Estimated reading time — 14 minutes

The month I had to spend every summer at a children’s camp was the most loathed period of the year for me. A place where children were supposed to rest, laugh, and socialize with their peers was, for me and the other wards of Clover Camp, hard labor. A tour of duty. A burden we were forced to shoulder year after year—and did so, paying with our strength, our sanity, our health.

And someone, every year without fail, paid with their life.Of course, children usually didn’t die at the camp itself, but later—after returning home. Clover Camp could not be shut down because of camper deaths. We made sure of that.

And hoped the next one dead would be someone else.

From the outside, the place looked like an idyllic children’s camp. We lived in cabins in a pine forest, almost on the shore of a clear woodland lake with a small sandy beach. The counselors were young teachers or recent graduates from education programs, using modern child-development techniques. Spacious rooms, each comfortably housing six boys or girls. Sports competitions, creative projects, quizzes, developmental activities, outdoor games—Clover Camp had everything needed to attract new children every year, aged eight to sixteen.

And new children arrived every summer.

First-timers were easy to spot among those who had already survived a shift. They looked forward to a month away from their parents, new friendships, fun, maybe a summer crush. Their faces shone among ours.

Temporarily, of course.

On the very first day, their more experienced roommates—or kids from older groups—would explain how things really were. It took a few more days for them to understand it wasn’t a joke, not a prank on newcomers—one or two days if the Contacts started immediately, or about six if the beginning of the shift was relatively quiet.

In the summer of 2005, I was thirteen. It was my fifth stay at Clover Camp.

On arrival day, I stand on the long porch in front of our room—Fourth Unit, Room Three—wondering how many newcomers I’d see when I open the door. Dima Shtykov, my longtime friend and comrade-in-arms, whom I’d met during my very first year here and who’s assigned to the same room again, sighs impatiently behind me, a heavy blue duffel slung over his shoulder.

“Why are you stuck? Open it already.”

With a tight feeling in my chest, I pull the door open. My gaze falls on the faces of four boys who are destined to be my roommates this shift.It isn’t that bad.

Filipp, Fat Vadim, and Kostik—his friend from last summer—all of them had been here before. The fourth, a lanky red-haired kid, is clearly new. He is unpacking a large black backpack, laying out necessities on his bed. His smile is stiff, strained—well, at least he is reading the room correctly.

When Dima and I enter, the boys visibly relax. Vadim collapses onto his bed in relief, Filipp grins widely, Kostik raises a fist in a triumphant gesture. We are all glad—only one newbie.

Dima and I greet the veterans, exchange small talk about how the year went. Seeing that everyone already knows each other, the newcomer decides not to lag behind. A bit shyly, he joins us.

“Yura,” he introduces himself, shaking our hands. Unsure whether, as a newcomer, he has the right to sit on someone else’s bed, he leans against the wardrobe instead. He tries to fit in, listening more than speaking—a good sign, I think.

“Do you believe in scary stories, newbie?” Filipp suddenly asks in the middle of the conversation. “Magic stuff. Evil spirits.”

“Huh?” Yura is caught off guard. He looks at Fil, then uncertainly scans our faces, expecting grins, teasing, some sign this was a joke.There are none.

Our faces are serious.

Dead serious, if such a thing can be said.

Finding no clues, he answers, “Well… I don’t know. There’s this woman, Aunt Klavdia, in a nearby village—they say she’s a witch. Supposedly even Yeltsin came to her for advice in the nineties. And a guy from my class told me he once walked through a cemetery at night and saw this green glow, but I think he’s lying—no way he’d go there at night.”

“Yura,” I interrupt, loudly and firmly.

He stops at once and looks at me.

“This camp isn’t ordinary. We’ll explain everything tonight. You won’t believe it—almost nobody does at first—but try. Until evening, stick close to one of us. It’s important—you don’t want to stumble into something out of ignorance. Pay attention to your surroundings. If you notice anything strange, tell one of us immediately. Don’t interfere on your own. After lights-out, we’ll tell you everything.”

I try to smile reassuringly—not sure how well it works—and step back onto the porch. I will unpack later, once the others are done.

Passing our cabin, there go Alina and Kirill. Alina is our informal leader. An Artist. Talents like hers are rare, and because of that—and because of her importance to our work—Artists are always generals in our secret war. Kirill is also an Artist, though a simpler one. He is a year younger than Alina, so next year, when she won’t be able to return, he will take over.

Behind them walks a small girl with a blue backpack on her shoulders. A first-timer, most likely. The corner of a sketchbook stick out of her pack. Catching my eye, Alina waves and makes a brushing motion, like a paintbrush on a canvas.

“Artist,” she mouths silently, giving me a thumbs-up.

The day passes quietly.

In the evening, the newcomer receives a very good demonstration.

“Guys… there’s someone… someone’s looking out from behind the trees.”

His bed was by the window, opposite the door. We gather beside him and look out where he points with a finger that barely trembles.

And indeed, in the forest, brightly lit by the setting sun, someone is peeking out from behind a tree. A human silhouette. The face is impossible to see. It leans out, stares—presumably at us—for a few seconds, then hides again. The action repeats about once a minute.

“Rule Twelve of the Safety Rules,” Fil says loudly. “If someone is staring at you from the forest, don’t stare back and close the curtains for at least half an hour. Better an hour. And don’t go to the bathroom for now—it’s in the forest.”

“Safety Rules?” Yura tears his gaze away from the window and looks at Fil in confusion.

Fil goes to the wardrobe, reaches behind its back panel, and pulls out a dusty green notebook.

“Here. Every room has one. Every unit. Always behind the wardrobe. Written mostly by… well, let’s say, specific experience. We have to add to it from time to time—that’s the worst part.”

He shows Yura the pages. The first three are almost completely filled. Lines written in different hands, by multiple generations of boys. Most are riddled with mistakes, blotches, uneven handwriting—the handwriting of frightened teenagers with one goal: survive the shift.

“Rule Twelve,” Fil points to the bottom of the first page. “If someone is staring at you from the forest, don’t stare back and close the curtains for at least half an hour. Avoid the forest for an hour unless absolutely necessary. See? I’ve practically memorized it. You should too. And always put the notebook back behind the wardrobe. It can be a matter of life and death.”

Yura stares at Fil, then glances at the window, already curtained by Dima, and silently sits down on his bed, reading.

He still suspects some elaborate prank, an initiation ritual. In a way, that’s exactly what it is. But the idea of a joke has to be abandoned as soon as possible.

And in my opinion, he isn’t hopeless. Open to new things, even if they contradict everything he thought he knows about the world. A couple more days—and, if he doesn’t have terrible luck, he’ll adapt quickly.

That shift, overall, was the quietest I can remember.

Kids from the Fifth Unit say something walked on their cabin roof one night, then the footsteps stopped and loud knocking began inside their wardrobe. One evening, Kirill the Artist saw children sitting by the lake, dressed in soaking wet winter clothes. A few other isolated incidents.

But by the end of the shift, we even manage to feel something like a normal children’s camp—badminton tournaments, line-ups, group songs. Only one thing troubles the counselors: not a single child signed up for forest orienteering.

Everything is quiet.

Almost.

Our final night of the shift arrives. In other camps it’s called Royal Night. We call it that too—but for different reasons. Because the shift has been calm, our mood is usually a little lighter, but on Royal Night any optimism evaporates. It would be too good if the shift ends without incident. Something will happen. Somewhere. We all know it.

Darkness falls. The light in the room is off. No one speaks—but I know for certain that no one is sleeping. Everyone is waiting. Listening to the sounds of the forest beyond the old window. Even closed, it lets the noise through.

We don’t know exactly which sounds we’re waiting for. Growling. Whispering. Footsteps—soft and creeping, or mad and fast, beating out the rhythm of a charging creature. A scream. The last isn’t so bad—perhaps the danger came to another unit. Perhaps it was repelled and won’t come for anyone else, and we’ll greet the dawn in peace.

It’s ugly, of course, to feel relief when danger finds someone else.

But don’t expect too much from terrified thirteen-year-old boys who have seen more than you ever have.

A creak. Outside. The porch.

Our hearing sharpens to the limit—did I imagine it?

Another creak. Closer footsteps. I didn’t imagine it.

A quiet moan—not outside, but inside. Kostya.

So. Something is on our porch. Our unit has four rooms—two boys’, two girls’. In every one of them, no one is sleeping. Everyone heard the creak. The chance it will come to your room is twenty-five percent, and everyone is praying not to draw the unlucky lot.

I don’t think prayers work here.

But I still close my eyes and whisper incoherent words to no one in particular.

The footsteps pass the first room.

Thirty-three point three percent.

Past the second.

Fifty percent.

Moonlight illuminates Dima’s pale face. His bed is right by the entrance. Mine is next, in the corner. He’s my friend—but in my heart, I’m glad there’s someone between me and the door. Even if that “someone” is my comrade-in-arms.

Sue me if you want.

The footsteps stop at our door.

Through the small window above Dima’s bed, I see a dark silhouette hesitating by the entrance. Human-shaped. Adult-sized, but without discernible details.

The figure seems to think. To listen to itself. Then it slowly raises a hand and pushes open the creaking door.

The unlucky ticket is ours.

Someone had to draw the black mark.

No time to whine. The danger has come, and we must resist it. Whatever has entered our room, we must act so that our room survives.

Rule One of the Common Notebook Behind the Wardrobe: if danger has come, act. Survival instructions follow below.

Rule Two of the Common Notebook Behind the Wardrobe: if there are no survival instructions for this specific situation, try to survive and tell as many campers as possible what exactly did you do to survive.

Yura lets out a muffled sob. This is his baptism by fire. He’s lucky it happens at the end of the shift. The rest of us make no sound. Panic will only make things worse.

Our eyes are fixed on the figure.

It slowly reaches out and switches on the night light by the wardrobe.

Ella Vladimirovna. Our counselor.

Or rather—something wearing her shape.

Something smiling at us with her lips far too wide. One of her eyes is half-closed, like a sleeping person’s. The other keeps rolling back, and something inside her has to exert constant effort to keep looking at us.

In her hand, clumsily clutched, is a black plastic bag.

“You’re not sleeping, boys?” it asks, never narrowing its smile.

Rule Seven of the Common Notebook Behind the Wardrobe: if something has possessed a person, it’s easy to tell. But it’s better not to let it know that you know.

“We’re awake, Ella Vladimirovna,” Fil whispers, his voice dry.

The single open eye fixes on Fil. Dragging unfamiliar, borrowed legs, the thing shuffles toward his bed. It awkwardly raises a hand and tries to pat his head with a limp, dead-hanging palm.

Fil turns visibly pale.

“Good boy,” Ella Vladimirovna says. “Do you know what little children usually do at camp?”

Fil shakes his head with difficulty.

The creature doesn’t seem to recognize the gesture and waits a few seconds for an answer. Then it opens Ella Vladimirovna’s mouth again.

“At camp, at night, children tell scary stories and summon spirits!”

Without taking its gaze off Fil, it reaches into the bag.

“And I have everything we need right here. Let’s not break tradition, children! Come here—all of you—onto this good boy’s bed!”

Children at camp really do those things. They tell horror stories. They summon things.We have to play along.

Slowly, as if in a trance, we rise from our beds and approach Fil’s. With every step, each of us searches for a reason to refuse Ella Vladimirovna.

There are none.

It—she—sits down on the edge of the bed.

“Well then, children,” it smiles only with the left side of its mouth.

I have never seen such a smile on a human face. It begins on the left and ends exactly at the center, dissolving into tightly clenched lips. I don’t think that’s physiologically possible.

“Do you know who we’re going to summon?”

Possibilities flash through my mind. The Queen of Spades. The Swearing Gnome. Pushkin. The Babadook. A Mushroom Spirit.

“We’re going to summon the Queen of Spades!” A triumphant spark flares in Ella Vladimirovna’s eye.

Fuck.

Anyone but the Queen of Spades.

I’ve never summoned anyone—there are no suicides at Clover Camp.

But the Queen of Spades is part of school folklore, and not a single story about her ends well—or humorously, like the ones about Swearing Gnome.

From the bag, it takes out a small mirror and a tube of lipstick. Ella Vladimirovna’s eyes dart between us.

Stay calm. Don’t look her in the eyes—but don’t look away. Don’t close your eyes.

I don’t know where that thought comes from, but I fix my gaze on her chin. Not aggressively. Not in challenge. But without showing fear.

“Vadim,” Ella Vladimirovna says.

The choice is made. This is Vadim’s fight.

Dima exhales softly in relief.

The creature hands the lipstick to Vadim. His hand trembles as he takes it.

Vadim. Kind, soft Vadim, who lies down to nap whenever he gets the chance.

Vadim, author of Rule Twenty-Two of the Common Notebook Behind the Wardrobe: They cannot enter your sleep. But in your sleep, you may see what to fear and how to defeat it.

Vadim, the homeboy who conqueres his fear every year and has come back for three shifts now. Vadim, who can fall asleep even in the middle of Horror.

Vadim, who in his first shift dreamed that something would appear at night in the second room of the Eighth Unit—allowing the girls to sleep in a neighboring unit and possibly saving their lives.

This is his fight.

And he accepts it.

“Draw a door, boy, right here,” Ella Vladimirovna says, her finger clumsily tapping the center of the mirror and slowly sliding toward the upper right corner, indicating where the door should be.

Vadim draws the door. The lines are steady—so steady you wouldn’t guess his hand is shaking.

That’s good. He’s focused. He isn’t letting fear win.

I’d say the odds are seventy percent in Vadim’s favor.

“Now the stairs,” the unnaturally tense finger moves diagonally from the upper right corner to the lower left. “From the door downward. Like this.”

Vadim freezes. Ella Vladimirovna’s finger taps impatiently against the mirror.

Left. Down. Left. Down. Left. Down.

Again and again, until the staircase is complete.

The lipstick slips from Vadim’s fingers and falls. He stares at the drawing without blinking.

“Good… good boy. Now say: ‘Queen of Spades, come.’ ‘Queen of Spades, come.’ ‘Queen of Spades, come.’ Three times, my boy. Three times. This will be very fun. You’re having fun, children, aren’t you?” our counselor asks.

Vadim turns to us, searching for support—support none of us can give. His eyes move from face to face, silently pleading for something: help, protection, a hint.

Nothing.

Helping now is dangerous, and he knows it.

When his gaze reaches me, I widen my eyes slightly and shrug one shoulder, silently mouthing go on.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then another. Ella Vladimirovna’s finger taps faster and faster, harder and harder.

Vadim repeats the words three times and stares at the mirror as if he’s entranced.

Though why as if?

We all see it.

At the base of the drawn staircase, a small flame appears. Slowly, unhurriedly, it begins climbing the steps toward the door at the top.

A sharp exhale by my ear pulls my attention away from the mirror. I turn and see Yura standing behind me. His eyes are wide, fixed on the flame. He sees nothing else. Understands nothing else.

He wouldn’t have survived tonight.

The only reason he’s alive is because the lot fell to Vadim.

The flame climbs higher. Two more steps. One more.

It pauses for a few seconds before the door——and the room’s entrance door flies open, slamming into the wall. The sound makes the girls in the neighboring room cry out. A gust of wind bursts inside, sweeps through the room, and dies out as it reaches Vadim.

Everything freezes.

The silence is broken only by an unpleasant sound. It takes me a moment to realize it’s Ella Vladimirovna, staring at Vadim’s face with greedy, joyful anticipation, struggling to hold back laughter.

I watch Vadim slowly turn, as if in a trance, walk to his bed, and lie down without covering himself with a blanket.

Ella Vladimirovna stands and backs toward the door, never taking her eyes off him.

We no longer pay attention to her leaving.

We all understand what just happened. We’ve all seen it before—or heard about it in previous shift.

All except Yura.

But he reads the room correctly and doesn’t ask questions.

We lie down too, but sleep doesn’t come for a long time.

Only Vadim snores.

By morning, he’ll remember nothing.

That’s how it always is.

Morning brings departure chaos.The happiest day of the shift—it’s over, and until next summer, we’re ordinary children again. Packing bags, searching for lost things, cheerful chatter and laughter. From the outside, the final day looks like the first day of a normal summer camp.

At Clover, it always does.

Only our unit is subdued.

Not too much—we can’t let Vadim notice and suspect anything.

Dima, who’s taken Yura under his wing, explains everything to him in the morning: what happened last night, how to behave now, what will happen next. It’s good that Yura takes it seriously. His first shift may be over, and he already has some experience of Clover Camp—but still, he’ll go far.

If he’s lucky.

Vadim is somewhere outside, enjoying his last day at camp. I use the opportunity to leave the room and go to the Artists.

I find them under a canopy at the far end of the camp, where their group traditionally spends most of its free time. Alina, Kirill, and little Olya.

Of course, rumors have already reached Alina.

They just need the name.

The two older Artists look at me expectantly. Not expectantly—demandingly. I don’t need to say anything. I know what they’re waiting for. I know—and still I stand there in silence, because once I say the name, it all becomes real.

I look away, down at the tables covered in sheets of A4 paper. Quick sketches of camp life—but more often symbols, strange patterns, incomprehensible signs.

During my first shift, I asked Alina what they were.

Protection, she said. Something like runes, talismans, wards. They just come to them while drawing, along with the knowledge of what to do with them afterward. Burn them while muttering nonsense words. Fold them into paper boats and launch them into the lake. Hide them under moss in the forest.

All sorts of things.

I remember how reassuringly she told me back then: See? It’s not all bad. There’s a lot of evil here, a lot of monsters and God knows what else—but there are good forces too. Someone sends us this knowledge. Someone helps us. Someone saves us.

Yes.

But no one will save Vadim from the Artists.

I close my eyes, gathering my strength. I imagine myself far away from here. I only have to say one word, let it fall from my lips—and that’s it. My duty will be done.

Just let it fall.

“Vadim.”

There.

I’ve said it. Somewhere far away, with my eyes closed.

But I hear Alina’s dark sigh.

I am not far away at all.

Kirill rustles paper businesslike. “Heart?” he asks.

“God, of course not,” Alina snaps. “They’ll start investigating. Clover could get into trouble—why they let in a kid with a heart condition who needed special care.”

It’s Alina’s last year at camp. After that, Kirill will become the lead Artist—and he still has one more shift ahead of him. We’re doomed with him. He’s foolish.

“Maybe… that disease,” little Olya says shyly. “I forgot the name. When a tick bites. My grandma’s neighbor died from that in the village. I can draw it—the boys showed me ticks.”

Alina nods thoughtfully. “That’ll do. No questions for the camp. They won’t be able to prove he was bitten here.”

Olya takes a pencil and bends over her sketchbook.

I know what she’ll draw.

I nod to them and walk away.

As much as possible, we avoid Vadim until departure.

Not completely—but still.

I manage to avoid being in the same room with him until the moment of goodbye, when we’re boarding the bus. He remembers nothing about the night. Nothing about summoning the Queen of Spades. Nothing about losing the fight and about the malicious spirit from the world of the dead—or whatever dark world—that has settled inside him, waiting for its moment.

But that thing inside him remembers everything.

It must not realize that we understand.

And under no circumstances must it learn about our Artists. Our last, secret line of defense. The weapon that, even at the cost of a soldier’s life, prevents a malignant entity inside a child from someday killing parents, siblings, classmates.

That is the purpose of the shifts at Clover Camp.

Shifts I fear so deeply that starting tomorrow I’ll begin counting the days on the wallpaper beside my bed until the next shift next summer—not out of anticipation, as my parents sweetly believe.

I shake Vadim’s hand and smile warmly at him. I wish him a good year and ask him not to be afraid to come back next summer.

I will never see him again.

As I release his hand, I notice a tick crawling under the sleeve of his T-shirt.

The shift is over.

Credit: Disaster