Your Still Beating Heart

by Tyler Keevil

  Pavel is talking to you. ‘Now we are going to get out, slowly,’ he says. ‘All of us.’

  He gets out first, extending his hand to help you after him, like a coachman. A lackey to your doom. You grip the doorframe – noting how cold it is on your bare fingers – and pull yourself out. The sky is dull, featureless. The mountain air unbelievably fresh and clean.

  Behind you Gogol emerges, blinking and wary, sensing the threat and menace of the situation, seeking your hand again immediately. Any short spell of separation is upsetting to him, and you too. From the front, Lenka appears, followed by Denis – pulling Marta out after him. A lump and patch of dried blood on Marta’s forehead, already flaking. Her eyes darting left, right. A hunted, haunted look. But when you catch her eye, you think you perceive something else there: a discreet signal. A mutual understanding. She knows you have the knife. Knows there is a small chance.

  She says something, not to you but to them – an uncertain question in Czech that is simply ignored, in that way of theirs. Denis stays close by her. Not bothering to hold her or restrain her, simply within reaching distance should it be needed. His gun hanging casually at his side.

  Once you’re all out, and assembled, the driver’s door of the black truck opens.

  Valerie descends from the driver’s seat, grandly, like a queen. Stepping first on to the footboard and then into the snow. Even here, in the remote wilderness, she has her own distinct look. Black snow boots, functional and fashionable, that come up to her knees. Dark fur gloves, svelte and glossy. And a heavy woollen shawl, worn like a poncho, patterned with muted browns and greens – as if chosen to match the surrounding forest. Her hair is in that thick braid, and she’s left it hanging outside her shawl, deliberately on display. So long it reaches her waist. Tied off with a black silk ribbon, the same sheen as her boots.

  There is nobody else in the vehicle. Just her, waiting. Her smile both beatific and murderous. A killing smile. She barely glances at Marta. Focuses – fixates – on you, before padding, predatorially, through the snow to Gogol. She bends at the waist, lowering her face to his. Pets his head, murmurs something in Russian. Something reassuring.

  The attitude of the others is deferential, reverent.

  ‘I don’t often come up here,’ she admits. ‘I leave these things to Pavel.’

  She goes on to explain that for you, she made a special trip. She wanted to see you, to see some of his work. She inhales the cold air deeply, savouring this moment. Then, as if it has just occurred to her, she asks you if you would like to scream. Even urges you to. As a test. She explains that you are miles from anyone, anything. You can scream all you like. And, of course, you will scream, she assures you. Later.

  You say nothing. She has defeated you and she knows it, and there is nothing to say. You could not speak if you wanted to. Your throat is tight, your veins humming with fear.

  Lenka asks her something, in their language. A short exchange follows. Valerie ends it by nodding, agreeing, and only switches back to English to summarise, and drive the point home: ‘You can go. We just need the truck for the drive back – only three of us will be returning.’

  She smiles at you, deliberately.

  Lenka jingles her keys and holds up a hand in farewell, heads for the SUV as if grateful to be spared witnessing what’s to come. From the boot she removes your duffel bag, tosses it casually into the snow. She still hasn’t looked at you or Gogol, or truly acknowledged you. For her, you suspect, you don’t really exist. You are dead already. She has been driving ghosts.

  The rest of you watch, the act oddly ritualistic, as the beige SUV reverses and leaves via the track you arrived on. As it trundles through the trees, Valerie reaches into the cab of her truck, twists the keys to turn off the engine, but leaves them in the ignition, presses a button to keep the heater running. Clearly there’s no need to lock it out here, and this way the truck will stay nice and warm for her, presumably until she is finished with you.

  Still. It’s a detail you note: there are keys in the truck.

  ‘Come,’ Valerie says. ‘Bring them.’

  You are made to walk. To the cabin. A path has been cleared across the lake – it’s easier to walk over the ice than through the snow. They lead you close to shore, where the ice is thickest. All of you shuffling in that cautious, flat-footed manner one adopts on ice, to avoid slipping and falling.

  You glance down at Gogol, just to meet his gaze. Hoping you can convey love and reassurance through a look. Hoping you don’t simply appear terrified, petrified. Failing to be the mother he needs.

  Valerie, who has taken the lead, slows down and falls into step beside you. Pavel has to move aside, to give her room. It’s the first time he hasn’t been right there, holding you or pressing the knife to you. You see now that he does indeed have a surgical implement of some sort – a long, curved scalpel, slim and silver as a crescent moon, except for the very tip, which glints red with your blood.

  Valerie links her arm in yours. As if you are two friends, out for a walk. She talks philosophically about the foolish decisions you have made and how none of this was at all necessary. She and Pavel always hold up their end of these bargains and their business dealings are usually smooth and trouble-free. They rarely have to resort to ridiculous measures such as you’ve forced them to use: scouring the countryside, calling in favours, sending people to look for you, drawing unwanted attention, taking great risks in order to track you down.

  And so, they have to kill you, of course. As an example. But, also, to punish you. You need to suffer before you die. Not the boy. It will be quick, painless for him. Just going to sleep.

  She looks over at Gogol. ‘Isn’t that right, little one? Just a nap.’

  He stares at her warily, like you might a viper. Sensing her wickedness and power.

  The long walk and her menacing chitchat have a strange effect on you. You can feel the cold settling in, leeching the warmth from you. But with the warmth goes the panic, the fear, the dread. You are able to think more clearly, more clinically. You feel that once they have you in the cabin you are lost. You will be dead. So whatever is to happen must happen before you get there, in the remaining – and ever-diminishing – distance.

  Valerie says something to Pavel, and he murmurs an answer, points across the ice.

  ‘Da,’ she says, and smiles sweetly at you. ‘Come, this way.’ She changes direction, adjusts course. You’re still heading towards the cabin but at an oblique angle, away from shore. You see now that there’s a machine or mechanism of some sort, out on the ice. A large bore or drill. You think at first that this is a terrible instrument of torture, huge and impractical. A nightmare contraption.

  But no, as you get closer you see holes in the ice, of varying sizes. The machine is a large auger – the kind used for ice-fishing. To drill a hole, access the water below.

  Valerie is not looking at the holes, or the drill. She releases your elbow, walks in a circle, studying the ice, an intent expression on her face. Finally, she snaps her fingers and says, ‘Ah-ha’ and takes two steps to the right. ‘Look,’ she says, pointing down.

  You don’t want to look, don’t want Gogol to look. When Pavel touches your shoulder, urging you forward, you let go of Gogol’s hand, allow yourself to be guided over to Valerie, to see what Valerie wants you to see. Beneath the ice there is a face. Pale skin, cloudy eyes. A gaping mouth. Features twisted by pain, rigid with death, but recognisable as Mario nonetheless. Just below, hazy through the ice, you can see his torso, stripped bare. Striated with incisions. A twisted map that leads to a gaping hole in the centre of his chest.

  Pavel nods, solemnly, as if acknowledging responsibility for his work.

  ‘This is where you go after,’ Valerie explains. ‘Frozen all winter, and fish food come spring. There are big carp in these lakes. They scavenge the bottom, strip clean the bones. Nobody else ever comes up here, you see.’

  Pavel adds, ‘It is our place.’

  They ar
e standing side-by-side, looking down, in awe and appreciation of themselves and their capabilities. Their poses and profiles so similar it’s eerie. In that moment, it occurs to you that they may be brother and sister, or related in some way. And, in that same moment, you know that this is the time: now. With the two of them beside you, but no scalpel at your back. With Pavel still gazing at Mario, fascinated by his own handiwork. With Gogol close to hand. With Denis a dozen steps off, guarding Marta but looking slightly away, maybe even unnerved by the sight of his onetime friend.

  With all the pieces arranged, just so, on this chessboard of ice.

  You make a soft gagging sound – as if overwhelmed by what you are seeing – and double over, clutching your guts, pretending to retch, while discretely sliding your hand up to your jacket pocket, reaching for the handle of the knife, so perfect and powerful in your grip. Valerie makes a sympathetic joke, about how unfortunate this is, this whole nasty business, and while she chuckles about that you slip the knife free of its sheath and straighten up and turn towards Pavel, using the force of your pivot to shove the blade into his chest, right where his heart should be.

  It slides in so cleanly, like a key in a lock. Fitting where it’s meant to go.

  The gasp of his breath. Not inwards but out. A sound you know. The sound you remember from the bus. The sound of life escaping. Soft and deafening. A small-scale cataclysm. An ending for one. Only this time you are the one holding the handle.

  In the aftermath: a shocked stillness. Everybody standing silent as Pavel slow-topples backwards, his legs folding, his head hitting the ice first with a dull, fatal clunk. The handle of the knife sticking straight up from his chest, firmly planted, stuck in its final resting place. A moment in which you all remain in a frieze, not believing, before realisation sets in.

  Then the stillness snaps and Valerie shrieks and Marta falls upon Denis, punching and kicking, grabbing at his gun. Screaming obscenities. Surprise on her side, and the ferocity of desperation. Her last-gasp effort adds to the chaos, heightens your chances of escape. Denis can’t shoot, and as he grapples with her the gun gets dropped, skitters across the ice like a little black bug. Marta is screaming at you to go, run – save the boy – and you grab Gogol’s hand and together you begin to run, as best you can, across the slippery and treacherous ice.

  Not even sure which direction to go, at first. Simply moving away from them, then having to adjust. Heading back towards the truck. Thinking of those keys. This time, rather than circling around the shore, you cut directly across the lake. The distance that much shorter. You glance back once and see Denis kneeling on Marta, his hands at her throat, choking and strangling, and glimpse Valerie crouched over Pavel. Checking him, or trying to save him. This you know to be useless. You felt the certainty and satisfaction of it: his death.

  Then running for another thirty metres – the truck, just get to the truck – before you check again. Denis is in pursuit now. Having left Marta behind. A lump on the ice. Sprawled and motionless. Marta.

  Valerie pointing after you, repeatedly shrieking. Stop – stop this! As if casting a spell, as if she is so delusional regarding the extent of her powers that she believes she can actually stop you that way.

  Gogol labouring beside you. Not crying, but focused entirely on the act of running, which is a struggle. His bad leg. The truck still so far off. No way you can outrun Denis. Stopping, turning. He’s there. Coming for you. He isn’t shooting yet. Not wanting to risk wasting bullets, or not wanting to risk hitting Gogol.

  You stand resolute, holding Gogol’s hand, as Denis closes the distance.

  Seeing that, Denis slows down, stands maybe ten metres off, panting and puffing breaths of frost. But grinning – showing his yellowed teeth. He knows he has you. The truck is still a few hundred metres further. And he has his gun. When he raises it, you try to guide Gogol behind you – a last act of protection – but instead Gogol steps in front of you. His face furious and fierce and defiant. Not a child’s expression at all. Your changeling.

  ‘Maty,’ he says. ‘Mother.’

  Denis pauses. From that distance he can’t shoot; he can’t be sure he won’t hit Gogol. And so there is a moment of deadlock. Denis laughs – at the seeming absurdity of this temporary dilemma – but stops laughing abruptly. Goes still. Looks down.

  You heard it too. The ice. Creaking. Cracking.

  You’ve sprinted straight across the centre of the lake, close to the patch of water, where the surface hasn’t frozen over. Now you can see that the layer beneath you is precariously thin, laced with cracks. The result is a strange impasse, as Denis tries to decide what to do, and you do too. Run, and hope the ice holds? Or will the first person to move, to break the stand-off, be the one who plunges through into the water?

  You shoulder-check. There’s still a long stretch of thin ice between you and the truck. But Gogol could make it. So much lighter than you. He could scoot across it like a duckling. You whisper to him, ‘Go to the truck. The truck.’

  Perhaps Denis hears, or decides he must act. With a reckless shout he charges at you, but, rather than flee like he expects, you push Gogol towards the truck, urging him on his way, and turn to face Denis, standing your ground, and as the two of you come together Denis slips – his legs shooting out from beneath him. A slapstick repeat of his clumsy attempt at mugging you, on that first night. And in falling this time he grabs you and pulls you down with him and you both land heavily and there is a sound like a tree branch splitting and then a dropping sensation and a brutal shock of cold and you know you have broken clean through the ice into the freezing waters of the lake.

  the void

  So this is how you’ll die. In a vacuum. An emptiness. Cold as space. The shock so great that it sucks all the air from your lungs, seems to seize your body and squeeze. Your eyes clench automatically. You’re still entangled with Denis, slow-sinking together, struggling – him gripping your arm just above the elbow. You feel him thrashing wildly, violently, panicking. You force your eyes open. See a strange sapphire darkness. Light filtering down through the layer of ice above you. Denis’s blurred face, his contorted features, right there in front of yours.

  You shove at him. Using the heel of your palm. Short, jabbing motions. Recalling something from swimming lessons – what to do if a drowning person clings to you. Aim for the nose. Beat them back, or they’ll drag you down with them. It seems to work. There is a kaleidoscope of bubbles as he cries out soundlessly. Blood clouding the water.

  But he has let you go. It gives you a chance.

  You kick free, kick away. Peer through the murk. Denis just a shape off to the left now, pawing at the water, having dropped his gun. It spirals down, turning lazily as it falls, straight down into darkness that is endless, that swallows it. Gone. You’re still sinking too. In these moments, when you’re in the open palm of death, you don’t think of Tod or your mother or your childhood or any important memories. Your life doesn’t flash before your eyes. You don’t have visions of a bright light, or sense any benevolent or malevolent forces at work.

  You don’t experience any of those things.

  You know then that death isn’t a spiritual or mystical process. It’s only – or purely – a biological one. The act of a living organism shutting down. Of body heat draining, of cold leeching into skin and flesh. Of muscles cramping, seizing. Of air no longer reaching the lungs, of oxygen no longer reaching the bloodstream, circulating to the organs. Of electrical impulses slowing. Of the heart fluttering, sputtering, followed by stillness, by silence, by nothing.

  Death is just a stopping.

  And yet. Working against all that, the fierce, vicious, ferocious, furious, desperate, raging, all-consuming desire to survive. Burning in your nerves, your limbs, the centre of your chest – your heart a hot coal – fuelled by thoughts of Gogol, of that little boy. Still up there, above you, in the world of the living. Crying out. You can hear him. Calling to you. Maty.

  Look up. The surface is
a vast white sheet, a glow of diffusion. Already so far away. How did you sink this deep? You’re flailing, kicking. It doesn’t feel like swimming. Draped as you are in clothes, weighed down as you are by shoes. It feels like climbing, like dragging yourself through slush. You wriggle out of your jacket, then jack-knife in the water to yank off your shoes. Keep trying, keep going. Your lungs aching, straining, threatening to burst in your chest.

  Maybe that will be how it feels. A last bubble-pop of life.

  Except, a star-shaped patch above. You’re floundering towards the hole in the ice by instinct. Your old sense of direction. The primal part of your brain. Guiding you as it would an animal, a fish or amphibian. All those years of evolution in you, on your side, triggered by the urgent sense you are dying – and dying to live.

  You’re getting closer to the surface. But the opening seems to be moving away. Staying just out of reach. Until it isn’t. Until your fist claws up into open air, shoving aside thick chunks of broken ice. Followed by your head, breaching, and your mouth.

  Now breathe. Breathe. That first gasp like being jolted back to life by a defibrillator. A violent seizure. Air filling your lungs. And again. Breathe. Ragged, burning inhalations. And each time the cold shoves the air right back out of you. You flounder and splash amid the puzzle pieces of broken ice. Struggling to find the edge, something solid. Something to grip. But the sides of the hole keep breaking, again and again, cracking off in chunks. No way to make progress. And all the while the water pulls at you, dragging you down. The cold seeping into you, leeching your strength. Until, finally, the ice doesn’t break. Your fingers find solidity, but, even then, you can’t gain purchase – clawing repeatedly at the rough, slippery surface of the lake. Your nails scraping, cracking, going bloody.