Into the Deep Wood

Marat had not spoken to her much when they left Void&Co and Theodora behind. It was closing in on nighttime, and she was so tired now she could barely keep her head up. Her muscles felt frail, and her head light. He’d gotten them meat pies once they got on their way, but she only ate a few bites despite her ravenous hunger. All she could think about was sleep.

Ezra met them at the doors as the coach pulled up.

“Master Marat!” He exclaimed as they got out. “Oh, but I have been waiting for you to return. There was a bit of an accident, you see. I had to move you down to the second floor. So sorry for the inconvenience. We had to go in and move your things.”

Val felt the cold of Marat’s mood change.

“You should not have done that,” Marat said, his eyes focused on Ezra, who looked back with a sly look on his face.

“I am afraid we had no choice, Master Marat! The rats, you see, they chewed through the beams. Rubble everywhere, the ceilings have caved in. My deepest apologies, of course, I will pay back any rent you have paid and more than that - I want to offer you an additional week, free of charge!” Ezra was already fishing in his pockets. Apparently, forgetting that the said rats had supposedly already been poisoned in the basement.

“We will be leaving,” Marat told him, pushing past, Val following nervously in his steps.

“Oh, but the city is full! No room. I turn away fifty people a day looking for accommodations!” Ezra followed them into the dusty, cluttered parlor. “I have not even given you your new room keys!”

Marat turned, stepping toward him and standing chest to… chin with the old man.

“So help you, the All-Father, Ezra. So help you.”

The old man did not show a drop of worry or sign of being intimidated. She could see Marat seething.

Without taking his eyes off Marat, Ezra brought two keys out of his pocket. The tension in the room grew the longer Marat would not take them. What broke it was Val’s sudden collapse onto the floor. It was as if her knees buckled, and she fell, holding her head.

“Marat, please, I cannot. I have to sleep. Tomorrow, please.” She begged, her voice slight and pathetic. The look on his face changed, and he snatched the keys out of Ezra’s hands. He helped Val to her feet, her body going limp against him between short bursts of trying her best to keep upright. As he led her up the stairs, he looked back at Ezra - the old man was still standing in the same spot, a grin on his face.

“I will be right back.” He promised her, helping her to lower on the mattress. He did not think she heard him. All alarms in his body were going off. He should not have let on to the innkeeper that he thought something was amiss.

He burst into his room, immediately tearing through his belongings. It was gone. It was all gone. All the herbs, all the talismans. His hunting knife and provisions were still there, as were his clothes. But nothing that would be used exclusively as a hunter was there any longer.

Including Erlan’s compass.

“Pigshit!”

Red in the face, Marat bolted out of his room and for the stairs, his feet moving faster than a false leg should allow. Somewhere below he heard a heavy door get pulled shut with force.

“EZRA!” He shouted, and again when he was down the flight of stairs. He looked, and through the adjoining room where Val had previously been served cheese pastries was a single door. Marat flew to it, pushing it with all his strength - but it was deadbolted on the other side.

“Whore fucker!” Marat looked for anything around him to break it, but any furniture available would have never survived the impact. That’s when he heard Val scream. In that heartbeat, his anger was gone, replaced by fear. How could he leave her alone?

He hurried back, everything in the past few minutes just a blur in his consciousness. He pushed the door and saw her twisting on the bed, her body begging for air that she could not get. Sweat pooled on her chest, and drips ran down her face and neck. Her eyes were closed.

“All-Father, forgive me,” Marat kneeled before the bed, bending down to her and cradling her head, “I should not have left you alone.”

She seemed to calm, her breathing resuming but only slightly. He tried to wake her softly, but there was no use. The girl was deep in the clutches of something he could not see.

He lifted her head, carefully sliding onto the mattress and setting it down on his lap. He would stay up the night. If it were a kikimora, by daylight, Val would be awake. And when she was, the very second that she was, he would hunt down and kill Ezra and anything else that lived in these walls.

The kikimora were nasty creatures. They would seek out those who were too weary or sickly to resist them, circle them like vultures, testing the waters. At first, they would disturb their sleep and even cause auditory hallucinations. Then, the parasitic spirit would latch on to their victim by way of horrible nightmares. Sometimes, it would steal the breath right out of one’s lungs. Sometimes, it would render a person unable to move - although lucid and awake.

Those times were the most frightening, as this state between dream and waking moments was when the victim would see the kikimora in its true form. Often, its feathered and scaly body would be latched onto the ceiling, sitting in the corner of the room, or directly on the victim’s chest. Their life force would be drained every hour that they slept, and after the first few nights, the poor soul would be so exhausted, their life force gone, that no amount of food would revive them; no amount of sleep would be enough. And the longer they slept, the more the kikimora took.

One of their most notable and abominable traits was that they could leech out the characteristics of animals to take their shape. So, these creatures of the Nothing could live in cities, towns, and anywhere that normally a monster could not go unnoticed - they could blend in. The kikimora could not have been Ezra, they could not take the form of people. But Ezra knew something, and he was hiding something.

It was less than an hour until Val began to shiver with her whole body. He felt a fever work its way through her rapidly, alarming in its rapid progression. There was nothing he could do. Removing her from the room would not stop it; only make it more difficult for her. The kikimora was already latched on.

So, he prayed. To the All-Father. To anyone and anything that would listen.

She shivered so hard that he thought she might be seizing up.

All-Father, Shattered God, Fauna, Midsommar Mother, anyone…

Marat slid down in the bed, his arms wrapped as tightly around her as he could, pulling her against himself in hopes of holding down the convulsions. He put his cheek against hers and at once felt how hard she had been clutching her jaw.

But then, it relaxed.

She began to relax.

She was so tired. She felt her legs shake under her. She heard Marat and Ezra, they were arguing, but her head swam. She felt the weakness of her wrists, elbows, and then knees - and felt herself collapsing.

Vague consciousness of Marat carrying her and then the bliss of a bed. But as he set her down, where she expected the mattress and the cool sheets, instead, she continued to fall through it and then through the floor and then continually down through the earth itself. She could even smell the damp dirt, her body weakly bracing for impact when it eventually came.

But it didn’t come.

The rush of falling through the air was instead replaced by the cold, crushing sensation of being thrust underwater.

Panic set in immediately.

She could not breathe.

She felt her lungs ache, desperately needing to reach the surface, but she could not move her arms. She was trapped inside her body, drowning. She didn't even know which way was up; the fall had distorted that understanding.

Deeper, Val felt her lungs about to burst.

And then, she fell through that, too, getting dumped out on the mossy and slippery shore of a lake –the mass of water both above and below her.

Someone stood a little ways off. It was hard to see. They were swaying back and forth. She clawed at the dirt to pull herself out of the water toward them. The sharp rocks and thorny branches in the mud cut her hands, and when she looked at them, she saw that they bled - the same way they bled when she fell in the snow and the chort dragged her into the forest.

Who was that ahead?

The figure, obscured partially by shadow, reached out an arm to her.

“I’m coming!” She gasped, her voice hoarse, with very little air coming from her lungs to support it. There was an urgency; she had to reach them.

The arm dropped, but the figure continued to sway ever so slightly. She stumbled forward, and as she got closer, she saw it was a man.

But, he was not standing.

He was hanging.

He was hanging from a tree, a large meat hook driven through his shoulder.

She could see the flesh of struggle, his weight pressing on it, and then it began to separate.

“I loved you!” The man, it was Amir, quickly became just a body hanging as his features deteriorated, muscles ripping and bone separating where the hook was lodged. What was left, a bloody, broken mess, lay in a heap on the ground. There was so much blood, it was all around. It was gushing from him.

“No!” She screamed and ran to him.

It was so contorted, only his giant sunken face, barely more than a skull wrapped in skin, looking up at her.

“GODS NO!” Val cried, reaching as if to help but pulling her shaking hands back, not knowing what to do or if she could or should even touch him.

“You did this... It was for you... He did it for you.” The body gasped, rasped, and struggled to get the words out of its caved-in throat.

“No!” She kept crying, now falling back, unable to keep looking at his misshapen form. “He said you were alive when he left!”

“He… put me… up there…” Each word came at a horrible price, “He… said… it was… for you… he left me… bleed out… my blood… in the drain…”

“No, no, no!” Val shut her eyes and kept repeating the word, the stench of human rot already accosting her nostrils.

And then, it was something else, something unpleasant but familiar. Grassy, musty, and a pungently sour aroma overwhelmed her. She knew it to be dog fennel. Its offensive smell plagued woodland margins and clearings all over her home village.

She opened her eyes. She sat alone, there, on the lakeshore, Amir gone. The smell was becoming overwhelming. She gagged and turned to the water. Between her and the lake was another figure. But this one was not obscured.

She saw clearly the amber-brown eyes and slight wrinkles at the corners. The thick dark hair. The nose was so similar to Marat’s.

It was Erlan.

He stood, buried up to his knees in the mud, and reached his hands to her as well; she saw they were pruney and swollen as if he held them underwater for a long, long time.

“Please help me!” He begged her, “I can’t get out, my feet, they’re stuck.”

She did not move, gods, but… she saw he was dripping wet, and the longer she looked at him, the wetter became his hair, his neck, his chest. It was as if the water was pouring out of every pore on his body.

“Please help me!” He asked again, sinking deeper in the mud.

“You aren’t here!” She screamed. “You’re dead!”

He fell forward, pulling a knee out and putting weight on it to try and pull the full of his other leg out as well.

“Because you turned my own brother against me…” He said, now clawing at the mud and dirt, his movements becoming subtly faster, his eyes fixed on her. “You sent me away.”

Val felt her breathing quicken to where she was afraid she would not be able to slow it before it exploded her lungs and heart.

“You killed me.”

He freed his other leg, crawling toward her on all fours, eye contact unbroken.

She went to run but found she could not move her limbs. It was as if they’d all gone to sleep at once as if the only thing she could do was blink. She held eye contact with Erlan, who was getting closer and slowly standing up.

“Do you know what it feels like to drown–?” He asked her, choking immediately, water bursting out of his mouth like vomit and all over her clothes. It still spilled from his mouth with his next words, “It burns in the lungs. It burns, and you try to spit it out, you try to free yourself of the burn, but you just gag - you choke and take in more of the burning water.”

She wanted to sob and cry out and felt her tears running down her face.

“At first, when you swim, you float - but not when you’re drowning.” He continued. “You get too heavy. Too much air leaves your body. Then you lose all the use of your limbs to the cold…”

She felt the cold creep in her arms and legs.

“...then you are plunged into the blackness. And you die. It is slow, anguishing. You are aware of all of it until the end.”

She collapsed, still unable to move. Her face toward the sky, she saw Erlan bend down and crawl over her - his face hovering above hers like it had once before.

“Don’t worry, Owlet. I found him. On the riverbank. A swollen heap, skin sloughing off his hands already. Fish had eaten parts of him, his beautiful face.” Erlan continued, slowly bending closer to her. “You should have seen his beautiful face, which you once desired.”

She wanted to turn her head away, but that, too, would not move. The dog fennel. Gods…

“Out of the holes they made, all over, water foamed out. That is how I want you to remember him, Owlet. You did that to him.”

And with that, Erlan leaned all the way down, closing her mouth with his. She felt the grotesque tongue, cold and slimy, the soft flesh that felt clammy and spongy, like it was disintegrating as the kiss progressed. She tasted the river water, iron, and the foul smell of gasses that escaped his throat in his decomposition. She tasted human rot. And, it turned liquid in her mouth, his kiss beginning to drown her. She panicked, but he would not let up. The water was pouring, and she felt that burning sensation. She felt it fill her lungs.

And then she felt someone grab her and pull her away from Erlan and the lakeshore. She wanted to fight back, to stop whatever horror awaited her on this other side. But, the arms wrapped tighter and swallowed her whole. They held her own arms and legs, unyielding, protecting her, shielding her from the grave chill coming off the lake. The warmth, she stopped struggling against it. She felt it lifting her, returning her from where she had fallen.

Val had become still, and the chills subsided. Marat lay with his arms around her, his chest pressed against her back, his face resting against hers. He could feel her muscles slowly relax. She twitched only once, as if startled awake, and took in a deep breath as if she had been holding it the whole time. She turned quickly onto her back, looking at him with wide, wild eyes.

She broke through, and she was there, in the dark room. The body's warmth enveloped her like a refuge from a cold winter day. The coarse and scratchy cheek leaned against hers heavily. She took in the cool night air, afraid she would go into a coughing fit but so desperate for it that she could not stop herself.

And, as if only then truly understanding where she was and who was with her, she spun, meeting Marat’s face so close she could see the relief on it even in the dark. So close she could feel the heat come off his skin. So close that had she only…

Unwilling to go another heartbeat, she brought up her arms - free, moving, unrestrained - and grabbed his face, pulling it down to her. This kiss was full of warmth, vitality, and vibrancy. Gone was the cold, taking with it the lingering chill of the nightmare.

At first, hesitant, surprised, but then purposefully leaning into it as if it were the only thing that mattered at that moment, Marat’s hand came up, cradling the back of her neck. Forceful, eager, as if life itself depended on it.

Val felt his entire body lean into her, and she met it with the same enthusiasm. His other hand slipped under her lower back, pulling her to him, and it was as if time both slowed and sped up - her heart racing, she grabbed at the shirt on his back. Unwilling to break the kiss, she wrapped an arm around his neck and slid the other under its fabric, wanting to feel the curve of every muscle, every part of him that had never been accessible to her.

His hands were so warm as they explored.

Clothes suddenly felt like an obstacle, the need to feel each other’s skin overwhelming, the pressure of each other’s bodies no longer enough. It was unclear who tore at what, whose hands untied, unbuckled, and slipped off. It was as if the smallest molecules of life rushed through their veins, urging and begging for something. An overdue and longed-for moment, borne of deep care, tenderness and frustration, now taking what it was owed.

It felt like she could feel every blood cell pulse rhythmically with their movements, coming up for air only when it became imperative for them both.

No sensation was unwelcome, pain and pleasure getting muddled together and swallowing them whole.

If this had been a part of the nightmare, Val thought, the cruelty of it would lie only in it coming to an end.