“No, baba. It is not—”
“You see, child, Burian’s mind is corrupted.” The crone leaned forwards, her eyes glittering. “The other prisoners marked his flesh as a warning to the world. When he came home to me, he burned the words away with metal. Didn’t you, Burian?”
Her grandson mumbled something indistinct, avoiding eye contact, head down. “Now he hides here, so that people do not look on his shame.”
Victoria regarded the old woman coldly. “Yes, well,” she replied, her tone sweetly patronising. “You don’t need to be afraid. I’m not going to take him away from you.”
The woman cackled. “Afraid? I have no use for fear, child. I have lived in this place all my life. This place that eats fear.” She paused, seeing something in Victoria’s eyes. “What have you seen, I wonder?” Her eyes searched Victoria’s face. “Tell me, girl! What have you seen tonight?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Victoria, shifting under the babushka’s stare.
“You saw him: the Black God, he haunts your eyes! Did he fly against the moon? Did you hear his voice on the wind? In the trees? Did he call to you?”
Her small, malevolent eyes were eager now, unblinking. She reached forward and seized hold of Victoria’s wrist with a clawlike hand. Victoria snatched it away.
“Let go of me!” she exclaimed, with too much shrillness.
The man, Burian, took hold of his grandmother’s chair and pulled it backwards so that Victoria was out of her reach. “Bud’ laska, baba! Vybachte, she has bad ideas,” he apologised, rolling his eyes.
“Stupid boy, be quiet! The girl has seen! She knows! But perhaps she does not understand what she has seen… perhaps she must be told.”
Victoria recoiled as the old woman struggled to her feet, ignoring her grandson’s feeble protestations, and began to shuffle, leaning heavily on the table, towards her.
“Tell me girl, what have you seen? His temple, burning in the night? His presence in dark places?”
Victoria felt flecks of spit land on her face as the woman drew closer, chattering excitedly. “Have you seen his face? Felt his teeth in your soul?”
She was panting with the exertion of moving and talking. Victoria stood up and moved away. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” she informed the witch, with the exaggerated enunciation of the courteously aggrieved. “I have to leave. Thanks for the drink.”
“Now you have seen him, there can be no peace for you! No peace!” cried the old woman, before a fit of violent, tubercular coughing robbed her of breath. Her grandson hurried around the table and guided her to the chair Victoria had just vacated. She sank into it with a groan, and clutched his arm for a long time. When she spoke again, she sounded old and tired.
“You do not understand, child. The young do not understand,” she whispered.
“What don’t we understand?” Victoria demanded to know, fighting a sudden wave of sympathy for the frail, old crone.
“The darkness.” Her voice was calmer now, hoarse with coughing. “Sit, girl–do not be afraid. Sit, and tell me: have you ever heard men say shchob tebe chorny bog ubif?”
She looked up at Victoria with ancient, grey eyes that swam with a lifetime’s pain and hardship. How old was this woman? Old enough to have lived more than two thirds of her life in a Soviet, guessed Victoria. Maybe even to remember the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. She found herself sitting down at the table again.
“Shchob tebe chorny bog ubif?” Victoria repeated. “No. What is that? Something about destruction.” Burian tilted the vodka bottle towards her and she nodded wearily, holding the glass steady while he poured.
“It is an old, old curse in our language,” replied the babushka. “‘May the black god smite thee.’ Men speak it now in jest—but how many of them know why? Do you know why?”
“I really don’t,” Victoria assured her, rubbing tiredly at her eyes. She wondered whether this little samosely hovel had a telephone. She should ask.
“Over a thousand years ago the Christians came, with their Jewish god and their arrogant priests, their masochist saints and boot-licking apostles. They promised and threatened, with a child’s vision of heaven and hell. Seduced us with the promise of a god’s love for mere men. Over centuries, the people, weak and stupid, forgot their old beliefs and knelt before the cross. Old names and old ways were put aside. How much easier to bless yourself, and pray to heaven, than to tremble with fear before the Black God—Czernobog!”
“Czernobog?” queried Victoria.
“The thousand forms of Czernobog!” declared the old witch. “Teacher and seer. Tormentor. Devourer. Ageless and undying, he listens to the stars, sleeping or wandering as the dead gods require. He is but a shadow. A messenger condemned to spread a gospel of despair. In ancient times learned men gathered at his temples, seeking wisdom—but the revelations of Czernobog drove them mad! He taught them to hear the voices of the stars, and they were sucked into deep oceans of misery. Lost in wonder and fear, their thoughts and their lives became the Black God’s food.
“Well the Chernolian tribesmen knew and feared mighty Czernobog! When he left his temple they knew he would return, and that they would recognise his coming. They waited like whipped dogs for the return of the master; for signs of his cruelty seeping from the shadows. For just the echo of a whisper in a corner of their dreams.”
Victoria closed her eyes and drained her glass of vodka. So, the old woman was some kind of mad, pagan, Slav-supremacist. Spending thirty years living in the Zone of Alienation could probably do that to you. Her grandson, sitting opposite, grinned apologetically at Victoria, rolling his eyes like an imbecile. Victoria decided to interrupt the old woman’s narrative.
“Right, so if this Czernobog was so well known, how come everyone got converted to Christianity instead of the other way around?”
The grandmother’s eyes gleamed. She leaned closer.
“Would you dare to know the mind of the messenger of chaos?” she hissed. “The Black God rises and departs as it pleases the Old Ones. He cares not for the worship of men! To him we are dull creatures. We are fuel. Lured by mystery and fear to Czernobog, who sucks order from our minds like marrow from a bone. He departed, leaving us to ripen on the bough. Now he has returned, melting back into the world. He haunts new temples now, mocking our vanity from the shadows.”
“I can live with having my vanity mocked,” replied Victoria, trying to sound offhand. She wasn’t sure what was more unnerving—the old woman’s fairy story or the relish with which she told it—but she was determined not to give her the satisfaction of reacting to it. “So, this Czernobog character was here, in Ukraine, then he went away, and now he’s back. Is that right?”
The old woman laughed indulgently. “In Ukraine? Yes, child, mighty Czernobog was here in Ukraine. In Egypt, men hailed the Dark Pharoah, Nyarlathotep. In Persia he was Angra Mainyu. In Babylon, Aciel. In Ireland, Balor of the evil eye. To the Guanchetos he was red-eyed Guayota. His terrible pyramids have been built by Nile and Amazon, and on nameless lands older than both. The Black God does not discriminate between creeds or species of man any more than men distinguish the inhabitants of an anthill.”
Nyarlathotep. Pyramids. Pharoahs. The old woman’s words tumbled through Victoria’s mind. The messages on the computer and the radio, the e-mail—what was happening here? How could this old hag know what had been happening in the camp?
“So why now?” she demanded. “Why do you think that all these old myths”—she emphasized the word—“are suddenly coming true now?”