Victor Bacau - Russian Horror Book

***

I got home late.

My mother was awake – watching TV in her room. I knocked.

“Hey. Why aren’t sleeping?”

“Just watching the new series, quite interesting,” she rubbed her sleepy eyes. She was waiting when I get back, although I said her I would back later.

“Want some tea?” she offered.

“Yes, please. I’ll pour the water on, you can keep watching.”

We could talk about anything, but sometimes I reminded myself that she was not just a friend to me, she was my mother, to whom her old age was already so close. And it was a real beastliness to make her nervous about anything. But I could not simply be silent, my heart was restless. So to her question ‘Where have you been?’ I honestly answered: ‘Prokhorov’.

She frowned.

“That house among the shacks? What did you need there?”

I told her.

Of course she knew two of my friends were missing; because I had been summoned to the police station as a friend, to gather information. Then I was also talking about my suspicions (and my hunch), about how I went to ‘Prokhorov’ with my friend – the district police officer.

Mother poured the tea. Finally, I had some normal tea.

“Do you think if the police had found a hook, wouldn’t they have done anything?”

A hook! My Mom used words from her favorite detective series.

I raised my hands as if saying, “I surrender!”.

“Okay, you may laugh. It seemed to me that this way it was possible to find something. That district is creepy. And the old woman is strange…”

Mother raised her eyebrow.

“The old woman?”

I told her. And the more I was telling, the more worried my mother’s face seemed.

“Don’t ever go there again.”

“Why, Mom?”

She interrupted me.

“Did you take anything from her? Don’t take anything from such people. Did you eat anything? Tell me honestly!”

“We didn’t even have tea, honestly! Mom, what’s up? What are you talking about?”

“Okay. You may laugh if you want to,” Mother waved her hand.

It turned out that the old woman was considered to be someone like the city freak, a local witch; and some people told different curious things about her.

“She’s a witch, everyone knows!” my mother said, and I smiled and shook my head.

“Yeah, everyone knows, except me.”

“Young people never pay attention to substantial things!”

Again – ‘young people’ and ‘not young people’.

Mother kept telling.

“Twenty years ago there was a story with that lady. In general, everyone knew she’s a witch, and there were people who went to see her, you understand why.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“Well, her work. I don’t know what exactly she used to practice. Taints, putting spells… She didn’t hide the fact of being involved with black magic. She hated hearing about God whatsoever, and didn’t name it anything but lies. Said, nobody’s ‘over there’…”

Mother was silent a bit, thinking deeply.

“A strange sort of people. They never believe in God, but do believe in magic. What nonsense.”

“Yeah, that’s stupidity,” I agreed. “So what happened to her? to the old lady.”

“Well, she was said to be rather rich. Perhaps she could earn a lot due to her magical practice. That wasn’t evident, but rumors were about that she had some cash. One day fellows visited her…”

“What fellows?”

“Tall fellows. Mighty, and drunk,” Mother threw up her hands. “Just guys who needed to make money easy way.”

“Ah, they were looking for money?”

“Yes, they did. And even they found some, I say. Neighbors told later they heard the noise from the witch’s apartment, then the guys ran out and everything came still. The old woman was dead.”

I couldn’t understand a thing anymore.

“How’s dead if she’s alive?”

“They saw an ambulance driving up to her house, and then the police and the ritual service. They carried out her body, blood all over; her head was bashed. That day she was about seventy, nobody believed she would survive with those injuries. Someone heard that the ambulance confirmed her death, so she was taken to the morgue. And imagine that, there she regained consciousness!”

I chuckled, though I didn’t like to hear it all.

“Toughest lady, uh?”

“Indeed she is. She didn’t write the application, refused any treatment, cursed the police and went home dressed in a nightgown only, the same she wore when taken to the morgue. She was pale blue, like she was a real cadaver, and blood all over her clothes, can you imagine? Looking like that she walked along the streets… Those guys, by the way, went missing, four persons. That days, word got around she’d turned into a vampire. Vuver Kuva.”

“Kinda Baba Yaga?”

“Well, something like that. Vuver Kuva. The locals call it this way.”

“And it’s been… twenty years ago?”

“Something about.”

“So she’s ninety now, isn’t she?”

“It appears she is.”

“And is she … well, is she still doing magic?”

“I don’t know what she’s doing,” Mother shook her head, “but you just promise me you won’t go back to that house either. Nothing to do with that nonsense. The police knows their business.”

“Okay, okay, got it,” I said. “But you know that everything you told me about that hag – that’s a story. It’s not a bit true!”

“People wouldn’t just gab.”

“T’is impossible to trust everything people tell.”

“Yeah, right…” agreed my mother and left her half-full mug.

She looked upset.

“Come on, mom, I’m going to be okay,” it was me who started the conversation, and I had to calm her down. I hugged her and kissed her gently on the top of her head, as she used to do to me fifteen years ago.

“Everything will be okay,” I said again, “you know I don’t get into murky waters.”

I calmed her down and sent her to bed, and sat down in my room at the computer and began to look for information. I didn’t believe I was looking for that.

Vuver means ‘vampire’ in our region.

Regions are different, people are different. In our country, each region is dominated by some native, local ethnicity. Each ethnicity has a legend or a story about vampires. Such an old exploitive subject! We’re in the twenty-first century, and we still believe in magic, in Baba Yaga, and in people who can revive after death and drink blood!

Century twenty-first.

Outraged, I still kept googling it – about vampires, and about the cases people could suddenly wake up in the morgue and so on and so on. I tickled my nerves with scary tales, morgue stories and all that stuff, and then somehow it imperceptibly happened I began to look through our pictures in social networks, pictures of Max, Marina, and other friends. Our class, our prom, our first day at uni.

And that hag kept coming to mind. Everything about her was weird. She was kinda hard of hearing nevertheless she managed to hear Marina was knocking at the wrong door. She said Max and Marina never came to see her… No, no, – she didn’t say anything about Max.

She never said a word about her grandchildren, but old people love speaking about them! They are happy about having grandchildren, and feel pity if they don’t have any. Older people like to talk about themselves also, but that one didn’t say anything about herself, not even a word.

I leaned back in my computer chair and closed my eyes. Suddenly I remembered the moment as once went to the kitchen when Mom was drinking tea, and for some reason I asked her,“Mom, where’s the garlic?”

I don’t remember why I needed it. She looked at me like I was a dope and said, “Garlic’s in the fridge. Look for a wooden stake in the cupboard.”