My grandmother told me this story when I was a child, and whether her grandmother or her mother, I don't know now. They just passed on this legend, and that's it, as a kind of family legend. She said that her mother used to scare her with this story as a child, worse than any buka and babaika. It was in the Far East, in Transbaikalia, as I understand it, before the revolution, even under Tsar Peas. My grandmother's grandmother was little then, about ten years old or so. There seemed to be more children, but she was the eldest, and her mother already took her everywhere with her to help with the housework: mowing, knitting sheaves, chopping wood — in general, she learned hard peasant labor from an early age. The mother didn't seem to have a husband, since she and her daughter did everything together.
Once they stayed in the forest — either picking mushrooms with berries, or knitting brooms for the winter in the bath. It seems like it was already by autumn, in August or September, probably, but it was still warm, we were preparing for autumn. It got dark. Then I will tell you from the words of a little grandmother.
"The mother says: "Ulyana, let's go faster, we have to get out of the forest before nightfall, otherwise there are wolves here, it's scary." Here we go, we go, and we seem to understand that we have gone somewhere wrong. Got lost, in general. They went out the hell where, to some lake. Well, Mother knew the local places well, figured out where we went. He says we need to go there. Well, we went along this lake along the windbreak a little further from the bank. Meanwhile, it got completely dark, they didn't have time before dark. The moon was still hanging a little above the horizon after dark, and now it had risen so high and illuminated the road with a milky pale light. Let's go, let's go, there seemed to be a sound coming from the water, as if someone was splashing in the water. And the laughter is so silvery, girlish like. At first, my mother and I thought we were imagining things, we looked at each other like that, and both suddenly felt scared, as if they had been doused with ice water from a bucket. We began to move more cautiously in the direction from which the sound was coming. And the splashing didn't stop. It sounded more and more clearly, sometimes interrupted by laughter. I was so scared, no wolves would scare me like that. And my mother told me to stand still and wait, while she goes down and looks at what's there. And she began to make her way through the bushes towards the shore — it was not far from him. I sat down under a bush so that I wouldn't be too visible, otherwise you never know what... I'm sitting, trembling, afraid.
Mother was gone for about seven minutes, no more. She suddenly ran out of the bushes, grabbed my hand and ran like a madwoman, not taking apart the road, dragging me by the hand. It hurt, but I didn't ask my mother what happened. There was no face on it. I didn't think anything at the time, I just realized that my mother had seen something really scary, and I just had to run without stopping. And soon the village appeared, we were very close to it.
For the next week, the mother went sullen and somehow not herself, as if something was pressing on her. She spoke reluctantly, was silent more. And then she said to me: "Do you know, Juliana, I'm going to die soon!". I was frightened by her words, I began to tell her: "Mommy, what are you, why are you talking about such passions? Don't do that!". And she says to me: "Do you remember, there, in the forest, on the lake — after all, there were mermaids. They washed my shroud. When I went out to the bank, that's how I saw them. They're kind of like girls, their hair is long, loose, sitting on the shore, looking at me and laughing. And in the water they rinse the white shroud. They called me by name, they say, Ustya, come here to us! And I was scared, how the hell do they know my name? And the mermaid is the only one who tells me, as if she heard what I thought: "Hey, Ustya, we all know something!". And she laughs herself. "And also," he says, "you, Ustya, will die soon, you don't have long to live. We're washing your shroud, cooking it for you," and shows it to me. Then I rushed to run from there, like a madwoman, I only grabbed you...".
Baba Ustya died four months later, as predicted. My grandmother's grandmother and the little ones were taken to their house by some distant relatives. So she grew up an orphan. Of the little ones, everyone died, only her brother seems to have survived. Foster parents often offended her and did not feed her properly, did not dress her, only forced her to work the dirtiest work in the whole house.
Here is an old village horror story that was passed down in our family by inheritance. My grandmother used to tell me about her when I was a child, she used to scare me, I remember. Well, and now I've shared it with you.
