Dream... Reality... Was it in a dream... in reality... Marusya Petrovna saw THIS sixty years ago and then remembered it all her life. Everyone to whom she tried to tell what she, an eight-year-old girl, witnessed on the night of the murder of the famous illusionist, hypnotist Simon Valenti and his assistant Asya Mordashova, who were touring in their city, did not believe her. The unhealthy fantasies of a child - that's what they said then, the ravings of a crazy old woman - that's what they say now. It was a terrible story. And a few months before this double murder, Mordashova’s children, a boy and a girl, disappeared. And now, after so many years, the nightmare seems to be returning. What is Simon Valenti's great-nephew doing here? Why did you settle in the remote provincial Dvurechensk? What is he looking for? And again, as then, the boy Misha Utkin disappeared, and Dashenka, her granddaughter, Marusya Petrovna, received a terrible drawing foreshadowing death...