"Cerberus the Guardian" by Tatyana Korsakova, summary Automatic translate

This book is a mystical thriller, published in 2023, that reveals the dark secrets of an ancient estate. The plot combines the harsh medical reality of a provincial hospital with ancient beliefs about vampires and otherworldly guardians. The main feature of the narrative is the psychological authenticity of the characters, who are forced to confront irrational evil head-on.

A mysterious find on an abandoned road

The story begins on an old, abandoned forest road at dusk. Funeral director Charon, possessing the unusual ability to sense the death of others, stumbles upon the remains of an accident. At the bottom of a ravine, he discovers a burning motorcycle and the body of a young girl. Charon takes the victim to his technical wing, hoping to capture the rare moment of the soul’s passing in a death mask. However, the girl stubbornly clings to life, demonstrating remarkable resilience despite a severe head injury.

Realizing that death is approaching, Charon calls his old friend, a young intensive care specialist named Miron. He takes the unknown patient to the district hospital, where she is diagnosed with increasing intracranial pressure. Miron is forced to make a deal with the head of the radiology department, Lyudmila Vasilyevna. To save the girl, whom the doctors call "Jane Doe," Lyudmila brings in the Moscow neurosurgeon Vyshegorodtsev, demanding in exchange that Miron arrange a meeting for her with the strange owner of a funeral home.

An ancient legend and the ghost of a dog

Miron visits the scene of the accident and finds a strange pencil sketch of a three-headed monster. Soon after, a creepy apparition begins haunting the doctor’s respiratory ward and apartment. It’s a skeletal dog with a skull for a head, which Miron mentally names Cerberus. The mystical creature shows surprising attention to the comatose girl, as if protecting her from an invisible danger.

Trying to unravel the mystery, Myron turns to his grandmother, who heads the local museum. She shows him an antique silver collar and a heraldic book belonging to the aristocratic Hungarian Bartan family. The family crest features a Dark Dog, meant to protect the women of the family. According to archival records, the last member of the family lived on the Gremuchy Ruchey estate, where all traces of the ancient artifact were lost.

Miron recalls how, as a child, he secretly entered the cellars of the Gremuchy Ruchey estate and saw a chained monster with red eyes. For a long time, this memory seemed like a childhood nightmare. But new, terrifying events lead the doctor to believe that the line between reality and fiction has become blurred.

Myron’s training and inner strength

Miron developed exceptional fortitude and agility thanks to regular training at a sports club under the guidance of Savik Musailovich. At thirteen, Kharon saved the teenager from a violent street gang and brought him to a basement aikido gym. From then on, Miron trained diligently, mastering the philosophy of non-confrontational self-defense and honing his skills to the rank of black belt. This physical conditioning and ability to concentrate in critical moments later helped him maintain his composure in battles with otherworldly beings.

Tragedy in Rattlesnake Hollow

A horrific accident occurs in thick fog at night: a tour bus veers off the road into a ravine. Myron’s hospital descends into chaos, as doctors battle all night to save the lives of dozens of victims. Carefully examining the wounded, Myron and surgeon Sidorenko notice strange lacerations in the area of the major vessels of the neck and collarbones, more consistent with predator bites. One of the passengers disappears from the crash site without a trace.

Miron and Lyudmila Vasilyevna head to the ravine to search for the missing tourist and stumble upon his bloodless body. Kharon, summoned to the scene, confirms that death was due to blood loss, but rigor mortis is suspiciously absent. Lyudmila contacts her contacts in the police, and the body is returned to the city morgue in an attempt to avoid publicity and accusations of negligence.

Meanwhile, a conflict is brewing at the hospital. The scheming head physician, Gorovoy, is attempting to have the unidentified Lera discharged to a horrific almshouse in Veselovka. To save their charge from death, Miron and Kharon use their connections. The girl is transferred to an elite nursing home that has opened in the restored Gremuchy Ruchey estate. Miron gets a part-time job as an anesthesiologist there, so he can personally monitor her condition.

The Resurrection and the Phantom Menace

Events take a sinister turn when a corpse from the morgue comes to life. Transformed into a mindless ghoul, it makes its way into Charon’s funeral home, where Lyudmila Vasilyevna is at the time. The monster attacks the terrified woman, but she desperately defends herself with a sharp stiletto heel from her shoe, plunging it into the creature’s eye socket. Charon, arriving just in time, destroys the cadaver with a precise blow to the heart from his sword-cane. Charon and Miron are forced to secretly return the twice-dead body to a bench near the morgue to cover up the incident.

After a dangerous incident, the cadaver at the funeral home was safely destroyed. This incident brings Charon and Lyudmila Vasilyevna closer together, and they agree to meet at a restaurant. Over dinner, they enthusiastically discuss pseudoscientific theories of vampirism, attempting to explain the phenomenon from a medical perspective. Lyudmila believes the bites are a viral infection capable of slowing metabolism to the point of apparent death. Charon, meanwhile, speculates about a deficiency of a special substance in ghouls’ blood that triggers uncontrollable aggression during periods of extreme hunger.

Charon shares historical records with Miron. It turns out that during World War II, the German occupiers conducted cruel experiments in Gremuchy Ruchey. As a result of these experiments, an outbreak of vampirism occurred in the ravine. One of the few surviving subjects was Miron’s great-grandfather, Dmitry Kulikov, who, after the ordeal, turned completely gray but acquired phenomenal intuition.

Miron begins haunting Lera in her lucid dreams. Inside a fictional Gothic castle, the girl regains the ability to speak and partially remembers her name. Her mind is protected by Cerberus, who in the dream world appears as a majestic dog of flesh and blood. Lera confesses to hearing strange whispers filling the ravine and is terrified of becoming a "vegetable" forever.

The first days at the estate and the rescue of Mashenka

Having settled into the boarding house, Miron transfers Lera to the outbuilding under the care of the caring elderly nurse, Semyonovna, where Cerberus continues to maintain its invisible vigil. On his very first day at the estate, Miron saves the local cosmetician, Mashenka, from fatal anaphylactic shock after eating chocolate with nuts. By quickly administering an epinephrine injection, he earns the respect of the head physician, Marta Genrikhovna, and meets the strange resident, Astra. Astra thanks the doctor for his promptness and hints that she finds the estate too boring and lacking its former mystical atmosphere.

Hunting in the fog of the estate

During a morning walk through the wild part of the estate park, Myron hears a mocking female laugh. In the thick fog, he is attacked by an invisible, clawed creature. The doctor defends himself with a broken hazel branch, severely wounding the attacker in the chest. Spectral Cerberus comes to the rescue and drives off the monster. Later, Charon and Myron find an upturned, bloody print of a slender woman’s hand on a concrete fence.

Miron explores an abandoned water tower and discovers the body of a man with a broken neck in an old boiler. He recognizes this corpse as the jeep driver from his prophetic dream — the man who hit Lera and threw her into a ravine. However, the body soon disappears from the tower without a trace, leading the heroes to conclude that the killer has also turned into a ghoul and escaped.

In the finale, Miron encounters Astra, a mysterious writer undergoing rejuvenating treatments at a boarding house. Meeting her at the water tower, he notices fresh blood on her lips. Astra bares her sharp fangs and ironically admits her true, vampiric nature, confirming the heroes’ suspicions about the existence of primordial evil in Rattlesnake Creek.