Korney Petrovich Ropotkin is a surgeon in the hospital of the district center Tyoploye, Chernozem region, and part-time a forensic expert in the local police. One night he has to join a task force to examine a corpse on the remote collective farm Volchya Dubrava. The woman was killed in an unusual way - with a wooden stake. Even more strange, however, is that a day later the corpse disappears from the autopsy room, and the morgue guard disappears along with it. But the events are just beginning... The story was published in the magazine Iskatel No. 01/2011.