Andrea Bennett - Two Cousins of Azov

She dropped the receiver and pounced on the front door. It was padded with black faux leather, and was locked. She tried every key in the basket on the telephone table: not one fitted. She beat her fists on it, banging as hard as she could, shouting out, the fringes on the headdress flying around her shoulders. Only the softest thumps escaped the blackness of the faux leather, her voice drowning in the darkness of the hall. She dropped to her knees, panting, hands over her ears to muffle the screams from the kitchen.

‘Help me!’ Polly was becoming frantic. ‘Pull the hatch! Pull it! Where are you?’

Albina observed the stuck sliding door and the stuck serving hatch. She picked her nose nervously. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said eventually, ‘but I don’t think you’re Olga. I want to go home. So I won’t help you, unless you tell me where the keys are.’

‘They’re here, you little cow, in my pocket! So open the damned hatch!’

Albina considered for a moment. If the keys really were in the girl’s pocket, there was not much she could do. She flexed her arms and tugged at the sliding door, pulling this way and that, easing upwards and downwards. It did not move.

‘Try the hatch, pull on the hatch!’ The voice was becoming hoarse.

Albina tried the hatch.

‘It’s stuck! You’ve slammed it too hard, cuckoo!’ She heaved on the little plastic handles once more. One snapped like a dry wishbone. She closed her eyes and wished.

‘Ay-ayayah!’ the voice inside the kitchen moaned. Albina backed away, pressing her shoulders to the window. She heard the wind moan and the trees rustle, leaves fluttering on the breeze.

There was a yell of pain, a thump of feet on floor and a crash as the girl came smashing through the hatch head-first, splitting the wood as she sprang, arcing in the air before Albina’s eyes like a salmon going upstream. Her graceful flight was halted as she hit the back of the sofa. The crunch sent a shiver down Albina’s spine. Polly fell limp to the floor.

‘Phewee,’ muttered Albina, tucking the headdress’ beads behind her ear as she bent down.

‘Olga?’ she whispered, prodding the girl with her toe. ‘Cuckoo?’

She was out cold, or dead, Albina was not sure which. She reached shaking fingers into the girl’s right trouser pocket and was relieved to feel a metal key ring. She pulled gently. Freedom was hers. She tiptoed to the front door.

As she raised the key to the lock she heard a noise. Another key was turning in the lock, retracting the bolts. She stumbled back, her mind flicking through versions of what could be on the other side. None of them were good. With seconds to prepare, she turned off the light, flexed her fists and braced her legs: a good stance might help. She would go in low, try to knock her opponent to the floor, and roll them over using their own momentum. Her heart beat loud in her chest as she waited, terrified, and licked her lips.

‘Is this the quickest way to Rostov? Are you sure?’ Sveta’s eyes roved the window, trying to make out the lights of the city. All she saw were murky fields, thickets of trees, the occasional concrete shelter and desultory roadside kiosk. The light was almost gone. The anxiety that she’d worked so hard to keep in check now wormed through her body.

‘Sveta, believe me, I have tried every route to the city, and this is the quickest, especially for this time of day, and the prevailing weather conditions.’

‘And you’re sure you remember where the apartment is?’ Her fingers felt into the crevices around her lips as she spoke, muffling the words. She could taste fear on her tongue.

‘Yes. I have been there many times. Unless they have moved the street into the air and yanked it down somewhere else, I know where it is.’ He nodded and drove on at a steady forty kilometres per hour.

‘You’re always very sensible Gor.’ Sveta was irritated by his calm.

‘Ha!’

‘Don’t you get tired of being so sensible?’

He picked up the acid in her words. ‘I am no automaton, Sveta, as you know. I feel the same as everyone else. The events of this week are grinding my soul, believe me. But at the moment, I am trying to help in the way I can, and that is by driving the car safely, so we arrive at our destination and don’t spill off the road.’

Sveta nodded, but her stomach churned. ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s my nerves.’ She fiddled with her handkerchief, pulling threads from a seam. ‘So, what’s the plan?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Plan?’ Gor’s face was grim.

She gave him a sideways glance. ‘What’s our approach to be? Good cop, bad cop?’ She spoke through stiff lips. ‘Or both bad?’

‘I think we have to go up there and demand Albina’s return.’

‘But what if she won’t open the door? My goodness, we have no plan!’ Sveta’s voice rose. ‘She will check, won’t she, and see it’s us. Unless you pretend you’ve brought the gold?’

‘She will want to see it. We could say it is in the bank, and she must come with us to get it?’

‘She won’t do that. We need a way of guaranteeing she will open the door. Maybe we can get a neighbour to call on her… I don’t know, we tell them it’s a surprise visit or something, so could they please just check that she’s at home…’

Gor’s mouth was pulled into a grimace and he raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, I don’t know! Don’t look at me like that! I think it is a reasonable plan.’

‘Yes, it is an idea, Sveta. Or maybe, for simplicity’s sake, I should fetch the axe from the boot and simply break down the door, if she doesn’t answer?’

‘Ah! Now, that’s a superb idea!’ Sveta beamed. ‘Yes, I think that’s the one.’

‘Agreed.’

She wiped condensation from the window with her woolly hat, smearing it to a mess of streaks and fibres. ‘Is it far now, Gor?’

‘Far enough. Try not to worry.’

‘Try not to worry, he says!’ Sveta smeared imaginary lipstick marks from the corners of her mouth, and set her jaw.

Beyond the windows, the inky clouds parted and the sun smudged the horizon like blood.

‘Take my mind off this interminable journey, Gor. Tell me something of your cousin, if it’s not too painful?’ She turned to him in her seat.

‘Well—’ He swerved to avoid a black truck chugging down the middle of the road towards them, and his eyebrows twitched. ‘We were close, when we were very small, living out in Siberia.’

‘A long way away…’

‘I looked out for him. I wasn’t much older, but I was taller, bigger… I hesitate to say cleverer, but it was the case. He was… he was a character, even then: funny, cheeky, silly. He lived with his baba, and his father stayed there some of the time… when he was sober. I’m afraid he was a difficult man. His mother, my aunt, was already dead. I don’t remember her at all.’

Sveta nodded. ‘And?’

‘He was always… eccentric. He could be in the room with you, but not be aware of you. His imagination was very strong. He loved to draw, and he drew stories. He always wanted stories. And he believed the stories told to him. If you said “Tolya, there’s a witch in your yard!” he would jump and turn to look, would always believe you. Those big round eyes of his…’

‘Innocent?’

‘Yes, no – more than that. I’d call it gullible: too willing to believe – in anything at all. A bit of a… fool. The boys at school – me included – told him about this local legend, a monster living in the forest: moth boy, we called him. All so much nonsense…’

‘Oh yes, you mentioned moth boy this afternoon. And?’ Sveta frowned.

‘It was an old story. We embellished it, updated it, as children do. We told Tolya this moth boy tapped on the windows at night, trying to get in. We told him about cold, dead eyes and fluttering wings. He took it to heart and… and we encouraged his belief. Because we could laugh at it. We… were cruel.’