Olga was back to sitting at her desk, looking over the screen of her computer. Approaching the narrow counter, Victor clears his throat and puts the key down on a faux marble top, sliding it towards her. Turning her chair to face him, Olga looks up at Victor quizzically; tonight she was wearing a shirt with a skull on it, it’s forehead had Slayer carved into it.
“Leaving already?” she jokes while chewing her gum.
“Yes, better get a move on before this snow picks up again. Got some business to take care of in the city.”
“Yeah, I figured that much…” Olga placed her huge boots, containing her feet, on the counter, their loose laces dangled on the sides. “…no one ever stays long. Not that I blame them, this place is full of suck. I think mausoleums got more life in them than this dump.” She popped her gum. “I had my uncle clear your car for you, so you’re all set.”
“Thank you for that. But I do have one question I have meant to ask.”
“What’s that?” she places her feet back on the floor and leans in to study Victor over closely.
“Well, you see…” Victor looks around as he always did when he was trying to choose his words carefully “…I went off the road last night, not far from here, by an old cemetery. Figured I might as well look around while the blizzard calmed, I like cemeteries. I noticed a lone grave on the hill there; it had decorations and offerings on it. I was just curious if you knew anything about it, that’s all.”
“Ah, you must mean Katya.” Olga lit up at the notion of telling someone all about me. “She is kinda a big deal around these parts, local ghost legend and all, so the town likes to remember her the best way they know how.”
I tilted my head in bewilderment; her answer took me by surprise as much as it did Victor. Apparently, I was a ghost legend, and I was never made aware of such a thing. How on earth would anyone know I was not entirely dead? How many people were aware of this fact, and for how long did this legend of me been floating around? All this talk of ghosts and legends was starting to get me paranoid about how little I knew of my powers. Victor did not look convinced either; he leaned his face on a hand he had propped up on the desk, giving Olga a half-hearted look with a dubious smile.
“I get it.” She laughs, popping her gum again. “You’re skeptical; I was too at first, always thought that people were pulling my leg when they told me the story. That is until I caught her on camera, been a believer ever since. Unbeknownst to her, Katya got me into the occult.”
“You caught a ghost on camera?” Victor pulls back in astonishment. “This I have to see. Do you happen to have the picture on you?”
“What a silly question, of course, I do. I have it right here.” Olga stands up and points to a small picture hanging by the staircase. “I had it framed and all, seeing as I feel oddly connected to her.”
Victor walked over to a small framed print hanging on the wall. Curiously I came close behind him; I needed to see this picture Olga supposedly got of me. The frame was small, understated; it was easy to miss among the rest of the pictures in their grand wood cases. Sure enough, there I was, staring right back at me. The photo clearly showed what could only be my spirit, standing next to my gravestone, looking over its inscription. I was translucent, much like I appeared to myself when I looked at parts of the body, you could see the willow tree straight through my torso. But it was me, unmistakably me, the ghost in the photo had my hair and wore my mama’s dress, same one I died in.
Timidly, Victor reaches up and traces my ghostly form with his long white fingers. His finger settles on my face, and he bites down on his lip as it starts to quiver. The glint in his eyes is laced with heartache and longing. He is doing his best to stay composed, but I can see right through his façade, I always could.
“Is…” he choked up “…is this her?”
“Mmmhmm.” Olga looks over at Victor concerned. “I know, she was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Most definitely. Although, I don’t think calling her beautiful does her justice. She is as lovely as a warm winter sun, rising over the cobalt waters of the ocean. A simply stunning vision that is only witnessed by those who crave to bask in its glory.”
“Damn man, you some sort of poet or some shit?”
“Maybe at heart.” Victor gives out a light chuckle as he continues to gaze lovingly over my picture.
He was not being entirely honest, my Victor was a poet, and a good one at that. I think that he got into it because of me, but there was never a time that I did not enjoy a stanza he had written for me. My Victor had talent; he had a way with words, so few men did. Had he lived, I have no doubt he would have become one of the greatest poets of our time.
“She would have loved you,” Olga had interrupted my tail of thought “Katya loved poetry. I go to her grave to read to her when I can, so she doesn’t get lonely or anything. I read somewhere Lord Byron was her favorite.”
“Ah yes, ‘My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, but ever love, and love but one.’ Something tells me this would have been her favorite poem.”
“Stanzas to a lady, on leaving England. Nice choice. It seems like you have fallen in love with a ghost.” Olga stands next to him cross-armed and smiling.
“I never stopped loving her,” Victor mumbles so she doesn’t hear.
Standing next to him, my heart is ablaze, I am pleasantly surprised and shocked at the same time. Not only has Victor remembered my favorite poem, he was able to recall my favorite lines. I read him that poem often, sitting on the banks of the Oka river, his head laying in my lap. He always joked about how silly it was to pine for a woman who rejected him, and I always use to reply how I found it to be romantic. Back in Moscow, I was sure he had forgotten me, but hearing him speak now, I know I was wrong, time was not able to put out the love we had shared. This proved what I had known all along; Victor was a hopeless romantic after all.
“So, what did happen to her, to make her stick around that is?”
“Yeah that, poor thing, can’t blame her for getting stuck here. She was gunned down on the eve of her wedding, right outside the Holy Trinity Church. So tragic, she was only nineteen at the time, just three years older than me.” Olga shakes her head sorrowfully “Can you believe some folks claim that it was her fiancé who was the culprit?”
“Is that so?” Victor nodded “Why is it, that everyone always suspects the significant other in these cases first.”
“No clue, maybe because they are the closest to the victim? Plus, he was the only one with her at the time. Witnesses place him walking her home, and her engagement ring was missing too. Most people had suspected he murdered her and ran off to Moscow to be with his lover or some fucked up shit like that.”
“What do you think?” Victor has his hand pressed over the spot my ring hung around his neck.
“I don’t believe he did it, he seemed to care for her too much, so if he did grow tired of her, he would have just broken things off, not murdered her. Plus, there was a cop back like fifty years, or so that discovered there had been two separate blood pools and theorized one belonged to the man. So, it seems like neither made it home alive that night, but someone stole his body for some reason, medical research most likely. Darn shame too.”
“So, I take it they never did catch the culprit.”
“Nah, the damn bastard got away with it, sure hopes he rots in hell for what he’s done. It seems like another local girl went missing weeks before too, so I think the village had a serial on their hand and didn’t even know it.” Olga looks at Victor and then at my photograph “Hey, what do you think is worse, death or a broken heart?”
“Not sure...” Victor looks over my picture, still fiddling with the secret hidden under his coat “I’d say they are both equally bad, but if I had to pick one to be, I would pick dead.”
“How come?” she snaps her gum.
“A broken heart doesn’t kill you, but it hurts so much you wish you were dead. But death, death only hurts briefly, and then you are free,
so I’d rather be dead.”
“Good answer, Katya really would have liked you.” She smiles as she watches him pull away from the picture “Anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you, I think that will be all. Oh, and thank you for having my car dug out for me” Victor heads for the door.
Olga shrugged and went back to her computer screen. Victor was almost out the door when he stopped at turned back to face her.
“Hey, do me one favor.”
“What’s that?” she calls up from the desk without looking up
“Get the hell out of this God forsaken town. Go to the city, get an education, start a better life. Something tells me Katya would have wanted it for you.”
Just like in life it seems Victor, and I connected on some metaphysical level, always able to know what the other one is thinking. That was exactly what I had wanted to tell Olga for so long, but had no ability to do so.
“You know what…” Olga looks up smiling “…I think I will. But you have to do a favor for me in return.”
“And what is that?”
“Come back and visit Katya for me, you seem to have a real connection with her, and I don’t want her to be alone or anything. Not sure if you believe in any of the reincarnation crap or anything, but maybe you are her Victor, returning to help her cross over or something.”
“Maybe I am.” Victor smiles “I promise, I will return often to visit Katya for you, she will never have to feel alone again.”
With a wave of his hand, Victor closes the door behind him, leaving the neglected inn for the bitterness of the cold night. Looking down at the snow under his feet as he walks I can see a smile on his face. Walking by his side, I can’t help but imagine he needed to come here and meet Olga in order to learn about me and help her find her way out of here. Perhaps, we were all bound together, linked by invisible ropes which guide us to one another when the time is right. If this was true, maybe what bound me to Victor was something a bit stronger than a rope, a titanium chain perchance.
Victor’s Lada is waiting for us, dug out from its snowy tomb. Victor dusts off the windshield with the sleeve of his coat and climbs inside; I materialize beside him in the passenger seat. Cranking the engine to life, he sits back and pulls out the chain which is holding on to my ring. He takes it off his neck and meticulously observes my ring between his fingers. Slipping the ring halfway down his ring finger, Victor tilts his head back in his seat, staring up at the golden ceiling of the car.
“So, you are still here darling.” He looks wistfully over to where I sit “All this time I thought you had moved on to better things, but like me, you are bound here, to this joyless land forever. I wish there were a way I could talk to you Katya, a way I could see you, I just want to be able to hold you in my arms again.”
“Me too Victor, me too.”
This mostly dead thing was beginning to look more and more like a curse. All I wanted was to be able to communicate with Victor, but no matter how hard I tried to recreate the few times I did manage to cross into the physical world, I failed miserably. There must be some trick to materializing in the realm of the living, and I am not going to give up until I figure out what it is. Turning my head, I peered deep into Victor's pale green eyes, they were different from what I knew, but for me, they were still beautiful. I place my hand on his knee, and Victor covers it with his, closing his eyes.
“Don’t worry love, I’ll find a way to be with you, I am never going to let you go ever again.” He opens his eyes and sits up, putting the car in gear. “But right now, I need to get back to Moscow and take care of a few things, things I should have never allowed to happen in the first place. I just hope you can forgive me once you learn what a terrible person I have been my love.”
“I’m right here; you just don’t see me.” I mumbled, “And I do forgive you, I can’t be mad at you, no matter how hard I try.”
With a jolt, the Lada slid from its spot and headed back to the city, back to Nadia, where I am sure an unpleasant confrontation was coming. Sitting in the car, I lean my head against the window and watch Dedinovo fade away in the rearview mirror. As the village disappears into the blackness of night, I wonder if the darkness would be waiting for us in the city. Perhaps it was gone, but I had a bad feeling deep within the caves of my heart that it was still there, hoping to get us back within its grasp.
6
The Atonement
O
ur ride into the city was slow going; the roads were poorly plowed, leaving the Lada to toil as it grappled with the snow to grip the pavement beneath. The silence between us was deafening; unspoken words were begging to be said wailed inside my head. Victor had both hands gripped on the wheel, staring out the window, he had a tenacious air about him. I have only seen him like this on a handful of occasions, the last one being the day before our death when he vowed to get us out of Dedinovo and make a life for us in the city.
Not daring to distract him from his world, I listened to the radio station he had left on, some easy listening program. Currently, it was blaring out some depressing love song by some guy named Igor Nikolayev. He was singing a song about five reasons why the love between some woman and him died out; it reminded me so much of my favorite poems by Lord Byron. Smirking, I think of what Victor would tell me about such an overly sentimental expression of love, but I know his secret now, he is just as passionate when it comes to matters of the heart.
Still grinning, I look up and notice the lights of the city faintly sparkling in the windshield, like fireflies in a field on a warm summer night. Usually, I would feel dazzled by the glimmer of Moscow coming into view, but not tonight, tonight something sinister was blended in with its shadows. As we came closer to the border, a flame I felt inside me the last time I was here had reignited itself; a blistering hot fire flowed deep in my veins. The closer we get, the more I had started to feel an asphyxiating gloom, surrounding me in its attempts to strangle the life force from me. Some arctic chill cascades down my spine as the abrupt manifestation of some ancient evil made its presence visibly known.
Either Victor was oblivious to its existence, or he did not seem to care because he pushed harder on the gas pedal and sped towards the house he lived in. Racing down streets, void of all apparent life I kept catching thing out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes just a quick glimpse of some large shadow lurking within an unlit corner of a bus station, at other times I caught sight of vermilion eyes, keeping tabs on us. Never in my time as a spirit had I ever witnessed anything like this, I don’t even know where to begin guessing what these things are, or what they are doing in the city. All I knew is that I was instinctively scared of them like cats know to stay away from dogs by some form of wisdom which had been bred into them over time.
The Lada pulls up to the antiquated building Victor had lived in with that woman. Reaching over my lap, he pulls out his pack of cigarettes, lighting up another pungent stick he leans his head on the window. Looking out of his window, his head was turned away from me, but I could still see his eyes reflecting on the darkened glass. Something about the way he looked concerned me, there was a gleam there I have never seen before in Victor, one of anger and contempt.
Taking the last few puffs of his cigarette, he puts it out on the back of his hand and tosses it onto the road outside. Leaving the engine running, Victor steps out and glances around at the building to our right. There was something different about it, more oppressive than it had been just a night ago. It seems like whatever had invaded the city was gathering here as its primary hunting grounds. I can make out muted silhouettes lurking in the nearby alleyways. Paying them no attention, Victor slams the door to his car shut and starts to walk to the garden gate, his footsteps thumping on the ground as they fell.
I run after him, terrified of being left alone with whatever vile creature that has been stalking us since we entered the city. Victor sprints up the old staircase with ease, scaling three or four steps at a time. Reaching the second
-floor landing, he begins creeping down to his door, not daring to make a sound, and unlocks the wood gate with a muffled click.
His room looks exactly the way it did when we left, broken glass in the fireplace and bottle caps on the floor. Not bothering to look around, Victor goes straight to his bedroom. From under his bed, he pulls out a small bag; one people like to wear on their backs in recent years. Walking over to his dresser, he carefully placed the drinking horn inside the backpack. With papa’s gift carefully packed away, Victor begins stuffing his bag full of clothes. I watch as he carefully zips the bulging bag shut and slings it over his shoulder, flowing behind him as he heads out of the room.
Nadia must have heard him come in because suddenly she is standing in his doorway, blocking our path. She is wearing another silky floor-length gown, this time it’s black and strapless. The look on her face is a cocktail of panic, outrage, and pure unbridled malice. With her arms holding on to the doorframe, her body acts as a door, and she continues to glare at Victor with her teeth clenched shut.
“What do you think you’re doing, lover?” she seethes through tightly clenched teeth, her sharp fangs openly visible.
“Leaving, what does it look like?” Victor scoffs at her while turning his head to face away from her “And stop calling me lover, I loathe that term coming from you.”
“Oh really? And where the hell do you think you are going?” Nadia leaves her spot in the door, darting for Victor, sticking her obnoxiously long nail in his face.
“That’s none of your concern.” Victor calmly pushes her aside and heads for the door which had been left open. Turning his head to face her, he smirks in her direction. “I’m leaving you.”
“Leaving me? You think you are leaving me?” Nadia shrieks like a banshee “You can’t do that.” She grabs hold of his arm, yanking him back into the room.
“Of course I can…” Victor pries her arm off and turns to walk out again “I shouldn’t have found myself with you, to begin with. I was an idiot for being weak enough to think you could provide me with anything other than self-loathing.”
Toska (Dark World Saga Book 1) Page 7