Sveta hopped off the fence, flashing a green bathing suit under the red flower skirt. “So are we going swimming?”
Janna grinned. “You bet.”
Mom’s voice popped into her head, “Stay away from the pontoon. The damn pipe is right next to it. Who knows what sort of filth it’s dumping into the river.” Yeah right. Her black dress would dry in half an hour. What Mom didn’t know, she couldn’t yell about.
They ran down the steep dirt slope to a narrow passage between the apartment houses leading to the boulevard along the river.
“There will be guys there,” Sveta said. “Mila and I met them the other day. They’re kind of rough. You know. Older. But cute. You’re not gonna lose it or anything?”
Janna shrugged. Sveta always met “guys”. So far they mysteriously failed to materialize.
“Here.” Sveta offered her a rubber band. “Put your hair up, so a water rat doesn’t get stuck in it.”
“There are no rats under pontoon. It’s a stupid rumor.”
They took the wide stairway down to the bottom of the boulevard and headed west, where the tall iron fence of the factory abruptly cut off the sidewalk. On the right, past the iron rail, the river flowed with ponderous dignity, its swamp-green waters full of silt and opaque.
Ahead by the fence, three guys passed a cigarette pack, leaning on the rail.
“You didn’t tell me they smoked.”
Sveta held up her hand. “Whatever. Just try to act cool, yes?”
The guys laughed. They did look older. Like in their twenties older. Sveta had a big dumb smile plastered on her face. Yeah. Act cool.
They stopped by the fence. Sveta struck a pose. “This is Janna. That’s Vadim, that’s Gena, and that guy with the big smile, that’s Ruslan.”
Blond Ruslan shrugged his big shoulder. “Janna,” he said. “Ooo.”
This was a bad idea. The only way to escape was to jump in the water and then go home.
She slipped off her shoes. Kids were diving off the pontoon into the dark water.
“You coming, Svet?”
Sveta waved her hand. “In a minute.”
Janna shrugged and went down to where the small wooden ladder dropped from the street to the pontoon. From here she could see the huge factory pipe beyond the fence. The pipe runoff, grey and nasty like dishwater, spilled into the river in a foamy stream. The green water swallowed it and she couldn’t tell if it curved to pontoon or not.
“You scared?” Ruslan came up behind her, smelling of smoke. “Want me to throw you in?”
He looked like he would enjoy it. “No, thanks.” Janna run across the metal, swung her arms, and executed a perfect dive.
Cold water shocked her. She kicked her feet and surfaced to see Ruslan crouching at the edge of the pontoon. He reached for her. “Gotcha!”
She dove under. What an ass.
Her foot touched the deep slime lining the bottom of the river, and then, beyond the watery muck, her toes brushed something smooth and solid. She felt the odd shape slide against the arch of her foot. Something grabbed her hair, jerking her head down, deeper into the green gloom. She flailed. The force let go and suddenly free, she surfaced with a gulp.
“I think I stepped on a water rat.” She tried to pull herself up onto the pontoon, but the wet metal proved too slick.
Ruslan skewed his face. “What? That’s a kid story.”
“I’m telling you I stepped on a water rat. It was in my hair.”
Ruslan glanced past her. His eyes widened. His jaw drooped, stretching his mouth in a terrified “o”. His chin shook. He struggled with trembling lips trying to shape a word…
She looked behind her and saw a face in the water. It stared at her, floating in the nimbus of blond hair, skin stark white, bloodless. Milky blue eyes glared at her, and she thought she saw the dead lips curve a little.
“A floater,” Ruslan whispered. “An utoplennik!”
A hand surfaced right by her shoulder. She lunged for Ruslan, clawing at the pontoon. “Pull me up!”
He backed away.
The dead fingers brushed her back. Ice shot down her spine. “Pull me up,” she screamed. “Help! Help me!”
#
She sat on the steps, wrapped in a towel. Her teeth chattered. Down by the river men in blue police uniforms pulled the utoplennik out of the water. She could hear them talking, giving directions, wrapping the body, like it was the most mundane thing.
Next to her Sveta hugged her knees. “If the cops bring me home, I’m going to be in so much trouble. You think they’ll let us go?”
Janna closed her eyes. Milky blue eyes staring from the water, hair like spider’s net…
A warm hand touched her shoulder. She glanced up and saw a policeman. “You live around here?”
“Up over there.” Sveta pointed over her shoulder. “You can see her house. I’ll take her home…”
“No,” he said. “We’ll take her home.”
They did half an hour later. There was no screaming. Nobody berated her. She was sent to a hot shower, and then she lied down in her bed and fell asleep.
#
Janna awoke in panic. Her heart hammered. Her feet and hands were ice-cold. She curled under the blanket, trying to get warm.
The bedroom was dark, the only light coming from the window, where a distant moon illuminated the empty soccer court. From here she could see little else, except a huge acacia on the right and the roof of the garage, only a couple of feet under her windowsill.
Janna closed her eyes. Just a nightmare.
A shrill sound of metal scratching glass cut through the silence. She glanced up. The utoplennik stood on the garage roof. Pale eyes stared at her from a grey-marble face.
She froze into a terrified clump. Her throat constricted. It hurt to breathe.
Water dripped from his hair down onto his white shirt, onto the jeans. He crouched, wedging his legs between the bars guarding the window. His knees made dump circles on the glass.
Not real. Not real, not real, not real…
He tested the glass with a long curved claw. Click-click-click.
Oh my God.
The utoplennik gripped the bars, leaned in close, opened his mouth, showing sharp wolf teeth. “Let me in.”
Something snapped in her chest like glass shattering into a million pieces. The scream ripped from her mouth. The house came alive with stomping, lights came on, Dad’s arms closed about her. “What is it?”
The roof lay empty.
She heaved, shuddering. “He was there. He was there on the roof. He was there!”
Mom leaned out to look at the roof. Dad straightened, ran his hand through his hair, opened his mouth to say something, but must’ve changed his mind and left the room.
Mom sat on the bed. “He can’t get in,” she said. “Unless you let him. There are bars on the windows. And he tries to break through the glass, we’ll hear it. Come. You can sleep on the couch in the living room. I’ll pull the drapes shut.”
Later, as she lay on the couch, she heard them talking in the bedroom.
“She had a nightmare. You shouldn’t encourage it.”
“She’s trying to deal with it. It’s hard enough as is. I want her to trust me, so I can help. If she thinks he’s real, then to her he is.”
#
Mom shook her head. “You haven’t eaten all day. You want a sandwich?”
“No.”
“Would you like to sleep on the couch tonight?”
“No.”
Not knowing if he was there, hovering behind the drapes, proved worse than staring him in the face. Janna took her book and went into her room.
She dragged the evening ritual: took her time brushing her teeth, washing her feet, brushing her hair. She read with the light on.
Slowly the house quieted down. The sound of running water stopped. The kitchen fell silent. The hum of the TV died. One by one the lights went out. The last traces of the quiet conversation between her parents melted into the night. It was as if all that made the house alive shrunk into the light of her lamp. She read, turning the pages with automaton monotony, not really understanding the words.
“Let me in.”
Oh no.
“Open the window.”
His voice pulled on her like a hand trying to lift her face. She stared at the book. Not real. In my head. Not real.
“Look at me.”
She raised her eyes before she knew she’d done it. The utoplennik stood behind bars. “Let me in.”
Janna reached for the light switch. Her fingers shook. She missed, whimpered, and finally flipped it. Harsh electric glow bathed the bedroom. He grinned against it.
He didn’t disappear. She clutched at her blanket. He was supposed to disappear.
“So pretty.” He caressed the glass. “Pretty, pretty girl. Open the window.”
The words wouldn’t come out, but she forced them, scraping her throat raw. “Go away.”
“Give me a kiss,” he whispered.
His voice slid off her skin. He licked his teeth. His shirt fell open, and she saw his muscular chest, dead and grey like the rest of him. “Let me put my arms around you. Let me smell your hair. And then I’ll go.”
“No.”
He glanced up to the small, hinged windowpane at the top of the window. It was locked. She knew it was locked. She only opened the whole window in the summer, never the pane alone.
He reached up, tapped the pane, and it swung open with agonizing slowness. “Ah. You left the way in for me.”
She knew she had to jump off the bed and run, run fast to her parents’ bedroom, but her muscles petrified. She couldn’t even twitch.
The utoplennik pressed against the bars, trying to reach through the opening. Janna’s chest barely moved. She took a tiny, shallow breath.
The utoplennik grimaced, eyes flashing with silver. His upper lip trembled, baring his teeth. His arm stretched with rubbery ease. Longer and longer, across the desk, across the carpet. She willed her legs to move, but they didn’t obey.
The arm crept forward, so thin she could nearly see through it. He gained another inch, and his hand plummeted to her bed, the arm too thin to support it. The clawed fingers clutched the edge of her blanket, the arm contracted, and he ripped the blanket from her.
She gasped.
He jerked the wad of the blanket through the window pain and tossed it aside with a frustrated growl. “You belong to me. You want me. You know you do. Open the window!”
She just stared, mute.
He grasped the bars and pulled, muscles on his arm bulging. With a tortured metal screech, the left bar gave and curved outward…
She screamed. She screamed and screamed at the top of her lungs, and she would not stop screaming, not when her parents ran into the bedroom, not when her father carried her out into the living room, not when they drenched her in water, trying to break her out of her hysteria…
#
The small house sat all by itself, on the edge of the block, crouching like an old man in an overgrown vacant lot.
“Znaharka she is,” Mom said. “Irina Ivanovna. You remember when your uncle went under the ice last year? Couldn’t find his body for three days. She put bread and salt on the water, found him in two hours. She spells the teeth too. She’ll help.”
She nodded and Janna was not sure who she was trying to convince, her or herself.
Mom rang the bell. A female voice called out, “Come in!” and let themselves into the house. It was an old house. Low ceilings, small rooms with white-washed walls, huge windows. The air smelled of cooked sunflower seeds and sour milk.
Janna followed Mom into the kitchen. A plump older woman sat at a table in a stream of light from the kitchen window. “Welcome.”
They sat at the table. Irina Ivanovna looked at her. Her eyes were light and hazel-yellow, like honey. “What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer.
“Janna,” Mom said.
Irina Ivanovna sighed. “Lean forward, child. Let me see you.”
Janna squinted as Irina Ivanovna’s fingers raised her face into the sunlight. The hands held her a moment and let go. Irina Ivanovna sat back with a sigh. “Didn’t christen the girl, mmm? Why, Larissa?”
Mom shifted in her seat. “Nikolai didn’t want to. Said superstition. I’ll take her, if it will help.”
Irina Ivanovna shook her head. “Too late now. Well, you go on. Leave her with me.”
“I’ll wait outside,” Mom said.
“It will be a long while.”
“I’ll wait all the same.”
“Suit yourself.”
When the front door closed behind Mom, Irina Ivanovna leaned back. “What does he have on you? Did you kiss a strange boy, no? Someone scratched you? Think back for me.”
Green water. Cold spring under foot. Slime. Sludge-slicked skin. Head jerked back…
“Hair then.” Irina Ivanovna sighed. “Not good. How many nights has he been coming?”
“Two.” Her voice sounded rusty, new to her.
“Third night tonight, then. That’s when it will all be decided. Want to be rid of him?”
Janna nodded.
Irina Ivanovna’s honey eyes regarded her, reaching in deep, taking all the secrets for her own. “I bet he is pretty. With a sweet voice. Makes your heart skip when he smiles.”
Janna closed her eyes.
“Like him a little, yes?”
She nodded, eyes still closed. Tears wet her cheeks.
“That’s alright,” Irina Ivanovna’s voice said. “He means for you to like him. You can send him on his way. Gone. Cut off like a rope with a knife. But you must be very sure, because on this night everything will be decided: either he leaves alone or with you. Wipe the tears.”
Janna wiped her face with the back of her hand. Irina Ivanovna put a piece of wood and a knife on the table. “This is ash. Sorcerous wood. Takes words well. Cut yourself a sliver, big enough to hold like a knife.”
Janna put the knife to the wood.
“Press harder.”
The blade slipped. Janna stuck her finger into her mouth, but few red drops fell on the wood.
“Good,” Irina Ivanovna said. “Not the fainting kind. It will need more blood before we’ll be done. I’ll make us tea.”
Janna cut, rubbing her blood into the wood, and drank boiling-hot dark tea, shockingly sweet, from a glass set in a metal podstakannik. Across the table Irina Ivanovna was knitting something out of blue yarn.
“Why does he want me?”
“He’s lonesome. And he lusts after you. You’re a pretty girl.”
“What will happen if I go with him?”
“You’ll perish. Lose your place in the world. What happens after I don’t know.”
It felt like there was more to it. Janna searched znaharka’s face for answers, but Irina Ivanovna would not meet her gaze.
#
Twenty minutes before midnight, Janna slipped from the house. She never liked the night. Even in the rare moments when she had stepped out on the porch to call Dad in from the garage, she ducked back into the light as soon as she could.
The night was suspect. It hid things. Frightening things.
Yet as she stepped out, she felt the power in the darkness, an alluring promise of uncommon freedom, without scrutiny, without limits.
Janna ran on the paved path, shoes in hand, between the rose bushes and the tiny herb garden, still wet from the rain. The petrichor rising from the soil and plants swayed her, intoxicating, heady. She swung the metal gate and slipped out.
Outside she put on her shoes and hurried down the slowly sloping sidewalk to the spot where three roads met by a cafe. She paused in the shadow of a lone weeping willow, right at the point of the crossroads. The cafe lay behind her, dark and silent. To the right the rectangle of Merchant Marine Academy loomed, also dark. To the left a row of century old poplars guarded the boulevard.
It had to be here.
Janna held out her hand and pricked her finger with her wooden sliver. A drop of blood swelled. She massaged the flesh until it fell into the dirt and whispered, “Come to me.”
A shadow lunged at her from the top of the poplar. It swept across the ground and slammed her against the willow. Cold hands pinned her arms to the bark. Flesh pressed into her, and she found his blue eyes staring into hers.
“You came.” He breathed but no warmth touched her skin. “I knew you would.”
He buried his face in her neck and kissed her. His lips were cold, but they might as well have been fire. The kiss shot heat from her neck all the way down. He grabbed a hand full of her hair and kissed her again, grinding against her until it hurt.
A car drove down the street and slowed. She could see the driver peering at them through the windshield.
The utoplennik pinned her with one hand and turned, baring his teeth at the car. “Mine!”
The power of his voice rolled across the street in a shimmer, like a transparent wave. The car slid to the side. The driver stood on the gas, taking the corner at the breakneck speed. The utoplennik whirled to her, grasped her dress and ripped it in a half. His hand found her breast, sending an electric jolt through her. She gasped. He kissed her neck and whispered in her ear.
“Come with me. All the time in the world. All the freedom. Just you and me.” He caught the hem of her dress and slid his hand up, caressing her thigh, higher and higher, his shaft hard against her. “Kiss me on the lips.”
“You can’t force me, can you?” she said, realizing the truth as she spoke. “You can touch me, but you can’t force me to come with you.”
“One kiss,” he said. “All it takes. Decide.”
“No,” she said.
He backed away. The hunger in his eyes almost broke her. “Let’s see if you still say no when you’re dying.”
He struck at her, faster than she could see, but her wooden needle met him halfway, piercing his palm. He stared at it, puzzled. His fingers trembled, once, twice and broke in a cascade of water. From his arm to his feet down he drained until only a shadowy outline of him remained, translucent and weak. He lunged to her, but the crossroads anchored him in place.
Behind the trees the river swelled. A long watery whip snapped from beyond the rail, over the street, through the trees, caught his neck in its lasso knot, jerked him off his feet and dragged him into the dark water.
The river splashed and lay still.
The night lost its color. So vivid before, the world lay dull and mundane. She swallowed, disoriented for a moment, yearning for the magic, for that captivating sharpness she had felt just a moment ago, but there was none to be had.
Regret stabbed, like a punch in the stomach. Janna bent, cradling the sudden pain, knowing with some sixth sense that never again would something like that happen to her. In her mind she saw herself go home, she saw herself rising, going to school. Day after day, all the while remembering how it could have been. She spun to the river, but it lay placid. Wordless sobs shook her.
Finally she picked herself up, held up her ripped dress, and went home through the magickless night.
