Poe (26 page)

The FBI is reportedly theorizing that the initial assault took place at Mrs. Chesterfield’s apartment at The Hurry Back Inn, and at some point she was taken to a second location, although it’s unclear where she died.
(Now the FBI is going to kill me. Or put me in jail. Same thing.)

Another resident of Goshen, 50-year-old crossing guard Celia Jenks, was also brutally murdered one month ago. Until today, the primary suspect was her boyfriend, local baker Fred Danvers, who
, although he makes a mean apple Danish,
has a criminal record, including a domestic violence charge from 1998.

But what’s the connection? Could it be the ill-fated Aspinwall mansion? Mrs. Chesterfield was one of the few still alive who were there the night of the tragic fire in 1940. In 1970, Celia Jenks and her husband, Will “Wolf” Jenks, purchased Aspinwall, where tragedy struck again when Wolf
was killed by a wild animal. (
Kind of ironic when you think about it.)

It only takes another twenty minutes to finish the article, and I decide that it’s so bad I will have to retire the pseudonym D. Peters when I finish my
real
book, but for now that’s the best I can do, and I e-mail it to Mac.

Now, back to the spooky stuff. I pull the loose pages I found in Daniel’s room from the vegetable bin, along with the photo of Rasputin. If possible, it’s even more bizarrely compelling under my bright fluorescent light—a Manson-esque portrait of insanity.

Which makes me think of Poe’s magnet message—
mad monk
. “Why does that sound so familiar?” I whisper.

For no reason whatsoever my television flickers on—no signal, just snow and deafeningly loud static.

“What the fuck.”
Christ
, I don’t want to wake Lisa up. I race to unplug the damn thing but then I see them—of the array of books that I’d stacked to form my no-budget television stand, a few titles stand out.
The Quiet Revolution: Rasputin and the Tsaritsa, Rasputin and Gnosticism in Early Twentieth-Century Russia, Rasputin: Mad Monk or Mystic Prophet?

I slap a hand against my forehead. Biggest idiot
ever
.

Granted I’ve been busy of late, what with drowning, nearly being flayed alive, almost shot by the FBI and whatnot, but I can’t believe that I’ve somehow missed the biggest connecting thread of them all. All those hours of mind-numbing research years ago for my ill-fated historical Rasputin novel, my eBay finds that I’d hoped would give it some semblance of authoritative weight, sitting here staring me in the face for
weeks
. The gardener at Aspinwall—Russian. The psychic at that ill-fated Halloween—Russian. The medieval pages are Russian; shit, even my ring, or at least the same symbol, worn by the most infamous Russian of all time—Rasputin. Whom I, for some strange
reason, decided to write about, although not so strange when you consider that my father was…

Russian
.

I jerk the television off the books and quickly pull out
Rasputin: Mad Monk or Mystic Prophet?
Thank God I had the good sense to highlight the good bits to crib from later.

I vaguely remember it was his fellow Russians who dubbed Rasputin “The Mad Monk.” Given his rather liberal views in Victorian society—he thought that in order to truly repent, one had to sin and sin often (alcohol and sexual licentiousness being key)—it’s no wonder that some members of the Russian royal family were more than a little perturbed about his free access to the daughters in the tsaritsa’s nursery. So he racked up a serious list of enemies, including Iliodor, a former friend and rival monk.

I quickly skip through the first few boring chapters (including a long-winded introduction by a professor that’s so dull it could cure insomnia) until I get to the pages that made me think Rasputin could successfully be characterized as a zombie.

Because
lots
of people tried to unsuccessfully knock Rasputin off. First up, a seventeen-year-old former prostitute and student of Iliodor, who waited for Rasputin while he was walking along a gravel path, nose innocently buried in a book, and plunged a knife into his abdomen. As his entrails fell out of his stomach, she screamed, “I have killed the Antichrist!” Just a
bit
prematurely, because Rasputin sprinted away, cradling his guts in his arms, and she chased him down the street until he managed to grab something and club her in the face with it.

And
I
get woozy from a paper cut.

The assembling crowd was all for beating said prostitute to death, but instead she was picked up by a constable, put on trial, and sentenced to an insane asylum, where she stayed for a few years, until she was busted out by a different crowd during the February Revolution.

Somehow Rasputin survived—if he wasn’t a zombie, then damn, that must have been a good surgeon for 1914—and he went on his merry way, which pissed off the Russian nobles. Considering this was before the February Revolution and the nobles were still in
power
, probably not a bright idea. Finally they decided to band together and assassinate him properly. Led by Prince Felix, they invited him down to a cellar and served him cakes and red wine that had been laced with enough poison to easily kill five men.

But then Felix thought, you know, it takes time to conceal a body—we should really move this along a bit faster. So he pulled out a revolver and shot Rasputin in the back. Which would just about do it, one would think. All bases covered.

Rasputin fell to the floor, and they must have all thought,
Great, mission accomplished
. They headed back to the palace to take a break, murder being harder work than they were probably used to. But forgetful Felix left his coat in the room, so he went back to get it, because
damn
, it’s cold in Russia. And he walked into the room expecting to find Rasputin dead in a pool of his own blood—hopefully nowhere near his coat, because as everyone knows, bloodstains are impossible to get out.

But instead he found Rasputin
standing
.

Rasputin then grabbed Felix by the lapels, screaming something like “You bad boy” and tried to
strangle
Felix. The posse heard the ruckus, and they shot Rasputin three more times, and he fell again. They thought,
Okay, mission really accomplished
, but when they approached the body they discovered he was struggling to get up.

Rasputin. The first Freddy Krueger of the twentieth century.

Well, what else is a crew of Russian nobles going to do but try to beat him to death? They clubbed away at him with anything at hand, because this was now well past the realm of vampire horror stuff. They went so far as to castrate Rasputin—ouch—then they rolled up his body in a carpet and threw him in the Neva River for good measure.

When Rasputin’s body was eventually discovered, the coroner found water in his lungs, as if the poison, gunshot wounds, beating, and castration hadn’t killed him—as if he’d
drowned
.

The tsaritsa was sad, and she gave him a proper burial, to the consternation of all the nobles who worked so hard to kill him. And apparently his popularity wasn’t all that high with the common folks either, because after the February Revolution, they dug up his remains so they could burn them. For good measure.

And as the flames licked at Rasputin’s bloated, rotting, castrated corpse, the most bizarre unimaginable thing happened.

He sat up.

Okay
. I have to admit that this definitely has the whiff of urban legend, a la Mikey’s stomach exploding because he drank Coke while eating Pop Rocks. While I’m wondering if there’s any possible scientific explanation why a corpse would sit up while it’s being incinerated—maybe I should have paid more attention in Biology 101—something else catches my attention.

A small newspaper cartoon shows the tsaritsa on her knees praying to Rasputin, who has horns on his head. He cradles his entrails while staring down a wild-looking woman who holds a knife. But it’s the description below that chills me, one name in particular. Khioniya Gueseva. I almost say it aloud, but I get a superstitious shiver that this might be a bad thing.

The psychic at Aspinwall was Russian, and her name—how had Amelia pronounced it in my dream? I quickly reach for my notebook, a flutter of excitement in my throat, and find my hastily jotted notes from the back of the photo in Alice’s apartment. “Fitzgeralds as geisha, and K.G. the psychic.”

K.G. Khioniya Gueseva? Could she also be the prostitute who tried to kill Rasputin? She did escape from the asylum, which would make her about forty at the time of the Aspinwall fire. Stranger things have happened. But maybe in Russia Khioniya and Gueseva are common names, the equivalents of Mary and Smith.

I’m missing something—I know it. I flip through the pages looking for another reference to Khioniya or K.G., skimming through biographical information that isn’t nearly as exciting as resurrected corpses and intricate murder plots. Rasputin was born in Pokrovskoye in 1869, son of a peasant blah, blah, blah—but then another name stands out.

Mine.

Rasputin had a sister and an older brother, Dmitri (the proper Russian spelling), who tragically fell in a nearby river. Rasputin jumped in to save them and also came close to drowning, before all three were pulled from the water by a passerby. While Rasputin survived, his sister didn’t make it. Dmitri caught pneumonia and died shortly afterward. And what does Rasputin name his own son?
Dmitri
.

I feel like I’m trying to pull out the vague memory of a dream. I’m surrounded by bits of flotsam and jetsam, but
Christ
, what does it all
mean
?

But there’s no time to think about it further, because suddenly from the bedroom Lisa is screaming.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BROKEN

F
uck, fuck, fuck. I race to the bedroom, tripping over the light cord and knocking the lamp over in the process, breaking the bulb—I don’t even notice stepping on the glass, because all I can think is I’m going to kill him, so help me God if he’s hurt her, if he’s even
touched
her…

But I find Lisa sitting upright in bed, trembling hands covering her ears, eyes shut, and no blood or gaping wound that I can see. I rush to her side and take her in my arms.

“Are you okay? Was he here? Did he hurt you?”

She seems to finally register me and she stops screaming, but her body still shakes with fear. Her mouth opens but can’t speak.

Which makes me think he
was
here. And maybe still
is
here.

I run to the closet, see if Daniel’s inside, but he’s not, which leaves the shower—is the curtain closed? But no, I find it’s open, and the window in the bedroom is closed shut and locked from the inside. Guess that’s the chief benefit of living in a small, crappy apartment—not many places for knife-wielding schizophrenic brothers to hide.

I take a moment—my heart is still fluttering like a wild bird in my chest, and I start to feel the pain in my feet—but the adrenaline is pumping, and I manage to walk back to the mattress, sit down, and hold Lisa close. She’s still shivering.

“You’re not dead?” she asks in a choked voice.

“Not the last time I checked.” I put her hand to my neck. “Do I still have a pulse?”

She smiles hesitantly. “Then it
was
just a dream…”

“Hopefully. What was the dream about?”

“I don’t know. I was having a nightmare, then I thought I opened my eyes, and I saw…”

“You saw what?”

“A face in the window.” She holds out her arm, pointing. “There.”

I look at the window. The stark, leafless branches of the maple tree sway slightly in the wind, and a scattering of new snow drifts lazily in the haze of a streetlight.

Lisa whispers, “You don’t think…”

“Course not,” I say, giving her arm a squeeze. “But I’ll go look just to make sure.”

Slowly I stand, ignoring the pain in my feet, and step toward the window. I press my hand against the cold pane of glass and quickly scan the street below.

And my heart clenches.

There’s a cluster of bootprints at the base of the tree, identical to the ones outside Lisa’s house. A lone, cracked branch dangles from the trunk, like a broken arm, like something or
someone
was too heavy for it.

“Do you see anything?”

“No,” I lie. I turn to her, try for a reassuring smile.

I can see her question me for a moment, the slight furrow in her brow, but then she presses the heel of her palm against her forehead. “Guess it was just part of my nightmare.”

I make my way back to the bed, settling in next to her. “Can’t imagine why you’d be having a nightmare. We lead such uneventful lives.”

“It was so
real
.” She hugs her knees, looking distant, like she’s underwater.

“You saw Daniel?” I ask casually.

“Yes,” says Lisa. “Or I thought I did.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. It was so… quick. But in my dream, I saw Daniel. Or it was him, but it wasn’t…”

I gently stroke her cheek.

“It’s hard to explain.” She looks at me and steadies herself. “I’ve never told anyone this before, because it sounds so… crazy.”

“Crazy as in my crappy apartment is haunted? Or crazy as in I was almost autopsied alive?”

“It’s up there,” says Lisa.

“I’m intrigued.”

Lisa takes a deep breath. “When Daniel… attacked me, his eyes were… different.”

“In what way?”

“Daniel’s eyes are green, like mine. But when he attacked me… they were black. Freaky weird black—no iris. I thought maybe it was a hallucination, part of the trauma. But lately, with all that’s happened… I don’t know, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

A cold realization strikes me. “Like Maddy’s eyes.”

“Maddy’s?”

“The psychic at Aspinwall.”

“It was so dark, I didn’t see…” says Lisa. She absently rubs at the scar at the base of her neck, like it’s some kind of charm or talisman.