Richard Montanari: The Devil_s Garden

…she drew a pair of even smaller rectangles, wide and thin, which were flower boxes. Charlotte put down the black crayon and picked up the red one. It was almost halfway gone, but that was okay. Gripping the small crayon tightly, she made little red tulips in the flower boxes, three flowers in each. When she was satisfied, she picked up the green crayon, and filled in the stems and leaves. All that was left to do was the front door. She selected a brown crayon…

… and made a doorway in the dust. With one final poke of her tiny finger, she made the doorknob. A door was useless without a doorknob. Emily Roman looked at her drawing. There was one last touch. She reached forward, and swirled her finger over the chimney. The last little curlicue was the smoke.

Aleks paced back and forth. He spoke rapidly, drifting from Estonian to Russian to English. He held his knife in his right hand, and as he turned he tapped it against his right leg, slicing the black leather of his coat. To Michael, who had seen his share of unhinged defendants, Aleks was coming apart.

Aleks stood directly in the front window, his back to the room.

“Things go full circle in this life, do they not, Michael Roman?”

Michael stole a glance at Abby. She was rocking back and forth, pulling on the pipes behind her.

“What do you mean?” Michael asked.

Aleks turned to face them. “This place. I can smell the yeast in the air. Once it is in the air, it never leaves, you know. I’ve heard of a bakery in Paris, a shop known for its sourdough breads, that has not used an active culture for more than a hundred years.” He turned to glance at Emily, back. “Do you think things remain? Things like energies, spirits?”

Michael knew he had to keep Aleks talking. “Maybe. I -”

“Were you here when it happened? Did you see it?”

Michael now knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the murder of Peeter and Johanna Roman. “No,” Michael said. “I didn’t see it.”

Aleks nodded. “I read about you. About the incident with the car bomb.”

Michael said nothing.

“You were supposed to die that day, yet you did not. Have you ever questioned this?”

Only every day since, Michael thought. “I don’t know,” he said, hoping to find some common ground with this madman. “Maybe I was destined for something else. Maybe something better.”

“Yes,” Aleks said. “Destiny.” He began to pace back and forth again, now behind Emily. Out of the corner of his eye Michael could see that Abby had begun to work the copper pipe from its mooring. “Tell me. When you were about to die, how did it feel?”

“It felt like nothing,” Michael said. “It happened too fast.”

“No,” Aleks said. “It is the longest moment of your life. It can last forever.”

Michael saw the pipe budge a little more, saw the duct tape on Abby’s wrists begin to fray. Aleks circled behind Emily.

“It was in a place not unlike this that it all began for me,” Aleks said. “I know the feeling. To be brought to the edge of the abyss, and to emerge unscathed. I do not think it was an accident that you came to care for Anna and Marya. I believe it was ordained. Now I must take them home.”

Before he could stop himself, Michael rose from the chair. The words just seemed to tumble out. “I won’t let you!”

Michael glanced again at Emily, at the drawing she had made in the dust. He could not make it out from where he was.

“You should know about their mother,” Aleks continued, moving closer to Emily. “A beautiful young girl. An ennustaja of magnificent power. Elena. She was merely a child when I first saw her. She was the spirit of the gray wolf.” Aleks pointed at the table in front of Michael. “There are two bullets in that weapon. I want you to pick it up.”

Michael froze. “No.”

“I want you to pick it up now!”

Slowly, Michael picked up the pistol. It felt heavy, leaden in his hand. Was it loaded? And if it was, why was Aleks doing this? Michael wondered if he could point it at Aleks, and pull the trigger.

No, he thought. He could not take the chance. Aleks was too close to Emily. “What do you want me to do?”

“There is only one choice. I am going to leave with my daughter, and I cannot take the risk that I will be stopped.”

Michael had no idea what the man meant by one choice. He remained silent.

“First, you will take the weapon, point it at Abigail’s head, and pull the trigger.”

Michael’s heart plunged. “What?”

“Then you will take your own life. You see, it will be seen as a murder/suicide, the logical actions of a man who killed the lawyer who illegally worked for him, then a young thug with whom he had done business. Not to mention the police detective who came to investigate. In your madness, seeing no way out, you brought your wife here, to the site of your life’s greatest tragedy, and took both your lives.”

Michael’s mind began to reel. Abby sobbed. “That’s… that’s not going to happen.”

Aleks crouched down behind Emily. “Maybe there is another choice for you.” He took one of the small, empty glass vials from the chain around his neck, placed it on the floor in front of Emily. He held the tip of the knife just inches from the back of the little girl’s head. “There are other ways for Anna to come with me.”

Abby screamed into the gag in her mouth. She began to rock back and forth violently, pulling on the pipe.

“We do not live in your world,” Aleks said, glancing at his knife. “These things cannot hurt us.”

“No.”

“The choice is between your life and Anna’s. What are you willing to do for her?”

“Don’t…” Michael lifted the pistol.

“Are you willing to trade your life for hers?”

“Stop!”

“Put the gun to Abigail’s head, Michael. If you love this child you will not hesitate.” He moved the knife even closer.

“Wait!” Michael screamed.

Emily looked up at him. In that moment Michael saw his daughter as a teenager, a young woman, an adult. It all came down to this moment.

“Make your choice now, Michael Roman,” Aleks said.

Michael knew what he had to do. Aleks was right. There really was no choice.

There had been other suitors over the years, many interlopers in their lives. Once, in a small village in Livonia, a young boy had dared speak with him about his daughter, Marya. The boy claimed to be the son of the town’s bailiff. This was after the second siege of Reval. Led by Ivan the Terrible, there was a sickness in the air, a state of lawlessness that swept the towns of Dunaburg, Kokenhausen and Wendenthe, and Aleks had dispatched the boy with no consequence.

Marya had been nearly seventeen at the time, a young woman of incomparable beauty. As she and Anna flowered to womanhood, they had begun to manifest small differences, not only in their personalities, but also in their looks. From a few yards away, to most people, they were indistinguishable from each other – their honey-colored hair, their flawless skin, their clear-blue eyes. But a father knows his children.

And now this man. A man who claimed to be their father. Another intruder.

Aleks stood outside the church, a bitter wind cutting along the ridge that led to the banks of the river. Anna sat before him, wrapped in fur. At her feet was a bundle, a swaddled, stillborn infant.

Aleks looked at the imposters.

Next to the dead child sat the grey wolf; primordial siver eyes set deep into the smooth dome of his head.

“Do it now,” he said. “Or I will do it for you.”

The gray wolf bayed.

The man raised the weapon, and pointed it at the woman’s head.