“The Captain decided he had to go ashore to find help, or at least try to contact someone to let them know we were having trouble. He took one man with him, Vanko. The rest of us were to stay behind and wait.
“When we awoke the next morning a heavy fog had set in. I’ve never seen another like it. It was an entity unto itself, so heavy and with such a presence—not a good one, something malevolent, spine prickling. I swear you could feel something hiding in that fog, waiting. The afternoon came and went and it became clear the Captain was not returning. We could not raise him on the radio either. We knew we had to send a scouting party ashore. I volunteered to go because staying on the ship in that fog was making me crazy.
“The entire island was blanketed with the fog and it muffled everything. I cannot explain how spooky it was scrambling over those rocks onto the land, wondering where the village was and why we couldn’t even get static on the radio from our Captain. It’s amazing that none of us drowned that day, as the fog made the land indistinguishable from the sea. Nothing felt solid, not even the rocks. The island was very hilly, and the cliffs suicidal. We were fortunate not to lose anyone, though later we thought it might have been a blessing to simply fall off a hill to certain death.
“It was late, near nightfall, when we came across the hut. There was just one wee light, but the fog was starting to clear off and it seemed as bright as a bonfire on a hilltop, we were that relieved to see it. It was a fisherman’s hut, but no one in our crew spoke the Faroese dialect so communication was limited.
“Vanko was there, sitting in a corner, staring off into space as though he saw something the rest of us could not. We gathered that the fisherman had found him lying amongst the rocks on the shore when he had been down to check if the storm was abating. As best we could determine, Vanko had been in this state since the fisherman found him, almost catatonic, but able to move if guided. Of the Captain, however, there was no sign.”
Shura paused and took a breath, and Jamie felt a shiver of prescience pass down his spine.
“We found the Captain on our way back to the ship. He was lying on the rocks where we had tied up the rowboat that brought us to shore. Understand, there is no way we could have missed him even in the fog, so we knew he could not have been there when we arrived. His body…well, it is best to say little, only that sailors usually have strong stomachs and there were many puking their guts out on that shore. I do not know what manner of beast does such things, but I do not care to find out either.
“There was nothing to do but head back to the ship. If Vanko knew what had happened to the Captain, he wasn’t saying, because he was no longer saying anything. We took him back to the ship, along with the Captain’s body in a canvas bag. We had to sail, and hope that the ship would make it to Russia in one piece. We would limp into port, but at least our engineer had managed to effect repairs enough that we were seaworthy. No one wanted to stay on that island. We would rather risk sinking.
“Vanko had always been a very happy sort who could drink most of us under the table. He was Ukrainian and had the prosaic good nature of his race. But after that night on the island, he was changed. It was as though he had brought something back with him, something dark and terrible. He was a big man, used to his meals being regular, but after that night he barely ate, he never slept and he wouldn’t speak about what was ailing him. We gave him medicine and he would fall asleep but wake up screaming and raving. It seemed to do him more harm than good, and after a bit he refused to take anything. He was terrified of falling asleep, said something was waiting for him in his dreams. Three days after we left the islands he was running a terrible fever and raving like a lunatic. I was the one who stayed with him in the infirmary. I could make no sense of anything he said, but I was frightened nevertheless. We had to put him in restraints because we were afraid he would harm himself.
“On the fourth day, somehow he got free. I was out on deck when it happened. He came running like a wildman, his wrists all bloody and raw. I don’t know how he managed to get the restraints off, but it had to have been very painful and difficult. I am sure he must have broken bones doing it.
“I saw his face as he went by but I could not stop him. He was terrified, terrified enough to take his own life. The waters there were very cold. A man might survive five minutes, maybe ten. Even then he would require immediate medical attention. Vanko had no intention of being rescued. He knew sure death lay in those waters and he went in knowing it would mean his life. I will carry that look of his all the way to my grave.
“Things got worse after that. Sailors talk. A ship is a small world, and soon we were hearing stories that had many things in common. The night watch said they often sensed something watching them, something evil they claimed, but when they turned around there was never anyone or anything there. They only knew there was something in the shadows that raised the hair on their necks and terrified them. They were certain it was whatever had killed Vanko, for no one believed that he had taken his own life willingly. Too many of us had witnessed his death.”
Sailors are a superstitious breed but do not frighten easily, which could only mean that something was very wrong aboard the Krasny Bopoh.
“We feared the sunset each night. For it was when the shadows swarmed and deepened, that they released whatever it was that laid low during the day.” Shura shuddered in remembrance. “Oh, how we dreaded the night. Two days later, another man threw himself over the side. Same as Vanko, raving, terrified and before we had a chance to tranquilize him, he was gone. We searched the waters but never found his body. The next one though, was different.
“Pavel was a quiet boy, not a terribly good sailor, but he did his work as he was told and didn’t question authority, which was what the Soviet state has always wanted from its sons. We never even knew anything was wrong. He had been on night duty and in the morning the man taking over his rounds found him laid out on the deck in a pool of blood. He had cut his own throat—the knife was still in his hand. He had never said a word about anything bothering him. But when they put his belongings together to send home to his mother, they found his journal. It was as if some force had come back with Vanko off that island and was driving us mad one by one, forcing us to kill ourselves.
“Things got worse on the ship after Pavel’s death. Everyone was certain he would be next. We were only a day out from Arkhangelsk and everyone seemed to feel if we could make it into port, we could rid ourselves of this curse.
“Once we were on land for a few days, it seemed that we had half imagined it. How could there really be a ghost aboard ship that was driving men insane? The truth was we had little choice about getting back onto the ship. It was go back to sea or starve. Still, there were a few men who didn’t show up when it was time to sail. I went back because I had a young wife and son to support, so what could I do?”
This was news. Shura had never mentioned a family. The surprise in the room must have been apparent for Shura smiled a little, though it was not an expression of happiness.
“It was another life.” He took a slug of the vodka, stretched his legs further toward the fire, and continued with his tale.
“We were five days out to sea when it happened. As if the thing,” his mouth curled as though he would spit on the memory, “had waited until we could no longer turn around and run back to port. One of the junior officers killed the cook and then took his own life, and we knew then it wasn’t over, that the thing would not be satisfied until we were all dead.
“We had to go back to port since a murder had taken place. It took five days to get back and we knew we were all going to be in trouble for bringing the ship in without completing our run. Mass panic took over, as though we were losing our collective minds. I tried to rationalize it, tried to tell myself that we’d all ingested something that was causing a terrible hallucination. Before the boat even turned back for Arkhangelsk, I felt it—on d
eck, in the hold, it didn’t matter. I could feel eyes watching me, waiting for something, an opportunity to strike. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. When I did manage to fall asleep, I had terrible dreams, and woke sweating and screaming. I wasn’t alone. Two-thirds of the ship was the same way. Later, those of us who survived asked ourselves if we had indeed experienced a mass hallucination, if there was a mold on the ship that could cause such a thing. As human beings we have to seek those answers to keep our sanity. When it was happening there was no explaining or rationalizing it. We were too terrified, too exhausted. And then one night, I saw it standing on the deck. It wasn’t anything solid, but I saw it nonetheless. And I knew it was looking straight at me.”
The fire had died back some, the stove no longer glowing red. The wind outside had risen to a terrible screech, and Jamie could feel gusts of cold air coming through the chinks in the hut. He put more wood in the fire, building it back up to a blaze. But the chill they all felt was more than just the weather. Violet was huddled up next to Nikolai, her small face pale, and Vanya, who had heard the tale before, looked as spooked as if he himself were witnessing the events firsthand.
“What did it look like?” Vanya asked, tone half eager, half horrified.
“Like a man, yet not a man—something awful that wasn’t one thing or another, but some abomination in between. There is no way to say how it was—like a terrible dark mist yet more substantial than that. Capable, I was certain, of choking the life from me should it get its miserable hands about my throat. It was more how it felt, as if it were wrapping something dreadful around you, insinuating things into your ears, for which there are no words in any language.”
Shura held up his broad hands. “It sounds unbelievable now, but that thing wanted me to kill myself, wanted me dead and it made it next to impossible to resist. I imagined it over and over, just throwing myself into those icy waters. I knew it would never leave me alone until it had taken the breath and blood from me. Death seemed the only release.
“One after another, it took us. It was a waiting game, and we started to envy the men who had already gone into those dark waters. Time had ceased to have meaning, and yet meant everything. Even an hour was an eternity, stretching itself out beyond the horizon. The day was a haven, the night a horrifying dream only dawn could relieve.”
He paused to wet his throat. The only sound was the soft crackle and hiss of the fire and the occasional rasp of Nikolai’s breathing. The rest of them were holding their collective breath, waiting for Shura to resume his chilling narrative.
“There is little more to tell, my friends, only that three more of us died before we made port. I was not one of them, why, I cannot say. But it was a fight, as though God and the Devil were warring over my soul that entire time. Mostly I felt like the Devil was winning. In the end, I walked off the ship which means God must have triumphed.”
“You are a believer?” Violet asked. It had been asked in innocence, but it was a loaded question. A belief in the State was one thing, belief in God quite another in the Soviet Union.
“Yes, I am a believer in all sorts of things, not all of them good, or things I wish to have knowledge of—but once you have seen and felt such things, you have no choice but to understand there is much in this world that is not easily explained. I begged God to deliver me during those days and nights, and He did. I would be an ungrateful fool to not believe in Him after that.”
“How did all this lead to you being sent here?” Jamie asked, moving the conversation quickly off dangerous shoals. He did not wish for Shura to compromise himself.
“I set fire to the ship,” Shura said, a distant look on his face. “I had help. Those of us who walked off that boat in Arkhangelsk knew it had to be destroyed. There was no other way to rid ourselves of whatever was on it. And the company would have kept using it, kept finding crews who did not know the story and sending them out to sea to certain death.
“We tugged it out into the mouth of the river where it flows into the White Sea and soaked it with gasoline—every inch of it, for no one wanted to take the chance of the ship being salvaged. Then we sat on the tug and drank ourselves senseless. I waited to get drunk until I knew nothing came off the ship. I knew whatever it was Vanko had brought aboard, went up in the flames or down into the water.”
“How can you be certain?” Vanya, always the devil’s advocate, asked.
Shura fixed him with his dark eyes, and there was a look in the depths of them such as Jamie had not seen before.
“Because I heard it scream and then when the flames got higher it stopped. Nine men had died on that ship, and still they kept crews on her. I was one of the few who knew what had happened and it wasn’t good knowledge to possess. They sentenced us all without trial for the burning and sinking of the ship. Here I am as a result, sentenced to twenty years for the destruction of state property, but I consider it a small price to pay to have rid myself and others of that thing on the ship. And now, Yasha Yakovich, you know my story.”
Normally, when the evening’s tale was done, people left chatting quietly amongst themselves, their breath gilded streams on the cold night air. But tonight everyone was silent, as if the spectral hand of Shura’s ghost had touched them all in the telling.
Jamie walked Violet to her hut as he did every night, waiting until she went inside to turn back to his own quarters. He spared a look for the guard tower, seeing the small, bright coal of the guard’s cigarette flare like a star in the wind and cold.
When he returned, the aura of something dark still permeated the hut, despite the sight of Shura in his red long johns, perched on a chair trying to chink the worst of the drafts with moss.
“Thank you for telling your story, Alexsandr Kobashivili,” Jamie said, using Shura’s formal name, to show him due respect for the sharing of his tale. “I will be lucky to sleep tonight.”
Shura shrugged, the dark Georgian eyes still with memory. “It is only one story of many and not so special, Yasha, for we all have souls—or ghosts as you would say. We are all haunted, in one way or another, da?”
“Da,” Jamie agreed, for he knew the truth of that particular statement all too well.
It was as he fell asleep that a memory came to him, of himself and Andrei telling stories one night as the level in first one vodka bottle and then another slowly fell. They had been telling folk tales from their respective homelands and Andrei had just related a particularly gruesome fairytale that involved a young maiden having her eyes taken out, and then later being cut into little pieces and buried in the forest. When he had commented upon the darkness of the tale, Andrei had merely shrugged.
“It’s a Russian story. They don’t end well. Russians don’t believe in happy endings.”
It was a Russian story he was caught in now, one of those dark fairytales where there was no hero to ride in on a white charger and rescue them all. No, he told himself, on the edge of sleep, if one wanted a hero in a Russian story, then one had to become the bloody hero oneself. Russians might not believe in happy endings, but occasionally Irishmen did.
Chapter Forty-three
March 1974
‘…For Blood and Wine Are Red’
Jamie entered the hut on a swirl of frosted snow, the heat of the room hitting him in the face as though he had stepped too close to the fire. He breathed it in, allowing his lungs to take the sweet, shocking pain of it. The small kitchen and dining area was empty, but clean. She was here though, he could sense her as one senses a spider ensconced in her web, where no thread moved or breathed without her knowledge. He could smell too the oil she liked to drop into her bath that was scented with black gardenias.
On the cracked countertop there was a bottle of wine—red and breathing out in dark, fragrant notes—pomegranates and deepest crimson grapes, the ones whose juice poured forth like fresh spilled blood. She had already poured a glass for him a
nd left it waiting. He drank as he was meant to, for it was part of the game. It was delicious, tasting of Georgian earth and Saperavi grapes and the deep undernotes of the vessels it was aged in, the ancient clay of the kvevri. It was as heady as liquid roses on his tongue. He wondered where she had sourced it, what deeds had been committed to bring it here to this godforsaken hole. He drank it like a Georgian, swiftly to the dregs and then poured himself another glass, taking a slow contemplative swallow, before walking through to the bedroom.
On the bedside table was a bowl of white peaches, a sharp silver knife beside them, waiting to quarter and bleed them. Their delicate flesh was veined with coral and garnet, their perfume heady as opium. He knew well enough their purpose, nestled there in their lacquered bowl, for he had taught her this particular pleasure. An open jar of honey glinted crimson-gold in the firelight. Oh yes, he had schooled her well. Too well, perhaps. He still had a bruise on his face from their last encounter.
She was already on the bed, naked. The sheets were clean, candles blazing in profusion, lighting the entire place with a rubescent glow. She was a study in red: red lips, parted in carnal expectation, lower lips suffused within the claret hair, breasts tipped vermilion with a generous brush, full and aroused in the cherry coal light which spilled from the stove and lent its carnelian flush to her skin. Her hair was loose, fanned across the clean pillows like flames burning the cheap cotton. She was desirable and his body, despite his mind’s aversion, took this in and did with it what it would. He had become a whore, knowing that whether the ends justified the means or not, he was still whoring his body to keep his soul intact. At some point, as he knew from previous experience, his soul would present him with a bill for that fractured wholeness.
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