by Ricky Fry
She was still in her bathrobe as she tiptoed down the stairs and into Byron’s study. The old woman’s résumé was right where she had left it, crumpled up in a bottom drawer littered with various documents left behind after the raid.
Her heart sank when she read the first reference. It was not, as she had hoped, a well-to-do family from Cambridge, or even out in Amherst, but an address in Back Bay, not more than a mile from the Hardaway’s home. While she didn’t recognize the name, Inez’s gaggle of housekeepers would have likely known if Iryna had in fact been employed there for the ten years listed on her résumé.
A knot grew in her stomach as she fired up the tablet on Byron’s desk and typed the address into the search bar. It didn’t take long to find the public property records. The knot in her stomach jumped to her throat when she read the name listed on the official record. She checked the résumé twice to be sure it wasn’t a mistake.
The names didn’t match.
An abrupt knock on the study door sent her heart racing. Her fingers trembled as she stashed the crumpled piece of paper back in the bottom drawer. “Who is it?”
The door slid open and Iryna entered, a smile on her wrinkled old face. “I went to check on you in the bathroom and you’d disappeared.”
“Yes,” she said, trying to smooth the nervous cracks in her voice. “I remembered something Byron had asked me to look over. It couldn’t wait.”
“Is everything alright, Mrs. Hardaway?” The smile left her face. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Perhaps that’s what the old woman was, she thought—a phantom, a ghost. It would certainly explain her sudden appearance on their doorstep at the exact stroke of midnight. That particular detail had never sat well with Byron. “It’s the trial. I’ve had a long day.”
Whatever tension had accumulated in the room was broken by the distant cries of the baby, drifting down from the nursery.
“I understand, dear. You must try to get some rest. I’ll go check on Nora.”
“Iryna, one last thing before you go.” She wanted to stop her, this woman, this ghost, who stood before her now like a stranger. She wasn’t sure it was safe for her to be around the baby, at least not until they’d cleared up any confusion about her résumé. But she thought it would be unwise to confront her without Byron present. Who could say what the old woman might do?
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything.”
TWENTY
The men were tired. Bogdan could see it plainly on their haggard faces. It had been two weeks since they first left the village, and although they were exhausted, not once had they uttered a complaint.
They’d slept little, riding at night and taking only a few hours rest by day—one of them always remaining awake to stand guard and roust the others before the last light of day sank behind the mountains. It wasn’t easy, sleeping in shifts beneath the bright, summer sun, but it was the only way to protect themselves from the beast who followed them through the dark.
Bogdan was already awake when Vladislav came to roust him. Any doubts he still had about the youngest among them vanished when, that very night, the pack containing their dried meat came loose and fell during a precarious river crossing.
It was the boy who threw himself headfirst into the swiftly moving current. Bogdan thought he might be carried away to drown, but Vladislav emerged soon after on the riverbank, a smile spreading across his face as he clutched the waterlogged pack against his chest.
The meat, though a bit soggy, had been saved, and they cheered his courage as they stripped the clothes from his shivering body and warmed him beside a fire.
“That was fun,” he said, his teeth still chattering behind blue lips.
Svyatoslav was the first to laugh, followed soon after by his son. Even Bogdan, serious as he was, laughed until his belly ached. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like that. Maybe, he thought, it had been with Yekaterina.
When the boy stopped shivering, and his clothes were sufficiently dry, they carried on again into the night. The trail wound up and over a narrow pass, and when they came to the other side they saw in the dusty, early morning light the clustered stone houses of a tiny village, not unlike their own.
“I don’t like it,” said Svyatoslav. “There’s not a trace of fire. No chickens. Not even a pig.”
“Maybe they bring the chickens in at night.” A more natural hue had finally returned to Vladislav’s thin and youthful lips. “Were you not the one who said these mountains are home to many wolves?”
Svyatoslav nodded silently.
None of them had been so far south before, not even Svyatoslav, who in his younger days had been a soldier and served many long campaigns in the west. Soon they would cross into the land called Transylvania, a place they knew only from stories and legends.
“It’s almost morning,” said Bogdan. “We’ll need a place to sleep. Perhaps the people of this village are still of our own kind, and would offer us food and shelter from the sun. What have we to fear from a handful of huts?”
Svyatoslav snorted as was his custom when he had nothing to say. They rode together side-by-side, and as they entered the village all was quiet, save for the sound of their horses.
“Hello.” Bogdan was the first to speak.
He was answered by the hoot of an owl, somewhere off in the distance.
Vladislav rode up beside him. “Maybe the people are still in their beds.”
It would be strange, he thought, for villagers to sleep past dawn. In such a place there was always work to be done—crops to be tended and sheep to be shepherded.
“Hello,” he said again.
Svyatoslav had already dismounted and was having a look around. A shepherd’s crook leaned against the stone wall of one of the huts. Various tools, the same as one might find in any village, could be seen hanging from hooks beneath the overhangs of thatched roofs.
Though Bogdan was tired, he thought they should ride on and find another place to rest. Although he couldn’t say what it was, something about the place made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight.
But young Vladislav, filled with courage from his daring performance at the river, set himself to knocking on doors before Bogdan could stop him. “Hello,” he called. “Is anyone here?”
Still, there was no answer. Surely, Bogdan imagined, the boy’s knocking would have stirred a pig or chicken. Choosing to ignore his better judgement, he dismounted and joined Vladislav at the door of one of the huts. He fingered the wooden latch and pushed, and was surprised when the door gave way.
Tiny particles of dust, glowing like stars in the night sky, swirled in the beam of light that poured into the dark space of the hut from the open doorway. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The first thing he saw was the shape of a long table, dishes and cups strewn about. In opposite corners were two narrow beds. They were empty. The house was abandoned.
It was the same in the rest of the huts. They entered them one by one, and though they found evidence of the lives which had once lived there—a filthy rag-doll, blood-stained cutting boards, even a book or two—there was nothing to suggest the village was occupied.
“It’s odd,” he said to Svyatoslav. “Where do you think they went?”
Svyatoslav ran his fingers through the wild hair of his coarse beard. “I couldn’t say. But it would seem they left in a hurry. Why else would they leave so many of their things behind?”
“They were afraid,” he said.
The big man surveyed the forested slopes that closed in all around them. “I don’t disagree. But shouldn’t we be asking ourselves what frightened them?”
“Bogdan!” Young Vladislav emerged from one of the tiny huts with something in his hands. “Have a look at what I’ve found.”
It was a small piece of slate, the same kind the priest had used to teach Bogdan and the other children of the village how to draw letters like the on
es they saw in books. Scrawled upon its rough surface in powdery chalk was a menacing figure, like something drawn from a nightmare.
The sight of it sent a chill traveling down the length of his spine. “Where did you find this?”
Vladislav pointed over his shoulder to the hut. “Just there, under the empty bed. Look closely, there’s a word written beneath the figure.”
Much to the priest’s disappointment, Bogdan had never been good at reading. He struggled to make out the uneven letters of the word. “What does it say?”
“Khyzhak,” said the boy. “It means predator.”
Svyatoslav surveyed the forest again and ran his fingers over the handle of his axe. “Is it a wolf?”
Bogdan studied the picture. There were arms and legs and a long body, much the same as a man. “It doesn’t look like a wolf.”
“Then is it the evil spirit? Tell us, dear friend, for you are the only one who has seen him.”
“No,” he said. “Whatever evil this might be is not the same evil that plagues our village.”
“What is it then?”
“A story, a myth, perhaps nothing more. Or maybe it’s that which drove these people from their homes with only the clothes on their backs.”
“Whatever creature it might be, let us not linger long enough in this place to find out. We should leave at once, Bogdan, and never speak of it again.”
“Yes,” he said, tucking the strange drawing into his saddle bag. “The horses have had their rest. This is no place to make camp for the day.”
And so they continued, eyes burning with the need for sleep, until an hour or two had passed since they left the abandoned village behind them. At last they came upon a small waterfall, and took shelter from the sun in the shade of a rocky outcrop. It was as good a place as any to rest until darkness returned.
“Sleep,” he said to his companions. “I’ll take the first watch.”
Vladislav was the first to nod off. The poor boy hadn’t slept since his plunge into the river. Svyatoslav and his taciturn son followed soon after, the sound of their gentle snoring joining together in an offbeat rhythm.
Bogdan found himself alone again, in a place far away from home, though he wondered if he had ever really known the comforts of a home. For a brief moment in time he’d found peace in Yekaterina’s arms. He closed his heavy eyes and imagined her face. And then she was with him, beside a waterfall in a strange forest, and he was no longer alone.
A hand on his shoulder jerked him awake. Vladislav stood over him, a grin on his face and a stick of dried meat in his hand.
“You fell asleep,” said the boy. “But no harm has been done. There’s still another hour of daylight.”
Bogdan rubbed his eyes. He was supposed to have kept watch, and was thankful nothing had happened in the time he had been asleep. “Thank you, Vladislav. You’ve proven your worth yet again.”
The boy smiled and nodded toward the others, who still slumbered with their backs against a rock. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”
It was the least of his worries. Most pressing was the evil spirit, who still followed them in the night. Once, when the others were engaged in a lively debate about which of the girls Vladislav should join in marriage, Bogdan caught sight of the beast’s red eyes, staring back at him from a distance.
But he was troubled also by the empty village they’d passed through earlier in the day, and the peculiar drawing they’d found beneath one of the beds. As he checked the horses and sent Vladislav to wake father and son, he couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever had sent the villagers running was still out there. He hoped only that their paths might never cross.
They set out again not long after dusk. The repose had served them well, and despite the troubling events of the day they were in high spirits.
The trail continued winding its way down from its peak at the pass, and as the forest closed in around them, Svyatoslav whistled an old folk tune.
“Hey, what’s that song about?” Vladislav perked up when he heard the melody. “I think my mother used to sing it to me.”
“It’s about a poor old peasant woman. She sits each day by the window, waiting for her sons to return from a long and distant war. But when they return, much older than when they’d left, the old woman had gone nearly blind and doesn’t recognize them.”
Vladislav tried whistling the first line. “What happens next?”
“They wait outside the poor old woman’s house day after day, until finally the youngest of the sons sings an old folk tune—the very same tune she used to sing to them when they were young. Upon hearing the song, the old woman is overcome with nostalgia and finally recognizes the boys as her own.”
“I remember. It’s a very famous song.”
“Yes,” said Svyatoslav. “Mothers sing it to their sons with the hope they might always return.”
The two rode along in the dark, boy and man, laughing and whistling, while Bogdan watched the trees. What he was looking for he couldn’t be sure, though something in his gut told him the evil spirit wasn’t the only thing lurking in the forest.
They’d just crested a small ridge, and arrived at a place where the trail narrowed down to the width of a single horse, when Vladislav’s whistle was returned from somewhere in the darkness beyond.
“What was that?” Svyatoslav reached for his axe for the second time in one day.
“Quiet.” Bogdan raised a hand to silence him.
A fine mist had fallen over everything, and they could see no farther than a few horse-lengths. They waited together, surrounded by the mist, with only the sounds of the horses stomping and biting at their bits to rupture the uneasy stillness.
A second whistle emerged from the fog, this time from the opposite direction as the first, though Bogdan could only guess from which direction it had truly come.
“Circle the horses,” he said. “Whatever happens, we stand together and we fight together.”
They had neither sword nor musket. They were not an army, only four tired peasants armed with a hunting bow, a wood-axe, and a pair of hunting knives. But they would not go easily. They had taken up a sacred mission, and whoever might wish to do them harm would need more than luck, for as the priest had said on that evening some weeks ago when they’d set out from the village, they were guided by the Almighty Hand of the Lord.
Soon the first and second whistle were joined by a third, then a fourth. A chorus of whistles—drifting across the fog and bouncing from tree to tree—filled the forest like the sounds of a dispossessed choir.
They couldn’t speak. They couldn’t move. They could only wait for what might come.
Vladislav was the first to be pulled from his horse, kicking and screaming as a dozen pairs of hands dragged him to the ground and retreated—the boy thrashing about wildly as he disappeared from sight into the heavy mist.
They came for Svyatoslav and his son next. The big man swung his axe and missed, and they were dragged away together through the mud and thick undergrowth.
Bogdan was the last to be pulled from his horse. Black, filthy hands reached and grabbed at him from all directions. He stabbed his knife into the darkness and found flesh. There was blood on the blade but no scream, no cry of agony. A hard blow fell upon his head and the world spun in wobbly circles. The last thing he saw before everything went dark was a strange figure towering over him—half man, half beast.
It was a familiar experience—the headache, the blurred vision, like waking up from a long dream. He tried to move and found he had been tied to a tree. In the light of a nearby fire he could see the others—Vladislav and Svyatoslav, along with his dutiful son. They were bound the same as him, arms pulled back and wrists tied together with leather cords. And there were shadows, others who moved about in the darkness with the bodies of men and the heads of wolves.
“Ah, so you’re awake.” The largest of the man-beasts squatted down beside him on the soggy earth. He wore no clothing save for a small br
eechcloth and a pair of boots. His skin was smeared with oil and dirt and reflected the orange glow of the flickering flames.
“Who are you?” Bogdan tried to rub his aching head, but the cords around his wrists held tight.
“You must be the leader. The leader always asks the questions.” The man-beast pulled back his mess of fur and teeth to reveal a human face. His eyes were blue, and shone brightly in contrast to his dirty skin. “Did we scare you?”
“We have nothing of value besides the horses,” he said. “But you can take them if you let us pass.”
“What makes you think you’re in a position to negotiate a deal? The last time I checked, it was you tied fast to a tree, not me.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been tied to a tree, or even the second. Yet still I live.”
The man-beast grinned, revealing a mouth marked by empty gaps in the places where some of his teeth had once been. He edged closer, and Bogdan smelled the rot on his breath. “Tell me,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Bogdan, son of Bogdan.”
“Well, Bogdan, son of Bogdan, I’m afraid you and your ragtag band of misfit friends have made a terrible mistake. These mountains belong to us now, and we take whatever we want.”
“Is that what happened to the village? Did you take what you want?”
The foul man smiled wider than before. He motioned to one of the others and waited as they fetched a small object from beside the fire. They returned with the chalk slate, and the foul man tossed it at Bogdan’s feet. “My name is Yegor,” he said. “And it would seem my reputation proceeds me.”
Bogdan tried not to imagine the child who must have drawn the picture, terrified and huddled beneath their bed. “Did you kill them?”
“It was a long winter,” said Yegor. “We didn’t just kill them for sport. We ate them.”
