[Formerly Featured/Award-Winning Novella/#2 in Horror]
There is something eerie about this village -- this hole of silent, maddened people.
In 1922 my Papa told me of a faceless entity that lurks amongst us in our isolated slice of Russia. The loc...
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On the second day of April, 1932, I received an urgent knock on my front door at nearly six o'clock in morning. The sun had broken the hilly horizon already, throwing out orange rays in the east. The rattling of the wood woke Mama, who slept downstairs, and, cursing, I followed her as soon as I'd pulled some clothes on.
"Who comes all the way up here at this time in a morning?" I growled, throwing open the door.
I recognised the grey-streaked hair straight away. It was Pyotr, panting slightly and with a vibrant flush in his cheeks.
"Just the man, Stefan," he said as he barged inside. "I need to speak to Aleksy Malenhov. Right now. Do you still keep him here? Is he downstairs? Is he safe?"
I rolled my eyes. Not again. "Da. Why?"
"I got word from Isaak. It's about Viktor."
"What about him? He's long dead."
"You'd better sit down," Pyotr scoffed, "because you're never going to believe this."
"What do you mean, his body is gone?" Aleksy spat when Pyotr told him. I'd given him more or less the same reaction. "He's dead. Dead and buried. I saw them lower him into the ground!"
"Viktor being alive or dead has nothing to do with it," explained my cousin. "The grave keeper said he heard noises in the night but was too scared to investigate it, no surprise. He's a superstitious man, that Yeshevsky, perhaps not ideal for a grave keeper. When he did his rounds this morning he found your father's grave wide open. Somebody or something dug up his remains and there's not a trace of him anywhere in the graveyard."
I held my hands up. "The hell do you mean something?" I interrupted. "You're not trying to say an animal did this, are you?"
"This wasn't done by tools," Pyotr replied. "If a man had wanted to dig up Viktor Malenhov's body, wouldn't he save himself the labour and use a shovel? Isaak distinctly saw signs of clawing in the earth around there."
"Claws or fingers?" Aleksy asked.
"I don't know – he didn't specify. Perhaps when the sun's higher you should come and see for yourself." He looked at me with worried, grey eyes. "Stefan, will you make sure the boy's chained up? I want to go home to Yuliya in one piece and preferably unchewed."
I nodded, stiffly, "Da," and then to Aleksy, "sorry, malysh."
An officer from Darakyev took our names and granted Aleksy, Pyotr and me entry into the cemetery. Aleksy followed behind with his hands bound in the kind of chains one might reserve for a boisterous hound, which caused a stir when the officer noticed them.
He barred my way with his arm. "Any reason the boy's chained like that?"
"Er ..."
"He's mentally unsound," Pyotr offered, and the officer's eyes widened.
