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This story happened to me personally. I was about thirteen at that time. It was a weekend, and early in the morning my parents left for the country house, and I stayed at home to sleep, resting from a hard school week. The room was quiet, such a quiet, annoyingly empty morning, when even the alarm clock seems like someone else's sound. I tossed and turned, wrapped in a blanket, and thought that five more minutes and five more, and closed my eyes again.
Suddenly, voices came from the next room.
- Manoban Lalisa, come out, play with us! - persistently, again and again, they called, and there was that childish tone in their voice: persistent, spit, as if reproachful. - Let's play...
I was not quite in the fog of sleep, but I haven't fully woken up yet. Twice she answered in a half-sleep something like "Leave me alone, I want to sleep, I'm not going anywhere!" - and was about to fall asleep again, when suddenly something in my voice was stuck for the last remnants of sleep. I jumped up abruptly, instinctively shringed into a lump, like a frightened kitten. My heart was pounding, and the world around me became clearer and colder: the light cracked from the cold air in the cracks of the window, the creaking of the door, the smell of coffee, which was not at home.
One simple and horrifyingly wrong knowledge came to me with absolute clarity: there is no one at home and there can be no one at home. My parents left early, the phone was in my mother's bag, the entrance door slammed shut quietly and finally. And the voices calling to play and walk, they came not from the street, not from the window, but from the next room. From there, in a second, a quiet children's laughter was heard: not friendly, not inviting, but one that immediately reflects in the ears like the ringing of broken glass.
It was one of the strangest and scariest moments in my life. I couldn't write everything off as a dream, the voice woke me up, pulled me out of it. He was real; I heard with every cell of my body. I tried to breathe evenly so as not to attract the attention of what was calling. But in a moment, fear overcame caution.
I got out of bed and slowly, almost silently, walked to the door of my parents' bedroom. My hands were shaking, as if someone was playing on a thin string in their palms. The door was ajar: a small crack through which the pale light lay on the floor. The smell in the room was familiar: the smell of their shampoo, the smell of an old book on the bedside table... and something else, such a smell as if someone had just laid out cold stones on the table and ran them over his face. He couldn't be called unpleasant, but he was a stranger, and from this the frost on the skin became deeper.
And I looked inside. No one. The bed is evenly maded, there were the same photos on the closet. Everything seems to be frozen in anticipation. And still from the corner of the room, from where the space behind the doorway to the corridor is hidden, the same voice came: already quiet, almost in a whisper, but distinctly.
- Manoban... - they called as if this name was the key. - Manoban Lalisa, come out.
Suddenly I felt something inside twitch from a strange mixture of recognition and alienation. I was called by my full name, no one has ever called me "Manoban Lalisa" in my life. The friends are called "Foss", mother - "Foes", relatives are affectionate. The full name was lying somewhere in the passport, in the official papers, it seemed callous and distant. And then it sounded as if someone from the other end of the room, or even from another house, was calling me from memory. The voice continued:
- We were playing, you were asleep. Now wake up.
I went to the corridor. The floor in the apartment was icy not from the temperature, but from the feeling that the footsteps left emptiness behind. In the far corner of the closet, I noticed small marks on the dust: tiny fingerprints, like from children's palms. They led from the bedroom door to the room itself and further, under the sofa, where there is never such dust, because parents carefully clean.
Something was moving under the sofa. It wasn't a movement of furniture, but rather a shadow that lived its life inappropriately. I bent down, whistled with horror and some almost childish curiosity at the same time. There was an old doll lying there - the one that my mother once threw away a long time ago, but for some reason I remembered her cut eyelashes and cracked eye. The doll was in the dust, her dress was torn, and there was a small tag around her neck with the inscription: "Kim Jenny".
I froze because of fear. For everyone around her, she was just "Jen", "Jane". No one has ever called her "Kim Jenny" in full, except in official documents. And now the tag quietly shone in the twilight, as if confirming what I had just heard: the names were full, sounded here with respect, almost with demand. As if someone from the other side of the house, or from behind the wall, demanded to be called as it is written in the books and testimonies.
Seeing the strange doll, I had to pick it up, her eyes were empty, and the inner fabric rustled like dry leaves. It is not clear where another children's melody appeared in the room: quiet, creaking, like an old musical winding mechanism. She didn't play the melody that the children knew, but a boiled, twisted-invented song, which made a cold sweat rise on the back of her head.
There was a knock on the door. I shuddered and fell back on the floor, the doll slipped out of my hands and hit the baseboard. Her eye, the cracked one, sparkled strangely, as if a small corner suddenly flashed there.
- Lalisa? - the voice sounded, but not that childish call. He was closer, and there was someone else's warm note in him, as if someone was trying to make the voice human, but he didn't quite know how to do it. - Manoban Lalisa, we know you. We remember your last name.
I ran to my parents' room, rushed to the phone, but the buttons were sticky, as if someone had left fingerprints on it, which immediately evaporated. The screen was as dark as night. I grabbed my jacket - the thoughts of escaping were funny and useless, because as soon as I opened the door, the corridor didn't look the same as usual: instead of a familiar picture, there was the same thin gray fog from which whispers could be heard. It flows not through the air, but as if on the skin, and in it the words, hollowed out without accents: "Let's play."
The story that I accidentally read on a foreign website of scary stories surfaced in my memories. There was a guy who was called exactly the same in the house, by full name, which none of his acquaintances used. He told how the voice was called "Thomas", although everyone calls him Tom or Tommy. The comments were similar to the entries from the notebook: someone posted their name and said that they were called the same: Robert, Christopher, Elizabeth. It seemed that somewhere there is a rule: what comes has a habit of calling people by their official names. As if it doesn't recognize diminutive forms.
I froze in front of the mirror in the hallway. My own reflection looked at me with pallor, but my eyes, my eyes were not quite mine: an echo of someone else's laughter splashed in them. I don't remember how long I stood, minutes, hours, seconds, but at one point the silence in the apartment became dull, and then there was a soft knock on the window glass. The knocking was smooth, metronomic: "tuk... tuk... tuk...", as if reminding me that time is moving and that it knows my full name.
Then I heard a second voice. He was thinner, more feminine, and said one word, it sounded like a confession and like a sentence at the same time:
- Kim Jenny.
I realized that a doll is not just a thing. It was a carrier, a pointer, a label. The tag on the neck didn't hang by accident. Someone or something made sure that the names sounded right. And every time it called the name, the space around me contracted.
I tried to rationalize it somehow. Maybe it was a prank of a neighbor's child. Maybe someone turned on the old recording, such sounds can be faked. But all this did not explain the traces of small palms, music under the sofa, the smell of cold stones. And it did not explain how the voices called me really full names, such that they had to remain in dusty documents, and not in the language of the living.
Still, I decided to check the room where it all felt like it all started, the parents' bedroom. An old carpet was crunching under my feet, and on top, on the chest of drawers, was our old photo album. On one of the pages there were photos: a family at the dacha, me and my parents by the lake, and somewhere on the left is a little girl with curly hair and a doll in her hands. I've never seen that doll in the photos, and the girl seemed nice and normal, but the caption under the picture was: "Kim Jenny, about seven years old" and next to it, neatly written, as if someone had erased it with a finger, was my full name: "Manoban Lalisa".
I felt something turn in my chest. Memories that I couldn't remember began to make their way through the thick of oblivion. Maybe I remembered this house differently; maybe I really saw something as a child, but adult logic erased it. Or it was more creepy, only our present never existed at home. Suddenly I began to suspect that the space around me was a sticker, under which a thick layer of old events, other people's lives, recorded names was hidden.
I suddenly wanted to leave. Leave and never come back. But my legs didn't obey. I stepped towards the door, and it slammed by itself, with a quiet, satisfied click. A small silhouette appeared on the threshold, no more than half a meter high, and before I realized who it was, he muttered a song: the very squeaky one that was playing under the sofa, and in all the words there was not so much meaning as a requirement:
- We were waiting. You forgot our game. We call by name books.
The silhouette was not a person and was not a doll, he was like the difference between a shadow and a thing: he held another tag in his hands. The name was written on it, and this name was my passport version, that set of letters with which you can't joke at all. The silhouette came closer, and I felt a cold wind on my skin, which smelled not of air, but of time.
- We're playing names, - said the creature in a voice that at the same time had no voice and imitated every voice that ever sounded in this house. - Call us, and we'll forget. Don't name it, and we'll stay.
The words rattled in my head like glasses on the shelf when I fell. I didn't know what to answer. I could have named him - any of those that were written on the tags and maybe it would really stop the game. But it seemed to me that the name has a downside: to name is to admit, to give a name to the force that will become it. And if I say a word, it will not only go away, it will enter me, into the roots, into my nights. Not to say, it means to leave the door open.
I bent down and picked up a second tag from the floor. On it, in addition to the name, there was a drop of old blood, not bright, not new, but like an imprint of time. Her smell is metal and either sea salt, or just a tart memory, as if there was some kind of key. I caught myself thinking that I've known this name since when I couldn't know anything and it was wild. Unlike the fear that was familiar, this feeling of someone else's story became mine.
And she whispered one word. Not the name of the creature, but rather the request, and that word was not in full form: "Jane?" - and immediately my pronunciation echoed, but did not calm down. The voice that used to be called sounded again, and now it sounded relief and irritation at the same time.
- Kim Jenny, - it whispered. - That's right.
And at that moment the room became so warm that I melted. Warm, like warm palms, like the breath of an animal and in it there was not only safety, but also calculation: the price for one word. The silhouette smiled, and his smile was such that all the light disappeared in it. He held out his hand to me, and I saw marks on my palm - small letters, as if burned: "Manoban", "Kim".
- We're waiting, - he said. - We just want to be called. Then you can play humanly. Then you can leave.
I could get up and leave the house. I could scream, turn on the siren in my cell phone, run out and forget. But the memory for which they came now lay warmer than the pounding of my heart. I kind of felt that behind this "we" were not only voices, but a whole line of names, a series of children's affairs and forgotten games. And if I leave, they will stay here, tied to these walls and to clothes, and their songs will continue to sneak in the ears of the one who lives inside.
Leaving a tag on the creature's palm. His skin was not skin - it was the surface where words grew. I saw the names there - the names of those who used to live in this house, and the names of those who may never have lived, but were an invention for entertainment. I didn't know whose side the truth was on, but I knew that a small price, one pronounced name - can close the door. And at the same time I understood that the price would not disappear: the name would remain in the house, and someone else would one day hear the rustle and decide to follow. Maybe this is a game: a chain of names, one by one, like beads.
The silhouette retreated into the shade and disappeared as if it had dissolved in the gap between the walls and the floor. The music is cut off. The doll under the sofa sighed - not with a human sigh, but with something that imitated breathing and silence filled the room again. But the silence was not empty now; it was saturated with unspoken words.
I stood holding the second tag in my hands, and understood that tomorrow, when my parents come back, everything will look different: the photo will remain, the doll will disappear or appear in the strangest places, and someone in the house may start calling a full name that no one has said for a long time. But knowledge settled inside me: these names are not simple words. They were doors.
I tried to close the story with the thought that it was just repeated nonsense, a coincidence, that someone was playing with the records somewhere, that the baby doll was just an old thing. But when I bent down to put the tag back under the sofa, my ear caught a whisper - now it's very close, right at the forehead.
- See you soon, Lisa, - whispered something thick and playful. - We'll remember.
I stepped back. The door to the corridor opened by itself. Through the crack, I saw below, at the very end of the landing, a faint flicker, like a light bulb that someone periodically turns on and off. The light blinked like an eye blinking, and in this flicker, if you look closer, there were letters. They loouted quickly and immediately disappeared: "Manoban Lalisa", "Kim Jenny", "Manoban Lalisa" - and everything went out again. I didn't know what to do next. Everything inside me was both empty and full at the same time. I could leave the tag by the couch and not say another name. I could leave and try to forget. Or I could sit and wait for someone to whisper, call, or play again. All I remembered was that names didn't come for no reason. They came for someone who could hear.
In the evening, when dense darkness descended on the city, and the windows of neighboring houses began to look like eyes, the thin sound of a children's song was heard in one of them again. Maybe it was just the music from the TV. Maybe someone was playing. Maybe someone was whispering the full name just now, hoping to hear the answer.
I still keep that tag in the box on the shelf. Sometimes at night it seems to me that it is a little warmer than usual, and in the silence I hear the creak of an old melody coming from the kitchen. I don't know who or what calls people by their names. I don't know who that little figure was on the doorstep. I don't know how many other names are bound to this house, or how many there are in the world, in some book we don't remember.
Sometimes I hear someone whispering my full name in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up and find little footprints on my pillow, almost like fingerprints, but thinner. Sometimes I think that in a far corner of the room, someone is playing a quiet tune on a clockwork mechanism, and the melody changes slightly.
And if one day, in some other house, at some other time, you hear a quiet call: "Kim Jenny... Manoban Lalisa..." - don't be quick to dismiss it as a coincidence. You can go to the window and see what's flickering there. You can close your eyes and not respond. Or you can say your full name, and then you'll know the price it carries.
But I've already said it. And now the door is ajar. I sometimes hear someone playing an old children's song and calling out a full name. And the same question comes to mind: who really comes when we call them by their passport names, and who comes when we don't call them at all?
I don't have an answer. It's just a whisper, and it continues, just like it did that early weekend when my parents left and I was left alone to sleep.