Detective Tales from the Soviet Union

Fourth Case

First of all, I have to disappoint you, cause the most paranormal story will have to be reserved for later. I didn't pick the best of times to go out and make photos. Not only I almost shat my pants because of some creepy dude there, but also visibility was shit. However, few of these photos will fit another story quite nicely. Use your imagination to envision the locales I am going to tell you about, cause some of these places are too far away/too creepy/don't exist anymore. Still, I think you will find this case to your liking.

Here it goes. It's '92, the country is still shaken, my grandpa is still serving in Militsiya of our town. One day a wierd guy comes to his station, acting all awkward and shy, obviousy nervous. According to grandpa, he looked like a drunken bum in dirty, torn clothes. Despite his looks, though, he had both proper passport and a legal address. In short, he told them this: in one of the farthest and worst parts of town, that consisted of garage cooperative and and abandoned train depot (you can see the depot gates on the first photo, I have no fucking idea why does it glow green, but I guess it looks amusing), his "friends" started to go missing. (By the by, I have no idea why that depot is even there, I've never seen a single train on those fucked up tracks in my life.) Those people were not just some random guys, but true to life vagabonds who had some sort of "spot" there, where they hid from people's eyes. Also there was scrap and copper reception point nearby (translator's note: selling stolen scrap and copper was an integral part of survival for many bums back in the 90's). That explains why they sent an "emissary" who actually had some legal papers instead of one of their own, because no one wanted to spend their night at the "monkey house" (tn: a slang term for a cell that houses drunks and bums) or used as a scapegoat to "help" Militsiya to close some dead cases, which was, regrettably, a quite widespread practice back then.

As he explained, something strange was happening there. Just three days ago, one of the bums walked away from the bonfire to take a piss and just never came back. Around 30 minutes later, his friends lit some sticks and went looking for him with those improvised torches. You never know, he might have fallen asleep in a ditch or something. But despite all their efforts, they failed to locate their friend (although, drunk bums are not very good at nocturnal search operations, let's be honest here). Their friend didn't come back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow either. They didn't think much about it, especially because a full bottle of vodka went missing that night too, which, apparently, was a commodity valuable enough for them to justify their friend's sudden flight (he didn't take any of his stuff with him, so they were waiting for him to come back, ready to kick his ass). But on the next night another one of them went missing, under much more frightening circumstances. Similarly, one of them walked away from the bonfire to take a leak, but as soon as he left the circle of light provided by it and entered the bushes he let out a terrifying scream that was abruptly cut short. This prompted other bums to action as they rushed to his rescue. But at that moment, accroding to the "emissary" they heard some sort of "growl" which made them stop in their tracks. He didn't see much himself, cause no one thought to prepare torches for such an occasion, but some of his friends claimed to see a "scary person" who was grinning at them from the darkness, barely dissipated by the weak light of their bonfire. To cut the long story short they got really scared and went back to their bonfire, not daring to go to sleep till the morning. At that point, bums were forced to take extreme measures and ask for help from one of their sworn enemies - the Militsiya.

Legally speaking, Militsiya had no basis to reject his report, so it was accepted, discussed during the smoke break and promptly dismissed as mad homeless ravings or some sort of prank. Cops had enough on their plate already. But next disapperance forced them to ponder and act. One of the town's citizens disappeared. A simple, regular guy who liked to drink and to drive around in his car in his free time. According to his wife he was a responsible family guy who never left for a long time without warning. But two days have passed and there was no sign of him (by the way, fuck if I know why didn't she report his disapperance after the first 24 hours passed). And the last place where he was seen was, you've guessed it, that very same garage cooperative, which situated near bums "spot", where he left his car and went home using familiar and the shortest route - old railway tracks. Connecting his disapperance with those of bums was, of course, an obvious thing to do. As you can see on the photos forest closely surrounds the tracks from the both sides. Similar situation is in the other direction, except threr is a bridge there, that you can see on the photo. I decided not to climb that bridge, cause I saw a corpse lying there in my childhood, which didn't leave me with a lot of pleasant memories (that corpse itself is not interesting, typical story of the late 90's). After the bridge there is more forest on the right and concrete wall on the left, separating railway from old warehouses (were almost abandoned back then and by the mid-2000s they were demolished. After that, some sort of building materials market was constructed there, but by now it is abandoned too, I guess this place just have such fate). And so it goes like that for a kilometre and a half till it reaches more-or-less civilized areas of town.

At first, they suspected the bums themselves, obviously. But on the other hand, if any of them was guilty he would have run away after their "emissary" informed the Militsiya. But one operative was sent to question them anyway (although, he either was a dumbfuck or the bums left their usual place, because he didn't find anyone). Meanwhile my grandfather took a group of subordinates and went to visit those old warehouses which were the obvious place to hide potential bodies. Besides, at that point in time, there wasn't even a single security guard working there. Skipping the boring details, what they've found there was a checkered shirt with some traces of blood, that, according to missing guy's wife, was on him when he left home. In addition, there was a lot of various trash and a couple of matrasses. The room they found them in was relatively clean too, in comparison to the rest of the warehouse. Experts immediately detected some fingerprints there and that's where a certain surprise awaited them. It was revealed that fingerprints belonged to two convicts who escaped from some prison near Solikamsk whole 15 years ago and were largely forgotten about by that point. By the by, they were imprisoned for some pretty heavy stuff (rape and something else, as far as I can remember). One of them was local, the other one used to live in Moscow. The local one was 62 y.o., at that point, the one from Moscow - 41.

Next logical step was to check the address where local escaped convict used to live. His flat was on the first floor in a pretty bad part of town. Apartment complex itself was in critical state (it has been demolished by now) and the flat itself belonged to town's housing fund for some reason (con would have been quite surprised if he chose to return home legally, I bet), but no one lived there anyway. It turned out that getting the keys wasn't a problem, since the door (a piece of plywood) was already broken into (the lock was torn out). Inside the apartment, or to be more precise, inside it's bathroom they've found, without any exaggeration, a fucking pandemonium. First traces of blood were found on the floor and walls of the corridor. And in the bathroom itself there was a bath full of bodyparts (belonging to three people in total, though heads and torsos were never found, as far as I know), apparently chopped with an axe that wasn't ever found either. Those parts floated in dirty cold water (no idea where did they get it, since water supply to that flat was cut off long ago). Stench of decomposition and feces was horrible (toilet was literally covered in excrements), but neighbours didn't contact Militsiya, which was understandable since nobody lived on the first three floors, except for an ancient blind gaffer from the second. Kitchen had a portable gas stove, big tin can with traces of blood on it, half-full bag of potatoes and a pile of human bones just laying in the corner. This is when the realisation hit the operatives. Cons, who's fingerprints where found everywhere around the apartment, were eating those people. Fuck if I know why and for what reason (I mean, you can just steal food, like those potaoes), but they were eating them. Everything pointed to this conclusion.

Questioning the other tenants didn't give investigators anything new to go on. Those few who still lived there (less than 10 people in total) unanimously calimed that they have never seen any unfamiliar men there. But that blind old man said that night before Militsiya payed a visit to that flat someone was trying to force themselves in his apartment for a few hours straight, but to no avail. Case was turning more and more serious by the minute. Two operatives were left in the apartment to lay ambush, while my grandfather went straight to the prosecutor's office, demanding them to involve the federals, because this case was clearly out of his league and he knew only too well who would have to answer for all this shit if it turned even more serious (imagine that, a mass murder plus two wanted escaped convicts). Case was taken away from him suprisingly fast, almost no one there even tried to argue with him. Two operatives, who spent the night in that flat and almost went mad from stench and disgust, were freed from their unpleasant duty, though murderers never returned to their apartment anyway. Everyone involved was thoroughly questioned by the feds (grandpa himself and his immediate superiors got their asses kicked by them for sloppiness, but no one lost their office or got demoted) who took this case over. What info I have left could be classified as "rumors told during the smoke breaks", but if you start to tell the story, you have to finish it, even though I don't know all the details.

Perpetrators' tracks were found not far from town, near a big forest that stretches for dozens of kilometres. There was a place there called "the logde" even though it was, in fact, more of a country house cooperative consisting of something around 40 houses. My guess, call came from there. Federals failed to apprehend both of them, though, and here's why: they were already pursuing them through the woods, when suddenly they stumbled upon the older one, lying on the ground and grinning like a madman. Apparently his friend broke his leg with something heavy and proceeded to escape alone. He was dragged to a car and interrogated, but no one managed to squeeze out a single word out of him, he just kept whining and growling like an animal. The younger one was never found, even though a search party combed through the whole fucking forest with dogs. The older con kept whining and shaking all the way to the precinct, but at one point fell silent. It turned out he managed to gnaw his own tongue off. Doctors managed to save his life (again, according to rumors). He proved uncooperative, was officialy recognized insane and got locked away in some specialized asylum for the rest of his days.

Neither I, nor my grandpa could vouch for a single word in a previous part, as you can understand. But there is only one proper version of events, no mysteries here. Two escaped convicts were fucking around somwhere for 15 whole years and managed to get from Ural to Moscow. They probably went through a lot in their travels. And at some point were forced to eat someone to avoid death from hunger (maybe another bum or just some random tourist). Apparently, this experience took a heavy toll on them psychologically, and they acquired a taste for human meat. After that, they switched to a new menu, slowly turning more and more into a couple of fucking animals if the older one is any indication. And only here, in the Moscow region they became bolder and ate someone who would be searched for, because finding them, basically, wasn't really that hard. But there is another factor. They had almost animal-like sense of danger, always managing to outpace Militsiya's pursuit just by a day or two. That's it.

By the way, it was really creepy, taking these photos, knowing that in theory one of them is still on the run, even though he must be really old today, those locales now are as far away from any proper civilization as it was back then. Also, I would never want to be in shoes of that blind old man during that night. This part of the story always chilled me to the bone.

© 1996 Archive66