A Terrible Vengeance (Russian: Страшная месть) is a Gothic horror story by Nikolai Gogol.It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, in 1832, and it was probably written in late summer 1831.The short story is written in the "ornate and agitated style" characteristic to Gogol, sometimes skirting purple prose, and was a great influence on the rhythmic prose of the modernist novelist Andrei Bely.The appearance of evil spirits, and specifically of an Antichrist figure, in A Terrible Vengeance was typical of Gogol's belief in the omnipresence of Evil in everyday life, an aspect of his religious philosophy that is uniquely direct in this story.