A premonition of an impending storm hung in the air. Heavy gray clouds loomed over the city park, yet the rain stubbornly did not begin. Tamara Sergeyevna strolled leisurely down the alley, her cane tapping rhythmically on the asphalt. She was already over sixty, but she carried herself with a proud posture, even though the pain in her knees grew more noticeable with each passing year. The only joy for her was her daily walks in the park, where she fed the pigeons and watched the playing children.
Approaching the playground, she heard coarse swearing and loud laughter. Usually at this time, the little ones and their mothers had already dispersed to their homes, but today the playground was occupied. Four teenagers had settled on the swings and the slide. They were smoking, drinking something from cans wrapped in paper bags, and exchanging loud, profane jokes.
«— Vit’, look! That little runt is coming again,» shouted the tallest of the group, pointing to a little girl of about five years old, who was approaching the swings hesitantly, holding the hand of her frightened mother.
«— Hey, you! Get out of here! The swings are occupied!» barked the guy in the black hoodie.
The little girl froze, pressing herself against her mother. The woman quietly said something to the child and led him away. Tamara Sergeyevna noticed tears in the girl’s eyes and felt anger boiling within her.
«— Young people,» she addressed the teenagers as she approached, «a playground is not a place for smoking and drinking. You are scaring the children with your behavior.»
The guys turned around, looking at her mockingly.
«— Oh, here comes another teacher,» smirked the burly guy, clearly the leader of the group. «Granny, don’t you have anything better to do? Go bake some pies instead.»
«— Oh come on, Vit’ek,» chimed in the skinny guy in the red jacket. «Maybe she’s just jealous that she wasn’t invited to hang out with us.»
They all burst out laughing, and a third teenager gave her an obscene gesture, which made Tamara Sergeyevna flinch.
«— You have no right to behave like that,» she stated, gripping her cane. «I can call the police.»
«— You scared the hedgehog with your bare ass,» Vit’ek snorted. «Get out of here while we’re still in a good mood.»
Tamara Sergeyevna felt her heart beating faster. Not from fear — from fury. She had worked for many years as a literature and Russian language teacher and had encountered many difficult teenagers, but she hadn’t seen such blatant rudeness in a long time.
«— You will regret your words,» she said quietly.
Something in her voice made them fall silent for a moment. Tamara Sergeyevna looked them straight in the eyes, and for a second the boys felt that her gaze became strange, piercing, almost inhuman. A chill ran down the spine of the youngest of the group, Kostya.
«— Oh, how scary!» Vit’ek was the first to recover. «We are all trembling with fear!»
The others laughed again, but not as confidently. And Tamara Sergeyevna, without saying another word, turned and slowly walked away, leaving behind a strange feeling of unease that the teenagers hurried to drown out with another round of beer and loud jokes.
The First Night
Victor woke up from his own scream. His heart was pounding furiously, and his shirt clung to his body with sweat. He had dreamed that he was running through a dark forest, with a tall figure in black chasing him. Just as the creature was about to catch him, he saw the face of that very old woman from the playground. Only her eyes glowed yellow, and sharp fangs protruded from her mouth.
«— You will pay for your disrespect,» she hissed in his dream before sinking her fangs into his shoulder.
Victor turned on the nightlight and, with horror, discovered on his shoulder two small but distinct marks, around which a bruise was spreading.
«— What the hell is this?» he muttered, feeling the injury.
He tried to convince himself that there must be a logical explanation. Maybe a mosquito had bitten him, and he scratched the bite in his sleep? Or perhaps it was just a coincidence, and the bruise appeared from a blow?
But deep down, Victor understood that something inexplicable was happening. When the first rays of sunlight crept into the room, he was still sitting on the bed, afraid to fall asleep again.
At school, Vit’ek met his friends and immediately noticed their pale faces and dark circles under their eyes.
«— Guys, did you also have some kind of crazy dream?» he asked, trying to speak casually, though his voice trembled.
Kostya nervously glanced around:
«— That old woman… she… she came to me in my dream. Tried to strangle me.»
«— And me too,» confirmed Dimka, the third of their group. «And do you have…—» he hesitated, «I mean, any marks?»
Victor instinctively rubbed his shoulder:
«— Two punctures, like a bite.»
«— I have bruises on my neck, as if I was really being strangled,» Kostya whispered, pulling up the collar of his sweater and showing the dark spots on his skin.
«— It’s all just a coincidence,» declared Andrey confidently, the biggest of the guys. «You’re just being paranoid. What, an old woman cursed us or something? It’s nonsense.»
But there was fear in Andrey’s eyes, and the others immediately noticed.
«— Then show us your neck,» demanded Victor, crossing his arms over his chest.
Andrey reluctantly unbuttoned his jacket. On his neck, there were marks just like Kostya’s, only even deeper.
«— It’s… just an allergy,» he tried to excuse himself, but his voice sounded uncertain.
«— From the old woman?» Dimka snorted nervously, trying to mask his anxiety with sarcasm.
They fell silent, each thinking about the coming night with growing dread.
The Confession
The third night was the last straw. Victor woke up screaming, as he had in previous days, but this time the marks on his body were deeper, and the pain was unbearable. In his dream, the old woman whispered directly into his ear:
«Remember your most shameful deed. Make amends, or I will come to you every night until you lose your mind.»
In the morning, he called his friends and arranged to meet in the park. They gathered at the same playground where the altercation with the strange woman had occurred. Everyone looked exhausted, as if they hadn’t slept for several days straight.
«— We need to find that old woman and apologize,» Kostya suggested, nervously looking around.
«— Do you think she’ll just leave us alone?» Andrey said skeptically. «She’s some damn witch!»
«— Do you have any better ideas?» Victor snapped. «We could tell our parents, but they either won’t believe us or they’ll send us to a psychiatrist.»
«— My brother ended up in a mental hospital for a month,» Dimka added grimly. «After he started saying he saw dead people.»
«— Then it’s settled,» Victor nodded. «We’re going to find the old woman.»
They split up and searched the entire park, but the woman was nowhere to be found. For the next three days, the teenagers returned there after school, hoping to encounter her, but to no avail. The nightmares continued, the marks grew deeper, and their mental state deteriorated further.
On the fourth day of searching, they finally saw Tamara Sergeyevna. She was sitting on a bench by the pond, feeding ducks by tossing pieces of bread into the water.
«— It’s her,» Kostya whispered, pointing to the woman.
They slowly approached the bench. Tamara Sergeyevna appeared unsurprised by their arrival.
«— I was expecting you,» she said calmly, continuing to feed the birds. «You don’t look well. Are you sleeping badly?»
«— Listen,» Victor began, trying to speak confidently, «we came to apologize for being rude to you. It was wrong.»
«— Just leave us alone,» Kostya added in a trembling voice. «We won’t do it again.»
Tamara Sergeyevna looked carefully at each of them.
«— An apology is good,» she finally said, «but it’s not enough. You must make amends for what you’ve done. Not just to me, but to others as well.»
«— What do you mean?» Andrey asked, swallowing a lump in his throat.
«— Each of you knows your most shameful deed,» the woman replied. «The one for which you still feel shame, even if you try not to think about it. Make amends, and the nightmares will cease.»
With those words, she stood up and, without looking back, walked away. The teenagers remained on the bench, lost in their thoughts.
«— She’s right,» Victor broke the silence. «I know what she’s talking about.»
«— And about what?» asked Dimka, frowning.
«— Remember the story with Uncle Pavel’s car? Back then we didn’t just take it for a ride without permission…»
The friends exchanged glances. None of them wanted to remember that evening when they, having stolen their neighbor Victor’s car, hit an elderly man at a crosswalk. The man got away with just bruises, but they got scared and fled the scene. And the next day it turned out that Uncle Pavel had been at a bar that evening, and everyone concluded that it was him, intoxicated, who had run someone down and fled. He was stripped of his license, forced to pay a hefty fine, and his family relations were irreparably damaged.
«— We must confess,» Victor said firmly. «Tell everything to our parents and the police.»
«— Are you crazy?» Andrey protested. «We could go to jail!»
«— We were only thirteen, at most—a suspended sentence,» Victor countered. «But if we do nothing, this… woman… won’t leave us alone.»
After long debates, they agreed that the truth was the only way out. First, they told everything to Victor’s parents, and then together with them, they went to the police. The confession was not easy, but once it was made, each of them felt a strange relief, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from their shoulders.
Consequences
The consequences of their confession turned out not to be as terrible as they had feared. Considering their age at the time of the incident and their heartfelt confession, the court sentenced them to community service and ordered them to pay compensation to the victim. Uncle Pavel was exonerated, his license reinstated, and although his relationship with his wife remained tense, there was a chance to set things right.
The most important thing for the kids was that the nightmares ceased. On the first night after the confession, they slept without dreams, and in the morning, they found no marks on their bodies.
A week later, Victor saw Tamara Sergeyevna in the park again. He approached her, now without fear.
«— Thank you,» he said sincerely. «You made us do the right thing.»
Tamara Sergeyevna smiled, and there was nothing sinister in that smile:
«— Do not thank me, young man. You made your own choice. And you did the right thing.»
«— But how did you do it? The nightmares, the marks…» Victor hesitated, not knowing how to phrase his question.
«— There is much in the world that is inexplicable,» the woman answered enigmatically. «Sometimes people need a little… push toward the right path.»
She handed him a small packet of bread crumbs:
«— Would you like to feed the ducks?»
Victor hesitantly took the packet and tossed a few crumbs into the water. The ducks immediately swam over, greedily snatching up the treat.
«— See how simple it is to do something good?» Tamara Sergeyevna said softly. «And how pleasant it is to see the result.»
New Life
A year passed. Victor and his friends had changed beyond recognition. They regularly performed community service in that very park: cleaning up litter, painting benches, and helping to organize children’s parties. At first, it was a formal punishment, but gradually it turned into a habit, and then—a necessity.
One day, while sweeping the walkways, Victor noticed a group of teenagers making noise on the playground, frightening the little ones. He approached them.
«— Guys, this is a playground,» he said calmly. «Let’s respect each other.»
«— Who do you think you are?» one of them challengingly asked.
«— I’m just someone who was once in your shoes and behaved exactly the same way,» Victor answered honestly. «And believe me, the price for such behavior can be higher than you think.»
Something in his voice made the teenagers fall silent. They exchanged glances and, muttering something to themselves, left the playground.
Victor smiled and continued his work. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a familiar figure on the bench by the pond. Tamara Sergeyevna was watching him, and it seemed to him that she nodded approvingly.
That evening, on his way home, Victor reflected on how one encounter can change an entire life. Sometimes one must confront their own fears and mistakes to find the right path. And sometimes these fears come in the form of an elderly woman feeding ducks in the park.
And in the park, on a bench by the pond, Tamara Sergeyevna took out a worn notebook from her bag and crossed out four names from a long list. Then she looked at the next entry and sighed quietly. Her work would never be finished as long as there were those in the world who needed a reminder of their conscience. She closed the notebook and headed towards the exit of the park, tapping her cane on the asphalt and humming an old lullaby. For some reason, her song sent shivers down the skin of passersby, although the words were barely discernible.
Tamara Sergeyevna knew that her mission was eternal. She was not merely an observer—she was a guide, helping people recognize their mistakes and correct them. Her methods might seem strange, even frightening, but they worked. And as long as people committed deeds that required redemption, she would be there, gently nudging them towards the right choice.
The next morning, the park awaited new visitors once again. Ducks splashed at the shore, children laughed on the playground, and somewhere in the distance, the sound of footsteps could be heard—slow, measured, as if counting time. Tamara Sergeyevna was there again, ready to meet those who needed her help.
