Chapter 6

 

 

 

I wanted to tell Joey what I found out and, like I promised, I said I’d return. So an hour later I stood back outside his apartment. It was quiet, and I silently thanked whatever angels were hanging around that he wasn’t still playing those damned records. I knocked twice and tried the knob. The door was locked. I could have let myself in again, but I didn’t want to seem like a nosy-Nelly, constantly checking on him, walking into his home whenever I felt like it. Anyway, I figured he was probably sleeping.

Another reason I decided to turn tail and get away quick was that I felt its pull again. The turntable was still spinning, still calling to me. It might not have been playing at that moment, but I knew it sure wasn’t “off” either, in the sense of regular mechanical devices resting sedentary while not in use. A part of me began jonesing to hear it, a slobbering, sweating part that somehow slid Joey’s key up into my hand and lifted it to the lock. I thought that must be how an addict feels, a fiend shootin’ heroin into his arm every day who decides to go clean, until someone dangles a needle before his eyes.

A whisper snuck into my ears.

Ne zaderzhivat’sya v kholodnyy i temnyy, ho prisoyedinit’sya ko mne v svet navsegda.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I bolted, just turned and sprinted like Jessie Owns in Berlin. The whisper’s allure didn’t lessen until I rose in the elevator two floors above.

Back in my apartment I deadbolted the door, then paced between boxes, feeling my heart beat staccato. I went to the largest window and gazed outside for several minutes, letting the oceans of blue sky wash away the jitters. Most of the other tenants had views of identical apartments across the street: faded gray produce shops on the bottom level, stacked on top by floors of living quarters for the low-income populace of the city. Fortunately, my apartment’s windows faced an empty lot, a barren space in the commercial quarters like the missing tooth from a child’s mouth. I had as nice a view as I could hope for and, unobstructed, my place was kept well-lit. The early afternoon sun poured in, splashing the living room in soft hues the color of melted butter, and I began to feel better. I pushed aside a kit of build-your-own globes, set the pillowcase and records down on the kitchen table, and settled into my easy chair.

Though I wasn’t in the reading mood, I looked at the book I bought from Vic. It was a biography of Rasputin, written by an ex-disciple who only distanced himself from Rasputin’s teachings decades after the mystic’s death. Quoted text proclaimed: The shackles of my soul were loosed, the blinders removed…

The front cover showed a photograph of Rasputin in middle age, raising his hand in the air like the blade of a knife, and his mouth gaped open in a great void as if the camera caught him mid-sentence. His hair and beard were wild, like a billowing, unfolding creature. But it was his eyes that were most disconcerting. Those eyes were bulging wide, so large they looked as if a child had drawn a cartoon over his features. They were round orbs of snow-white, with specks of coal as the pupils, arched upwards toward the heavens. It was a sinister image, and I wondered not at all how he gained his moniker, the Mad Monk.

I turned to the first page and began to read.

 

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin is one of the strangest and most deviant men in modern history. He is remembered as a Russian holy monk and prophet with numerous proven incidences of healing that mystified the most educated medical minds of his time. He was also labeled a charlatan who manipulated the suffering of others for political and financial gain. Still today, he is regarded as a shadowy and furtive individual said to have been in league with supernatural forces and granted mystic abilities in exchange for dark servitude. The only fact which has been steadfastly proven is that Rasputin possessed some abnormal power over Russia’s last ruling Emperor, Nicholas II and his family, and was instrumental in the fall of the tsarist government, which led to the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty in 1917.

Separating fact from superstition and heresy is challenging, as much written documentation relating to Rasputin has inexplicably been destroyed over the years since his death. Even that which I saw and experienced firsthand while under his sway seems difficult to believe and recite all these years later.

Rasputin was born a peasant sometime between 1863 and 1873 in a small village outside Siberia...

 

I read further. Soft tick-tocks from the clock on my wall punctuated each turned page. I had been familiar with Rasputin’s name as a mythical figure footnoted in school studies I once skimmed over as a boy but never read intimately. He had two siblings, both of whom died young due to drowning-related effects (one drowning outright and the other from illness contracted from near-drowning). Rasputin himself nearly drowned, but was saved and thereafter began to portray indications of supernatural powers.

 

A court record found in the crumbling vault of Verkhoturye Monastery states that while Rasputin was aged “near-to-manhood,” his father, Efim, had his horse stolen. It was claimed that Rasputin was able to envision the theft through a “sense known only to him,” and lead armed men to a remote farm where the horse was found and the thief apprehended.

When eighteen, Rasputin was reportedly visited by the Virgin Mary and urged to join the Khlysty sect, an outlawed religious group that practiced exaltation through sexual ecstasy. He practiced his beliefs, “converting” the peasant women of each village he passed through. Indeed, his surname, “Rasputin,” soon became synonymous in Russian as “the debauched one”...

 

An image worked itself into my mind of Rasputin as a conman, preying on the lonely borough wives whose husbands were conscripted to labor or military service. Like hoods I knew in the shadows of Detroit, those granted the cunning and discipline to evade scruples found life to be a flea market, buying peoples’ trust with words flimsy as a three-dollar bill. Religion and sex go hand-in-hand, after all, each just manners to escape the difficulties of everyday life, to find meaning in a troubled existence.

I read on, absorbing the details of his life, trying to understand the motivation behind stories of his exploits, his wanderings and dark lusts. I searched for a common theme stitching together his philosophies, failures, allies, and enemies; the cults he formed, the followers acquired through practices no other human could replicate.

 

Rasputin’s rise to royal influence came about through his healing of Tsar Nicholas II’s only son, young Aleksei, who was dying from hemophilia, a medical condition that impairs the body’s ability to stop bleeding. From that time forward, Rasputin was deemed a “holy man” and a friend of the ruling family. His influence extended amongst the Tsar’s wife, children, court nobles, and even bishops in the Orthodox Church.

With his political fortitude established, Rasputin began to preach openly and without fear of consequence, of reveling in immoral acts and even consorting with spirits. He was found guilty, though never sentenced, of raping a nun. He spoke with the dead, prophesized the future, and ordered followers to his bidding, which included kidnapping, assault, and even murder. His disciples came to be known as “The Misbegottens,” and I shamefacedly admit to naming myself among their number.

During the onset of World War One, in particular, the whispers of Rasputin’s dark servitude seemed true. I was alongside him in Rome on June 28, 1914 and heard him speak in tongues never before heard. Yet sailors in the middle of the Caspian Sea swore in court that Rasputin boarded their vessel that very day and flew away on wings of black, carrying off the third mate. On June 28, also, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. Witnesses testified Rasputin chanted strange words and stood next to the man who shot Ferdinand.

 

The outside world seemed to fall away while I was engrossed in the book, and I lost track of the time that passed. My imagination filled with Rasputin and the absurd accusations leveled against him. No matter how evil the man’s motivations may have been, what was claimed he caused—and was capable of doing—was simply physically and scientifically impossible. I began to disregard the pages I read as mere tabloid fare, similar to the science fiction books I bought from Vic. Just because a book title states it is a biography based on fact does not mean it hasn’t been embellished with fine words to attract sales.

I skipped a few chapters, skimming for anything I could relate to…

 

By 1915, Rasputin claimed to foresee his own impending death. He sought the methodology to remain living even after dying, and became obsessed with the variants of immortality and of finding the means for souls to travel between the worlds of death and of the living. He said: “My hour will soon come. I have no fear but know that the hour will be bitter for you. I will suffer a great martyrdom...and will inherit the kingdom.”

During the last months of his life, Rasputin was rarely seen, yet those closest to him vanished without explanation. It was said that he collected souls to fulfill the great prophecy of a vanished people.

 

I skipped more pages, until some compulsion caused me to flip halfway through and begin reading in earnest.

 

...When encountered at night, Rasputin was said to chant incessantly. He collected certain “words” according to their etymology, and he filled them with dark power, the way other men might fill a bucket with water. Such words that he spoke had much more meaning than their surface definition. Words that Rasputin empowered could become an invitation or a password, a remark shared like a secret handshake that, the more spoken, grew only in potency.

Words like, ‘Vkhodite.’

 

My mouth unhinged, and every piece of baggage in my apartment seemed to gasp alongside me.

 

For Rasputin, ‘vkhodite’ was the ultimate communiqué of influence. Translating to “come in,” the word became the banner command of submission and the proved intention to submit to his discipline. Vkhodite meant to “come into” his world, his dogma. You were surrendering yourself to a higher power, leaving behind the cold and fleeting solitude of earthly existence for immortality under his command. In effect, he was setting himself up as a god and his ‘Misbegottens’ his disciples.

Rasputin would induct his followers as such: Ne zaderzhivat’sya v kholodnyy i temnyy, ho prisoyedinit’sya ko mne v svet navsegda.

‘Do not linger in the cold and dark, but join me in the light forever.’

 

My God, it was the phrase from the music! Vic’s friend was right; it really was Rasputin’s records.

But if what this author—this former disciple—said was true, how did the chanting on the records hold such an influence over me and over Joey, who was becoming quite obsessed, just by listening to them now, years later? Did those words really hold such power?

I knew then, that regardless of how much of the book was valid, I had to find a way to convince Joey to get rid of the records. The hoodoo-voodoo they spouted carried some sort of psychological consequence. I thought about calling Joey and laying it all out, but how could I convince him the few bucks he might turn on those records was worth the effect of a brainwash? I decided I’d go down there tomorrow, take him to breakfast, and lay it all out.

The phone rang, a shrill blast that caused me to leap from the chair like a frightened child. Though it startled me, it was nonetheless a welcome interruption from my dreary thoughts.

I caught my breath and answered. “Hello?”

“Hi.” It was Gail, and I relaxed. She was a needed respite from what I just read. She continued. “What’re you doing today?”

“Just thinking about you,” I lied.

“Good answer.”

“Yourself?”

“I’m home from work early and wondering if you’d like to come over for a Friday night date. I’m going to make chicken and artichoke, and there’s a bottle of chardonnay that takes two to drink.”

I needed to break and take some time to contemplate matters. An evening at Gail’s seemed like a shipshape idea. “Sure, honey. Any special occasion?”

“Well…” her voice softened. “I want to talk. You know, about us.”

Oh God, I thought. ‘The Talk.’ What I first thought as a ‘shipshape idea’ now sunk like the Titanic. Whenever a woman makes plans just to talk, it means she wants something that requires a change of your lifestyle.

I gritted my teeth, but tried to keep my voice upbeat. “I’d like that. What time were you thinking?”

“I know how busy you are,” she said. My anxiety slipped into defensiveness, as if that were a barb against me for not having a real job. Just thinking about The Talk flipped my emotions topsy-turvy. She continued. “What’s a good time for you?”

“I can make time whenever you like,” I replied.

“I mean, what time can you commit to? Punctuality isn’t one of your finer points, and I don’t want to serve dinner cold.”

Another barb? I already wished I had said I was too busy to meet. “How about at five? That’s two hours from now. I’ll start getting ready and maybe even arrive early to show what a changed guy I can be.”

“Just on-time is good enough. I can’t wait to see you,” she said.

“You too. I’m really looking forward to it.”

A knock sounded at the front door.

“Someone’s at the door,” I said. “Gotta go, but I’ll see you later.”

“Okay, five o’clock. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I hung up the phone, first feeling grateful for the interruption, then feeling guilty for feeling grateful. I went to the door.

It was Ray, baring a big smile and a clipboard.

“Hey, Charlie, how’s it going?”

“Just living life. What brings you by?”

“We had a hot date, remember? Three o’clock, I’m here to peruse the knickknacks you’ve been hoarding.”

Nuts. I knew I was destined to be late to Gail’s. Again.

“Actually, slipped my mind,” I said. “I’m not really prepared—”

“Sounds like you need a secretary.” He pushed his way inside and whistled. “And a housekeeper.”

I had to imagine what my apartment looked like to someone for the first time. Although I knew Ray expected it—the only difference between us being that he owned stores to place his winnings into instead of piling them in his living room—I still felt the scarlet blushes of shame. The walls of luggage I collected looked like the hedges at City Park, cut into an elaborate maze where one could wander lost all day. I don’t know how I let it build up so much; it was overwhelming to think of the day I’d ever have to clear it all out.

Inspiration struck. I said, “I’ll cut you a deal if you take away everything all at once.”

Ray just rolled his eyes. “Funny. Most of this you couldn’t give to the homeless.”

“So you came all the way over here to insult me?”

He snapped his fingers and slapped my back. “Don’t get so tense. I know there’s valuables in here I can pay cash for.”

“All right. You want to start over there?” I said. I led him to a half-wall separating my dining area from the kitchenette. I had created impromptu shelving out of luggage stacked in different directions and, in the spaces created, stored a deluge of kitschy sculptures, glassware, and tin devices whose purposes were meaningless to me. “I’ve got some curiosities that came from an Egyptian bagman.”

“Egyptian is always a good start.”

After half an hour, Ray had ferreted through only a corner of my collections. I started getting antsy, watching the time. I originally thought he might only take a cursory glance, buy a few things, and be off, but he buried himself inside mountains of suitcases that I hadn’t looked at in years. He reminded me of an archaeologist, carving through the substrate with a hand spoon, carefully logging every detail in a grid of sectioned quadrants. I wanted to tell him to speed it up, but he was so thorough, setting aside things I forgot—or maybe never knew—I possessed, including jade teacups from China, Mediterranean lithographs, a Royal Air Force jacket, and Art Deco-era dining utensils made of colored glass. Money signs danced before my eyes.

“I gotta make a call,” I said.

“It’s your place.”

I dialed Gail, hoping she hadn’t gotten too started on dinner, and fumbled through my mind a number of excuses as to why I would be late. The phone just rang. I let it jangle twenty times, then hung up and called again. Still no answer. I cursed three shades of blue. Tonight wouldn’t go well if she had a big talk planned and I blew it off.

I considered Ray a good friend, but not good enough to leave in my home unattended where he could “find” something and take it away without telling me—I simply would never know if anything went missing. But his bright excitement caught me; every few minutes he was muttering wow under his breath and setting things aside, and I knew I was earning money just watching him.

On the other hand, no amount of money was worth the guilt of skipping on Gail’s dinner.

“Ray,” I said. “I hate to interrupt you, but I’m going to have to ask you to wrap it up.”

“You kicking me out already, Charlie? I thought we were doing business.”

“We are, but we’ll have to pick up another time. I’m sorry. It’s my fault I overbooked today.”

“I came all the way across the city for this.”

“Don’t chafe. I think you could spend all week in here and still not be done.”

“If you let me.” His eyes twinkled. “You’ve got some notable effects stashed in your belongings.”

The phone rang, and I prayed it was Gail checking on me, knowing I was running late. Maybe I could salvage this afternoon after all.

“Hold that thought,” I told Ray. Into the phone, I answered, “Hello?”

“Charlie, I’ve got an offer for you.”

It was Vic. Normally I’d be happy to hear from him, but now wasn’t a good time. Then again, anytime was good to hear an offer.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“My friend, Yefim László—the one who listened to your records—wants to buy them.”

“I thought he never wanted to see or hear them again.”

“That’s what he told me, but I guess people are allowed to change their minds. He’s here now, and he wants them.”

“They’re not my records to sell—they’re my friend, Joey’s. He lives downstairs, and I’ll have to arrange a meeting between them for another time.”

“Yefim is hot to buy right now.”

“It’ll have to wait. I’m in the middle of a couple other deals.”

Vic’s voice lowered, as if he were whispering. “Charlie, I’ve never seen my friend like this. I tried talking him out of it, but he’s prepared to spend a great deal of money to procure those records immediately. He says time is of the essence. Maybe he learned something we don’t know, but your friend could be in for a windfall.”

My nerves burned. I was about to tell Vic there wasn’t a chance in Hades I would set up a meeting right now with Joey as sick as he was and me running so late. But then I thought, this was an out. Those records were no good—I knew that in a way that didn’t make logical sense—and maybe this was a way to get rid of them. Whoever’s hands they ended up in would be away from Les Deux Oies. Somebody else could figure out those hellish chants and dreams of a crazy man.

I hoped Gail would understand…she’d have to.

I spoke into the phone. “I can’t guarantee Yefim an audience with my friend, as he’s been real sick lately. But he can come over and I’ll bring him down for an introduction.”

I heard Vic relay my response to Yefim and then his excited reply.

“I’m in the Les Deux Oies building,” I said. “On Sanford Street. Sixth floor, apartment number six-twelve.”

“Yefim gives his thanks and is on his way.”

“All right. Thanks, Vic.”

“And, Charlie,” he said. “Don’t fleece him too badly. I’ve never seen Yefim like this, so…desperate.”

We hung up, and I saw Ray standing nearby, acting inconspicuous, but obviously listening to the whole conversation.

“What was that all about?” he asked innocently.

“People are going to think we’re holding a convention in here. Another collector’s coming over.”

“And this after you tell me I have to leave?”

“I’m bringing him down to Joey’s place. He wants to buy some records Joey won last week.”

“What kind of records?”

“The kind you don’t want,” I said.

Ray snapped his fingers once, loud. His face tightened into a scowl. “Charlie, I hope you’re not holding out on me. Who buys your wins when nobody else does? I throw myself at you, offering you dough. And here you are giving the inside scoop to another dealer? I think I should get the right to bid, too.”

“Ray,” I said and paused, not knowing how to explain myself without sounding four cents shy of a nickel. “The records are no good, trust me. They’re in another language, and they hurt your ears, they sound so bad.”

“Yet someone wants to buy them this very moment.”

“I don’t know what this guy wants them for, but it’s a bad investment.”

“Maybe I can judge for myself.”

My exasperation was growing out of control. I felt people were walking all over me with what they wanted, and I couldn’t put my foot down hard enough to control them. “Fine, but I’m telling you it’s a waste of your time.”

Ray nodded slightly. “We’ll see,” he said, and went back to rifling through the suitcases.

I tried calling Gail again, but she still didn’t answer. I wondered if it was on purpose—she knew that if she picked up, I’d snake my way into canceling, but if I couldn’t get a hold of her, the guilt would drive me to rush over there one way or the other. Which was true. I heard that rich socialites were beginning to use “answering machines,” like robotic secretaries, and that someday it would be commonplace for every phone to automatically have the ability to record a message. Did I wish we used that technology today…

I didn’t have time remaining to shower and shave like I wanted, but I got cleaned up as best I could in the reduced amount of time. I planned to drop off Yefim and Ray at Joey’s and go from there straight to Gail’s. I towel-washed my face in the sink, trying not to look too hard at the features of my weathered mug. Gail said the wrinkles around my mouth and the crow’s feet at my eyes gave me “movie star character,” but I thought they just made me look prematurely old. Not that I cared much about my appearance. I had never been a lady’s man in the looks department and, as I aged, I knew it mattered less and less.

I wound my way through stacks of baggage until I reached the closet. I pushed aside uniforms, costumes, and vintage finery until I reached my own clothes, and selected a charcoal gray suit with olive pinstripes. I heard a tumbling thud from the living room, followed by a clattering like loose coins rolling across a tile floor.

“I’m all right,” Ray called from the living room. “Some of your cases took a tumble.”

I didn’t reply. Just dug around until I found some clean dress socks and shoes that weren’t dull enough to need a shine. Picked out a silk tie that was soft as clouds. It was one of six dozen found inside a lacquered salesman’s trunk I won at an auction last year. That had been a good bid; I’d never have to buy a tie again for the rest of my life.

I knotted it, and someone pounded at the front door. Pushing my way past luggage towers, I returned to the living room, where Ray scoffed. I answered the door, prepared to feel the embarrassment of someone else seeing my place for the first time. The man who answered was old and wiry with the biggest shock of white hair I’d ever seen, overlaying his head like an enormous cotton ball. He was pale, and shook slightly, and barely looked around.

“Mr. Charlie Stewart?” he asked.

“That’s me. You must be Yefim.”

“Yes. I’m very excited to hear those records again.”

“Come in,” I said. I motioned at Ray. “That’s Ray. Ray, Yefim.”

Ray was suddenly all smiles. He snapped his fingers and plunged his hand into Yefim’s. “Nice to meet you,” he said.

Yefim returned the handshake but barely acknowledged him.

“You listened to the music, yes?” Yefim asked me.

I nodded. “I heard it.”

“Has he come to you? The man with the beard?”

My chest tightened, as if a vice wrapped around my ribs and pressed in.

“Who’s that?” Ray asked. “Another dealer?”

I flashed him the ‘not now’ look.

“Yes, I think I’ve glimpsed a bearded man. What does it mean?” I asked.

“Hasn’t he told you?” Yefim answered. “Or are you not listening to him?”

“That doesn’t exactly answer my question.”

“It means there’s room for all of us.”

My chest tightened more, if that were possible. I thought of the dreams of people grouped around a campfire in the snow. “You’ve got it worse than Joey.”

“He can save you also, if you let him.”

“Who are you talking about?” My voice rose. “Who is the man with the beard?”

“It is Rasputin. But I think you knew that already. He’s returned as prophesized.”

The vice, tighter. There was barely room in my chest to inhale.

“The world is ending soon, Mr. Stewart. Rasputin is here to save us, if you accept him.”

“Wow,” Ray said and snapped his fingers. “Rasputin?”

Yefim nodded gravely.

“You’ve got records by the Russian seer, Rasputin?”

“Mr. Stewart’s friend has them. He is the doorway.”

Ray smiled for all the wrong reasons. “Then what are we doing up here?”

Staying safe, I wanted to respond. But I knew I had to move; it was time to go to Joey’s.

“What are you going to do with the records?” I asked Yefim.

“The same as anyone would do. Listen to them.”

Suddenly my plan seemed foolish, the strategy of a child who breaks a cookie jar and tries to hide it in the nearest cupboard drawer. I would never be able to contain the mess just by passing it along for someone else to use.

“I hear it playing now,” Yefim added. “Below us…”

I thought of the three records that Vic passed to Yefim. Vic had said: “My friend says these records are cursed. They’re like reading a demon’s diary; they make you sick if you listen. They don’t play like normal records. You noticed that already. And Yefim…he says they don’t end.”

I wondered how long Yefim had listened to those records while they were in his possession. Did he play them for hours before realizing they never ended? Was he more infected with it than any of us? The music seemed like a germ. Once it contaminated you, you might not feel its effects for some time…but when the germ incubates, it infects the listener and spreads into madness. Yefim must have understood after listening that they were cursed and returned them to Vic, but since then the voices grew in his head, calling to him to listen again.

“Below us…” Yefim repeated. He cocked his head, listening to a song I could not hear. He walked out the door.

What should I do? Stop him by force? The records would still play, and Joey would still listen. I decided my original child’s strategy would have to do for now. If Yefim took them, at least that would buy me some time. At least the records would be out of the building and, hopefully, their effect diminished on us.

I followed Yefim down the hall to the elevator, and Ray trailed after us, writing in his clipboard.

“I’ll help you get the records,” I told Yefim. “But you take them far, far away from here.”

He didn’t respond, and the elevator doors opened to take us inside.

I heard that cursed music as soon as we reached Joey’s floor. I imagined a rider on a horse galloping to me from the distance. Every time I heard the records playing, the rider drew closer and closer, great puffs of dust filling the sky behind. Only that rider wasn’t coming to greet me—he was coming to run me down.

Yefim seemed almost to be shaking, like he was overjoyed to hear the music. Ray made a face like someone farted in his ear and told him it was a lullaby.

I had sensed those records were bad news ever since I first listened to them, but now I began to feel genuinely scared. It was harder each time I heard it not to just settle down and let it carry me off to whatever dream world it sang about. I fought the temptation and led the others to Joey’s door, thinking: let Yefim take the records away; please just let him take them all right now. That was followed by the thought that if Yefim didn’t buy every one of the records, I would snatch them with me on the way out. Just grab-and-dash, break them over my knee, and apologize later.

We walked down the hall, and I saw the building’s superintendent, Horace Wetzel, standing in a daze outside Joey’s apartment. His craggy face hung slack and tilted toward the door as if listening to what occurred on the other side.

“Wetzel, what’re you doing?” I asked.

He looked at me confused, the expression of someone waking from a deep slumber.

“I got a complaint,” he said. “A complaint…but someone called me…someone I couldn’t see…”

“So you settled for eavesdropping?”

His mind seemed to clear a bit, and his face flushed. “I run this building. I can go where I damn well please.”

“I don’t think nosing around is in your job description—”

“You got a problem, pay your rent on time. Then we’ll talk,” he interrupted.

He turned about-face and marched up the hall toward the elevators. His head kept twitching to the side, though, as he passed, spasms like the aftershock of a particularly violent sneeze.

I knocked at Joey’s door, knowing he wouldn’t answer. I turned the knob and the door opened, so I entered, followed by Yefim and Ray.

The first thing I saw was that Joey wasn’t alone. There were several other men and women sitting with him in a circle on the floor. The Scandinavian, Martin, sat hunched over, arms extended palms-up, as if offering worship to Joey. Next to him, Martin’s wife tilted her face to the ceiling, eyes rolled back. The woman across the hall with blue hair was there, swaying back-and-forth, as were a couple other people who looked familiar, but I didn’t know by name.

The man with the beard was there, too…Rasputin. This time he did not vanish when I looked upon him.

He stood behind Joey, and a strange effect caused me to rub at my eyes. The room seemed blurry, as if a fine mist hung in the air. I looked again and saw Rasputin was also within Joey, like a spirit rising from its mortal body or, perhaps, like a form within a form, like those little Russian nesting dolls, in which a wooden figure is stacked inside another wooden figure.

The chanting was louder than ever before. The record player must have been at full volume and everyone in the room sang with it. That sound was hideous: squealing, crashing, scratching instruments that just played over and over, overlaid by the recorded voices. Yefim pushed past me to kneel with the others and began to repeat the words I now knew so well.

Vkhodite. Vkhodite. Vkhodite.

Ne zaderzhivat’sya v kholodnyy i temnyy, ho prisoyedinit’sya ko mne v svet navsegda.

“Christ almighty, it’s cold in here,” Ray said softly. Then he gasped. “Is that…snow?”

And then I realized why the room seemed blurry. There was a fine veil of snowflakes floating in the air. The baggage stacked against the walls had thin lines of frost hanging off the edges. On top of the nearest stack lay the empty leather suitcase with ivory handle that Joey had won, the case that had contained the record player. Everything in the room seemed paler than it should have been.

Yefim turned to us. “Come in,” he said. A puff of fog exhaled with his breath. “Do not linger in the cold.”

He returned to chanting, and I felt shammed. Yefim was never planning on buying the records; he just feigned interest in order to find out where they were. He wanted to hear them again, to join with the others.

“Charlie,” Ray said and tugged at my elbow. “What’s going on?”

“It’s those records.”

I looked again at Joey and stepped closer to him. I was wrong in thinking Rasputin was “within” him. It was the other way around; Joey was within Rasputin and fading away. I saw Joey only as if he were an afterimage. Rasputin’s eyes glowed like burning coal briquettes, and they shone through the veil of snow. Steam lifted off his shoulders. If we were in a snowy forest, it was Rasputin who would be the campfire that we circled for warmth.

“Joey,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

The group chanted louder.

I needed to turn the music off, to set them free. I pushed past Joey’s neighbors and reached for the gramophone playing in their midst. Rasputin watched me and made no effort to interfere. I should have been leery when a thin smile crossed his face, but I moved forward in my charge with the adrenaline-fueled fortitude of the sanctimonious.

I took hold of the record player’s arm and lifted. It took no more than a second, and it was easy. The music stopped and, by proxy, so did the chanters. It was as if the spell were broken immediately, and the room turned dead-silent. I was already imagining squeezing my hands around that bearded lunatic’s throat.

Of course there had to be a reason he was known as the ‘Mad Monk’; I should have realized he kept some sort of hoodoo up his sleeves in order to skip across time and materialize out of a record player.

The player’s brass arm turned fluid in my fingers and moved like a wet snake, lashing out with its needle, slicing the palm of my hand. A bright red line opened across my skin, and I released it with a cry. The arm became solid again and dropped back exactly into the position from where I had lifted it. The music—and the chanting—resumed.

Rasputin now spoke, and licks of flame shot from his mouth. “Come in. Do not linger in the cold.”

An icy wind blew over me, and Rasputin’s robes billowed with a poof. I felt light-headed listening as the chanting continued, but it sounded distant, the volume turned down. The air became fuzzier, and I wrapped my arms across my chest, shivering under the thin pinstriped suit.

Why had I come into the snow dressed like this?

Pine trees bristled thick in all directions, and I knew I would be lost if I tried to make my way amongst them by myself. In the distance, on mountaintops, were fairy-tale castles with pink and turquoise spires. The moonlight caused them to glow. Snowflakes settled on my nose, and I felt myself grow numb. It was an effort of great magnitude to lift my legs and move, though there was nowhere I could go. I stood in a clearing with a campfire at its center. The fire was wrapped in robes and a beard.

Vkhodite.

Rasputin rose into the air and held his hands up parallel to each other, about a foot apart, as if supporting an invisible rod at each end. Between his hands, the universe shifted. I saw flames roll across the cosmos, consuming worlds and stars and gods. The infinitesimality of existence consumed my thoughts, much as the flames consumed eternity. I knew not if this were a reflection of the past, or of things to come, or how I fit in; only that I was as insubstantial in its effect as a shadow is in a lightless cave. If I held poison in my hand, I would have drunk it; had I a gun, I would have put it to my head. The despair was a blanket wrapped over my senses, so that I suffocated in its many folds.

Vkhodite.

Then I knew. He showed me these things so I would join him. He offered an escape, a freedom from suffering, a chance to find new purpose as one of his Misbegottens. I would never again be alone, never shiver in the snow of life. I would never die. It was only my soul he would take, a pittance for his gift of immortality, and I would play on and on through him. If only I would stop fighting and chant along to the music…

I woke to Ray slapping my face. He wore a silver pinky ring in the shape of a horseshoe, and the edge of its band cut my cheek.

“Snap out of it,” he said and shook me like a ragdoll.

The temperature seemed to jump a hundred degrees. I went from standing in drifts of snow to leaning against Ray in the muggy early evening of Detroit summer.

“I gotta slap you again?” he asked.

Ray seemed blurry at first but soon drifted into focus. I spoke, and heard my voice sounded drugged. “No.”

“Thought you went loopy on me.”

“What happened?”

He let go of me. We stood on the sidewalk outside Les Deux Oies.

“You were talking to someone,” he said. “And then your voice just dropped off. You looked like you were sleepwalking, the way you moved, real sluggish and stiff. You sat on the floor with your friends and mumbled some weird words over and over.”

“Didn’t you feel it?” I asked.

“Yeah, I felt it. That’s why I left. I’ve been drunk enough to know when my senses are slipping away. I picked you up and carried you out.”

“They didn’t stop you?”

“The man with the beard said something, and the others looked like they might intervene, but you and I were closest to the door. I was quick and, once out, nobody followed.”

“Joey needs help.”

“He sure does. I don’t know what he’s gotten himself into. What were they doing up there? Looked like a group of commies praying to the devil. That’s some sick stuff.” Ray snapped his fingers.

“We’ve got to stop them.”

“You have a plan? I hope it don’t involve the police, ’cause they wouldn’t care. As long as it stays in the room, that’s a solid case of religious freedom. Maybe McCarthy was right all along. We’re being subverted by the pinkos. Ever since his censure, the liberals have been running the country.”

Vkhodite.

It sounded in my head, from far away, calling to me. Was the voice growing stronger the longer it went on? Or did its reach expand as more people sang along?

“But you saw it,” I said. “It’s like being brainwashed. And for God’s sake, it was snowing in there! Police or not, we have to go back, pull Joey out of the room, the same as you pulled me out. Then the others...”

“I don’t think you’re in a condition to do much of anything. You look like you died and thawed out.”

I felt it too. The hot evening air burned my cold skin. My joints ached, and my brain felt like Willie Mays used it for batting practice. But I persisted. “He’s my friend. I just...wasn’t prepared.”

“And you’re still not. You’re not thinking. What’re you going to do differently the next time you go up there?”

I couldn’t think of a thing.

Ray continued. “How long has Joey been up there with those records?”

“He’s been gettin’ an earful every day for the past week, trying to figure them out.”

“So a little while longer’s not going to change anything. We’ve got to take matters into our own hands, Charlie. We need weapons.”

“You’ve got a gun?”

“I was at Normandy. I’ve got a collection.”

“I didn’t know you were in the army.”

“Came back a goddamned war hero. Lot of good it does you after the headlines change.”

I was taken aback—the things you don’t know about your friends.

“So, what’s your plan?” I asked.

Ray started snapping fast. “Like I said, we need weapons. I have to go to my North Side shop; I’ve got some things in storage there. John’s working all night, taking inventory. I’ll bring him back with the guns. We could use another man.”

I was going to ask “Which John,” but I supposed it didn’t matter.

“We’ll regroup in the lobby,” Ray said. “I would bring you along, but I’ve only got a two-seater, and John doesn’t have a car. I think you need to rest up anyway.”

I was torn inside. I couldn’t let Joey rot away in his room any longer with that...thing. I wanted to get him now, but I felt faint, like I could topple over any moment and not get back up. Then again, was I lying to myself? Did I really want to go back up there to try to save Joey, or was I making up a reason to hear the music again, to let myself give up? I already felt lulled into a state of semi-hypnosis. The mind plays funny tricks sometimes, and I couldn’t trust my own reasoning.

“All right,” I conceded.

“You want me to help you back up to your room?” he asked.

“No, I need to get away, put some distance between myself and this building for awhile.”

“Don’t go far.”

“I’ve just got somewhere I have to check in at.”

Ray nodded. “We’ll do it, Charlie, don’t you worry. We’ll storm them, just like at Normandy.”

“What time?” I asked.

“What time is what?”

“What time should we meet back in the lobby?”

He stared at me, and his head twitched just barely. “Yeah, in the lobby. Um, three hours. Meet you here in the lobby...three hours, at ten o’clock.”

I felt a brush of déjà vu, like I was experiencing something again, something that had occurred already. The air seemed a little colder, a little darker. Or possibly it was just the sun beginning to fall.

“Maybe I should follow you,” I said, and I knew it was my fear working me over; I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t have many lifelines to grasp, and he was the nearest. If something happened to Ray, my odds of beating this situation would slip even worse. “It could be better if we stay together. I’ll just drive separate.”

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

Ray looked at me and blinked. “No, I gotta go. Can’t keep watching in the rearview for you. We’ll meet back in the lobby.”

I noticed he stopped snapping.

“In Normandy,” he said. “Normandy...”

“Ray—”

“See you, Charlie.” He turned about-face and left.

I was left alone on the sidewalk. The streetlamp across the street turned on, then fizzled and went out. I walked the other way, around to the side of the building where tenants parked, still feeling muddled in the mind. The longer I was in the shadow of the apartments, I realized the honest truth was that I did want to go back to Joey’s room and surrender to the song. I thought of my vision in Rasputin’s world and the difficulty of moving each leg; that was how I felt now, as if I struggled to reach my car through a bank of snow. But if the others in Joey’s room had given in, it was only because they hadn’t been there from the beginning. They didn’t see what it did to us, the way I watched Joey fade away. Maybe they believed this was a grand venture, a chance to discover the meaning of existence, but I didn’t buy it. It was the devil’s deal and a kick in the ass.

I made it to my car. I opened the door and slid behind the steering wheel. Slipped the key into the ignition and…nothing. The engine gurgled and belched but wouldn’t roll over. I turned the key again to the same effect. I knew my transmission had been going out, but this was something different. The starter? Carburetor? Rasputin’s effort? All I knew was the Crestline wasn’t going anywhere tonight. How the world seems to conspire when desperation nips at your heels…

Vkhodite.

I needed to get away. I sensed Rasputin—that thing—reaching down to me from the fourth floor, his arms extending like wisps of flame. I jumped out of the car and ran back around the building, hoping to see Ray before he drove off. He was nowhere in sight, so I just kept on running, all the way down Sanford Street, past its closed shops and darkened windows and old vagabonds sleeping in the alleyways.

A taxi drove slowly in the other direction eyeing me: a middle-aged man running—now holding the stitch in his side and gasping for breath—down the street, dressed in a flapping suit and shoes in which one sole began to crack off. I waved him over and, fortunately, he didn’t think I was too crazed. I gave him directions, and he drove me to Gail’s.

It was after eight o’clock by the time I knocked on her front door. Gail’s bungalow was an architectural turn-of-the-century wonder, cramming five split-level rooms and a kitchenette into only a thousand square feet of space. It might have been small, but Gail’s home was sharp. Each room had its own theme and color palette; she decorated to match with the season’s fashions. She even let me keep a room so I’d feel more welcome during visits. Of course, it never felt like “my” room without luggage littering under every step.

Knocking at her door reminded me of Joey; I rapped for half a minute without any response. I had a key to her house the same as I did for him, but didn’t want to let myself inside if she was fuming.

Finally, she answered. I tried not to look too hard at the streaks of mascara dried under her eyes.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” I said. “I’m in some kind of mess.”

Her eyes went big and pink lips parted like a blooming rose. “Charlie, what’s wrong with you?”

“It’s a long story, dear. It’s Joey; I don’t know what to do.”

“No, it’s you,” she said. “You look sick. You’re paler than a ghost.”

“I am?”

“Lord, I can almost see through your skin.”

The tension of the last several hours caught up to me, and I felt faint, like I would collapse right on her doorstep.

“Come in,” she said. “You need to lie down.”

She led me to the living room couch, and I sank down so quick, I thought I would fall through the floor.

“I’ll get you some water,” she said and vanished into the kitchenette.

When I woke, another hour had passed. Gail wrapped a couple blankets over me while I slept.

“You’re freezing,” she said.

“I’ll be all right.”

“I just called Dr. Adams, but he’s out on another call. A nurse said to bring you into the hospital.”

“It’s only the snow,” I said. “The snow’s making me cold.”

“What snow?”

I blanched…why had I said that? The snow was a dream...

Vkhodite.

It was a record, playing over and over again. That’s why it kept repeating, like an album that got scratched; it played the same phrases in a loop, repeating through the disc’s groove without moving forward. That’s where I was, trapped inside the record’s cycle.

I had to turn it off.

Gail stroked my forehead. The warmth of her touch thawed my chill. “Charlie, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

Had I drifted away again?

I bolstered myself to focus. “I—I’m hearing things…seeing things…that are real.”

That didn’t make any sense at all. She cocked her head and made a face, waiting for more. I finally spat it out, blunt as a brick. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” she repeated, and her eyes narrowed as if she were contemplating some underlying meaning to the question. “You mean like spirits that haunt our homes?”

Gail and I had spoken late into the night on many subjects, but the topics of death and religion were not ones we broached in-depth. I knew she affirmed Protestant leanings, as myself, but hadn’t visited a church in decades. Perhaps religion, like death, was for the morbid.

“Yes, a presence after death,” I replied.

“I think we have a soul, some sort of residue that transcends elsewhere, but I don’t really believe in invisible people that remain, wandering amongst us.”

“Gail,” I said, and paused before continuing. “There’s a ghost in Les Deux Oies. It’s hurting people, and I think it’s taking them away to another place. It’s touched me…it’s inside me somehow, and it’s trying to take me, too.”

I thought she would step back and roll her eyes and say how the hoarding in my apartment is truly driving me bonkers. Instead, she kept stroking my forehead and kissed my brow as her fingers passed over.

“What can I do to help?” she asked.

“You believe me?”

“If there’s something affecting you, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right.”

I don’t know why, but I always seemed to judge myself more harshly than Gail judged me. My own conscience constantly thought the worst of myself, and it manifested itself onto her. She was the understanding one between us, the rational and considerate partner in our relationship. Even when I was late to see her or pulled a boneheaded move, I knew she would be inwardly disappointed, but she never made as big a deal of it as I did in my own mind. I got into the habit of thinking ill of people—even her—and then, every time when I braced myself for negativity, she amazed me with sympathy and understanding.

“I—I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Tell me what happened.”

And so I did. I recited everything from that previous Thursday night at the baggage auction where Joey won the record player. I described the chanting we heard and my conversations with Vic, trying to figure out what the music meant. I told her how I watched Joey grow wan, until I saw him last as nothing more than a shadow within Rasputin. I explained the music’s effect on anyone who heard it, even Joey’s neighbors who were hapless enough to be within earshot of his room. I spoke of the dreams I had and the impossible changes in his room, as if it transformed into another land.

I told Gail everything and, again, braced myself for her rebuke.

“Why on God’s green earth are you still living there, if you think a curse is taking over the building?” she asked. “Just leave.”

That wasn’t the response I expected, though it seemed an obvious question to be asked.

“I believe it’s like an infection,” I said after careful thought. “It’s a seed planted in my brain, and it won’t be dislodged regardless of how far away I travel. I’ve been fighting it, but he’s in my dreams, he’s in my head, whispering. I’ve got to turn it off, forever.”

Gail made a face like she was going to cry, then it seemed to change to a laugh, before returning to the potential waterworks. “Oh, God, the messes you get into, Charlie.”

“This is hardly something you can plan on—”

She interrupted, as if I hadn’t spoken. “If only I’d talked to you a couple weeks ago.”

I didn’t like the sound of that remark...a phrase like that could lead to a whole slew of problematic scenarios.

I asked anyway. “About what?”

“You seem so distracted when we’re together, like your mind is somewhere else.”

I knew better than to disagree with that.

She continued. “I didn’t want to bring it up if it wasn’t going to happen, but now it has, and I wish I’d have discussed it with you since the very beginning.”

“What, Gail? I’m feeling crazy enough without you dragging up something else.”

“Geoff Van Duyn made me a job offer to oversee onsite expansion of a new Rockwell’s. I’m moving to New York City.”

I was devastated. No, I was crushed. All the building fear and distress was a weight so great, it felt as if I crawled on concrete while a giant foot squashed me from above. And now here I sat, literally dying, and my girlfriend says she’s leaving me. Though I’d always expected it, I wasn’t prepared for that stab of pain that suddenly made all the other pain seem as inconsequential as a scratch on the thumbnail.

“I’m sorry,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“I want you to come with me,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Charlie, I know how happy you are in Detroit. You’ve got your friends, your collections. But what’s your future? You’re struggling with something every time I see you. My relocation will be paid for and I’ll be making good money, more than I need. It’s a chance to start over for both of us…together.”

My mind reeled, and I couldn’t determine if it was Rasputin’s curse knocking me or what Gail just said. “That’s so…sudden.”

“I know, Charlie. But sometimes when your train comes to station, you’ve got to be ready on the platform, suitcase in hand.”

“Is that why you brought me to dinner with Van Duyn?”

“I wanted you to meet him. The promotion was a possibility, something rumored about that I was in the running for. He made me the offer today. I was planning on telling you over dinner tonight…under better circumstances.”

“Congratulations.” I wasn’t sure of what else to say.

“I should have told you what it entailed earlier,” she said. “But it was just a rumor, and I didn’t want to get our hopes up, or make it seem like I was some girl suckered by daydreams.”

“Gail, your timing—”

“Like I said, I wish I would have discussed this a couple weeks ago, when I first heard about it. Maybe you would have been packing your clothes instead of running around at those auctions. Maybe this thing never would have happened.”

Though I appreciated her stance, I doubted I would have skipped on an auction even if I was in the middle of packing.

“We can talk about it later,” I said, though I didn’t know how much “later” I had. Cold sweat dripped down my temples like melting frost, and I shivered.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I even told you about the job when you’ve got your own problems. I believe you about this haunting, but it’s hard to put into perspective, just something I never imagined anyone would actually get tangled up with. I hoped that moving would wipe the slate clean, all our problems taken care of. But there’s always a hitch, isn’t there?”

I was in fear for my life, and right now all I felt was guilt for burdening her with my woes. My eyes rolled back, and I sensed as if I was about to pass out again…

“Charlie?” Gail shook me and patted my face.

I did pass out.

“How long was I gone?” I asked. I sensed Rasputin’s presence, but he wasn’t alone. I heard Joey call to me as well: vkhodite.

“Just a few minutes. You’re sick, Charlie. I want to help you with all this, but you can barely stay awake. You need to go to the hospital. If what you say is true—you’re infected with some sort of ghost’s touch—there’s no telling what hideous illness you’ve contracted.”

“Hospitals won’t help. I’ve got to get back and take care of this now. I’m meeting Ray at the apartments. He’s got a plan.”

“What’s his big plan?”

I certainly didn’t want to tell her we were going in there for a stick-em-up. “We’re going to turn the record player off.”

“That’s it? You defeat the ghost by turning off the record player? If it’s that easy, why don’t I go over there and do it for you? You’re too sick to do anything but sleep.”

“No, Gail. You can’t go in there. Hearing the music is what makes you sick.”

“Wear ear plugs.”

The simplicity of her declaration made me feel like a little kid being told that two pounds of turds don’t fit in a one-pound box. It was too simple, too obvious, to do anything but make sense. Then again, nothing about those records made sense. Maybe ear plugs wouldn’t work—the ghost would slip right on through the rubber. Besides that, I already heard the music in my head even when it wasn’t around. But I knew, too, the closer I was in its presence, and the more I listened to Rasputin’s chants, the greater effect it had on me. The ear plugs, at least, would have to slow down that effect.

“I knew there was a reason I loved you,” I said.

“What’s that reason? My common sense? What about my support of your crazy ways, and my compassion and cooking and wit?”

“And extraordinary beauty,” I added.

“What don’t I do for you, Charlie Stewart?” She pinched the inside of my thigh.

“Stop it, I’m near an invalid!” I cried out with a giggle. The stress and fear and sickness passed for a second, just a brief moment in which the sun popped over the horizon and melted that crushing pressure on my back. Then the sun winked out, and the pressure and fear and everything else crashed back into place.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

She looked at me and nodded. “I’m glad I got to see you.”

“I tried calling earlier.”

“I knew it was you. Sorry I didn’t answer. I thought if I picked up you would cancel on dinner.”

“I was going to.”

She smiled, but it was a pitiful, sad look, the expression of foreboding and acceptance that whatever was to happen would probably be for the worst. “I’ll get those ear plugs for you. The neighbor’s dogs have been keeping me up at night. I guess I won’t be sleeping tonight anyway.”

Gail went into the other room, and I tried imagining life without her. I couldn’t. I knew she was right, that I’d grown dependent on her to keep me sane. She was the one constant in my life, like going to the track and knowing she was the winning bet every single race. Just being in Gail’s presence relieved my worries, and the sound of her voice warmed me with joy. If I was to be taken away by Rasputin, like Joey, I had to make sure she didn’t follow. I wanted Gail as uninvolved and distant as possible. I hoped she’d have the life she deserved in New York, and I knew it was a long stretch to even consider me being a part of it, given the condition I was in. I know how hokey it sounds but, regardless of what would happen, I just wanted her to be happy.

She returned into the room, and I thought of the dramatic final scenes I’d seen in movies like Gone With the Wind and Casablanca, those “good-byes” that stain your memories forever with tears. I wanted my good-bye to have meaning.

Instead, I planted my face in my hands. “Can you give me a ride back home?”