Domovoi

by M. K. Hobson

  It is dark at the top of the stairs.

  He keeps climbing.

  The door opens onto a hallway, its linseed lineolum flooring warped and curled. Four doors open off the hallway, two on either side. He opens the first door. There is an office beyond, nothing in it but a mouse’s nest and some chewed-on newspapers.

  He looks in the second office. It has a heavy metal desk in it. There is a window that looks over the factory floor, but it is covered with plywood.

  There is a woman in the third office.

  Ryan jumps when he sees her, slamming back against the door with a rattling thud. She is sitting with her back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling as if expecting it to do something. There is a look on her face, a look that is both empty and full, like she is thinking very deep thoughts about nothing.

  “Jesus,” he whispers, his heart pounding in his throat. “Who the hell are you?”

  She drops her oil-colored eyes and looks at him, not blinking. She is, Ryan notices, as far from beautiful as a woman can get. She is shaped like a bell; her ass is immense, her waist lumpy, her shoulders strangely narrow. Her breasts poke out through her too-tight tank-top, and they’re small and hard and probably sour, like unripe persimmons. Her arms are thick with muscle.

  “Winnie,” she says, lifting a hand. In it, there is a bottle of vodka. She takes a swig of this and holds the bottle toward him.

  Squatter, he thinks, with a mixture of disgust and glee. The first secret to be stripped, the first boil to be lanced. He knows how to deal with squatters.

  “You’re going to have to leave.” His voice is firm and unshaking, full of money.

  “No,” she says.

  “I’ve bought this place. It’s mine now.”

  Winnie does not move, but stares at him, a grim little smile playing over her lips.

  “Yours, eh?” she says.

  Ryan thinks about going for the police. But it is hot out there, burning and dry, and in here it is cool. So instead of leaving, he does something stupid. Something he knows he should not do. He reaches out and grabs the strange woman’s arms, tries to pull her to her feet. He halfway succeeds before she wrenches herself backward, pulling him off balance and sending him tumbling to the dirty floor.

  She moves quickly, coming up over him. With a balled fist, she punches down viciously, catching his chin. He puts up his arms, shields his face. The world is a confusion of movement and pain as she hits him. Her fists find his softest spots, unerringly, hard. He closes his eyes.

  “Yours, eh?” she shrieks again and again, until her voice finally retreats down a dark tunnel.

  * * *

  He wakes up choking.

  The woman is pouring vodka down his throat.

  He gags, shoving her hand aside. He is lying on the floor. He wants to jump up, but he cannot; he is stiff and sore. He can barely move. She is sitting next to him, legs stretched out before her. In her hand, she has a long heavy piece of wood that looks like it came out of a ruined place in the wall. She is tapping the wood gently against her knee.

  He looks at her lap, stretched out beside him. It is vast, doughy, clad in worn-thin sweatpants. He tentatively reaches over a hand to touch it. It is warm, like pudding encased in a heating blanket. Winnie says nothing, but takes a drink of the vodka. Then she hands it to him. He takes his hand off her leg and takes the bottle, drinking from it delicately. She offers him a cigarette. He doesn’t smoke. But he watches as she puts one in her mouth, lights it carefully, exhales the smoke in a thin stream.

  “Why are you here?” Winnie asks.

  “This place is mine now,” Ryan says, his voice uncertain. “I bought it.”

  “You bought it.” She says the words flatly, a statement, not a question. She seems to find them humorous, but she does not smile; instead, she flares her nostrils.

  “Why?”

  “To . . . to clean it. To make it new.”

  “What if it doesn’t want to be?”

  Ryan blinks at her, as lost as one of the gals at the assessor’s office.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What if it just wants to be what it is? What it has become?”

  This makes Ryan laugh, a loud barking laugh that echoes through the empty building.

  Winnie snarls, her lip curling. She lifts the wood, brings it down hard.

  He curls his arms around his head again, and again the world retreats in darkness.

  * * *

  When he wakes up, she is gone and he is alone.

  He limps down the stairs and out of the building, down to where his green Lexus is waiting. It is night, a thick hot summer night. Where did the whole day go? He has the most horrific hangover he’s ever experienced, and he aches terribly.

  Running his tongue over his lip, he can tell that it’s split. Touching fingers to his eyes, he can tell that they’re blackened.

  When he gets to his green Lexus he looks at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. It’s worse than he thought. There’s a red welting crease over his cheekbone, and both his eyes are as purple and blue as overripe plums.

  First, he uses his cell phone to call the police. He tells them about the crazy squatter in his building. He wants her cleared out. He is a man of substance, goddamn it! He has pumped millions into the local economy over the past decade. He is on a first-name basis with the mayor.

  Yes, he is willing to press charges for assault. He wants her locked up for life. Maybe in an insane asylum.

  Satisfied, he flips his phone shut. Then he drives to his fiancée’s condominium. She is wearing green silk pajamas, and she looks as smooth and beautiful as fresh plaster. She looks at him blankly, without interest, without surprise, without anything. She does not even comment on his battered face. In a flash of blackness, he shoves her to the ground and makes passionate, unpleasant love to her on the bleached oak floor of her entry hall.

  Then, sitting naked on her distressed leather couch, her black portable phone pressed to his ear, he calls every contractor he knows. The most brutal, the most efficient, the most pragmatic, the most no-nonsense.

  He makes appointments, sketches timelines, makes plans.

  * * *

  The first month, they clean.

  Contractors tear out the old offices where Ryan was beaten, commenting on the drops of dried blood and the smell of spilt vodka.

  The police find no squatter. They search the place thoroughly, come quickly to the conclusion that she has “moved on,” and happily wash their hands of the whole thing. Ryan, however, is not satisfied with this sanguine pronouncement. In fact, every now and again, Ryan is sure he sees Winnie’s lumpy figure out of the corner of his eye, rushing at him, the wood in her hand raised high. Her eyes are lit with hatred and anger.

  But she is never really there, and the police can’t arrest someone they can’t see.

  Ryan’s brutal and efficient men start to call him “twitchy,” for he is always involuntarily dodging blows.

  * * *

  After a month, the building is completely gutted and structural work can begin. It is then that Winnie really does reappear. Ryan is alone in a room one afternoon, looking at plans, when he smells honey and steel, sweet and fleeting.

  He looks up, alarmed, expecting to see her bearing down on him with the wood. But she’s just standing, looking at him, her arms crossed behind her back. She seems to have lost weight. Her ass is smaller, and her legs seem skinnier. Her skin seems smoother.

  He regards her for a while, assessing danger. She’s still and solid and sullen. He flashes her a sandpaper grin.

  “You’re back?” he says.

  “Never left,” she says. “Never will leave. Never.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Ryan says. “The police . . .”

  “The police won’t find me,” she says, looking at him. She looks paler, he notices. Slightly sick. There is a strange shimmer about her, as if he can see her bones superimposed upon her flesh, a luminous
ghost-skeleton that moves as she moves. He blinks, trying to clear this odd vision from his eyes.

  “What gives you the right?” she asks, softly. “What gives you the right to do this?”

  His brow curdles. It is an insane question.

  “I own this building,” he says slowly, reducing each word to inarguable finality.

  “That is not an answer,” she says.

  “What other answer is there?” Ryan blazes, sudden frustration firing him. He wants her to shut up, to do what she is told.

  Winnie is silent for a few moments. She is standing at a place where a wall used to be. The wall is gone, only structural timbers remain. She stretches out a hand, strokes her fingers through the air that the wall used to occupy. He can see every bone in her hand set in angular contrast against the timbers and studs and beams. The stark intersecting lines are indescribably beautiful.

  “I do not want to be what you want to make me,” she says.

  Ryan says nothing, watches her stroke the ghost-wall. The moment of adoration passes, giving way to critical dissatisfaction. Her movements are crisp, clumsy, machinelike. Inelegant, he thinks. She needs curves, smooth clean curves that please the eye. He makes a mental note to work with the architect on some streamlined walls for the entrance.

  “You have no right,” she gasps, and he realizes that she is crying. “You have no right to change something that does not want to be changed.”

  He takes a step forward, then another, like an unwise park visitor approaching a seemingly tame bear. He reaches out a hand, and touches her face.

  “There now,” he says, stroking her cheek. Her skin is smoother, he notices with satisfaction. “There now.”

  Winnie reaches into her pocket for a cigarette. Her hand is trembling.

  “No smoking,” Ryan says gently, prying the cigarette from between her fingers. With a ferocious snarl, she slaps his hand away. He jumps back, his heart thudding. A surprisingly pleasant thrill surges through him.

  “It’s for your own good,” he adds, holding fists defensively before his chest, expecting her to rush him.

  “Liar,” she spits at him, and in the time it takes him to blink she is gone.

  * * *

  Problems arise, one after another. Expensive problems. Seismic upgrades. Asbestos removal. Hazardous waste disposal from where old puddles of oil have polluted the ground.

  It is easy to take out the first construction loan; Ryan’s bankers love him. They even love him enough to give him a second. But the third one is difficult. They shuffle their wingtips and cast glances back and forth. It is clear that they share some of Jose’s concerns.

  We’re unclear on your vision here, Mr. Ceres.

  The freeway’s a dozen blocks away.

  To call the neighborhood transitional is being generous . . .

  The infrastructure’s marginal . . . no retail component anywhere nearby . . .

  Ryan bullies them and gets the third loan, but there will not be another. It should be enough. That, added to some liquidated longer-term investments . . . his broker will squeal that the money is for his future, but Ryan doesn’t care. She is his future.

  The contractors finish the framing. The smell of fresh pine is one of the best smells Ryan knows. It’s the same smell that disinfectants have, and Ryan always associates new framing with cleanliness. Old ugly hidden things, invisible squirming vermin being scorched away, burned away, sterilized.

  One of Ryan’s brutally efficient Russian workers, a framer, is named Sergei. He leaves behind a plate of bread and salt one night, which Ryan stumbles over. Ryan swears roughly at Sergei; while the Russian is much bigger than he is, it’s always good to look tough to one’s people.

  “What the hell is this?” Ryan picks up the plate of bread and salt and shakes it in the big man’s face. “We got the rats cleared out of here months ago, you want them back?”

  “This will not attract rats,” Sergei shrugs. “She will not let it.”

  “She?” Ryan looks at him. “Who?”

  “The building,” Sergei says. “The domovoi.” Seeing that Ryan does not understand, Sergei gently takes the plate of bread and salt from him and puts it down carefully.

  “The domovoi is the spirit of the building. Its soul. This building’s soul is sad and in pain. I thought to comfort her.”

  “Comfort her?” Ryan clenches his teeth, remembering Winnie bearing down on him with the wood. “I’m not paying you to comfort the goddamn building.” He kicks at the plate of bread and salt, sending it scattering across the plywood flooring.

  Sergei shrugs, and turns to go. Ryan calls after him:

  “Can they be killed?”

  Sergei turns slowly, looks at him through narrowed eyes.

  “Killed?” he says.

  “Yes,” Ryan says curtly. “Killed. Eradicated. Exorcised.”

  “I have heard that they can be moved,” Sergei says thoughtfully. “By carrying hearth coals to a new home. If the domovoi likes it there . . .”

  “I didn’t say moved,” Ryan interrupts him sharply. “I said killed. Can they be killed?”

  Sergei shrugs, looks around at the clean-smelling new pine framing.

  “I suppose this is the way to do it,” he says.

  * * *

  Winnie does not show herself again until month four.

  The contractors are putting in bamboo flooring and installing energy-efficient double-paned glass windows. The money is running thin, but Ryan will not cut corners. He runs up bills that he knows he will not pay. This does not concern him in the least.

  Visitors from the bank begin showing up at the worksite, at odd hours of the day. Taking notes.

  Ryan is in a room that will become the master bedroom of the most expensive loft, eight thousand square feet of exposed concrete and thick hewn beams. The room is large and airy, with wiring for a ceiling fan and arched windows that look out over the street. He’s looking down at the street, his hands clasped behind his back. On the street, there’s a man leaning against a blue Camaro, selling drugs.

  “Please stop.” The words come from behind him. He turns slowly.

  She looks much thinner now, her face sleek and shining. Her hair is smoothed back from a soft, placid face. She’s wearing a suit of grey silk. He looks her up and down, approvingly.

  “It hurts,” she says. “Please stop.”

  “I’m too far along now,” he says. The words make her wince visibly.

  A vague premonition of worry crosses his mind. What is the pain in his chest, what is the ineffable regret? He doesn’t understand it; he dismisses it with a curt gesture of his hand.

  “You’re just afraid of change,” he says, more harshly than he intends to.

  “It hurts,” Winnie says again.

  “Good things sometimes hurt,” Ryan says, careful to make his tone soft. He wants her to understand, he wants her to stop fighting. He wants her to let him have her, to give him access and permission. “Medicine hurts. It hurts, but it heals.”

  “You are not healing me, you are killing me,” she whispers. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I know what you are.”

  “I hate you,” she whispers, tears gleaming slick in her oil-colored eyes.

  Ryan smiles down at her sadly. She doesn’t hate him. He knows it, just knows it. She doesn’t hate him. She can’t hate him.

  “You hate the idea of changing,” he says. “You hate the idea of being changed. You hate the idea of letting someone else help you.”

  “I never asked for your help,” Winnie says.

  “But you did. By decaying, by getting old, by letting yourself fall to ruin,” Ryan strokes her hair. “But I will make it better. I will take care of you.”

  “It hurts,” Winnie says finally, and then she’s gone, and Ryan’s arms encircle nothing.

  * * *

  After six months, the renovation is complete. The Windsor Machine Works rehab is finished. I
t is clean, sterile, perfect. There are no secrets left.

  Every item on the punch list has been checked off, and the Russians have been paid, even if there are other bills that never will be.

  There are five vast condo lofts on the top floor, each with a prime view of the surrounding neighborhood. The ramshackle houses that haven’t been painted in years, the rusting cars in their driveways and side-yards, the drug dealers and prostitutes in their blue Camaros. Who said there wasn’t a viable retail component?

  Ryan has had a dozen calls from the real-estate agency he usually uses to broker his properties. They’re trying to back out. They want nothing to do with marketing this one. He enjoys listening to the voice mails, how they get progressively screechier.

  There is 15,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, lease ready. The blonde wood floors and cool white lighting are perfect for the Starbucks and the Gap and the Old Navy that will never come.

  Ryan takes one last walk through the building, but he does not enjoy it. He feels so strange. The familiar joy, the pride and feeling of completion, the post-orgasmic relaxation of tense energy pleasantly spent, is nowhere to be felt. Instead he feels keyed up, anxious and annoyed. Frustrated. Stifled. Twitchy.

  He comes into the room where he last saw Winnie. This is the display model; it has been decorated so that perky sales agents can inspire prospective residents with visions of the kind of life their exorbitantly high mortgage can purchase for them. The walls have been painted a soothing shade of mint green. There is a comfortable arrangement of camel-colored suede furniture in one corner. One chair is draped with a fuzzy, avocado-hued chenille throw. Ryan tries to imagine getting comfortable in this room. He can’t. The thought gives him a headache.

  There is also a large white bed, a cast-iron four-poster looped with gauze that (Ryan knows from experience) will have to be washed every goddamn week to keep from getting dusty. More meaningless garniture. More curls of shaved beet. He imagines making love to his fiancée in that bed, in that engulfing marshmallow-soft nest. Imagines her yielding body, her blank eyes staring up at him.