Claws of Mercy
Natalie Yacobson

Translator Natalia Lilienthal

© Natalie Yacobson, 2024

© Natalia Lilienthal, translation, 2024

ISBN 978-5-0062-1722-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

A gloomy hospital

“Here they heal” read the sign on the gate. For some reason, he thought it read “Here they kill.”

In any case, the backwoods place boasted a splendid attraction. If only an infirmary could be called a landmark? Probably, since the building itself resembles a palace with marble columns. That’s what museums look like, not hospitals. The walls themselves reek of luxury and antiquity. Seven ominous angelic statues are perched on the edges of the staircase, as if in mockery of doctors who cannot save human lives unless the higher powers allow them to. Ruslan saw drops of blood on the wings of one of the angels.

“Do you believe that a statue can come to life and crush someone with its own hands?”

“More like wings,” Ruslan didn’t realize whether he was joking or answering his colleague quite seriously. Dima had been pestering him with questions since morning. His incessant chatter drowned out even the radio in the car. Together they drove to a place that was so remote that it was time for legends to be written about it. Some rich man had thought of building a huge palace complex in the middle of a swampy area and wild forests, and they, two young guys, for lack of better work, had to go to the construction site in the middle of nowhere. It is equally far from Moscow and Siberia. You won’t find these places on a map.

“Yesterday, a friend called me from here and said that a construction worker had been crushed by a marble statue,” Dima persisted. “It was just on the porch of the local hospital.”

“Is it being repaired?”

“To fix something… probably… he was crushed by a fallen angel statue. Can you imagine? What a situation! I can’t believe it!”

The stretcher was indeed carrying a dead body wrapped in bloody sheets. Ruslan thought it was a dead man. Why are they bringing it to the hospital? There must be a morgue inside.

A slender girl in a nurse’s uniform flashed through the archway of the entrance. Her white coat also had blood droplets on it. Although it was now a gray overcast day, but it seemed that the girl brought with her the breath of night. It was probably because of her blue-black hair and equally dark eyebrows and eyelashes. She rather resembled a fairy of the night than a nurse. Ruslan was suddenly drawn to her so strongly that he forgot all his business.

“Don’t look!”

The nearby voice was menacing and metallic. Dima was definitely silent. It felt as if this one of the statues had spoken to him.

How could a statue fall at night and crush someone? After all, all the pedestals were occupied, and therefore none of the statues had broken. There was no way the statue could have fallen without breaking.

It seemed to Ruslan that all the marble angels were squinting ominously at him.

“Let’s go, or we’ll be late,” Dima said hurriedly.

Ruslan pressed the gas. The pedal clanked unpleasantly under his foot, as if it might break. The dark-haired nurse had already gone back inside the building. Or rather, someone had dragged her inside. It was a tall, swarthy man whose hands seemed clawed from afar.

Statues

“The tales here are horrible,” Dima was rattling on the road. “Ever since several villages disappeared, people have been saying all sorts of things.”

“They are about witches, about woodsmen, about mermaids in the swamp,” Ruslan said sarcastically. He didn’t believe in myths and tales. It was as silly as believing in horror movies or comic-book horror stories. Yes, there are many deserted kilometers of road, but there are no devils and sorcerers unless you make them up yourself. It is better to persistently press on the gas and enjoy the meters of asphalt left behind. The tires rustled gently on the road, which turned out to be flat. Probably recently repaired. No wonder if some oligarch had bought the land here to build on. Ruslan didn’t even know exactly who they were going to work for. It was a fact that the construction would take a long time, which meant that the salary would be secured for a long period of time.

He dozed off at the wheel. Immediately he dreamed he was approaching the doors of the palace, that is, the doors of the hospital. The full moon was shining. Its glare is on the statues. The beautiful brunette nurse is sitting on the stairs in front of the entrance, her lips bloody. She is holding something in her lap. From afar, it looks like someone’s severed head.

“Hey!”

Ruslan calls out to her, and she looks up. There’s darkness in her eyes.

“Be attentive!” Dima said. He helped, otherwise the car would have hit a tree.

How did you get off the road? Ruslan rubbed his eyes sleepily.

“You better get behind the rudder!” He rummaged through the glove compartment for medicine. His head was bursting with pain.

Dima willingly traded places with him. He’d just gotten his driver’s license, so there wouldn’t be any problems. Let him drive. Besides, there’s no one on the road. Even if they break the rules of the road, there’s no one to fine them. And even if someone kills them on the way, no one will find their bodies here. It’s all wild and deserted.

Well, why is he thinking dark thoughts? Is it the dreams that overexcited him? Or was it the gloomy facade of the hospital?

There was no medicine in the glove compartment. Where did the pack of pills go? Ruslan definitely had them with him. Probably he left it in his bag. It wasn’t a bag, but some kind of notebook in the back seat. Ruslan pulled it out. It was a black leather-bound notebook with some bizarre symbols stamped on the cover! It looks like pentagrams. What modern production can’t think of to attract customers! Ruslan often noticed notebooks with skulls and skeletons on the covers in the windows of stationery shops, and sometimes there were images of dark fairies and vampires. Gothic style was becoming popular.

“Is this yours?”

Dima glanced at the notebook and shook his head negatively.

“Then where did it come from?”

“Maybe one of the hospital visitors put it in the car window on purpose,” Dima suggested.

“Are you kidding?” Ruslan ruffled his blond hair. His head ached even more.

“What’s joking got to do with it? Aren’t there enough superstitious people out there? And there are even more psychics – charlatans who play on people’s trust to lure away money or gifts.”

“What are you getting at?”

Ruslan didn’t like this conversation. It was too ominous.

“Well, many losers pay for dubious rituals to throw their misfortune on someone, and then deliberately throw away expensive things in a crowded place, which is sure someone will pick up. There is an example: if you take a thing from the dead, you will soon die. Or if you take a thing that belonged to someone spoiled, his spoilage will be transferred to you.”

“It is nonsense!”

Ruslan shivered. His friend talks as if he’d planted the notebook himself. But there was no notebook in the car until they stopped at the hospital. Probably they decided to get rid of it because its owner was already in the hospital morgue. But why wasn’t it just tossed into the dumpster?

Although there was no dumpster, no ice cream stand, not even a soda machine near the hospital. Ruslan slowed down near it, hoping to buy a can of Fanta. It didn’t work! They didn’t sell drinks there. There was no pharmacy where you could buy plasters and bandages nearby either. Too bad he hadn’t thought to bring a first aid kit earlier. The calluses chafed by his new sneakers ached unbearably.

Ruslan opened his notebook for nothing. The paper was shabby and yellowed. The notebook must be old. There were no marks on the title page, and the first pages were clean. Ruslan began to leaf through them and came across the notes. The lines ran unevenly, though the handwriting was calligraphic.

“The seven at the entrance are only asleep. It is best not to wake them, but alas, they will not sleep forever. There are victims already. Someone has performed a ritual, a red pentagram drawn at the entrance. The doctors are terrified. Yesterday, they claimed with aplomb to believe only in science. Today they believe in demons.

I, on the other hand, am becoming a non-believer. Yesterday I collected statues of beautiful angels and treasured them like jewels. Today I smash their heads with a hammer and burn the pieces. Angels have led me into terrible trouble.”

The entry broke off. The next few pages were blank. Then Ruslan came across a symbol scrawled across the page in red pen.

Was it some kind of nonsense or a cipher?

He closed his eyes, and he immediately pictured a gloomy surgical room, where some monster was performing an operation, and a beautiful girl in an evening gown was handing him instruments. Was this the same nurse he had seen this morning? Her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes are black as coal, and her eyelids are lined with red shadow. The operation is done in the dark. There are no lights on, but the monster assistant’s skin glows by itself. The place is full of living statues.

“Come to us!” A chorus of voices whispers.

Ruslan struggles to open his eyelids. What the hell is this? He’s starting to go mad. They say it happens to all the inhabitants of big cities who find themselves in the wilderness for the first time.

He couldn’t fall asleep again. Dima turned on the radio. Some frivolous song filled the interior of the car. It was more fun to drive with music, but gloomy thoughts still nested in the head.

“Do you believe you can build a mansion with swimming pools, saunas, tennis courts and museum galleries full of paintings and sculptures in such wilderness?” Dima asked him casually.

“Do you mean sculptures?” Ruslan was interested. “It is like the one in front of the entrance to the hospital we passed.”

“Were there any sculptures there?” Dima was genuinely surprised.

“Didn’t you see them?” Ruslan felt a chill run down his spine.

Dima shook his head negatively. He could drive the car perfectly well. We should have put him behind the rudder right away. But Ruslan drove the car well until he passed the hospital. At that moment he felt sick. Are there such strong infections that can make you sick from the doorstep? He hadn’t even interacted with any of the sick people. Unless someone contagious out of meanness had slipped his notebook into the opened window of the car in order to infect the driver. We must get rid of this weird find soon. Maybe throw it out of the window on the side of the highway right now. Ruslan was about to do it, but at the last moment he changed his mind. It was pitiful! It was as if he was parting with some secret that he would still need.

He’ll have to hold the blank pages to the fire. Probably there’s something written in milk or lemon juice. Then the text will appear only from the proximity of the flame. That’s how people who need to hide something from prying eyes make notes. Probably some of the patients were hiding their secrets from the doctors.

Ruslan looked in his pocket for a lighter. He had recently quit smoking, but he kept the lighter with the view of the Ostankino TV Tower as a memento of the excursion. On the blank sheet of paper, the fire had left cinders, but there were no letters. So there are no records here. It was a shame. He thought he was close to solving some mystery.

Eerie visions haunted him all the way. Would this area be filled with ghost stories? It was useless to ask his companion about it. Dima thought only about where he would go on vacation: Turkey, Greece or Crimea? Where is the resort better? Where are more comfortable hotels? Where to find a cute traveling companion?

But this summer he’s unlikely to have time for a vacation. After all, they would have enough work for at least six months. The unfinished mansion was part anthill, part quarry. Various architects started to work on it, and for some reason they all quit. He would have to finish the job for everyone. As far as Ruslan could see, they had all started building in their own individual style. Different superstructures didn’t fit together. Some were deliberately destroyed, as if each new hired architect was trying to destroy the traces of his predecessors’ work.

Ruslan got a stack of blueprints that contradicted one another. All made by different people. Now he has to create his final drawing, into which he will transfer the idea of his employer. The building should resemble a labyrinth, which combines the styles of different eras and countries.

The idea is grandiose, but how can it be realized? Ruslan gloomily looked at the piles, the foundation, the laid foundations of the towers and galleries connecting the different buildings. Would it be necessary to destroy all this in order to work according to a new plan?

“Each building should be built in the style of one of the ancient civilizations: Egyptian, Roman, Indian, Greek, Chinese, and only the smallest building in the style of Russian terems, and all this will be connected by covered passages,” Ruslan cringed over the dictated conditions.

“I wonder who they are building such an expensive gift for? For sure, it is for a beautiful woman,” dreamily stretched out his companion, who was fixated on charming persons.

“In my opinion, the rich people are beginning to lose their brains because of their fads. Such a structure can only be called a whim.”

“But this whim is well paid for,” Dima said thoughtfully, who had already paid off debts and alimony from the generous advance payment. And there was still a fee ahead. He doesn’t care what and on what principle to build. The customer pays, so he is always right.

Ruslan sighed and ruffled his blond hair. He didn’t like the idea of a fancy palace, but where else would he find work?

“Damn palace!” He hissed, looking at the construction site with its unfinished towers and buildings. “Our ancestors staged revolution and overthrew monarchs just to bring back the era of palaces and the rich. How people don’t rush to get away from inequality, but end up returning to it again.”

“Do you want to go back to the USSR?” Dima joked.

Ruslan remained silent. He didn’t like to talk politics.

“It was good that we weren’t sent to build a hospital. Personally, I like palaces much better than hospitals. The hospital we passed this morning gives me the creeps.”

Well! Dima admitted it himself. Ruslan didn’t have to ask him about it. He too felt the aura of darkness and ghosts.

“They say it was a terrible thing going on in that asylum.”

“Is anything in the press about it? What was it called?” Ruslan prepared to type a query on the Internet on his phone.

“It was there before the revolution. But there was a fire there recently.”

“Was there a fire?” Ruslan was surprised. “The walls hadn’t even smoked.”

“They were probably painted afterwards, and the building was repaired.”

“I noticed that the paint was old, peeling in places.”

“You’re very observant. You’re not familiar with optics and eyeglasses. I’ve only recently switched to lenses.”

No one met the two architects at the counter. The guards let the arrivals through reluctantly.

The register listed Ruslan Ivanovich Sotnikov and Dmitry Vasilyevich Angarov, architects. The statement “this is us” was not enough. RuslanI had to show his documents. Out of the corner of his eye Ruslan noticed a list of engineers’ names, above which there was a mourning cross. Without thinking much about the observance of decorum, he snatched up the list and read:

“Volodya Perov, Grigory Shepetov, Alexander Voylokov, Pavel Kostin, Leonid Pushkarev… Are they all dead?”

“No, they are sick. They are all in the hospital,” the guard reluctantly muttered.

Wow!

“What are they sick with? Is there an epidemic at the construction site?”

The guard obviously did not like this curiosity. For a moment it seemed that he would ignore the question, but he answered with grim humor:

“Get drunk, have fun, have a disaster. Now twenty workers and five engineers are in the hospital.”

“And when they’re discharged from there, will they go back to the construction site?”

The guard shrugged, but it was obvious he wasn’t expecting them back.

“If they were taken to the hospital we passed by, they say they only come back from there in a coffin,” Dima muttered as they passed the guard post.

“Why? Are the doctors there so bad?”

“They take patients there in the most extreme cases, when it is obvious that nothing can be done.”

“Is it obvious right away?” Ruslan raised his ashy eyebrows in amazement. His friend Sashka, a surgeon by profession, used to say that doctors were not omnipotent. Sometimes someone who’s already been crossed will recover, and sometimes a healthy person will die. Diagnosis still means nothing. Sasha said he’d seen miraculous healings himself. Maybe his religiosity had clouded his judgment. Ruslan himself did not approve of those doctors who sent patients to churches for treatment. The soul was a separate concern, but physical ailments needed physical help.

“I noticed something like a temple near the hospital,” he recalled.

“It’s a former monastery,” Dima explained.

“And why it stands next to the hospital. Were the sick treated with prayers?”

“If people are going to die soon, there’s nothing else to do.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, I think the nuns were helping to care for the sick. In fact, there was a big scandal involving their help in the last century. Some nuns went mad, claimed they saw the devil, who told them to abuse the dying. Doctors claimed the same thing. Imagine, they were performing surgeries on the living, mutilating people. Supposedly demons told them to do it. It all happened a long time ago. I don’t know if the story’s true or if it’s a tourist lie.”

“Can you read it in the guidebook? Where’d you hear about it?”

“It was from the guys who worked here before us and quit. I talked to them on the phone. They seemed scared. People have become very superstitious these days.”

Ruslan sighed. Thoughts of the hospital sowed gloom on his soul. He didn’t like doctors, if only for the reason that they never paid any attention to him at the polyclinic unless he brought a box of chocolates as a present. Free medicine has one disadvantage: if you don’t give the doctors a small bribe in the form of a chocolate bar or a pack of cookies, they won’t treat you, but will send you to a lot of paid tests, which, as it turns out, were not needed for anything.

“It’s better not to get sick,” Ruslan concluded.

“What can you tell your body to do?” Dima grinned. “People are not made of marble. All infections stick to us.”

“Marble, you said…” Ruslan was taken aback when he noticed a statue of an angel on the construction site, just like the one on the steps of the hospital. He must have gotten double vision, because the statue was moving its wing.

“Look!” Ruslan tugged at his comrade’s sleeve.

“Where is it? Is it at the crane?”

“No, it is the angel.”

“What angel is it?”

“It is the marble one! It is the statue!”

“I don’t see any statue,” Dima rubbed his eyes. “They must be inside.”

“Who is it?”

“They are figures like museum pieces. I’m told they’ve already started moving them into a gallery that’s being rebuilt. By the way, we have to plan the building so that this gallery won’t be destroyed or altered. It and the already rebuilt rotunda must not be touched. All the other wings must adjoin them so that the rotunda remains in the center.”

“What a task is it!” Ruslan had never faced anything like this before. It would take a lot of thought. Now he was more concerned about the marble angel. Why couldn’t Dima see it?

It was as if the angel didn’t exist. There were only workers carrying wheelbarrows with lime and bricks. Maybe the statue had already been moved. It was probably not made of marble, but of papier-mâché. Then it could have just been carried away.

Could he have mistaken the mannequin for a statue? He seems to have perfect eyesight. Dima’s the one who’s always squinting.

And what did the construction site need a mannequin for? Probably it was brought for the home theater, which was still to be built. Ruslan thought it was foolish to bring interior decorations into a mansion that had not yet been built. It was even more foolish to build parts of the mansion before the architects arrived on the site. He wasn’t even told about the rotunda. Now the whole plan would have to be reworked.

Ruslan caught the gaze of the marble eyes. They looked down at him from above the rotunda. A statue of an angel nestled against the roof. It is definitely a stucco decoration. Yet the angel seems alive. His lips stretch in a sly grin. A blinding flash of the sun for a moment obscured Ruslan’s eyes, and in the next moment the angel on the roof of the rotunda was gone.

What the hell!

“I think I need lenses or glasses, too,” Ruslan muttered, “I’m seeing double.”

Or did he have sunstroke? As he drove the car, the sun heated the sight-glass mercilessly.

“Let’s hurry up, we’re on a tight schedule,” Dima pulled him towards the rotunda. “We need to see it to think how to proceed, and the gallery, too.”

Ruslan flinched when something red splashed on his jacket. Was that ketchup or blood? The third statue he’d seen at the construction site had been splattered with blood. This time the marble angel made no secret of the fact that it was alive. It moved easily and plastically. It is probably an actor, smeared with whitewash from head to toe, so that it is not distinguishable from the sculpture. But why are his eyes entirely white, too? Angel put his hand to his lips, calling for silence. Workers passed by, as if they didn’t see him. Someone pushed a wheelbarrow full of bricks at the angel. In an instant, marble palms closed around the trucker’s head and crushed it like a rotten egg. Blood spurted.

Ruslan wanted to scream, to call the police. Even angels aren’t allowed to get up to mischief on a construction site. And this was probably not an angel, but some liquid powdered joker. Only the builders don’t notice him for some reason. Before Ruslan could open his mouth, the angel, the wheelbarrow with the brick, and the severed head, which the angel was playing with as if it were a red ball, disappeared from view.

Ruslan looked at his jacket and didn’t see any blood on it. It had definitely splattered on him.

Pagan gods

What’s wrong with him? Is he going crazy? He began to see statues of angels everywhere, crushing the heads of workers.

Dima strode masterfully into the rotunda. Ruslan had nothing to do but follow him. He felt out of place in the new place. This had never happened to him before. Usually he would get to work right away, but here he was suddenly plagued by migraines.

There was a gallery of sculptures in the rotunda, but not a single angel among them. There were only pagan gods. Some of them Ruslan could name, others he had seen for the first time. The graceful sculptures looked both creepy and beautiful. Although who would have thought that something creepy could be captivatingly beautiful!

Ruslan wandered around the rotunda, pushing aside the heavy velvet drapes that covered some of the aisles. The rotunda reminded him of a horror museum.

At the entrance hung a painting of the goddess Marena in a black kokoshnik and holding a skull. Opposite was an eerie landscape with black fields where armies of stunted demons grew with the crops. Two monstrous giants replaced the caryatids. Both of them reminded Ruslan of the Scandinavian Surt, lord of the fire giants and god of the end of the world. The farther one went, the more ominous pictures and figures one encountered. There were sea monsters, women turning into dragons, rakshasas, and ifrites. A complete set for an apocalypse meeting! If all these gods and demons turned out not to be part of a dead culture, but living beings, they would definitely sweep the world away. Ruslan suddenly felt uneasy. For a moment, he imagined all these creepy creatures coming to life and pouncing on defenseless humanity.

“Who had the idea of assembling such a gruesome collection?” He wondered.

“Who is it? It is our oligarch, of course.”

“Or it is one of his secretaries,” Ruslan suggested. “Who among the bigwigs does not do without the advice of their assistants?”

“And what kind of collection would you advise him to collect? Are they paintings by Modigliani and Picasso?”

It was a joke, of course, but Ruslan answered seriously:

“I mean Shishkin, Aivazovsky, Rokotov, Bryullov, Levitsky.”

“It would cost too much. What if even an oligarch can’t afford it?” His partner always wanted to make jokes. With the help of jokes is easy to get away from the grim reality, but sometimes reality strikes.

“Even the merchant Tretyakov was able to collect paintings, which he then gave to the people, and the resulting is Tretyakov Gallery.”

“You can’t expect that here,” Dima grinned. “The exhibits were brought for a private collection.”

“But what if the rich man has awakened his conscience and wants to open a free museum here?”

“It’s too far from populated areas. Gasoline alone to get here would be expensive. And there’s no public transportation to get here at all. So how do we get visitors here?”

“It is on customized buses, like sightseers. Why are you thinking about technical problems? Can’t our customer afford everything?”

“Let’s say that’s true. But there’s another problem.”

“What is it?”

“Take a look! Look around! What do you see? Beauty mixed with horror.”

“Some like horror and even surrealism, although surrealist art is the world through the eyes of a madman. In surrealist paintings, all the objects are not in their place, so that it gives the impression of absurdity or madness, but some people like it. It’s not without reason that art connoisseurs throng to Salvador Dali’s villa-museum. I’ve been there, by the way, but for some reason I like it better here, I don’t know why.”

“Is it because of it?” The partner nodded at the central pedestal with an unfamiliar, but so attractive name of the deity.

“Yes. It is because of her.”

Ruslan moved forward toward the shimmering statue. Her golden wings fluttered. How like an optical illusion! It was a play of light and shadow. Ruslan reached out his hand to touch the gilded statue and felt only emptiness. There was no statue on the pedestal. But he had just seen it!

Had he imagined it? Ruslan wiped his eyes. The pedestal was still empty. He could have sworn that a minute ago he had seen a golden silhouette with wings on it.

He should get more sleep, and then he wouldn’t have obsessions. Anything can appear to an overworked or tipsy person.

Dima was worried that there were no beer houses in the neighborhood.

“It would probably take half a day to get to the nearest pub!” He lamented.

Ruslan didn’t like the name pub. It was too English, as if it were London, not the distant Moscow suburbs. Nevertheless, the name “pub” could be seen on a pub even in the bedroom neighborhood of Moscow, where Ruslan’s family lived. For some reason, it became fashionable to give the most unattractive-looking establishments foreign names. The service did not improve. And the degree of alcohol was equally high everywhere. Ruslan preferred not to drink at all. That way you would be soberer and spend less money. The museum exposition of the rotunda interested him much more than the presence of drinking establishments in the neighborhood.

“It’s gorgeous here!” He whistled.

“Imagine how much more chic it will be when the building is completed and filled with all the imported curiosities that are still on their way,” Dima’s voice was filled with undisguised envy. He could be understood. Who wouldn’t dream of living in his own palace!

“What a pity that all this luxury will rot here like in a crypt.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Such rarities should be put on public display, not hidden in a private collection,” Ruslan, though he didn’t have the skills of an archeologist, could determine that many of the statues of ancient gods were ancient, hastily restored. They belong in the Hermitage, not in the countryside.

“The public already has the Tretyakov Gallery and the Historical Museum in the center of Moscow,” Dima obligingly reminded him, who himself, if he had ever been to the above-mentioned places, had only been on a forced excursion when he was a schoolboy. He had never visited museums of his own free will. But it didn’t cost him anything to design a blueprint of a museum building.

“It seems that this mansion is being built for the Tsar,” Ruslan whispered to himself, but Dima heard him.

“Why is it?”

“It’s more luxurious than the Hermitage.”

“Well, the Hermitage is old, it’s been standing on the bank of the Neva River for centuries, but here everything is new and will be furnished according to the latest technology.”

“And if you look around, you can rather assume that it will be a temple, not a palace. Look how many gods are around!”

“There were gods and goddesses from all different countries and religions of the world. Only any symbolism related to Christianity was forbidden in the palace, but the owner ordered statues of all the ancient gods. Their names were already carved on the empty pedestals. There were ancient gods, and Egyptian, and Persian, and Indian, and Chinese, and Slavic. All the names belonged to ancient cults. Ruslan studied a little about the culture of the religions of the world.”

“Will the sculptures be made in the ‘art nouveau’ or glamorous style?” He joked. What else would you expect from a cultureless New Russian? People who got rich by chance did not understand museum values.

“No, they were all copies of historical figures.”

Ruslan whistled. It seemed to be the rare case when a rich man could pretend that he was no stranger to history and opera. Probably a concert hall or a private theater, like it was in old Russian estates.

“Do you need a sketch artist?” Ruslan wanted to recommend an acquaintance.

“All the figures have already been made. Some have arrived, others will be delivered soon. So we’ll have to hurry with the completion of the wings.”

On some of the pedestals there were indeed slender figures of Athena, Nemesis and Hecate. The goddess of war was threateningly aiming her spear at those who entered. The three-faced Hecate was conjuring. The Slavic Chernobog squinted menacingly, the leaden face of Loki frightened away with an unpleasant cunning expression, Thanatos was terrifying. The five-headed dragon goddess Takhisis was depicted with one female head and four snake heads. Keto, goddess of sea terrors, crawled across the pedestal dragging a mountain of metal tentacles behind her. Her webbed hands of silvered copper bent over the pedestal and clung to the floor. Ker, the goddess of misfortune, stood between three empty pedestals. Ruslan did not know the Persian gods by name. But the black marble angel made him think of a lie. Was Christian symbolism allowed here?

The suspicion was premature. The black angel was Cupid. Psyche was missing. There was no pedestal for her. The unfinished halls were chaotic. Empty niches were covered with heavy red drapes. Many-armed Indian gods alternated with ancient and Egyptian figures. Ruslan recognized Anubis and Ptah, Seth, Sebek and Kebhut. For some reason a pedestal was prepared for Pharaoh Ehnaton. Did he belong to the pantheon of gods too?

Dima lagged behind, and Ruslan realized that he was lost in the labyrinth of unfinished halls and corridors. From somewhere far away came the clatter of hammers and quiet chants. The radio must be on somewhere.

“It’s a hymn to Aton,” someone whispered behind him.

Ruslan turned around.

A brunette woman stepped down from the pedestal of the goddess Kali, which had recently been empty. Ruslan recognized her immediately. She was the one he had seen at the medical center they had passed. But where had the nurse’s uniform gone? Why was she dressed like an Indian goddess? Her eyes and lips are thickly lined with scarlet. Instead of medical instruments, a gilded sickle gleams in her hand.

A sickle is definitely not an attribute of the goddess Kali. It would be more like a Slavic midwife.

The girl was barefoot. For a second it seemed for some reason that she was treading not on the floor, but on skulls and bones.

“Who are you?” Ruslan felt his lips go numb. Instead of a question, there was only a whisper. He felt as if he were being frozen like a corpse sent to the morgue’s refrigerator.

The girl wasn’t cold, though; there were droplets of sweat on her bronzed skin. On her naked shoulder, a wound glowed. Did the girl herself carelessly hit with a sickle?

“Shall I call an ambulance for you?” It was probably a foolish question to ask a nurse. She could have already taken some painkillers if she’s not paying attention to the wound. And there’s something tearing out of the wound, like some insect living under the skin and pulling the limbs through the edges of the cut.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help, bandages, medication?”

The girl whispered a couple phrases in an unfamiliar language in response and swung the sickle around. He must be imagining things. Ruslan covered his eyes, and when he opened them, he found that the girl in front of him was multi-armed like a goddess. Second and third pairs of hands emerged from the folds of the sari like white insects. A surgical instrument was clutched in each hand. Ruslan barely dodged the scalpel.

“Ah, there you are!” Dima’s voice brought him out of his daze. There was no girl with a sickle. But on Kali’s pedestal was a multi-armed bronze figure. Had she been there a moment before? She looked ominous. As, indeed, it should be. A necklace of skulls around her neck and bronze skulls under her bare feet added to the sinister image. There’s nothing to be surprised about. Kali is the goddess of blood.

“I hope we won’t be sacrificed to her,” Ruslan joked awkwardly, and immediately felt a strange chill as if all of Kali’s bronze hands had closed around his neck.

“Oh, come on! Who does that now? People believe in something like this just for the sake of ticking boxes or to create a museum like this at home.”

“It’s odd that they dragged the sculptures into an unfinished building. Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until the end of construction?”

“Maybe there was nowhere else to store them. Or maybe we are meant to be inspired to be more creative than just building.”

“Or it could also be that they’re all stolen.”

That’s the most obvious suggestion as to why rarities should be hidden.

Matvey Gennadyevich Vereskovsky, Ruslan’s employer and oligarch, knew a lot about expensive things. But did he know about art? In any case, someone among his relatives or his staff had an excellent knowledge of art.

Ruslan paid attention to the figure of the Scandinavian Loki, who had a cunning expression on his face. It seemed that evil gods were honored here, as well as gods of funerary cults. The statue of Anubis in the corner glittered with gilt. The three-faced Hecate occupied a separate niche lined with alabaster skulls. Several painted wood figures depicted fox demons. The kimono-clad beauties had tails and fox masks in their hands. Looking at the collection, Ruslan approached the empty pedestal in the center again. It was obvious that it had a special place. So there must be a special deity standing on it. It would probably become the head of the local pantheon.

Ruslan stopped near the central pedestal with golden letters and the inscription “Alais”.

“I don’t know of such a goddess,” he admitted.

“It seems to be a goddess from Ancient Egypt,” illiterate Dima suddenly showed erudition. “I saw a teaser of a movie about her.”

So that’s where his erudition comes from! From a primitive movie! Ruslan grinned crookedly.

“Is the pedestal made of real gold?” He was genuinely surprised when he touched the ornament.

“I think so.”

Ruslan whistled.

“When people have easy money, they don’t know where to put it, and everything becomes gold!“444

“A lot of money has been spent on this palace,” Dima agreed.

“My husband doesn’t even give me money for doctors,” a slender blonde woman suddenly came out from behind the column. “But the statue of his favorite will be made of gold of the highest standard.”

The blonde looked enviously at the statue of Alais. Apparently, this blonde is the oligarch’s wife.

Ruslan felt embarrassed. A loose tongue could get him fired and cause a lot of trouble. It’s better not to argue with rich people, they have the courts and the police under their thumb. Everyone knows that the one with the most money is always right. But the pretty blonde was angry at her husband’s spending, so she looked at Ruslan with approval and sympathy.

Usually blondes do not like light-haired guys. They prefer brunettes. But the oligarch’s young wife was not a blonde. There were dark roots in her dyed platinum hair.

“I’m Valentina Vladimirovna,” she introduced herself. “But for you it’s just Valentina when we’re in private. In public, however, you’d better address me by my first name and patronymic.”

And she is a rather prim person. Any young girl would just call herself Valya.

Dima introduced himself and Ruslan. The conversation seemed to take place in an ordinary company of young people, but it gave off the novelty of aristocratic arrogance.

Valentina Vladimirovna had something to be proud of. She had a figure and appearance like a photo model, even better. The sequined dress would have been more suitable for the evening, but she wore it now. Probably she is going to some kind of reception after she’s given the building a hostess’s eye.

“Is your husband going to visit us?” Ruslan asked politely.

“Why is it?” The blonde was genuinely surprised and flapped her painted eyelashes.

“Well, to see how things are going here…”

“There’s a solicitor and managers for that.”

“I suppose you must like the building first and foremost? Your husband’s building it for you, isn’t he? Is it a wedding present?”

“It is more like a temple for them,” Valentina looked at the statues with distaste.

As if they could come down from their pedestals and become her living rivals! Ruslan marveled at the lady’s nervousness. It must be hard to keep a rich husband under her thumb.

Valentina took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her shiny clutch. She wanted to smoke, but for some reason she came to her senses and put everything back in her purse. Either she remembered that cultured men did not approve of women smoking, or she was afraid to smoke in the presence of ancient gods. Probably it is the second. Wives of powerful husbands are often very superstitious. Ruslan would not have been surprised to hear that Valentina traveled to psychics, mediums, and other charlatans for sessions. But she suddenly brought up the subject of the old medical center.

“There is an amazing medical center nearby. I’ve been urging my husband to donate to it for a long time, but he refuses. Sometimes superstitious fear is more powerful than common sense.”

“Is it because of the angels at the entrance?” Ruslan guessed. After all, the angels are from the Christian religion, which is not supported here. If they were Egyptian gods, the hospital would have gotten grants long ago. He chuckled at his own impressionability.

“It’s all because of old stories,” Valentina muttered.

“What stories do you mean?” Ruslan and Dima asked in unison.

“Those silly stories that go back to the serfdom era, when there was not wasteland here, but villages, hamlets, and some noble manor, which was destroyed during the revolution.”

Ruslan remembered from the stories of his ancestors that the estates were not destroyed, but taken away in favor of red commanders and party chairmen, but he kept silent. His family’s traumas did not concern Valentina Vladimirovna or Dima.

“What was going on here?” Ruslan asked for the sake of politeness.

“Well, I don’t know anything for sure, I’m not from here,” the oligarch’s wife began to justify herself. “I myself moved to St. Petersburg from the Rostov region at a young age, and later moved to Moscow. It is boring to live in the suburbs. I like noisy megacities, spas, restaurants, clubs, entertainment. From the very beginning, I was against building a house in the middle of nowhere.”

“So, what was going on in the middle of nowhere?” Ruslan interrupted her.

“Rumor has it, a lot of things. Are you interested in local superstitions?”

“I am just curious.”

Valentina crumpled, not wanting to speak, and then she blurted out in one breath:

“Allegedly, out of love for angels in this wilderness a lot of creepiness created.”

How strange it sounded! Ruslan instantly remembered the black-covered notebook he had found. There were notes about evil angels in it too.

“Did you find any broken angel figurines here?” He asked, focusing on the notes.

“I wasn’t looking for any!” Valentina was extremely surprised. “I’m not going through the garbage.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Ruslan objected hastily. How do you tell a woman you barely know that someone else’s notebook was thrown into his car, and instead of throwing it away, he started to read it like an idiot. Now he wants to check the information.

The oligarch’s wife was no longer listening to him, but was fixing her hair. A bob haircut with small snaking curls suited her very well.

“By the way, here’s my business card, in case you need anything,” Valentina rummaged in her purse and held out a thin rectangular card, filled in only on one side.

Ruslan accepted the card. He was already aware that if the name and contacts on the back of the card were not duplicated in English, it meant that the person had no international connections. All influential people have business cards on both sides: one side in the usual Russian, the other in English. Apparently, her husband keeps Valentina Vladimirovna in tight grip. He is the influential person here, not she. For some reason, the business card had Verbina’s last name on it, not Vereskovskaya. It was probably Valentina’s maiden name, but it was awkward to ask. Ruslan did not encourage those who lived in unregistered marriages and thought it was humiliating to talk about such topics aloud. If you ask about something, people will immediately have to justify to everyone why they consider a receipt in the Registry Office unnecessary. Many even call such a marriage civil, but this is a mistake. Although also do not want to explain to anyone that civil marriages are those that are registered, but not married. Otherwise you have to get into discussions with people. Ruslan didn’t like to argue or have someone point out his place.

It was likely that Valentina Vladimirovna’s surname was a well-known one, and the woman didn’t want to change it when she got married, but there was a one-in-a-hundred chance of that. Most married women prefer to take their husbands’ surnames so that the marriage can take place according to all the rules.

“And what will be on this pedestal?” Ruslan decided to check Dima’s assumption.

“Some Egyptian goddess,” Valentina Vladimirovna confirmed.

“Is it another one? It feels like the leading figure of the whole multinational pantheon should stand here.”

“This goddess is special. She’s more heavenly than Egyptian,” Valentina sounded so jealous that Ruslan stopped asking. Only a mad woman could be jealous of a statue. Or a completely desperate woman, completely deprived of male attention. Valentina Vladimirovna didn’t look like the latter. Her appearance was above all praise, but her manners left much to be desired.

“I’ll go!” Valentina Vladimirovna checked the time on the electronic clock in her iPhone. “I have a session at the massage parlor and then the gym. You should know how far it is to drive from here to the nearest fitness center.”

Ruslan wonder why she even came here. Was it to see the statues from all over the world? Or was she more interested in the empty pedestal? Valentina Vladimirovna seemed to be waiting not for a statue of a goddess, but for a rival.

“Are you driving yourself?” Ruslan asked reluctantly. The woman he was talking to gave the impression that she was not sober.

“No, I have a chauffeur. He’s waiting downstairs.”

That was to be expected. A rich man’s wife has no reason to get a driver’s license, and certainly she would never use public transportation. Ruslan was embarrassed that he had asked a stupid question, but the beautiful blonde was not offended by it. She looked absent-mindedly at the empty pedestal.

“Goodbye!” She said goodbye. But to the pedestal or to her companions?

In a minute Valentina’s heels were already tapping on the steps of the rotunda.

:She is a gorgeous woman!” Dima whistled.

“And her maintenance costs her husband, most likely, not cheaper than this palace,” Ruslan said pessimistically.

“Hush! Or she’ll hear you.”

But the guest had already left, and the pedestals and evil gods remained. As soon as the living interlocutor disappeared, Ruslan felt trapped in the company of pagan gods. It seemed as if the statues were watching him.

Fatalism

There was noise coming from the construction site. It was chaotic. Carts, wheelbarrows, cranes, all jumbled into a confused picture. What a mess to work in! Ruslan had a headache from having to rearrange other people’s drawings. It would have been better if he had been allowed to make his own, but then the rotunda would have to be destroyed and the foundation would have to be rebuilt. The employer won’t allow it.

Vereskovsky himself came to the construction site a week later to visit the new architects. The conversation with him was not the most pleasant. Vereskovsky had a lot of requirements that were difficult to fulfill. Everything had to follow his instructions stupidly, and he did not promise a bonus in case of successful completion of the construction.

Many of Vereskovsky’s conditions were extremely stupid. It seems that he is a fantasist. So the construction is going on like a bedlam. Ruslan was extremely happy to kick the oligarch out of the construction site.

“He ought to have been a serf while working in the fields,” complained Dima. “Next time you’ll meet him alone, and I’ll pretend that I’m too busy with urgent problems.”

“It’s not good to put everything on your friend’s shoulders!”

“I know, but I don’t want to feel like a slave!”

Dima muttered to himself for a long time something like that all the money he earned here would have to be spent on psychologists to calm him down from his boss’s tyranny. Ruslan silently looked after Vereskovsky, who, accompanied by his bodyguards, was walking toward the luxury car. The oligarch appeared to be an unassuming type.

“What did Valentina Vladimirovna see in him, I wondered?” Dima also looked at the way Vereskovsky was driving away.

“It was money,” Ruslan answered without hesitation.

“Are you joking?”

“It is absolutely not. If a beautiful woman gets mixed up with someone who has only wealth among his virtues, it’s immediately clear what she found in him – a voluminous purse, well, maybe some connections. All beauties strive for a high social status through marriage or love affair.”

“You’re a pessimist!”

“I’m a realist!”

“Don’t you get any attention from women?” Dima scrutinized his handsome colleague.

“They do, but not for long. I don’t have much to offer them,” Ruslan bitterly remembered that all the romances that had started in high school and at the institute had ended there. How is it that in the modern world you can get acquainted only at school and at work? And if in the circle of colleagues found no one suitable, then there is nowhere else to look. There are, however, dubious dating sites, where you can pick up a promiscuous person or a fraud.

“Once I met a pretty girl by giving her a cheat sheet for an exam,” Ruslan recalled.

“And how did it all end?”

“She lived in the Moscow suburbs, and I lived in Moscow. While we were going to school, we met. Together with the studies, the affair ended.”

Ruslan doesn’t even want to think about those times. It was impossible to live on a scholarship or to buy a bouquet of flowers for a girl. Many students worked part-time after classes, and they had no time to meet someone. During the school years, only children of rich parents live well. If Valentina has children, they will be able to have fun and go on dates between classes, spending parental money on flowers and visits to cafes.

“Did you hear that Vereskovsky’s wife is planning to go to the hospital before the construction is finished?” As if by the way, Dima said. “So she won’t visit us again. It’s a pity! I enjoyed talking to her much more than to her stern husband.”

“Is she seriously ill?”

Dima almost laughed. “She wants to have plastic surgery at some elite hospital.”

“Are you serious? Why would she do that?”

“Who can understand with these beauties?”

Ruslan shrugged his shoulders. Probably Valentina Vladimirovna’s beauty is just skillful makeup. All the stars look perfect after cosmetic salons, but when you wash off the makeup, they get old and dull before your eyes. He was well acquainted with this situation on the example of one theater star, with whom his mother was friends.

“She wants to change her facial features?”

“Why would she? Did her husband fall out of love with her? Did he think she was ugly?”

“It is worse! Valentina Vladimirovna fell under the general craze – she wanted to become like a movie star. She’s very fashionable now. Everyone wants to be like her, but not everyone has the money to realize this dream. The star’s name is Athenais. You’ve probably heard of it?”

If he wasn’t too busy working, Ruslan would go to the movies. But it seems that overwork is a good thing. Otherwise, what absurd thoughts would he have been indoctrinated into by the movies? Women go to the movies and then start dreaming about plastic surgery instead of doing housework and cooking! It’s high time the star business is shut down since it indoctrinates healthy viewers with such sick thoughts.

A star named Athenais was now a mass lunacy. Ruslan didn’t know what was so special about her, because he hadn’t seen any movies with her. He had only heard glimpses on the radio that she had caused frequent suicides, and that girls who wanted to be like her had died under the knives of plastic surgeons. But the fate of Valentina Vladimirovna is not his business. If she wants to become another victim of beauty, it makes no sense to dissuade her.

“Why don’t we go to the nearest movie theater this weekend? There’s an Athenaïs movie playing right now called ‘Blood Dawn.’ It is about the struggle of violent religious sects. They say it’s more moving than Romeo and Juliet.”

That’s the last thing we need! Ruslan was already under the impression that a gorgeous girl who could easily win first prize in a beauty contest was eager to reshape her face to look like Athenais.

“No, I don’t! I’m going to sit down this weekend to work on some new blueprints.”

Dima turned away with a sigh, clearly swallowing the reproach:

“You’re so boring!”

Let him be boring, the main thing is that he’s alive. Those guys who go to movies with Athenais die in droves. Ruslan noticed in his friend’s things a glossy advertisement with some Egyptian movie and ran his eyes over the first lines. What a coincidence! This very star, it turns out, played the role of that Egyptian deity called Alais. That’s why her statue will be made of gold! Apparently, the oligarch himself was no less impressed by her than his wife.

Ushebti

The huge wooden box was delivered first thing in the morning. It was not marked “valuable cargo” for nothing. Apparently, it was museum stuff inside again. Dima had accidentally ripped off the tag and was now looking for it all over the rotunda. Ruslan decided to open the box instead of looking for the tags to it. Inside, packed in shavings and sawdust were ominous statuettes.

“These are Ushcheti,” Ruslan guessed. “Vereskovsky had ordered to make a separate chamber in the rotunda for them. I’m afraid that won’t be realistic. He doesn’t even realize that the whole rotunda will collapse if we make an extra room in it.”

“So let’s make an annex,” Dima concentrated on looking at the statuettes. “Are they made of black wood or stone?”

Ruslan took some figurines out of the drawer. The feeling was that they were about to bite his fingers.

“Why do I feel like I’m holding not a figurine but a grenade?”

“They have a very evil look,” Dima suggested.

“But they are skillfully made. The material seems to be terracotta, and this one seems to be made of sycamore.”

“They must be very expensive.”

“But they do have an ominous look to them.”

“They’re funerary statues.”

“What good are they?”

“It is just a museum, put them in a display case and admire them. Well, you can still study them.”

“Our oligarch loves such exhibits.”

“But he doesn’t know the meaning behind them.”

“What’s the point?”

“These figurines served as the dead man’s slaves. They were to do all the work for the dead in the afterlife, so that the deceased would rest after death.”

“It is fascinating! But our employer doesn’t need them, he has enough live slaves.”

“They are hired laborers, not slaves. It’s different.”

“Not much different!” Ruslan’s back was already hurting. The work was hard and the pay was small. One might as well have worked for a single tortilla, like the slaves of ancient civilizations. But his colleague was not discouraged. No wonder, because he got a smaller part of the work, so he could get busy looking at Ushebti.

“I see you like these sinister freaks very much. Do you wish you could take them back to your place?” Ruslan teased his buddy.

“It is no way! I’m not crazy.”

“What makes you think I think you’re crazy?”

“There are stories that those who have them see creepy creatures that work at night and bite if you catch them at work. One restorer was afraid to wake up at night because of them, and the next morning found that they had done his work for him so that all that was left of all the exhibits were just shavings.”

“Obviously, they can’t do work for the living and do it the other way around,” Ruslan suggested.

“What if they do it on purpose? They are slaves of the dead. We, living people, climb into ancient pyramids, take out funeral paraphernalia without asking, and the ancient gods take revenge on us.”

“It’s just a story.”

“I have heard many such legends,” Dima admitted, “and their wording is very modern. Allegedly, many collectors have suffered because of Ushebti. The symptoms of all the unfortunates are the same. After the Ushebti got into their collection, they hear the sounds of hard work at night, see aggressive laborers who work hard for their owner, and wake up in the morning in complete bedlam. To a secretary who worked at an exhibition, they gutted all the folders with documents. The movers who transported them complain that the Ushebti deliberately punctured their truck tires. One wealthy businessman, who was renovating his cottage, received an Ushebti as a gift. He left them at the cottage at the time of repair. The Ushebti worked there as fitters, roofers and dyers. In the end, the cottage was just rubble. And it was worth a lot, but the Ushebti have cleaned it up in their way.”

“And all of this was caught on security cameras?”

“No, security cameras are always broken or damaged, but there are eyewitnesses. Usually, they’re unhappy people who left the Ushebti at their place. Then they all need psychologists. Ushebti are industrious, but you have to flee from their industriousness, otherwise they will bury you under the rubble of your house, or if you are working in the field, they will drive a tractor over your corpse instead of sowing. I heard that one seamstress was helping restorers of historical costumes. They put her alive under her own sewing machine. The needle stitched all the way through her skin, even on her eyelids. That’s the work of an Ushebti!”

“How cruel is it!”

“The ancient gods are cruel.”

“Are they only the Ancients?” Ruslan had heard something frightening about modern sects.

“Yes, probably all of them, otherwise the world would be a paradise if they were kind.”

The truth seemed bitter. Ruslan regretted having unpacked the parcel. If it hadn’t been for the Ushbeti found in it, this philosophical conversation wouldn’t have taken place.

“Let’s put them somewhere so that they could add to the local exposition,” Ruslan suggested.

“I’m afraid there are no shelves for them here.”

That’s right. There were only empty pedestals around, on which the statues would soon be placed. The package with them would obviously be more cumbersome than the one with the Ushebti. Ruslan clutched one figurine in his hand and wondered how he felt. Why did it seem to him that such fragile figurines held more power than the giants?

“It felt like they could crush us all,” he thought aloud, but Dima didn’t listen to him. He walked around the rotunda with his phone and photographed the exhibits.

“I’ll keep the pictures as a souvenir. Where else will you see such curiosities?”

In any museum, Ruslan wanted to say, but bit his tongue in time. He himself had visited the Egyptian hall in the Hermitage and the Historical Museum on Red Square many times, had been to various exhibitions of Oriental and antique culture, but he had never seen such sinister and impressive figures. Somehow even the bandaged mummy in the Hermitage window did not make such a frightening impression on him as the beautiful statues?

He had seen Ushebti before, too, in museums and on reproductions in encyclopedias, but not like these. The figures seemed alive and breathing. For some reason, when he looked at them, he thought of black locusts.

“If they wake up, there won’t be a construction site left,” a voice whispered in his subconscious. He must have imagined it again.

The Ushebti resembled gods. And they were not only ancient, but also modern, almost glamorous. It seemed as if they had been specially varnished and polished.

Ruslan left the Ushebti in a box among a pile of shavings. They would not break here. If scratches appeared on the Ushebti, those who unpacked the box would have to account for the damage.

Working at a construction site has brought Ruslan to a dead end. No architect and no engineer can cope here, because the employer demands to build a new fantastic building on the skeleton of an old structure. The future palace will have to have a bunch of wings: Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, French, English, and so on. One wing will have to look like a Russian princely terem, only not made of wood. Usually terems were built of logs, but such material is short-lived, so Ruslan will have to choose stone or cement and process it so that the masonry walls resemble log walls. Even one wing in the shape of an Aztec pyramid is planned. All the wings will be connected by air passages. Hanging gardens and galleries will be located in the passages. We still need to design sites for fountains and greenhouses. The idea is grandiose! But how you could realize it?

Ruslan worked on the drawings all day long. Dinner was modest, and they had to spend the night in a tiny carriage taken off its wheels. The workers jokingly called it a trailer. Some people didn’t have enough wagons, so they slept in tents. There was no hope of a luxury hotel. There are no hotels near the construction site. There is only an abandoned hospital.

“I’d be happy to sleep there, too, if there were a decent bunk instead of a sleeping bag and a heater,” Dima complained as he fell asleep. He and Ruslan shared one trailer for two.

After lights out, only the guard on duty remained at the construction site. He had his own booth in front of the entrance, and he certainly didn’t make any noise at night. There’s a strange noise coming from wherever, like someone’s still working.

“Do you hear hammers banging there?” Ruslan called out to his colleague, but Dima just turned over on his other side and snored.

The sound of hammers was monotonous, as if a whole army was working outside, but no sounds of conversation or footsteps could be heard. Probably it was just an auditory hallucination. Overwork can do that too. The sound of hammers has been joined by the whistle of a drill. That’s exactly the whistle of a drill.

Ruslan woke up and crawled out of the cramped sleeping bag. Not even in the pioneer camp had it been so uncomfortable. His whole body ached. There was a noise and a strange hissing outside. Ruslan opened the door of the wagon, and barely managed to dodge the sparks that usually fly off from working welders. What the hell! They can’t have fireworks at night on a construction site.

Some shadows were replacing the workers, carrying bricks from wheelbarrows, pouring cement, working with trowels and picks. The work was confused and inept. It did more harm than good.

“Hey, you!” Ruslan called out, and flinched when red eyes stared at him.

They’re not construction workers. They’re not wearing helmets or uniforms. And they were shorter than grown men. The strangers were small, thin and dark, like shadows. They hissed at Ruslan with needle-sharp teeth and continued working. They were industrious, but they were wasting building material. Everything in their hands was breaking instead of being useful.

Ruslan couldn’t understand what was happening. Did he really see the Ushebti working at the construction site? Or was it all a nightmare?

There was no time to think. No one was awake but him. The guard was nowhere to be seen, and the industrious laborers were tearing everything down. Their sharp teeth glinted like needles and easily ripped stones from concrete blocks.

How to stop them? How could he justify himself to the oligarch if the building was destroyed the next morning?

Ruslan didn’t know what to do. Maybe hit them all with a crane. The Ushebti only got angry when he tried to take action. Well, now they’re going to jump on him and bring everything down with it. They might even dance on the wreckage to celebrate the successful destruction. Or is it not their job to have fun anymore? All they have to do is work. And they have to work for the dead, not the living. If they come from a burial cult, no wonder why they destroy everything. Their work is the opposite. It’s not a work for good, but for destruction.

“It is enough!” A clear, ringing voice came from somewhere above and overrode the hissing of the Ushebti. “This is my territory! Look for work elsewhere!”

Strangely enough, the Ushchebti obeyed. And Ruslan passed out in full confidence that he had just heard the voice of a deity.

When he woke up, it was night. A column resembling an obelisk had been erected at the construction site. It was probably just some block that had been dragged here and dumped wherever it was.

On top of it sat a beautiful girl who looked like a model with golden wings attached to her back. Ruslan saw her for only a moment, and then there was only a flash of sunlight. The model disappeared somewhere, as if it had never existed. Could he have imagined it? No, he could clearly see the arrogant expression with which she was watching the construction site, as if all the construction workers were her slaves. That was the arrogance with which the pharaohs watched the building of the pyramids.

Shadows at the construction site

Couriers delivered food once a week: just pizza and mineral water. No luxury was expected by the architects. Dima managed to reacquaint himself with all the couriers.

“They don’t like coming here, but they have to,” he reported. “Their employers send them. It takes a long time to get here, there are no settlements around.”

“Not one! Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“It’s strange, why build a hospital where there are no settlements,” Ruslan couldn’t get the facade of the gloomy hospital out of his head. It seemed as if some voice was calling him to go back there.”

“Maybe it was to treat some rare disease that couldn’t be allowed to spread.”

Dima looked longingly after the couriers.

“Now they’ll bring a new batch of food in a week,” he sighed. “We’ll have to stretch our food supplies for seven days.”

“You like to eat.”

“And I like to drink. And I don’t like to mess around in the mud. This construction site is filthy, like a swamp under the ground. One night I even thought I saw clawed hands coming out of the ground. Can you imagine?”

“You must have been drinking.”

“I was just daydreaming about how good it would be to work as a courier instead of sitting on this construction site.”

Ruslan noticed how heavy the couriers’ backpacks were and didn’t envy them. Couriers always reminded him of modern-day peddlers. They, too, went door-to-door and carried their goods with them.

The pizza with slices of sausage was not tasty at all. Ruslan didn’t like mineral water. We should have brought tea bags and a thermos.

“Our oligarch is in no hurry to make sure that we have a decent meal.”

“Well, it’s not an expensive restaurant here,” Dima said philosophically.

“This pizza is making me sick.”

“If you need it, I brought some Allochol for intestinal distress.

Ruslan only grinned wryly. You can’t help bad food with pills. The pizza was definitely not fresh. The slices, wrapped in foil, were covered with mold that he hadn’t noticed a second ago.

“They say everything rots fast in these places. It’s a bad atmosphere.”

“You should not build a mansion in a place like this!”

Did the oligarch not realize that all the works of art he had collected would perish in a bad climate? Or did he buy some perfect equipment to keep the building at the right temperature for storing antiquities. How much money does it take to create the same atmosphere in a private building as in a museum! It seems that Vereskovsky is fabulously rich, but he does everything with a twist. Ruslan could say with certainty that there was no other construction site like this one. Everything is done not as it should be done, but as it is more convenient for the customer.

In general, there was nothing to complain about. Ruslan adored his work. Architecture was not only a job for him, but also a hobby. His favorite occupation helped him to survive. Unloved work often makes people depressed. But with favorite work you feel useful and happy.

But just because someone is building a private Hermitage, you feel an acute sense of injustice. Ruslan himself didn’t even have enough money for a micro-apartment. And living on the corner with elderly relatives is the most difficult ordeal faced by many young adults. Renting a house is also an unacceptable luxury for most young people. Often people work hard, and their wages are barely enough for food and a bus pass.

“When I was a kid,” Ruslan recalled, “my grandparents opened a bank account in my name. They knew how hard it was to live in a dormitory, and they were saving money so that their grandson would have his own apartment when he grew up. And one day, all the savings simply disappeared from the accounts, it was promised to be reimbursed, but there was no compensation. My grandmother liked to repeat that all our money went into the deep pockets of some new Russians. In those days, many people lost all their savings, but out of nowhere, fabulously rich people suddenly appeared.”

“Are you implying that our employer made his money dishonestly?”

“How can you get that kind of wealth honestly? He’s copying Midas. He even commissioned a statue made of solid gold!”

“Maybe he’ll end up like Midas. All dishonest people get screwed in the end, but we have to please him for now if we want to get paychecks and bonuses.”

“Don’t even count on bonuses! He’s got everything on the books for his employees, but the furniture here is probably inlaid with gems.”

“If only someone would want the furniture here. I have the impression that Vereskovsky is building a temple, not a palace.”

“Do you have that impression too?” Ruslan was surprised. He thought he was the only one who looked at a drawing of a palace under construction and compared it to the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal. It looks like a temple and a tomb at the same time.

“I also have a feeling that everything here might collapse like the Tower of Babel or tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Dima confessed.

“Why is that?”

“It is because you work sluggishly. I constantly have to correct your drawings.”

“The atmosphere of this place has a bad effect on me, as if there were some evil here,” Ruslan looked around. There were only Tajiks doing various jobs, and he was expecting ghosts.

“It’s all because of the abandoned hospital and the stories they spread about it. They say that in the old days the hospital was the estate of some nobleman with a bad reputation.”

“Why do you call it abandoned?” Ruslan was indignant. “I’ve seen people going in there myself.”

“If you continue to wear your nerves out with this, you’ll soon find yourself in the hospital, and your position will be given to another architect. There were many of them around here. Vereskovsky is looking for some genius who can combine completely different architectural styles into one building. The only thing I agree with you on is that it was necessary to pay three times the price for such a complex work,” Dima drank mineral water and didn’t grimace. Apparently, he liked it.

Ruslan noticed some winged shadows on the construction site. Probably huge birds flew over the construction site.

“Since high school, when I once went to the hospital,” Ruslan confessed, “the thing I dread the most is hospitals. Forced idleness depresses me, and various medical procedures make me sick.”

Perhaps it was a mistake for him to admit it out loud. It was as if someone had heard his words and taken note.

“My sister was disappointed in doctors, too,” Dima confessed in turn. “She went to them for treatment of teenage acne. They ran her through a bunch of paid tests and prescribed expensive drugs that did not help at all. In the end, the kind doctors consoled her that she could live with acne. And if acne bothers her so much, then let her go to a psychotherapist. How’s that for a situation like that?”

“My mom usually copes with such a situation with the help of gifts. It is worth presenting the attending physicians with a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates, as they will treat your ailments with great compassion. Of course, sometimes there are honest people.”

“But the best way out of illnesses is not to get sick. Therefore, in my spare time I do sports and drink vitamins by the handful.”

Ruslan noticed the strange shadows on the construction site again. It seemed that they were whispering something and giving him strange thoughts about the coming immortality. No wonder. In the shadow of the temple such thoughts should come to mind. And the palace that Vereskovsky is building is exactly like a temple.

Ruslan threw back his head and looked up. There were no birds flying about, neither small nor large. So where do winged shadows come from?

“He’s spotted us!” A nasty hissing voice said.

Dima had just stepped back to throw away the pizza wrappers and empty bottles when something on the construction site suddenly tilted. It seemed as if a crane had suddenly turned, but the chauffeur’s booth in it was empty. Was the rotunda collapsing?

Ruslan looked back at it, but it too stood as still as a monument.

“You saw us!” A nasty voice whispered in Ruslan’s ear.

Suddenly something huge covered the sun. It was no longer a winged shadow, but something rectangular and bulky. A huge block seemed to have fallen off from somewhere. But from where is it? And where will it fall? If it’s right on top of him, it’s too late to run. At the same time there was the sound of falling bricks and an obnoxious giggle. Ruslan felt an unbearable weight on him, and his eyes darkened.

The mysterious brunette

The creepy giggling was in his ears. The workers couldn’t be joking like this, could they? They don’t seem to care about jokes. Everyone was swamped with work. Everyone had frightened faces. A block at the construction site had indeed fallen. Ruslan expected all his bones to be shattered, but it turned out that he had only abrasions. The rubble had been cleared away, but the bandages from the first aid kit were not enough to stop the bleeding.

“Wait, we’ll get you to the hospital,” Dima wailed over him.

His buddy’s voice was overlapped by someone’s whistling whisper. A winged shadow loomed over Dima.

“It will crush you too,” Ruslan wanted to shout, but only wheezes came out of his mouth. Somehow he was sure that the winged creature that had collapsed the block was a girl. He must have imagined it. Dima was still fussing over him, giving some urgent orders and calling on his phone. Ruslan’s consciousness was falling into darkness. Probably he was going to die now, and the winged figure he saw was an angel from hell.

Ruslan woke up in bed, covered with a thin blanket. The first sensation was the needle of a syringe frozen in his skin. The nurse’s manicured hands were giving him an injection. Fingernails covered in red nail polish were pulling back the plunger. The syringe seemed to fill with blood.

Apparently he wasn’t being injected with a dose of anesthetic, but blood was being drawn from his vein for analysis. Ruslan lifted his head from the pillow and thought he was dreaming. Next to his bunk was that mysterious brunette in a nurse’s uniform. She appeared even more beautiful up close. Her face was as pale as a ghost’s. Her black eyeliner and eyelashes seemed painted on. Her lips, thickly painted with scarlet lipstick, somehow reminded hime of beautiful vampires rising from their coffins at night. It was night, by the way. The blinds on the hospital windows were raised, and the moon was visible behind them.

“Don’t move!” The beauty warned.

Ruslan noticed her shapely breasts heaving under her uniform and thought that it would be a pleasure to be treated under her supervision. Just think of it! He was glad he’d come to the hospital because she was here. He used to be scared as hell of hospitals, syringes and various surgical instruments. And now there’s a crazy thought in his head that he’ll be pleased even if a stranger cuts him open alive for the sake of experimentation.

“That’s it!” She removed the syringe, which had no blood in it.

He couldn’t have been dreaming, could he? Or did he hit his head too hard when he fell?

“I was going to give you a medicine dropper, but I can see you’re coming around. You just need to get some rest.”

The beauty’s voice flowed like music. Ruslan could barely make out the words. In any case, he didn’t understand much about medical terms. More than listening, he liked to look at the nurse. She was as graceful as a model and more beautiful than all the superstars put together. What stars, she was more beautiful than the Olympic goddesses! There was something Asian about her features. One of his classmates often said that Asian women were the most beautiful. Ruslan hadn’t shared his opinion before, but now it was as if he had fallen in love.

“You remind me of a fox demon,” Ruslan said, remembering some of the doramas he had watched in his student days.

The beauty took no offense.

“Call me Tamara.”

“Tamara?” Ruslan was surprised to hear a typical Russian name. He was ready to hear something exotic.

“And the last name?”

“Just Tamara,” she smiled. The nametag on her uniform was blank.

“I’m Ruslan.”

“I know.”

“How is it?”

“I had to fill out your admission form. Your friend brought you and your papers.”

“He is my colleague,” Ruslan corrected.

“Colleagues are usually friends.”

“It is not always,” Ruslan remembered the sullen construction workers from the oligarch’s lands. You couldn’t get a friendly word out of them. But they were all his colleagues. Well, at least employees. After all, they worked on the construction of the mansion in the same team. And now he’s in the hospital.

“How are you feeling?” Tamara touched his forehead, checking his temperature. He liked her touch. It’s the same when the night touches you. Tamara’s hand was cold and smooth as marble.

“I feel strange,” Ruslan admitted to her, “as if I were already dead.

He wouldn’t say that to a doctor. Tamara didn’t panic. She studied the patient with her eyes, not with her instruments.

“Would you like to listen to my heart or take a cardiogram?” Ruslan joked.

“No,” Tamara answered seriously. “You’re healthy. You’ll be discharged in three days.”

“Healthy people don’t go to hospital. And why do you speak about three days?”

“No one stays longer than three days.”

“This hospital is magic!”

Tamara waved her black mascara eyelashes to hide her eyes for a moment. It made it seem like she was hiding something.

“Do they heal all the sick here in three days?” Ruslan kept up with her.

Tamara sat down on a low stool next to the bunk and made a sign to keep quiet.

“You need to rest.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Shall I give you sleeping pills?”

“No need. I’ve always fallen asleep just fine on my own without any sleeping pills.”

“Then you’re not a nervous person. It’s hard for anyone who’s stressed out at work to fall asleep. Many people in these parts suffered from insomnia, because life here was hard, you had to overexert yourself, and then came eternal sleep.”

It was as if Tamara was composing a local legend for a tourist. With a voice as beautiful as hers, you have to be a singer. When she speaks, it feels like a nightingale trill is wafting through the air.

“I hope this hospital isn’t private?” Ruslan noticed only now that he was alone in the room, as if he were in a suite. It was too luxurious for a hospital. The room has a floor clock in a walnut case, a table with a porcelain set, and even some kind of painting on the wall.

“It is private, of course.”

“I hope my employer pays for my stay.”

Why shouldn’t Vereskovsky pay for his architect’s three-day stay in a fancy hospital? The oligarchs have a lot of money. It will be bad if the employer is greedy and doesn’t want to bear the cost of the accident.

“He won’t have to pay. It’s a charitable institution,” Tamara explained. “The hospital is for anyone who needs emergency care and is out of our reach.”

“Is it for you? You mean for the hospital staff?”

Tamara nodded silently.

“And the treatment is free?”

“They won’t charge you for it,” Tamara replied streamlined. “But you’ll have to take blood for analysis.”

“I don’t like to pay with blood.”

“It’s for the good of science.”

“And you like to joke!”

Tamara smiled back with just her lips.

“I haven’t seen a charitable institution in a long time. No one treats without a medical policy or insurance. I didn’t bring my policy with me when I went to the construction site.”

“We don’t give out bulletins, but we do help you get better.”

“Now you’re not a nurse, you’re a nun who helps out between prayers.”

“There really was a convent in the left wing.”

For some reason Ruslan felt sick at the thought. Where there are monasteries, there are burials. The presence of a monastery nearby indicated that many people had gone straight to the other side of the world from this hospital.

Tamara guessed his thoughts and explained:

“Centuries ago, cholera epidemics and war casualties were treated here. The monastery and the hospital were built at the same time on the donation of the prince, who owned the surrounding lands and thousands of serfs.”

And now the same lands belong to an oligarch! Almost nothing changes over time, except the names. There was one feudal lord, now there’s another.

“Don’t tell me that you also do plastic surgery for free,” Ruslan remembered the oligarch’s wife, who was concerned about her appearance.

“If people need it,” Tamara nodded, “but if it’s not absolutely necessary, a monetary contribution is welcome. However, it is not obligatory.”

“You’re crazy!”

“We just want to help.”

Ruslan thought it was strange that Tamara didn’t specify who exactly she wanted to help: people or someone else. Maybe she was a foreigner and could hardly speak Russian? No, it didn’t sound like that. Her speech is no accent, but the meaning of her words is strange.

The picture in the ornate gilded frame on the wall was also strange. Ruslan looked at it for a long time, but he couldn’t understand what it depicted. It was a complete mess! Pyramids, angels, corpses, clawed hands reaching out of the sand, and some creatures stuck in layers of earth. Such a mix of eras and symbols reminded him of Salvador Dali’s museum.

“I don’t like surrealism,” Ruslan admitted.

“You just don’t understand it,” Tamara glanced at the painting. “Surrealism has a cipher in it, like a rambling dream. Everything that seems abstract actually hints at something complex.”

“It takes a very clever head to understand and decipher it all.”

“And your head is sick,” Tamara teased.

“I just bumped my head. It’ll feel a little sore and then it’ll go away.”

Ruslan felt something like a bump on the back of his head.

“Lie still!” Tamara told him to lie still.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor. It seemed as if an iron robot was treading the floor, not a human being. Was it the doctor?

Tamara shuddered.

“I’ll be right back!” She promised, jumping up from her stool.

“But… wait!” Ruslan wanted to stop her, but he couldn’t get up from the bunk. And the heels of the nurse’s shoes were already clacking in the corridor. She even forgot to close the door of the room. She was in such a hurry. The doctor didn’t even call her. Where was she rushing off to? Who can understand these women? One minute they’re flirting with you, the next they’re running away from you like a monster!

Speaking of monsters! Ruslan noticed an ugly shadow in the corridor. He couldn’t see much from his bunk. He should have propped himself up on his elbows to get a closer look, but he didn’t have the strength. Tamara must have sedated him in time. Sleep was intolerable. Ruslan fell asleep.

Locked up

In the corridor at the receptionist’s desk, a television was on. On the screen there was a glimpse of some creepy and beautiful footage of some kind of battle, in which winged creatures were participating. Probably they were angels. Beautiful voices were saying something incomprehensible. They sounded like music. Ruslan watched what was happening through the slit of the opened door of the ward. Curious, who opened the door? Had Tamara not closed it when she left? Or had someone else visited him while he lay unconscious? His room was the last one in the hallway. It was worth opening the door and you could watch everything that was going on in the reception, but his head ached so much that forced espionage was not pleasant. Soon Ruslan’s eyelids began to droop. Consciousness fell into darkness.

Was he dreaming? Or was it a fragment from a movie that repeated itself in his dream? There are dreams with a repetition of events experienced in reality. This is when the brain of a tired person could not relax and shut down for a good rest. Then a person dreams that he is still working or sitting at school. But can a watched movie be repeated in a dream?

In a dream, Ruslan could walk and even participate in the events. A beautiful woman, whom he had already seen a glimpse of on TV, led him to the locked doors. The beauty was wearing a scarlet cape, something like a Japanese kimono embroidered with dragons. Or was it a robe? Keys jingled in her hands. Something rustled beneath the cape, as if the fabric were hiding wings.

“His head is in there! You can talk to him. But don’t get too close,” she instructed in the tone of a mentor. “I saved the head long ago, but it still breathes fire. Stay away from his lips. If he doesn’t like your question, he’ll burn you. If you don’t offend him in any way, he will foretell your future.”

“Whose head is it?”

“It is Michael’s. His winged body is gone, but I kept his head.”

“You locked it up?” Ruslan was surprised.

“He held me prisoner for centuries, and now I’m holding him. Karma is karma. In every next life, the rapist will become a victim himself,” the beauty’s tone became instructive.

On a pedestal in the gloomy room there was the blond head of an angel. It was alive. Ruslan shuddered. He had seen such a face on frescoes in temples, and now he saw it on the severed head.

The beauty was tearing strands from the blond head and weaving them into something. Under each torn strand, the wounds bled. The hair was torn off with nothing but skin and blood.

The head woke up and breathed fire like a dragon.

Ruslan woke up in horror. He had almost been burned! But there weren’t even any burns left. His skin didn’t burn.

What a horror! Watching a dream like a movie is creepy!

Someone was singing in the hospital corridor. Ruslan was sure that if he got up and went there, he would see a beautiful woman weaving something from the hair of a severed head. There are legends about all sorts of creepy magic spinners who spin magic threads from people’s blood. What if he dreamed of such a spinster?

The girl in the dream was like a goddess. As if she was the only one missing on the pedestal in the unfinished mansion of oligarch Vereskovsky.

The night passed like a fog. A strange, mournful song drifted down the corridor. Ruslan couldn’t make out the words, as if it were sung in a foreign language. But it was definitely Russian. The song was warning him about something.

Ruslan had had a headache since morning. The words of the night song echoed in his ears. He could not make them out. It was strange to hear the words and not understand what they meant.

The blinds on the window were raised. The morning light was streaming into the room. It was a cloudy morning. Probably there will be a thunderstorm soon. Construction sites are chaotic in a thunderstorm. I wonder how the work is going now. According to the pretty nurse, he’ll be back on the site in three days to check it out. Two days to be exact. He slept for one day.

Ruslan wiped his eyes. One light eyelash remained on his finger. Perhaps he should make a wish. Ruslan wished to get out of the hospital as soon as possible.

The window overlooked the stairs leading to the hospital portal. The winged statues were still standing on it, but their postures seemed to have changed slightly. Perhaps it only seemed that way when viewed from a different angle. The marble angels had an ominous look, as if they were angels of death. There must have been a lot of dying in this hospital. The local morgue occupied an entire wing.

Ruslan noticed a familiar haircut. Could it be Valentina Vladimirovna Verbina? She was wearing a strict business suit and no jewelry. She had also washed off her makeup and had somehow become duller all at once. Valentina had a large bag in her hands.

“She had an appointment for a consultation at the plastic surgery department. It’s in that annex!” Tamara suddenly approached from behind and pulled down the blinds. “You should be resting.”

“I was just noticing an acquaintance.”

“I figured as much,” Tamara smiled disarmingly. “Only she didn’t say she wanted to visit you.”

“Does she know I’m here?”

“Everyone knows you’re here.”

“Who is it?”

“Not many people live here. News travels fast.”

Tamara frowned, as if she were hiding something. Tamara had an unhealthy pale complexion, but she was very beautiful. It was a shame that she was only in contact with Ruslan because she had to take care of the patients. If they had met on the street, at a disco, in a bar or in a theater, she would not have noticed him.

Valentina Vladimirovna didn’t even want to visit him. Of course, she was a casual acquaintance, but he was her husband’s architect after all. She could have shown some elementary politeness, since she came to the hospital where he was lying. Or Valentina Vladimirovna is hiding her visit here? After all, plastic surgery is a compromising thing. It’s embarrassing to admit to someone that your beauty is artificial, not innate. And if Valentina Vladimirovna is going to have a face-lift, she doesn’t want to admit it to anyone.

Ruslan wondered how old Valentina Vladimirovna was. She looked about twenty-five to thirty, but looks can be deceiving. Many young women who are too busy at work often look forty, and fifty-year-old models can easily pretend to be minors. It all depends on the living conditions and care of appearance. Rich slackers often look amazing, because they have the opportunity not to be tired at work, vacation at expensive resorts and travel to beauty salons. Women are like flowers, the more fertile the soil in which they grow, the more beautiful they become. But plant a flower on a dusty road far from water and it will wither.

“How old are you?” Ruslan spontaneously asked Tamara.

She was embarrassed for some reason.

“It was an insensitive question.”

“Why is it?”

“The younger I am, the less experience I have.”

Tamara started rummaging through her toolbox and pulled out a vial of pills.

“Just don’t give me sleeping pills.”

“It’ll help you calm down and sleep until the doctor is available. He’s on overload right now. You’ll have to wait.”

“I feel perfectly healthy.”

“The stitches from your wounds will need to come out soon anyway.”

“Did I get stitches?” Ruslan was genuinely surprised. “I don’t remember.”

“You were unconscious when they brought you here.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I wasn’t hooked up to any machines. Imagine if when I woke up I’d found out I’d been in a coma for years,” Ruslan joked. The joke was ridiculous. Tamara didn’t even smile.

“Time flies by here,” she fluffed the pillow on the bunk.

Nothing was visible under her uniform but her threadbare pantyhose. It would be nice to see at least the edge of her skirt to see what she wore when she wasn’t working. Ruslan tried to imagine Tamara in jeans and a T-shirt or a short summer sundress and couldn’t. But it was not difficult to imagine her in a chic evening dress. Tamara has the appearance of a refined aristocrat. The nurse’s uniform she was wearing seemed temporarily borrowed from someone.

Ruslan would rather believe that Tamara was the daughter of Vereskovsky or some other oligarch than that she was on the hospital staff. Could he be being played? He’d never seen a nurse like her before.

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