A WALK IN THE PARK
Jiří Pavlovský
It was a park. But in Prague, any piece of green that’s bigger than a postage stamp is considered a park. Anything that can serve as a dog toilet, or in case of an emergency, as a human one. This park was on Charles Square and a road cut it in two parts. In one part was something between a fountain and a swimming pool, in the other a slightly larger grass area. We’re talking about the part on the left side of Charles Square, if you were looking from above, from Ječná Street . . . and of course on the right, if you were looking from Resslova Street, where the paratroopers found it was unwise to hide in a church during WWII.
That park contained a playground, some of the necessary statues of the greats of the past and, of course, a modest grassy area with a trampled cross path, and a small, lonely group of trees that crouched off to the side, brooding about suicide.
The park, as usual, was circled by a path lined with garbage bins and benches on which sat mothers (waiting when their children playing in the sandpit will start crying), tired pensioners, lovers, and homeless people.
It was September, so the days were still quite warm, and although the homeless mostly occupied the opposite side of the park, quite a few of them spilled over here as well. They slept in the fading sun, surrounded by bags with their belongings and plastic bottles. Not all of them, of course. Some chatted, smoked and drank, some tried to get a few coins from passing people, and some skipped that futile part and went straight to swearing at anyone around them.
Fry was one of the homeless, but the guy he was looking at wasn’t—though he tried his best to look like one of them. At first glance, everything seemed fine. The strange homeless guy was sitting on a bench, leg over leg, arms draped over the back of the chair, wearing several layers of clothing (too much branded stuff), bags laid next to his shoes (too new). Even sitting up, it was obvious he was tall. With his long, bent legs and his arms outstretched (no dirt behind his fingernails), he gave the impression of a spider. The only thing that kept him from looking like someone from a horror movie (hell, he had those layers of clothing perfectly matched and adjusted) was a face (too clean) with a friendly smile (with too many and too white teeth) and the satisfied expression of a man who is exactly where he should be.
Fry (he didn’t get his nickname because of a drug addiction, but because he occasionally helped out at the nearby fast-food stand) saw all of this from the neighboring bench. Fry didn’t like that guy. He didn’t belong here. He looked like he’d dressed up as a hobo for a fancy-dress party and forgot to change back. Fry was triggered. It was worse than wearing a blackface.
Fry fished in his plastic bag, pulled out a plastic bottle, took a sip for encouragement, closed the bottle, stuffed it in his bag, stood up, and walked determinedly over to the bench with Lanky. Even the stains on his clothes looked orderly, almost geometrical, more like the result of an artistic intent than hygiene issues.
But who would give a homeless man a second look.
“This bench is mine,” Fry said aggressively to start the conversation.
“Congratulations,” Lanky said calmly. “It’s a very nice bench.”
“I want you to beat it.”
“Me too, believe me,” sighed Lanky. But he didn’t move. He just continued to smile contentedly.
“Then get the hell out,” Fry snapped. “And presto. And be grateful.” He leaned closer to Lanky. “I’ve been in prison before. And I have no problem going back there.”
Lanky looked him in the eye. “Trust me, I respect a man with ambition and plans. It’s just that, unfortunately, I’m stuck here. Frankly, I’d hate to fight you over this bench; neither of us would like that. So I suggest you tolerate my presence for a while. Then you won’t have to spend several days in the hospital and me in the shower.”
“Are you a cop?” Fry guessed. That would explain a lot.
“Me?” Lanky laughed. “Do I look like . . . ?” He ran his eyes over his dirty clothes, “Well, you’re right, I do look a bit like a cop when I think about it. But I’m not. I am,” he lowered his voice, “a member of a top-secret group of Hunters who are seeking out and killing monsters in our country.”
“Monsters.”
“Yes. One of those guys who does all the essential work of researching and finding out vital information so that some steroid muscles can come in, do what we tell them, and get all the glory and money for it.”
“I’ve never seen a monster before.”
“We’re very good at our jobs,” Lanky said.
“You’re not a cop,” Fry decided. “You’re nuts.”
“I’m afraid you’re right on both counts. Can I get back to looking for monsters?”
Fry wondered if he shouldn’t pull him up after all, but you never know with crazies. He still remembered that dude who had bitten everyone around him. The bites themselves hadn’t been so bad, but then they’d all had to go to the doctor. But again, he couldn’t back down. Then he’d look like a pussy. He had some prestige. “Go look for them in your shithole! Get off my bench! Get the fuck off, you and your Hunters!”
Lanky put a finger over his narrow lips. “Shh. You can’t talk about Hunters.”
“Yeah? And what are you going to do to me if I talk about them, huh? You gonna send some boogeymen after me?”
Lanky revealed a cloak, then another, pulled up his sweater and showed the butt of his pistol. “I’ll kill you.”
Fry froze. Something told him this was no toy.
“We’re a secret organization,” Lanky continued. “So if anyone finds out about us, it would be really bad for them.”
“I . . . ,” Fry began, but somehow he ran out of words.
“We usually do this more subtly, but . . . ,” Lanky shrugged. “You won’t be the first to disappear here in the park.”
“I . . . I won’t say anything,” Fry finally stuttered.
Lanky patted the seat next to him. “Sit here . . . or rather,” he patted it a little farther away, “sit here.”
“I . . . ”
Lanky just patted the bench again, and Fry sat down. Lanky’s resemblance to a spider was growing. The way he looked at him . . . that must be the way a spider must look when it’s going to eat a pretty fat fly.
“You are very lucky,” Lanky said. “I haven’t told you anything important. Not the name of our organization, not who’s our leader, where is our headquarters, not even our favorite ice cream flavor. And if you cooperate, I won’t tell you anything else. But if I get the feeling that you’re lying to me, or that you don’t want to cooperate . . . ”
Fry needed a drink. “Can I have a drink?” he asked.
“Help yourself,” Lanky said. “To come clean . . . cleanish, considering our outfits . . . I was sent here to blend in with the crowd, so to speak, and observe the situation. It’s probably unnecessary for me to be here, except that everyone has to spend some time in the field, even though I would be much, much more useful in the office. But who am I to complain? No one important,” he sighed. “I’m quite envious of you sometimes. No bosses, no assignments . . . ” He watched Fry trying to pour the entire contents of the bottle into his stomach. “No liver . . . ” He sighed. “I won’t beat around the bush. I hate this blending in the crowd and I’m bored by observing. So I figured I’d speed things up and delegate to people who are already present.”
It took Fry a moment to realize that meant him. “But I . . . I don’t know anything about anything.”
“That’s what I hope you’re wrong about. Or at least you can get someone who is better informed. One of the, shall we say, regulars.”
“I don’t even fucking know what’s going on!”
Lanky raised his eyebrows like a conductor taking baton. “About a dozen people have disappeared here in this park in the last year. Eleven that we know of.”
“Here?” Fry asked. “Are you kidding me?”
“And that’s the point. I’m not. Last time the cameras picked them up, they were heading for the park, and then nothing showed on the other side.”
“So they came out the other way. People go as they please.”
“Anything’s possible. The bottom line is we have unexplained disappearances and the only thing those people have in common is this park. It could be a coincidence, it could just be some freak that is lurking here, lures people out somewhere and then takes them away . . . but it’s always happened during daytime. And there’s no place around here where you can do that without being noticed.”
“During the day?”
“Always in the daytime. Usually sometime in the afternoon, around two or three o’clock. That’s not a time you’d want to kidnap someone.”
Fry was, against his will, intrigued. “Monsters walk at night,” he stated confidently. “And if there was a monster here, someone would notice.”
“I’m not so sure,” Lanky countered. “It could have been camouflaged somehow. Or just extremely fast.”
“The worst thing that happens here are fist fights. Yeah, someone got shanked here once, but that was a really long time ago. And it was on the other side.”
“We’ve been looking into that, too, of course. Local history is always important. But nothing substantial came out of it. It’s just . . . we still have eleven missing people who were last seen heading towards this park.”
“So they were abducted by aliens,” Fry waved his hand.
“We don’t know anything about aliens,” Lanky acknowledged. “But the witnesses didn’t notice any flying saucers.”
“The witnesses? Who?”
“One witness, actually. He saw Adriana . . . that’s one of the last missing people . . . walking down this path.” Lanky pointed to the path that led diagonally across the lawn. “Then he looked for his dog, and when he turned around, the lawn was empty.”
“Oh, shit,” Fry said. “That has to be aliens.”
“Or an accidental teleportation. Or an ascension. Or they became invisible. Or they just suddenly got tired of existing.” Lanky shrugged and leaned back on the bench. “No one knows anything.”
Fry looked at the small patch of grass with new respect. How long would it take him to go to the other side? Twenty steps? What could happen in twenty steps?
“And this is where you—Mr. Miroslav Jíška—come into play,” Lanky said.
Fry twitched. He hadn’t heard that name in a long time.
“I don’t enjoy observing and tracking, but I know a lot of people and I’m really, really good at my job. So I checked you out. Just in case you thought that if you disappeared from this park, you’d disappear from me too. Not only you won’t, but you will probably have a nasty accident later. Why can’t I just watch my mouth . . . ”
“But you didn’t actually tell me anything! You said it yourself!”
“But only you and I know that. Calm down, I don’t want you to do anything sick. I just want you to stand up, check on all of your alcoholic acquaintances and see if they’ve noticed anything.”
“Ha!” Fry blurted out. “If they’ve noticed anything? Most of them wouldn’t have noticed if a herd of elephants were trampling around. They’re already out of reality.”
“I don’t think so,” said Lanky.
“I know them, I . . . ”
Lanky stopped him by raising his hand and pointing a finger in front of him. On the other side, a homeless man had just gotten up from the bench, stood up, held onto the back of the bench, looked around, and spotted Fry. He waved at him and started walking toward him, heading toward the path across the lawn . . . but then he turned right and followed the sidewalk. He took the longer way.
He didn’t set foot on the lawn.
“Something tells me,” said Lanky, “that they noticed something after all.”
* * *
They noticed, but they didn’t know about it, or they couldn’t describe it anymore. There was only a feeling, a hunch, an unpleasant aftertaste in the air. Some of them left, moved to the already crowded other half of the park, or somewhere else, but for some there was nothing else left. The park was their home now, during the day and sometimes at night when there was nowhere else to go. And after all, for most of them, fear was already a constant friend. A little more, a little less, it didn’t matter so much.
And better an enemy that you can’t see, that doesn’t really threaten you in any way, than one that will beat you up and steal what little you have.
So they stayed here.
“So just a feeling, huh?” Lanky said, dissatisfied. “That’s it?”
Fry watched him shift in his seat, hunching over as he stretched his long arms. He wanted to ask if everything was all right, if that was enough, if he had accomplished his task, if he could go now, but he was afraid that any word would alert Lanky about his presence and he would be killed. So he’d rather remain silent, hoping that Lanky might forget about him, that he would get up and leave and everything would be all right again.
Lanky looked at him, extinguishing Fry’s dreams. “I expected more.”
“I . . . it’s not my fault.”
“No one saw anything, no one heard anything, this place just doesn’t have good vibes.” Lanky shook his head. “I don’t believe it. And not just because I don’t like the word ‘vibe.’”
“Can I go?”
“To where?”
“ . . . home?”
Lanky paused in thought. “One of us here seems to be misunderstanding the term ‘homeless.’”
“The shelter . . . that’s where I have . . . ”
Lanky waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. You still have time and this place needs to be monitored. Not all the time, of course. Only in the afternoon. Get me a couple of people, we’ll give them paper and a pencil—Can you write?—okay, paper and a pencil it is. And you’ll write down,” he jabbed his finger to the left, “who entered this lawn, at what time, and . . . ,” he jabbed to the right, “who came off.”
“Also at what time?”
Lanky paused. “Points for effort, but no, that’s unnecessary.” He looked at the path through the grass. An elderly lady entered it with a shopping bag and left it at the far end. A group of women stepped onto it, fighting their advancing age with luxurious clothing. They crossed the lawn and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Then a couple of men who were arguing about something important, a group of youngsters who were showing their friendship by punching each other in the shoulder with their fists, a guy in a metal t-shirt, a guy in a tank top pulled up over his bulging belly—he could disappear if there was any justice—stepped on the grass and they all made it to the safety of the pavement.
“I guess someone should write the people who go from here to there . . . and someone else the ones who go from there to here. And it should be two people doing both, for control. Someone who won’t write about flying octopuses.”
“And . . . what do I tell them?” Fry asked after a long moment. “What’s the payoff?”
Lanky didn’t understand at first, then automatically ran his hand down to where his gun was, but paused. “You’re right. They deserve some reward. We can throw it in the cost. A hundred an hour? Is that okay?”
Fry bulged his eyes. A hundred crowns for lying on a bench and taking notes?
“Okay,” said Lanky, who misinterpreted his look. “A hundred and fifty. But no more.” He handed him a business card with his phone number. “Call it when someone disappears. Don’t lose it. I’m gonna want it back.”
The homeless man’s head nodded like a bobblehead behind the car window. “We’ll do it.”
“Great,” Lanky said. He leaned back against the bench again and stopped noticing Fry. Eventually, the whole thing took a turn for the better.
He was free. He’d have to come in for a check-up, but he wouldn’t have to sit around in this humiliating costume.
He moved to leave the park, to wash up, change into something cleaner, have a latte.
Unfortunately, he went across the lawn.
* * *
The walk was really about 20 to 30 steps long. Less if you had long legs, and Theodor Kristián (a name he got from his parents . . . and with that name came a constant sense of injustice) did. He crossed that line easily, in no time. He crossed it two or three times before he realized something was wrong. He looked under his feet. Then forward and back. The beaten path twisted and turned around him and connected back behind his back, forming one big circle. He looked up. Birds in the sky were stuck in a blurred photograph. The wind wasn’t blowing, and the people around the lawn remained stuck in the middle of started motions.
Damn, he thought. And I hadn’t given Fry a paper and a pencil.
He stopped. There it was. He would become a part of the statistics. A joke in the Fantom office. No way.
He looked around. The small patch of forest in the corner of the lawn suddenly seemed much denser, the trees towering higher, pulling apart as if it were a forest explosion stopped just at its beginning. Just a few moments and they would . . .
They were everywhere.
Theodor stood in the middle of the forest, plastic bags in hand. He could smell it, smell the moss, the pine cones, the soil beneath his feet. That small forest was like a land trap, waiting for people to spring up at the right moment, to draw them into its universe, to enclose them in itself. Theodor looked at his cell phone. It was dead. Not only did it not pick up any signal in this world, he had no use for it. It was a strange artifact serving a mysterious mystical purpose. Even Theodor himself suddenly couldn’t remember what it was used for or how. It fell from his hand into the fallen pine needles.
The forest stretched into the distance and Theodor started to run.
He ran, dodging trees, ducking from under branches that reached for him—until he came upon his lying cell phone.
He was running in circles. He hung the plastic bag with his belongings on one of the branches. He took a step away from it—and saw it in the distance in front of him. He turned to his right, took a step forward—and there it was again. Of course it was behind him too. He sat down under a tree. He must not panic. Panic means death. If he could keep his cool, he would surely pull through. He’s smarter than some stupid forest.
But he knew that these things didn’t necessarily have a failsafe or some hidden maintenance exit.
He’s got an advantage, though. His disappearance was witnessed by Fry, so . . .
So Fry would run away, hoping he would never see Theodor again in his life. He hasn’t even done any work yet, so there’s no reason for him to save him. And even if he decided to do it, then what? He doesn’t know who to call, and the police would laugh at him.
So what about the others? The rest of Fantom? How long will it take for them to figure out he’s missing? This assignment was, he had to admit, pretty low on their priority list. He didn’t even have a backup; he was just going to make a call tonight. If he didn’t call, then what? Someone would probably check it out, find out what was going on, investigate and rescue him.
Just hold on till tomorrow.
But . . . is there a tomorrow? The sky above him hasn’t moved.
He didn’t take any watch because of his disguise, his cell phone froze . . . maybe he could make some sundial? Just to know how time passes around here.
He looked in his bag for something he could use. Quality wine in poor quality packaging. Gloves in case he had to touch some real homeless people. A spare pair of socks and then a bunch of rags to blend in. He still had his wallet with his ID in a pocket, but he doubted anyone would legitimize him here.
And of course, he had a gun. What if he fired a shot here? Here, in this closed universe? Would a bullet come back and hit him in the back?
Thinking of timekeeping, he broke off a twig from one tree (somehow subconsciously expecting a roar, gushing blood, or a brutal counterattack, but all he got was a twig), stripped the bark from one side with his teeth—and drove it into the ground. It stopped a few inches below the surface, not even managing to catch itself. Theodor pressed on. It wouldn’t move. Stupid place. He pulled it out . . .
The twig was covered in blood.
Theodor took a breath. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in. A twig covered in blood. It doesn’t have to be human blood. It could be some red clay. Or he just killed a mole.
Or something else. Something bigger that’s gonna come out, screaming, any minute. Theodor backed off. Then he put his hand palm down. The earth was still, like any good soil.
How deep had he driven it in? A few inches?
He began to dig. The dirt was denser than it looked, staying behind his fingernails, the pebbles grazing his fingers. He ignored it. He had to find out what was down there. He already found something there, something soft, something pale . . .
A human hand.
There was a human hand buried in the dirt.
He didn’t yell. After all, he’d seen some corpses before. Just not usually this close up. And usually only in photos.
The hand was pale, only the back was bloody . . .
If they’re bleeding, they must still be alive! Dead men don’t bleed!
No, they can’t be alive, they’re buried under a pile of dirt.
What if there’s no time here? What if it’s impossible to die here? Am I breathing?
He was breathing. Quite loudly and frantically. He stopped breathing. Do I need to breathe?
He did. But . . . can he die?
No, his desire for experimentation didn’t go that far.
He had to dig up the body. So he started digging. Someone had buried the body standing up, hand held up as if to grasp something. He dug like a madman, haunted by the crazy vision of a man covered in dirt, with it in his eyes, in his mouth, in his throat, but still alive, being trapped in eternal darkness. He was . . .
Theodor stopped. A zombie? No, zombies don’t bleed.
How does he know that?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that he was frantically trying to dig up something that might not be human at all. Maybe it’s not human anymore, maybe it never was. Maybe it’s just a hand reaching somewhere deep into the earth, and if you get close to it, if you uncover it, it grabs you and pulls you down.
But what if it doesn’t? What if it’s a human and they are dying?
Theodor sat down next to the hole he’d dug. It wasn’t very deep yet. The truth was, if they hadn’t died by now, they’d stay alive for a while. If they hadn’t died . . .
Theodor started poking that exposed palm with a twig. If the one down there is alive, they can feel it. If the one down there is alive, they’ll move their hand, make a sign. If the one down there is alive . . .
The hand didn’t move.
Maybe the one down there is a quadriplegic, Theodor thought. Or maybe it’s some kind of magical immobilization spell.
Or maybe dead people are bleeding here. Is the answer buried down there, or is it a trap?
He didn’t have much choice anyway, so he bent over the hole again and keep digging.
Yeah. He was definitely dead. Theodor could tell, even if he couldn’t try to check his breath with a mirror. The dead man’s gaping mouth was full of dirt, as if he were testing how much he could eat in one swallow. And Theodor didn’t have a mirror anyway. Maybe some movement of his eyes . . . what eyes? Two holes full of bloody dirt. Theodor stepped back and tried to imagine the dead man without all the dirt and grime around him, still alive. Yeah, it was one of those missing people. Homeless? Hapless? Definitely lifeless.
Theodor Kristián was looking at his future. This is what awaits me. I’ll end up in the dirt. But how will that happen to me? Will something pull me in? Will I fall in it? Will I be killed and buried? No, by the look on his face, or what’s left of it, he made it into the ground alive. Great, there’s a lot to look forward to.
There are many teams fighting the supernatural and the unnatural. Some rely on magic, others on ammo. Some, like Jonáš’s team, rely on magic, chaos, and improvisation, while people from Fantom rely more on weapons, planning, teamwork, and gathering detailed information on the enemy. He had the weapon, though Theodor would gladly trade it for a working pentagram. The team consisted of him and the corpse. And he doesn’t know shit about the enemy.
Think, think!
This couldn’t happen on its own. Someone had to start this.
Could this be a consequence? Cursed places do occur from time to time, they are not all that exceptional. But nothing major has happened here in the recent years. Nothing that would have the power to make this happen. Even that murder happened in the other part of the park.
Was it created on purpose? Why? Why would someone set a death trap in the middle of Charles Square? It’s not destructive enough to make a bigger impact. Sure, it could have targeted a specific person who walked by, but if someone had that kind of power, why make it so complicated? And why would it still work?
Maybe it hasn’t gotten its victim yet. Or it can’t be shut down.
Could it be a side effect? One of those things that show up in places where wizards have fought each other, where monsters have been summoned; or it was just the revenge of nature, fed up with being pissed on by dogs.
“I don’t have a dog,” he said out loud, just in case. “And I promise not to walk across the lawn again!”
MO, think of a modus operandi. You’re the know-it-all, the one who’s smarter than everyone else, the one everyone goes to for advice—if they have no one else to go to because you usually give them a hard time.
“And I promise I’ll become a better person,” he lied, just to be sure.
Nothing happened. He leaned against a tree. What now? Just wait to die? He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t thirsty. He just had his own little, tiny piece of a forest to himself.
He screamed and started running. He ran and he didn’t know where to, just forward; he jumped over the hole with the dead man once, twice, three times . . . If he runs for long enough, he’ll break it; he’ll break this vicious circle, it’s like banging on a door, banging on it over and over again, and you don’t care about the blood, or the broken finger bones, you are banging with your hands, with your feet, with your head, until you break the door down.
Or until you collapse, half unconscious, on the floor.
He fell and rolled over, gasping for breath. Nothing changed. He was still in the same place, just exhausted. Maybe he should lie down for a while and wait; surely Fantom had been alerted and everyone was looking for a way to get him out of here. They can do it. All he has to do is wait.
He should start thinking about how to set up camp here. Even if he didn’t finish a sundial, night should have fallen by now. He was in the park around 3 p.m., he could have been here for what . . . four, five hours? At the very least, it should be starting to get dark. But not here, where timelessness still reigned above his head.
At least it wouldn’t get cold. Still, he’d have to camp somewhere. He had something to drink, some food too (would the food spoil here?), but that would last him until tomorrow, the day after at most, if he rationed it a lot. He’s not hungry, he’s not thirsty, but no one has guaranteed that he will be that way forever.
Don’t give up, pussy, he ordered himself. Go! You can break it.
He was exhausted; he’d rather have rolled over and fallen asleep, and deep down he knew it was hopeless, but he also knew there was nothing else he could do. And that if he stopped going, if he stopped doing the one thing he could do, he’d give up everything and then it would be his end.
He took the next step.
And then . . .
Something changed. Something was different, he felt it on his tongue, he felt it at the back of his neck, he felt it in his hair.
Wind was blowing. Just slightly, but it was there. He licked his finger and tried to guess where it was blowing from. Over there! There’s . . .
In the distance, almost obscured by the trees, was an opening to another world. A world without trees and without needles. He could have sworn a dog had just run there. That’s it! That’s it, it’s timed! The gate opens and closes at a certain time, and whoever’s around . . .
Don’t think! Go!
He ran, hoping it wouldn’t close right in front of him, that he would make it. Was it getting bigger? Yes, it was getting bigger, it was getting closer . . .
And then his feet hit the mud. Suddenly he had nothing solid under him; he slipped, he swung, the mud covered him, clogged his eyes, his mouth, his nose. He tried to grasp at something, but there was only slick, deep mud all around him.
No, not just mud. A swamp.
Now he knew how the others had died. And he knew what killed them.
But it was as good as a dead horse to him now.
* * *
Fry sat on the bench and stared at the empty space in the middle of the lawn. He must have blinked . . . or rather fallen asleep. Lanky was there, and then suddenly he wasn’t. But it wasn’t a sudden disappearance, just a blink and he was gone. It was as if he’d slowly walked away in a hundredth of a second, which was impossible, Fry knew that. He looked around. No one reacted, not even the people with the dog, the drunks around on the benches, the group of fancily dressed women . . . , no one noticed anything was wrong.
Just him.
What now? Should he do something?
Call the police? Yeah, he could imagine how that would turn out. So you saw a man disappear? And he couldn’t have just taken off on those pink mice that were running around?
He was holding a business card with Lanky’s phone number in his hand. Well, it was probably his phone number, the name didn’t seem the least bit plausible. What now? Should he try calling him?
He tried it on his old Nokia, holding it away from his ear, because you never knew what would happen if you called . . . somewhere else. Nothing happened. There wasn’t even a dial tone; the phone wasn’t going to acknowledge this number as worthy of its concern. On the other side of the business card was a printed capital F in front of nine digits. He should call the people from that secret organization that would probably kill him.
Or they’ll give him a fortune for the information.
Or give him a fortune and then kill him.
He threw the phone back in the bag. This really wasn’t worth his nerves.
But what if Lanky gets out and comes after him? What if he wants revenge?
Fry hesitated, thought for a moment, then got up and got out of the park, out of Prague, and out of this story.
* * *
Theodor lay sprawled in the swamp to distribute his weight and slow down the dive. He had no idea if it was working; he thought the swamp was more likely savoring him, swallowing him in small pieces, like a particularly tasty piece of cake. He lay on his stomach, arms outstretched, and moved his legs carefully, as if he was swimming in slow motion, to slowly try to kick himself out of the muddy grip. So as not to create air pockets pulling him back down. Slowly . . . slowly . . . slowly . . . just don’t lose your nerve and don’t panic.
His eyes darted around frantically, looking for something to grab onto. A sward that would indicate that there was a patch of earth . . . or a stump . . .
There was one, out of his reach. He moved his arms in a breaststroke, but the mud held him firmly. He didn’t give up, paddling his arms smoothly, not speeding up, moving, not stopping. He didn’t know how long it took; time didn’t play the slightest role here. He hadn’t moved an inch in the swamp . . . unless you count the downward direction. He was doing great at that.
Not far from his right hand, his plastic bag was lying in the mud. He reached for it, moved awkwardly, the mud bubbled beneath him, and only the top half of his body stayed above the surface.
Don’t panic! Don’t panic! DON’T PANIC! Regular movements with his legs, arms outstretched, keeping afloat, taking a look in the bag.
Hope is a bitch. He knew he wasn’t going to find anything useful in the bag, but the voice in his head began to convince him even so that maybe a rope had gotten in there, a rope with an anchor . . . , and it was putting together an absolutely convincing argument as to how it could have happened.
No rope inside. All that was in the bag were his clothes, a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, matches . . . Nothing that would get him out of the swamp.
Although . . .
He absolutely mustn’t screw up now. No sudden movements. He tied the leg of his trousers together with the sleeve of his sweater. It was hard as he tried to move his arms as carefully as he could; by the time he managed it, he had the mud up to his belly. He didn’t give a damn about safety, he was already upright in the swamp, tying the sleeve of his sweatshirt to a plastic bottle filled with mud so tightly it was squeezed in the middle. It wasn’t exactly an anchor rope, but it might do the trick. He tossed the bottle toward the stump. It didn’t fly far enough; it disappeared beneath the surface with a splash. He pulled at his bound clothes quickly, in panicked terror of losing the bottle, but it reappeared, skimming along the surface towards Theodor, who was already chest-deep in the swamp, leaving a small and rapidly filling furrow behind it.
He didn’t have many more tries left. Was there anything closer?
The head! That half-excavated corpse. It was a little closer. He took a breath, spun the bottle over his head like a lasso and threw it. The bottle traced an arc in the air, dragged his clothes behind it, flew past the dead man’s outstretched hand; Theodor tugged at his trousers, the bottle rolled back and encircled the protruding hand. Once, twice . . . and that was enough. It landed on the ground. Theodor ignored the mud already clinging to his neck and pulled carefully. Slowly, so the grip tightened and the bottle wouldn’t loosen. And only then did he begin to pull himself closer. Carefully, as if he had all the time in the world, which was probably true. The muscles in his arms ached, reminding him of the old days where they’d tried to teach him how to climb a rope at school. This was the same, only he had a ton of extra mud on him. And he was fighting for his life.
Slowly . . .
It seemed nothing was happening at all, just the searing pain in his arms was getting worse. His eyes were fixed on that increasingly bent arm and the bottle that trembled at its side. At any moment, something might come loose.
But it was the mud that gave way and let go of his legs. Theodor felt a surge of energy, pulling himself up, slowly rising above the surface and following it to the coveted piece of solid ground. By then, he was using his legs to help—
The arm broke at the elbow and the rope came loose.
Theodor began to dive into the depths again. But he so was close, he could almost reach the hand, so he grabbed both ends of his improvised rope as if he were going to jump rope, and threw it over the hand. He pulled. The rope didn’t slip. He was sure of it now, he could do this, he could do this . . .
He did it! He landed on solid ground, covered in mud, but happy. He’s the man, the king of the world!
Well, except for the small problem of getting out of here.
He was looking at a window into his normal world, just out of reach, in the middle of the swamp.
* * *
“And . . . ,” Karla asked.
“And?” Theodor Kristián answered, already scrubbed clean and shaved, in new clothes, with a massive watch on his wrist. Karla would have bet he’d also managed to get a manicure done, because nothing was more important than perfectly manicured nails.
“How did you get out of there?”
Theodor shrugged with the expression of a ruler talking to rabble trying to bask in the rays of his glory. “Simply. If you know who’s behind it, you know how to get out.”
“And?” Karla asked again. “Who’s behind it?”
Theodor Kristián smirked. “But that should be obvious by now, shouldn’t it?”
“Would you like to order?”
They met in one of the cafes around Charles Square. Of course, Theodor had no intention of going to Fantom’s headquarters, as it was located in one of those bizarre cities that weren’t Prague, and thus it was a wonder anyone bothered to plot them on a map at all. And in the Prague office . . . The truth was that everyone there was so glad that Kristián had dropped out for a while that Karla didn’t want to spoil their brief moment of happiness and comfort. So they met in a café that was so hipster that the menu said Coffee, Coffee with milk or Coffee with frothed milk.
“Grande latte,” Theodor said.
“You mean ‘lots of milk with a little coffee,’” the waiter corrected him.
“Black coffee,” Karla added her order. “Large.”
The waiter nodded and walked over to the man operating the levers of the space machine. “One large normal, one girly.”
“What on Earth kind of a place is this?” Theodor asked.
Karla looked around. “A café. They make coffee here.”
“The hell they . . . ” Theodor sighed. No, he mustn’t get distracted. He had just been born again. He must enjoy life to the fullest.
Karla unbuttoned her jacket. She was rather petite in stature, looking frail and vulnerable, which was usually the last mistake a lot of people made. She walked around dressed strictly for business, her brown hair pulled back into a bun. She looked more like a teenage municipal clerk than the head of Fantom’s Prague research department.
“So who’s behind this?” she asked again.
“Behind the coffee?”
Karla refused to comment on that.
“Who is behind this? Think about it. The forest, the swamp, the inability to find the right direction, the lure . . . ,” he looked at Karla. “Bludiczkas.”
Karla sputtered. “You’re out of your mind, aren’t you? Bludiczkas? And in a park in Prague?”
“It’s strange, yes, but there is a forest.”
“Have you seen that forest? It’s six trees! It’s not a forest, it’s a rock garden!”
“As you can see, that’s enough. There’s no telling how big a space . . . ”
“And these bludiczkas,” Karla started, “did they do it themselves? Or did they team up with Little Red Riding Hood? Or with Cinderella?”
Theodor raised his eyebrows. “Those are fairy tale characters.”
“Exactly.”
“The existence of bludiczkas has been documented. In 1815 . . . ”
“In 1815, they were still burning witches! Those are not exactly reliable sources!”
“Your coffee,” said the waiter. He placed it in front of them. “Would you like a straw with it?” he asked.
Theodor snorted and the waiter floated a little further away.
“First of all,” Theodor said after a moment, “they didn’t burn witches anymore in 1815. As you would know if you were even a little interested in history and didn’t get all your information from TikTok alone. Bludiczkas were a documented fact. In 1815, they even caught one and studied her. The fact that they could change into dancing lights may be superstition, but they could affect one’s perception of the environment. But mostly they worked with their sexual energy.”
“Sexual energy. That explains a lot.”
Theodor ignored her. “They were basically the Czech equivalent of sirens. They just didn’t use singing . . . at least, that’s what the records say. It’s quite logical, given the environment.”
“Or maybe they just didn’t have a musical ear.”
“The last death probably caused by the bludiczkas dates back to 1875. They haven’t been seen since, and it’s assumed that they disappeared sometime around the time of forest cultivation and the placement of hiking signs.”
“Right. Let’s get serious.” Karla waved away his attempt to object. “Let’s talk seriously. The irrefutable fact is that monsters are connected to their environment. If they don’t have a suitable environment, they die or they are fundamentally weakened. It’s like viruses. What was once a deadly threat is now a minor inconvenience. You used to die of it, now aspirin will fix it. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“Even if we accept the existence of bludiczkas and accept that this is their modus operandi, this is well beyond their capabilities. It was beyond their capabilities even in the days of their greatest power. Which are now, with the state of the forests and all, really long gone. Or do you have any proof that they were capable of this sort of thing?”
“I don’t have proof that they weren’t either. And they could . . . they could have allied with someone.”
“Yeah. With the Snow Queen . . . I know, I know, I’m not going to completely dismiss it. But . . . isn’t it likely that you just latched onto the first possible explanation? That it could be something else?” Karla leaned across the table. “Listen, you did great. No matter how you did it—and you bet I’m going to want it detailed in the report—you did it. You got away. But this . . . you grabbed one aspect of all the symptoms and built your theory on that. You are ignoring everything else.”
Theodor took a sip of coffee. And then another. “This coffee is good.” He took another sip. “But on second thought, I lived in the wilderness for a while. It leaves a mark on you.”
“All right, Tarzan. Write it down and we’ll take a look. The pros will take over. I mean . . . people from the action team.”
Theodor snorted. “Action team . . . Why action team?”
“Because that’s their job. You supply them with the information, they handle monsters.”
“Why not me? What’s the difference between me and the action team people?”
“Muscles? Combat experience? Charisma? Being sexually attractive?”
“Ouch,” Theodor said.
“Teamwork, reliability, commitment . . . ”
“No. The main difference is money,” Theodor cut her off.
“Money?”
“We do most of the work, and what do we get out of it? Just a base salary. Who gets most of the money from TEFLON? Them.”
“They risk their lives. They’re eliminating monsters.”
“Based on the information they got from us. If they know what it is and how to do it, it’s easy enough to hit it on the head and kill it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“In the end, it’s always about information.”
“They have years of training and experience.”
“So do I—and what do I get out of it? A few cents and social security.”
Karla leaned back in her chair and eyed Theodor inquiringly. “What’re you trying to say?”
“I want to finish the job. I have the right to do it. I almost died already.”
“And do you want to finish the case, or the dying?”
“I know how to deal with bludiczkas.”
“If they’re bludiczkas.”
“They are bludiczkas.”
“To be clear,” Karla said. “We sent you into the field because you’ve been successfully avoiding it for five years. And since you’re getting on everyone’s nerves at the office, we gave you this mission. I figured if you had to sit with the homeless for a couple of weeks, it’d cut you down to size. And of course, you immediately tried to wriggle out of it, then walked right into a death trap like a total idiot . . . but then you somehow managed to get out of it, and apparently achieved some kind of goddamn enlightenment in the process, and now you’re going to dedicate your life to finding a group of all-powerful bludiczkas who prey on people in Prague parks?”
“Sort of. I was enlightened by the fact that I was risking my life for some thirty grand.”
“Plus the bonuses.”
“Plus, it’ll help the company. How long has it been since we scored in Prague? A couple of years, huh? And if we hand this over to the action team, all the glory . . . ”
“And the money . . . ”
“ . . . and the money will be swallowed by them. Don’t tell me it won’t help you if you score some serious points.”
Karla didn’t answer. It was the truth. The Prague department was more on the edge. There were few monsters and a lot of competition. The freaks around Jonáš . . . most of the big events were solved up by them these days. Yeah, this was just . . . bludiczkas or something . . . but it still might have helped.
Karla was ambitious, and Theodor knew it. So she just sighed. “How do you plan on finding your bludiczkas?”
“Easily enough. I know what they look like.”
“Would you like to order anything else?” The waiter broke into their discussion.
“Evian,” Theodor said.
“We don’t have Evian. But I could bring tap water from the faucet for you? That’s about the same.”
“Something sparkling then. And no, I don’t mean your sense of humor.”
“Twice,” Karla said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“How do they even make a living with that kind of behavior?” Theodor wondered.
“Sometimes I feel like it’s part of the style these days. It creates an atmosphere.”
“Bullshit.”
“So you’ve seen them?”
“Just before I went in there. Three women. Fifty-something, well-groomed, fancy clothes . . . ”
“Aren’t you a bit of a misogynist? Why would they be bludiczkas?”
“They were the most likely suspects.”
“You know what they say about having a hammer in your hand?”
“That you’re supposed to watch your fingers?”
“No. That the whole world looks like a nail.”
“All the more reason to watch your fingers.”
“You’ve decided that bludiczkas are behind this, so of course it fits your formula. And you don’t see anything else. Were they running around a meadow?”
“No.”
“Were they glowing? Were they trying to charm you? Cast spells on you? Did they try to dance with you till you fell asleep?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Your water. Don’t drown.”
Karla threw up her hands. “So what if they were, and I’m just guessing here, just some clerks who happened to be walking to work?”
“For one thing, they went by just before I disappeared. And then there’s another thing. Something about them didn’t sit right with me, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. It wasn’t until I realized that this was the work of bludiczkas.”
“And what was that?”
“They were wearing high-heeled shoes. Elegant shoes. Really high heels.”
“And . . . oh.”
“Yeah. You don’t walk across grass in those.”
“Hm. And usually not to work either.”
“Unless you walk with such light steps that not a blade of grass will bend under you. They were bludiczkas.”
“I’m not saying you’re right, but it’s definitely weird.” Karla took a sip of water. “I’m not saying you’re right . . . but maybe we should talk to him. This stuff is his turf.”
“Talk to whom?”
“The big boss.”
“Ours?” Theodor didn’t understand.
“Theirs. If there are bludiczkas in Prague, he’ll know.”
“You mean . . . ” Theodor’s eyes lit up. “Great. When should I leave?”
“I haven’t decided if we’re going to do it yet. And even if we were going to ask him, we’re certainly not going to send you. Your negotiating skills are . . . are . . . actually, they more like aren’t. Remember that time you were supposed to be talking to those rarachs?”
“In the end, we defeated them.”
“Yeah, but they originally came to Earth just to arrange a wifi connection. So no, you’re really not going to negotiate.”
“This is my case.”
“This isn’t a toy for you to usurp for yourself. I assign the contracts.”
“Then assign it to me,” Theodor Kristián said. “I’m the furthest along in this.”
“I’ll think about it,” Karla said.
Theodor thought about it too. “I’m offering you a deal.”
“We hunt monsters. We don’t trade stocks.”
“I’ll keep the case. I’ll go to the boss. And in return, I’ll tell you where the bodies of those who disappeared are. You can give them to the bereaved. At least that’s the way I think it’s done. And most importantly, you won’t run the risk of someone discovering them by accident and starting a panic.”
Karla muttered a few curses into her glass of water. “Someone? By sheer chance? Like after they get an anonymous phone call?”
“Anything’s possible,” Theodor shrugged.
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“We all have our hobbies.”
The waiter returned to their table again. “Anything else you would like to order?”
“Yes. Can you kill this man? How you do it is entirely up to you. You can poison his coffee. You can beat him to death with a coffee machine. You can chop him up and put him in a stew. I’ll leave that entirely to your discretion.”
The waiter nodded his head sagely. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“This is my suggestion,” Theodor continued in a conciliatory tone. “I’ll tell you where the bodies are. You dig them up. You check them out. If their cause of death matches what I say—you give me a chance. I just want to be there, that’s all. I don’t even have to talk.”
Karla really wasn’t buying this. Theodor was physically incapable of not talking. “And if there’s not a match?”
“I’ll obediently go back to the office and keep gathering information for the less intelligent but more muscular ones.”
“Hmm. That sounds tempting.”
“Would you like anything else?”
“The check.”
* * *
The lawn in Charles Square was surrounded by a high wall. It was covered with apologies, saying that everyone was sorry for making your life difficult, but it was to improve the quality of life, so it was fine. Maybe not quite in those words, but the meaning fit.
At the edge of the lawn, safely surrounded by a wall, stood Theodor Kristián, watching two guys digging shovels into the ground. Even though he wasn’t working, he was sweating. For the first time in his life he was seized with the fear that he had made a mistake. That he might not be in the right for once. They’d already had two holes, and apart from the absence of soil, there was nothing in them. Time stretched on forever, and even further, and every dig of the shovel into the ground felt like a kick in the balls.
“Are you sure?” One of the diggers asked as he began to dig a third hole.
“You should have brought an excavator,” Theodor sighed.
“Sure,” the digger grinned. “An excavator.” He chuckled, as if Theodor had made a joke that could have been featured in a New Year’s Eve skit at the very least. “An excavator.”
“There’s nothing here,” the other said. “Should I dig deeper?”
Karla had a blanket spread out on the lawn, her glasses on her nose, a glass in one hand, a book in the other, and she looked as if summer wasn’t over yet. She looked up from her book. “Should they dig deeper?”
“No,” said Theodor reluctantly. “Don’t you have some gadget to show where the bodies are?”
“I thought you knew where the bodies are. At least, that’s what you claimed.”
“I didn’t claim to know their exact location to an inch!”
Karla shrugged. Right. She didn’t want to embarrass herself by perpetuating her confidence in his theories by signing off on a request for some heavy machinery. Two guys with a shovel, that’s about all he could expect.
He returned to the path. Where’d he show up? Somewhere . . . somewhere around here. How the hell was he supposed to know? So, if the exit was here, then . . .
He took three steps back. “Try it here.”
“Are you sure?”
No, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure at all.
“I’m sure.”
“It’s your money,” the man shrugged. Karla looked at her watch.
Theodor thought hard. His whole theory rested on an assumption that he hadn’t been teleported anywhere, that he had been in the same place the whole time, just in a different space. The dimensions of the location would fit, the circle he was in in the forest was roughly the size of a lawn. He must have been here the whole time.
Of course, it was also possible that he had been transported to somewhere outside of Prague, that the whole circle wasn’t just a different face of this park, but the normal face of a different place. But then . . .
. . . they couldn’t have been bludiczkas.
“I found something,” the digger exclaimed, and Karla reluctantly looked up again from the book with the half-naked vampire on the cover. This was it!
The man reached into the hole and pulled out a ball. He squeezed it and the ball squeaked lightly. “Is this what you were looking for?”
Karla smiled.
“No,” Theodor said.
“Too bad. There’s still . . . wait a minute . . . ” The man bent over the dug hole.
“What?”
There was silence for a moment. “I think we found a hand.”
Theodor walked over to the dig site. A few fingers waved from the dirt, together with the back of a hand, where someone had recently stuck a twig.
“Hey,” Theodor said to his old familiar hand. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.” He turned to Karla. “So now can we get some heavy machinery?”
* * *
In the end, they found fifteen bodies there. Fifteen corpses, all hidden under the grass, standing up, with their arms stretched upwards, towards where the dogs were running around. In their mouths, lungs, stomachs . . . was dirt. They were buried from the inside.
And Theodor got what he wanted.
* * *
The car leaving Prague was silent.
Karla was thinking about the bodies, pulled silently out of the dirt, wrapped in green plastic bags and discreetly taken away. That was probably the worst part of it for her. Bodies crammed into carts marked “Woods and Gardening,” thrown on top of each other, pretending they were just a batch of dirt and cut branches. She knew she should have resigned herself to the fact that death was random, brutal and cruel, but this lack of posthumous dignity hit her more than it should have. Probably also because it was her decision to make. Some bodies of the deceased, with family and acquaintances, would eventually be found somewhere and delivered back, with a tale of accident packed in, of a crime explained, of suicide . . . tailored to each body. They’ll be released one by one, found in various places around Prague and the country. No one wanted it to look like a mysterious mass murder.
The SRS had an extra department for that, of course; poorly paid, as was the custom. People with circles under their eyes studied the biographies of the dead and devised convincing ways they could go off the grid so as not to raise unnecessary questions. It didn’t always work, and sometimes they had to come up with additional justifications for why a blind grandmother died in a motocross event, but it more or less worked.
Karla didn’t even ask what would happen to those who had no relatives or loved ones.
She cast a glance at Theodor. What would happen to him when he died? Would he end up in the stomach of some creature living in the basement of the SRS headquarters? Or will a group of endgame creators prescribe him death by autoerotic asphyxiation?
“What?” asked Theodor from behind the steering wheel.
“Nothing,” Karla said. And there was silence from then on.
* * *
The car was silent. They tried to talk, but there weren’t many available topics. They tried to play music, but one side was pushing for classical music and the other side was pushing for K-pop. Which didn’t really go together, so it ended up being quiet again.
It was a really long ride.
* * *
The car was silent.
They crossed the Polish border. It was the beginning of autumn, so Szklarska Poręba was not as crowded with visitors as in winter, when people come here to ski, or during the holidays, when people come here for God knows what reasons. But they still had a problem finding a suitable place to leave their car. Karla was nervous like railway barriers when train tracks are rumbling in the distance. They got out of the car and walked down a path, Theodor with the firm stride of a robot. After what he’d been through, it was no wonder he was afraid of nature.
“Here,” Karla said.
It was nothing fancy. There was a stone slab in the ground that said Rübezahls Grab. And upside down, misspelled, was the name of the person they were looking for.
“Why here?” sighed Karla.
“For the irony? Maybe he wants to dance on his grave?”
“He won’t be dancing, I hope.”
“In my opinion? It’s far away. He wants to see how high we can jump, just to meet him.”
“You don’t like him much, do you?”
Theodor just shrugged. “Should I?”
He was right. Although he was portrayed in fairy tales as a sort of beardier Karl Marx, the truth was that he was more of a monster. No, not a monster. A deity. A small, but destructive one. Storms, avalanches . . . and of course, as deities go, with penchant for kidnapping and raping women. Someone estimated that up to half the current population in and around the Giant Mountains has his genes.
Theodor nudged Karla and pointed to a tree.
“What?”
“A jay.”
She measured him with her gaze. “You can’t believe everything you see on TV.”
“I bet he’s watching us.” He waved to the jay and it flew away.
“Message received.”
“It was just a jay,” Karla said. “And if he’s coming, it’s because our boss called him and explained that it would be really nice of him to come. That they’d have his back if there was a problem again. When they find some girl in the woods who’s been raped.”
“I thought . . . ”
“What? That he’d quit that? That his little buddy became soft in his old age? No, we’re not that lucky.”
“Another reason we meet here,” Theodor said, looking around cautiously. “We have no jurisdiction here.”
“Not that it would do us any good. A human would have ended up in jail long ago. A monster . . . a monster we would kill. But he . . . we need him. It’s better to get along with him.” Only when Karla said that out loud, it dawned on her how much it pissed her off.
They sat down by a wooden table where the tourists could eat their snacks, right next to a map and an information board. The sun was already setting behind the mountains when he appeared. He was much smaller than they had expected, no crossing mountains with a single stride, not even paper ones like in a TV show. His beard was trimmed short and greying. He wore a windbreaker and comfortable hiking pants and boots. In his hand, the Lord of the Woods held a staff.
He sat down opposite of Karla and Theodor, left his staff on the bench to his left and put his hands on the table, stroking the wood with his palms.
He wasn’t big, he was old, but he still exuded power. He looked like an aging mob boss, a guy who could sentence you to death with a snap of his fingers . . . and who really fucking loved snapping his fingers.
“So?” he said without much ado. He didn’t bother with introductions.
“First of all,” Karla began, “we’re really grateful you gave us some of your time. We appreciate it.”
He said nothing, just ran his expressionless eyes over her. Then his eyes slid to Theodor. “Go on.”
“We have a problem,” Karla said. “Something’s killing people, and . . . ”
“What a tragedy,” the man said coldly. “An unimaginable misfortune.”
“And . . . yes.”
“Everyone’s death is a tragedy.” He spoke as stones rolled down the hillside. “But there are so few of you. You are almost on the verge of extinction.”
“Not exactly . . . ”
“How many have died so far that you had to visit me? Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” The Lord of the Woods shook his head. “A terrible tragedy. At this rate, no man will remain.”
“Every human life is . . . ”
“Sacred? Important? Everyone could be the next Mozart, Einstein? Why is it that the dead are always this ambitious, that with every death one gets wiser and becomes a genius?”
“It’s a matter of principle,” Theodor said.
“Your principle. It does not concern me. I have my own. Or shall I come and report to you how many hares died just yesterday? How many deer have people shot? How many foxes have been run over by cars, asking what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not the same thing,” Karla objected.
“Why? In what way is such a person better than, for example, a beaver?”
“Brain? Self-awareness? Art?” Karla suggested. Damn. She knew better than to get into such a debate. She was only playing his game with this, but she couldn’t help it.
The man just lifted his hands slightly and clapped them on the table. The surroundings shook. “Art. You like something, so you declare that it’s something special, that it’s the thing that makes you better than everyone else. Why do you think other creatures don’t have their own art, equally valuable and essential to them? You just can’t perceive it, just like squirrels can’t perceive Fast & Furious.”
“Porn,” Theodor said, and silence fell around the table.
“What?” the Lord of the Woods thundered softly.
“Porn. We can talk all we want, but it’s definitely more fun to watch two banging people than two banging rabbits. I’m guessing you feel the same way. Besides, talk to a rabbit as long as you want, it still won’t blow you.”
Karla closed her eyes. This was exactly what she was afraid of.
“Porn is for losers,” the Lord of the Woods stated firmly.
“Excuse me?”
“For those who have no other choice but to watch,” said the Lord of the Woods contemptuously.
Theodor grimaced. “I’ll try not to take that personally.”
“Feel free to take it personally.”
“I’ll overlook your absolute lack of taste. The point is,” Theodore didn’t budge, “that even if you can change into whatever you want . . . ,” he continued, “I’m still convinced that sex with human beings is the most fun.”
“That’s your defense of humanity?” the Lord of the Woods asked. “I’m supposed to assist you in saving insignificant individuals . . . because you’re good for sex?”
“It may not be the ultimate reason, but at least it’s true. Good for sex and good at it. And then there’s this other reason.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a mystery.”
“And?”
“Mysteries are great.”
“Mysteries are. Solutions aren’t.”
“People started disappearing in the middle of a park in downtown Prague,” Karla said. “They find themselves in a forest there’s no escape from, where all the roads lead back until there’s a way out. When they try to escape, they fall into a swamp and drown. After death, they reappear back in the park. Or rather, under the park.”
“It was a forest, and you are the Lord of the Woods,” Theodor added. “We need information.”
“And what do I need?”
Karla took the floor. “What can we give to the one who can have everything he can think of?”
“How about you?” said Lord of the Woods.
“Okay,” Theodor said.
“No,” said Karla. “That is off limits.”
“Him, then,” said Lord of the Woods.
“Okay,” said Karla.
“Okay,” said Theodor.
“Really?” Karla asked.
“I can sacrifice myself for the team.” He turned to Lord of the Woods. “They tried to kill me. I’ll do anything to get them.”
“A revenge?” Forest Lord said. “Is that what you want?”
“Another thing that’s great about us humans. We’re incredibly vengeful,” Theodor said, his eyes fixed on the Lord of Woods. “And the fact that we invented matches.”
It took Karla a second to realize what Theodor had just said.
“Are you threatening me?”
“I have no reason to,” Theodor said calmly. “But surely you understand that there are some things one can’t let go of.”
“I can crush you like a bug.”
“That would be an answer too.”
Somewhere nearby, there was a roar and the wind picked up.
Karla stood up abruptly. “I apologize for my colleague, he doesn’t know how to behave. He’s an idiot, but if we want to . . . ”
“They’re bludiczkas,” Theodor interrupted Karla.
“That’s not certain,” Karla objected. “But it’s one possibility.”
“Bludiczkas.” Theodor repeated. “And that’s your thing.”
The Lord of Woods watched them for a moment, then relaxed his clenched fists. The wind died and the hungry eyes that had been watching them from behind the trees disappeared.
“All right. I won’t even ask for anything for this,” he said. “Because bludiczkas are dead. They’re dead or gone. That’s the same thing. They died with their natural environment. Like bisons or aurochs. They’ve been weakened by tourist signs and killed by cell phone maps.”
How many supernatural beings could have become extinct like that? How many have disappeared without us even knowing, Karla thought. And then she thought of something much worse.
And how many could have been born this way?
Theodor opened his bag and fished out several photos. “It’s from a street camera, but you can see the faces.”
The Lord of the Woods looked at the photos. The wind blew, the treetops began to bend, and Theodor held his bag to keep it from falling to the ground. Two things were clear to him. One, that the Lord of the Woods recognized these women . . . and two, that he should never play poker.
The Lord of the Woods realized it, too. He pushed the photos back. “Bludiczkas.”
Theodor tried his best not to say, “I told you so!”
“I told you so!”
Unsuccessfully.
“I hardly recognized them, they’ve changed a lot. And the clothes . . . they always only wore light robes, almost translucent . . . and they were much thinner. And younger. I thought they were dead. One day they just disappeared. I can feel it. I can feel something different, I can feel every single thing that’s happening here. And I feel everything disappearing, everything dying.” He sighed. “When you live too long, all you see is the dying.”
“They didn’t tell you anything?” Karla asked.
“No.”
“Do you have any idea why they moved to Prague?”
“I have no idea why anyone would move to Prague.”
Theodor snorted.
“Any idea how they can suddenly make people disappear?”
“In their last years, they haven’t been able to make a snowflake disappear in the middle of a blizzard. So no, I have no idea.”
“How can we find them?”
The Lord of the Woods didn’t laugh. His face had been serious throughout the conversation, with emotion only occasionally crossing it like the light of a dying flashlight, but now he was pretty close to it. “They’re bludiczkas.”
“Which means?”
“That you won’t find them unless they want you to.”
* * *
The car was silent.
They drove along the highway in the dark, and Karla wondered how she was going to describe the whole thing in her report. The relationship between humans and the Lord of the Woods had certainly not improved with this visit. Shit, she knew it was a mistake to bring Theodor along. Plus, it turned out he was right, which was maybe even worse than a pissed off . . .
“I was thinking about the art,” Theodor jumped into her thoughts. “Was he right?”
“About the porn?”
“What? No, he was bullshitting. Asshole. About the art.”
“That beavers have their Beethoven?”
“That it doesn’t count. It’s like when kids scrawl something and their parents say how wonderful it is and that it should be hung on a wall. We lack an unbiased critic.”
“Someone who’s not human?”
“An alien.”
“When we find one, we can promote them to a film critic.”
“In every sci-fi film, the aliens are excited about Mozart, operas, our greatest art. They work as confirmation of our opinion. But what if we meet aliens and it turns out that in their opinion, the best thing mankind has ever created is the song Yeah, you got that yummy-yum? And not ironically? What if they worship Uwe Boll’s movies?”
“Then it will be necessary to exterminate them. Declare a cultural galactic war,” Karla admitted.
“And what if they’re right and we’re wrong? What if we all have the wrong receptors?”
“If we’ve all got it wrong . . . then that’s a good thing, right? Voice of the people and all that.”
“The voice of the people is an idiot.”
“So actually, the aliens would have the same taste as us. They just wouldn’t be faking it.”
Theodor shot her a startled look. “Oh, my God. That’s an even scarier thought.”
Karla reached for the radio button and started looking for any station playing old Czech hits. “But aliens aren’t exactly our problem right now. Right now, our problem are the bludiczkas.”
“Bludiczkas,” Theodor rolled his victory over his tongue.
“What are they doing in Prague? How did they get that power? Why are they killing people?”
Slovakian pop blared from the radio, and they both tried to remember the singer’s name at the same time. Habera? Ráž? It wasn’t Žbirka, they would have recognized him . . . Müller? Were there any other Slovak singers?
The car was silent for a while, then Theodor leaned over and turned off the radio.
“There is one more question. Perhaps the most important one.”
“More fundamental than how they got the power?”
“Yes. You’ve seen the pictures. These are all brand clothes. Expensive brand clothes . . . or really, really good fakes. Where did they get the money for that?”
Karla almost drove her car into a ditch. “You’re just saying that now?”
“I thought you’d have noticed that, too. You’re a woman.”
“Excuse me?”
“The clothes, the purses, the shoes . . . the shoes weren’t visible in the picture, sure, but still.”
“I’m not that kind of a woman.”
Theodor, shrewdly, didn’t comment on that.
Karla wondered. “But . . . if they bought it here . . . are there many stores that sell this stuff? Well, I’m sure there are, but not as many as normal clothing stores.”
Theodor was starting to see the picture, too. “And we can start by asking around. If they’re living near Charles Square, there’s a good chance they’ll be shopping in the center of Prague.”
Karla grabbed the phone.
“It’s four in the morning,” Theodor informed her.
“All the better. Have them start as soon as they get to work. They have the photos. They’ll find out where they can get them. By the time we get home and get some sleep, we’ll know.”
* * *
He didn’t arrive at the office until about 4 p.m. Fortunately, there were no fixed working hours. Some days there was just a security guard, but if there was an “event,” folding chairs were brought out and slept on. Of course, this didn’t concern Theodor. Since childhood he had disliked sleeping around anyone else, which had interfered irritatingly with any attempts at any relationship that had a chance to become if not serious, then at least not entirely comedic.
In short, he had been told to arrive at four, so there he was at four twenty-five. He rode the paternoster up to the third floor, jumped out and walked down a long corridor where the walls were covered in magical ornaments and other security spells. He wasn’t a dark mage, he wasn’t going to slaughter everyone, but he still felt slightly nauseous. Maybe that was why a lot of people preferred to sleep in the office.
It was only when he slammed the door behind him that his stomach stopped churning and his brain finished convincing him that he should commit suicide immediately. Hey, everything was wonderful again.
He was about to make coffee when Karla hissed at him and dragged him by the arm to her office. “We got ’em!”
“So fast?”
“Yeah! We found the shop they used to go! On the most expensive boulevard, what else. What’s more, one of them left her phone number there in case new merchandise came in.” Karla looked at her notes. “That led us to her name, Veronika Míšková, and from that to where she works! Konxept. Computer marketing. We checked her colleagues and two of them match the photo! We got them!”
Theodor sat down in a chair. Obviously, even bludiczkas aren’t immune to a shopping spree. “What now?”
“We need to get them as soon as possible. You disappeared just two days after the last victim. The intervals are getting shorter. They’re steadily getting stronger. We’ll pick them up in their office.” Karla raised her thumb. “First, they’ll all be there together.” Forefinger. “Second, they won’t expect it. They’ll feel safe.” Middle finger. “And there won’t be any nature except maybe a potted ficus. No park. No forest.”
“They’ll be more dangerous together.”
“They could be. But we have to take our chances. They might find out you escaped.” She lowered her thumb down. “And I’m sure they noticed the park being dug up and could have put two and two together.” Pointer finger. “We’re putting a unit together. Do you want to join it?”
The remaining raised middle finger didn’t exactly look like a warm invitation.
But Theodor was suspicious. “How will the bounty be divided? Still the same?”
Karla shrugged indifferently. “Nothing has changed. Those who kill the monster get the most. The bounty here will be divided among the entire action team. Which still isn’t a huge deal, but it’s at least something.”
“I’m going,” Theodor said. “Maybe someone will die and there’ll be more left.”
Karla gave him a questioning look.
“What? I’m joking.”
“You don’t joke about that.”
“Okay, okay,” Theodor growled. “I’m prepared to accept a share.”
“Fine,” Karla sighed. “Then go get your gun. We’ll be on our way in a minute.”
* * *
The gun was handed to him by a guy with a shaved head in a room full of guns and provocatively stacked boxes of explosives. He only came up to Theodor’s chest, but he made up for it with the width of his shoulders. He was just showing Theodor a gun and saying a lot of strange and uninteresting terms. Type, ammo, sighting, rate of fire . . . blah, blah, blah.
“Or then there’s this,” he pointed to an almost identical large model. “It’s blah, blah, it’s got blah, blah, blah, and with that blah, blah, blah . . . ”
Theodor stopped him with a raise of his hand. “I’m sorry,” he uttered, unexpectedly polite, “but I just have one fundamental question. If I press down here, will something fly out of this hole and kill whatever it is I’m aiming at? If so, that’s all I really need to know. Give me, like, this nice little thing and this nice big thing. And a plastic bag to go with it, so I don’t run around Prague with it in hand.”
The weapons expert looked at him incredulously. “What I’m telling you is absolutely vital information.”
“Maybe to you,” Theodor objected. “I’m not taking it away from you, everyone has something. I, for one, collected stamps as a kid.”
“I can’t let a man who doesn’t know how to use a gun into action.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t know how to use a gun.”
The expert slid the gun over to him. “Let’s see it then. There’s the target. Try . . . ”
Theodor reached for the gun, cocked it, aimed, and fired three times.
In the center of the target, three bullet holes coalesced into the shape of the Mickey Mouse logo.
The expert looked closely at the target, then at Theodor.
“Just because I’m not interested in guns doesn’t mean I can’t shoot. It’s one of the many things I have a knack for,” Theodor said.
“If you’re good with guns . . . why aren’t you in an action group? Why aren’t you in the field?”
“I can use a shovel,” Theodor explained amiably. “And I didn’t become a digger either.”
The weapons expert looked at him for a moment. “This is the first time I’m not sure which side of a gunfight to support.”
“I hear that a lot. You got that bag?”
* * *
They eventually gave him holsters for both guns, and Theodor tucked them in, hoping he wouldn’t have to take them out. He didn’t like guns. They made noise and a mess. He got into the car where the rest of the team and Karla were already sitting, looking at him like he had an itchy rash in his crotch.
“Let’s go!” Theodor instructed. After another clash of gazes with the team leader and a brief explanation of who was in charge, the same command was given, but this time it was official, and the car was off.
In Prague, the big black car looked about as inconspicuous as a hippo in a swimming pool. They drove through the busy traffic to somewhere near Jungmannova Street, where the Konxept company was located. It was not a place where one could park easily, especially with a car that was the size of a tank, so it squeezed in front of a garage entrance. Six guys jumped out and ran down the street in a slight crouch. Behind them, already in a less professional position, walked Theodor. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, but otherwise didn’t appear to be preparing for a fight, more like for an afternoon meeting in a café. Karla, meanwhile, explained to the guard who angrily ran out of the garage entrance to mind his own business, and walked behind the team.
Hidden behind a moving truck, the soldiers ran through an arched entryway into the building, sideways to the stairwell, and without a stop ran up the stairs to the third floor, to a heavy door with a Konxept Ltd. sign.
From within came a quiet growl. Soldiers lined up on either side of the door, while Theodor ran hard after them. The commander turned to him. “Stay behind us, all right? Get inside when we give the all clear, okay?”
Theodor didn’t listen to him. He was focusing on the sounds from inside.
“Cancel it. Cancel it now.”
“Are you crazy?”
“The sounds . . . that’s a shredder. Someone’s in there destroying files. And outside . . . the moving truck? That must have been for them. They know we’re coming.”
What did the Lord of the Woods say? That if the bludiczkas don’t want it, they’ll never find them?
What if they wanted to be found?
By then, Karla had arrived.
“It’s a trap,” Theodor said.
The commander turned to his men. “You heard him. Be prepared for resistance. We’re going in.”
“So I don’t . . . ,” Theodor managed to say, but by then the door had burst open, the men had rushed in—and stopped. Theodor peered inside. A long corridor stretched out before him, going on forever, with more and more corridors branching off from it like branches.
At least it wasn’t a forest.
* * *
The soldiers took another step, and suddenly the whole unit was gone, except one surprised man who looked not at all military and professional, but like a frightened boy. He looked around, took a step forward—and screamed in pain. His arm wrenched back, his back arched, his legs crossed, as if every part of him wanted to go in a different direction.
“Stay still!” Karla shouted. “Help him somehow!”
His scream was drowned out by a drawn-out roar, strengthening and closing in. They didn’t even have the time to see how it happened, but a second soldier flew through the ceiling, hit the floor, and splattered. The bulletproof vest remained intact, but what was inside it went flying all over the place, like he was a tube of toothpaste someone stomped on. Blood and chunks of flesh hit the walls, the ceiling, the screaming soldier, who moved back violently—and hit the floor in a dead heap of broken and dislocated bones.
The heavy door next to Theodor shuddered as bullets slammed into it. A soldier rushed sideways along the wall, firing blindly forward.
“Hey, stop it!” Theodor yelled, but the soldier didn’t hear him. So he and Karla backed up to the stairwell and drew their weapons.
“They’re ours,” Karla said.
“Not anymore,” Theodor said . . . but he didn’t want to peek out and return fire either. And not just because he was afraid that a soldier might hit him.
The shooting stopped.
Theodor slowly approached the door and looked inside.
The man was lying sideways on the wall, with a hole in his chest from which blood was pouring out onto the opposite wall. It crossed the corridor like a red ribbon destined to be cut. And then there was a thud, and the wall swallowed him.
Karla shoved him from behind. “We have to help them somehow.”
“They’re dead,” Theodor said, sliding down the door into a crouch. Suddenly he laughed. “The supporting team of supporting characters has been slaughtered, and it’s up to the main character and his girl to stop the evil.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“Think of it as a movie. It helps you to keep your distance.”
Karla sat down next to him and breathed deeply for a moment with her eyes closed. “This isn’t a movie. And if it was, I’d be the heroine and you’d be the comic male side character.”
“Oh yeah, I forget what times we live in. Wouldn’t you rather be a superior?”
“Superiors in movies don’t end well.”
Theodor stood up. “Okay. Shall we go in?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yeah. One hundred percent. Absolutely and undeniably.” He opened his bag. “I’m mad, but I’m ready. Remember how you asked how I got out of the woods?”
“Yes.”
“The bludiczkas work with your senses. They confuse you. You think you’re doing something, but you’re actually doing something else. And worst of all, if your senses believe it, your body believes it.” He showed Karla two objects. “I was hoping I wouldn’t need these. Earplugs.” He stuffed one in his ear. Then he put a clip on his nose. “It was worse in the woods, I had to stuff my nose with moss.”
“What about me?”
“I need someone to cover me. I’ll be completely defenseless.” He pulled a thin rope from his bag. “It should hold. Tie yourself to me.”
“You’re really out of your mind. We’ll go back and call for backup. We underestimated . . . I underestimated them. We’re going to get them hard way. We’ll take them out from a distance with drones, no one can fool those.”
“They’ll all be gone by then. They’ll get away.”
“So they’ll get away!”
Theodor shot her an angry look. “They almost killed me. And now they must think how much smarter they are. They’re not smarter. I’m not going to let some old matrons beat me.”
“You want to get yourself killed just because of your bigoted misogyny?”
“And for the money it’s worth. It’ll be the best-paid misogyny in history!” He tied a scarf around his eyes and stuck the other plug in his ear. “I can’t see or hear anything now. Are you tied up?”
“Yes,” Karla said, but then realized he couldn’t hear her, so she just patted him on the shoulder.
“Good,” Theodor breathed through his mouth. He was talking very loudly, more like shouting in fact. “Now comes the worse part. Because that alone isn’t enough, you still have some internal control in your head, something that keeps you walking straight, keeps you balanced.” He walked over to the wall, ducked his head—and hit the wall with it. He staggered, blood dripping from his bruised forehead onto his scarf, almost falling to the floor. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he waved his hand, the opposite way Karla was. “Just . . . if I pass out, wake me up.”
“Stop it,” Karla yelled, but of course, he didn’t hear her.
The second headbutt to the wall left a large bloody smear on the plaster. “I . . . should . . . have . . . taken . . . the . . . ham . . . hammer . . . ”
Thud.
Karla screamed.
“I . . . came . . . upon it by ashident,” Theodor continued with an effort. “When yoo are roonning blindly throogh the woots, shometimesh you hit yoorshelf.” Thud.
Karla grabbed him and ripped off his scarf. His eyes were bloodshot under it. “It’s ookay,” he said with an effort. “Here wee go.” He dropped to his knees. “Good,” he said. “Good.” He straightened his scarf, leaned against the wall, and started forward, stumbling. At first Karla was afraid he was going to fall down the stairs, but instead he just bumped sideways into the doorframe and rolled in, dragging Karla with him. “Better . . . lose . . . yoor eyesh. Not . . . alwash. Better.”
“How do you know where you’re going?”
He tried to point to his head, but missed. “I . . . shaw . . . the mop.”
That was scary rather than comforting.
They walked through the door, the world swirled around her, Theodor disappeared, and the roar of the shredder echoed in all directions. The floor rattled beneath her feet. The rope reached out and jerked her forward. She closed her eyes and let herself be pulled. When she opened them, Theodor was in front of her again, staggering from side to side like a drunken sailor in the middle of a storm. She closed her eyes.
When she opened her eyes again, Theodor was heading for the wall. She closed her eyes again. He kept pulling her forward, not stopping. She gritted her teeth, waiting for the impact—no, she mustn’t do that; that would be playing their game.
They kept going forward.
When she opened her eyes, they were walking crookedly down a corridor, inches off the ground. She closed her eyes.
When her eyes opened, they were spinning in a circle, and Theodor’s body was bent at a right angle. She closed her eyes and covered her ears.
When she opened her eyes, the world was rushing forward around them, spinning . . . She pressed her eyelids tightly together.
When she opened her eyes, they were standing in front of a door marked Konxept, Head Office.
They reached their destination.
Theodor hit his head on the door and the impact threw him into Karla’s arms. “We’re here!” She said, then remembered he couldn’t hear her. She gripped his shoulders and pulled the blindfold from his eyes. Oh my God. His pupils were barely visible in the red whites. He tried to focus on her. She pointed to the door. “We’re here!”
He didn’t understand. He closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, opened his mouth, grunted something, paused in surprise, pulled his earplugs out of his ears, and sprayed the floor with yellow vomit.
He wiped his mouth. “We’re . . . here . . . ”
“How are you?”
“I think I have a . . . concussion,” Theodor said slowly. “And . . . maybe . . . the flu.”
“I’m on my period and I’m not complaining,” Karla encouraged him. “Pull yourself together. We have to finish this.”
Theodor nodded and consequently vomited again. “It’s . . . it’s better now.”
“And thank you,” Karla said.
“We haven’t . . . won . . . yet . . . ”
Karla pulled out her gun. Kick the door in, or open it carefully? She pushed the handle. It was unlocked. She pushed the door open and stepped aside.
The only sound she heard was Theodor gagging.
There was no one inside . . . and no, it certainly didn’t look like the head office. Behind the door was a long room with two rows of desks lined up behind it. A computer sat on each desk . . . and the only other decorations were a coffee machine and a white board in the front, which was currently covered by colorful smudges.
She stepped inside, the barrel of her gun following her gaze. Right, left . . . Only the hum of a shredder could be heard somewhere in the distance. And then it stopped. The room was quiet and empty, but someone could have been hiding behind every desk, could have jumped out and blasted them to pieces. She crouched behind a desk.
Theodor staggered into the room, wiping his mouth and slumping into one of the office chairs with a sigh of relief. “Hey, computer.”
“Shh!”
“Shhh,” Theodor said to the computer and turned it on.
Karla ran through the rest of the room. “No one’s here! Where is everyone?”
Theodor shrugged. “Maybe . . . they’re on . . . company leave.”
“After what happened out there? They massacred our entire team!”
“Could have . . . ” Theodor’s head spun. “It could have been an auto . . . automatic defense. Like ours. A magical trap. An echo.”
“Echo?”
While the computer was booting up, Theodor searched the drawers. He found a half-empty bottle of soda and drunk it. He didn’t offer it to Karla.
“If . . . if they’re doing . . . any magical . . . rituals . . . summoning demons . . . ”
“Then it’ll affect the surroundings. Right.”
The melody of Windows booting up echoed through the room. “Think you can get in?” Karla asked. “You think they don’t have it locked?” She began scanning the surrounding tables.
Theodor gave her an uncomprehending look, then turned to the monitor. “They have it . . . locked. Shit. I’ll have to . . . kill . . . call our . . . ”
“IT department? Yeah, they could log in remotely. Or . . . ” Karla reached over to an archaic monitor, peeled off a yellow post-it note with a password marked on it, and showed it to Theodor. “ . . . we can use this.”
“Also . . . a solution,” Theodor admitted reluctantly.
Entering the password took him a few tries, and Karla was about to ask him to stop, but he finally managed to get all the letters right and the computer let him in. Karla, meanwhile, listened to the silence, to see if she could hear the thud of feet, the click of a doorknob or a slide. Slowly she moved from desk to desk, ready at any moment to sink behind it and return fire.
“Oh, look at this,” Theodor said after a moment, satisfied, if a little hoarsely. And then, “And look at this.”
“What?”
“Well . . . I know what they were doing here. And I even know how they . . . managed to strengthen their . . . abilities so much.”
“Magic?”
“No. Something much, much worse.” He looked at Karla. “Discussion forums.”
* * *
The computer was full of it. Each click on the top bar threw them to a different page describing what terrible things will happen to you if you get a covid vaccination, secrets the government doesn’t want you to know and you’re supposed to share before they delete it, all the things that are a hologram or just manipulation of the rest of the public, and the constant calls not to be the sheep. And on top of that, elaborate texts on several websites describing the atrocities the Ukrainian army is carrying out on its own people so it can frame innocent Russian visitors who just happened to be passing by.
All guaranteed to be true.
If Theodor’s head wasn’t spinning before, it would be spinning now.
“What’s that supposed to mean? What the hell is that?” Karla didn’t understand. “Is that what they read here?”
Theodor looked at her. “I am the one who hits walls with his head, not you. I have a right to be stupid. Of course they don’t read it here. They write it.”
“You mean we risked our lives and six people died . . . just to find an office where a disinformation website is being created? Do you know how many there must be everywhere?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“This isn’t about the site. All this . . . is just a tool for them.”
“For . . . ” Karla was starting to get it. “For the bludiczkas.”
“This is a godsend for the bludiczkas. In the past, they could fool one person in a year, now they can do it by the hundreds! And since there was covid . . . do you know how many people they could have killed by fooling them into doing something stupid?”
“So that’s how . . . ”
“Yeah. They leveled up through the roof. They were like vampires working in a blood bank. Necrophiliacs in a morgue. This . . . this must have been their dream come true.”
“But why were they killing people in the park?”
“Maybe as a reminder of old times. Or maybe their excess energy just had to go somewhere. They walked through the park a lot, so they just . . . contaminated it.” Theodor shrugged. “Whatever. They’re gone.” He looked out the window at the street, resting his forehead against the glass and leaving a bloody smear. “Think the fire department can come get us? Or a helicopter? I’m not going down that hall again.”
At that moment, the door to the hallway flew open. Karla dropped to her knees and aimed her gun. Theodor just turned his head.
One of the team members burst into the room and fired at him. Theodor rolled rather than jumped, but the result was the same. The shot missed him. The soldier took two steps forward and a stream of mud came out of his mouth. It flowed down his uniform, his bulletproof vest, even started to flow from his nose, and a brown stain appeared in his crotch. Karla’s trigger finger hesitated.
“Shoot!” Theodor yelled, forgetting that he himself was armed.
Karla fired, the soldier moved, and the white board behind him shattered into pieces. He took off towards Karla, following a path that only he could see, a path that twisted through the air. It’s quite confusing when you have to shoot at an attacker running upside down towards you.
He ran past Theodor, who was struggling with his pistol holster. The soldier’s mouth was still oozing mud, and only a little way from his mouth it remembered gravity and started to collapse in the right direction, splashing across the floor.
Karla jumped behind a table.
The soldier pulled the trigger, and splinters from the parquet floor flew into the air. Karla, thanks to old shooting lessons and current aerobics classes, managed to roll aside and empty her gun into the soldier.
He paused, his eyes bulging and bulging until finally they popped out of their sockets and mud began to ooze from his skull like champagne from a bottle.
He slumped to the ground.
The door’s lids shattered and a giant boar crashed in, smashing into the opposite wall. It shook its head and glared at Theodor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Theodor said, shooting at the boar. The bullet pierced its forehead, the recoil threw Theodor’s unprepared arm upward, and the second shot hit the ceiling. Both shots had roughly the same impact on the boar.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Theodor repeated, leaping over a table as the boar destroyed the chair he’d been sitting in moments before. He landed hard on his knees.
He fired again, but unlike the soldier, the ammo didn’t work on the boar. The soldier was, after all, a borrowed tool. The boar was . . . what exactly? A symbol of the forest?
It was definitely pissed.
Theodor was zigzagging desperately in front of it. He had the advantage of greater momentum, but the boar had the advantage of immortality and unstoppability. Theodor would have traded with it in a heartbeat.
Karla fired several shots at the boar, the only achievement being that it noticed her as well.
A heavy thud of hooves came from the hallway and another boar burst through the doorway of the room. No, not a boar. The nightmare of a hunter who dreams of boars. Huge, with an elongated snout resembling a crocodile. The tusk has carved a furrow in the doorframe.
Theodor looked around for somewhere to climb, but the room did not offer many choices. Only desks with computers, and those weren’t hard to knock over.
“How can they be killed?” Karla yelled at him.
And Theodor was forced to say the sentence he hated most of all. “I don’t know!”
He jumped aside. The smaller boar missed him by only a few millimeters, while the other stood near the door, watching Karla. There had to be a solution to this. If they were summoned by bludiczkas, just kill them. But there were no bludiczkas here. There was no way to weaken their powers. There was no way to . . .
Theodor had a crazy idea.
“Call tech support!” he yelled at Karla.
Karla shot him a look even more terrified than when she looked at boars.
“They need to crash their servers! If their network goes down . . . ”
“ . . . it will weaken their power,” Karla finished. It might work. If they were drawing power from disinformation, crashing the site might weaken them at least a little.
And besides, they could send reinforcements while they’re at it.
The boar in the front opened its muzzle. Wider than any animal should be able to. A giant maw with several rows of needle teeth.
Karla, her gaze flickering from her cell phone to the boar, began to dial.
Theodor was too slow. There was too much to keep track of—the result was that the smaller boar dug a tusk into his leg and knocked him to the ground. It ducked its head, ready to rip open his stomach. Theodor managed to kick it in the side of the head with his uninjured leg; the boar staggered and drove the tusk into the wall instead of into Theodor.
The wall shook and a painting of flowers fell from it.
The other boar slowly made its way to the Karla, who was on the phone. Theodor had to restrain it—but he couldn’t handle two boars at once. Hell, he couldn’t even handle one. If he could just get rid of it . . .
He grabbed a sturdy computer monitor and smashed it over his boar’s head. The beast may have been immortal, but blows to its head were not pleasant. It staggered, its legs buckling, giving Theodor just enough time to get away. He limped to the other side of the room, dragging a slab of the broken table behind him.
He looked around for Karla. She was shouting something in her phone, backing away from the big boar, which walked toward her with the deliberate stride of a movie serial killer. No, he didn’t have time to deal with her now. His boar lunged forward, slamming into the board Theodor had set up for it, pinning him to the wall between the windows along with it. It roared, its hooves slipping on the parquet floor, and the board began to splinter.
Damn, this sucks. Theodor looked around, but found nothing he could use. If the boar doesn’t stop . . .
The boar stopped.
It pulled its tusks out of the wood and took a step, a second step, a third, ducked its head, and prepared to run. Theodor moved half a meter away. The boar followed him with its gaze. Theodor dropped the board by his feet.
“Come on, piggy,” he said.
The boar took off.
Theodor kicked one edge of the board up, sat on his butt, lifted it above his head, and braced it against the windowsill. The other edge of the board was still propped up against the parquet floor, and the whole board formed an improvised platform suitable for wheelchairs and boars. At that moment the boar’s hooves struck it. The board vibrated in Theodor’s hands, the wood cracking painfully—but it held. The boar ran up it like a ramp, tried to brake but didn’t make it, shattering the window and flying out into the street.
Theodor didn’t even look after it, so he had no idea if it had splattered on the pavement below, much to the surprise of the pedestrians, or if it had vanished into thin air. He ran after the big one headed for Karla, and thought of nothing better than to punch it from behind—with all the force of his fist—in the balls.
The boar’s hind leg just missed Theodor’s head by a few millimeters, and then the boar’s roar filled the room.
And then came Karla’s quiet voice on the phone. “Yeah. This is exactly why I need it. So hurry the fuck up.”
The boar began to turn. It stomped its feet angrily, and tables flew aside on contact with its body. It looked like it was getting bigger and bigger by the moment. It surged forward.
Theodor had nowhere to go. There was only one way left—up. He pushed off the table and caught his fingers on the overhead light, the cover of a fluorescent lamp that stretched across half the room. He had no idea how he’d come up with the idea that it might work. He’d never done rock climbing, and he certainly wasn’t the type to hold onto a perpendicular rock with his pinky and still be able to do a crossword puzzle at the same time. And he had no idea why he thought a fluorescent light would hold up. It was just plastic.
Both gave in at the same time. But even the few seconds the lighting and his fingers lasted slowed his fall, and it was enough to make the boar choke and crash into the wall below him. The room shook and a cloud of plaster rose into the air. Theodor fell to the floor, and before he could scramble to his feet in pain, he could smell the stench from the boar’s maw again.
The room was in pieces, parts of broken computers, monitors and desks were lying everywhere, there was nowhere to hide. Theodor limped backwards, blood dripping from his leg on the floor, and reloaded his gun. Not that he thought it would do him any good. It was more like his lucky rabbit’s foot.
The boar bared its shark rows of teeth at him. You could see all the way down its throat, where something red was bubbling and overflowing. Theodor had a nagging suspicion that he would be soon getting a closer look.
At that moment Karla came up to the boar from the side and stabbed a pair of scissors in the boar’s side.
So stupid, Theodor thought, but maybe it’ll pay attention to her for a while. After all, women come first.
And then he took a good look at the scissors. There were wires tied to them that led to an electric extension cord. The boar just turned its head slightly. Karla, with the plug in one hand, ran to a socket in the wall and stuck it in.
A gleam flashed in the boar’s eyes. It opened its maw and sparks skipped between its fangs. Theodor smelled the stench of burnt bristles. The boar’s eyes exploded in their sockets. It roared, and bubbling red liquid spewed from its maw and with a hiss began to burn its way through the floor.
It certainly wasn’t pleasant. This had to . . .
The boar slumped to the ground, jammed the scissors deep into its side, rolled over, ripped out the wires, and severed the connection. It stood up again. It reeked of burns, oily matter oozing from its eyes, red goo pouring from its maw, but it was still alive. It sniffed. It looked confused; the smell of its own burning bristles overpowered everything else. Theodor carefully backed out of its reach.
“Well?” he hissed to Karla. She just shrugged.
How long could it take to take the servers down? Minutes? Hours? They didn’t even know if it would work, that was just wishful thinking. They just hoped it would work like breaking a pentagram in a magical ceremony, like chanting an incantation . . .
The boar picked up their scent.
“We must escape into the corridor,” said Theodor.
“We won’t survive there.”
“Better there than staying here.”
The boar took the first step towards them. Keyboards and fragments of desks crunched under its feet. Theodor threw a chair at it. It hit the boar in the snout and the beast jerked in surprise. Karla pointed a finger. There was blood coming from the side where she had stuck the scissors in. Just a light trickle, but it was blood.
The boar gave them a blank-eyed look. It opened its maw . . . and Theodor wasn’t sure, but it seemed to him that the mouth had opened a little less, and there weren’t as many rows of teeth either.
He and Karla looked at each other, then they both pulled out their pistols and started shooting. Bullets bit into the animal’s flesh, chunks of fur, flesh and bone flying off the boar. It exploded in mud and blood, screaming, thrashing . . . dying.
Theodor was overcome with fatigue. He sank to the ground. “Behold,” he said. “The power of the internet.” Then he pondered that. “But we won’t tell them. I’m sure the IT people would want a cut then, too.”
He was exhausted. Okay, he had to admit that field work was a bit of a chore, too. Although, as he proved, if you’re a little handy, it’s no problem to get it done. A little intelligence, a little insight, and it’s all handled almost seamlessly. He should probably bandage that leg before he bleeds out.
And then slow footsteps came from the hallway.
* * *
Karla listened to the approaching footsteps and tried to count. How many soldiers had she seen die? Could there be anyone else alive out there? Could they save anyone?
No, those footsteps didn’t belong to any soldiers. None of the soldiers wore high-heeled shoes.
Blades of grass grew up between the parquet floors, the debris of the tables was covered in moss, and the air was suddenly fresh and oxygenated.
Karla could smell the scent of pine needles.
The footsteps tapped out their elegant rhythm on the floor of the corridor, never changing pace, already outside of the room, already . . .
The most beautiful woman in the galaxy entered the room and carefully stepped around the corpse and the mud puddle. She smiled, and that smile made Karla’s heart explode. She had never believed in love at first sight, she had never even been into girls much—those few attempts in college didn’t count, you try all sorts of things there—but now she understood she had been making a huge mistake.
The gun had fallen out of her hand. She would need her hands when she touched her, when she kissed her, when they were together . . .
The face of the most beautiful woman in the galaxy collapsed inward and blood spattered the wall behind her. Karla screamed.
“What?” said Theodor, gun in hand. “I thought we were supposed to kill them?”
“You . . . you . . . ” Karla wanted to reach for the gun and shoot him, to get revenge for killing her love, but before she could bend over, the feeling faded and only confusion remained.
“Is something wrong?” Theodor asked in confusion.
“You . . . you didn’t . . . you didn’t see her?”
“Of course I saw her. If I didn’t see her, I couldn’t have shot her, could I? What were you doing?”
Karla took several breaths. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand it at all. Unless . . . she looked at Theodor. “You . . . sorry, but . . . you’re not all that interested in girls, are you?”
Theodor was offended. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not a big deal these days, you know that . . . and the company has no problem with it, no need to . . . ”
“Hey, you start acting like a madwoman, and I’m suddenly gay? I could tell by the look on your face which one of us was the gay one here. So don’t blame it on me, please.”
“That was just . . . yeah, well.” Karla leaned back against the table. “We should have interrogated her.”
“I’m sure you’d want to squeeze her out.” Theodor was still pouting. “Thoroughly. Nothing beats a good oral intercourse.”
Karla bent over the woman. She already looked normal, like an aging football player’s ex-wife, in expensive and tight clothes. She didn’t understand what could have been so attractive about her. “We need to search her.”
“Oh, I’m sure you need to . . . ”
“Stop it, will you? Please stop.” Karla looked out through the open door into the hallway. It was completely normal, with a kitchen across the hall. “I don’t think there’s another one here. They must have escaped. Everything’s fine again.”
Theodor wondered for a moment if he could milk some insult out of that speech after all, but found nothing there. “You mean we’re only going to get paid for one?”
“You’ll get paid,” Karla said. “You got her. It was your kill.”
Theodor shrugged modestly. “Actually, that’s true. How much for her?”
“You don’t know?”
“I never had any need to find out. I’m above that sort of thing. How much?” Karla told him, and Theodor’s eyes bugged out. “What?”
“I double-checked it.”
“If I . . . if I got a part-time job for the day, I’d have made more! If I took my old magazines to the recycling center, I’d have made more! Has everyone gone mad?”
“The bludiczkas are seen as weak and harmless creatures. They’re at the bottom of the list.”
“This was not a weak and harmless creature! She killed an entire unit! She sent a boar after us! Two boars!”
“I know. I know, but that’s just the way it is. Maybe it will be adjusted in the future.”
“For this kind of money . . . the bosses really can suck my dick.”
There was silence for a while.
“I’m sure they’ll—”
* * *
Autumn was slowly ending and the trees had leaves in shades of yellow and brown. It happened every year, and yet every year photographers saw it as the hottest trend, flooding the internet with more and more photos of leaves. Theodor waded through the leaves and didn’t give a shit about them. Yes, he had changed. He had become a tough guy. A dangerous guy. A monster killer. Okay, so far the score wasn’t the highest, but it was just the beginning.
It was cold, but the man waiting for him on the bench in the middle of the forest didn’t seem to feel it. He was dressed lightly, with a leg slung over a leg, pipe in hand.
“No smoking in the woods,” Theodor admonished him.
The man ignored it. “Why did you want to see me again? And where’s that chick that was with you last time?”
“It’s just me. Just the poor and lonely me.”
“Hmm.”
“I just wanted to ask . . . haven’t you heard from them? The bludiczkas?”
“No.”
“I don’t know if you get the latest news, but we only got one. She stayed on site, maybe to dispose of evidence, maybe to deal with us. Growing power blinds you. I believe she wanted to see what she could do. And she was able to get her head blown off.”
“Which one was it?”
“The one with the hole in her head,” Theodor clarified. “But what I wondered was how they knew about us. How they managed to set that trap for us.”
“Who knows? They’re bludiczkas. I never truly understood them either.”
“But it didn’t bother me for long. There weren’t too many suspects.”
The man took a drag from his pipe. It was quiet for a moment, the forest itself quieting around them, as if it was wondering what to do next. “I left them a message. I had no idea they were going to kill anyone. I wanted them to escape. After all, I am the Lord of the Woods, and they used to be a part of the woods.”
“When we find them, they’ll be a part of it in the form of fertilizer. Do you have a hand in those disinformation sites?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe. On the other hand, if people harm and destroy each other, it won’t exactly be a bad thing, will it?”
“You manage that even without me.”
“We want to know where the remaining bludiczkas are.”
“I don’t know.”
“Strange.”
“What?”
“I got lost three times on the way here. And in the last month, three tourists have gone missing in these parts.”
“Tourists get lost all the time. And don’t blame your poor sense of direction on the bludiczkas.”
“It’s been two months since six of our people died. And fifteen more civilians before that. And me too, almost. I knew all along that you had warned them and that they would flee here. Where else would they have gone?”
“If you’re accusing me of something . . . ”
The trees around them began to bend in the gusts of wind. Theodor had to raise his voice.
“It’s been two months . . . more than two months. Do you know why I waited so long to come back in the woods here?”
“Why?”
“Because it took this long for the bounties on bludiczkas to be raised. And it also took a while for explosives to be placed inconspicuously around this forest.” He pulled a detonator from his pocket. “We’ll make a little fire. A few dozen hectares, nothing big. But it’s enough to make a man connected with the woods a bit cuckoo.”
“You . . . you can’t do this,” said the Lord of the Woods. “They won’t let you do this!”
“They did. Protection of nature is a nice thing, but your dating methods?” Theodor shook his head. “That won’t do these days. Just mention it and no one dares say no. No one wants to stand up for a sexual predator.” He raised his hand holding the detonator.
“No!” the Lord of the Woods shouted.
“I’ll have to share with the others, but that’s the way it is. It’s good money for the bludiczkas, but for the Lord of the Woods?” Theodor smirked, pressed the button, and the forest around him began to shake. Explosions echoed in the distance and fiery flames flickered above treetops.
Theodor smiled, content.
“That’s what you get for badmouthing porn, asshole.”
JIŘÍ PAVLOVSKÝ (* 1968)
A personality of almost renaissance range—a film and literary critic, a searing glossator, an author of witty bon mots, a comics enthusiast and a peculiar writer, a creator of strange worlds, a co-director of the comics publishing house CREW and an owner of a distribution company—the main character of this essay is all this and much more.
Jiří Pavlovský’s early literary career is connected with the now legendary literary group Rigor Mortis, where he attracted attention with his humorous fantasy short story Visit Me Tonight, Said Death, and Hit a Golf Ball into the Eighteenth Hole in the anthology Mlok 1994 (Klub Julese Vernea, 1994) and other hilarious texts, on which he collaborated with similarly inclined Štěpán Kopřiva. At the turn of the millennium, he was behind another memorable collection with Marek Dobeš titled It’s good to be dead (Je dobré být mrtvý, Klub Julese Vernea, 2000). As an author, he does not hesitate to venture into a variety of themes ranging from erotic to cyberpunk to classic science fiction and fantasy, but he always treats them in a specific way full of black humor, sarcasm, irony, unexpected connections and strange aesthetics, so it is no wonder that he has become a welcome visitor to various anthologies such as Orbital Sherlocks (Orbitální Šerloci, Mladá fronta, 2006), Shines of Swords, Flashes of Lasers (Třpyt mečů, záblesky laserů, Straky na vrbě, 2008), Legends: Cursed Libraries (Legendy: Prokleté knihovny, Straky na vrbě, 2013), 12 Immortals (12 nesmrtelných, Argo, 2015) or Legends: Praga Mater Urbium (Legendy: Praga Mater Urbium, Straky na vrbě, 2020).
However, all this was not enough to satisfy him, so he came up with his own project, Hammer of Wizards, a series of urban fantasy novels set in his home city Prague with a quite bizarre set of heroes, where he is involved not only as an author, but also as a coordinator of other writers’ stories, whom he allows to play on his turf. The series about a former Inquisition agent Felix Jonáš and his team of misfits is one of the most original domestic series, which he plans to follow up with a new season in a few years.
Moreover, Jíří Pavlovský is a fan of the Monster Hunter series; hence his participation in the MHF project, which was as inevitable as it is welcome.