“Who are you, Erna?” The first book in the “Quicksands” series. A building collapses in the city. Everything is “dumped” onto quicksand—groundwater. They undermined the foundation. But where do quicksands come from in a steppe city? After the “cataclysm,” the lives of some teenagers in the city change. Fourteen-year-old Laura’s deceased father returns, and thirteen-year-old Tyoma begins to find himself in strange situations for his “bad” behavior, then begins to see the dead, and then meets the devil himself... What do the quicksands want from the human world - the shadows of a new afterlife created by the murdered man in color years old king? Why are quicksand at war with the traditional afterlife? A bully and a downtrodden girl are trying to find an answer to these questions.