After driving a little bit, I stopped and got out of the car. Below, under a gentle mountain, in a spacious hollow, a village lay in the fog. To the right, under the tall trees, is the old churchyard. Not far away, on the horizon, is a black strip of forest. Suddenly. Barely audible, far away, with a high note, it spread out and melted into a dreamy world. He listened... No, it was probably a dog howling in the village or just the wind...
The neighbors of this estate were terribly envious people. And they were also unclean: everything stuck to them. And when building a new threshing floor for food, fodder and household tools, on the advice of an old mother, the owner of this estate put an amulet on the threshold of the building – three notches with an axe. Late in the evening, when the sun was setting, the old woman uttered the words of the spell, kneeling and overshadowing the door with various signs, sprinkling the threshold and walls with water from a dark bottle tied with leather straps and multicolored threads.
And really, the thieves were cut off. Maybe they themselves saw grandma's magic through the fence, or maybe it was true that the power created by the spell began to act and imposed a master's ban on the property.
And life went on. When they grew up, the two sons married good girls, and built strong houses at the other end of the street. Everyone has got their own farm, no worse than their parents. They did not forget their parents, they helped with the work in the field with the strength of a brave man and went to the pies on holidays, for various family reasons.
So a few years have passed... When dying, the owner's mother said the following about the spell: Not only does it protect the building and the entire household from theft, from misfortunes and misfortunes, it has another, much more terrible power: if someone encroaches on the good acquired, crossing this threshold, will turn into a ghoul. And this will happen only when a person, leaving the threshing floor, crosses the threshold backwards, that is, he will walk away with his back. And she also said that her love spells do not work on all family members who now live. She quietly began to list by name her son and daughter-in-law, her grandchildren and their wives, and their little children. After her lips pronounced the name of the last great-grandson, the owner of the manor heard the dying words. The old woman said that if she went to a better world, if there was a desire or fear of a spell, it was better to cut out the threshold and burn it on the third day after the Rainbow at the intersection of three roads, on the first star.
What prevented the owner from fulfilling the last instruction of the dying mother is impossible to find out about it now. Perhaps household chores and everyday worries were pushed aside at first glance, the matter is secondary, not so significant. And then there was the bright joy that came to the house – the owner's wife made him happy, gave birth to a child later, a third son...
The child grew up quick-witted, playful. Soul, take it and rejoice! And so it happened that the son kept reaching out to his father. Although his mother was a good woman, his son spent more time on his father's lap, watching his father's hands when he was doing something around the house. One thing must be said for sure, that this mischief-maker was for the parents of the elderly, well, just a gift from heaven.
Nothing in the morning foreshadowed that the whole life in this peaceful, happy house was about to change so dramatically, turn in such a terrible direction... As they say, the summer day feeds the year, so in the morning all the adults were already on their feet, everyone knew what and where they would do during the day.
The kid woke up much later, out of habit ran out onto the porch and loudly called his father. And, not hearing his father's voice, he ran to look for him. I looked everywhere. The spacious barn was the furthest of the buildings, and the child headed for it. At that moment, my father appeared from the other end of the courtyard... Everything happened instantly! Something bad and terrible stirred in his chest, and he called out to his son, but it was too late. The kid crossed the serif threshold, and from the dark opening of the open barn doors a huge owl flew over his head, which accidentally flew in here when hunting mice. It was her child who got scared, the boy took a few steps back and fell backwards into the street. It is difficult to imagine, and it is even more difficult to describe, what happened at that moment, which was witnessed by both the father and the mother, who happened to be on the porch of the house. For a moment there was just an eclipse in the eyes, a veil, everything was in a fog. And when the subjects became solvable, a very small wolf cub was rushing around the yard and plaintively screaming. Poking its muzzle into different corners, it darted through an open gate and across the field, often looking back, fluttered to the nearest forest. Apparently, there was no protection from the great-grandmother's spell on this baby, whose name she did not pronounce when she was dying.
His father recovered only when his wife, with a soft groan, sagged onto the porch steps and immediately died with her eyes open, staring after her son with a frozen stare.
Both the funeral of his wife and the search for his ghoul son in the forest by the whole village completely undermined the strength of the owner: he fell ill, stopped eating. Nothing and no one would have been able to bring him back to life if one day the distant, barely audible howls of a wolf cub had not reached his ears. Leaving the farm to his eldest son, his father bought an old house on the farm, which was located close to the forest, and lived in isolation. After some time, people noticed a hermit in the courtyard – the owner himself–and a young wolf next to him.
It is not known how long the old man lived like this, but one day the children who came to him found their father dead at the door of the house, and at his feet lay a huge, extraordinarily beautiful wolf. The beast got up and, without touching anyone, went into the forest.
After the funeral of the unfortunate father, for some time the whole neighborhood heard a wolf howling in the cemetery, more like a human wailing. People did not hunt and kill the beast, they guessed...