by Sara Clancy
“Hold Teddy for me.”
She clutched the toy to her chest with both arms.
“I had a nightmare,” she said meekly.
They both knew that wasn’t the real course. All things considered, delayed bedwetting wasn’t the worst way mental trauma could manifest itself. He’d take it over self-harm or suicidal tendencies any day. For a nine-year-old, however, it was mortifying. So, they lied. She blamed her dreams, he pretended to believe her, and they carried on like it had never happened.
“Zombies again?” he asked.
She nodded.
“They aren’t real.”
“Ivan has a book that says they’re real in Haiti.”
“Haiti’s a long way off.”
“But if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere,” she insisted, tugging restlessly on the teddy bear’s arm. “We have a lot of dead bodies just lying around.”
Aleksandr crouched down in front of his sister, resting his forearms on his thighs.
“They aren’t real, Nadya.”
She opened her mouth, but he cut off her protests.
“Even if they were, they won’t be able to get you. Scavengers would get them before they could cross the desert.”
“The girls are kept closer,” she pouted.
“They’re all cut into pieces,” he said with a smile. “What’s a shin going to do? Or is it the elbows that I need to look out for?”
A small giggle bubbled up out of her even as she continued to clutch her bear tight.
“Do you think the severed feet hop?” he asked. “Or do they move forward by wiggling their toes?”
Scowling playfully, she smacked him with the teddy. Smiling at her, he reeled back at the blow, arms held up as if to fend off the attack. The reaction earned him another giggle and he decided it was time to get back to work. He didn’t get far in stripping the bed before she chastised him.
“I’m old enough to help, Alek.”
The reminder of her age made him slightly ill. “Alright. Go and get some clean sheets.”
Carefully and quietly, she slipped off of the ladder and left the room. He had both beds stripped by the time she got back and, between them, the sheets were changed in record time. They didn't need to discuss it to know that they would work by moonlight alone. As Aleksandr rolled the items into one giant ball, Nadya flopped down on the sheets to squirm and kick, working in as many wrinkles as possible. By the time they finished, it was as if nothing had happened.
“Do you think Petya and Olga know?” Nadya asked.
He knew she wasn’t talking about her nightly accidents.
“No. They’d already be using it against you.” He placed a hand on the back of her head. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Nadya. We’re all afraid of something.”
“They’re not,” she said softly.
“Wait until you see Petya around a snake.”
She blinked up at him. “Snakes? Really?”
Aleksandr nodded.
“But ... he’s a killer. He can’t be afraid of snakes.”
“Fear doesn’t have much to do with logic,” he said.
Contemplating that for a moment, she asked, “Is Olga afraid of snakes?”
“No. But she’d flay herself before she’d set foot on the thirteenth floor. And no, I don’t know why, she’s never shared that. I just know she’s paranoid of the number thirteen.”
Nadya, having apparently gotten what she needed from the conversation, deemed it over. She snatched up a change of clothes and they left the room. Once again, Aleksandr carried her. It was better to keep it down to one set of footsteps. He barely dared to breathe as he crept down the staircase. Nadya’s tight grip on his shoulders tightened with every step, and she never stopped looking around.
The house was dark, but he knew the path well. Years of hunting had made it second nature for him to move silently. Although, at this point, it wasn't just noise that was the threat. Every shadow was thick enough to hide their dark-haired mother. He went straight to the front door. The little click of the turning door handle sounded like a cocking gun in the tense silence. Nadya flinched at the sound and pressed her face against her brother's shoulder.
Gathering his courage, Aleksandr opened the door and slipped outside. The night air was just as oppressive as it was inside. Living off of generators made the concept of air-conditioning a luxury. The first step onto the sand made him lose balance slightly. Nadya's nails found some cuts on his arm and reopened them as she scrambled. Blood oozed out.
“Let go,” he whispered hurriedly.
She obeyed and leaned back enough to level him with a hurt look. “I’m sorry.”
“Show me your hand,” he said.
There were a few smears of blood on her fingertips.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“Shh, I’m not mad. Do you have any open cuts?” Realizing that she wasn’t following, he added. “Father still hasn’t given me the money to get tested yet.”
“You think that the man was sick?” she asked as he started walking again.
He shrugged. There wasn't much need for any more discussion. Nadya had been through this enough times to understand. Until he was sure that he was healthy, they were to be careful. It wasn't an easy task to keep their blood from mixing given their family lifestyle. All they could do was try.
Getting across the shifting sands was harder with Nadya in his arms, her weight throwing him off balance. She was still clinging to his neck, her small arms starting to shake with fear as well as the cold, but he didn't have the heart to put her down. Having grown accustomed to the heat that remained within the walls, and the wardrobes specifically, Aleksandr felt the chilly wind all the more. It might have been smarter to grab a jacket.
Navigating by the moonlight, he made his way to the back of the house and further off to a neighboring building. Years had passed since the last of the residents had left the town, leaving the land for the desert to reclaim. It had done so with a vengeance. Rolling dunes had invaded the homes through open doors and broken windows. The wind had eroded some structures down to their foundations, while others had sandy hills that reached to the rooftops. The why and how of the evacuations was a mystery he couldn’t be bothered looking into. Drought. Famine. Mine closure or disease. It all ended up the same. No one cared about the town anymore. People had forgotten about it. And, in doing so, had created the perfect killing field. A whole town entirely under their control. A place removed from the rest of the world by impassable wastelands. They could do whatever they wanted here. And when they had turned their home into a grotesque slaughterhouse that no amount of bleach could clean, they could simply move to another building and start again.
It even had running water and electricity, although both were sporadic and unreliable. The original plan must have been for self-reliance. Their water came from underground lakes that filled during the short rainy season, and their power from an industrial generator. Their father had succeeded in getting the engine to run, but there was no saving the wires. Time and weather had ravaged them beyond repair. Flicking on a light switch came with the potential of electrocution. Exhausted and sore, Aleksandr was glad that one of the few functioning buildings was nearby.
In a relatively short time, the load of laundry was on and they were trudging back up the hill. He would deal with the rest in the morning. Uphill was much harder. Shifting Nadya so that she was clinging to his back, he hunched forward and kept moving. The sand kept slipping them back down. So it took three steps to go the distance of one.
“Alek?” Nadya whispered.
He lifted his head and his stomach plummeted. Headlights severed the darkness with razor precision. The car twisted around the winding roads but was unmistakably coming closer. Father’s home.
“Alek.”
She filled the world with every ounce of her fear.
“It’s okay,” he replied as he lowered onto one knee.
Without further prompting, she crawled off
of his back and lay down on the sand beside him. Keeping low, the sand and darkness worked in their favor.
“We’ll wait until he’s inside and then sneak back to your room,” he told his sister.
“What if he sees us?”
He swallowed thickly. “Then I’ll distract him and you run. You were never out here. Got it?”
She nodded. Lights flashed across the dune and they both plastered themselves to the sand. Aleksandr didn’t recognize the sound of the engine. A new car, he figured. His fingertips twitched with the urge to reach for his weapon, but moving right now wasn’t a smart option. Slowly, Nadya’s fragile hand pushed across the sand to wrap around one of his fingers. She was big enough to grab more but didn’t try to. The engine stopped and the sound of car doors opening and closing cut the following silence. Aleksandr’s heart slammed against his ribs as he waited. A new car meant a new plaything. They went in the shed. This routine promised a window of opportunity for Aleksandr to get Nadya back into the house unseen.
Then he heard the front door open. They'd need a new plan. Their mother was awake. Nadya’s fingers tightened to the brink of pain as they listened to their parents greeting each other with an exuberant passion. Olga and Petya were creatures of the same nature. They wallowed in their obsession with each other. Feeding and validating the other's darkest desires, urging them to ‘greatness’, both demonically liberating and deadly possessive at once.
Petya had been a brutal and cruel man since birth. The kind of abomination that people wouldn't be surprised to hear was a serial killer. Impulsive, reckless, bored with the clean-up; it hadn’t taken long for police to start closing in. Petya had intended Olga to be his last thrill. He had decided to die by a hailstorm of police-issued bullets rather than submit to capture. Olga was stunning and alluring and there. In his haste to have his fun before the law caught up with him, he hadn’t done his research. The night he had come for her, Petya had no idea that Olga’s body count and twisted appetite dwarfed his own.
Eerily beautiful, with long midnight hair, framing sharp bone structure and enormous dark eyes, Olga looked about as frail and delicate as a bird. It was all a trap. A lure. She had the looks to draw people in and the fake charm to put them at ease. Petya was a firestorm. All heat and fury. Olga was a tornado. Unpredictable and far-reaching. Both were deadly in their own right. Combined, they were devastating. And Ivan was alone with them. Ivan, and a new victim that would be whipping them into a bloodlust.
Nadya’s hand tightened on Aleksandr’s finger again. He barely turned his head, just enough to meet her gaze out of the corner of his eyes and nodded once. I’ll get him out of there, the motion promised. Her grip loosened, and a slight pain filled Aleksandr's chest. Soon she’d be old enough to know he wasn’t as infallible as she assumed. But not tonight, he told himself. Tonight, keep them safe.
They waited in tense silence, the air freezing their backs. Barely daring to breathe, they listened until their parents’ declarations of devotion switched to Russian. That was a sign that they’d be too wrapped up in each other to notice anything else.
Finally, the switch happened. Aleksandr’s muscles tensed as he waited to hear each of his parents' voices. The second he did, he was on his feet and hurling Nadya into his arms. He bolted towards the back door of the house. The hill of sand wasn’t any easier to maneuver at speed. But time didn't allow him to stop or slow down. As he neared the top, he found himself thankful that his father had claimed another victim. There were limited areas in town that the average car could surmount without getting bogged. If he had been using his own, he could have parked in the back, unknowingly stranding them. Their victim, however, seemed to have one that needed to stick to the wind-cleared road out front. It gave them a chance.
The car’s high beams looked as bright as a prison spotlight. Its range, however, was limited, leaving the bulk of the building to the shadows. Aleksandr made sure that every step he took kept him within the darkness and the safety it provided. Panting hard, he reached the back door and pressed his back against the stable wall. The weathered paint cracked off at the slight touch. Set upon stilts, the house had a narrow crawlspace and a few stone steps that led to the door. Both offered hiding places for a child as small as Nadya.
Coaxing her to crouch down on the far side of the stairs, away from the intruding light, he caught her eyes and pressed one finger to his lips. She didn’t really need the reminder to be silent. The gesture was a sign to stay put and that he’d bring Ivan to her. She nodded and crawled deeper into the shadows under the house, slipping into them until he could barely see her.
Aleksandr waited until she was settled, even though every second of hesitation made his chest hurt a little more. Make sure she’s safe, he told himself. You can’t lose them both. It took everything he had to keep his expression neutral as images of Dimitry and Tanya flashed across his mind. The twins that had come before. The ones Aleksandr had utterly failed. Dimitry had been alone with their mother when she was bored. Olga had her fun, and Dimitry had ended up buried under the back porch.
His nails dug painfully into his palms as he clenched his fists. It wasn’t enough to keep the memory away. Tanya, cold and broken on the floor. Her face twisted in a silent scream, eyes wide and accusing as they started to rot, the air exposure staining the whites a murky brown. Aleksandr flinched at the memory of their father patting his shoulder. She had to die, Alek, the ghostly voice whispered in the back of his head. It was still light with laughter. I didn’t want to break up the set.
It was perhaps one of the greatest cruelties of life that, while so many good people struggled to have kids, Olga and Petya Sokolovsky kept churning out twins. Dimitry and Tanya didn’t need to die, but Aleksandr had learned from it. There was no safe place around their parents. Never draw attention to yourself, he had taught them long before they were old enough to understand. Be quiet. Be still. Be obedient. I’ll come and get you the first second I can.
Nadya finally stilled. Aleksandr instantly turned and started across the back of the house. The sand helped to quieten Aleksandr’s steps as he crept around the side. Pressed against the building, he was once again grateful for his limited height. Malnourishment had a way of stunting growth. Most surviving Sokolovsky children rarely broke five feet. Aleksandr had made it to five-foot-five and thankfully stopped there. The taller he was, the harder it would have been to hide.
A windstorm last night had worked the sand into a sharper slope than usual. It left the crawl space exposed at the back of the house and smothered it at the front. So when he reached the front edge of the building, he didn't have to worry about anyone spotting his legs.
Crouching down, he peeked around the corner. Olga and Petya were mauling each other, half leaning against the hood of an old VW Bug. They had already discarded numerous items of clothing, a few of which had landed on the crumpled body at their feet. Aleksandr spared the woman a glance. It was hard to tell if she was alive. Dumped at an awkward angle and with her dark skin that mixed with the shadows, he couldn't be sure if she was breathing. He couldn’t trust a hysterical fit to work as a distraction.
Ivan obediently stood where Petya would have ordered him to. By the front of the car. Dead center of one of the high beams. Desperate not to look at his parents or the woman, he stood with his gaze locked straight ahead. His thumbs were digging into the sides of his index fingers, hard enough to already draw blood. Aleksandr watched as his younger brother struggled to stop the nervous habit. It was never safe to bleed around Petya and Olga. Especially now. Sadists didn't have much use for an unconscious victim. Until their newest conquest opened her eyes, they had all the desire to torture and no outlet. Getting their attention while they were in this state would be the same as thrashing about in shark-infested waters.
Aleksandr’s breathing evened out as he lingered in his hiding place. His heart, however, continued to pound against his ribs like a panicked bird. Ivan was utterly exposed. Checking that all other partie
s remained occupied, Aleksandr wiped his sweaty palms off on his shirt. There was no getting rid of the layer of sand. It was irritatingly grainy against his skin as he curled his now dry hand around the hilt of his knife. Pulling it free of its sheath created barely more than a soft rasp. At that moment, it seemed as loud as a scream.
Shifting back on his heels, he reached up to scratch the sharp edge against the side of the house. The brittle paint cracked off quickly, the specks dancing in the gentle breeze like falling snow. It didn't seem to move out from around the corner far enough, so he pushed them further with a few steady breaths. He was getting lightheaded by the time he succeeded to get the flurries into the ring of light.
Come on, Ivan, Aleksandr silently encouraged as he continued the process for a few moments more. The flakes were tiny but didn’t look like sand. If luck were on their side, his brother would see the difference. When almost a minute had passed, Aleksandr crouched, lowered his hand, and rocked forward again, peeking around the edge. Ivan still faced straight ahead. You can do it, Aleksandr thought. See.
A small furrow flashed across Ivan’s face, leaving just as fast as it had come. He stood solid as his eyes flicked towards the house corner. Aleksandr lifted his chin, needed a sign that his brother saw him and not just the shadows. The tension in his chest eased slightly as he watched Ivan cross the fingers of his right hand. They could fill a dictionary with their secret language. I see you. I know you're there. I don't know where Nadya is.
That’s my boy, Aleksandr thought. A small smile tipped his lips as he nodded to his brother. I've got her. I'm here for you. Checking that the coast was still clear, he lifted his hand, not drawing it into the light but high enough to coax Ivan forward. A fine tremor ran the length of Ivan's body as he turned his head towards Olga and Petya then back again. Aleksandr kept his hand up. Not demanding. Waiting.
Eyes locked onto Aleksandr's face, Ivan took his first tentative step. A solid slap of metal made the brothers jump. Neither breathed as Olga pulled away from her husband, her eyes passing right over Ivan as she tossed her hair back. Then their captive moaned and released a sudden groan. The night filled with sound. Cackling laughter, pained moans, and the solid thump of Olga stomping and kicking the unconscious girl.