Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)

by JC Andrijeski

  He cannot feel his wings.

  He stares at his hands, gasping for breath, gasping in pain.

  They look like meat... like something dead.

  They don’t belong to him.

  He fights to feel his wings, to flap his wings, to bring them around himself for warmth...

  For he realizes he is cold. He is horribly, mind-shatteringly cold.

  But they are gone. His wings are gone.

  He is alone.

  No other presences live inside him––perhaps for the first time. No other beings whisper in his mind, warm his thoughts. He feels none of his family’s light. He feels...

  Nothing.

  He is lost in that nothingness, terrified by it.

  He gasps out, paralyzed with the differences, which are now too many to count, too many to catalogue with his slower-moving mind. He stares up at a shocking, pale-blue sky, so high and cloudless he can’t wrap his mind around that either. Everything hurts, but that wash of ice blue, it shocks him with its beauty, nearly brings him to tears. His feelings are muted and lost behind what feels like a pane of glass, he is alone but cannot comprehend how heavy and weighted he feels, how surrounded and claustrophobic and trapped. His wings are gone.

  He is bound in meat.

  Yet still, there is beauty.

  He recognizes these feelings in glimpses and touches––but only because he’s felt the same on human beings a few million times before. He has felt with them and sympathized with them––without really comprehending them at all. This heaviness lived in humans he communicated with, humans he shared himself with and tried to help...

  But not like now.

  He’s never felt it like he does now.

  It is like being chained to the Earth by iron and water.

  He hears voices suddenly and they are loud, painfully loud... shrill. He feels nothing at all from the beings making those sounds. He knows nothing of their minds or hearts. He cannot connect to them, or do anything to soften what he hears them shouting above. He does not know their intent. He cannot discern their motives, so he fears them.

  That fear washes over him like a physical force.

  Again, the simple intensity of that experience paralyzes him.

  “How did this idiot get here?” one slurs.

  The voice sounds drunk, bored, but he is also nearly shouting. Raguel cannot discern anything it truly feels. The words are painfully loud to his virgin ears, deafening in their indifference to him.

  “...Did you see where he took off his clothes? Where are they?”

  “No.” Tension vibrates the second voice. Is it excitement? Fear? Disgust? Raguel cannot tell. “He is only here, like now... naked. Look at how white he is! He is like snow! Do you think he is sick...? Some kind of mutant? An albino?”

  A third voice holds humor, a stronger slur of alcohol. “Who cares?”

  A fourth voice speaks up––excited, jabbering. Too excited.

  “Did you see that? Did you see it? This guy... he is just here suddenly! Like, poof! He appears out of nowhere! Then he is lying there like that, looking like demons scratch at his eyes... like something tore his lungs out!”

  Raguel flinches at the mention of demons. When he looks around though, he sees nothing, feels nothing, good or bad.

  If demons are there, they are invisible to him.

  The voice grows more shrill, more excited. “I swear it! I saw it with my own eyes! It was magic that brought him here! Magic! Did no one else SEE that?”

  Another man laughs, and it is a cold laugh. Disconnected.

  “Been drinking turpentine again, Dmitri?” he scoffs.

  “No! I swear upon my heart I saw it! I did! I saw it!”

  Raguel is still trying to feel his way through this world. But there is no way to do it, not in this form. He is blind deaf and dumb––lost inside this suit of meat and chained to the earth.

  He hears something, loud, coming out of his chest.

  It pounds into him, slamming into bone and flesh and blood.

  “Look at him!” the first one slurs. A face looms over Raguel, red and puffy and wrapped partway in a scarf. “What is wrong with this fool? He is scared out of his mind!”

  That thing in Raguel pounds harder.

  Whatever that thing is, it hurts.

  The pain is something new as well, new as the cold snow on his bare skin, the shocking blue of the sky, the heaviness of his arms and hands and the loud voices from people whose faces look blurred to him, and who he can’t feel with any part of his mind or spirit.

  His wings are gone.

  Suddenly, he understands. It is his heart, he realizes.

  That thing that hurts inside his chest is his heart.

  Something in that simple realization breaks the dream.

  Lying on the frozen wet ground, staring up at a high, winter sky, his skin burning from the first cold he’s ever felt––

  Raguel begins to scream.

  ILANA

  ILANA KOPOVICH FROWNED, staring over her shoulder at the grinning officer standing behind her. He clearly wasn’t CID, or Moscow Criminal Investigations. Militsiya, sure, but she pegged him for patrol, possibly mounted police.

  Which made her wonder what he was doing in this part of the building at all.

  He had walked up behind her while she bent over the borrowed desk she’d been temporarily assigned at Petrovka 38, the main building of the city’s militia. From the way he grinned, staring openly at her ass as she turned around, she could only guess this man had no idea who she was.

  Not only in terms of her undercover role––none of the regular law enforcement officers should be aware she worked for the KGB. No, he clearly had not heard even who she was officially, meaning the title she passed as her general cover.

  Only a complete jackass would leer at an official of the Party like this. Particularly a high-ranked official here to assess the political ramifications of a gruesome crime committed virtually on the front door of the Kremlin.

  Of course, this hungover-looking country boy with the scraggly beard and the bad body odor might be just such a jackass.

  In Ilana’s experience, they definitely existed.

  She strongly suspected he did not know her alias, however. He must think she was militsiya too, and assumed she held a lower rank than he, that she worked in social services or some other clerical capacity, like most women in the Moscow police.

  Either way, his eyes raked down her like she was some woman on the street he wanted to pay for sex. He blew on his hands without taking his eyes off her figure, stamping mud off his feet from a late winter storm.

  Ilana frowned, glancing down at the water he’d left on the floor.

  He grinned wider when her eyes flickered back up. That idiot smile didn’t waver even when her frown deepened at the slowness of his answer to her question.

  “He asked for me?” she repeated, trying to get a response out of him again. She was unable to keep the puzzlement out of her voice. “Some drunk fool you found naked in Gorky Park knew me by name? He knew I was here, at the police station?”

  “Da. He definitely knows you.” The uniformed officer spoke humorously, grinning wider, before he seemed to see something in her face and think better of whatever he’d been about to say. “...He asks for comrade Ilana Kopovich. That is you, da? He wishes to speak to you. He knew your name, where you live, that you are a Party Officer in Special Projects.” The smile crept out a tiny bit more. “...He knows other things too, comrade. That you are divorced. Your clothing size. A birth mark ‘like Japanese islands’ on your right leg...”

  He traced the location on his own thigh with thick fingers, winking at her.

  She gaped, blinking at him in surprise.

  Passing deliberately over the birthmark thing, she frowned deeper.

  So this bearded moron did know who she was. He simply thought the fact that he could imagine her naked gave him the right to talk to her like a prostitute. Shoving that aside in some
irritation, she focused back on what he’d actually told her.

  They’d picked up some drunk lunatic in the park who asked for her by name.

  Whoever that lunatic was, he’d called her a “Party Officer in Special Projects.”

  That was language sometimes used internally to reference her connection to the KGB. Ilana’s stated position was as a Communist Party officer for the Politburo, here to assess any political ramifications of the child murders. She did not come here as a KGB investigator, not officially. The KGB had grown increasingly aware of the corruption worsening throughout different levels of the militsiya. Even more than before, KGB agents sometimes used someone like Ilana versus going openly to the police and announcing who they were.

  Often, they did both.

  In other words, using that “Special Projects” language was dangerous. Someone smarter than this idiot might know what it actually meant.

  “He knows where I live?” she said after a pause. “Your Gorky Park drunk?”

  The man nodded, once more blowing on his hands. “He rattles off your address like it belongs to his mother, comrade.” Hesitating, he added more deferentially, “...Comrade Officer Kopovich.”

  It had to be Uri, her ex.

  Her fingers tightened into fists at her sides. The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was no other explanation. How drunk would he have to be though, to end up naked in Gorky Park in February? Babbling about “Special Projects” for the Party?

  But yes, given the details he’d known about her, it was the only thing that made sense.

  It troubled her that Uri had somehow learned of her role as KGB. It could only be new knowledge for him, since he hadn’t known of her KGB role while they were married. He certainly hadn’t gotten the information from Ilana herself.

  Anyway, she knew Uri. He wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Especially not during some of their drag-down fights.

  If he didn’t learn silence, he would disappear for real one of these days.

  Sighing, she combed fingers through her long, dirty-blond hair, then shouldered on her wool coat. She checked her pocket for keys, looped her purse over one shoulder, then gathered up the copies of files she’d just procured from the lead homicide detective’s desk. She’d asked for and received copies of everything they had procured so far on the psychopathic child-murderer, Golunksy, including the tapes from the interviews she’d just witnessed.

  The detective seemed annoyed with her for asking, but he hadn’t argued. Truthfully, he’d been acting strangely towards her since the interview with Golunsky, and she had no idea why.

  Perhaps it was Golunsky’s jab about the detective raping her?

  Somehow, Ilana got the feeling it was something else, though.

  She would have liked to ask him about it, or at least talk to him to see if she could discern the problem herself, but he’d disappeared not long after the interview ended.

  Sighing as she shoved that out of her mind for now, she looked back at the militsiya officer.

  “Lead on, comrade,” she said to the bearded policeman.

  She would need to do damage control on the Uri thing first. Which likely meant going to Party headquarters and talking to Karkoff, her superior officer. The thought annoyed her in terms of wasted time, but did not worry her particularly.

  Karkoff would be reasonable.

  He would let Ilana try to handle Uri herself. The first time, at least.

  But she had to tell him.

  She’d already planned to take the criminal investigation materials off-site, to peruse them in more detail before she handed those off to Karkoff as well, along with her recommendations on how to proceed. She’d intended to take them back home where she could pore over the details and drink decent coffee––eventually make herself lunch.

  Regardless of the Uri thing, and Karkoff himself, she needed to come up with a strategy on how to roll the murders up the ladder. That included making a decision as to whether she thought KGB should be conducting their own parallel investigation alongside that by the Criminal Investigations Department or CID.

  Ilana had her doubts as to whether the child-murderer Golunsky harbored any motives that were political, whatever his reasons for leaving the bodies in Red Square. That didn’t mean he didn’t have other motives, however––beyond simply being crazy and degenerate. It also didn’t mean he wasn’t working with other people. Something definitely felt off in his capture.

  Something felt off regarding a number of details around this case.

  Anyway, in the Soviet Union, everything was politics.

  The Party could be incredibly touchy these days. Ever since things had gotten more heated again in their “cold” war with the United States, some in the Kremlin saw foreign enemies everywhere. They could also be touchy when it came to motive-less, psychosis-based murders, if only for reasons of public relations. They would want the crime solved fast, but they would also be eager to point the blame elsewhere. Meaning outside of Moscow itself.

  Which meant she would have to handle this thing with care.

  If not, the whole investigation might get derailed––or worse, turn into a witch hunt with the Party leaders insisting it was outside agitators or American spies. They might decide Golunsky was just a patsy for some group of dissidents or foreign terrorists.

  That was especially true now, with increasing murmurs around General Secretary Chernenko’s health deteriorating. Many said he would need to be replaced soon, now that he lived at the hospital pretty much full time.

  Ilana normally avoided such discussions, even in the abstract.

  Still, she was not deaf, dumb and blind.

  Moreover, to work in the KGB, one had to be mindful of political currents. And whatever the exact truth of these rumors about General Secretary Chernenko and his health, she knew now was not a good time to publicize murders of this kind. The Western media in particular would enjoy the story a little too much––and the Party normally got good press off the seemingly endless parade of psychopathic killers produced by the capitalistic United States.

  Perhaps she could convince her superiors to prosecute Golunsky publicly as a foreigner, but stress his insanity rather than politics. For he clearly was insane, and from his papers she knew he was Polish by birth. They might be able to stretch that, say he was raised too far from the loving arms of Russia, that he was an insurgent and a loner and a lunatic.

  Political maneuverings of this kind did not interest Ilana really. She got no joy out of making this look like something it was not. But she was also a pragmatist. To her, the issue was how to get Golunsky behind bars. Or possibly shot.

  She could not let this monster back out on the streets to murder more innocent babies.

  That being said, to sell Golunsky as a crazed Polish malcontent contained its own set of problems. There were those in the hierarchy who would want to commit resources to that angle, to follow this “evidence of terrorism” to its source. Like any political body, the Kremlin was not devoid of opportunists who would try to use this story for their own ends.

  Nor, sadly, was it entirely devoid of idiots who would believe it and panic.

  Sighing as she thought about the challenges she would face in selling this thing––no matter which direction she chose––she found her irritation at her ex-husband worsening.

  She followed the uniformed officer through a maze of hallways leading down into the station’s cluster of temporary holding cells. Neither of them spoke. They only paused briefly while she showed her badge to the guard watching over the cell block when prompted, nodding to him when he smiled before following the cop, or “ment” silently inside.

  When they entered the cement block area that housed the general population, Ilana found herself faced with a row of iron-barred segments. Most contained dirty, tattooed men smoking unfiltered cheap Russian cigarettes, their hands resting on the edges of the bars as they watched her and the cop enter. A few catcalled when they notice
d her sex in the wool overcoat, and nearly all of them winked and spoke to her as she passed.

  She did not spare them a glance.

  Following the ment down the right-hand corridor, her mind remained full of Uri and what she would possibly say to him, given his likely condition.

  When she reached the cell at the far end of the row, however, and followed the gesturing hand of the young militia officer, she stopped in her tracks.

  It was not Uri who stared back at her from inside that cell.

  Instead she found herself looking at a man she had never before seen in her life.

  RAGUEL

  HIS LOOKS MIGHT have stopped Ilana in her tracks all on their own, truthfully.

  He was beautiful, this man.

  Uri was very attractive too, of course––handsome enough that he got stares on the street when they’d still been together. Handsome enough to be annoying with it at times, truthfully, despite his own jealous rages about her and any man she so much as smiled at. Tall, dark-haired, with a booming laugh, dark brown eyes, a strong jaw, Uri looked like a model in Western clothing advertisements.

  She’d found Uri unbelievably sexy when they first met in school.

  But this man in the Moscow holding cell was a different kind of beauty altogether.

  He almost didn’t look real to Ilana. If Uri made her think of a clothing model, this man looked more like a stone statue, something created wholly from an artist’s mind and hands and chisel. His beauty bordered on otherworldly.

  He looked up at her face when they approached his cage, ignoring the officer with her.

  His gray eyes shone faintly under the florescent overheads, contrasting strangely with his streaked, white-blond hair. His hair itself didn’t look real either––it had odd lines of black and dark gray woven into that white color, and while it couldn’t possibly be natural, she found herself thinking that it didn’t look dyed, either.

  Something about his beauty also appeared ageless.

  Ilana found she couldn’t pinpoint an age for him at all, even though she tried––postulating several possibilities from mid-twenties all the way up to his forties depending on how she looked at him. His face was entirely unlined, but somehow it wasn’t a young face, in spite of that.