Dogheads

Three young Muscovites come to do a job in a remote village of the Volga region: they need to remove a dying fresco from the wall of an abandoned church. The fresco depicts a heretical image of Saint Christopher with a dog's head. It turns out that the village was once a schismatic monastery, and the job is an experiment by mysterious dangerologists, "sappers" of world culture. And in the haze of peat fires, lost historical memory births the terrifying Doghead — either a demon of dissidents or a god of camp guards.

If you like, this is a genre novel, a horror story about werewolves. If you prefer — a new rural prose. If you wish — a stylization of web surfing on the topic of the Russian schism. But overall, "Dogheads" is a story about the invisible borders of culture and the guardians of those borders. Any society has a certain circle of beliefs, and society does not allow a person to leave this circle, and if a person dares to step beyond the sacred limit, monsters are sent to chase them.