Firetale (33 page)

Martha or Demeter? He struggled
to recognize the girl in his dreams, and when
he realized, with horror, that
he couldn’t, he woke up with heaviness in his chest. Greg was
afraid to fall asleep.

Dreams torment
you?

“
You know they do.”

Soon all will
end.

“
Yes.”

Are you happy?

“
I don’t know.”

Why?

“
I don’t know if you will
stay.”

I have nowhere to
go.

“
I do not know if I want you to
stay.”

Why?

“
Because of you, I think Martha
is still around. That she’s not dead, and will return one
day.”

She
’s not dead, she lives in
me.

“
Sounds like a line from a cheap
romantic comedy.”

Her memories, her
emotions
—all
of them are in me.

“
This is the problem. She is you.
But you’re not her. Every day I speak with you and don’t know who
I’m talking to. It’s driving me crazy.”

Greg, her love for you has
set me free.

“
Hers?”

I do not
understand.

“
Martha wasn’t demionis. She was
a human. And when you took her body, she became something more. And
I loved her, what she was with you. And now she’s dead, and all I
have left of her is you. And I don’t know what part of you I loved
as Martha, and if there’s still a part of you that loves
me.”

You don
’t want me to leave you?

“
Devil’s fuck, I don’t know!
While you’re inside, it seems to me that she is there, she’s with
me. But what happens when you get a new body?”

You can live a normal life,
control your
own body.

“
Yes, yes, but I will no longer
have her. All her memories, her emotions, they will be with you in
another body.”

If I remain in you, Greg,
you
will
die. And what will happen to me is unknown. Perhaps I will
disappear. I’m not as strong as I was a thousand years
ago.

“
I understand.”

Then we both have only
one
hope.

When the sun rose, almost all
the
members
of the circus slept under the roof of an abandoned factory. Only
Lazarus, relying on help from one of the ogre brothers, came to say
goodbye to Greg, Pietro, and Ino.

“
I don’t like long goodbyes.
Especially because I hope to see you again within one day, maybe
two. Four of you.”

“
Don’t worry, Mr. Bernardius.
Everything will be fine,” Pietro promised.

“
I have no doubt, my friend.” He
turned to Ino. “Please do not tease him. Safe trip.”

During the first hour on the road, a heavy
silence hung over the car. The archivist was studying a folio he
had brought with him, and Greg looked gloomily out the window. They
rode to some lonely spot that, with drizzle and the gray light of
an overcast morning, seemed even more forbidding. Ino, sitting
behind the wheel, decided to break the silence.

“
I always knew the girl was
special,” said the witch, looking at Greg in the front mirror.
“Everyone felt close to her in a special way.”

Greg looked at Ino and said
nothing.

“
Demeter, as a witch, I always
believed in you—in nature, in the Earth, the planet itself, more
than in God or the Devil,” Ino said with fervor, for which she got
an indignant look from Pietro. The archivist looked like an old
lady, in front of which there was something obscene.

“
She is grateful to you,” said
Greg for the goddess. “Thanks to those like you, she’s still alive.
Albeit weak.”

The witch looked back at Greg in the
mirror, her eyes shining like those of a girl who admired an elder
sister or a close friend.

“
I wanted to ask you something
else,” Ino began hesitantly. “I’ve always believed, if not in
Demeter herself, but in all that she represents—the ground, trees,
nature. And if you’re looking for a new body for her …”

The witch did not have time to finish.
Greg’s face ceased to express any emotion, and when he spoke, his
mouth poured out a deep and melodic female voice in the ancient
language. The witch listened attentively, in a vain attempt to
understand the words of the goddess.

“
What did she say?” she
reluctantly asked a giggling Pietro.

“
I must say, I would not refuse
to look at it!” chuckled the archivist until Ino punched him in the
shoulder.

“
Oh!” Pietro exclaimed in
surprise.

“
Just translate it,” Ino
hissed.

“
She said she would not take your
body.”

“
But I give it
voluntarily!”

“
That’s not the reason. For a god
to feel comfortable in an avatar, he must oust the old personality.
Only your physical body would remain. For your friends, relatives,
and loved ones, you would be dead, and your personality would not
come back to you, even if the god decides to leave the avatar. So,
according to Demeter, to my regret, what you suggest is not a gift
but your own suicide. So she must decline your offer.” Pietro
looked amused.

“
Maybe it’s better just to watch
the road,” suggested Greg irritably. And Ino and Pietro
shamefacedly hushed up.

They continued to drive in
almost complete silence till evening.
The landscape outside the window was so
dull, plain, and monotonous that Greg began to think they were on
another planet, where even the trees and oncoming cars were
considered a curiosity. They drove according to Pietro’s
instructions, and the archivist swore as he checked an old crumpled
map covered with creases.

“
How old is that shit?” snapped
Ino. “We’re already lost.”

“
This was issued in 1947,”
Pietro, stung, had to admit. “Perhaps there are no new roads. But
we only need the old ones.”

The archivist and the witch
continued debat
ing the need for new maps, until Greg, who was paying more
attention to the road than to his squabbling friends, tapped on the
window.

“
There,” the magician said,
pointing to a silhouette away from the road. Against the evening
sky above the thick trees, two tall spires were clearly
visible.

“
This is it!” the archivist
squealed happily, and Ino, with relief, drove to where Greg
pointed.

“
At one time, this hospital was
one of the most advanced,” Pietro said. “Here experimental and
sometimes extreme methods of treatment were used—hydrotherapy,
insulin therapy, lobotomies, and LSD.”

Ino looked horrified.
“Treatment? Some
would call it torture!”

Turning off the road, they
moved
onto a
wide dirt track that looped through the trees. Greg frowned at the
litter covering the road. Here and there lay empty bags of chips,
beer cans, paper, and plastic bags.

“
They don’t try hard to impress
new guests,” Ino said with a smile, glancing at the
archivist.

“
Pietro, are you sure this is the
place we’re looking for?” Greg asked.

“
Yes,” the tubby man drawled, but
he seemed uncertain. “This is it.”

When the car
rounded the last turn, all
doubts were dispelled.

A cinder path led through a wide
lawn with flowerbeds and rickety benches to a long five-story
building with two wings crowned with the spires Greg had noticed
from the road. Th
e third spire, shorter than the other two, towered above
the arch in the middle of the main entrance, decorated with a clock
with twisted hands. Piles of garbage spotted the lawn even more
frequently than on the driveway to the building. Red brick walls
were covered with obscenities and the names of bands, and some of
the building’s wide rectangular windows were completely devoid of
glass.

“
It doesn’t appear that the
hospital is still operating,” Greg murmured. In his voice were
fatigue, disappointment, and shock.

“
Damn it, if not for Lazarus’s
ban on all electrical devices, we could have Googled it first,” Ino
lamented.

Pietro looked like a child whose
Christmas gift had been
snatched away from under his nose. “This can’t
be,” he whispered.

“
We can at least inspect the
building,” suggested Greg.

“
And what’re you gonna find in
this dump?” Ino snapped.

From inside the building, they
heard voices, glass crunching,
and the sound of crashing. A moment later, a
company of teens tumbled onto the porch, choking with laughter.
They did not immediately notice Greg and the others, and when Ino
got their attention by loudly clearing her throat, the teens almost
jumped.

“
Hi,” the witch said cheerfully
and waved.

“
Ahem, hello,” said a shaggy boy
about 19 years old, the eldest in the company.

“
What are you doing here?” Ino
asked, maintaining her cheerful tone.

A ginger-haired girl standing behind the
boy was about to reply, but the shaggy hair spoke first.

“
We don’t have to answer them,
they’re not cops,” hissed shaggy to his girlfriend. Three other
teenagers, two boys and a girl, heard the eldest’s whisper and
relaxed a bit.

“
No, we’re not cops,” said Ino.
“We were just driving past and wanted to see the house.”

One of the guys nodded toward Greg, who
was pale and kept his hands under his armpits to stop shivering.
“Yeah, yeah. A lot of guys like him strolling around.”

Ino did not understand.
“Like
him?”

“
What’s wrong with you, mumsie?
Like this doper.” The teen nodded again and pointed to Greg. “Since
the hospital closed, they gather here. Come here to shoot up, so no
one sees.”

“
It was closed a long time ago?”
asked Pietro.

The shaggy
hair looked at the archivist as
if trying to decide if he was worthy of a response.

“
Fourteen years ago,” said the
girl behind the shaggy one, and got a disapproving look from her
boyfriend.

“
What did they do with the
patients?” Greg asked.

“
Some were discharged, others
were sent to other psychiatric hospitals,” said the second
girl.

“
There’s one left,” mumbled the
redhead.

“
Left? Here?” Greg asked
doubtfully.

“
Yes, some crazy Indian,” said
one of the guys, grinning. “They say he was discharged, but he kept
coming back here.”

“
Right here, in the ruins?” Ino
asked.

“
Yeah,” said the shaggy one. “He
says that the voices in his head told him to come back.”

Pietro brightened like a child
who was promised to get his Christmas gift back.
“Voices?”

“
Yes, he’s crazy. They say there
were a lot like him here, crazy people hearing voices.”

“
A dime a dozen,” confirmed the
second girl.

“
You said the Indian
says
—not
said
—that he had a voice in his head. So is he still alive?”
Greg asked the eldest kid.

“
And kicking. We see him every
time we come here.”

Greg and Ino tried not to show
their surprise, and Pietro turned his head, looking from the witch
to the magician and back, as if expecting that they
would embrace him
and thank him profusely.

“
You probably have to go home,
kids,” said Ino playfully.

“
You’re not our mother,” shaggy
said defiantly.

The five teenagers remained on the porch
for a few moments, as if implying that they would go home when they
saw fit, and then hesitantly went down the porch steps.

“
Hey, guys. Anyone else here?”
Ino asked them.

“
No one. Only that Indian,” said
the redheaded girl.

“
Well, nice,” Ino said. “Here’s
something for you to brighten the way home.” The witch found a
bottle with bright red liquid and threw it to the shaggy, who
caught it on the fly. The teens surrounded their leader,
whispering, trying to figure out what the stranger had given him,
and then they went away, occasionally turning back to look at Ino
and the others.

“
Not sure they’re allowed to
drink alcohol,” said Greg, after the teens disappeared around the
bend of the road.

“
It’s not alcohol, my boy. But
tomorrow they will not remember anything about tonight. We do not
want them to gab, eh?” retorted Ino.

“
Let’s just find this Indian,”
said Pietro.

On the inside, the abandoned asylum looked
as unwelcome as it did from the outside. Graffiti adorned even the
lofty ceilings, and Greg could not imagine what tricks teenagers
used to climb so high. The wide ground floor lobby was covered with
fragments of leather chairs, and in the center was an old piano,
the keys of which were stuck to each other. In general, the inside
of the asylum was more like an expensive hotel of the early 40s
than an ugly place for using experimental treatment techniques on
humans.