by Ricky Fry
“It’s just awful,” said Nancy, as she discussed the matter with her husband. The nanny’s next of kin had yet to be located. They’d packed her few things, the only items which remained to mark an otherwise unremarkable life, in a box which they’d placed beside the front door. It waited there, haunting them, a reminder of the unfortunate event which had occurred in their very expensive and otherwise perfect home.
Mr. Hardaway, for his part, seemed less bothered by what had happened than his wife. He was a busy man, after all. At the age of forty-five, he was already the CEO of a private equity firm, one of the largest in Boston, and indeed the entire East Coast. He openly suspected his wife’s recent moodiness was less a product of sympathy than it was frustration, as she’d been left alone to care for Baby Nora until a suitable replacement could be found.
Nancy soon forget her troubles when the services of a particularly beautiful young nanny, a blonde-haired import from Sweden, became available. The nanny had come highly recommended by the Abernathy family, who—despite never having said such—everyone knew could no longer afford domestic assistance after Mr. Abernathy’s creative investment practices fell under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission. What wonderful luck it was for Mrs. Hardaway.
“I’m very happy you’re here,” she said, as she embraced her new nanny on the morning of her arrival. The cardboard box with the previous nanny’s possessions, still waiting near the front door, wasn’t enough to kill her spirits. “What’s your name again, dear?”
“My name is Ingrid,” said the new nanny with a lilting Swedish accent. “I’m sure you’re already aware my dismissal from the Abernathy family wasn’t due to poor performance.”
“Yes, it’s rather unfortunate. I’ve heard such dreadful things about those financial investigations.” Once, she’d come home from a social function to find Mr. Hardaway in his study, feverishly feeding a box of documents into a shredder. It had only been a false alarm, he told her. There was nothing to worry about.
“Right this way,” she said, leading Ingrid by the hand to the same room which had previously been occupied by their first nanny. “Inez—oh, Inez is our housekeeper—put a fresh change of sheets on the bed just this morning.”
Ingrid smiled. “If you don’t mind, might I ask why your previous nanny left?”
“Can I be frank, Ingrid?”
“We Swedes prefer frankness.”
“Yes, well then, I’m quite certain you’ve heard the rumors. Boston is still, as they say, a small town.”
Ingrid nodded as she placed her suitcase on the bed and surveyed the room.
“Right, well it was all a rather terrible incident. One moment she was fine and the next she’d collapsed. By the time they rushed her to the hospital, she was dead. Such a tragedy really.”
“Oh, you must have been devastated.”
“Truly.”
“And the baby?”
“Hmm?” She was distracted by Ingrid’s blue eyes—so pure and innocent.
“How’s the baby?”
“Ah, she’s fine.” Baby Nora had survived the incident unscathed. In fact, she only seemed more radiant. Her skin, as Nancy had pointed out to her husband, was positively glowing. And much to her exhausted relief, Nora had been crying less since their previous nanny’s untimely departure. Perhaps, Nancy thought to herself in her most private moments, the woman had simply been a terrible nanny.
With the details of her employment settled, Ingrid went at once to attend to the baby in the nursery. Nancy excused herself to her husband’s study and filled a glass with Mr. Hardaway’s finest single malt scotch. It was bad form, she knew, to drink during the day. But it was almost afternoon, and besides, after everything she’d been through, she thought she deserved a little relaxation.
That night, with Baby Nora sleeping soundly in her crib, Ingrid even offered to help Inez prepare dinner. The two women laughed and exchanged stories of home while Nancy helped herself to a second glass of scotch. At the dinner table, she smiled at Mr. Hardaway and wondered if things around the house might finally be improving. She was eager to return to her life as the socially well-connected wife of a successful Boston financier. Miss too many charity functions, she thought, and one of those upstart and dreadfully unfashionable housewives from the South End would swoop in to take your place. She wasn’t about to sit idly by and let that happen.
Mr. Hardaway must have returned from work in an equally good mood, because that night in the bedroom he was frisky. After their romp, he’d drawn a hot bath for her, and she’d taken her usual sleeping pill with a third and final glass of her husband’s scotch. She had no idea who’d invented the pills that ushered her to off to sleep night after night, but if it were possible she would have thanked them personally. How people had lived before such modern comforts, she couldn’t fathom.
“How’s work?” she asked her husband as they sat side-by-side in bed. She’d moved on from Vanity Fair to the latest Cosmo, a guilty pleasure, while he frowned over emails on his phone.
“Oh, fine. We’re buying a new company—just a few more hiccups to get sorted—but it seems promising. How would you like a vacation home in Martha’s Vineyard? Maybe we could even buy a boat. I’ve always wanted to learn how to sail.”
“That promising?” She tried not to giggle while she imagined herself hosting the celebrities and well-heeled politicians who were known to summer on the exclusive island. “What do they do?”
“Hmm?” Mr. Hardaway pressed send—there was a cheerful little whooshing sound as the email departed for its destination.
“The company—what sort of business is it?”
“Oh, nothing terribly exciting. It’s an investment vehicle, mostly for enormously wealthy Russians and Saudis who want to buy property. It’s all a bit dull and straightforward, really.”
“I see.” She didn’t pretend to understand what her husband did all day in his stylish downtown office. It’s not that she wasn’t smart, she’d graduated university at the top of her class, but rather that Mr. Hardaway volunteered so few details. It was better that way, he’d told her once when she’d pressed him for more information. She tried not to think too much about what he might have meant by that as she drifted off to sleep.
She couldn’t be sure how long she had slept, only that the room was dark when she was woken by the shrill sound of Ingrid’s screams. “Byron,” she said, while poking her husband in the ribs. Her mind was immediately filled with the vision of their previous nanny, sprawled dead and bleeding on the nursery floor.
Her husband was already awake. He switched the lamp on and pulled his robe from the chair beside the bed. “Stay here. I’ll go and see what happened.”
And so she waited, expecting some kind of terrible news. What had she done, she asked herself, to deserve this? At least the baby wasn’t crying. There was nothing more unnerving than the sound of her daughter’s tears.
The door opened and her husband sat on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his tired eyes. “False alarm. It was only a terrible nightmare. Ingrid and the baby are fine.”
“Thank goodness.” She wanted to feel angry at the disturbance the new nanny had caused. After caring for Nora in the wake of their first nanny’s death, she was in desperate need of beauty sleep. But she was too tired to feel angry. And there was something else, a deep, unsettling feeling that their troubles had somehow only just begun.
She tried to return to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. It was far too late, she told herself, for another sleeping pill. She had things to do in the morning. A new dress had to be purchased for Friday night—the opening of a new art gallery featuring female African painters. She listened to her husband snore—he had always been a loud sleeper—and bemoaned her awful luck.
Ingrid brought her fresh squeezed juice and Swedish-style oatmeal in the morning. The young nanny was all apologies. She hadn’t had a nightmare like that since she was a little girl. Perhaps it was just the unfamiliarity of a strange
new room.
Nancy feigned graciousness. In truth, she was rather upset at the loss of her precious sleep, and wondered if the bags under her eyes had returned. “That’s okay, dear,” she said in her kindest tone. “These things happen. Would you like to come dress shopping with me this afternoon? Inez will be here to keep an eye on Nora.”
“Oh, I couldn’t abandon the baby on my first full day. It wouldn’t be right of me.”
Just as well. Nancy had always preferred to do her shopping alone.
She returned that evening fresh-faced and smiling. She’d found a wonderful floral number, she told her husband, with bright and vivid colors to match the art gallery’s African theme. She’d even had time to visit the spa for a rescue treatment.
“There’s nothing quite like a good facial,” she said, as she described the fresh slices of chilled cucumbers they’d placed over her eyes, “to restore one’s youthful vitality.”
Inez, being of some kind of distant African descent, had even complimented her dress selection. And so she found herself in a generally favorable mood that night as she and Mr. Hardaway switched off their respective bedside lamps and drifted off to sleep.
She was woken again, sometime around three or four in the morning, by the sharp sound of Ingrid’s bloodcurdling screams.
Her husband, despite being tired after another long day at the office, did the respectable thing and gathered himself up to go check on her. She was fine, he reported upon his return—it was just another nightmare.
When he finally climbed back into bed beside her, Nancy was in a less-than-charitable mood. “What are we going to do, Byron? I can’t have that woman waking me up every night. This can’t go on.”
“Steady,” he said. “It’ll pass.”
Only it didn’t pass.
Despite the many and frequent apologies of the nanny, Nancy totally lost her patience on the third night, when she was woken again by the the horrible sound of the woman’s screams.
“My dear Ingrid,” she said, as they ate breakfast together in the sunroom adjacent the kitchen, “what are these nightmares that trouble you?”
Ingrid’s face turned white. “I’d rather not say, Mrs. Hardaway. They’re so unpleasant.”
“Maybe talking about them would help.” She’d already made up her mind to send Ingrid away if the nightmares didn’t cease. The young Swede was certainly a wonderful nanny, of that there was little doubt. Nora had never seemed happier, and Nancy would mourn the loss of someone to care for her child. But the nightly interruptions had grown too much for her to bear.
“It’s the draug, ma’am.”
It was a word Nancy Hardaway was entirely unfamiliar with. “Draug?”
Ingrid’s soft white face flushed bright red, as if she were terribly embarrassed. “An old Swedish myth. I’ve never believed in such things myself, but it’s there each night in my dreams.”
“I’m not sure I understand.” She wondered if the girl might be crazy.
“The draug is an undead spirit, condemned to wander the earth. It comes in the night and feeds on the souls of the living. You wake suddenly, unable to breathe or move, with its crushing weight upon your chest. And the smell, such a terrible smell, like something has died and been left beneath the bed to rot.”
Nancy thought it was rather ridiculous. Perhaps the girl was in need of serious professional help. “Has it happened before?”
“Ma’am?”
“This dream, is it normal?”
“No, ma’am. I should say once, when I was a little girl in Sweden, I awoke in the night with the same sensations. My grandmother had been telling us stories of the old days and I’m sure that was the cause. But it hasn’t happened since, not until I arrived in your fine home. It’s just—” The girl paused to collect herself. “—it feels so awfully real.”
“I assure you, sweet Ingrid, you’re quite safe here. Mr. Hardaway is careful to set the security alarm each night before bed, and the caretaker keeps a close eye on things from his basement apartment.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ingrid let out a small, nervous laugh. “It’s only a silly dream—nothing more. Please, Mrs. Hardaway, don’t send me away. I adore your daughter and I’m sure it will pass.”
After two more nights of dreadful screams, it was the nanny who packed her things and said goodbye to the Hardaway household. She was going back to Sweden, she told them, to recover from the experience.
Nancy, who’d felt guilty for wanting to send the girl away, found herself begging Ingrid to stay. But the girl was unmoved, and so for the second time in a matter of weeks she found herself without a nanny.
Later that night, as she sat in the nursery tending to Baby Nora, she remembered a time, years ago, when she’d wanted nothing more than to be a mother. It was, in fact, all she’d ever thought about. But Mr. Hardaway had been found insufficient, despite their many visits to the top fertility specialists in Boston. And so she’d resigned herself to the life of a social queen, until the day came when she could no longer imagine having a child.
Childbirth at thirty-six years old had not been easy. She was in labor for nearly seventeen hours, until the doctors insisted on an emergency cesarean section. Now, as she nursed Nora from a bottle, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, she still had a chance at becoming a good mother.
She put the bottle down on the table and slipped her shirt from her shoulder. Nora giggled as she raised her to her breast. This is what mothers do, Nancy thought. Tiny lips wrapped themselves around her nipple and a drop of warm milk ran down her chest. It was nice, the two of them sharing a moment.
As she cradled her baby another memory returned. She was reminded by something Ingrid had said—the story of the draug, an evil shadow in the night. Not long before she’d discovered she was pregnant, Nancy had awoken from her own nightmare.
She shivered now as she remembered the strange figure above her bed, the weight upon her chest as it enveloped her, squeezing the breath from her as she lay helpless, unable to move. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, and she found herself next to Mr. Hardaway, the sheets wet with sweat. Terrible morning sickness in the weeks after had sent her to the doctor, who’d confirmed she was with child. It was a miracle, they told her, considering her husband’s shortcomings. But there, in the dimply lit space of the nursery, she couldn’t help but wonder if things were somehow connected.
“Ouch,” she said, as a sharp pain rose from her chest. When she looked down, there was a thin line of blood where the milk had run from her nipple.
Nora had bit her.
FOUR
“It’s a miracle,” said the priest. The villagers gathered around him in a half-circle at the edge of the village clearing—men and women with incredulous looks on their tired and worn faces. Only the small children laughed and played at their parent’s feet, unaware of the significance of what they were witnessing.
For Bogdan, it was something like waking up from a long, fitful sleep. His head hurt, and his ears rang with a deafening thunder. He raised his hands to his face, wrists burned and sore from the twisting of the cords, to find little rivers of dried blood. And the sun—its morning rays bore into his eyes like the blade of a dagger. He’d never expected to see the sun again.
Thirst burned in his bone-dry throat, but the crowd was too busy discussing among themselves the implications of his survival to bother with bringing him water. It was a delicate voice, like something from one of the old songs, which parted the villagers and raised a wooden cup of water to his parched lips.
“Yekaterina,” he said, drinking from the cup and taking her into his arms. “My love.”
She was crying, much the same as the night before, only this time they were not tears of loss, but tears of joy.
That night, they gathered outside the house of the oldest and wisest man in the village to ponder what had happened. Some considered it a sign of good fortune, while others spoke only of doom.
“We’re saved,” said one of the
men. “The beast has lost his power. He will trouble us no more.”
“You’re a fool,” cried another. “The boy, for whatever reason we cannot yet say, has failed to honor the agreement. There will only be more death and blood to come.”
Bogdan sat silently among them, wrapped in an animal skin with Yekaterina by his side. He’d spent the day with his family, his mother sobbing over him while his father sat stern-faced, gazing into the fire that burned in the hearth in the corner of their house. His brothers and sisters, never quite understanding what had happened or the true significance of the ceremony, had nonetheless been happy to see him, and offered hugs and kisses before retreating to play with their toys.
“My children,” said the old priest who’d offered him up as a sacrifice to the evil spirit, “God has a plan. If only we might listen, he will reveal everything in due course.”
The villagers wanted nothing of God’s plan. They had grown restless, and the words of the priest did little to soothe their doubts. A call rang out among them to repeat the ceremony. It must have been a mistake, they said. He would be tied to the tree and offered again. It was the only way.
Bogdan said nothing. He was supposed to be dead, and though he found himself alive and well, something had changed deep inside him. He was no longer a boy without a future. He was a man, with the heavy weight of the world thrust suddenly upon his still-slender shoulders.
He was not the only one who had changed. Yekaterina, who’d sacrificed her love for the sake of the village, resembled little of the gentle girl with blue eyes who sang hymns and picked mushrooms in the forest. If he had become a man, so too had she become a women. He watched her listen to them now, debating his fate as though he was only something to be used and discarded. But they had forgotten that he was her husband and she his wife.
“Enough,” she said, standing to address them as a mother might address her children. “My husband gave his life for you. He went eagerly to the tree of death and thrust himself upon it. He did not once complain. And he has returned to walk again among us.”
