Vodník

by Bryce Moore

  We got to the square, the buildings lit up for the evening. A few people were out strolling, but for the most part, the place was empty. L’uboš was analyzing the buildings and counting. Then he pointed at the electronics store, its lights off and clearly closed. “That’s the one,” he said. “I’m going in.”

  Dad caught his arm. “We need supplies. The crypt entrance has likely been covered over by renovations. We’ll need a sledgehammer at least. And we can’t be too obvious about this. If the police show up . . .”

  L’uboš grunted and I nodded, nervous. It wasn’t the getting caught that had me jumpy—it was what that would do to our schedule if we did. There was no time for a police investigation.

  I stared at the building. It was old, but it was much more flowery than it had been in the picture in the chronicle. What if we were wrong? The one to the right seemed closer to what I remembered from the vision. It wasn’t like they’d kept the same house numbers for the past three hundred years. Then again, a lot of renovation could happen in that time. The façade wouldn’t still be the same as it had been then.

  L’uboš went to find some tools—I didn’t ask where he’d get them. It was too late to buy anything at the hardware store down the street. Dad and I examined the electronics store. Shattering our way in through the glass front door would attract an audience, no matter how few people were on the square. The store was essentially one large room filled with aisle upon aisle of gadgets and televisions, from what the city lights illuminated. Farther back in the store was nothing but darkness.

  We circled around back to check for a delivery entrance. For once, we lucked out. The door in the rear was steel, but it had the store name clearly labeled in stenciled paint.

  L’uboš met us out front, loaded up with a sledgehammer and a couple of high powered flashlights. “Ready,” he said.

  We took him back to the service entrance. Two resounding medieval-knight-infused sledgehammer blows later, and the doorknob and lock had fallen off. Did I ever mention how strong my uncle was? I glanced around nervously, looking for people peering out to see what the racket had been. The buildings were all right next to each other, after all. Nothing but row houses, really: apartments up top and stores on the street level. No lights came on. Everything stayed silent.

  We crept in, shutting the door behind us and clicking on the flashlights.

  Boxes stuffed with CDs and DVDs filled every available piece of shelf space and much of the floor too. I felt like I had to breathe in just to navigate the hallways. The first room we came to was an office, and around the corner was a staircase leading down to the basement.

  Jackpot.

  The stairs were old, with little smooth grooves worn into the centers where centuries of feet had stepped. We switched on the overhead lights. No one would see these from outside. The basement was just as crammed as upstairs. From working at the castle, I could recognize older architecture, and this basement was full of it. The stones they had used to build the wall were large and roughly cut, with little mortar between the cracks. It took a different kind of skill and craftsmanship to do that than was needed to build things today, when concrete and rebar gave you all sorts of shortcuts.

  Then again, there was also no sign of any crypt entrances. Certainly no “Dead People Here” signs. If the crypt were down here, the sledgehammer would be the only way to get to it. Or dynamite.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Not to worry,” Dad said. “If the family died of cholera, I’d think whoever moved into the house afterward did everything they could to forget about the crypt. They wouldn’t have moved the bodies—too worried about getting the disease as well—but I could see them covering up the entrance to the family’s burial site.”

  Then it was a matter of knocking on walls and the floor with the sledgehammer, searching for a place that sounded hollow. Part of me didn’t think such a simple approach would work, and I grew more certain of that the longer we went without hearing anything. Dad kept banging away, always with the same sound.

  Thunk thunk thunk.

  I was hunting for anywhere the masonry seemed newer, but it was hard to see the bigger picture when you had to keep shoving boxes out of the way.

  Thunk thunk thunk.

  Maybe I could just sprinkle the potion on the basement floor. Would it be close enough to Lesana’s grave to count? I checked the shelf where I’d put the potion, just to make sure it was still safe. It was.

  Thunk thunk boom.

  We all froze. Dad tapped that last spot again.

  Boom. The sound echoed beneath us, promising a large open space, most likely filled with dead relatives of Lesana.

  I asked, “There isn’t a chance of that cholera still being around down there, is there?”

  Dad shook his head. “It’s transmitted by drinking or eating contaminated water or food, so . . . no. Step aside. This should only take a few blows.” He seemed eager to try his hand at the sledgehammer, maybe inspired by L’uboš’s herculean performance earlier. L’uboš and I crouched behind some boxes to be out of the way of flying concrete shards, followed by signs of brick farther down. The sledgehammer made a sound loud enough to blow out eardrums, but nothing happened.

  Just as I was about to suggest librarians might not be the best equipped for breaking into crypts, the bricks Dad was standing on shattered all at once, and his body fell through the hole like a stone into water.

  L’uboš and I rushed to the edge and looked over. All I could see was black, but a foul stench was coming up out of the hole. It smelled so bad I could taste it: making me think of ancient bones and rotting flesh. I stumbled back from the opening and coughed, then leaned forward again when it felt like I could breathe. I fumbled for my flashlight and turned it on.

  The hole led to a stairwell. Dad had fallen through and tumbled to the bottom of the stairs. “Dad?” He wasn’t moving.

  “Quick,” L’uboš said. “I’ll lower you down.”

  I tucked the flashlight—still lit—into my belt, then grabbed my uncle’s hands and he lowered me into the hole. Once I was down, he gripped the edge and swung down into the opening. I ran to check on my father.

  He was breathing, but it smelled even worse down here. Whatever had been in the air, his lungs were full of it. I checked him for injuries. If my dad died because of this, I didn’t know what I’d do. He wasn’t bleeding, but I was afraid to move him. What if his back was broken?

  “We have to call an ambulance,” I said.

  “No,” L’uboš said. “Not from here. We must get him out ourselves.”

  “We can’t do that. His spine—”

  “Stay calm,” L’uboš said. “I have training in this—a requirement for the joust in case of injury. Stay here.” Without another word, he grabbed the remaining flashlight—Dad’s had fallen in with him and broken in the fall—went back to the opening, and hoisted himself through it.

  I stayed there in the dark, my eyes straining to see my dad. What if he was paralyzed? This was all my fault. I should have been the one to use the sledgehammer. Or we should have found out more about what we were trying to do. Or—

  A board dropped down through the hole, followed by L’uboš. “Here,” he said. “We must roll him onto the board, but it is important we do it at the same time. I will roll the shoulders, you will roll him at the waist. Okay?”

  “But what—”

  “No buts,” L’uboš said. “The medics would have to do the same in any case. We must get him to where the ambulance can help him. Come on. Go to his side. Ready?”

  Not a bit. But he was right, and he seemed to know what he was doing. I nodded.

  “Okay. When we roll him, it is important to keep his head, neck, and back in line. Follow my lead. One. Two. Three.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting—maybe to have my dad scream in pain or an alarm to go off that we were doing something wrong. But we rolled him without him making a sound, and L’uboš used some cord he had found to
secure Dad to the board. “Now come,” L’uboš said. “We need to get him up through the hole. Move carefully and quickly.”

  He took the lead, showing me when to lift the board and how to maneuver it the right way. My mind was in a haze, and I just did what I was told, although all through it, I kept wondering what would happen. What if Dad couldn’t move? Couldn’t type? Couldn’t—

  “Good,” L’uboš said.

  I blinked and discovered we were outside, with my father still on the makeshift stretcher, laid out a little way down the alley behind the store. “What now?” I asked.

  L’uboš checked his watch. “You have an hour and a half. Was that the right crypt?”

  My jaw dropped open. As soon as I’d seen my dad get in trouble, everything else in my mind had gone blank. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Go check. I’ll stay here with your father.”

  I grabbed the flashlight and darted back into the building. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for me to rush down the stairs, duck my head into the hole in the basement and shine the light around before I recognized the place. I knew right where Lesana’s grave ought to be. Sure enough, when I shone my flashlight down the middle aisle, I recognized the false wall that had been built to house her body. Carved into it were the words

  Lesana Laurinská

  March 18, 1693–October 17, 1709

  As soon as I saw the inscription, I ran back out to L’uboš. “This is it.”

  “Good,” he said. “Go down and complete the spell. I will take care of your father.”

  I stared at my dad, lying helpless on the ground. “But—”

  “Please, Tomas. This is something I can do, finally. I can do nothing about saving my daughter, nothing about saving the castle from being turned into a spa, but I can do this. You do what you can do. Help Katka before it is too late. Here. Take my watch and go. Quickly.”

  He was right. I took a final glance at my dad before grabbing the watch, heading back down to the basement, collecting the potion on the way, and then lowering myself into the crypt. I put on the watch, clicked on the flashlight. Now that it was just me there, the place was silent, and I could hear each shuffle my feet made on the floor. The room was large, with low vaulted ceilings. Sarcophagi lined the walls and were placed throughout on the floor, rows of sleeping stone faces and folded arms. It made me think of Katka’s hospital, with so many people sharing the same place for something that should be a private affair.

  I shook my head clear and bent down to grab the sledge­hammer, its wooden handle smooth and cold in my hand. The walled-off portion —where Lesana had been entombed—was about twenty feet in front of me. I could still remember hearing her scream from behind that wall in my vision, and I pictured her trapped behind there, crying until her body died and her soul transformed. I shuddered and looked around with the flashlight again, just to make sure I was alone.

  Then I clenched my teeth, hefted the sledgehammer, and did my best to smash the wall apart with one blow.

  Hitting a thick stone wall with a sledgehammer hurts you more than it hurts the wall. The hammer felt like it was trying to leap out of my hands, and all it did to the wall was make a tiny little chip. I grunted, took a tighter grip on the handle, and tried again.

  This time I was ready for the shock, and I made a bigger dent. I didn’t know what they had made that wall out of, but it took me fifteen minutes to break through. I stepped back and let the bad air rush out. No sense breathing more of the foul stuff than I had to. After that, things went more quickly, as the hole widened with each blow.

  I paused and went over to pick up the flashlight from the floor where I had set it to give me some light. Before I shone it into the opening, I steeled myself for what I might see. Rotting clothes, decayed flesh, a pile of dust—it wouldn’t be pretty.

  I wasn’t prepared to see a girl about my age, sleeping on a pedestal in an alcove of the crypt, which had been turned into a small room when it was walled off.

  There was no doubt it was Lesana. After all these years, she could have been asleep. Her clothes were in much worse shape, the cloth brittle and aged, but she herself looked like Sleeping Beauty, ready to waken with a kiss. She was still pretty, nose and all. In fact, now that I knew her—well, comparatively—she was even more attractive. As soon as I saw her like that, I felt a jolt through my heart. I know it sounds corny, but that’s as good as I can describe it. Like I was wishing for what could never be. It had been one thing to meet Lesana as a water spirit, but to have her lying there— Focus, Tomas. It wasn’t fair what had happened to her. That vodník had a lot to answer for.

  I went back to work until the hole was big enough for me to squeeze through without too much struggle. My palms were sweating, and blisters had formed on both hands. I threw the sledgehammer through the opening—to enlarge the hole on my way out, when I had more time—and got the potion.

  In a few seconds, this would all be over.

  I clambered into Lesana’s burial site, one hand holding the potion, the other holding the flashlight. I could stand and walk around in there—the room was about ten feet by ten feet. In the unsteady light, I could almost see her breathing.

  I took a few deep breaths and stepped closer to her corpse. I managed to get the rubber bands off the cup, and then took off the cellophane. I studied the contents.

  With a silent prayer, I poured the potion into her mouth, hoping for all I was worth that I got more of a result than dirty water splashing on her skin.

  I didn’t.

  No flashing lights, no sudden explosions—just dirty water on Lesana’s non-decayed skin. Nothing else. She was a three-hundred-year-old corpse, if perfectly preserved. If the potion had done what it was supposed to, I should have seen something—massive decomposition, something. Maybe it was unrealistic to expect to see her crumble to dust like a vampire on Buffy. But at the very least, I would have expected Morena to come tell me “mission accomplished.”

  It hadn’t worked. Either we’d screwed it up, or the vodník had been playing a trick, or—

  I screamed in frustration and hurled the cup at the wall. What was I supposed to do now? I had maybe forty-five minutes until my cousin died, my father might have been paralyzed, and I was covered in the dust of an ancient crypt. It was all for nothing.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was supposed to be where I released Lesana’s soul in a wonderful display of pyrotechnics, at which point Katka would race in, cured. It wasn’t the scene where the hero fails after trying everything. There had to be something else I could do. Anything else.

  A series of ideas flashed through my mind as I paced around in the small space. Maybe Lesana’s soul stayed on earth because her body was in such good shape. Maybe she was like a vampire, and I could stake her through the heart or behead her or—too bloody. Maybe I could run up to the church and grab some holy water. That could do something, right? Holy water?

  What did they do in fairy tales when this happened? They certainly didn’t take household ingredients, stick ’em in a cup, and dump them on a corpse. No. The prince waltzed in, kissed the princess, and they all lived happily ever after.

  I looked back at Lesana, lying there as if she had been waiting for me.

  It could work.

  I’d try the kiss, and if that didn’t work, I’d—I’d think of something else.

  I walked to her pedestal and shone my light on her face. Her lips were even moist. Maybe she wasn’t dead. No, I reminded myself, that’s just where the potion poured over her. I checked for breathing, just in case. Nothing.

  I licked my lips and tried not to feel like a pervert. This was for Katka. My first kiss was going to be with a girl who’d been dead for three centuries.

  Come on, Tomas. You’re stalling. I bent down and put my lips right on top of Lesana’s. At first, it was like pudding mushing into oatmeal.

  Then a jolt like electricity arced through my lips. I yelped in surprise and stumbled backward.

>   Lesana gasped, coughed, and sat up.

  This book is dedicated to Plato, Ramses II, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, and the Backstreet Boys.

  I stared at Lesana.

  She looked down at her clothes and wiped her mouth, no doubt wondering why it was full of watery bird poop taste and boy spit. “Tomas?” she said. “What happened? Where am I?”

  It was one thing to wish for something, another to get it. Part of me was happy Lesana was alive and, well, datable, but a large part of me was furious at myself for feeling that way. With her alive, it meant there was no soul to take Katka’s place. I sank to the floor and sat down, letting the flashlight fall. It rolled to shine back at the hole I had smashed in the wall. The vodník was glaring at me through it.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he said.

  I blinked at him, confused. “What?”

  “You teenagers these days. Nothing but hormones. Is that all you can think about?”

  “The potion didn’t work,” I said. “I—”

  “Didn’t work? You’re hormonal and illiterate? Sixty seconds. The potion needed sixty seconds to work its course.”

  He was right. I remembered that now. “So if I had waited longer, then—” Then I could have saved Katka.

  “Then Lesana’s soul would have gone straight to my teacup, where she’s supposed to be,” the vodník said. “It’s a good thing I’m a genius, or I might be more than irritated at this point.”

  “Stop,” Lesana said, looking down at her body with a panicked expression. “What’s going on? What happened to me?”

  I stood up and stalked over to the opening where the vodník was peering in. “What do you mean she’d be in a teacup?”

  “Now,” he said. “If I could just remember where I put that teacup. Always carry one around with you, you know. Don’t leave home without it.”

  “I’m human again?” Lesana said behind me.

  “Wait a minute.” I rushed up to the opening and grabbed the vodník by his collar. “Her soul was supposed to be released.”