Haunted

by Joy Preble

  Tess is quiet for a moment. This unnerves me almost more than the rest of it. In my thankfully limited experience, Tess has never been quiet.

  She looks at me, her expression intense. “Ethan—what made Ben jump into the pool?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to try to find out.”

  Tess pokes a finger at me again. “I’m holding you to that.” Her voice lowers to almost a whisper. “She feels responsible, you know. For Anastasia’s death. Probably for that rotten Viktor, too. That’s what I think, anyway. I guess that might not be worth much to you, it being my opinion and all. But that’s how I see it. And now this thing with Ben is going to make it all worse.”

  She places her hands on her hips and seems to wait for me to disagree with her. My jeans and T-shirt continue to drip pool water.

  “So that shadow woman,” Tess asks. “What exactly is it that you thought you saw?”

  The answer rises from me quickly. Like the tales of Baba Yaga that I’d once thought were just stories, another tale comes to mind: one that the women in my village had told when our neighbor’s nineteen-year-old daughter had drowned in the river a few days after her lover had died of influenza. She was pregnant, and he had promised to marry her, and then suddenly, he was gone. She grieved and grieved, and then one day, her father found her floating, her hair wild around her in the water.

  “Rusalka,” I say. “Russian mermaid.”

  “Ru-what? Don’t just say that like I’m supposed to know what you’re talking about. Mermaid? Like Ariel in that Disney movie?”

  I smile in spite of myself. “More malevolent. Less cheery singing. Definitely less cheery outcome. Women who’ve been wronged. Sometimes murdered. Always near a body of water. They transform sometimes. That’s how the legends go. They become this other thing—this water creature. In some stories, they find release. In others, it’s more—um, permanent. But I’ve—well, I’ve seen things. They’re real. Rusalkas exist.”

  “Terrific. You know it might be easier if you made us a list, Ethan. You know—crazy Russian folklore shit that’s going to appear, freak us all out, and try to kill someone’s boyfriend. That kind of thing.”

  “I’ll consider that. So he really is her boyfriend?”

  Tess raises an eyebrow. “Yup. So this mermaid thing—is it dangerous?”

  My silence is my answer. It’s broken by the sound of sirens. Someone’s called an ambulance or the fire department.

  “Ben has been really good for her,” Tess says. “So while you’re screwing things up again, you remember that.”

  “I’m here to help. That’s why I came back.” It sounds as foolish coming out of my mouth as it did in my head before I said it.

  Tess laughs. “Right,” she says. “So start helping.”

  THE FOREST, EARLY AFTERNOON

  BABA YAGA

  Through the skull in my fireplace, I watch Anne. The one who is mine but not mine. The one who is not gone from me. I had not known what losing Anastasia would feel like: the pain of it; the wrenching bitterness.

  The loss of that one girl has weakened me. Changed me. I had not known that I could be other than I was. But I have learned that there are things beyond what even I know.

  Maiden. Mother. Crone. These are what I am. What I have been. Goddess, but more than goddess. And now—something else. The emptiness of it creeps into me, worms its way deep inside and holds fast, even as I struggle to shake it loose.

  “Ben.” Anne hugs the boy on the ground tightly in her arms. “Oh, Ben. I was so afraid.”

  “Me too,” he tells her. “I don’t understand what happened. I saw her, Anne. I saw her. You did too, didn’t you? Tell me I wasn’t seeing things.”

  She does not answer, only pulls him even tighter, and her thoughts float out to me as mine sometimes float to her. She feels responsible for what happened. For what might have happened. This much I can see. Does she love this boy whose life almost disappeared in front of her eyes? I believe she wants to. But Ethan is back. Love does not always obey logic. It is as I am—impossible to predict. It can empower as much as it can destroy. It can hull us empty, or it can fill us with great joy. But we cannot know which is our destiny. Not even I can know for sure.

  I lean closer to my fire and try to warm myself. I study the face of the man who has been my prisoner—the one who offered himself in place of my other girl. My Anastasia. He let her free. Does he know that she chose death? I have told him, but he is quite stunningly mad these days, and so I do not know if he has heard me.

  “Mother,” he whispers to me. “Baba Yaga.” And sometimes, when the madness digs deeper, “Darling.”

  When Anastasia was in the hut, things were different. She swept and brought me sweet tea and pretended not to understand what I was. In her bed, she hid the doll that her mother had given her, the one that spoke to her. She believed that it protected her, and I let her have this thought. Perhaps it was even true sometimes. Like love, magic is a strange and mercurial thing. Its strength comes from the object and the user, but also from the giver. Anastasia’s mother gave her that doll, and so the wishes and dreams and hopes she had for her daughter came with it. Potent magic. More powerful than this man who now shares my hut could ever believe. I could make him believe, of course, but I see no need. The truth would not set him free.

  “Yaga,” he calls to me. It is my name, and names have power. Viktor knows this. He knows many things. But he has never known what I truly am.

  Had he come to me like Anastasia, when the magic was at its height, when I was compelled to take a girl against her truest will, as well as mine, things might not have gone so badly for him. Anastasia suffered here, but she did not age. That magic has not been so kind to Brother Viktor.

  I look at his face now, and I laugh. Time—as always—follows its own rules here in my hut. Once, long, long ago—so distant that I can barely see it now—I was human. Or at least, closer to human than I am now; than I have been for a very, very long time. I ran through meadows, wove flowers through my hair, felt the earth’s power beneath me. I was beautiful then. My hair flowed long and thick. My eyes were bright, my hands small and smooth, my body young and firm and strong. And I thought I would be young forever.

  When he offered himself to me—a Romanov in blood but not in heart—Viktor too looked different than the man I see now, crouched by the fire, his hair matted, his eyes rheumy, his face lined so deeply that were there a mirror in the hut, he would scream if he saw himself. But there is not. Still, he runs his hands over his face. I know he feels the change, and I know it frightens him. And in those moments, I feel a bitter kind of pleasure.

  “Yaga,” he says to me now. “My dear Yaga. What will we do today?”

  Because the possibilities are many, I ponder this. And because I can, I concentrate, feel the power surge inside me as my right hand releases, drops heavily to the wooden floor of the hut, then crawls—huge and brown and wrinkled—on its finger tips to this man whose gaze skitters from the fire to the hand to my face.

  “No,” he says softly.

  But I do not listen. Instead, I smile as my hand strokes his hair. I see him shudder. I concentrate and move the hand to his cheek, run one finger across those deep grooves. He bites his tongue so he will not scream, and somehow, in my own mouth, I taste the copper tang of it.

  “If I find a way to let you go,” I say, “what will you do?”

  For a moment, my hand still on his cheek, his gaze clears. He was, after all, a powerful magician. Not as powerful as I am. Certainly not as powerful as those whose magic resides in me: The Old Ones. The ones who came before. The ones who changed me, who made me what I am now.

  “If you don’t let me go, what will become of you, Yaga?”

  The question lies between us. My hand moves from his cheek, slithers over his shoulder and down his back, scuttles back across the smooth wooden floor and up my dress, and reattaches itself to my body. My arm tingles, tiny prickles of sensation. In the fireplac
e, the skull gleams brighter, its bleached bones almost sparkling. In its eyes, Anne strokes the hair of the fragile mortal called Ben. Ethan watches them, his blue eyes missing nothing. His heart, I fear, is missing everything. And deep in the water, so deep that none of them can see her, the rusalka swims and smiles. I know she is there. I just am not sure what she wants—or what she will do to get it.

  Here in my hut, I know that if I do not free this man I’ve held captive, his presence will weaken me further. He is a Romanov, yes. But he is not the Romanov who is supposed to be here. That one is dead—or if not dead, not here nevertheless, and that is all the same to me. It is not his magic that weakens me. It is my own. The Crone’s magic. Virgin. Mother. Hag. The girl awakened my middle nature. Mother. And it was that which almost destroyed me. The grief of giving her up clawed at my insides. Burned me from within.

  I do not harbor those feelings for Viktor. Only rage—hot and red, or sometimes black as night, an oily rage that slicks about the hut like a presence. I cannot kill him, and I cannot love him. He is linked by blood to my two girls, Anastasia and Anne, and blood is powerful. The first night he was with me, I dreamed of slaughtering him where he lay, cowering and whimpering like a mewling infant, the smell of fear so strong on him that I could almost see it rising in waves. I hated that I had taken him, that he lay on Anastasia’s bed, clutching at the red and blue cotton quilt she had used, that his skin touched something that had touched hers. Impossible.

  That first night, I rose from my chair, fetched a knife from the table. I would not send my hands alone to do this business. I would do it with a whole body. This man had tricked the tsar’s youngest daughter, had tried to kill Anne. What kind of man uses a seventeen-year-old girl for his own power? What kind of man tries to kill another innocent girl to keep that power? I raised the knife. I felt only calm. Only peace.

  Viktor watched me. He was in his prime still. The youth he’d killed for had not yet abandoned him. If there was fear in his eyes, I couldn’t find it. “Can you do it, Yaga?” he asked me. His tone was even. His breathing calm. “If you want to kill me, then kill me. Don’t toy with me. We are old friends, you and I. Perhaps it is only fitting that you are the one to do it.”

  I didn’t believe him, of course. Some men are willing to die for what they believe in. Viktor believed in nothing but himself. And men like that don’t court death. Even ones like Viktor, able to trick me into doing his bidding. Able to compel me to save a girl who in the end, wanted only to die.

  I had thought that nothing more could surprise me. But I was wrong. I am the Death Crone, but I am more than that. And in that moment, perhaps because I sensed he wanted me to choose death, I chose to keep it from him. I set the knife on the table. I let Viktor live.

  But that kindness has weakened me. I am, after all, not human anymore. I gave that up a long, long time ago. The price was steep, but I did not understand that then. Now, like my hut, I obey a different set of rules. The Crone in me understands, but the mother and maiden suffer when I destroy. It is a precarious balance, harder and harder to manage with each passing day.

  We talk about this sometimes, Anne and I. At night she comes to me, a dream but not a dream. Real enough for both of us. We walk in my forest, and we talk. I try not to frighten her, but it is my way, and thus impossible to avoid. We speak of magic and life, of love and loss. Of the things that foolish girls do. She does not ask to see Viktor. And I do not offer. Sometimes, I catch her thinking about Ethan. Sometimes, I catch her grieving. She has much to grieve. I invite her to drink of the stream near my hut. So far, she has declined.

  And now there is the rusalka. Once more, forces are ready to collide—just as they were when the time came for Anne to claim her power and free Anastasia. I know this in my deepest self. I wait for it. But I fear it, and this is strange because I have conquered fear.

  At my feet, Viktor smiles. The madness has returned. In the skull in the fireplace, Anne strokes Ben’s hair. Ethan talks to the one called Tess, the one whose friendship shines like diamonds.

  “Come to me,” I tell my captive.

  Still smiling, he does as I command.

  THURSDAY, 3:33 pm

  ANNE

  My head aches. Ben almost drowned. Ben almost drowned, and Ethan is back, and whatever this thing is that keeps following me around has finally figured out a way to keep me from ignoring it. It’s talking to me. Ethan could hear it, and it tried to grab Ben. I don’t know why it let him go, and I don’t know what it wants from me. I only know that I’ve been pretending for months that none of this is happening, but now I can’t pretend anymore.

  “Let me take you to the hospital,” I tell Ben over and over. It’s all I can think to say. I would drive him to the hospital, and they’d check him out. They’d tell me that he was okay, and then maybe I could forget the rest of it. Only he won’t go—even though the paramedics came in the ambulance because someone had dialed 911 while we were pulling Ben out of the water.

  “I’m fine.” He raises his hands in a stopping motion. “God, Anne. Calm down. It was weird, but I’m fine. I mean, it’s not like it’s your fault. Why the hell did you jump in there anyway? Carter had my back.” Carter is the other guard on duty. “He knows what to do. Shit, Anne. You’re not even that good of a swimmer. Why would you do that? Plus, what’s the deal with your friend? Not that I didn’t appreciate it, but what the hell? He dives in fully clothed? Who is this guy, anyway? He looks sort of familiar. Did he go to Kennedy last year or something? It’s like I’ve seen him, but I don’t know where.”

  “Ethan. His name is Ethan. He’s a friend of our family.” It sounds just as lame the second time as it did the first. But what else am I supposed to say? Yeah, Ben, you’re right. I’m a big fat liar. You probably did see him last fall—right before the crazy witch chased us both out of the courtyard and my life turned upside down. Only for some reason, almost everyone seems to have blocked all that out. Like it’s just too hard to believe, so you don’t.

  We’re standing in the little lifeguard office near the entrance to the pool. Ben had closed the door, but I can hear the muffled sound of Carter talking to someone outside—maybe one of the paramedics because they haven’t driven away yet.

  “Anne.” Ben’s voice is low and serious-sounding. He pulls me to him. He’d put on his white Aqua Creek T-shirt, but I’m still just in my swimsuit, and I can feel the familiar warmth of him, which makes me happy. He’d been so cold when we’d dragged him from the pool. His damp hair smells of chlorine.

  Suddenly, I feel like crying, and because I’m not sure why, I tip my head up and kiss Ben on the mouth. Kissing Ben always makes me feel safe—just me and Ben together, as close as possible. Everything focuses on just that, and I stop feeling like the world is caving in around me because of huge scary stuff I can’t control. I feel safe. I feel normal.

  “You feel amazing.” Ben’s hands are in my hair then, and on my skin, and our tongues are tangled together. You almost died, I keep thinking. You almost died, and somehow, it was my fault. I’m pretty sure this is not what Ben wants me to contemplate while he’s slipping his hand under the top of my bikini and I’m letting him—in fact, encouraging him. This is the problem with being me. I could let Ben feel me up all day long, but it’s not going to change the fact that a Russian mermaid almost killed him. Telling Ben the truth isn’t going to happen anytime soon either.

  Ben’s hand wanders in the other direction, flicks around my bikini bottom. I flick it away. It wanders back.

  Two things occur to me. One is that if I don’t object a little more obviously—correction, if I don’t object even subtly—I’m about to have guilt sex with my boyfriend on the fake wood desk in the Aqua Creek office and possibly end up with lifeguard applications plastered to my back. The other is that even while Ben’s hands are exploring all sorts of interesting places, and even while I’m still freaking out mightily about the whole mermaid thing, I’m still thinking about Ethan.

 
This is definitely one wild swing of emotions, even for me.

  “Not here, Ben.”

  Ben seems to feel that here is just fine.

  “Seriously, Ben. There are people out there.”

  “And we’re in here.”

  I swat his hands away a couple more times, and he finally gets the message, which is a relief, since I might still be terrified, but I’m not stupid.

  “Let me drive you home,” I insist. “They’re closing the pool for the afternoon, Ben. That’s what Carter told you, remember? So let me drive you home before I go to work. Please, Ben?”

  Ben is quiet then, but he blows out a breath, and I take it as a yes.

  Ethan and Tess are standing by my car. They look like they’ve been arguing. This doesn’t surprise me. Someone—Carter, probably—had given Ethan dry shorts and a T-shirt to replace his soaked clothes. I try not to notice how low the shorts hang on his hips. I fail.

  Tess all but leaps on me. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Gotta take Ben home.”

  “I’ll call you.” This comes from Ethan. Ben tightens his grip on my hand, and I see him frown.

  I tell Tess I’ll talk to her later. On the positive side, no Russian mermaids float into view—although that possibly might have cut the tension between Ben, Ethan, and me. Possibly not.

  “Why does he need to call you?” Ben frowns again as he settles into the passenger seat of the Jetta that I’d gotten for my seventeenth birthday.

  “Don’t know. It’s no big deal, Ben.” Except clearly, it is.

  Ben’s tone gets a little edgier. “So you’re sure there’s nothing else I should know about this? He seems sort of shady.”

  My lips twitch back a laugh. Of all the adjectives I’d use to describe Ethan, shady probably isn’t one of them. Ben’s brow furrows. He scowls at me.