The Speculist

Once in a while she would open her eyes and see not the shooter or the man from the game, but Pasha. He would stand there with his head gaping half open, still bleeding. Still crying after all these years. Demanding to know what had happened to him, and why had she allowed it?

Then she would truly wake up, terrified. Sometimes screaming, sometimes merely sobbing. But it was not a consuming fear, not where Pasha was concerned. When she had a vision of the man with the gun or the evil man who had ordered Pasha’s death, Ksenia would wake up afraid and remain afraid. But when she awakened screaming at the sight of her brother, the fear would turn to anger. How she hated him for what he had done to her. He had tried to kill Reuben and had not cared whether she lived or died. And he had died, himself.

That was the worst, the most unforgivable of his crimes. Had he lived, there was a chance that somehow they could have made things right between them, somewhere down the road. But now he was gone and completely beyond redemption. She could forgive Pavel for trying to kill her, but she could never forgive him for taking the life of her beloved brother — that is, his own life. It wasn’t just his death, it was the process of transformation that had led to it: the act of actually taking his life and making it into something that it was never meant to be. Making himself into someone he was never meant to be; someone she couldn’t even recognize in the end.

That was unforgivable.

She couldn’t stand it any longer. She had to know. Her eyes tightly closed, Ksenia rolled over onto her back. She slowly opened her eyes, then blinked once or twice as she fixed her gaze at the foot of the bed. Her mouth fell open in a frozen gasp. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even breathe. All the nightmares had done nothing to prepare for this moment.

There was a man standing there.

It was not Mr. Keyes or Dr. Chevlenko. It certainly wasn’t Reuben. Nor was it the criminal boss, nor the shooter, nor Pasha.

The man was a complete stranger. He was an older man, wearing a dark coat. Even in the moonlit room, she could make out a sharp, hawk-like face and piercing eyes. There was something unnaturally fixed about this man. He was too rigid, too much there. This was not a quality that she could see, but one that she could sense. There was something wrong…desperately wrong with this man. He was lying about who and what he was. Even just standing there, he was lying. It occurred to her that she knew — didn’t suspect, but knew with an utter certainty — that he, that it was somehow behind all the evil she had encountered, both sleeping and waking.

He was the source of it all.

Somehow.

She closed her eyes again. She wanted to be brave enough to look her death in the face as it came for her. She knew that she had once been that brave. But she was older now and not as strong. The fear had eaten away at her, weakening her. And now here she was faltering at the last moment. She was ashamed, but the fear was too much for her. She was afraid not just for herself, but for Ivor. And for poor Mr. Keyes.

Michael, he always said. Call me Michael.

And even for Reuben. When he did make it back to this place, as she knew he would in time, he would be distraught that he had not been able to help Betty before she finally gave up a year earlier. And now he would return to find that Ksenia herself was gone, brutally murdered.

She began to weep as she thought of Ivor once again. He was a sensitive boy. A lot like his father, really. And now, like his father, he would be losing his mother while still a boy. It was cruel, and she couldn’t think about it without crying. She was frightened and alone. She was so tired of being afraid. At least now it would end.

“Don’t cry, sweet girl.”

The voice came from the foot of the bed, where the apparition was standing. Ksenia whimpered at the sound of it. The unfamiliar voice spoke to her in Russian, using the same words her father had used when, as a small child, she had been in need of comfort. But there was no comfort here. It was another lie, like his voice, like his presence. And like his presence there, in her room, in the middle of the night, it was another violation.

“Ksenia Ivanova,” said the man. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Go away,” she begged, barely able to whisper the words. “Leave me alone.”

“Ksenia Ivanova,” he said again. “Open your eyes. I have to talk to you.”

She opened her eyes again. He had not moved; nothing about him had changed. The stillness was unnatural. Ksenia was fully awake now, and her rational self took over. The terror didn’t subside, but it was joined by anger and curiosity and the desire to act. She reached over and turned on the lamp. She sat up in bed and took a better look at the apparition. Whatever was going to happen, she would face it. She would not lie there in helplessness waiting for her death.

The light added little information. He was an old man, around the same age as Mr. Keyes. In the light his face seemed a bit less sharp, his eyes a bit less piercing. He was pale; his skin had an odd gray sheen. And his lips were thick, the lower one hanging slightly. He was strange, no question, but perhaps not as uncanny as she had thought. Perhaps her own predisposition to night terrors had made him worse than he truly was.

She cleared her throat. She would not whisper or beg again. She found her voice and it was strong and angry.

“What do you want?” she asked. “How dare you come in here?”

She began to assess her options. She had nothing in the way of a weapon at her disposal. There was a telephone on the nightstand. She thought of grabbing the cordless receiver and throwing it at him, but she doubted she could do much damage with it. Better to use the phone to call someone: Mr. Keyes or the guards.

This raised the troubling question of how this man had managed to get past the guards in the first place. And there had been no yelp from Father Alexy, who slept in the next room at the foot of Ivor’s bed. He was usually alert to the slightest disturbance at night. What had this man already done before coming to her room? She thought of Ivor, and the terror returned like a wave of sickness. She hadn’t been thinking clearly before, she had still been asleep. Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to her, but this man, this thing, could not be allowed to hurt her son. She reached over and took hold of the phone.

She had no plan. She would run at him, she would strike him with the phone.

“Don’t be silly, Ksenia Ivanova,” he said. Instantly, unnaturally, he was standing next to the nightstand. There had been no sensation of movement. There had been no time in which the change had occurred. He was simply there.

She didn’t protest as he removed the receiver from her hand.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. And you need not worry about your son. He’s in bed asleep.”

She felt dizzy. This was all wrong. How could he know so much? What her father had said to her, what she was thinking. And how could he move like that? Move without moving.

“Who…what are you?” she asked.

“I am what you see. A man. My name is Nino Markku.”

She knew that name. She couldn’t place it, but she had heard it spoken.

“What do you want with me?”

“I have come here with a warning. And an offer. I wish to place you under my protection.”

She studied him for a moment.

“I don’t need your protection. I don’t even know who you are. Besides, I’m already under the protection of Mr. Keyes.”

He laughed.

“Mr. Keyes is a good man. But he cannot protect you from what’s coming.”

“This is your warning, then? So tell me what is coming.”

The man, the thing — whatever he was — looked thoughtful for a moment. Almost sad.

Slowly, and with a seeming great effort, he extended one hand towards her face. The backs of his fingers, rough and cold, brushed her cheek. Ksenia didn’t recoil. He opened his hand, brushing his fingertips along her cheekbone to her lips. His touch grew warmer and softer as he moved his hand along, now up: lightly across her face, caressing her eyelids, her forehead, finally running his fingers gently through her hair.

The sensation was delightful. All fear was gone; she felt peace and warmth at the stranger’s touch. Somewhere beneath the pleasure lay a sensation of unease, a sliver of fear that something was wrong, here, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She could no more bring it to the fore than she could the memory behind the name a moment earlier.

“You truly are a sweet girl,” Markku said after a moment. “Would you doubt me if I told you that I could bring you happiness such as you have never known?”

“No,” she answered sleepily. The answer echoed inside her. No.

No.

His hand moved down through her hair, caressing her neck and then her shoulder. The thick fingers danced easily in and out of her nightgown, now coming around to her throat, now moving down towards her breasts. He reached towards her with his other hand, drawing her near. Now his face was a few inches from hers. His eyes were wider than she had noticed, his skin grayer. Delightfully gray. There was a bead of drool on his lower hanging lip. Ksenia was overcome with desire. She wanted his soft hands on her; she was hungry for his mouth, for his touch.

He released her, returning to the foot of the bed again without seeming to move to get there. Ksenia fell back onto the bed, the trance ended, trembling with revulsion.

He watched her for a moment.

“I have not pleased you,” he said. “How strange.”

Ksenia stared at him.

“Strange,” she said, her disgust giving way to anger. “If you wish to please me, leave. Go. Now.”

Markku did not move.

“What are you?” she asked him for the second time. Then she remembered something.

“Of course, you’re from Georgia,” she said. “You are the uncle of that man, Kolkhi.”

He half-smiled and nodded.

“Why have you come here?”

“I have come here to offer my protection to you and your son.”

“I do not wish it.”

“I’m sure that is true. But you need it nonetheless.”

Ksenia looked down and realized she was still holding the phone. She need only dial the guardhouse to summon help. The digits were 4147. She pressed the green button to activate the receiver. Then she pressed the four and then the one. As she moved her finger towards the four a second time, she was overcome by a feeling of disgust for the telephone receiver. It was an appalling thing, revolting. She would be sick at her stomach if she held it for even a second longer. She wanted to drop it.

It was painful to continue holding onto it.

She pressed the four again, and now she was overcome by fear. The receiver was horrifying, much more so than the stranger standing at the foot of her bed. It was an object of terror. It was death to be near it. Only dropping it would make her safe.

Summoning all her strength, she dialed the seven.

“You are so very brave,” said Markku.

Ksenia ignored him. She held the receiver up to her ear. The phone rang once, then a second time. She was surprised that no one picked it up by the third ring. It continued to ring. Four, five, six times. This wasn’t right. Something had happened to them. Seven, eight, nine rings. Markku had done something to them.

Ksenia looked down and realized she was still holding the phone in her lap. She was confused. Hadn’t she been holding it up to her ear? Hadn’t she dialed a number and waited for an answer?

She wasn’t sure.

She held the receiver up to her ear. There was no ringing, and no dial tone. The phone was dead. She started to press the green button to activate the phone when she was once again overcome by a feeling of dread. The receiver was an abomination. If she didn’t drop it immediately, Ivor would die. Nothing else could save him, only dropping the phone.

The receiver slipped from her fingers and onto the bed, then rolled off onto the floor.

“But there are always limits to courage, aren’t there?” said Markku.

Then he was gone.

Ksenia expected him to reappear elsewhere in the room as he had done before, but minutes passed and the apparition did not return. It took her a while before she gained sufficient composure to reach down and pick up the phone.

It took longer still before she was able to call for help.