WINTER

 

He notices that it has a face.

The lips parting as if they were playing paper fortune teller but they don’t make a sound. Sara shines her phone light into the tangle of shapes in the dark. We can make out eyes, searching for a trace of awareness that might glimmer back at us.

The body is small and fragile. We can’t tell where it ends and where it begins, what belongs to it and what doesn’t. Some cables tangled with brambles, knotted like earphone wires. A hunk of flesh, or just a rag. A musky animal smell fills the air.

– Let’s go home, Sara.

She says nothing and reaches her hand into the darkness. Inhale, exhale. Not far from here, life is normal but down here, it’s no man’s land. The Barrens. A ravine carved out by some slag heap with the motorway bypass overhead, a railway bridge, the barbed wire fence of the train yard – just barriers, warnings and bushes everywhere.

Cars soar above us at high speed, while a freight train crawls by, slow and endlessly long. Sara hands me her phone.

– Hold the light.

She takes off her coat, carefully spreading it where she guesses the body could be. She wraps it in the beige wool, carefully patting it with her hand to keep it in place.

– Help me pick it up.

If someone sees us down here then we’re not gonna make it out. We could have been home ages ago.

The evening didn’t go well. We wanted to get some air.

– It’ll make you feel good. Better than sitting here making yourself miserable, I told her.

One of us mentions this place. They say they closed The Barrens again. They do it every time when there’s a spill or when someone gets lost or hurt down there. They build barricades, the firefighters swarm around with the police and the health department. Then they disappear again.

We just wanted to have a quick look.

Alcohol sparked curiosity — or perhaps just stupidity. We got lost in conversation, walking until we reached the city limits. There, the network of street lamps ends, giving way to pitch blackness. A lake without water. A toxic zone creeping into the city like a disease. Most of the time, no one notices it — just as with any disease.

Where we are, there’s a narrow asphalt path running along The Barrens. Cyclists ride here during the day, joggers do their training here but there’s no one here now. No flashing lights, false alarm.

Just a security car.

Headlights creep into view somewhere in front of us. I don’t want any trouble, I grab Sara’s hand and pull her away.

Then the car turns around, the headlights pointing into the darkness of the curtained area.

– Who’s there? The security guard calls out.

– We better go.

– No. Wait. Look.

Sara points down. Something stumbles down there.

The car starts up, its lights licking the bridge pillars before vanishing into the distance. Sara takes off running — over the guardrails and straight down.
The rumble of lorries echoes beneath the bridge, resonating like a church hall.

I grab the thing by the legs – or whatever it could be. I feel that I’m touching a body. It’s neither warm nor moving, nothing like that, but you just know that you’ve grabbed hold of something that’s alive.

– Pull.

– You have to pull, hurry up, says Sara.

We’re fighting for the body through the thicket. Branches are breaking off, fibres or hair. I feel like screaming in disgust but no one would hear it here anyway, it would just bounce off the concrete bellies of the bridges and echo back to us.

Then a rustle, and the thing is free. Light as wet paper.

We stumble under the light of the bridge lamp and place the body in the hollow of Sara’s coat. It doesn’t look like anything human or animal. We can see our breath in the cold air.

At first, we don’t notice that the security car is back. I cover the body, pretending we’re drunk, locals, we’re getting out of here. I casually throw the thing on my shoulders and we walk off into the darkness. We can’t go up now, not anymore.

We’re making our way through mud and dead bushes, when Sara says something.

– What?

– I thought it was a little kid.

It takes a while to get over the fence. We pass the body over our heads.

My jacket gets torn on the mesh. The thing slumps into Sara’s arms like a lump of dirty laundry.

Grandma’s cottage, same as it used to be. The key’s under the flower pot. Nothing inside looks familiar.

Our eyes adjust to the dark, I’m trying to remember where the circuit breakers are. I pry them open with a knife and the room flickers to life with an old yellow light — the electricity works, oddly enough. Sara’s found bed sheets.

– We need a blanket too.

– Maybe the other wardrobe?

She puts the body down on the bed. It’s lying completely still. Sara’s breath is visible in the cold.

– Will you start a fire?

I let a few small twigs catch and then add a log.

The strange thing still in plain sight.

It seems smaller now.

Stumps of emaciated limbs, a deflated chest, a wrinkled face. Fur, skin, cables. Flesh laced with bits of plastic. Mutilated remains. When I look at it long enough, I see something familiar in it. Something I might know. An animal, a child. Then I catch sight of my grandmother’s photo on the wall. The resemblance to something human, or just alive, is gone.

It’s strange how well the body remembers. I wouldn’t have found this place on a map, but I knew it from the days when The Barrens didn’t have a name yet — when it wasn’t so big or so strange. Back then, the city ignored it.
Now it carefully rises above it, stepping over it as if it were a pool of searing acid.

We walked deeper into The Barrens, through the dark. The city lights faded slowly, swallowed by a wall of shrubs and junk. Then we found a well-trodden path. My feet recognised the soft terrain, suddenly knowing which way to go.

Sara didn’t protest. We couldn’t go home with that thing. We would have been caught by security straight away. It would have meant trouble. Finding the key and turning it in the lock was a relief but now it felt strange. I dove into my memory and brought something foreign into it, something that shouldn’t be there.

– Can’t you help me?

Sara wets the corner of a tea towel, presses it to the thing’s mouth, handling it as if it were a newborn.

– You shouldn’t bend down so close to it. It could hurt you. Or infect you with something.

She doesn’t listen to me.

– I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay with you. Don’t worry, Sara whispers to the bundle wrapped in the duvet. The creature’s chest moves rapidly. It breathes like an animal. A bird. Or a very battered, frail puppy. A field kitten. That’s what Grandma called kittens that got so damaged during birth that the cat mother threw them out.

– I’m here with you, Sara continues. She lies down with the thing and rests her head on her hand. Kitchen cupboard, couch and a stove. I move around the room as if I know what to do.

I walk back and forth aimlessly, only stopping when I come upon something familiar. Grandma’s picture in the frame, her youthful unapproachable face, hair combed tightly, lips firmly pressed together, a clock that no longer works, a faded poster of the old city centre.

I find a bottle of rum in the cupboard.

I pour us some and hand Sara a glass. She relaxes a little. The cottage starts getting warmer. Sara carefully pulls the duvet back and examines the tiny body carefully.

– She’s just cold. I’m sure she’ll be fine, she says. As if she wasn’t at all concerned about what the thing was.

– We’re going home tomorrow. We’ll probably have to go into quarantine. Or something.

– Oh, please.

She stands up a little drunkenly, looking around the cottage. She checks the bedroom as if it were a hotel room.

I’ll lie down with her in there, OK? Will you help me carry her? She then folds her clothes on the shabby chair. She lets her hair down. Her T-shirt reminds me of the morning in the city. It feels like a year ago. I’m left with the couch, my feet sticking out at the end. I cover myself with an old towel. I wish I was sitting on the night tram, resting my heavy head on the window.

What are we doing here? With this thing?

I roll from side to side. I get up. I

n the next room, Sara is sleeping peacefully. Wrapped in cold blankets, she snores softly as if there was nothing at all special about tonight.

I have to search for the thing at first. I think it’s hiding from me. After staring long enough, the outline of a raisin-like head slowly emerges from the darkness.

When I was little, I used to outwit ghosts by becoming friends with them. I told them they weren’t evil. I laughed, haha, that’s funny, that’s hilarious, don’t do that, hahaha. I kept saying it until they had to go along with it. The trick was to never look away.

The thing is lying on the camp bed, within reach of Sara. Why did she lie down so close to it?

We’ll make the necessary calls in the morning. We’ll pay the fine and go.

Something stirs on the clawed limb. It resembles a finger.

– Milk.

Sara is talking in her sleep. I can’t see into her eyes. Maybe she’s awake.

– That’s what they do when they drink milk.

Someone turns on the light in the house across the way.

Morning, headache. I vaguely remember last night. It takes me a while to realise where I am. My grandmother is frowning at me from a photograph.

I go to see Sara in the bedroom. The thing is at the foot of the bed now. In the light of day, it looks like a clump of trash. Something that accidentally piled up on itself. Sara’s just getting up. As soon as she opens her eyes, she immediately starts tending to the incomprehensible body. The small chest wrapped in a sheet trembles as if on command.

– Can we go? Maybe they won’t be there patrolling in the morning. Nothing.

– The stop is just a few minutes from here. I’ll go straight to work. You can go rest and we’ll meet up at home. Leave everything as is. Don’t tidy up. No. Sara doesn’t pay any attention to what I’m saying. She carefully examines the thing’s body.

I try using compassion instead:

– So, we’ll give it to the neighbours? The ones next door?

Sara quickly gets up and carefully covers the thing. She leaves to go to the main room and starts planning.

– I’m certainly not leaving her here, so why don’t you take a home office day. She opens the old cupboard, takes out a pot and brings it to the sink – It’s not potable. You can’t boil it either, I tell her.

Sara makes a face.

– In that case we don’t have water.

She opens the door to the garden. The cold morning air fills the room.

It looks as if someone has hit the reset button outside. In the garden, there are a few half-grown apple trees, cherries, apricots – none of these sights mean anything to me. A heavy sky.

Sara flits about somewhere in the back, I see yellow wellies left by my grandmother.

Friday. What time is it? I forgot to check my phone. I can’t deny that I’m enjoying it a little bit. Sara slips past me and goes back inside.

– We need that water.

– We need to go home, I argue.

– Calm down. It’s fine. Can’t we pretend it’s just a little trip? A getaway. The doctor said I need stuff like that.

My mind goes to the thing in the bedroom. It doesn’t exactly radiate health.

 

 

Translated by Alžběta Belánová