Confession of a Ghost. F.M. Dostoevsky award. Playing Another Reality. Alexandra Kryuchkova

sign of Saturn from the middle finger of his right hand and gave it to me.

      “Accept my tiny gift. One day you’ll find it on Earth, in the monastery of St. Anastasia in Greece. If you don’t pass by, it’ll help you remember me and our conversation.”

      Library of the Universe

      “Angel, are there 12 Houses in total? Each of them has got something interesting for me like that?”

      “Don’t be dramatic. I’m nervous myself! You’ll incarnate and immediately forget everything, and I’ll have to lead you all your life along the edge of the abyss. Unlike others, you need an eye upon you! It doesn’t work just to lay a straw on the ground.”

      “Tell me, why will all that happen to me?” I didn’t let up.

      “Like Saturn, you’ll never say or do anything without a purpose. What happens to a child is not ‘Why?’, but ‘For what?’, ‘What’s the purpose?’. Many great personalities have the House of Death accented.”

      “Who were they on Earth?”

      “Well, presidents of countries. You’ll live in the country where…”

      “When will I see my mother? Why will she leave me?”

      “Nobody said that, it’s just that everything has its time.”

      The book about ghosts opened at the page with “The Seal” story about a little girl who saw the seal of Death on people and tried in vain to save them.

      “She dialed someone’s number, but no one answered. Anyway, did anyone live in the abandoned house, except… ghosts? Why and to whom did she keep trying to get through?”

      Broken Watch

      Ammouliani

      The sea in the bay nearby Nicolette’s house was heavenly, but for a change I went for magic! Vourvourou was a group of uninhabited islands off the neighboring peninsula of Sithonia. Having floated into the bay, one found oneself in a fairy tale, remembering pirates, a map of hidden treasures, parrots… When the ship stopped, one jumped from the deck into the sea and swam to the island feeling like Robinson.

      All the way, the Holy Mountain looked at me, and I looked at it. There were no clouds even over the top, so the Virgin was away on important business. Dimitra told me the day before the abyss at the cape of Athos with a drop of 80 to 1,000 meters really existed, but according to legend, the depth of the abyss was equal to the height of the Mountain – 2,033 meters, which led me to no less deep reflections. Dimitra’s husband, a sailor, answering my question – if anyone had ever fished in that place – said it would have been tantamount to suicide.

      The day before, I tortured local residents about a bright yellow multi-beam star moving across the sky. As it turned out, that was Arcturus, “the Guardian of Heaven”, a pulsating giant star, over 7 billion years old, more than 100 times brighter than the Sun. Yes, on the border with the Holy pyramid-like Mountain, located right by the abyss, in the area called by the Greeks the Great Guard, there was the City of Heaven (Uranus-polis), above which the Guardian of Heaven was scanning the space. I jumped off the ship the first, it was magical!

      Every time I came to Athos, I received a piece of news about the Gold-Mines, evil gold miners, and I got scared. What would happen to Athos then? Not far from there, a foreign company decided to mine gold. The locals tried to fight against it in every possible way, because highly toxic fumes would poison the sea and the nature of all the peninsulas of Chalkidiki, and drinking water was already disappearing from the mountain of Skouries, where mines were being built. Given the seismological activity, the protective structures, such as a dome over the mine, wouldn’t save anything. However, the protest rallies, as happened in stories with large sums involved, ended in failure. All my acquaintances on Athos were in gloomy expectation of their Apocalypse, when they would have to leave the City of Heaven forever. I asked Janis what the Athos monks said, and he replied, “They pray weeping.”

      I returned to the ship by swimming, and it sailed to Ammouliani, the island opposite my bay. In the meantime, dinner was ripe, but someone shouted, “Dolphins!” All the tourists instantly turned into children – they jumped up from their seats, forgot about everything in the world and took pictures of the playful dolphins accompanying the ship. The Holy Mountain looked at me again, and I looked at it. “One of the monks said that the Virgin Mary appeared to him crying for she was leaving Athos,” Janis told me the other day.

      We sailed to the luxury beach of Ammouliani – Alikes, and again enjoyed the sea, and then we circled the island on the ship and moored at the pier for a walk around the village. I was wandering down the tiny street, immersed in sad musings over the Gold-Mines, when I was drawn to a gift shop. Having passed the showcases with jewelry, I turned to the exit, but for some reason I took a step back, and my gaze fell on the far table. It couldn’t be true! I swam closer and closer, afraid to frighten my vision away. I didn’t know who He was, but… I knew Him, and silently froze at the hand-painted icon of the Saint standing at the well with a silver bucket in his hand.

      “Do you know him?” the store owner called out to me.

      “No, but…” I didn’t know how to explain to the Greek that I had repeatedly attended during meditations an unknown monastery on the mountain, where exactly at the very same well the same Monk was pouring holy water from the same bucket on me, what I told the world about in the first part of my novel “The Book of Secret Knowledge” back in September 2009.

      “Nobody here knows Him,” the shop owner sighed. “Hieromartyr Philoumenos. They chopped Him with an axe. This Greek monk served in Palestine. He was an archimandrite of the Jerusalem Orthodox Church and the Guardian of Jacob’s Well on the mountain in Samaria, where the meeting of Christ with the Samaritan woman took place, as described in the Gospel of John the Theologian. The water in the Well symbolizes the living water of the Faith, after drinking which one becomes liberated. Philoumenos was canonized on September 11, 2009. His relics were on Mount Zion. He is referred to as ‘Vanquisher of daemons, dispeller of the powers of Darkness’.”

      “How much does the icon cost?” I asked and remembered that there was clearly not enough money on the card for a hand-painted one of that size. The store owner hesitated. My heart sank. And he announced exactly the amount I had!

      Ouranoupoli

      I heard the muffled trill of the phone and opened my eyes – it was easy and even very pleasant to doze off there: the olive tree branches were swaying in the breeze, and the cicadas were providing a lulling background.

      “Where are you now?” Ray, as always, appeared unexpectedly.

      “On the beach. Dozing off a bit.”

      “Do you take your phone with you to the beach?” He chuckled, and he was right.

      “Not usually, but apparently I’ve got a premonition you would call!”

      “What time is it now?”

      “What’s the difference for you?” I was surprised.

      “I wonder what time you go to the sea.”

      “I don’t know. My watch has been showing something wrong for a long time. I keep wearing it out of habit.”

      “Look at the shade of the olives and at the Sun.”

      “Aah! It’s about six in the evening!”

      “Are you hungry already?”

      “Do you want to invite me to dinner?”

      “A little later. What did you eat last night?”

      I tried to remember, but, apparently,