Eerie visions haunted him all the way. Would this area be filled with ghost stories? It was useless to ask his companion about it. Dima thought only about where he would go on vacation: Turkey, Greece or Crimea? Where is the resort better? Where are more comfortable hotels? Where to find a cute traveling companion?

But this summer he’s unlikely to have time for a vacation. After all, they would have enough work for at least six months. The unfinished mansion was part anthill, part quarry. Various architects started to work on it, and for some reason they all quit. He would have to finish the job for everyone. As far as Ruslan could see, they had all started building in their own individual style. Different superstructures didn’t fit together. Some were deliberately destroyed, as if each new hired architect was trying to destroy the traces of his predecessors’ work.

Ruslan got a stack of blueprints that contradicted one another. All made by different people. Now he has to create his final drawing, into which he will transfer the idea of his employer. The building should resemble a labyrinth, which combines the styles of different eras and countries.

The idea is grandiose, but how can it be realized? Ruslan gloomily looked at the piles, the foundation, the laid foundations of the towers and galleries connecting the different buildings. Would it be necessary to destroy all this in order to work according to a new plan?

“Each building should be built in the style of one of the ancient civilizations: Egyptian, Roman, Indian, Greek, Chinese, and only the smallest building in the style of Russian terems, and all this will be connected by covered passages,” Ruslan cringed over the dictated conditions.

“I wonder who they are building such an expensive gift for? For sure, it is for a beautiful woman,” dreamily stretched out his companion, who was fixated on charming persons.

“In my opinion, the rich people are beginning to lose their brains because of their fads. Such a structure can only be called a whim.”

“But this whim is well paid for,” Dima said thoughtfully, who had already paid off debts and alimony from the generous advance payment. And there was still a fee ahead. He doesn’t care what and on what principle to build. The customer pays, so he is always right.

Ruslan sighed and ruffled his blond hair. He didn’t like the idea of a fancy palace, but where else would he find work?

“Damn palace!” He hissed, looking at the construction site with its unfinished towers and buildings. “Our ancestors staged revolution and overthrew monarchs just to bring back the era of palaces and the rich. How people don’t rush to get away from inequality, but end up returning to it again.”

“Do you want to go back to the USSR?” Dima joked.

Ruslan remained silent. He didn’t like to talk politics.

“It was good that we weren’t sent to build a hospital. Personally, I like palaces much better than hospitals. The hospital we passed this morning gives me the creeps.”

Well! Dima admitted it himself. Ruslan didn’t have to ask him about it. He too felt the aura of darkness and ghosts.

“They say it was a terrible thing going on in that asylum.”

“Is anything in the press about it? What was it called?” Ruslan prepared to type a query on the Internet on his phone.

“It was there before the revolution. But there was a fire there recently.”

“Was there a fire?” Ruslan was surprised. “The walls hadn’t even smoked.”

“They were probably painted afterwards, and the building was repaired.”

“I noticed that the paint was old, peeling in places.”

“You’re very observant. You’re not familiar with optics and eyeglasses. I’ve only recently switched to lenses.”

No one met the two architects at the counter. The guards let the arrivals through reluctantly.

The register listed Ruslan Ivanovich Sotnikov and Dmitry Vasilyevich Angarov, architects. The statement “this is us” was not enough. RuslanI had to show his documents. Out of the corner of his eye Ruslan noticed a list of engineers’ names, above which there was a mourning cross. Without thinking much about the observance of decorum, he snatched up the list and read:

“Volodya Perov, Grigory Shepetov, Alexander Voylokov, Pavel Kostin, Leonid Pushkarev… Are they all dead?”

“No, they are sick. They are all in the hospital,” the guard reluctantly muttered.

Wow!

“What are they sick with? Is there an epidemic at the construction site?”

The guard obviously did not like this curiosity. For a moment it seemed that he would ignore the question, but he answered with grim humor:

“Get drunk, have fun, have a disaster. Now twenty workers and five engineers are in the hospital.”

“And when they’re discharged from there, will they go back to the construction site?”

The guard shrugged, but it was obvious he wasn’t expecting them back.

“If they were taken to the hospital we passed by, they say they only come back from there in a coffin,” Dima muttered as they passed the guard post.

“Why? Are the doctors there so bad?”

“They take patients there in the most extreme cases, when it is obvious that nothing can be done.”

“Is it obvious right away?” Ruslan raised his ashy eyebrows in amazement. His friend Sashka, a surgeon by profession, used to say that doctors were not omnipotent. Sometimes someone who’s already been crossed will recover, and sometimes a healthy person will die. Diagnosis still means nothing. Sasha said he’d seen miraculous healings himself. Maybe his religiosity had clouded his judgment. Ruslan himself did not approve of those doctors who sent patients to churches for treatment. The soul was a separate concern, but physical ailments needed physical help.

“I noticed something like a temple near the hospital,” he recalled.

“It’s a former monastery,” Dima explained.

“And why it stands next to the hospital. Were the sick treated with prayers?”

“If people are going to die soon, there’s nothing else to do.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, I think the nuns were helping to care for the sick. In fact, there was a big scandal involving their help in the last century. Some nuns went mad, claimed they saw the devil, who told them to abuse the dying. Doctors claimed the same thing. Imagine, they were performing surgeries on the living, mutilating people. Supposedly demons told them to do it. It all happened a long time ago. I don’t know if the story’s true or if it’s a tourist lie.”

“Can you read it in the guidebook? Where’d you hear about it?”

“It was from the guys who worked here before us and quit. I talked to them on the phone. They seemed scared. People have become very superstitious these days.”

Ruslan sighed. Thoughts of the hospital sowed gloom on his soul. He didn’t like doctors, if only for the reason that they never paid any attention to him at the polyclinic unless he brought a box of chocolates as a present. Free medicine has one disadvantage: if you don’t give the doctors a small bribe in the form of a chocolate bar or a pack of cookies, they won’t treat you, but will send you to a lot of paid tests, which, as it turns out, were not needed for anything.

“It’s better not to get sick,” Ruslan concluded.

“What can you tell your body to do?” Dima grinned. “People are not made of marble. All infections stick to us.”

“Marble, you said…” Ruslan was taken aback when he noticed a statue of an angel on the construction site, just like the one on the steps of the hospital. He must have gotten double vision, because the statue was moving its wing.

“Look!” Ruslan tugged at his comrade’s sleeve.

“Where is it? Is it at the crane?”

“No, it is the angel.”

“What angel is it?”

“It is the marble one! It is the statue!”

“I don’t see any statue,” Dima rubbed his eyes. “They must be inside.”

“Who is it?”

“They are figures like museum pieces. I’m told they’ve already started moving them into a gallery that’s being rebuilt. By the way, we have to plan the building so that this gallery won’t be destroyed or altered. It and the already rebuilt rotunda must not be touched. All the other wings must adjoin them so that the rotunda remains in the center.”

“What a task is it!” Ruslan had never faced anything like this before. It would take a lot of thought. Now he was more concerned about the marble angel. Why couldn’t Dima see it?

It was as if the angel didn’t exist. There were only workers carrying wheelbarrows with lime and bricks. Maybe the statue had already been moved. It was probably not made of marble, but of papier-mâché. Then it could have just been carried away.

Could he have mistaken the mannequin for a statue? He seems to have perfect eyesight. Dima’s the one who’s always squinting.

And what did the construction site need a mannequin for? Probably it was brought for the home theater, which was still to be built. Ruslan thought it was foolish to bring interior decorations into a mansion that had not yet been built. It was even more foolish to build parts of the mansion before the architects arrived on the site. He wasn’t even told about the rotunda. Now the whole plan would have to be reworked.

Ruslan caught the gaze of the marble eyes. They looked down at him from above the rotunda. A statue of an angel nestled against the roof. It is definitely a stucco decoration. Yet the angel seems alive. His lips stretch in a sly grin. A blinding flash of the sun for a moment obscured Ruslan’s eyes, and in the next moment the angel on the roof of the rotunda was gone.

What the hell!

“I think I need lenses or glasses, too,” Ruslan muttered, “I’m seeing double.”

Or did he have sunstroke? As he drove the car, the sun heated the sight-glass mercilessly.

“Let’s hurry up, we’re on a tight schedule,” Dima pulled him towards the rotunda. “We need to see it to think how to proceed, and the gallery, too.”

Ruslan flinched when something red splashed on his jacket. Was that ketchup or blood? The third statue he’d seen at the construction site had been splattered with blood. This time the marble angel made no secret of the fact that it was alive. It moved easily and plastically. It is probably an actor, smeared with whitewash from head to toe, so that it is not distinguishable from the sculpture. But why are his eyes entirely white, too? Angel put his hand to his lips, calling for silence. Workers passed by, as if they didn’t see him. Someone pushed a wheelbarrow full of bricks at the angel. In an instant, marble palms closed around the trucker’s head and crushed it like a rotten egg. Blood spurted.

Ruslan wanted to scream, to call the police. Even angels aren’t allowed to get up to mischief on a construction site. And this was probably not an angel, but some liquid powdered joker. Only the builders don’t notice him for some reason. Before Ruslan could open his mouth, the angel, the wheelbarrow with the brick, and the severed head, which the angel was playing with as if it were a red ball, disappeared from view.

Ruslan looked at his jacket and didn’t see any blood on it. It had definitely splattered on him.