The third reason he was writing more was to document his growing concerns—not about the impending nuclear accident, of which he knew nothing from his perspective in time, but the strange attacks that had started near Pripyat recently. I could feel his fear and worry as I read his words. Four people had been killed and Alexi believed the government was somehow involved.
On January 21, 1985, Alexi writes a long entry describing a story he heard from a co-worker and something he saw with his own eyes. Rather than try to paraphrase it, I have reproduced my best translation of this excerpt below.
****
I have never known Luka to be a liar. A cheat at cards, yes, but not dishonest in things that matter. And when he told me about the Bowl of Pripyat, I know he wasn’t lying. He was too afraid for it to be anything other than the truth.
He said, as we all know, that there are certain work tunnels and other areas underneath portions of Pripyat. Some say it is for a bomb shelter, others say it is for certain important people to travel between the town and the plant. Luka says it is for secret government things, the chief of which is the Bowl of Pripyat.
According to Luka, he had an older brother who worked on the plans for where to place the reactor and the “nuclear city” of Pripyat. The location was chosen because of something that was found there years earlier in a cavern deep below. They called it the “Bowl of Pripyat”.
It was a gigantic metallic bowl that stood as high as a tall man and as wide as two Wartburg 353s were long. It appeared to be empty at first, but over time it was discovered that the bottom would sometimes fill with a strange liquid. You could stir and shift the liquid, but attempting to remove any of it was somehow impossible, and anyone who touched the liquid seemed to go immediately and permanently insane. You would think this would cause people to stay away from the Bowl, but as my father used to say, “Appetite comes with eating.” The mystery and danger of the artifact caused it to become a highly prized commodity among those with power.
The building of the plant and the city were the perfect cover, as no one would pay attention to a few extra trucks or men coming in or out of the area in the dead of night. Luka says that his brother never saw the bowl, but two of his workers had. They had come back and told Luka’s brother strange tales of what was happening in that dark cavern deep in the earth, and it was clear that they were terrified. The next day, his brother received notice that the two men had been transferred elsewhere, and he never heard from them again.
The thought of all this was both scary and exciting, but at the time I had no intention of investigating it further. I am no brain, but I know better than to poke a sleeping bear. Still, over the next few weeks, I would find my gaze wandering to a certain patch of woods as I passed by on my way to and from work. Out in a clearing, half a kilometer from the road, there was a large concrete pillar that ended in a heavy metal grate. I had always assumed it was some kind of ventilation for the tunnels underneath, but before Luka’s story it had always been a mild curiosity at best. Now it was imbued with a kind of weight that was both attractive and repulsive. Still, I stayed away.
When the attacks started last month, my mind immediately went to the Bowl of Pripyat. This may seem foolish to some—while Pripyat only has small crimes usually, it is not unheard of for someone to be attacked or even killed. But this was different. One of the bodies I’ve seen myself and the others I’ve heard tell of, and the way they were burned and changed, it seems unnatural. People, good and sensible people, started talking about witchcraft and curses, or possibly some kind of Nav. But my mind went to the thing I had come to believe lay beneath us.
Tonight when I was walking home, my eyes went to that patch of forest again. My feet froze to the spot as I saw something looking back at me. It was tall—half again as tall as a large man—and even obscured by the trees and shadow, I could tell it had an unnatural shape unlike that of any person or animal I knew. It did not move, but simply watched me as I gathered up the courage to run back home as quickly as I could.
Every step I ran I expected to be my last. The thing would catch me from behind and drag me away. They would find my body as they had the others—cracked, charred and bloated with bones that no longer seemed to fit together right. But nothing happened. I made it back home and have heard no sign of the creature in the hours since. I’m writing this to not only make a record, but to help me decide if I should talk to others about it as well. I do not wish to be thought a fool, but I also do not want others getting hurt if what I know could help.
****
I have talked to some of the other men in the village, and to my surprise, no one laughed. Others have seen and heard things themselves, it seems, and while none of us mentioned the rumors about the Bowl or the cavern, we all seemed to be in agreement that some kind of monster is plaguing our woods. After some discussion, they have agreed to handle it without notifying any officials. They are forming a hunting party tonight and have asked me to go along. I am not good with a rifle, but I will still go. I feel this is important and necessary to keep us all safe.
****
There continue to be more entries after this, but they are usually short and typically detail their efforts to hunt this creature. Over the next two months, three more people are killed and the hunting party is going out every night with no success.
Then there is a brief paragraph that says that there was a city-wide assembly held by government officials. The townsfolk were told to stop all hunting activities, that this was a government matter that was being investigated. Anyone found outside of town at night (aside from going to and from work at the plant) would risk arrest and punishment.
The next one was the last entry written by Alexi and was clearly hastily done, with the man’s normally precise handwriting, so much like my own, being replaced with the slanting cursive I use when I’m in a rush. The date of the entry was April 27, 1986, the day after the Chernobyl disaster.
****
The plant is still burning. They say it started with Reactor 4. Everyone is afraid of getting sick from the radiation. Many people want to leave, but others say the radiation goes with the wind, and we are safer here. I say that it doesn’t matter, because the whole thing is a lie.
Last week we started the hunting party again. The military was doing nothing and our people kept dying, so we resolved to act. Night before last a group of us went on patrol, and for the first time, we found what we had been looking for. I wish now that we hadn’t.
The creature was standing over the body of a woman, though between her condition and the dark, I couldn’t have said who it was, and in the commotion of the past two days I still haven’t learned. It looked up at us, and in the glow of our lights, we saw it fully. God, but we saw it too well.
It was tall and slender, with a long, wide head that trailed off into thick ribbons of twitching flesh that seemed to move on their own, coiling and writhing around its spindly arms and legs like puppet strings. Its torso was a ruined, misshapen mass of bone and meat, with several openings that showed the black, glistening turmoil of its relentlessly churning insides. The worst parts were its eyes and skin, though for wholly different reasons. The skin…I would have to call its skin a kind of yellow, though it was a strangely shining shade that seemed wrong somehow. Just looking at how it glowed in the light make my stomach quiver and something inside my head shift uneasily. As for its eyes…they looked almost human beyond their large size and light purple hue. They were intelligent eyes. Eyes filled with knowledge and emotion.
And it was looking at us with equal parts of curiosity and contempt.
We tried to fight it, but as it stepped forward, most of the men dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, jerking like they were in the throws of a fit. I felt my father’s shotgun fall from my grasp as I sank to my knees. I wanted to close my eyes, to not watch this horrible thing approach and kill us, but I was transfixed. As the men around me grew more violent in their thrashings, I started to hear the firs
t of several dull cracks as they broke their own backs and necks one by one.
As for me, the monster stopped in front of me and squatted down, studying me with what might have been mild amusement on a more human face. After a few moments, it snaked out a speckled orange tongue and ran it up my face. As it finished, it spoke a single word.
”Selah.”
Either my revulsion and fear overcame its control over me or the creature chose to release me. Either way, I ran back to the town as quick as I could. Within two hours we were packed and ready to go Kiev, invitation from my uncle or not. But that’s when the soldiers came, telling us there had been a fire at the plant, and that no one was allowed to leave for the time being.
I am trying to keep up a brave face for my wife-to-be, my beautiful Alena, but I am terrified. Afraid of the radiation if the fires are real, to be sure. But more afraid of the thing this “accident” is meant to cover up. The thing that touched me and gave these troubling thoughts and dreams.
Because while I have slept little in the last two days, what sleep I’ve had has been strange and troubled. And I find my waking hours invaded by memories and thoughts that are not my own. Of a life that is not my own.
In that life, I am an American man named Brian and it seems to be many years in the future. Young and successful, that life is easier in some ways and harder in others. I have a family there, a job, thoughts and dreams that are both alien to me and undeniably familiar. I cannot say for sure if I am forgetting Alexi or remembering Brian, but either way it makes me both happy and terrified, as though I delight at the thought at being eradicated and made new.
Perhaps it is radiation sickness, but I fear it is something worse. Some hex placed on me by that vile creature in the woods. I fear what its corruption might be doing to me. And God help me, I fear that it might stop.
****
My name is Brian Favors. And I no longer think all of this is some strange coincidence or magical happenstance. I believe everything that Alexi wrote down, and I know he wasn’t crazy. Or if he was, then so am I.
Because I’m beginning to remember things too. Things from Alexi’s life that were never in the journal. The look of mild surprise and pride on my father’s face when I told him of my promotion. The smell of my sweet Alena’s hair when I held her close. The feel of that rotten thing’s tongue as it raked roughly up my face and somehow unmoored me and my counterpoint from normal reality and time.
I still remember being Brian, but it is harder now. The memories of both men swim around each other like hungry fishes vying for scraps of my attention. They shove and crowd each other until it is sometimes hard to see either clearly. I should think I’m just going crazy, but I don’t think I am. And much like Alexi…or Brian…in the journal, I don’t know that I want it to stop.
I write all of this with the hope it will clear my mind, at least somewhat. I post it with the hope that I can receive advice as to what I should do next. I’m strongly considering traveling to the Ukraine. Pripyat has become a tourist attraction of all things, and while the trip will be costly, it may be that I could find answers there. But will the answers I find help ease my troubled mind or only give me more questions?
For as my father always said, “Appetite comes with eating.”
The Bowl of Pripyat: Blood on the Mirror
I am Alexi Petrovich. I am Brian Favors. I believe that both of these things are true; that I am somehow both men.
But I don’t believe that is the entire truth.
I think the whole truth is that I am both less and more than these men. As they travel this strange path that has led them to a creaking train ride across the Ukraine in a passenger compartment that smells of cigarette smoke and too many years of use, I feel a phantom third trailing them, us. Sometimes behind, sometimes ahead, but always there as a terrible constant—the discordant beat of a corrupted heart.
I can’t see that third face yet, but I can sense it. It’s pushing up from some darker depth, carrying the weight of truth and the inertia of inevitability.
It terrifies me for many reasons. Most of all, because I’m beginning to fear it may be my truest face.
****
It took me nine hours to fly from New York to Kiev. Before that, the longest flight I had ever taken had been to Arizona to visit my cousin when I was nineteen. This was a wholly different experience. The plane was larger, but also older, and while the passenger compartment was only half-full, the seats seemed cramped for such a long flight. The blessing was that the trip was relatively quiet, and after a few minutes of listening to the low rumbling hum of the engines, I found myself drifting off to sleep.
I had gotten used to the strange dreams by that point, but the dream I had on that flight was different somehow. In it, I was in a town square, though I couldn’t have said where. People were all around me, hurrying to and fro, ordering food from a local stand, clustering up to have conversations here and there before moving on. I was looking around, trying to find some point of reference that might trigger some sense of familiarity in either Brian or Alexi’s memories, but there was nothing.
The architecture of the place was strange, and I saw no signs or engravings that gave any indication of a particular language or nationality. Just a large stone square bordered on all sides by buildings that towered over everything like the upreaching ornate fingers of some subterranean stone god. This was set against a sky that was a deep blue I would normally associate with twilight, but everything seemed too bright and well-defined for that. I could see far too much. And as the people crowding the square began to turn toward me, I could see the burn scars and keloids that traced fine lines of lightning across everyone’s flesh.
And they were turning to me now, all of them. First with curiosity, and then with joyful recognition. A few of them came towards me—men and women reaching out to touch me as they echoed out greetings to a long-lost friend. At my sides I felt my coat being tugged as children turned their twisted and charred faces up to me with gap-toothed smiles and shining eyes wild with excitement.
I tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The crush of people was growing now, and as they pressed closer, the babble of their greetings grew into an undulating wave of sound that I somehow understood even as I felt it tightening my throat and hammering down into the center of my brain.
They were welcoming me home.
I saw several of the people further back struggling to reach me, rubbing and scratching at their heads in frustration that they were so far back in the swelling biomass that was closing in on me. A needle of new horror pushed through as I saw their hair was coming away in tufts, floating away like dandelion fluff as they went back to pawing their heads with one hand as they reached for me with the other.
There was a man in front of me now, grabbing my lapels and grinning at me as he babbled that same flood of words that were neither English nor Russian. He was saying how good it was to have me back at last. I had trouble understanding some of it—but not because I couldn’t comprehend the words, whatever language it might be.
It was because he was trying to talk as his teeth were falling out.
****
I was awoken from a deep sleep by a concerned-looking stewardess. I had somehow slept the rest of the way to Kiev and was the last passenger left on the plane. As I pushed my way further up into consciousness, I realized I was also soaking wet. It was sweat for the most part, though I couldn’t say for sure I hadn’t peed on myself a little as well.
Feeling a flush of confusion, fear and embarrassment, I apologized to the stewardess and fumbled my way off the plane. I made the apology in Russian, but I was well past being troubled by such things now. Making my way through the airport, I found a taxi stand and got a ride to the hotel I had booked prior to my flight.
My train for Pripyat did not leave until six the next morning, but between jet lag and worry I got little rest during my stay in the hotel. By three a.m., I was already heading to the station in the co
ld rain that had settled over the city during the night. The train arrived a few minutes early, and so by the time the sun was rising, I was already on my way to Pripyat.
I woke with a start. My watch told me I had been asleep for just over two hours—a dreamless sleep that was a blessing after so many bad nights. I still had several more hours to go before I would be in Pripyat, so I started looking around with thoughts of exploring the train for a food cart or dining car.
That’s when I saw the faded yellow envelope lying in the seat next to me.
I froze like I had just woken up next to a rattlesnake. I knew what it was without opening it. The similarity of the envelope was part of it—that same old, dried-out looking paper that looked like it had been sitting somewhere for decades before being delivered to me. But it was more than that. It was like I could sense or somehow dimly recall that there were more writings inside.
Forcing myself to pick up the envelope, I felt the shift of paper inside as I looked around the car for any sign of who might have left this while I slept. The only other passengers were a teenaged couple that were looking at something on the girl’s cell phone. Grasping the envelope tightly, I walked back to them, shifting my weight with the subtle sway of the rails as I went. They looked up at the same time, their expressions slightly frightened and wary as I asked them if they had seen anyone leave me the envelope.
The boy shook his head while the girl muttered no, they had not seen anything, and then they both went back to studying her phone. I wanted to ask more, but I could tell they were ignoring me out of some sort of anxiety, not rudeness, and I didn’t want to worry them more by being the strange man that kept bugging them with odd questions. So I reluctantly went back to my seat and opened up the envelope.
I recognized our handwriting right away. The tone, however, was much different this time. It was describing events that took place several days after the last entry from Alexi, and this time the writer identified himself as Brian. Much like me, he had mixed memories of both men, and much like me, he found himself increasingly unable to distinguish one from the other as his nightmares grew more real and vivid.
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