The Winter Beast and other tales Read online



  THE WINTER BEAST

  And Other Tales

  James R. Sanford

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. This e-book has been published without Digital Rights Management software installed, so that it may be read on personal devices.

  Text Copyright © 2012 by James R. Sanford

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  THE WINTER BEAST

  THE GOD STONE

  BLOOD BOND

  A FAMILY TRADITION

  THE EXALTED

  THE WINTER BEAST

  The creature thrived in the cold. I knew this instinctively before I was even fully aware of its presence. Walking the hunting trails below the mist-enshrouded hills on cold winter afternoons, when the clouds seemed to press close to the earth, I always felt a vague uneasiness, a feeling of being watched. The dogs never strayed from me on those days. At times they even followed, clinging to my heels, constantly turning their heads to point back toward the estate, whining to go home. On those days when light patches of fog drifted through the forest, sending a damp chill into my bones, I came to understand, in a way I could never voice to myself, that it was there.

  I realize now that my father knew of it. It is possible that his inner sympathy with the creature, his intuitive understanding — something akin to communication, was even stronger than my own. I remember when I was seventeen, in the late spring of the year of the death of Empress Catherine (and it always happened in the springtime), when the overseer, Georgi, came to tell him of the serf who claimed his wife had been taken away in the night by a demon.

  My father's brow narrowed, a dark cloud passing behind his eyes. "The peasant must have been drunk," he said. "We all know that a band of marauding Cossacks has been plaguing the neighboring districts. They must have taken the woman."

  "But Father," I began, quickly falling silent under his sudden sharp glance.

  "Make this known among the serfs," my father continued to Georgi, "Cossacks took the girl. There will be no search for her." Georgi knew as well as I that no word of bandit Cossacks had reached our ears, but he dared not to say this.

  And now I know why he never forbade me to hunt near those dark hills, even as summer drew very near. There was an unspoken, no, an unthought of covenant between them, a compact which was never made, yet nonetheless existed. My father never feared that it would take me.

  But damn him. Damn him for making me swear a holy oath. For I would condemn myself to hell in this life out of fear of eternal punishment in the next.

  I began taking long solitary walks in the eastern woods early in the winter of 1805 (the year of the battle of Austerlitz). My father had stopped rising from his bed by then, consumption slowly draining the life from him. Walking with my head cast down, watching my boots pack down the loose snow on the trails, I first felt its presence as a certainty — undoubtedly a force not natural, a thing of the cold and the dark. As I returned to the house in deep twilight one evening the week before Christmas, the doctor from Orsha met me at the door saying, "Hurry to him, Sergey Andreyevich, he hasn't much time."

  The priest had just finished the last rites as I strode into the room still wearing my greatcoat. "Come near," my father whispered weakly, the disease taking his last breaths from him. "Swear to me, my son . . . swear an oath on your soul that you will never abandon this house, never give up our family lands . . . no matter what may befall you, no matter what may befall Holy Russia. Swear this, so I may die in peace."

  "I shall do as you ask, father."

  "No," he gasped, his eyes desperate, "on your very soul, before God."

  I knelt and crossed myself. "Before God, and upon my immortal soul I swear it."

  My father closed his eyes and died without another word. I think in his last hour he had a vision of things to come.

  The next six years passed slowly and I withdrew deeper into myself. Naturally, the warmth of long summer days never failed to lift my darkness from me, and I often attended gay dances in Borisov, waltzing as if in a dream on those gentle evenings. But with the grey clouds of autumn the black thoughts would descend upon me again, and I could not spend even one night away from home. A feeling of waking in the autumn, yes, waking and weakness and hunger, and I would pace the hunting trails on the cold days.

  The occasional runaway serf never caused me much concern. Rash young men often behave irresponsibly, and their family, knowing it was for their own good, usually had knowledge of where such a young man would go. Inevitably the runaway boy would be caught and returned to his place on the land. But each year, in the late spring, the head of a peasant household would come to me with a tale of a missing family member — one who was not the sort to abandon their life — a grandfather or a newlywed girl. The search for them was always in vain. And as I became more sensitive to the presence of the creature, the coming of springtime always filled me with a sense of horrible anticipation.

  I awoke late one morning in the June of 1811, my bedchamber a flush with bright warm light. It was the first day of summer. Eyes half open, I began burrowing deeper into the feather bed, then came fully awake with a start. The first day of summer — spring had passed and no word had come to me of a serf gone missing under odd circumstance. It was as if I were reborn. Streams of golden sunlight washed away the dread within my heart, and I arose with vigor, calling for my valet with a musical tone to my voice.

  I spent the day wandering the manor. The house, the garden, the stables, everything I possessed seemed new and yet familiar at the same time. The clock in the great hall was an old friend. And even the headstones of my parents graves no longer stood like grey sentinels; they were more like two pages from a beloved and well-read book. And as I stood on the veranda that evening, the scent of freshly-cut grass heavy in the air, the thought came clearly that I was not a young man anymore and I found myself wanting for a wife. I thought of Katina Fedorovna, and the thought made me happy. But this happiness lived only a short time.

  Three days later I found the cave. The arrival of heavy winds from the south, hot winds which cut like the scimitar of the Turk, had brought to life a violent summer storm. I rode hard that day in the hills to the east, and the sudden rearing of thunderheads caught me far from the house. I sought shelter on the low ground, but found little protection from the punishing rain. Leading my horse through the steep ravine at the edge of the woods, I came upon a short but rather wide crevasse in its rocky face. Lightning struck close at that moment, and my horse bolted, tearing the reins from my grasp, plunging through rippling sheets of rain, then gone.

  I could do nothing to recover the horse until the storm passed. Stooping to enter the crevasse, I saw that it opened into a small cave which grew wider as it sloped downward. As I paused to let my eyes adjust to the dim light, the smell struck me, an odor of old wet animal hides, and I swallowed hard, thinking that I had found the lair of a wolf pack or a solitary black bear. But in all my days of hunting in these environs I had never crossed any sign of wolf or bear.

  I went deeper. A few slick steps down and I was able to stand. Time had carved a large cul-de-sac in the cold and stony earth. An odd shape protruded from the far wall, near an enormous pile of rotting leaves. The shape was vaguely familiar, the colors of foam and mud, the texture like that of plaster, and as I stepped closer, able to see t
hrough its translucence, I suddenly recognized it. It was the carcass of a great stag. Pinned against the wall of the cave, encased in some kind of strange substance, the animal looked (as well as I could tell, peering through the milky covering) as if it had been killed that very day. I reached out. The encasing material had a waxen smoothness to it, but was hard as dried glue.

  I drew my hunting knife and jabbed cautiously at this unnatural cocoon. It was very hard. With stronger thrusts, I found that the substance would chip away in thin slices, rather like flint, and soon I had fashioned an opening the size of my hand just behind the shoulder of the mummified deer. I could smell no decay. Touching it, I felt the hide to be soft and warm. And then, ever so faintly, my fingers detected a single heartbeat. Could this be? Had I imagined it? I held my hand there for a full minute. And then again, I felt another heartbeat, then nothing.

  For a time, I pondered how this animal's life had been slowed to such a point without dying, and then I was suddenly aware that the storm had passed. Above the ringing silence of the cavern, I became aware of a rhythmic breathing. Behind me, the mound of rotting leaves seemed to rise and fall ever so slightly, ever so gently, and now I could discern a vague shape within the pile of refuse. It was a huge beast of some sort. I could see thick fur or hair amid the twigs and leaves with which it had covered itself. My first thought was that it must be a bear, sick or wounded in some way, and I made to depart stealthily. But when, with a rustling spasm, a great hand-like claw (far too human in appearance) thrust itself through the debris, I gasped and scrambled for the exit of the cave without regard that my panic-stricken flight might awaken and enrage the creature.

  I marched home along rain-slicked paths, and the freshness of that early summer day made it easy to push aside thoughts of what lay in the cave. The earth above was a gentle, orderly place — I had merely succumbed to childish terrors in the underworld. The deeper knowledge within me remained at rest, slumbering throughout the summer.

  And so I courted Katina Fedorovna.

  Her eyes matched her chestnut hair, but they were too wide for her petite features — eyes which always seemed startled, as if she had suddenly been come upon while standing alone in a quiet place. She did not so much walk as drift on currents of air. Like all beautiful women, she knew the power of her charm, and could bring any young man to her service with nothing more than a smile in his direction. But she was no coquette. And after we had danced the spinning waltz beneath the stars of August and I had quoted lines from Racine to her, we began to speak to each other in Russian instead of French, and I knew that soon I would be able to ask for her hand.

  My friends, out of concern, not conceit, reminded me that Katina's family though well-to-do was beneath my station and that my late parents would never have approved.

  "Are you sure that her affection is not motivated completely by money," asked one of them.

  “Certainly," I replied, "she holds a secret sparkle in her eye, for my countenance only." I was in love with her, and it was for more than how she looked on my arm.

  The engagement was rushed, mostly by Katina's father. He was the one, I thought, who took sure interest in transfusing his bloodline to one more ancient and wealthy. We set the wedding for midsummer, and saw each other throughout the winter at small gatherings. I played games with her in townhouse parlors while most of the men my age sat in adjacent rooms talking about Napoleon, speculating about war in the coming summer. And in the spring Bonaparte's ambition forced us to cut short an already brief courtship. I married Katina in early June of 1812.

  Our honeymoon was ended a few days later when Leonid Valnikov sent a rider over with the word, over a week old, that the Grande Armee had crossed the River Niemen and into Holy Russia. It was a Friday afternoon. The next morning I had Yakov harness the pair of white mares, and I drove with Katina to the Valnikov estate. Leonid was like an uncle to me. We sipped warm wine, and I wished for him to wash away some of the fear of the coming war with France, to tell me that General Kutuzov would drive those haughty Frenchmen back into Poland with ease. We had, of course, passed the springtime speaking the speech of its growing certainty, but I felt surprising shock when at last it arrived, the demon, war.

  Naturally, the young bravos of the town used no such disparaging term for the glorious battle to come. "This time the little emperor has awakened a giant and will get the thrashing he is due," they bragged as they signed their names and were marched away by the recruiting officer. I still get a pang of guilt that I never felt any pity for them or their fate, but I sensed, driving home in twilight, that the pale horseman was not carried headlong by the invaders. Rather, I knew he would be following behind the legions of soldiers, feasting on the lands left silent by their passing.

  The hard-eyed cavalryman bearing a major's insignia and Kutuzov’s orders arrived with a squadron of dragoons before the first day of summer. I waved to him as he crossed the little bridge and turned his horse toward the garden where I sat reading. "So the war is over already!" I called in a jesting manner, not daring to reveal my secret hope that it was true. For the last three days the sky had been dark to the west, the horizon black, the air hazy with smoke, and I had imagined that the great battle was taking place.

  The Major looked down on me with a soot-streaked face. "No. We have not yet engaged Bonaparte's army. The General is giving ground to the French — we must have time to marshal more troops before we can attack. And we must weaken the enemy as they pursue us."

  Then he told me his orders, and for a moment I could not speak.

  "You cannot!" I finally blurted out. "What gives the General the right — "

  "The Tsar gives him the right!" he snapped back at me, but I took no offense. He was tired, and angry with loathing for what duty required of him. He calmed himself before he spoke again.

  "I am sorry, sir. But you are subject to martial law, and you must obey. We also have orders to commandeer all horses and livestock, excepting what you need for transportation."

  "Transportation?"

  "You can't mean to stay. It would be terrible for your family, and you would all starve come winter. The peasants and village folk are already heading east with what they can carry, and you should do the same. You have until noon tomorrow. Good day, sir."

  That night I told Katina that I was sending most of the servants away, but would be staying. I told her of the promise to my father and the holy oath I had sworn upon my very soul. And it was then that I came to understand what my father knew but could not say: that if I fled the estate, I would break my ethereal bond with the creature. I and my family and all my descendants not yet born would become its prey. I did not tell my wife this, of course, and Katina said that she would stay by my side though I asked her to go. For that I was grateful.

  In the morning, the dragoons came for the animals. They took all the grain and would have taken the flour and salted fish as well if they had had more wagons. I sent the servants along with them, except for old Yakov. Then the Major and his troops returned at noon to enact General Kutuzov's master strategy.

  They set fire to the fields. They burned all of them. Every stalk of wheat, every potato field, every patch of onions or cabbage, every storehouse, every haystack, every blade of grass, they burned.

  We watched from my balcony. When they lit the first fire, far in the distant, and it rippled across the wide field of waving grass, it was awing, almost sublime. Then the torch-bearing riders came closer. Great clouds of smoke roiled upward from the waves of flame, far more thick and black than I would have thought. Soon a strong wind began blowing from the north and the fires spread quickly, getting into the hedges, jumping roads, leaping into the trees, engulfing the abandoned hovels of the serfs.

  We felt the heat from half a mile away, the sound of the flames like the roar of a storm. Blackened horses and riders cantered the lanes between the fields, shouting, turning about, trying to find a way
past the walls of fire. It was like the last days of the earth, and we waited for trumpets and broken seals and God's judgment. Before the curtains of smoke fully enclosed us, I saw the dragoons assemble on the highroad. They rode off, the world aflame, riding hard towards battle at Borodino.

  "We must go to the cellars now, m'lord," Yakov said, his voice tight with fear. "It is the only place we might be safe."

  I saw that he was right. What a fool I had been to stay, for now I would lose it all and perhaps our lives with it.

  "Yes," I said, "let us go at once."

  We went to the farthest corner of the deepest cellar, and I was comforted when Katina knelt and offered a simple and devout prayer for our deliverance. We waited, listening to the distant growl of the wind-buffeted fire.

  At length it seemed to pass, so I climbed the stone steps and pushed open the cellar door. The house was still there. By some miracle the entire estate, though heavily blackened, stood intact. What remained of an ancient moat had held the flames back.

  Yakov and Katina joined me, choking and coughing on the acrid stench. The earth all around was black. The edge of the forest had burned, the skeletal remains of the largest trees still standing. A light spring shower began to fall, washing some of the haze from the sky, turning into a filthy rain, and we could soon see miles across what had been fields and forest. It was all the same, a charred, smoldering, ash-covered landscaped — a portrait of hell on a rainy day.

  It rained hard all the next day, and I lay on my bed, overcome by lethargy, and the house smelled damp and sooty. But the day after dawned clear and unseasonably cool, like a last gasp of spring before the full heat of summer, and I felt rather chipper in spite of the desolation that surrounded my home.

  I was famished. I called Katina to the kitchen and requested a breakfast fit for the Tsar, but it was no use. She was helpless and I was worse.

  "I'll get Yakov to make us some kind of a peasant meal," I laughed.

  "He's out hunting," she said. "He left early saying that the woods along the eastern hills looked untouched by the fires."

  A sudden wave of revulsion broke over me, and I was nearly sick to my stomach. I realized that I wasn't really hungry, and I did not care to think about why I felt so.

  "Wait here," I told Katina.

  I loaded my musket as quickly as I could with trembling hands. The thought came to me that I would find him in the cave in an unnatural state of paralysis, cocooned in the hardened secretion of the beast, and now I understood those feelings I had always had in the autumn of waking weak and hungry. But when I found the cave again it was empty, save for the rotting nest where the creature had lain. Some of the woodland had indeed survived the fire, so I set out to search it, pausing from time to time to call Yakov's name. At length I crossed his footprints in the mud, and easily tracked him from there.

  I cannot speak of the horror I found amid the shredded remains of Yakov's clothing. It was not recognizable as him. And I retched not only at the proof of the creature's feast, but also at the poisonous guilt within me. I felt, in some way, that I had done the deed myself.

  I returned to Katina and told her, "He has run away. I tracked him as far as the highroad." Perhaps a shadow of what I had seen then crossed my face, and she saw through the lie.

  "Oh, let us go as well," she pleaded. "My heart forebodes that this will become a dark place for us. Let us go now, my husband."

  "That cannot be," I said. "And I will hear no more of it."

  That night the wind blew gusty and I could not sleep. My ears played tricks on me, or so I thought, for each time I closed my eyes I heard a faint sound outside. Just a garden gate left open and now swinging in the wind, I told myself.

  Then came a loud blow at the front doors, and I jerked fully upright while Katina cringed at the violent sound. When I climbed down from our bed she grabbed at me, saying, "Please do not answer it."

  "It could be a neighbor, or a traveller in need," I said, trying as much to convince myself as her.

  A slow pounding began — a thick, fleshy hand on the solid oak doors.

  "Then let them be," she begged, "only stay here with me now. That is all I ask of you."

  The pounding stopped and I stayed with my wife. I heard only the wind for the rest of that night, yet I did not sleep.

  I found the creature's footprints in the light of day. Wide and clawed, but much like those of a huge man, they ran through the abandoned stables, cow houses, and all the livestock pens. The massive stable doors had been ripped away and thrown a hundred feet.

  It had been looking for prey. It needed a last victim before it could settle into its summer of sleep, a victim that would be there warm and alive when it awoke in the autumn, one that would be poisoned or entranced — an easy kill for a beast that was groggy and weak.

  The sun shone hotly that afternoon. It was the last day of spring.

  That night I slept with a loaded pistol beside the bed, and I reached for it when I awoke after midnight. A few moments later the pounding began at the front doors, and I rose, slipping into breeches and boots.

  Katina begged me again not to go, but this time I ignored her. I was angry. I would confront this creature. I had kept my half of the covenant, let the beast keep its own. A candle in one hand and the pistol grasped tightly in the other, I crept down the grand hall.

  The pounding stopped when I reached the entryway, and I stood there, unable to move, suddenly fearful. What would I find behind that door, the face of my ancestors' evil, fed by the inhuman side of myself, the part of me that had known what was happening to the serfs yet did nothing?

  I threw open the doors. It was not there. Peering into the quiet night, I saw no one.

  Then I knew where it had gone. I ran to my bedchamber, cocking the pistol and shouting for Katina. She was lying faint on the bed, the window open and the creature standing over her.

  We were the same height, but it must have been triple my weight. It was covered all over with long thick hair and had a large head, topped with curving horns. Despite its dangling arms and broad, thick torso, it looked more like a man than an ape, a feral dwarf of huge proportions, an imp of Satan.

  I raised the pistol but the creature knew what I did not. It looked at me for a moment with its piggish eyes then scooped Katina from the bed and turned to the window. I sighted carefully at its head. The beast was only a few steps away — there was no chance I would miss — all I had to do was squeeze the trigger. Yet I could not fire, and it took her away.

  I slumped back against the wall, my heart more desolate than the land outside. I cursed myself for a weak-willed coward, but that was not the truth of it. The creature, though I hated it, had been a member of my family longer than Katina.

  After that, I think I suffered from madness for a time. For a week I did nothing but drink bottle after bottle of cognac, a poison from the very heartland of the invaders who had brought it all to this. And strangely, though the Grande Armee marched all the way to Moscow before it was done, I never saw a single Frenchman pass near my house. I was alone at the end of the world.

  Katina's wide, full eyes looked at me from where her portrait hung on the wall. I could envision those eyes staring out through the translucent shell, as I had seen the eye of the stag in that foul grotto. I wondered if she was conscious, if some form of time passed for her. After that, I no longer desired strong drink. I simply sat on the veranda day after day looking out at the blackened land, wondering if eternal hell could be more terrible than the one I now lived.

  High summer came at last, and by the grace of God my madness abated. The beast was deep into its hibernation; its hold upon me was weak as ever it would be. Now was the only chance, for me and for her.

  I went to the family cemetery and stood at the foot of my father's grave.

  "No more!" I shouted at his headstone. "No longer shall I be complicit in your crimes. The oath I took no longer bind
s me. You forced it upon me not to preserve the family lands, but to maintain our bond with the creature — an oath so dishonorable and unholy that it could never be sanctified before God."

  I slowly spun a full circle, hurling accusations at my grandfather's grave and all his forefathers' in turn. "Why did you all do it? So you would not have to be afraid? When did it start? How many have there been? Did it not matter because they were only serfs? There had to be something human within you at one time.

  "But now it matters not. We shall go far away from here, even if she cannot be revived."

  I went to the cave then, and I did not carry any kind of firearm, only a hammer and chisel. The sun shone overhead, and the day was hot. I stood outside the cave with my eyes closed for a moment, so that the darkness inside should not blind me. I entered, knowing what must be there, but I was still not prepared.

  She stood there, affixed to the wall by that unnatural secretion, her eyes open, and I felt that she saw me but could not move in even the smallest way. My breast ached for what she had suffered, but then the creature stirred in its bed of filth, as though troubled dreams crossed its sleep. It was trying to come fully awake, for it knew that I was there and what I planned. I had to work quickly. If it truly woke before I finished, it would devour me. I swung the hammer with a sure hand.

  Even as I threw down the tools and pulled Katina from the shattered remnants of her prison shell, the beast rose up before me, but its balance seemed unsure. It took one hesitant step, clawing at me feebly. I dragged Katina from the cave and to the edge of the burnt forest. I looked back then, but saw only the mouth of the cave lying dark and silent.

  Katina lay limp in my arms, as if in a trance. I pushed her in a vegetable cart for days. When we reached the marshes I found a small village that had survived the great burning, and then she opened her eyes and asked what had happened.

  She had no memory of the creature, but when the rains of autumn came she started suddenly each time a chill wind rose, and I often found her at the window late at night, listening as if she would hear it should it awaken.

  It is winter now, and I think the creature must have died. All things that feed can be starved, as now does Napoleon's army as it retreats across the burned and frozen land. Yes, the beast must be dead by now. The memory of my ancestral house is that of a home for darkness, and I will never dwell there again. But I shall still take long walks in the countryside, seeking peace, at last alone with myself.