And then the impossible occurred.
I sensed movement beyond my closed eyes, but it was not accompanied by the
pain of my throat being flayed asunder. The heat on my neck was replaced by
the cool damp of the forest; the pressure of paws against my shoulders disappeared.
I opened my eyes and saw that the wolf had withdrawn. He now sat on his haunches
at my feet like an obedient, panting dog, tongue lolling out the side of his
deadly mouth.
I pushed myself to a half-sitting position. The wolf snarled and snapped, and
moved to charge again - but reluctantly held himself back at the last instant,
as though an invisible, unwanted barrier held him in check.
I wasted no time questioning the reason for this remarkable phenomenon. I found
the revolver nearby on the ground and moved slowly, stealthily towards it as
the wolf growled his displeasure, but remained otherwise still. At last, I reached
swiftly for the gun and fired it point-blank at the creature, who remained so
unresisting that I felt a stab of pity. It died with a soft whine as its head
sank onto its forelegs.
Afterwards, there was only silence - not even the scurrying of a squirrel, or
the singing of a bird, only the soft, steady drum of rain upon foliage. The
third wolf never appeared. When my trembling eased, I determined with footsteps
the limits of the sinking soil. It was much smaller than I expected, perhaps
only three square feet - far too small for a body. With dark mirth that verged
on hysteria, I began to laugh: perhaps the tales of the
moroi
were
true. Perhaps my brother had led me to a buried cache of jewels or golden coins.
Obsessed, I began to dig with nothing more than my hands.
It was sweaty work. The soil was heavy with moisture, and after an hour, perhaps
two, I was soaked, covered with mud, aching. The rain was coming down hard.
I was on the verge of giving up when my chilled fingers finally struck something
soft and yielding beneath the inch of muddy water.
It felt like a thick layer of fabric. I frantically cleared away enough mud
to determine the dimensions of the hidden prize: it was a square roughly twelve
inches on each side, and when I dug deep enough to get my fingers beneath it,
I could feel that it was apparently a perfectly square box of some very hard
material, either metal or wood, beneath the cloth.
I knelt on the wet, yielding ground and leaned forward, wriggling first fingers,
then hands, beneath the box. It took several moments before I could get a good
enough grip and enough momentum to pull it from the wet earth, but at last I
gave a mighty yank and it came forth with a loud sucking sound.
I fell back onto my haunches and studied my treasure: it had been wrapped in
several layers of fine black silk, now soaked and filthy, but too new and in
too good shape to have been more than a day in the earth. Eagerly, I unwrapped
it, and discovered beneath a simple, unvarnished wooden box fashioned from the
native pine, with a crude brass latch.
I set the box on the ground and unfastened the latch, cutting my thumb on its
sharp, unpolished edge, but in my fearful excitement, I did not care. I flung
back the latch, slipped my fingertips under the top, and attempted to pry the
box open. It took a great deal of effort, as the wood was swollen from the moisture,
but at last it came, and I threw back the top.
And screamed when I stared into Jeffries wide, death-clouded eyes.
I sprang to my feet; the box fell from my hands. Jeffries head rolled out
across the soggy foliage with a damp crackling sound and came to rest face up
on the very edge of the gaping grave. As it rolled, something fell from the
open mouth, which was frozen in the same anguished rictus it had worn in my
dream. I reached for the white object on the dark glistening ground, and picked
up a head of garlic.
His neck had been sawed through in the same manner as fathers, and his mouth
crammed full of the pungent herb. His skin was whiter than I thought it possible
for any human's to have been; it was precisely the colour of chalk, even paler
than the tufts of tousled hair that stuck out wildly in all directions from
his scalp.
Thunder rumbled as I stared, aghast, down at the severed head. An abrupt cloudburst
beat down through the sheltering trees, spilling a violent cascade on me and
my unfortunate erstwhile guest, washing mud from my trouser legs and sleeves.
The rain pounded down on Jeffries open, unseeing eyes, glued his hair to his
scalp, swept away twigs and soil and the solitary alder leaf that had clung
to his marble-white cheek.
For an instant I thought I would vomit; but what erupted from the depths of
my terrified being was entirely unexpected.
I began to laugh.
Low at first, then rising higher in pitch until the sound became hysterical.
I threw back my head and laughed harder, weeping, letting the rain mingle with
my tears, letting it drum against my open eyes as it did Jeffries sightless
ones, letting it fill my grinning rictus of a mouth until I bent forward, gagging,
still convulsed by hellish glee.
For I realised: Stefan had first appeared
before
Jeffries death.
Jeffries was merely coincidental, an afterthought.
There was more treasure to be found.
And I found it, little brother. Oh, I found it.
I spread my arms wide, embracing the rain, whirling in circles like a child
seeing how much he could bear before becoming dizzy. I danced, crashing through
the brush, unmindful of wolves, uncaring, pressing my feet into the loamy, carpeted
soil, pausing when it yielded to dig in the mud like a dog hellbent on retrieving
a bone.
I found bones, a graveyard full of them - and all of them skulls. Big skulls,
and little ones, too. The infants were buried without any amenities; I found
their heads in a mass grave. Many of the tiny skulls were irregularly shaped,
and hinted at gross deformity. One child had half an extra head emerging from
his cranium, as though he had endeavoured and failed to give birth to Athena.
I stopped opening the boxes after the second one - which contained the head
of a man several months decayed and slippery with moss - though I continued my
mad excavation, collecting the small boxes like so many trophies. But after
some two dozen - in addition to too many infants skulls to count - I found my maniacal
energy exhausted, though the ground still gave way in several places immediately
surrounding me.
And how many more graveyards like this lay hidden in the endless forest?
Too many places for one man to dig. For one man to bear.
But where had the bodies gone, the larger ones of the adults, and the little
twisted ones of the poor, discarded children?
Ah, Stefan, I think I learned the answer to that, too.
There were bone fragments mingled with the thatch of twigs, leaves, and pine
needles carpeting the forest floor. Upon sifting through the loam carefully,
I became convinced that the bodies had been left for the wolves. The fragments
were all that remained after the animals had cracked the largest bones into
pieces between their powerful jaws, to get at the tasty marrow.
Who can say how long I remained there, scrabbling madly in the mud? How could
any human being be expected to account for the passage of time in the face of
such horror?
I know only this: that when at last I collapsed, trembling, spent, unable to
move another handful of heavy soaked earth, I fell back onto the ground and
looked up between the branches at a tiny crevice of reddening sky, and knew
the clouds had cleared, and the sun was setting.
I am uncertain what happened then; a comforting madness had entirely overtaken
me, and reduced my mind to a
tabula rasa,
incapable of remembering
the past, incapable of retaining the present. I do not remember if I replaced
the heads and bones I discovered (I pray I did, to protect poor Jeffries and
his fellow victims from any further post-mortem indignity), but I apparently
managed to crawl into the caleche and drive home.
By the time I returned home, disheveled, damp, and muddy, I was in a delirium.
Mary says I have been ill two days with a fever, one so dangerously high that
the night of the twelfth they feared I would not live. She seems to know something
terrible has happened; she is kind and loving, and does not press.
How can I ever tell her? Gods, I cannot bear to think of her living so close
to such danger
! I am responsible for bringing her to this chamber of horrors,
and if anything happens to her or the child -
I can write no more of this, for writing makes me remember, and think, and
when I begin to remember, when I begin to think, the insanity threatens again
The Journal of Mary Windham Tsepesh
14 April.
For two days, Arkady has been so terribly ill that I have been afraid to leave
his side even to write in my journal.
His daily custom is to rise late, take lunch, then read, write, or walk until
just before sundown, when he heads for the castle. He usually does not return
until after I am asleep.
But the day before yesterday, he came home shortly after sunset. The old gardener,
Ion, saw him coming. Something about the way Arkady erratically drove the horses,
he said, alerted him, and he rushed into the house, calling:
Doamna! Doamna!
I was reading in one of the sitting rooms, but the strident tone in the old
man's voice bade me drop the book and rush towards the foyer. Somehow, my heart
knew something terrible had happened to my husband.
I arrived in time to see Ion holding open the massive front door as Arkady
staggered in, his hair and clothes disheveled, soggy, smeared with mud. His
eyes were bright and wild, his features contorted as though in pain - but he
was laughing.
Laughing,
such an evil sound that it froze my heart.
I lifted a hand to my throat, to the small gold cross hidden beneath the fabric
of my dress, and said, almost too softly to be heard above his hysterical laughter,
Arkady.
He glanced up, startled. His eyes focused on me, and his mirth abruptly became
terror, which grew until he could bear it no longer, but sank to his knees and
covered his face with his hands. Beneath them, he released a long, low groan,
then muttered, The skulls! All the little skulls!
I stepped up beside him as he knelt, and pressed a hand to his forehead; it
was so hot that I glanced up at once at Ion and ordered, Send at once for the
doctor. He seemed to understand the word
doktor
well enough, for he
nodded and hurried off towards the servants quarters.
Just then, Arkady threw his arms around my legs, pressed his face to my belly,
and wept, His head! His head! Stefan was right! There was treasure in the forest!
Dunya and another of the chambermaids, llona, appeared, and the three of us
managed to get Arkady to bed. That night his fever rose and the delirium worsened
so that it was all Dunya and I could do to keep him from throwing himself from
the bed. He shouted horrible, frightening things about bones and skulls and
Mister Jeffries and Stefan, his brother, who had died in childhood - and wolves.
At the worst point that first night, he jerked bolt upright in the bed and
stared at me with eyes so wide the irises were edged all round with white, and
panting, exclaimed: My God! I wrote the letter that brought him here! Father
and I both - ! And he let out an anguished howl that could be heard all through
the house.
I thought that night that he would die. But through the goodness of God, he
lived, and by the next day he was a little better, though still lapsing into
occasional mild delirium. Dunya insisted we take turns watching, though she
let me sleep through most of my shift. The sweet girl is concerned about me.
I feel dreadfully tired all the time, and the child drops lower each day.
Today Arkady is better. The fever has broken, and his eyes are the clear, gentle
ones I have always known.
Zsuzsanna has improved much, too. She was able to walk to the sitting room
today, but we were reluctant to break the news of Arkady's illness, so the servants
and I have entered into a conspiracy of silence. She is sweet as ever, but distantly
dreamy, and at times I detect smug condescension in her smile. I cannot help
thinking her recovery is more Dunya's doing than the doctors, and so we faithfully
garland the window with pungent wreaths each night, then closet them away in
the daytime.
But something heartbreaking happened this noon, and I do not think we will
be able to hide this truth from Zsuzsanna very long. The day was temperate and
sunny, and while Arkady was peacefully napping, I went out into the little landscaped
garden by the east wing, which captures the morning sunlight. I was sitting
on the cast-iron loveseat there with my eyes closed, dozing in the delicious
warmth of the sun when I heard footsteps nearby. I glanced up to see the gardener,
Ion, carrying big brown Brutus like a pup in his arms. I smiled at first at
the tender sight - until the poor dog's head lolled back with lifeless abandon,
and I saw the blood on his throat and flank where he had been cruelly mauled.
I burst immediately into sobs, and cried out, What happened?
Ion stopped, gazed sadly down at the animal in his arms, and shook his head;
whether to indicate regret at the sweet animal's passing or his own ignorance
of German, I do not know.
Weeping, I pointed to myself, and said, I will tell Zsuzsanna. And I lifted
my finger to my lips in a signal for silence, hoping that he would understand
not to speak of it to her or anyone else until I had done so.
He looked back up at me and nodded, seeming to understand, then slowly trudged
onward, apparently intending to lay the animal to rest.
I hope he buried him somewhere near a garden or trees, where there is plenty
of sunlight and growing things and small animals to chase.