Claws of Mercy

Translator Natalia Lilienthal

© Natalie Yacobson, 2024

© Natalia Lilienthal, translation, 2024

ISBN 978-5-0062-1722-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

A gloomy hospital

“Here they heal” read the sign on the gate. For some reason, he thought it read “Here they kill.”

In any case, the backwoods place boasted a splendid attraction. If only an infirmary could be called a landmark? Probably, since the building itself resembles a palace with marble columns. That’s what museums look like, not hospitals. The walls themselves reek of luxury and antiquity. Seven ominous angelic statues are perched on the edges of the staircase, as if in mockery of doctors who cannot save human lives unless the higher powers allow them to. Ruslan saw drops of blood on the wings of one of the angels.

“Do you believe that a statue can come to life and crush someone with its own hands?”

“More like wings,” Ruslan didn’t realize whether he was joking or answering his colleague quite seriously. Dima had been pestering him with questions since morning. His incessant chatter drowned out even the radio in the car. Together they drove to a place that was so remote that it was time for legends to be written about it. Some rich man had thought of building a huge palace complex in the middle of a swampy area and wild forests, and they, two young guys, for lack of better work, had to go to the construction site in the middle of nowhere. It is equally far from Moscow and Siberia. You won’t find these places on a map.

“Yesterday, a friend called me from here and said that a construction worker had been crushed by a marble statue,” Dima persisted. “It was just on the porch of the local hospital.”

“Is it being repaired?”

“To fix something… probably… he was crushed by a fallen angel statue. Can you imagine? What a situation! I can’t believe it!”

The stretcher was indeed carrying a dead body wrapped in bloody sheets. Ruslan thought it was a dead man. Why are they bringing it to the hospital? There must be a morgue inside.

A slender girl in a nurse’s uniform flashed through the archway of the entrance. Her white coat also had blood droplets on it. Although it was now a gray overcast day, but it seemed that the girl brought with her the breath of night. It was probably because of her blue-black hair and equally dark eyebrows and eyelashes. She rather resembled a fairy of the night than a nurse. Ruslan was suddenly drawn to her so strongly that he forgot all his business.

“Don’t look!”

The nearby voice was menacing and metallic. Dima was definitely silent. It felt as if this one of the statues had spoken to him.

How could a statue fall at night and crush someone? After all, all the pedestals were occupied, and therefore none of the statues had broken. There was no way the statue could have fallen without breaking.

It seemed to Ruslan that all the marble angels were squinting ominously at him.

“Let’s go, or we’ll be late,” Dima said hurriedly.

Ruslan pressed the gas. The pedal clanked unpleasantly under his foot, as if it might break. The dark-haired nurse had already gone back inside the building. Or rather, someone had dragged her inside. It was a tall, swarthy man whose hands seemed clawed from afar.

Statues

“The tales here are horrible,” Dima was rattling on the road. “Ever since several villages disappeared, people have been saying all sorts of things.”

“They are about witches, about woodsmen, about mermaids in the swamp,” Ruslan said sarcastically. He didn’t believe in myths and tales. It was as silly as believing in horror movies or comic-book horror stories. Yes, there are many deserted kilometers of road, but there are no devils and sorcerers unless you make them up yourself. It is better to persistently press on the gas and enjoy the meters of asphalt left behind. The tires rustled gently on the road, which turned out to be flat. Probably recently repaired. No wonder if some oligarch had bought the land here to build on. Ruslan didn’t even know exactly who they were going to work for. It was a fact that the construction would take a long time, which meant that the salary would be secured for a long period of time.

He dozed off at the wheel. Immediately he dreamed he was approaching the doors of the palace, that is, the doors of the hospital. The full moon was shining. Its glare is on the statues. The beautiful brunette nurse is sitting on the stairs in front of the entrance, her lips bloody. She is holding something in her lap. From afar, it looks like someone’s severed head.

“Hey!”

Ruslan calls out to her, and she looks up. There’s darkness in her eyes.

“Be attentive!” Dima said. He helped, otherwise the car would have hit a tree.

How did you get off the road? Ruslan rubbed his eyes sleepily.

“You better get behind the rudder!” He rummaged through the glove compartment for medicine. His head was bursting with pain.

Dima willingly traded places with him. He’d just gotten his driver’s license, so there wouldn’t be any problems. Let him drive. Besides, there’s no one on the road. Even if they break the rules of the road, there’s no one to fine them. And even if someone kills them on the way, no one will find their bodies here. It’s all wild and deserted.

Well, why is he thinking dark thoughts? Is it the dreams that overexcited him? Or was it the gloomy facade of the hospital?

There was no medicine in the glove compartment. Where did the pack of pills go? Ruslan definitely had them with him. Probably he left it in his bag. It wasn’t a bag, but some kind of notebook in the back seat. Ruslan pulled it out. It was a black leather-bound notebook with some bizarre symbols stamped on the cover! It looks like pentagrams. What modern production can’t think of to attract customers! Ruslan often noticed notebooks with skulls and skeletons on the covers in the windows of stationery shops, and sometimes there were images of dark fairies and vampires. Gothic style was becoming popular.

“Is this yours?”

Dima glanced at the notebook and shook his head negatively.

“Then where did it come from?”

“Maybe one of the hospital visitors put it in the car window on purpose,” Dima suggested.

“Are you kidding?” Ruslan ruffled his blond hair. His head ached even more.

“What’s joking got to do with it? Aren’t there enough superstitious people out there? And there are even more psychics – charlatans who play on people’s trust to lure away money or gifts.”

“What are you getting at?”

Ruslan didn’t like this conversation. It was too ominous.

“Well, many losers pay for dubious rituals to throw their misfortune on someone, and then deliberately throw away expensive things in a crowded place, which is sure someone will pick up. There is an example: if you take a thing from the dead, you will soon die. Or if you take a thing that belonged to someone spoiled, his spoilage will be transferred to you.”

“It is nonsense!”

Ruslan shivered. His friend talks as if he’d planted the notebook himself. But there was no notebook in the car until they stopped at the hospital. Probably they decided to get rid of it because its owner was already in the hospital morgue. But why wasn’t it just tossed into the dumpster?

Although there was no dumpster, no ice cream stand, not even a soda machine near the hospital. Ruslan slowed down near it, hoping to buy a can of Fanta. It didn’t work! They didn’t sell drinks there. There was no pharmacy where you could buy plasters and bandages nearby either. Too bad he hadn’t thought to bring a first aid kit earlier. The calluses chafed by his new sneakers ached unbearably.

Ruslan opened his notebook for nothing. The paper was shabby and yellowed. The notebook must be old. There were no marks on the title page, and the first pages were clean. Ruslan began to leaf through them and came across the notes. The lines ran unevenly, though the handwriting was calligraphic.

“The seven at the entrance are only asleep. It is best not to wake them, but alas, they will not sleep forever. There are victims already. Someone has performed a ritual, a red pentagram drawn at the entrance. The doctors are terrified. Yesterday, they claimed with aplomb to believe only in science. Today they believe in demons.

I, on the other hand, am becoming a non-believer. Yesterday I collected statues of beautiful angels and treasured them like jewels. Today I smash their heads with a hammer and burn the pieces. Angels have led me into terrible trouble.”

The entry broke off. The next few pages were blank. Then Ruslan came across a symbol scrawled across the page in red pen.

Was it some kind of nonsense or a cipher?

He closed his eyes, and he immediately pictured a gloomy surgical room, where some monster was performing an operation, and a beautiful girl in an evening gown was handing him instruments. Was this the same nurse he had seen this morning? Her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are black as coal, and her eyelids are lined with red shadow. The operation is done in the dark. There are no lights on, but the monster assistant’s skin glows by itself. The place is full of living statues.

“Come to us!” A chorus of voices whispers.

Ruslan struggles to open his eyelids. What the hell is this? He’s starting to go mad. They say it happens to all the inhabitants of big cities who find themselves in the wilderness for the first time.

He couldn’t fall asleep again. Dima turned on the radio. Some frivolous song filled the interior of the car. It was more fun to drive with music, but gloomy thoughts still nested in the head.

“Do you believe you can build a mansion with swimming pools, saunas, tennis courts and museum galleries full of paintings and sculptures in such wilderness?” Dima asked him casually.

“Do you mean sculptures?” Ruslan was interested. “It is like the one in front of the entrance to the hospital we passed.”

“Were there any sculptures there?” Dima was genuinely surprised.

“Didn’t you see them?” Ruslan felt a chill run down his spine.

Dima shook his head negatively. He could drive the car perfectly well. We should have put him behind the rudder right away. But Ruslan drove the car well until he passed the hospital. At that moment he felt sick. Are there such strong infections that can make you sick from the doorstep? He hadn’t even interacted with any of the sick people. Unless someone contagious out of meanness had slipped his notebook into the opened window of the car in order to infect the driver. We must get rid of this weird find soon. Maybe throw it out of the window on the side of the highway right now. Ruslan was about to do it, but at the last moment he changed his mind. It was pitiful! It was as if he was parting with some secret that he would still need.

He’ll have to hold the blank pages to the fire. Probably there’s something written in milk or lemon juice. Then the text will appear only from the proximity of the flame. That’s how people who need to hide something from prying eyes make notes. Probably some of the patients were hiding their secrets from the doctors.

Ruslan looked in his pocket for a lighter. He had recently quit smoking, but he kept the lighter with the view of the Ostankino TV Tower as a memento of the excursion. On the blank sheet of paper, the fire had left cinders, but there were no letters. So there are no records here. It was a shame. He thought he was close to solving some mystery.

Eerie visions haunted him all the way. Would this area be filled with ghost stories? It was useless to ask his companion about it. Dima thought only about where he would go on vacation: Turkey, Greece or Crimea? Where is the resort better? Where are more comfortable hotels? Where to find a cute traveling companion?

But this summer he’s unlikely to have time for a vacation. After all, they would have enough work for at least six months. The unfinished mansion was part anthill, part quarry. Various architects started to work on it, and for some reason they all quit. He would have to finish the job for everyone. As far as Ruslan could see, they had all started building in their own individual style. Different superstructures didn’t fit together. Some were deliberately destroyed, as if each new hired architect was trying to destroy the traces of his predecessors’ work.

Ruslan got a stack of blueprints that contradicted one another. All made by different people. Now he has to create his final drawing, into which he will transfer the idea of his employer. The building should resemble a labyrinth, which combines the styles of different eras and countries.

The idea is grandiose, but how can it be realized? Ruslan gloomily looked at the piles, the foundation, the laid foundations of the towers and galleries connecting the different buildings. Would it be necessary to destroy all this in order to work according to a new plan?

“Each building should be built in the style of one of the ancient civilizations: Egyptian, Roman, Indian, Greek, Chinese, and only the smallest building in the style of Russian terems, and all this will be connected by covered passages,” Ruslan cringed over the dictated conditions.

“I wonder who they are building such an expensive gift for? For sure, it is for a beautiful woman,” dreamily stretched out his companion, who was fixated on charming persons.

“In my opinion, the rich people are beginning to lose their brains because of their fads. Such a structure can only be called a whim.”

“But this whim is well paid for,” Dima said thoughtfully, who had already paid off debts and alimony from the generous advance payment. And there was still a fee ahead. He doesn’t care what and on what principle to build. The customer pays, so he is always right.

Ruslan sighed and ruffled his blond hair. He didn’t like the idea of a fancy palace, but where else would he find work?

“Damn palace!” He hissed, looking at the construction site with its unfinished towers and buildings. “Our ancestors staged revolution and overthrew monarchs just to bring back the era of palaces and the rich. How people don’t rush to get away from inequality, but end up returning to it again.”

“Do you want to go back to the USSR?” Dima joked.

Ruslan remained silent. He didn’t like to talk politics.

“It was good that we weren’t sent to build a hospital. Personally, I like palaces much better than hospitals. The hospital we passed this morning gives me the creeps.”

Well! Dima admitted it himself. Ruslan didn’t have to ask him about it. He too felt the aura of darkness and ghosts.

“They say it was a terrible thing going on in that asylum.”

“Is anything in the press about it? What was it called?” Ruslan prepared to type a query on the Internet on his phone.

“It was there before the revolution. But there was a fire there recently.”

“Was there a fire?” Ruslan was surprised. “The walls hadn’t even smoked.”

“They were probably painted afterwards, and the building was repaired.”

“I noticed that the paint was old, peeling in places.”

“You’re very observant. You’re not familiar with optics and eyeglasses. I’ve only recently switched to lenses.”

No one met the two architects at the counter. The guards let the arrivals through reluctantly.

The register listed Ruslan Ivanovich Sotnikov and Dmitry Vasilyevich Angarov, architects. The statement “this is us” was not enough. RuslanI had to show his documents. Out of the corner of his eye Ruslan noticed a list of engineers’ names, above which there was a mourning cross. Without thinking much about the observance of decorum, he snatched up the list and read:

“Volodya Perov, Grigory Shepetov, Alexander Voylokov, Pavel Kostin, Leonid Pushkarev… Are they all dead?”

“No, they are sick. They are all in the hospital,” the guard reluctantly muttered.

Wow!

“What are they sick with? Is there an epidemic at the construction site?”

The guard obviously did not like this curiosity. For a moment it seemed that he would ignore the question, but he answered with grim humor:

“Get drunk, have fun, have a disaster. Now twenty workers and five engineers are in the hospital.”

“And when they’re discharged from there, will they go back to the construction site?”

The guard shrugged, but it was obvious he wasn’t expecting them back.

“If they were taken to the hospital we passed by, they say they only come back from there in a coffin,” Dima muttered as they passed the guard post.

“Why? Are the doctors there so bad?”

“They take patients there in the most extreme cases, when it is obvious that nothing can be done.”

“Is it obvious right away?” Ruslan raised his ashy eyebrows in amazement. His friend Sashka, a surgeon by profession, used to say that doctors were not omnipotent. Sometimes someone who’s already been crossed will recover, and sometimes a healthy person will die. Diagnosis still means nothing. Sasha said he’d seen miraculous healings himself. Maybe his religiosity had clouded his judgment. Ruslan himself did not approve of those doctors who sent patients to churches for treatment. The soul was a separate concern, but physical ailments needed physical help.

“I noticed something like a temple near the hospital,” he recalled.

“It’s a former monastery,” Dima explained.

“And why it stands next to the hospital. Were the sick treated with prayers?”

“If people are going to die soon, there’s nothing else to do.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, I think the nuns were helping to care for the sick. In fact, there was a big scandal involving their help in the last century. Some nuns went mad, claimed they saw the devil, who told them to abuse the dying. Doctors claimed the same thing. Imagine, they were performing surgeries on the living, mutilating people. Supposedly demons told them to do it. It all happened a long time ago. I don’t know if the story’s true or if it’s a tourist lie.”

“Can you read it in the guidebook? Where’d you hear about it?”

“It was from the guys who worked here before us and quit. I talked to them on the phone. They seemed scared. People have become very superstitious these days.”

Ruslan sighed. Thoughts of the hospital sowed gloom on his soul. He didn’t like doctors, if only for the reason that they never paid any attention to him at the polyclinic unless he brought a box of chocolates as a present. Free medicine has one disadvantage: if you don’t give the doctors a small bribe in the form of a chocolate bar or a pack of cookies, they won’t treat you, but will send you to a lot of paid tests, which, as it turns out, were not needed for anything.

“It’s better not to get sick,” Ruslan concluded.

“What can you tell your body to do?” Dima grinned. “People are not made of marble. All infections stick to us.”

“Marble, you said…” Ruslan was taken aback when he noticed a statue of an angel on the construction site, just like the one on the steps of the hospital. He must have gotten double vision, because the statue was moving its wing.

“Look!” Ruslan tugged at his comrade’s sleeve.

“Where is it? Is it at the crane?”

“No, it is the angel.”

“What angel is it?”

“It is the marble one! It is the statue!”

“I don’t see any statue,” Dima rubbed his eyes. “They must be inside.”

“Who is it?”

“They are figures like museum pieces. I’m told they’ve already started moving them into a gallery that’s being rebuilt. By the way, we have to plan the building so that this gallery won’t be destroyed or altered. It and the already rebuilt rotunda must not be touched. All the other wings must adjoin them so that the rotunda remains in the center.”

“What a task is it!” Ruslan had never faced anything like this before. It would take a lot of thought. Now he was more concerned about the marble angel. Why couldn’t Dima see it?

It was as if the angel didn’t exist. There were only workers carrying wheelbarrows with lime and bricks. Maybe the statue had already been moved. It was probably not made of marble, but of papier-mâché. Then it could have just been carried away.

Could he have mistaken the mannequin for a statue? He seems to have perfect eyesight. Dima’s the one who’s always squinting.

And what did the construction site need a mannequin for? Probably it was brought for the home theater, which was still to be built. Ruslan thought it was foolish to bring interior decorations into a mansion that had not yet been built. It was even more foolish to build parts of the mansion before the architects arrived on the site. He wasn’t even told about the rotunda. Now the whole plan would have to be reworked.

Ruslan caught the gaze of the marble eyes. They looked down at him from above the rotunda. A statue of an angel nestled against the roof. It is definitely a stucco decoration. Yet the angel seems alive. His lips stretch in a sly grin. A blinding flash of the sun for a moment obscured Ruslan’s eyes, and in the next moment the angel on the roof of the rotunda was gone.

What the hell!

“I think I need lenses or glasses, too,” Ruslan muttered, “I’m seeing double.”

Or did he have sunstroke? As he drove the car, the sun heated the sight-glass mercilessly.

“Let’s hurry up, we’re on a tight schedule,” Dima pulled him towards the rotunda. “We need to see it to think how to proceed, and the gallery, too.”

Ruslan flinched when something red splashed on his jacket. Was that ketchup or blood? The third statue he’d seen at the construction site had been splattered with blood. This time the marble angel made no secret of the fact that it was alive. It moved easily and plastically. It is probably an actor, smeared with whitewash from head to toe, so that it is not distinguishable from the sculpture. But why are his eyes entirely white, too? Angel put his hand to his lips, calling for silence. Workers passed by, as if they didn’t see him. Someone pushed a wheelbarrow full of bricks at the angel. In an instant, marble palms closed around the trucker’s head and crushed it like a rotten egg. Blood spurted.

Ruslan wanted to scream, to call the police. Even angels aren’t allowed to get up to mischief on a construction site. And this was probably not an angel, but some liquid powdered joker. Only the builders don’t notice him for some reason. Before Ruslan could open his mouth, the angel, the wheelbarrow with the brick, and the severed head, which the angel was playing with as if it were a red ball, disappeared from view.

Ruslan looked at his jacket and didn’t see any blood on it. It had definitely splattered on him.

Pagan gods

What’s wrong with him? Is he going crazy? He began to see statues of angels everywhere, crushing the heads of workers.

Dima strode masterfully into the rotunda. Ruslan had nothing to do but follow him. He felt out of place in the new place. This had never happened to him before. Usually he would get to work right away, but here he was suddenly plagued by migraines.

There was a gallery of sculptures in the rotunda, but not a single angel among them. There were only pagan gods. Some of them Ruslan could name, others he had seen for the first time. The graceful sculptures looked both creepy and beautiful. Although who would have thought that something creepy could be captivatingly beautiful!

Ruslan wandered around the rotunda, pushing aside the heavy velvet drapes that covered some of the aisles. The rotunda reminded him of a horror museum.

At the entrance hung a painting of the goddess Marena in a black kokoshnik and holding a skull. Opposite was an eerie landscape with black fields where armies of stunted demons grew with the crops. Two monstrous giants replaced the caryatids. Both of them reminded Ruslan of the Scandinavian Surt, lord of the fire giants and god of the end of the world. The farther one went, the more ominous pictures and figures one encountered. There were sea monsters, women turning into dragons, rakshasas, and ifrites. A complete set for an apocalypse meeting! If all these gods and demons turned out not to be part of a dead culture, but living beings, they would definitely sweep the world away. Ruslan suddenly felt uneasy. For a moment, he imagined all these creepy creatures coming to life and pouncing on defenseless humanity.