The Room

In the thriller-puzzle by Vitaly Mikhaylov, children disappear from locked rooms, and the hands of those marked as future victims are covered with black sores resembling keyholes. There is no salvation, only postponement: if not you, then someone else. In... a cinematically crafted sequence of dreamlike-surreal episodes, the protagonist agonizingly searches for both the one responsible for the children's abductions and the one who can help him unlock the door to his own unique and paradoxical consciousness. The mind is a locked room from which it is impossible to escape. The main character is only sixteen, but he has already become a celebrity: he has been honored with a book dedicated to his own gift-curse, a rare syndrome — an inability to remember any name, including his own, combined with exceptional mathematical abilities. In pursuit of the dark force abducting children, he must carefully count the doors of abandoned hotels and half-forgotten mansions in an attempt to harness his own memory and mind. This novel is a scary fairy tale written by a skillful visionary.
Vitaly Mikhaylov was born in the town of Volkhov in the Leningrad region. For a long time, he worked as a journalist, then as an archivist, and now — as a bibliographer.