Dan Smith - Red Winter

‘Seeing ghosts now.’ I shook my head at myself and went back to looking at the trees just in front of me, but the base of my neck tingled as if a cold finger traced a line there and I couldn’t help glancing back, feeling as if malevolent eyes watched me from every shadow.

Another sound, but this time it was further away. Perhaps out on the road. I cocked my head to one side and pushed back my hat so I could listen. Kashtan’s ears twisted and I knew I hadn’t imagined the sound.

‘You hear that too?’ I said. ‘Was that a horse in the village?’

Kashtan replied only by turning her ears this way and that, searching for the source of the sound.

‘You think they came back for me? Tanya and Lyudmila?’ But I knew they wouldn’t have come back.

The sound came again. Hooves on hard dirt.

‘Definitely a horse,’ I said. ‘Or horses.’

I remembered the sensation I’d had of being watched. Those lonely days in the forest with my dying brother, wondering if I was being followed. Hunted. There were some who prided themselves on finding deserters and bringing them in for public execution. I imagined they would do the same for me if they thought me to be still alive.

I had ridden along streams where I could, stayed in the forest, doubled-back to cover my tracks. I had done everything I could to remain untraceable, but the sounds were clear behind me. Someone was in the village. I glanced over my shoulder, looking for any hint of movement, but saw nothing other than the unsympathetic trees, the silent brushwood and the glistening frost.

Then a voice. A sound that jolted me and filled me with dread.

I looked back again, wondering for a moment if it might be Marianna and the boys. I fought the sudden urge to return to the road, telling myself it could not be them. And when I stared across the clearing to the trees that hid the road from view, I saw the passing of shadows and heard the sound of men’s voices and knew I had to move quickly. I could not afford to be seen by anyone.

‘Come on.’ I nudged Kashtan with my heels and together we melted into the forest.

We had left a trail. It was almost impossible not to. In the village, there was evidence of the horses, but the tracks would be muddled. Footprints across the bridge, hoof prints leading into and out of the village. There were Kashtan’s tracks too, travelling beyond the bridge right up to the river and out on the other side. If there was someone in the village now, they would see all of that evidence, but it would be confusing. My best chance was that if they chose to follow anyone, they would follow the women. Theirs would be the clearest trail.

But if someone or something had been tracking me in the forest as I had journeyed home, then they would not follow the women. They would follow the single horse. The man alone.

If they were hunting me, they would follow Kashtan’s trail right to the clearing and beyond. It would take them a while to decipher the tracks, though. I still had time to elude them.

It was difficult to navigate through the dense forest, but it could work in our favour. Kashtan would have to be brave and move quickly, but it would be easy to leave a confused trail here, so we weaved among the trees, heading deeper, closer to the place where the crows had gathered. I could not leave until I had seen what was here. I had to know.

I heard no more evidence of anyone following. Kashtan breathed hard, but her tread was light and there was little sound to our movement. The occasional creak of the saddle or the slap of my kit against Kashtan’s hide, but other than that, we were quiet, moving through the forest like a ghost from one of Marianna’s stories, until the trees began to thin out once more and we came to the place of crows.

Kashtan could smell it before we came to that place. She grew more agitated the closer we rode, and she reared as soon as we broke into the small clearing and laid eyes on the victims lying about it. The sight of them seared itself into my mind.

Kashtan shook her head and rolled her eyes and tried to turn away.

Startled by our arrival, the crows cawed and flew up into the trees in a flurry of agitation and displeasure.

‘All right,’ I told her, as I looked away and strengthened my nerve. ‘All right.’

I turned her to the right and rode further into the forest, and once we were out of sight and Kashtan grew calm, I stopped and dismounted, hitching her to a sturdy tree branch.

‘I have to look at them,’ I told her. ‘I have to know.’

She nuzzled my chest and blew in my face, then I stepped away and stood for a moment, closing my eyes, touching the fingers of my left hand to the chotki round my right wrist and offering a clumsy prayer of hope. I was not much of a believer; it was not part of the new thinking. Marianna had been the one to keep the faith and perhaps that was why the chotki gave me some comfort. It had been round her wrist and would still bear traces of her, bringing us closer. And because she believed, then I would carry that for her, and if there was anything that could give me strength enough for this, something that might answer my prayer, then I was willing to give it a chance.

I took a deep breath and removed the rifle from my back, grasping it tight as I picked my way back towards the horror.

I was overcome with numbness as I made my return to where the bodies lay. My vision was tunnelled, so I only saw what was right before me: my path through the sleeping trees. I could no longer smell the decaying leaves at my feet, or the damp bark that surrounded me. To my ears, the forest was silent but for the pounding of my own blood as it pumped through my veins. And when I came to the massacre, that pounding faltered before gathering speed and I fought to make myself strong.

All I had to do was identify the people; to satisfy myself that my children and wife were not among them. Once that was done, I would leave.

Two men lay on the ground close to the cold remains of a small fire. They were naked, victims of the same fate as Galina’s husband, except their heads were nowhere to be seen. Judging by the shape and size of their bodies, they were older men, so I passed them by and steeled myself as I approached another man, who was slumped against a tree, his face swollen and beaten beyond recognition. His hands had been flayed, and in the centre of his chest was branded a star, just as I had seen on Sasha. The swollen welt of seared flesh was pink now, but would have been angry when it was first burned. The star would have been a bold, patriotic red.

I turned away and went to another man, nailed to a tree, his head dropped so that his chin rested on his chest. He was just out of reach, so I put the barrel of my rifle under his chin and pushed up his head. Maxim Mikhailovich. In the centre of his forehead was branded a five-pointed star.

Other men were there, all of them older, and I forced myself to detach. I had to view them not as people I knew, not even as people at all, but as something else. Something less valuable. Something unimportant. Callous as it seemed, I had learned it was the only way to cope when faced with people whose skin was flayed from their hands, whose throats were cut, whose necks were punctured by bullets.

Each man had the five-pointed star branded into the skin somewhere on his naked body. I had never seen anything like it and I found myself wondering if it had been done before or after death.

If it had been done to my sons.

I saw no children at all, though, no women, and that gave me a glimmer of guilty hope as I went from body to body, identifying each one, finding neither Misha nor Pavel, but many of the people I had grown up with. I told myself that my sons were still alive, and that until I knew for certain, I had to believe that Marianna was too. I refused to accept that she was drowned in the lake. So I kept on, forcing myself to look at each body, trying not to remember their names and their families, and only when I came to the last of them did the full horror of this place sink in. Now that I had satisfied myself that my family wasn’t here, the evil of this place began to overcome me. It was like a malevolent spirit wrapping its arms around me and dragging me into its despair. My hands began to shake, and my breathing quickened. Only now did I realise how dry my throat was, that I had been clamping my teeth together so hard my jaw ached.