by Alma Boykin
Alexi rolled until his back was to the picture-gate. He got to his feet and shook off the rope. As he looked around, he saw what looked like a trap door with a silvered, wrought iron latch carved with figures that seemed to writhe as he watched. Silver hinges and strange figures decorated the door, and Alexi’s gut told him that nothing good could emerge from that trapdoor. “Right.” He used two hairs and tied the latch shut. The hair of a magical horse would probably last longer than old rope would, maybe.
What was that in the far corner? Black cloth covered a pile of something. Alexi crept nearer and saw a thin, dark-red line trickling out from under the rough cloth. The end of what looked suspiciously like a bone, pink and white, just barely peeked out from the cover. A bit of maroon-dyed hair clung to the bone. Alexi backed away, crossing himself. He hunted around for another exit and couldn’t find one, but he didn’t go behind the iconostasis, either. In fact, Alexi did his best to keep his back to it. The wind outside the false-church began to puff and blow, and over the whistling, Alexi heard an all-too-familiar thumping as the Sweeper returned.
Before the men could open the door, Alexi grabbed some of the rope and wound it around his hands again, so they looked bound. Then he lay back down, pretending to be half-conscious. The door flew open and four men came in, stopped, and bowed to the crone as Baba Yaga stormed in, then stopped. The men followed behind, bringing two skull-lights into the main room. The skulls cast a sick, bright yellow-green light on everything, making tortured shadows on the floor. Alexi opened his eyes fully in time to see BabaYaga smile, baring her teeth. She opened and closed her mouth, striking sparks. “So Ivan son of Ivan, you are mine. You owe me blood-debt, Ivan Ivonovich.” She came closer, leaned down, and grabbed his shoulders, picking him up as lightly as if he were a bit of straw from her broom. Her breath smelled like death and Alexi whimpered. She smiled, clicking her teeth, and sparks stung his face. The flames in her dark eyes danced and his mind went blank, gibbering in pure, absolute terror. He heard a deep voice starting to chant a twisted version of the holy liturgy; words that coiled around his heart and memory, pulling up nightmares and ghosts.
She shook him and his teeth rattled. “My cookpot is only half full, Ivan Ivanovich. You failed my tasks, as did she.” One long, stick-like finger with a blood stained, dagger-like nail pointed over Alexi’s shoulder at the pile of bones under the cloth. “My servants told her to stay away, but she would not listen.” The Sweeper smiled again and Alexi tried to pray, but fear drove the words out of his memory. The chanting and incense smell grew thicker, darker, and Alexi couldn’t breathe, trapped in the fire of Baba Yaga’s eyes.
Something crashed against the door and Baba Yaga looked away as a man gasped, “What was that?” The chanting faded as another thump struck the wall.
“Well?”
“I do not know, great Lady,” Boris answered. He sounded very nervous, and Alexi looked that way as well. The priest and mayor kept glancing toward the door. Something under the floor moved, scraping under the wood like a claw dragging, and it seemed as if the trap door twitched, straining against the hairs. Baba Yaga glanced at the trapdoor, then toward the outside door again. Alexi heard distant thunder and took a deep breath. He had to get away before the storm hit. He noticed Baba Yaga lowering him down until he feet touched the floor. Her grip loosened just enough. Now!
Alexi twisted and dropped to the stained wooden floor. He rolled away from the ancient crone and grabbed the closest thing at hand. The skull light flared and died as his right hand touched it. The Horse’s hairs! But how long would they work? Alexi hurled skull and stick at the closest villager. The man screamed as the magical torch hit him. Alexi launched across the room, charging head down, right hand extended. He caught Boris as the priest tried to grab him, knocking the bigger man back. Alexi heard Baba Yaga coming behind him. Rain pounded the building and it seemed to shiver as a blast of wind struck it. Alexi used the old table as a launching pad and heaved himself over it, dumping it behind him, and reached the door.
He hauled it open, diving out of the building and into the storm. White fire danced from the sky and rain pounded out of a green-black sky. Alexi took off running. As he fled, he rubbed the remaining hairs on his thumb. Coyote called, “This way, John Johnson! Into the wind!”
How the hell could he tell into the wind, Alexi thought, panting and almost drowning with each breath. The wind screamed, swirling and spinning and— Spinning! Alexi slipped in the mud, fell, and scrambled to his feet. He could see Baba Yaga and one of her skulls behind him. “God help me!” He ran faster, the muck pulling at his feet, the rain trying to blind him, deafened by the roar of the storm. The earth seemed to shake and just as he passed the last house in the village, he gasped and fell to the ground.
A white tornado screamed out of the west, dancing like a mad dervish, spinning and throwing lightning. For the briefest instant Alexi thought he saw the figure of a young woman in white buckskin, her face glowing with anger, in the heart of the funnel. Lightning blinded him and he flinched away as a piece of something blew past an inch above his head. Alexi crawled through the mud until he reached the bar ditch beside the county road and hid in it. Wind clawed at him and the rain stung, drenching him to the skin, but the whirlwind passed him by. He heard screams, maybe, and the sound of wood breaking, and a faint thumping sound, like a pestle driving across the land faster than fast. Only after the wind faded and the rain eased did he dare to look up.
Something rode in the chaos above the village. Not the spirit in the tornado, but something far darker, something that sucked the light and life out of the world as it passed. Something black with solid yellow-green-blue unnatural, sickly eyes full of fury. Then it was gone with the storm. Alexi sat up, and then stood. From the relative height of the county road, the Coyote observed, “Dude, you are in deep buffalo chips now.”
“No joke, sir. You’re not on its Christmas list either, you know.”
The rude sound and nasty smell made Alexi fan the air. The Coyote laughed. “That’s what I think of that thing’s chances of hurting me. And my debt is cleared, John Johnson.” He danced off into the tall brown grasses, rising onto his hind feet and twirling. A little dust devil spun up behind him, hiding the Coyote from view.
“I need a beer.”
He heard a child crying. Alexi turned his back and started walking down the blacktop, away from the ruins of Blackland.
No more innocent blood, the house spirit had begged. Part of Alexi wanted to let everyone die, to make them suffer. He had not promised, he reminded himself. The cry faded, then rose again. “Mama! Mama!” The ghost of one of the Somali schoolchildren killed by an Al Shabab bomber floated up from his memory.
“Fuck it.”
Alexi turned back and started with the remains of the closest house. By the time he reached the remains of the third house, he’d helped free four women and eight children, and he heard sirens approaching. The cavalry had arrived.
“ . . . and that’s when all Dade County broke loose,” now-Captain Domzowski finished explaining. “It turns out former Captain Wonder-boy couldn’t be bothered to look for you, and the troopers all assumed you were in another vehicle. We had to leave the civilians’ cars, and Mrs. Nelson’s partner thought she’d gone to a house after all, so it wasn’t until that afternoon, just before the storms started rolling in, that we got sorted out enough to know that you weren’t with the Guard or us, and that Mrs. Nelson was missing. Damn if I can figure out why no one counted noses. It’s like everyone had a serious case of brain cramp, or rectal-cranial emplacement.”
Alexi grunted and ate more chicken-fried whatever. A good batter and enough white gravy could make anything edible. And he was starving. He’d already drunk the Hays municipal reservoir half dry.
“Damn shame about that little town, sir,” Sar-Major Young sighed, shaking his head. “One of the survivors said that the men were all at a worship service when the church took a direct hit by the tornado. Three a
re still missing, including the mayor and the priest. Although they did find some remains, but they’re having to use DNA to identify them.”
Alexi stared at the potatoes, torn between crying for the poor stupid paramedic administrator and gloating over what probably happened to the false priest and the others. If Nelson had listened, or had not tried to return after Jones had gotten her out of the false church . . . Actually, if what was in the storm, either of the figures in the storm, were what he thought they were, the men’s bodies might never be found because the pieces had been scattered from Nebraska to Texas. He also had a hunch that the trapdoor in the false-church had led to the dwelling of the creature in the storm, the Sweeper’s master, but Alexi sure as hell wasn’t going to say that, not even over ‘Net chat with Babushka and Ivan the Purrable. Some names should not be spoken.
“How’s your wrists?”
Alexi swallowed. “Much better, Sar Major, sir. The glass didn’t cut anything serious.” He’d used pulling women and children out of the half-collapsed houses as an excuse for the abrasions and cuts on his hands. The remaining hairs from the Little Humpbacked Horse now hid inside a St. George’s medallion in the form of a locket hanging under his icons. He didn’t think either the saints or the Little Humpbacked Horse would object.
“That’s good. I’ll be glad to get back to Wichita,” Domzowski said. “Tornadoes and blizzards are not supposed to hit in October, especially not back-to-back, in the wrong order.”
“No argument here, sir.” Alexi applied himself to the rest of his dinner. Amazing, he thought, how many problems disappeared with the application of a decent meal.
Alexi did his best to pretend that nothing had happened, since that seemed to be how his unit behaved. When they got back to Ft. Owen he filed an acceptable, fictional, account of the day’s events and went back to fussing at corporals and training privates and trying to stay below everyone else’s radar. He managed pretty well, until one morning late in the month when he was returning from the mailroom and heard Col. Smith’s voice coming from a conference room. “Wait. How can you drown in El Dorado?”
“Apparently it can be done, sir, if someone tries hard enough,” he heard Sar-Major Young’s voice replying.
“That or they were drunk, like the guy up at Ft. Riley last year.” The colonel sighed and Alexi tip-toed past the part open door as fast as he could.
On the last day of the month, Marty stuck his head into their office door. “Z, you’d better have an alibi. Captain D and a County Mounty are on their way up the hall.” Sgt. Krehbiel disappeared as Alexi wondered what his brother had gotten into this time. Whatever it was, Alexi hadn’t been there and he had witnesses.
A firm fist banged on the doorframe and Captain Domzowski walked in, followed by a tall, skinny Kansas State Trooper. Alexi got to his feet as the captain started without warning or preamble. “Sergeant Z., did you know a Stacie Nichols from Emporia?”
Alexi’s mouth went dry. “Yes, sir, I did. We broke up in March.”
The trooper wrote something in a little notebook. “Have you had any contact with her since then, Sergeant Zolnerovich?”
“No sir. I have not seen her since, or returned her calls or e-mails. My parents did take a restraining order out against her a few weeks ago, sir, but I have not talked to or texted her.”
The highway patrolman and Capt. Domzowski shared identical grim looks. “I’m very sorry, Sergeant, but a fisherman found her body in El Dorado Lake two days ago. She left a suicide note, naming you as her killer and saying that she would get even.” The highway patrolman continued on for another minute, talking about clearly disturbed and for Alexi not to worry.
One word filled Alexi’s mind, a word that repeated over and over like his heart beat and drowned out the patrolman’s voice.
Rusalka.
Tale the Third: Chicken Feet and the Firebird
“You are doing what?” Ekaterina Boroslavna’s incredulity came across the computer chat loud and clear. A feline “mreeoow” echoed Alexi’s grandmother as Ivan the Purrable seconded her comment.
“I’m helping a bunch of church scouts at summer camp near Ft. Collins,” Alexander “Alexi” Zolnerovich repeated. “And I was sober when I agreed to go with them.” His brother Cyril had told their father that he thought Alexi had been drunk at the time. No, Alexi sighed, just a sucker for a damsel in distress, in this case the mother of twin fourteen-year-old boys. “Father Anthony is leading group. Father Anthony Makarov.”
“Oh. In that case, why did you scare me like that?”
Ivan chimed in, “Meh.”
Alexi rolled his eyes and hoped the camera on his computer didn’t pick up the gesture. “Because I am not going fishing at Horsetooth Reservoir with them at the start of trip, Babushka. I want to come visit you for two days. Then I’ll meet them up at campground in National Forest.”
The white-haired woman’s expression softened, although her black cat did not appear mollified. “That’s different. What did you tell Fr. Anthony?”
“The truth, mostly. That I cannot swim well and I do not know how to fish or paddle boat, so I avoid lake.” Fr. Anthony would not believe Alexi’s real reason, one that his Babushka understood all too well: a rusalka. Alexi’s ex-girlfriend had drowned herself out of mad obsession and rage at him, and Alexi no longer trusted any lake or pond. In the Old Country, rusalkas’ magic bound them to the lake where they died. Not so in the New World, and Alexi had barely escaped Stacie’s ghost once already when he’d gone with his brother to look at a boat up on Lake Shawnee near Topeka.
Ivan made a sympathetic noise. “Thanks, Ivan.” By now Alexi had almost gotten used to talking to the black cat, almost.
Three weeks later Alexi’s pick-up pulled up to the gate in front of Babushka’s house at the edge of Golden, west of the Denver metro mess. Alexi waited. The new gate opened and he drove through. He stopped, made certain that the heavy pipe-rail entrance slid closed and the little red square “locked” sign appeared, and drove up to the white house with red shutters. Instead of knocking on the front door, Alexi walked around the garage and followed the sound of muttered Russian and English to a mass of corn stalks wiggling and swaying at the corner of a very large garden. He waited for a minute or two and cleared his throat. “Babushka?”
“Back here.” He heard more rustling, and after a moment his grandmother emerged from the corn and bean-poles. A painfully loud green and purple swirled kerchief covered her white hair, and she wore pink overalls and a red plaid shirt. “Welcome, welcome!” She kissed his cheeks and hugged him. She seemed a little shorter than he remembered, but she’d never been tall, just formidable. Any woman who could escape Russia with her husband, four children, and several books and icons had to be formidable.
“How was your drive?”
“Quiet. Blessedly quiet.” No houses on chicken feet, no horses with flaming eyes, no talking Coyotes had appeared on the Interstate, he’d seen no tornados or blizzards, and the truck behaved. All he’d encountered between Wichita and Denver had been the usual speeding semis and distracted car drivers, and the occasional under-powered little roller-skate. “May the rest of this trip be so quiet.”
“Amen.” Babushka pointed to the back porch. “There is lemonade, and fresh bread if you are hungry. Supper is cooking.”
Alexi blinked. “Um, Ivan cooks?” Tuna casserole, tuna steaks, tuna au gratin, tuna burgers, an entire Ivan-approved menu flashed through Alexi’s mind.
Babushka laughed, shaking her finger at him. “No, no, the oven and slow-cooker cook. Ivan only eats.”
And complains about the food, Alexi thought. He’d found Ivan’s opinion of being left with nothing but dry cat-kibble two mornings after he’d returned from rescuing his grandmother from the Sweeper. At least the hairball had been on the outside of the overnight bag and not in one of his boots or on his clothes. “I’ll put my bag inside and then come back.”
“Good. I need to finish tying up the beans.”
Alexi got his overnight bag out of the pick-up, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside. Half a second later, “MrOW!”
Alexi staggered and looked down in time to keep from planting his boot on Ivan the Purrable’s tail. “Dude! I can’t stop that fast, OK? And hello to you to.”
The black cat glared up at him, blue eyes narrow. Ivan sniffed and stalked off, tail at half-staff. Alexi rolled his eyes and took his bag to the guest room. Unlike the last time he’d come to visit, the mirrors stood uncovered and the icons hung in their proper places on the walls. Alexi nodded to St. George. He made a quick trip to the guest bathroom and stared at the rubber-duckie-shaped soap in the dish. “Ohhh boy.” But it lathered like normal soap, and Alexi felt a lot more relaxed as he walked through the tidy, dim ranch house, out the back kitchen door and onto the porch. Ivan joined him as he sat down. The lemonade proved to be hard lemonade, and Alexi grinned as he opened the bottle. The sun had warmed the black bread, enough so that the butter (also hiding in the little ice chest) spread easily. That was one Old Country tradition Alexi heartily endorsed: the greeting with bread and salt. He stretched his legs out and sighed.
“Mrowp.” A dense cat landed in his lap, walked around and settled with an answering sigh. Eyes closed, Alexi scratched the top of Ivan’s head. An arrhythmic purr rewarded his efforts.
Alexi decided to ask. “Not to ruin your mood, but do you know anything about banishing a rusalka?”
The head under his fingers turned back and forth.
“Too bad.” You know, Alexi thought, maybe I really am insane. I am asking my Babushka’s cat for advice on dealing with an obsessed water spirit.
