 Devil's Deeds By Serhiy KHARCHENKO |
I always write only about true things. Employees of our newspaper proudly say about me when I walk past them: "There goes "the pink and paragon of truth". In this article my precision in covering different events exceeds my previous achievements. Those who don't believe me should refrain from reading the following story..
Some time ago the sky above the Ukrainian provincial town of Kolochansk was "damaged" by something unknown in a very disturbing way. Text, such as seen and which offends the dignity of honest people, usually appears only on fences or on placards during irresponsible political campaigns. But to appear in the sky?! Yes, yes, in the zenith of the sky. There, where usually God is located, for several days and nights a hand-made text announcement was blinking. And it was written very carelessly. The author of this announcement didn't add some quote about the Apocalypse. Nor did the author try "to disguise" this too "human-related" announcement. The hurriedly scribbled text, which could be clearly seen at a range of ten kilometers even from nearby villages, said in a business-like manner: Those Kolochansk residents who obtained their money by illegal means, must return it to a bank. Further it said: It must be returned only to the National Bank. Disobedient people would be punished it stated: Otherwise in a month or two horns would appear on such people's foreheads it warned. The horns would be small like one-year old devils have - this the author of the text explained in a flouting and caring way - so that such people, businessmen, etc. could continue working but they would need to wear hats on their heads.
One could have laughed at this "prophecy", but the announcement in the sky was too real and the fear that the announcement might have been related to devildom put a lot of pressure on people's minds.
An indignant interview of one Kyiv physicist and academician was published by all in the mass media. According to this physicist words, currently there are no such energy devices of such capacity that could display such a "sky slide" anywhere in the world. At a height of 10 kilometers from the ground and five kilometers in radius the sheer magnitude of the writing was too much for current technology. The academician gibed in the press at those journalists who prognosticated that the sky phenomenon above Kolochansk must have been created by Americans with a laser gun. Why the hell would Americans need to bother with our cracker-barrel oligarchs - the academician went on reasoning - Americans have enough of their own problems to solve.
"Scientists will not 'wash their hands of this yet unexplainable problem', but they will not also damage their reputations by trying to find some devildom here", concluded the academician.
I secretly arrived in Kolochansk with some acquaintances who brought me along as they covered this astounding event for TV. An intimidating sign with the words "To Let Pass Anywhere" was attached to the windscreen of their minivan. Road entry points to the city of Kolochansk were blocked by the militia. The whole of Ukraine it seems wanted to come and observe this phenomenon. This "thing" that was more cool than a UFO, than anything even. But, so far only local people and a few others were in Kolochansk: the others being mostly security services, militia and some journalists.
From a long time past the city of Kolochansk - "the capital" of one of the steppe regions of Ukraine - had a bad reputation. At first glance, it would seem that everything there was like anywhere else: grain fields, a metallurgical plant- with smokestacks that emitted pollution like factories in the 19th century, ugly burrows of an ore mining and processing plant and other minor business and industry. But at the same time, as bad luck would have it, hundreds of relicts of old civilizations are located there: old burial mounds, Scythian shrines, and the common graves of Zaporizhian Cossacks. But as it happens and has been told, the more the local industry damaged nature, the more often local residents happened to see in different places a live Cossack from a previous century. The picture most often seen by the locals is described: a Cossack sitting on a grave and his horse standing nearby. Though, according to malicious gossips, local homemade moonshine of unusually strong proof was to blame for people seeing such pictures. Because of that wild moonshine one could see sometimes devils dancing on the old burial mounds too.
Malevolent joy was felt in the air on the main square of Kolchansk. The notorious moonshine seduced people into committing sins. People had no desire at all to work.
But back to our phenomenon. Local residents were pointing with their fingers at the sky sign and were making bets as to which oligarch among the local ones would be the first to be "crowned" with horns. Some people thought that the first one would be the head of the board of the local commodity exchange - he had bought the exchange through stooges and obtained the opportunity to dictate prices on grain. Other people bet that the local sugar magnate would be the first. This guy caused the local sugar plant to go bankrupt; then he privatized it and started to use only imported sugarcane for production. Many local farmers had been thus forced to stopgrowing sugar beets and went broke.
On the main square the journalists circled around one local intellectual. He was a self-learned historian, a compiler of a catalog of local burial mounds. So, now the historian was in the apogee of fame and at the peak of "alcoholic comfort" of his soul. According to him, the "ultimatum to oligarchs" was created in the sky with the help of mysterious space technologies of the ancient Sumerians. They had in ancient times lived here, on the Dnipro River, about 10 thousand years ago, and later, Only God knows why they left this land and went to Mesopotamia and founded there the Sumerian kingdom.
I will explain now using the words of that historian what caused the rage of the ancient Sumerians.
Once many years ago, - the self-learned historian informed the frightened journalists - when the construction of the ore and mining processing plant was started - bulldozers demolished the largest local burial mound. At that time a tornado then burst from the depths of the ground! A deep crater appeared on that place! And at night that crater shined brightly for a long time! Then engineers decided to bring many trucks with debris and other waste and fill the crater with it. So, in such a way the ungodly technical people further insulted the ancient Sumerian link with space. The link had "connected" an ancient shrine, which was located at that place, with the stars!
You say that this is all nonsense! Well, I warned you: if you don't believe it - don't read!
The journalists almost failed to get away from this local historian. But finally, some of them, including me, managed to get away and sneak past bodyguards into an elite restaurant there in the city of Kolchansk. The spacious restaurant reminded us of office premises. Mobile phones were ringing constantly, business papers, bank notes, stock papers rustled in visitors' hands. Waiters were bringing truffles worth 200 dollars each and even more expensive lamb meat in raspberry sauce. The visitors kept ordering imported bottles of wine - each cost about a thousand dollars and even more.
However, the atmosphere in the restaurant was filled with worry, people were nervous, the atmosphere was similar perhaps to the atmosphere in Hitler's bunker during the storming of Berlin at the end of WWII. I saw how a chief of the local court, who owned a mansion and three apartments, put some paper in his mouth and swallowed it, and then flushed it with a shot of vodka. He shouted very loudly to everyone in the restaurant that for the sake of justice not only bribe-takers, but also bribe-givers must become "horn-carriers".
A vagrant in a dirty shirt with a beautiful bow tie lay sprawled in a chair at the next table. The bum was surrounded by four local businessmen who one by one were re-registering their real estate in the man's name. Already the bum had managed to become an owner of exclusive stables, an almost new yacht, a villa and three cars. He signed the documents while rubbing his head from time to check whether horns had appeared on his forehead or not.
But most visitors in the restaurant behaved themselves with dignity and weren't panicking. All the time they were appealing to each other to "think logically". The offensive text in the sky must have been created by a human being, they went on thinking aloud and logically. Sooner or later the author of the anonymous announcement would be revealed - it was not in vain that so many generals had arrived in Kolchansk. The generals know how to solve even the most complicated cases. But the threats to the address of the best people in the city must be just blackmail. Only God "registers" people's sins. A mortal person wouldn't be able to conduct such monitoring, even if he/she threatened with some ugly horns. So, the visitors of the restaurant made a collective decision: not to return their money to the state.
But we, the journalists, missed the major meeting related to all these mysterious events in the city of Kolchansk. As it appeared later, "black archaeologists" secretly got together the same night. People also sometimes call them "gravediggers" since they loot any graves - from Scythian czars to the graves of Nazi soldiers. They are not particular. These "gravediggers" know everything about each other, even who among them has which model of mobile drilling unit. They quickly found out who among them had been lately the most active in the "cleaning" of the burial mounds, which the Kolochansk city administration - either due to its greed or ignorance - allowed local farmers to privatize. Having lost their status as archaeological landmarks, the burial mounds became the subject of different money-related deals: for 200 U.S. dollars the farmers let "black archaeologists" dig in the graves and shrines. According to the "gravediggers", only one among them could be blamed for the appearance of the strange sky sign. That could have been done only by the "gravedigger" called "Stalker" because he had not only a mobile drilling unit, but also echo sounders from the ministry of defense.
"Stalker" was unable to even begin denying his guilt in the matter. The "gravediggers" were scared that they might lose their profitable "underground" business and decided to turn him over to the security services.
The next morning Kolchansk residents fell into a trance - the sky sign disappeared. Dogs, which sense future trouble coming, started to howl.
...One burial mound, which had been dug out before, emitted a violet light from its bottom. At the bottom, a small windowpane in an aluminum frame was lying right next to the light. On the glass was written that text, which the mass media had called "the world sensation". The generals were shocked with the simplicity of the "hell" machine, which had threatened the national security of the state and many military careers. One of the generals made "a trial shot" - he put the windowpane over the light and the damn sign appeared in the sky again! The general immediately removed the frame. No doubts were left about the origin of the text, and all the generals' careers were saved. But now the obnoxious academicians would have to work a lot harder in order to find an explanation for all this devildom in scientific terms. .
Since "Stalker" had made an honest confession, he begged that consideration be given that his act was only "malicious hooliganism" or, at the worst, as "grave terrorism without threat of explosives". He swore that he had concocted the idea about horns from immoral foreign movies.
At this point I had wanted to finish my most true reportage. But as soon as I wrote the final words of the story, I received a phone call from Kolchansk. I was told secretly that not everything is O.K. in Kolochansk. The city is again cut-off by militia squads from the rest of the world. The owner of the commodity exchange and the owner of the sugar plant haven't been taking off their hats even while in bed. And what's under the hats? ..You guess. And moreover, the owner of the commodities exchange probably needs special treatment: he's constantly singing arias of Mephistopheles and only in Italian.
"Only now real devildom is beginning to happen in Kolochansk", - thought I.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Cows and Parachutists
Vietnam, Cobra-laced rice moonshine and those smiles
Gambling on the Slope
Manners Cost Nothing
A Roger By Any Other Name
Never Underestimate the Mark!
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