife. The most terrible is the one the heart wants to open the door to. Sit closer to the stove, and don't look at the door. I'll tell you what an old chumak passed on to me, while the candle between us trembled without any wind.

That winter a fiery star fell in the field. Not just a star - a whole pillar of flame that tore the sky open above the village. The dogs howled all night, the roosters kept silent till morning. And where the star had fallen, they found a black circle of scorched earth. Warm, as if someone were breathing under it. And that circle smelled of burnt grain.

From that black circle a low, warm fog crept toward the village. It clung to the windowpanes, and the first to see a figure through it was a young widow whose husband had not come back from the war. In the night she woke to a breath on her neck. By the bed stood a man who looked like her beloved. But the moon slid behind a cloud, and he crumbled into ash. Only the smell of burnt grain remained.

The next night he knocked at the window. She saw him through the glass - handsome, smiling, with his hand held out. She did not open. But she did not step away either. She stood and watched until he dissolved into the dark. In the morning there was ash on the windowsill, warm to the touch. And again that smell - burnt grain.

He came every night. Sometimes as the husband who had died - with the same voice, the same smile. Sometimes as a stranger who cast no shadow by candlelight. She knew it was not him. But she waited. Because his warmth was warmer than any stove. And the smell of burnt grain became dearer to her than bread. With every morning she grew weaker. Her cheeks sank, her eyes dimmed. The neighbour women whispered: a perelesnyk has come, the litavets is taking his due.

The old healer woman put wormwood and an iron nail under her pillow. By morning the wormwood was burned, and the nail - melted. And again that smell of burnt grain. And not only she. Three women in the village began to waste away. One heard her dead husband's voice through her sleep. Another saw a handsome young man at the window. The third woke to a warm breath, though there was no one in the house. One sign bound them all together - the smell of burnt grain in the morning.

The healer said: he does not break down doors, he does not force his way in. He waits until you open the door yourself. And open it you will - because the heart begs for what it does not have. That is his power. She advised them to strew the threshold with seer-poppy and hang a branch of aspen above the window. But not everyone listened.

One they saved - a mother of two children, who remembered their voices at the very moment she was reaching for the window. She bit her lip until it bled, and the vision vanished. Another could not. In the morning they found her with a smile on her face, but no warmth in her body. Beside the pillow - a handful of ash with the smell of burnt grain.

The chumak said that after that the village emptied out in a single winter. The houses stood with their doors locked, only the wind rocked the shutters. And on the spot of the scorched circle in the field, nothing grows to this day. And they say that on frosty nights it smells there of burnt grain. I don't know if it's true. But when you lie down to sleep and suddenly feel warmth on your cheek - don't hurry to light a candle.

First, breathe in. If it smells of burnt grain - don't open the window. And don't look at who is standing behind the glass. Because he already knows how your voice sounds when you call out in your sleep.