Chapter 6

Viktor

    It was dark.  Even so, the boys didn’t dare turn on their flashlights.  Everyone thought they were sleeping at Viktor’s house.  They were supposed to be at any rate.  Mrs. Carver watched them for the evening and put them to bed in Viktor’s room before falling asleep on the living room sofa herself.   It was the usual routine of what happened when this elderly neighbor looked after Viktor as a favor to his mother.  Viktor liked Mrs. Carver.  She was nothing but kind to him, so he felt awful counting on her weakness to be able to fulfill his plan.

    Mrs. Carver slept like a rock.  She always had.  Nadia used to balance a book on their elderly neighbor’s head for a minute or two for fun back in the day.  She would come to Viktor’s door to see if he was awake.  Then the two of them would sneak downstairs, Nadia would balance a book on Mrs. Carver’s head just to make sure she was sound asleep.  Then, if Mrs. Carver didn’t move, which she never did, the two of them would sneak in the kitchen for a shared cookie and a glass of milk before going upstairs and crawling into bed again.

    Then, when Nadia was old enough, Mrs. Carver stopped watching them at night and the two of them would simply share a cookie before going to bed.  While Viktor loved being home alone with Nadia, he had missed the fun and adventure of sneaking a cookie in the dark of night with Mrs. Carver sleeping in the other room, even if nothing ever woke her up.

    Sneaking down the stairs with the other boys brought back that sense of adventure Viktor felt with Nadia.  It was easy getting out of the house without waking Mrs. Carver and they were down the road and out of sight within minutes of coming down the stairs.  

    This was going to be it.  The great adventure of saving Nadia’s ghost.  The boys had backpacks full of everything they could possibly need.  Rope, flashlights, food, crucifixes, salt, powdered brick, a rabbit’s foot, candles, books with spells, and anything else someone would need to free a trapped spirit.

    After all of his reading and contemplating on what would be best, Viktor and his friends were going to hold a seance.  They would light candles and conjure up Nadia’s spirit, talk to her to see why she was still here, and then do what had to be done to set her free.

    It didn’t take long for them to get to the civil war hospital.  The roads were empty.  They didn’t need to spend any time hiding from adults that may be making their way home at this hour of night.  There was no time wasted on talking either.  Everyone knew where they were going and what the plan was.  All they had to do was get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

    When the boys arrived, the gate was closed again.  Viktor thought that perhaps the guards started closing it after they caught the boys the first time.  That wasn’t going to stop them though.  There were trees close enough to the wall that they could climb the trees and use the rope they brought to get down the other side.  However, that wouldn’t be necessary.  All of the boys were still young and thin and the bars on the gate weren’t set that close together.

    All four of them fit through.  It was the easiest for Christopher being two years younger and still rather small for his age.  Donny had the hardest time.  It took him three tries and a little greasing up of his ears and face to make it through.  Viktor knew that they would have the scratches from the bars on their skin in the morning and he was wondering what lies they would tell to cover them up.  That wasn’t important now though.  They made it through the gate.  They had to keep moving or risk getting caught.

    The boys then followed the wall instead of heading straight towards the building.  So far they hadn’t seen the guards and Viktor wasn’t going to risk being surprised by them by simply running through the open.  When they reached the far side of the large building, they dashed across the smaller space from the wall to the structure.  Once they were against the building, they followed it, staying in its vast shadow, until they got to a door.

    Viktor poked his head in first.  No one in sight.  He led the others inside and down the hall to a room where they could see the moon through the windows.  It wasn’t easy traveling through the building in the dark.  There was debris everywhere.  They had to climb over the overturned beds and other equipment and furniture left behind.

    To Viktor, it looked like a violent hurricane had come through here.  Everything was in disarray.  There were smashed bits of furniture along with the overturned pieces.  As if something had been hurling them against the walls until they were destroyed.  There was also a chair, caught by one of it’s legs several feet up in the wall.  Viktor knew that some of the soldiers that had stayed her had gone mad and that this destruction was partially their work and partially the work of time and abandonment. 

    He also knew that for the seance to work they would need a quiet room with moonlight which was why the room they chose was virtually empty except for a desk in the corner.  The boys made a circle with salt and sat around it.  They used a compass to make sure that one of them sat in each direction.  Viktor was sitting on perfect north.  Nadia’s favorite direction.  She wanted to go north to see the penguins and the northern lights some day.  She’d seen it all in National Geographics.

    “Nadia,” Viktor whispered into the darkness around them.  “Nadia, if you’re here, we’ve come to help you.  Come into the circle.”

    There were some sounds in the distance.  The boys a looked around.  Shivers running through bodies.  The sound was coming closer.  The furniture in the other rooms could be heard shifting.  The wooden floors groaned and then gently creaked.  Viktor took a deep breath.  He tried to look brave for the others, but he was beginning to worry that if the civil war ghosts were still here, they may have as much interest in coming to the seance as Nadia would have.  The unnatural noise of unseen movement got louder and louder.  It wasn’t just coming from one direction any more.  It was surrounding them.

    Christopher inched closer to Ralph and tried to whisper something.  Ralph put his finger to his lips and gently shook his head, before shooing his brother back to his spot.  Seconds later, Nadia appeared sitting in the center of the circle. The noise stopped and Viktor could see that all of his friends looked as relieved as he felt. 

    “Nadia,” Viktor said.  “Can you tell us why you’ve returned?”

    Viktor could see his sister smiling under the mess of her dark hair.  Hair that appeared so dark now that it could have been liquid.  Viktor wondered about it.  It was almost as if he could touch the mass of hair only to discover there were no individual strands.  Almost as if it was just dark water or crude oil that surrounded her face.   If he touched his sister’s hair now, would it be as soft as it had been before, when Viktor curled up in Nadia’s bed after a nightmare and rested his head against hers, lost in her soft curls and the smell of her lavender shampoo.  Or would he touch this dark mass of hair only to pull his hand back to find it covered in sticky darkness?

    Viktor tried to pull himself away from the memories of lavender scents and the safety of his sister’s room on dark nights and back into the moment.  Nadia was here in the circle.  She moved her lips, but the words were a garbled sound, like someone disrupted by the crackling of a bad station on the radio.  Viktor could make out two of the words.  Why and returned.  She wanted to tell them why she was here.

    Christopher was getting on Viktor’s nerves though.  Always fidgeting in the background.  Always trying to move closer to his brother.  He was going to ruin this.  In fact, he was standing now, something that could break a spell like this.  Nadia looked over at him and he sat back down.  When Nadia’s head turned back to Viktor, Christopher got up again crept over to his brother pointed at Nadia and whispered something.  Viktor tried his best to ignore Christopher.  He couldn’t blame the younger boy for being scared, he just couldn’t stand him being distracting at a time like this.

    Viktor tapped on the ground.  “Nadia, if you can’t speak, tap.”

    “I love you” was the answer.  Nadia’s fingers pressing awkwardly into the wooden floor below her to make the code in a mix of scratching and tapping motions.

    Viktor tapped the words back to her.  “I love you.”

    He then added, “Why are you here?”

    Nadia tapped back.  “I love you.  Can’t speak.  Tap.  Tap.  Tap.”

    Viktor paused for a second.  Something was off.  Donny seemed uneasy.  Ralph had moved from his spot and was whispering something in his ear.   The room felt colder than it had before.  The silence was becoming more disturbing than the noise around them had been.  Had the others seen something?  Heard something?  Noticed something Viktor hadn’t?  Viktor focused back on Nadia.  They were here to set her free.  This may be their only chance.  He had to get it right even if the others weren’t going to help him, but without their help this whole thing was starting to feel unnatural.

    “Why are you here?”  It wasn’t Viktor who tapped it this time.  It was Nadia.  Viktor tapped out, “I’m here to help you.  What do you need?”

    As Viktor was tapping, he pretended to look at his sister, but was watching just over her shoulder as Ralph and Donny slowly stood up.  They were gesturing for him to follow quietly.  They were moving calmly, but there was clear panic on their faces.  Something was wrong.

    Donny was mouthing something.  He was pointing at Nadia and shaking his head.

    “Not her.”  Those were the words Donny was trying to tell him.  Viktor kept tapping on the ground, asking why Nadia was here.  Now it wasn’t to get the answer he was looking for.  It was to buy himself time to think and maybe even time for the others to leave.  It had to be Nadia.  Viktor kept telling himself, but the feeling that something was off kept growing in his chest to the point that he found it hard to breath.  The more he tapped to his sister, the more Viktor came to realize the problem with their unspoken conversation.

    “I love you,” Nadia tapped.  “Can’t speak.  Tap.  I’m here.”

    No new words.  Viktor realized it too late, but Nadia never used new words when she tapped.  She was simply mimicking what Viktor tapped back to him.  What ever had taken Nadia’s form must have been able to read Viktor, since, the moment he was on to it, it seemed to catch on to them.

    Nadia suddenly spun her head around to face Christopher who was sneaking out of the room.  She stood up and so did Viktor.  Donny had grabbed a piece of wood from somewhere and hit Nadia with it as hard as she could.  She collapsed to the ground.  Her body looked almost as if it had melted just a bit into the floor. 

    “Run!” Donny shouted and Viktor did.

    The television crackled and Mrs. Hannigan turned the corner to find Christopher sitting on the sofa staring at the static on the screen.  Mrs. Hannigan could have sworn she’d put her son to bed hours ago, but there he was, fully dressed, staring blankly at the static on the screen.

    Maybe he had gotten up and was confused by the time or maybe he’d only pretended to go to sleep.  Whatever his reasons for sitting here on the couch, Christopher seemed odd and out of place.  Mrs. Hannigan watched her boy for another minute to see if he would move, but he barely even blinked.  So she sighed and came into the room to ask what was wrong.

    “Did you have a bad dream, sweetheart?” she asked.  It was late and they were planning on going to church in the morning.  Christopher didn’t move or speak until his mother sat down on the couch with him and lifted him to sit on her lap facing her.

    “Nadia has blue eyes,” Christopher whispered to his mother.

    “Who?”  Mrs. Hannigan asked.  The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place where she had heard it before.

    “Nadia.  Nadia has blue eyes.”

    The name sounded Russian.  Eastern European at least.  Then it struck Mrs. Hannigan that it might be the daughter of that poor Eastern European woman who lived down the road.  Her daughter had been killed, hadn’t she?  Mrs. Hannigan wasn’t so sure, but it seemed right.  She could hardly imagine loosing something so precious as her little Christopher and it must have been so horrific for that poor soul to save her child from that dreadful war only to have her die here.  

    Christopher must have seen a picture of the girl somewhere in the paper or maybe the teachers had been gossiping again at the school.  Whatever brought the memory of that poor dead girl into Christopher’s mind, Mrs. Hannigan would never know.  She would try to ask him about it in the morning, but for now she just wanted them both to get back to sleep.  Mrs. Hannigan kissed her boy on the forehead, wrapped her arms around him, and lifted him with a groan, before turning the television off for the night.  

    “Come,” she said.  “You can spend the night in bed with me and your dad.  No bad dreams can hurt you there.”

    As she carried her son upstairs, the young boy watched the living room over her shoulder, terrified of the girl on the sofa with the blue and white dress and haunting black eyes.