Richard Montanari - The Devil_s Garden

Elena Keskkula knew they would come at midnight, bathed in the blood of ancients, just as she had known so many things in her fifteen years. As the ennustaja of her village – a fortuneteller and mystic whose readings were sought by believers from as far away as Tallinn and St Petersburg – she had always been able to glimpse the future. At seven she saw her family’s small potato farm overrun by vermin. At ten she saw Jaak Lind lying in a field in Nalchik, the blackened flesh of his palms fused around the face of St Christopher. At twelve she foretold the floods that washed away much of her village, saw the peat bogs choked with dead livestock, the bright parasols adrift on rivers of mud. In her brief time she had seen the patience of evil men, the heartbreak of motherless children, the souls of all around her laid bare with shame, with guilt, with desire. For Elena Keskkula the present had always been past.

What she had not seen, what had been denied the terrible blessing of her second sight, was the torment of bringing lives into this world, the depth to which she loved these children she would never know, the grief of such loss.

And the blood.

So much blood…

He came to her bed on a warm July evening, nearly nine months earlier, a night when the perfume of rue flowers filled the valley, and the Narva River ran silent. She wanted to fight him, but she had known it would be futile. He was tall and powerful, with large hands and a lean, muscular body marked with the tattoos of the villainous vennaskond. Drug lord, usurer, extortionist, thief, he moved like a wraith in the night, ruling the towns and villages of Ida-Viru County with a ruthlessness unknown even during Soviet occupation.

His name was Aleksander Savisaar.

Elena had first seen him when she was a child, standing in the place of the gray wolf. She knew then that he would come to her, enter her, although she was far too young at the time to know what it meant.

At morning he stole away as quietly as he had come. Elena knew he had left his seed in her, and that he would one day return to reap what he had sown.

Over the many months that followed, Elena saw his eyes every waking moment, felt his warm breath on her face, the cruel power of his touch. Some nights, when the air was still, she heard the music. Those who whispered of him said on these nights Aleksander Savisaar would sit on Saber Hill overlooking the village, and play his flute, his long fair hair blown back by the Baltic winds. They said he was quite learned in Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Elena did not know of these things. What she did know was that many times, when his song soared over the valley, the lives within her stirred.

On a late winter midnight the babies came, two of them perfect girls, one stillborn, each wrapped in a thin veil, the true sign of the second sight.

For Elena, consciousness came and left. In her fever dream she saw a man – a Finn by his dress and manner and accent, a man with fog-white hair – standing at the foot of the bed. She saw her father bargain with this man, take his money. Moments later, the Finn left with the newborns, both children swaddled in a black woolen tekk against the cold. On the floor, near the fireplace, he left a third bundle, bloodied rags in a lifeless pile. Her maternal instincts battling her dread, Elena tried to rise from the bed, but found she could not move. She wept until her tears ran dry. She wept for the terrible knowledge that these babies, the progeny of Aleksander Savisaar, were gone. Sold in the night like so much chattel.

And hell would be known.

She sensed him before she saw him. At dawn he filled the doorway, his shoulders spanning the jambs, his aura scarlet with rage.

Elena closed her eyes. The future raced through her like a furious river. She saw the severed heads on the gateposts at the road that led to the farm, the charred and battered skulls of her father and brother. She saw their bodies piled in the barn.

As morning crested the hills to the east, Aleksander Savisaar dragged Elena outside, the blood between her legs leaving a ragged red streak in the snow. He placed her against the majestic spruce behind the house, the tree around which Elena and her brother Andres had wrapped ribbons each winter solstice since they were children.

He kissed her once, then drew his knife. The blue steel shimmered in the morning light. He smelled of vodka, venison, and new leather.

“They are mine, soothsayer, and I will find them,” he whispered. “No matter how long it takes.” He brought the edge of his razor-sharp blade to her throat. “They are my tutred, and with them I will be immortal.”

In this moment Elena Keskkula had a powerful vision. In it she saw another man, a good man who would raise her precious daughters as his own, a man who had stood in death’s garden and lived, a man who would one day, in a field of blood far away, face the devil himself.

On the day Michael Roman realized he would live forever, five years after the last day of his life, his entire world went pink. A pastel pink at that: pink tablecloths, pink chairs, pink flowers, pink crepe banners, even a huge pink umbrella festooned in smiling pink bunnies. There were pink cups and plates, pink forks and napkins, a plate piled high with frosted pink cupcakes.

The only thing keeping the property from a listing with Candy Land Realty was the small patch of green grass barely visible beneath the maze of aluminum folding tables and plastic chairs, grass that would surely never be the same.

Then there was that other vision of green. Departing green. The money.

How much was all this costing again?

As Michael stood behind the house, he thought about the first time he had seen it, and how perfect it seemed.

The house was a three bedroom brick colonial, with buff-colored shutters and matching pilasters, set far back from the winding road. Even for the suburbs, it was isolated, perched atop a slight hill, embraced by a stand of sycamores, shielded from both the road and neighbors by a waist-high hedgerow. Behind the house was a two-car garage, a gardening shed, a wide yard with a latticework trellis. The lot gave quickly to the woods, sloping down to meet a meandering creek, which ran toward the Hudson River. At night it became eerily silent. For Michael, having grown up in the city, the change was hard to take. At first the isolation had gotten to him; Abby too, although she would never admit it. The nearest houses were about a quarter-mile in either direction. The foliage was thick, and in summer it felt like living in a giant green cocoon. Twice over the past year, when the power had gone out in a storm, Michael felt as if he was on the moon. Since that time he had stocked up on batteries, candles, canned goods, even a pair of kerosene heaters. They could probably survive a week in the Yukon if they needed to.

“The clown will be here at one.”

Michael turned to see his wife crossing the yard, carrying a plateful of pink frosted cookies. She wore tight white jeans and a powder blue Roar Lion Roar Columbia University T-shirt, along with a pair of drugstore flip flop sandals. Somehow she still managed to look like Grace Kelly.

“Your brother’s coming?” Michael asked.

“Be nice.”

Abigail Reed Roman, thirty-one, was four years younger than her husband. Unlike Michael’s working-class childhood, she had grown up on an estate in Pound Ridge, the daughter of a world-renowned cardiac surgeon. Where Michael’s patience seemed at times to be nonexistent – his temper usually hovered at a constant 211 degrees Fahrenheit, often rising – his wife ran on an even keel. Until she was cornered. Then there were rodents in Calcutta that bowed to her ferocity. Nearly a decade as an emergency room nurse at New York Downtown Hospital will do that to you; ten years of crack heads, PCP heads, exploded lives, torn people, and broken souls.