Red Winter

by Smith, Dan

  I gritted my teeth and bowed my head. I needed my family. Only they could cast away the shadow that grew darker across my soul every day. They had to be here somewhere. I had to find them.

  I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, forcing the emotions away. I placed the revolver on the bed and ran my hands across my head and face, rubbing life and sense into them.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ I said aloud, finding comfort in my own voice.

  With fresh purpose, I strengthened my resolve and went to the chest of drawers to rummage for fresh clothes, which I laid on the bed beside the revolver. Shucking off my boots, I dragged the wet trousers from my legs and used the towel from the back of the chair to dry. I had to take care of myself before anything else. Damp and cold and driven to madness, I was useless.

  Redressed, I fastened my coat and pulled on my cold, wet boots, collecting the revolver before heading back to the front door and pulling it open to the night. The sky was clear of cloud now and any last traces of warmth were stolen away. The countless stars looked on, and the half-moon washed everything in silver.

  Kashtan nickered and snorted as soon as she saw me, and I scanned each way along the street, listening, before I stepped out and went to her. She nuzzled my chest and I put a hand to the blaze on her face.

  ‘A moment longer,’ I whispered, putting my nose close to hers and feeling the heat of her sweet breath. ‘I’ll get you out of sight. Somewhere warm. Find you something to eat if I can.’

  I patted her neck and moved round her, casting my eyes to the black shape of the forest on the other side of the river. Among the trees, the night was dark, and after a while it played tricks on even the strongest mind. I would be glad to sleep under a proper roof tonight and thanked my luck for that small mercy.

  ‘You did well,’ I told her. ‘You’ve been brave.’

  She had been in battle, she knew the smell of blood, but it had still frightened her to have Alek on her back. Without Kashtan I never would have made it home. She was a good friend.

  I loosened the binding that had kept my brother from falling and pulled him towards me, dragging him over my shoulder as I took his weight. I carried him into the house and leaned him against the wall by the pich, collapsing beside him, breathing heavily from the effort. We sat side by side as if we’d settled for a cigarette and a talk about old times.

  ‘You’re home,’ I told him. ‘More or less.’

  Alek didn’t live with me; he lived in the house next door with his wife, Irina, but she had died childless the year before the revolution, and this was where he spent much of his time when he was here in Belev, so it was more of a home than anywhere else. And this was the house he had grown up in, the house Papa had built himself and that Mama ran with a firm hand and a warm smile, the house we had played and argued and fought in as boys; the house he had left to be with Irina, the beauty of the village. Everyone said she’d marry Semyon Petrovich, but she’d never been interested in anyone other than Alek. He once said to me that Irina loved the way he played the garmoshka, that’s why she had married him, but I told him it couldn’t be true. His playing was tuneless, and his garmoshka was so worn and shabby it wheezed like an old man smoking his last pipe.

  I stared at his sturdy boots, then looked down at my own – cold and damp and uncomfortable. ‘You don’t need them now,’ I whispered, and sat up to tug them from his feet.

  Leaving my own in a heap by the pich, I felt a wave of sadness as I pulled on Alek’s socks and boots, but they were a better fit than my own and were of no use to a dead man. He would want me to have them.

  ‘Wait here for me,’ I said, unable to look at his face.

  Back outside, I unhitched Kashtan and led her to the outbuilding at the back of the izba. In the past, we had used it for storing grain and livestock, but now I was beginning to wonder if there might be something else in there, and as I came close to the door, I imagined I would open it to find the bodies of my children hanging from the rafters, with nooses tight about their necks. I’d seen such things already on my journey home, and the darkness of those images had been a constant passenger in my thoughts, but I had not expected that I would find such things here. I had only seen hope and warmth when I thought of home, and now I tightened my jaw and tried to push away the ghosts of my more recent memories. But those bleaker images crept into my thoughts like shadowy apparitions, smothering the light I longed for.

  I passed my old two-wheeled cart and swallowed hard as I prepared for the worst – if it was even possible to prepare for the terrible things I could imagine. I took a deep breath and braced myself, but when I put a foot to the door and pushed it open, raising the revolver, I found the outbuilding to be as empty as the house.

  I stood for a while and allowed my breath to escape me in a long sigh, forcing my fingers to relax as I lowered my arm. A wave of relief washed over me with a suddenness that brought with it the surprise that I could have felt so much more afraid and helpless than I had realised. But that relief was tempered with something else; this time, at least, my fears were unfounded, but the absence of my family here was both a blessing and a curse. They were still missing and I damned the experiences that now sent me visions of the worst.

  Any livestock that had once been kept in the outbuilding was long gone, but the scent of animals remained. The fenced-off section to the left of the door was bereft of any food stocks and I assumed the requisitions had been as harsh here as anywhere else. Perhaps Marianna and the children had moved on to find a place where they could feed themselves better. Or perhaps they had forgotten me and run from the war, looking for something safer.

  But there was the coat. Marianna would never leave without her coat.

  The floor was covered with straw, and there was a small pile of hay at the far end beside a shallow trough containing a few inches of rainwater that fed in from a pipe coming through the roof. When I led Kashtan in, she followed without trouble, going straight to the hay.

  I removed the few pieces of kit I had collected on my journey and slipped the saddle from her back, dumping it on the ground by the door. There were surface scratches across her flanks, ragged scrapes from our ride through the forest. She’d been reluctant to go where the trees grew so thick – the closeness of them had spooked her, and the scent of wild animals had troubled her – but she’d gone on. She’d been brave and I owed her for that.

  I took a rag from one of my saddlebags and soaked it in the trough before cleaning the dried blood from her skin, drying her and leaving her to the warmth of the outbuilding. I closed the door behind me and stood in the silence of the night, looking across at the field where the moonlight washed over the regular wave of the unplanted furrows.

  The beginnings of a frost crunched beneath my feet as I slipped to the other end of the yard and climbed over the fence into my brother’s property. Holding the revolver ready in front of me, I tried to block the emotions that had plagued me when I was alone in my family bedroom. I had to forget the sadness and the worry and the anger. I had to do what I did best and subdue my emotions, empty myself, leaving only what I needed. And when they were gone, there was just fear; and it was fear that kept my senses keen as I moved in the shadows, heading to the outbuilding behind Alek’s house. Finding it empty, I passed along the line of houses, checking each outbuilding in turn and finding no livestock, no grain, nothing.

  On this side of the road, there was a line of nine izbas, built with enough space between each to prevent the spread of fire. I checked every yard and outbuilding before moving on to the road that ran between the houses.

  I listened for a while, shivering as the temperature dropped and my breath misted around me, then moved from home to home, summoning the courage to enter each one but finding them all empty. I headed across the road and searched the windmill, the church, and the houses that backed onto the river, but found nothing other than what I had found in my own home. There were plates on tables, a few bits and pieces of food in cupboards, an
d all the signs that people had been going about their business, but the people themselves were missing. It was as if they had been plucked from their homes by invisible hands, or left in a hurry without time to do much more than pick up their coats. Except it was only the children’s coats; wherever they had gone, the adults had not taken their winter coats with them.

  As the night matured, the cold bit harder and the wind played among the highest branches in the forest, teasing the sails of the windmill so the air was filled with the creak and groan of old wood.

  I returned to check on Kashtan one last time and took my supplies back to the house, but even when I closed the door and pushed the bolt across, it felt as if the forest demons had slipped inside with me. After jamming a chair under the door handle, I went to the windows and considered drawing the curtains but decided against it. If anyone came in the night, they would bring lights, and I wanted to be able to see them.

  Eventually I went to my brother and slumped beside him as before.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ I whispered, staring at the door, feeling more alone than ever. ‘They’ve all gone. Everyone. Where the hell are they? What’s happened to them?’ I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, to remind myself that he had gone too.

  I placed the revolver in my lap and concentrated on the significance of the winter coats. It bothered me that the children’s were missing but not the adults’, and I couldn’t think of a good reason why it would be so. I went over it again and again, but I was worn out and my thoughts began to blur and swim. I told myself I would look again tomorrow, try to find an explanation.

  Somewhere in the night, exhaustion overcame me and I slept a while beside my dead brother. I woke when I thought I heard my wife’s gentle laughter and I sat up, forgetting where I was.

  ‘Marianna?’

  But then there was the emptiness of remembering she wasn’t there, and I leaned back and rubbed my eyes.

  The wind had strengthened further and it probed the house, searching for a way in, plucking at the windows, shaking the door and rattling the bolt. I wondered if it might be safe to light a fire. No one would see the smoke in the dark, and I could keep the oven door shut, pull the curtains across the windows. The warmth would be a welcome relief.

  I stood and rubbed the stiffness from my neck before going to the range, breaking kindling and arranging it in the oven. Reaching for the bundle of matches and taking one from the roll, though, something stopped me from striking it. A voice whispering in my head. Whatever had taken the people of Belev might come for me too, and how would I ever help them then? What use would I be to my wife and children if I were to disappear the way they had?

  I replaced the match in the roll of cloth and put it on the table, my fingers reluctant to let it go. I wanted that fire so much my heart sank at how close I had been to having it; how close I had come to that one small comfort. A huge sadness welled inside me – for the loss of my brother, for Marianna and the boys, for everything I had done and seen. It surged in a great wave and I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my fingers against them.

  Standing like that, I prayed for my family. Prayed for some sign of them.

  But my prayer was disturbed by a scraping and shuffling from deeper in the room. At first, I thought I was imagining the noise, but when it came again, I opened my eyes and turned back to my brother. My vision was impaired, blurred because I had been rubbing my eyes, and I thought it was playing tricks on me when I saw a dark shadow rising in the room. The spectre was taking shape, emerging from the ground in the murky darkness, as if Alek had woken from the dead and was standing to greet me. I tried to tell myself it was my imagination. It was nothing more than an eerie mix of light and dark. As my sight cleared, however, I knew it was no trick. Someone or something was there.

  I was not alone in the house.

  3

  A blinding white light of panic and fear exploded in my mind. A quick flash, a fraction of a second and then it was gone. After that, everything was instinct. The revolver lay on the floor beside my brother and was of no use to me now, so I launched myself at the figure, thinking to protect myself by attacking first. I had no idea who had come into my home, but in the fragment of time it took to make my first movement, I remembered that I had bolted the door. The windows were closed, and the door was locked, so it was impossible that anyone could have come in while I was asleep. The only way anybody could be inside the house was if they had already been here when I returned from searching the village. They had waited for me to fall asleep and they had emerged from their hiding place to do whatever it was they had done to the other villagers.

  Three steps were all it took for me to cross the distance between us.

  Three wide, quick steps.

  My boots clicked on the wooden floor and the figure remained as it was. It made no attempt to move or defend itself and I barrelled into it with all my strength. My natural impulse was to use as much force as I could, to destroy this threat without delay. I had seen and suffered things that gave a man the inclination to destroy and kill before waiting for horrors to be committed upon himself. I had extinguished life before, and tonight I would do the same.

  There was no resistance.

  As soon as I put my arms round it and forced it to the ground, I knew the figure was thin and weak. It was well padded with clothing, but beneath the materials, bones protruded hard against flesh. Skin was old and dry. Muscle was weak. It made hardly a sound when it hit the floor and took my full weight as I came down on top of it. There was just an escape of air and a muffled grunt, and then I was astride the shape, pinning it to the floor. I put my hands out, finding the narrow throat and circling my fingers round it, pressing my thumbs into the soft hollow, squeezing the life out of it, crushing the cartilage.

  The smell that issued from the bag of bones beneath me was hellish. The odour of damp earth and human waste filled my nostrils and clotted my throat. The stink of decay washed over this awful creature like a disease, making me gag, but I knew it was human. It had to be. I could feel its neck crushing in my grip.

  It raised its hands to my face, touching me with bony fingers, long nails raking at my cheeks. Then, as life began to leave it and its body began to relax, it managed a word. It opened its mouth and spoke a single word, which came out in a long, hot breath.

  ‘Alek.’

  And with that word, my senses returned to me. I was killing something I could not see. I might have been strangling my own wife on the floor of our home.

  I released my grip and jumped back from the creature, crawling to where my brother lay. I ran my hands around the floorboards, searching for the revolver, and when my fingers stumbled on its cold metal, I snatched it up and pointed it at the shape that lay coughing in a heap. It had turned onto its front and was spluttering and hacking like an old hag.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, but the creature didn’t reply. It stayed as it was, fighting for life, drawing air into its lungs in short, wheezing gasps.

  I waited, trying to keep the revolver steady in my shaking hands, the stink of the creature thick around me. And when its breathing eventually settled to a rhythmic rasp and whistle, it spoke again.

  ‘Alek?’ the creature said. ‘Is that you, Alek?’

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked for a second time, but I was almost too afraid to hear the answer. I knew this was no witch or spectre; this was a person who was looking for shelter and safety, just as I was. I also knew it was a woman – the voice told me that much – but I was afraid to know which woman. The thought that my wife might have become this creature was almost too much to bear.

  When she didn’t answer, I raised my voice and asked once more, ‘Who are you? Speak now or I’ll shoot.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Alek.’ She shifted on the floor and turned towards me. All I could make out in the darkness was the shape of her, but I saw she was holding a hand out to me. Whether she wanted me to take it or she was just trying to reach out to me, I didn’t know, b
ut I couldn’t bring myself to touch her even if it was what she wanted. The way she smelled and the way she had felt in my fingers made my skin crawl.

  ‘Tell me your name,’ I said.

  ‘Is that you, Alek?’

  ‘No. It’s Kolya. Nikolai. Alek’s brother. Who are you?’

  There was a moment of silence as if she were trying to remember.

  ‘Galina,’ she said. ‘Galina, Galina, Galina.’

  Galina Ivanovna Petrova was a friend of my mother. At least, she had been until Mama died, the summer before the revolution. Mama went to the river to wash clothes one morning and didn’t return. When Alek and I went looking for her, we found the clothes but no sign of Mama, so we searched up and down the bank, finding nothing until we came to the lake where the water washed from the river. We swam there when the weather was warm. The lake was a good size, with a small, marshy island close to the far shore where my brother and I played as children. We had an old rowing boat with a tin for baling out the water that leaked through the joins in the wood. At its deepest point, the lake was deeper than any of us ever cared to find out. As children, we would dare each other to swim down and touch the bottom, but the darkness closed around you quickly in the murky water, and the weeds reached up to tangle your hands and feet. Nobody I knew had ever touched the bottom.

  Mama was in the lake when we found her. She was floating face up, as if the river’s current had turned her to face the sky. Her skirt billowed around her, rippling with the surface water, and her headscarf had come loose so her hair was spread out in tendrils. A deep gash marred her forehead, cleaned by the current and the fish so that it was an empty, ragged scar.

  We could only guess that she had slipped from the riverbank and hit her head on one of the many rocks. If the blow hadn’t killed her, it was the cold water that had taken her life, swirling about her, drowning her as she lay unconscious.