Straw Dolls

When the familiar order of the world cracks, something ancient and merciless emerges from the rift!

Night fishing far from the shore turns into a struggle with a primordial deity for whom the dark, mirror-like surface of the lake is a sacrificial cup. Chasing an easy catch pushes a young man to break an old prohibition and go out at noon onto forbidden, protected land—straight into the path of its cruel guardian. And the ritual, intended to summon wise spirits, turns into a nightmare: uninvited entities will not leave the house until the one who called them pays with everything he has.

You are holding a collection by Sofya Markelova—the very one that became a real find for YouTube channels with scary stories! Her characters encounter what has no place in common sense. Ordinary spaces—vacation, work, the yard—suddenly become the stage for a quiet yet relentless horror, whose roots reach deep into time: toward forgotten rites and a guilt that was never atoned.

In Sofya Markelova’s stories, small, living worlds are born—gloomy and dense in atmosphere, yet in their own way close, gripping the soul. Schoolkids decide to test rumors about a terrifying apartment; a man, trying to escape a blizzard, stays the night in a lonely old man’s house—whose trade is the dead. And it all sounds as if the narrator has walked right alongside the characters through their fear.