Dan Smith - Red Winter

It raised its hands to my face, touching me with bony fingers, long nails raking at my cheeks. Then, as life began to leave it and its body began to relax, it managed a word. It opened its mouth and spoke a single word, which came out in a long, hot breath.

‘Alek.’

And with that word, my senses returned to me. I was killing something I could not see. I might have been strangling my own wife on the floor of our home.

I released my grip and jumped back from the creature, crawling to where my brother lay. I ran my hands around the floorboards, searching for the revolver, and when my fingers stumbled on its cold metal, I snatched it up and pointed it at the shape that lay coughing in a heap. It had turned onto its front and was spluttering and hacking like an old hag.

‘Who are you?’ I asked, but the creature didn’t reply. It stayed as it was, fighting for life, drawing air into its lungs in short, wheezing gasps.

I waited, trying to keep the revolver steady in my shaking hands, the stink of the creature thick around me. And when its breathing eventually settled to a rhythmic rasp and whistle, it spoke again.

‘Alek?’ the creature said. ‘Is that you, Alek?’

‘Who are you?’ I asked for a second time, but I was almost too afraid to hear the answer. I knew this was no witch or spectre; this was a person who was looking for shelter and safety, just as I was. I also knew it was a woman – the voice told me that much – but I was afraid to know which woman. The thought that my wife might have become this creature was almost too much to bear.

When she didn’t answer, I raised my voice and asked once more, ‘Who are you? Speak now or I’ll shoot.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Alek.’ She shifted on the floor and turned towards me. All I could make out in the darkness was the shape of her, but I saw she was holding a hand out to me. Whether she wanted me to take it or she was just trying to reach out to me, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch her even if it was what she wanted. The way she smelled and the way she had felt in my fingers made my skin crawl.

‘Tell me your name,’ I said.

‘Is that you, Alek?’

‘No. It’s Kolya. Nikolai. Alek’s brother. Who are you ?’

There was a moment of silence as if she were trying to remember.

‘Galina,’ she said. ‘Galina, Galina, Galina.’

Galina Ivanovna Petrova was a friend of my mother. At least, she had been until Mama died, the summer before the revolution. Mama went to the river to wash clothes one morning and didn’t return. When Alek and I went looking for her, we found the clothes but no sign of Mama, so we searched up and down the bank, finding nothing until we came to the lake where the water washed from the river. We swam there when the weather was warm. The lake was a good size, with a small, marshy island close to the far shore where my brother and I played as children. We had an old rowing boat with a tin for baling out the water that leaked through the joins in the wood. At its deepest point, the lake was deeper than any of us ever cared to find out. As children, we would dare each other to swim down and touch the bottom, but the darkness closed around you quickly in the murky water, and the weeds reached up to tangle your hands and feet. Nobody I knew had ever touched the bottom.

Mama was in the lake when we found her. She was floating face up, as if the river’s current had turned her to face the sky. Her skirt billowed around her, rippling with the surface water, and her headscarf had come loose so her hair was spread out in tendrils. A deep gash marred her forehead, cleaned by the current and the fish so that it was an empty, ragged scar.

We could only guess that she had slipped from the riverbank and hit her head on one of the many rocks. If the blow hadn’t killed her, it was the cold water that had taken her life, swirling about her, drowning her as she lay unconscious.

We never found Mama’s headscarf.

We buried her the next day, in the patch of land behind the small church. Papa had been there a long time already, and tomorrow morning, I would bury my brother beside them.

‘Galina Ivanovna?’ I said, pushing to my knees. I could hardly believe the creature that had risen from the darkness was the old woman I had known all my life. She was the woman who used to give Alek and me pampushki , still warm from the oven and laced with enough garlic to burn your tongue.

She was one of the women who had mourned at my mother’s funeral.

‘Alek. Thank God. Please. Help me.’

‘It’s Kolya,’ I said without thinking. I got to my feet and took a tentative step towards her. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Help me,’ she said again, and this time I went right to her, reeling at the stink as if coming against a barrier that I had to force myself through. I knelt beside her, feeling the loosened floorboards as I did so.

‘You were under the floor?’ I asked.

‘Always under,’ she said. ‘Hiding. It’s not safe when someone comes.’

I shivered when she touched my wrist. Her grip was stronger than I expected and she squeezed tight as she pulled herself up. Her skin was cold and damp.

‘When who comes, Galina Ivanovna?’

‘ Anyone . So I hide and watch and I see everything.’

‘From under the floor?’

‘From under it and above it. From outside and in. From the forest. I saw you coming, riding your horse, and I knew you had come to help me.’

‘Help you how?’

‘Help me with the others, of course. You can take care of them now.’

‘The others? Where are they? I’ve been looking—’

‘Gone,’ she said. ‘All gone.’

With that single word, an icy fist punched through me and clawed its fingers round my heart. ‘Gone where?’

Galina Ivanovna kept her grip tight on my wrist, and her breathing wheezed in and out, in and out. ‘Is it over now?’ she asked. ‘The war? Is that why you came home?’

‘Where have they gone?’ I pulled my hand away, loath to feel her touch. ‘When?’

‘Hmm? Oh. A long time,’ she said. ‘Days, weeks. I don’t know.’

Judging by the way she smelled, I guessed it was weeks rather than days.

‘Can you remember what happened here, Galina Ivanovna? I can’t find anyone and it’s important that you tell me where everyone is. I want to help you.’ I wished I could tear the truth out of her, but she was confused and hardly seemed to know what she was saying.

Galina put her hand to her head and tapped it with the gnarled knuckle of one finger. ‘Remember,’ she said. ‘Remember, remember, remember. Oh.’ Her movement was sudden and she reached out to grab me once more. This time she grasped my forearm with one hand and reached up with the other to touch my cheek. She brought her face close to mine. ‘Don’t let him take me too.’

‘Who?’

She spoke with urgency, lowering her voice and putting her lips to my ear. ‘Don’t let him make me go with the others.’

‘Where did they go?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice calm despite the questions spinning in my head. ‘Who are you talking about?’

She loosened her grip on me and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Don’t let him take me.’

‘Who’s he ? Can you remember? You have to tell me—’

‘Koschei,’ she said. ‘The Deathless One.’

She had lost her mind. I understood that as soon as she started whispering about Koschei the Deathless. Gaunt and cruel and brandishing his sword, Koschei was as much an embodiment of evil as Baba Yaga, the cruel witch who lived deep in the forest in a shabby house surrounded by a fence made from the bones of her victims. But Koschei was just a monster from the skazkas we told our children. He was no more real than the forest demons, and he couldn’t have been in our village, but something had happened here in Belev that had driven Galina Ivanovna out of her mind. Though she rambled like a lunatic and smelled like death, she was my kin of sorts and it was my responsibility to take care of her. And whatever she had survived, I needed to hear about it; I needed to know what had happened to my family. If I was to be of any use at all to my wife and children, I needed to know whatever Galina could tell me.