The Bone Mother

by David Demchuk

  “Strigoi,” I whispered. “The beast was a strigoi.”

  “Yes,” Simone said gravely.

  “Rosina was my grandmother—and her daughter was my mother.”

  “Yes. And that is why your mother was killed. And your brothers as well. You should have died, too. But somehow, you survived.”

  I tried to stand, tried to push myself out of the chair, but instead I collapsed to the floor, onto my knees and then on my side. “Am I also—a beast?” I gasped.

  “You have the blood. You have your urges. Then again, you might just be an ordinary monster.” She knelt down, pulled a blanket from the foot of her bed over me as I lay clenched and shivering. “Yes, Ruta and I, we know quite a bit about you. You see, we are the ones who contracted you, through Spadok. We are the ones who arranged your assignments. The four men you killed, they were the last of your grandmother’s torturers.”

  The door opened, and a familiar pair of heavy white shoes entered the room, stepped around and behind me. Two strong arms lifted me up. I tried to writhe, to squirm and struggle, but I was paralyzed. The arms dropped me, a dead weight, onto the bed by Simone’s feet. I looked up and saw Ruta standing over me, holding her cellphone close to my face. SOON, said her message to me.

  “I knew Rosina, in the thimble factory, and I saw what happened to her,” Simone continued. “Just before the war, the Russians used the factory to conduct experiments of a hideous nature. Your grandmother, who carried the beast blood, she suffered greatly there. She was still just a child. We helped her escape, and kept her hidden, and in time her gifts revealed themselves.”

  “Her . . . gifts?” I asked weakly. Suddenly I heard the familiar sound, of something being dragged across the floor, and I realized: it was the heavy iron grate. I turned my head slightly, and watched as one dark hairy hand, and another, and another, grasped the edge of the bed. Then more hands, more arms, reaching up and over, reaching for me. And then face, and eyes, and teeth, and tongue.

  “Oh, look, here she is,” Simone said with a smile. “She looks excited to see you.”

  The face loomed closer, and then somehow blurred and bloomed. Eyes and more eyes, mouth upon mouth, hands on my cheeks, in my hair, on my chest. “How many . . . are there?” I asked. “What else . . . is here?”

  “No one else, nothing else,” Simone replied. “Just her.” And with that, two of the hands pried open my jaw, and another grabbed hold of my tongue. And then one of the mouths pressed onto my eye, and she said, “I think she must be hungry.”

  It is dark down here, I think, down here where my grandmother lives. Thin ribbons of light shine down from the grate, from cracks between the boards. I turn my head and see the shapes of others, slumped against the walls, some alive, some not. She feeds on both. She feeds on me. A finger here, a toe there. Sometimes more.

  I’m telling this in circles, I know. Inside-out and wrong-way-round. The words are twisting, tangling. I sleep, I wake, I watch the ribbons of light, I wait. I have the blood of the beast in me. Maybe I do not know how to die. Waiting is all I can do.

  But:

  We have some time, before she comes. An hour or two perhaps. Tell me a tale, something from your childhood. I do like a good story.

  TWO

  THE NIGHT POLICE

  Sabina

  There was a time in the history of our three neighbouring villages when very few children were being born, and almost no girls. Movchanya. This period lasted nearly ten years. Even today, no one knows why, though of course there are theories—some to do with the factory, some with the government, some to do with the land on which our villages were built, and a few blaming our own tainted bloodlines.

  We do not speak of it now, but at the time it was quite traumatic. Many women struggled to become pregnant but, of the few that succeeded, most of them miscarried within the first two months. Nearly a dozen women carried their babies into the ninth month but the children were either stillborn or so severely deformed that they could barely take a breath. Some men left the villages for the city, married there and brought their wives back, but it did not matter. The results were the same. In those ten years, among our villages, only thirty children lived. Only six of them girls.

  I came in the seventh year. I was born a boy but was raised as a girl. Of course I did not understand this at the time, and I do not know now whether I was drawn to girlish things before my parents chose this, or because they chose it. But what’s done is done. I was not the only such child—four others were also raised this way, three older than me and one younger—but I was the only one from my village. Our parents ensured, as we grew, that we always wore something green: a dress or skirt, or a ribbon, or a wristlet or stockings, to set us apart from the others. We were known as the Zeleni Divuski, the Green Girls.

  There was some teasing, naturally, as we grew up, and there was some fear. We were treated differently, some felt “specially,” and that is always difficult for children. In time, though, the girls outside our group, even the older ones, would come and tell us their secrets, and the boys would come and ask us how to make the girls like them.

  The boys would often practice with us—not sexually, of course, but with holding hands and talking and kissing. “Too rough, too fast,” we might say to one. “Too shy, too quiet,” to another. We encouraged boys to ask questions and to listen, to be less boastful, to be more polite and considerate. “Is this how you talk to your mother?” we would ask. Once a boy answered, “I don’t have a mother,” and one of us too quickly said, “I don’t doubt it.” We tried not to make the boys cry, but there were times.

  And then we would report back to the girls about who was funny and charming, who was strong and shy, who was quick and boisterous. They all wanted to know who kissed best but we would not tell them. “Find out for yourselves!” we would laugh. It was all harmless fun, and some good matches and good families resulted from our encouragements. Though it wasn’t till many years later that we found understanding wives, or husbands, for ourselves.

  This was all well before the war. The villages were situated on lands in constant dispute—not only between countries but among landowners, religions, and even species. There were stories of the Drevniye, the beings who came before all of us, and how some lived alongside us in peace and even sheltered with us to disguise their presence. We had heard talk of the shapeshifters but never knew if they lived among us or whom they might be. And there were dark tales of the Naystarsha, who lived deep beneath the ground and who was the source of all the Drevniye power. Fairy stories, all of them, but still.

  One day, when I was seventeen, a summer day I think, or very early in the fall, I was sipping some tea in the square when a much younger girl came over to me and said, “You should think of leaving this place. All the Green Girls. And soon.”

  I was shocked that someone so young should be so bold. “Why do you say this to me?” I asked. “Who are you? And why should I leave?” She held her finger to her lip, and then whispered. “Meet with the others, tonight if you can.” She peered into my eye. “Your mother has a sister in Satu Mare. Go to her. If you need to travel farther, you will know.” Then she looked around, and I looked around, and saw that a few of the villagers were standing a respectful distance away, watching us. I thought I knew everyone in the village, but now I was surrounded by strangers.

  “How long do we have?” I asked. “How long must we be gone?”

  “Tomorrow at noon should still be safe. But tonight is better. Take everything you love.”

  Something in those last few words chilled me deeply. I curtsied to her, to all of them, and turned, and hurried home. I told my mother her sister was ill, a mutual friend in town had said so, and that we must see her at once. She bundled my father and our dog into the cart with some clothing and provisions, and we were off just after dinner. I made us stop at the other villages, told the other Green Girls the story. Three were able to join us. Little Maruska was ill with a terrible cough and couldn’t b
e moved, so I urged her parents to follow as soon as they could. I then apologized to my mother for the now-obvious lie, but she could see how frightened I was, how frightened we all were and, well, if it was a trick, a prank of some sort, we’d at least have taken a trip together and oh how surprised my aunt would be.

  Little Maruska never did join us. And we never went back. We heard in the end what happened, of course. I still do not know why we were saved.

  Marius

  If you feel something strike you on the shoulder or leg or on your side, as if someone has slapped or punched you, and no one is near who could have done so, fall down.

  I did so. My brother did not. He was hit three more times and died. I stayed on the ground until I heard shouts and shots and men running up, farmers and villagers, neighbours, and only then did I dare stir.

  I lost so much blood, and yet I lived.

  My mother had told us a war was coming, said it was not far from us and inching closer day by day. She never spoke to anyone, never left our house, and yet she knew this. Now it was on our doorstep.

  Hunters had come from time to time, before I was born, in twos and threes. Ours was an old village, and the oldest among us had fled from other old villages, and their parents and grandparents from other old villages before. We heard stories of special officers, police who were more like soldiers, whose task it was to rid the world of our kind. Our village had been a sanctuary, but now it was a trap.

  Sacha’s father Yuri found the hunters in the woods, where they had been cornered by some of the whispering folk upon whom their weapons were useless. Half-mad, they had curled up and torn at themselves, crying and shrieking at what they had heard. Yuri and other men from the village tied the hunters and led them to the church for questioning before the congregation. It took hours before they died—but in his last breath, the older one confessed to a number: five hundred.

  “That one,” my mother said. “What he says is true. I see them. Five hundred coming. They will be here before dawn.”

  Yuri slit the older man’s throat and threw his body to the ground. The last trickles of blood meandered towards the drain in front of the altar, where the Naystarsha hid beneath, the warm red droplets moistening her tangle of tongues. “What can we do?” Yuri hissed. “We cannot fight five hundred. We cannot run.”

  “Some can run,” my mother said. “Some can hide, for a time. What we cannot do is stay and wait. Here, they will kill us all.” She turned to the gathered villagers. The room was nearly full; I had never seen her speak to so many at once.

  “You who are descendants of the Northern Families, you must go to the forest. Take nothing with you. The woods have paths and protections. You who came to us from the Eastern Edge, you will be safest close to the water. Travel past the lake and along the rivers. Your children know a network of caves that you have never seen. Trust them, and they will lead you. We who are oldest and weakest, we must feed the Naystarsha, so that she may survive in solitude until this darkness passes. The rest must fight, to help to save the others.”

  “What of the factory?” someone asked from the back of the room.

  “The factory is already gone,” my mother said. “Everyone there is gone.” There were gasps in the room, and murmurs, and sobs. But it was as if we already knew.

  “What you describe is hopeless,” Yuri said. “We must stay together, we must band together and fight!”

  “Yuri,” she said kindly, “you are a good man and a strong man, but you are not the one to lead us. Take my hand.”

  Confused, he took her hand and she held him gently. His eyes began to cloud over, he grew pale and frightened. “What is happening?” he whispered. “Why can’t I see? Why can’t I speak?”

  “Shhhh,” she said calmly, “you are having a dream, that is all, an odd, confusing dream.” She gestured to me to pull the altar grate from the floor. I did so, and felt the coarse bristly tongues of the Naystarsha brush against my fingers. “You will wake up soon, and the world will be bright and new and full of joy,” and she led him to the drain and dropped him in. The tongues whirled around him like razors. He didn’t even scream.

  “Now, all of you,” she said to the room. “You know what to do, and you must do it now. There is no time.” Just then, gunshots began to ring out from the most distant fields. Dozens and dozens of villagers filed out, and seven more—old, infirm, injured—came to the front.

  My mother took the hand of the first—“You will feel no pain”—and led him over the drain where the tongues welcomed him. She took another’s hand—“You will feel no pain”—and again, and again, until all who were with us had been consumed. She turned to me.

  “Why don’t you stay?” I asked. “You can run or hide. You know much more than they do.”

  “I will only hold them back. What they need to know to survive, they will learn in the coming days.”

  “Is it true? Will we wake up in a world that’s bright and new and full of joy?”

  “No,” she said. “Our heaven, such as it was, was here. We lived, we loved, we saw beautiful and terrible things, and now it ends.” She stepped forward, clutching me. “You will feel no pain,” she whispered—and together we fell into the abyss.

  Elena

  Shortly after we were married, my husband Antoniu and I left our village and travelled south—first to Odessa and then to Izmail on the banks of the Danube. His family had a history there, as he was of Wallachian blood, but his last ancestors had been driven from the area more than a century before.

  Once we arrived, I discreetly set up shop in our basement rooms as a fortune teller. Such activities were prohibited in the days leading up to the war, and violence was on the rise. However, the wealthy and powerful craved knowledge of their futures, and soon my clientele grew to include the wives of the mayor and the chief of police. What no one knew was that my husband had the true gift, and that I was merely his mouthpiece. While watching from a nearby chair or listening from behind a curtain, Antoniu would send his voice into my head with his observations and predictions and I would repeat them, eliciting gasps.

  Much of what troubled these women was mundane. “I see you are considering an affair,” I would say to one, and to another I would note, “Your husband has a wandering eye.” To a third I would ask, “Have you checked your jewellery box lately? Some pieces may be missing,” and to another, “Are you prepared to have another child? Because it seems that you are carrying one.” Tears of gratitude were not unusual, accompanied by generous gifts to increase good luck and ward off the Evil Eye.

  As the war grew closer, though, the women changed as their husbands changed, and so did the questions they brought to me. “Will my son be called into battle?” asked one. “Is my neighbour a spy?” asked another. “Are we safe? Should we flee? What cities, what countries, will be spared?” The answers were difficult, as the decisions of a few remote men changed the futures of millions day by day. The women became more desperate, bringing gold and jewels and other valuables to pay for their sittings—and then abruptly they stopped coming. The streets were tense and still. Even the birds were afraid to fly.

  The third evening, after supper, Antoniu brought out an old leather bag, and filled it with nearly all we had earned, tied it tight with twine and handed it to me. “Put on my pants and coat and boots,” he said, “and keep to the shadows. Go to the cathedral—behind it you will find a stone stairwell that leads down to an ancient cistern. You may enter it tonight, and then again in five years. Hide the bag in the shallow water away from the entrance, at the base of a pillar where you know you will find it.”

  “Why are you saying this?” I asked. “What is happening?”

  “Go now, and do not hurry back,” he said, wrapping his black cloth coat around me. “I am expecting guests.” He pressed his hand to my belly, then kissed me on the forehead. “Remember always, Elena, I am never very far from you.”

  I stepped out the door and into the night, and saw that the military had take
n to the streets, as had the police and another force whose insignia was unfamiliar. They knew exactly who they wanted. They went to certain houses and buildings, pulled certain people out into the streets—even the elderly, even children and babies—pushed them onto the ground and shot them.

  I ran.

  I reached the cathedral and found the stone stairwell, the old wooden door, the passage into the cistern. I paused at a column carved with the visage of Medusa, knelt down and tucked the leather bag into the water beneath it. “We are the children of monsters and of gods,” we were always told in the village. It was a comfort to find one here. I kissed her—I do not know why—and then curled up and slept on the floor beneath her unblinking gaze.

  Hours later, I crept up the stairs to find that the sun was just starting to rise. The streets were empty and silent. I slipped through the shaded alleys as if led by a cautious child, and as I approached our street, our home—

  —I saw my Antoniu being carried out, a bloodied sack over his head. He had been shot. The officer carrying him tossed his body into the back of a military truck, one of several such trucks into which dozens of other bodies had been flung. Those same officers, that same insignia—I know now it was the Nichni Politsiyi. Among them, curiously, was our own police chief. He looked up and down the street, then closed our door behind him, stepped into a long oil-black car, and pulled away, followed one-two-three by the corpse-bearing trucks. As the convoy departed, I composed myself and moved back into the alley, found my way to our home’s back entrance, ducked back inside and then sobbed until finally I slept.

  At noon I awoke, startled by a tapping at the door. I pulled a dressing gown around myself and peered out to see the police chief’s wife standing nervously. I ushered her in, sat her down at the table. “My husband was killed last night,” I told her. “I expect they meant to kill me, and it’s likely they still mean to do so.”