Babayaga

He would have reacted, but he could not. He was immobilized.

She stepped in front of him and smiled. “Sorry. You do like to run away and I had to make sure you would stay with me. But don’t worry,” she said, moving out of his static line of sight, “this will not take long.”

Straining every muscle, desperate to see what she was up to, Bendix found he was frozen in place, fastened firmly to the spot, with every muscle he wished to move now absolutely petrified. His eyes darted about with widening terror. He could hear her opening the glass cabinets, removing items and placing them on the metal counter, and then his pupils dilated wide as he heard the familiar clinking of the syringes being removed from their velvet case. “You are fortunate it is me,” she said, in a voice that was almost soothing. “If Elga were alive, you would be stone deaf by now, watching while she snacked on your bloody ears. Then she’d stick the tines of a fork through an eyeball and pluck that out too. You’d watch her chew with your good eye for as long as she let you.” Zoya returned to his line of sight. “She might even spare your life, so you could suffer in agony. Me, I am not that cruel, I promise I will let you die. But I do think it will hurt.” She held up the needle. “After all, your strange equipment is very new to me, so you’ll have to be a little patient”—she smiled—“I’m a virgin at this.”

It did hurt, and after the first injection, the searing pain was so tremendous he desperately wanted to scream out, but his paralysis prevented even that last great spasm. He knew he only had a little time, perhaps less than a minute, before the drug hit. The shame of his defeat burned at his pride, he wanted some tool, some trick, to smash her, to maul her, to wipe that mocking smile from her lips. Perched on the metal stool before him, she was still talking, calmly, soothingly, looking into his eyes as he endured the piercing agony and strained to break the spell. “Is it not odd to you that our paths would cross? After so many years? Have you given that any thought? I have. Incredible, even for a coincidence. What does your scientific reasoning tell you about this, Doctor? What natural force pulled us together? Was it electricity? Gravity? Was it God?” She shook her head. “No, we have no God, do we? That is a bond we share. But what was it, then? Can you guess?” The room was dimming; he had only seconds left before the nightmares came. He did not want to imagine the visions that were now rising up from his subconscious, racing toward him in a great tumultuous wall like a massive black storm bank descending upon quiet plains. He was intelligent enough to be terrified. He could barely hear Zoya’s voice now. “Goodbye,” she whispered, reaching out to gently stroke his cheek. It was the last human touch he felt before the darkness of his life exploded.

Over the next twenty minutes, she kept building on the nightmares, methodically filling the syringes and emptying each one into his pale, prone arm. Finally, as he sat there, immobilized with his eyes glaring, lost in the grotesque phantasms of his delirious, macabre mind, she rose and went to the bookshelf. Pulling down the manuals and textbooks one by one, she tore the pages out and covered the floor. Then she held a fistful of paper up to the burner and, after it caught fire, dropped it to the ground. The flames caught fast. As she left, she wondered what the neighbors of the 6th arrondissement would find lurking in their own dreams once the smoke hit.

V

So now we elemental sisters exhale,

our most bitter course through,
and now a fair wind will soon take
the dandelion seed dancing
across the blackened, turbulent sea,
on toward shadowed safety,
on toward cherished immortality.

For no one wants to be eternal

and alone.

VI

The priest met the detective at the entrance to the asylum. Vidot was holding a brown grocery bag. “Ah, thank you for coming. And here you are,” he said, handing the bag over to Andrei. “I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your generosity.”