Babayaga

by Toby Barlow

  A bird chirped. She exhaled, surprised at how nervous her instinct had been. I am too jumpy, she thought, I must relax. When the bird chirped again she noticed it wasn’t the chirp of an evening songbird, a finch or a bunting, it was the cluck of a nearby chicken. Then a thought struck her with the dead weight of certainty, with the sureness of a nail hammered into soft wood: the old priest did not keep chickens, but Elga’s little friend did.

  She touched Will and he stretched beside her and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Hi,” he said and grinned. She kicked him hard, a sudden blow to the side of the head that knocked him flying, over the edge of the loft and down to the barn floor, safely out of the way, as the door burst open and the guns started firing.

  XVI

  As he began the benediction, Andrei was relieved to be wrapping up the evening service so efficiently. His two frail parishioners, both well into their nineties, had enormous patience for long ceremonies. The ancient benefactress was blind with glaucoma and wheelchair-bound. Her husband could still walk, but only with the aid of his two silver-handled canes. But they both chanted and sang with full voices, the purity of their lives giving strength to their hymns. The two were always ready to sing.

  Andrei was both diligent and modest in his dealings with them. Unlike their maid, who was always leaning in as they sipped their soup to ask what benefice they planned for her in their will, he was respectful. He knew if they both died tomorrow, perhaps perishing hand-in-hand in their sleep, there was a great probability that he would be left poor as a cockroach. He believed this would be fine, a righteous punishment for so devotedly serving a God he did not quite believe in. On the other hand, if they bequeathed him even a small fraction of their wealth, it would only prove to Andrei that if God did exist, he was as indulgent as a drunk uncle at Christmas, throwing out candies and treats to the scattering children, regardless of who was good or bad. Not exactly the spirit you want to build a theology around. But it did not matter, God could do what he wanted to do, the priest would not beg a sou from these two souls who had already piously provided him steady refuge from the world. While they were strict in their rituals and demanding of his time, both of them were kind, and in exchange for a small stipend he delivered a modest service at every sunrise and sunset, along with longer, more elaborate sermons for saint’s days and Sunday masses. Clearly these two did not need his spiritual guidance, theirs were spotless souls, and there was scant wisdom he could offer in his homilies that they had not already gleaned from a lifetime’s experience. In fact, it was painfully obvious to Andrei that what they enjoyed most about their rituals at this point in their lives was simply how the duties of religious observation filled up their empty days.

  At that moment his blessing of their bowed heads was disturbed by loud, concussive thunder booming close-by. It sounded as it was coming from over beyond the east side of their property line.

  “Is it a rainstorm?” asked the old woman.

  “No,” said Andrei, through guesswork measuring the direction and distance of the noises as the thundering continued to boom. “I do not think it is a rainstorm.”

  “So what is it?” asked the old man, cupping a palm behind his good ear.

  Andrei paused, listening to the rumbling as it grew. Rising, falling, shaking, and vibrating in its timbre with occasional loud cracks, it sounded more metallic than thunderous, and more organic than the gears of any farm machinery. Finishing his rough estimation, the priest grimaced, realizing the probable cause. “You will have to excuse me,” he said, reaching for his coat. “I believe God is burning down my house.”

  XVII

  Will scrambled to the corner of the barn, bewildered and naked, his ears deafened by the sound of crackling electricity, gunshots, glass shattering, and the screaming of women’s voices. Clouds of colored powders—seaweed green, turnip red, and deep orange—ballooned explosively throughout the room, jars smashed onto the floor, hurled down from above, where a ranting Zoya howled out strange phrases in what Will guessed was most probably Russian.

  In the fading light, and with all the dust blooming about, he could not make out the attackers. The silhouette of a woman, shouting loudly in a language equally foreign, stood in the doorway as she and the man beside her both fired their guns straight up into the loft. There was a second man standing beside them, seemingly doing nothing but observing. Squinting through the haze, Will could make the first man out as Brandon and was sure the second was little Bendix. He did not recognize the old woman.

  Other bullets were firing in from the outside, piercing the walls. The voices seemed to be coming from everywhere. Will desperately looked for a way to help. Another jar exploded, completely obscuring his view of the barn door. He realized they had not noticed, or perhaps could not even see him amid all the clouds of colored dust. He decided to try to sneak out the back and circle around to surprise the attackers from behind; he could possibly tackle one and maybe get a gun. He didn’t understand how Zoya was able to survive up in the loft; they kept shooting at her and she kept shouting. He knew he had to act fast.

  He grabbed a garden hoe leaning against the wall and ran to the small door at the rear of the barn. Opening it, he found himself standing nose to nose with a little girl holding a chicken. The girl wore a deep scowl and was busy chanting, “Fish coin, fish coin, fish—” Remembering her from Zoya’s apartment, Will went into a sudden rage, quickly grabbing the chicken by the neck and hitting the girl over the head hard with it. “Get the fuck out of here!” he shouted at her in English, walloping her again while the chicken wildly squawked. “Get the fuck out!” The girl went shrieking off across the yard, holding her hands to her head as she scurried into the thick woods. Will dropped the chicken, which looked up at him menacingly, aggressively clawing the ground as if readying for a fight. Without a thought, Will kicked the bird, sending it off after the girl, flapping and fluttering its wings.

  There was the simultaneous crack of a bullet and a stinging on his ear. “Ow!” He felt the warmth of blood down the side of his neck as he ducked around the corner. Checking, he found it was only a scratch of a wound. Mike Mitchell poked his head around the corner of the barn and took another shot with the pistol. It missed. With a leap, Will lunged back inside the barn and ducked to the side. He didn’t think Mitchell was stupid enough to come right in after him, but a second later that is exactly what Mitchell did, stepping cautiously across the threshold and getting clobbered in the face with Will’s hoe. It split Mitchell’s nose and sent blood spurting out as he collapsed. Will grabbed Mitchell’s gun as he fell and shot Mitchell twice in the head with it. Will had never killed a man before, and it stunned him how quickly Mitchell went from being alive to being dead. He quickly lay down behind Mitchell’s prone corpse, using it as a shield as he carefully aimed and fired toward the figures in the doorway.

  Under attack, his assailants reacted immediately. Brandon leapt to the side while Will fired two more shots in his general direction. Will then turned in time to see Bendix slip off as well, leaving the woman still chanting while firing her revolver up into the loft. Hearing Zoya’s shouting and her footsteps jumping around on the floorboards above him, Will realized she was, against all odds, still alive. He tried to get a sense of where in the cloudy, dusty barn Brandon was, but he couldn’t see him. The sound of electricity crackled all around him. He couldn’t figure it out. He stood up and aimed the pistol at the old woman, but his chamber clicked empty.

  Suddenly another figure slipped up behind her. Will paused. Who is that, he thought, the priest? There was a quick motion and the old woman’s arms flew out. Caught mid-shout, she gargled a scream and fell forward into the dirt.

  Before he could react, Will suddenly felt a great weight pushing him to the ground, as though a sack of potatoes had landed on him. He collapsed beneath the mass of it. Will rolled to the side, desperate to avoid the next blow, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He was literally naked and defenseless. He suspected t
hat the man who had been standing in the doorway had slipped away and had somehow come up behind him. The bullet would come any second. Again, he thought of Zoya. She was silent now, there were no footsteps in the loft, it was all over. He shut his eyes and winced, ready for the end.

  “Hullo, hullo? What have we here?” a voice said.

  Will opened his eyes to see Oliver standing over him, pointing past his shoulder. Will turned and saw another man lying in the dust about ten feet away. The man was also naked, his body curled up against the wall, and he was vomiting violently. Will got up and gave the man a closer look. “I think I know him from someplace.”

  Oliver eyed the two of them. “I certainly hope so.”

  Will felt bruised, probably from the initial fall. He looked around. There was shattered glass and liquid all over the ground from where a hail of bullets had torn through Elga’s collection of concoctions. Brinish and brackish liquids dripped down from the rafters, and the air hung thick with sulfur.

  With his remaining strength, Will scrambled up the ladder to the loft. There he found Zoya lying on the floor, unconscious. He put his ear to her lips and listened for a breath while his hand felt around the top of her chest, desperately hunting for a heartbeat. It was there, faint but present. He looked around the loft; bullet holes riddled the ceiling and the back wall, as poxed as the Milky Way, yet she didn’t seem to have a scratch. He smiled in grateful wonder.

  He found his pants by the pallet’s edge and pulled them on. Then he gently lifted Zoya and heaved her over his shoulder. Stepping with care, he cautiously made his way down the ladder to the barn floor. There he laid her down on the straw-strewn ground. Oliver came up to his side. “How badly is she hurt?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Will said.

  “Well, there’s no bleeding. Maybe we should just let her rest.”

  Will looked at Oliver. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I thought you went back into the city.”

  “Oh, I did go back. I got to my flat and picked up the mail, got a coffee and the paper. I was going to relax a bit, you know, before I went over to the embassy. But then I recalled I still had that item I had forgotten to return to you. The thing nagged at me until finally I figured I should just hand-deliver it to you, didn’t want you worrying about it while you were gone.”

  “The knife?”

  “Yes, see, I thoughtfully put it over there for you,” said Oliver, pointing down at the old woman’s body. Glinting brightly in the light of the day, the long handle stuck out of her back. “According to the official report, you’ll be somewhat of a hero, as it was your knife that took down the assassin of two U.S. agents, a Russian assassin no less.”

  “I don’t know if anyone is going to believe that,” Will said.

  “Well, ballistics don’t lie,” Oliver said. “Just give me a minute to get the right guns into the right dead hands and we should be fine.”

  Will looked over at Mitchell’s body. “You said two people. Where’s the other one?”

  “Over here,” said Oliver, taking Will over to the north side of the barn and pointing down behind a bale of hay. Brandon lay on his back, his eyes looking surprised, the bullet hole in his forehead still leaking a steady wash of blood. “Lucky shot, I’d say.”

  “Yes,” Will agreed, “pretty damn lucky. I thought you meant Bendix.”

  “No, I was coming up the drive and saw him beating a hasty retreat, running away across the field. It seems that’s generally his modus operandi.”

  They heard footsteps coming down the gravel drive and both turned quickly just as the old priest entered the barn. He ignored them, stopping and kneeling on the rough ground beside the old woman. He crossed himself and said a prayer, then he rose and went across to crouch down next to Zoya. He put his hand to her chest and left it there for a few moments. Only then did he look up at the two men. “She needs help.”

  “I have a car, we can get her to the local doctor,” said Oliver.

  “No, no,” said the priest. “Do not take her to the doctor, he would have no idea what to do. She needs a very specific cure. Do either of you know where she lives?”

  Will was about to reply when a loud, retching sound came out from the barn’s darkened corner. The priest squinted into the shadows and then looked quizzically up at Oliver and Will. “Who is that naked man?”

  XVIII

  Elga looked down at the point of the knife blade sticking out of her chest. She pinched it with her fingers and tried to push it back, but it seemed she could not apply enough pressure. She tried reaching behind her and pulling it out by the handle, which was sticking out from her spine at a perfectly perpendicular angle, but the blade was lodged deeply in an unreachable point between her shoulder blades, and her short, stiff arms could not extend that far.

  “It’s stupid to try,” came a voice. Elga looked up to find the ghost of Mazza standing there, a hole of blood still sitting where her left eye should be. Lyda stood next to her.

  “Oh,” said Elga.

  “Yes,” said Mazza, nodding toward the knife. “I could try to pull it out, but I’m guessing it’s in there for good.”

  The spirit of Lyda opened her mouth and out dropped a smattering of small silver fishes.

  “See what I’m up against?” said Mazza. “It’s going to be good to have someone to talk to now. These two are useless.”

  “Two?” said Elga, itching at her chest.

  “Come, you remember Basha?” Mazza gestured toward a spot where the light seemed a bit crooked.

  “Oh, right,” Elga said.

  “We must go now, there are still some matters to attend to,” said Mazza. “Basha has had us flying around like barn swallows, but now most of our work is done.”

  “Work? What work? Killing me? Is that what you stupid bitches came to do?” Elga said, placing her hand to her chest where the point of the knife poked out. “Ow.”

  “Always so easy to offend, Elga.” Mazza paused. “But, possibly, yes. It may have been time for you to go. I do not know. I don’t ask questions and Basha shares so little.”

  XIX

  Vidot sat in the passenger seat of the car, wearing the oversized clothes he had borrowed from the priest. He had not said a word to anyone, other than “Il est très compliqué,” “Puis-je voyager avec vous en ville?” and “Merci pour le pantalon.”

  Oliver had been pointing a pistol at Vidot when he finally emerged, naked, from the shadows. Feeling as exposed and vulnerable as he had ever felt, Vidot raised his hands in surrender just as Will stepped forward and told Oliver to put the gun down. “He’s okay. I told you, I know him.”

  “Where in the Lord’s name do you know him from?” said Oliver.

  “He’s a friend,” said Will, nodding to Vidot. Then, addressing him: “Merci.”

  Vidot made a small bow, relieved that Will had remembered him from their mutual hallucination. After a few more awkward moments, the priest had finally gone to get him a set of clothes.

  In the car now, he tried to use logic to reassemble the surreal course of events. All he could come up with was that the death of the old woman had broken her spell over him, returning him to his natural state. He wondered if the same thing had happened that day all over Europe. God knows how many others were sprung free. The woman was ancient and had, no doubt, cast countless spiteful spells between Russia and Paris. He imagined legions of bears, squirrels, and tortoises spontaneously becoming men again, awakening naked to their restored form, as bewildered as he was. Driving along in the car now, he scratched his fingers lightly along the top of his hand, pinching himself and pulling at his skin. He rubbed his arm and ran his fingers through his hair. He never imagined the intensity mere existence could cause, but now, as tears ran down his cheeks, he scratched at his testicles and wiggled his ten toes in the old priest’s roomy loafers, all while savoring the simple satisfaction of being back in his own skin. He looked over his shoulder at Zoya, lying unconscious with her head in Will’s lap. T
he American was softly stroking her forehead, gazing down at her face with an expression of tender affection that almost made Vidot’s heart burst.

  Oliver drove fast. As they left the countryside behind, buildings slowly filled in the spaces, crouching together and growing in height, as if they were physically being pulled shoulder to shoulder as they stacked up toward the center of the city, rising taller as they were drawn in by the centripetal excitement of Paris. It was not too late in the evening and the boulevards still bustled with families and young couples out for an after-dinner stroll. Vidot realized his wife, Adèle, was there in the city too, perhaps even now in the arms of her lover. Vidot wanted to run to find her, pull her from her Alberto’s arms, box the man’s ears and punch him in the nose, and then seize her, kiss her, throttle, embrace, and shake her till she screamed. The impulse was so strong, he had to close his eyes to try to calm himself. Not yet, he thought. I cannot go to her when my heart is so rough. I must wait.

  They drove down rue Lafayette and turned up toward Pigalle. “I’ll pull up in front of the hotel,” said Oliver. “You can help get her upstairs, yes?”

  Vidot nodded. He was curious what would happen. They had all listened as the priest, crouching next to Zoya on the barn floor, had explained the necessary steps they would need to take if they hoped to revive her. Will had asked the priest to come with them, but the old man had refused. “You don’t need me,” he said. “You’ll find it by the window.”