Festival of Fear Read online

  She climbed on to the bus. Kasia and Grzegorz were sitting at the front, next to the driver. Halfway down the aisle sat two young nurses from the children’s hospital at Chorzow. Grace had arranged for them to accompany the children all the way to Warsaw, and then for two student nurses from UHP to take care of them while they were being flown back to Philly.

  The children themselves were unexcited. Some of them rocked in their seats, as they always rocked, while others stared listlessly out of the windows. None of them had any experience of a day away from the orphanage, so they had no idea of where they might be going or what was going to happen to them.

  However, the nurses gave them each a carton of Sokpol cranberry juice, and a Princessa chocolate wafer, and they were so pleased that they chattered and laughed with pleasure and one or two of them even screamed.

  Kasia took hold of Grace’s hand. ‘It is a wonderful thing that you are doing today, Grace.’

  Grace looked down at Anka, sitting in her lap. ‘I just wish that Gabriela could have been here, too.’

  ‘The police think she ran away,’ said Grzegorz. ‘They believe she was try to get home to her father and mother.’

  ‘So she died of what? Exposure?’

  ‘They think so,’ said Kasia. ‘Her body was so badly torn to pieces that it was almost impossible for them to say. They could not find one of her arms.’

  ‘Oh, God. I hope she didn’t suffer. She was so frightened that she was going to be eaten by a witch, and look what happened to her. I feel so guilty.’

  ‘It was not your fault, Grace,’ Grzegorz told her. ‘These childs, they have great luck to be alive at all. Even ordinary childs in Katowice has terrible troubles with the health, because of the pollutement in the air. The steelworks, the factories. The doctors find the heavy metals even inside the unborn babies. Lead, arsenic. We try our best, but we cannot save every one of them.’

  Grace lifted up Anka. ‘Gabriela said that Anka always kept her safe, didn’t she? Anka breathed in all of her nightmares, so that they wouldn’t hurt her.’

  Kasia tugged Anka’s hair, trying to straighten it. ‘Many Polish children have nightmares about Baba Jaga. She is very scary!’

  ‘I never heard about her before.’

  ‘Well, Baba Jaga lives in the forest, in a wooden hut that runs around on chicken legs. The keyhole to her front door is a human mouth with sharp teeth inside it, and the fence around her hut is made of human bones with a skull on top of every pole, except for one, which is supposed to be for you, if you are having a nightmare about her.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Grace, ‘I think I’ll try not to.’

  Kasia smiled. ‘Baba Jaga is always hungry, and so she is always out searching for food. She flies in and out through the chimney, in a mortar, with a pestle to steer with, and she carries a net for catching children.

  ‘The story goes that the only child who ever managed to escape from Baba Jaga was the daughter of a turnip farmer.’

  Grace said, ‘The daughter of a turnip farmer? That’s what Gabriela believed she was, didn’t she?’

  Kasia nodded. ‘Every time Baba Jaga was about to eat her, the girl said that she would taste much better with turnips, so Baba Jaga took her back to her father’s farm to collect a sack full of them. The girl cooked them into a turnip stew, and Baba Jaga ate so much that she fell asleep.

  ‘It was a bitter night in winter, and Baba Jaga slept so long that she was frozen stiff. The girl was able to steal the special key from Baba Jaga’s belt and escape.’

  ‘Poor Gabriela,’ said Grace. ‘If only she could have escaped.’

  The doll, Anka, continued to stare at her, unblinking, and for a split second Grace could have sworn that she was smiling. But she was only being jiggled by the bus, as they turned off the side road that took them away from the Cienisty Orphanage, and on to the broad S1 highway to Warsaw.

  The sun shone, the cumulus clouds blossomed in the sky, and the two young nurses started the children in a clapping song.

  ‘Kosi kosi lapci, pojedziem do babci! Babcia da nam mleczka, a dziadzius pierniczka! Clap, clap little hands, we will go to grandma’s! Granny will give us milk, and grandpa a gingerbread cookie!’

  Jack and Daisy were sitting in the second-floor lounge of the Holiday Inn in Warsaw, waiting for her. Jack was looking unshaven and tired, and his dark hair was ruffled, but Grace knew that he had only been back from Tokyo for a day and a half before he had brought Daisy over to Poland.

  When she had told him about her determination to rescue the children from the orphanage, Jack had told her that she was mad. ‘You’re a crazy woman. You’re worse than my mother. All she did was rescue cats.’ But he had supported her right from the very beginning, and never once told her that she was wasting her time. More than that, he had called in favors from senior executives at five different hospitals to whom he sold scanning equipment. He had emailed dozens of his friends and golf partners and he had even taken the junior senator for Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, Jr, for lunch at Vetri’s, and canvassed his support, too.

  As she came up the stairs, Daisy ran over and flung her arms around her.

  ‘Where did you get that baseball cap?’ asked Grace. It had a rubber rooster’s head on top of it, with wildly staring eyes.

  ‘Daddy brought it back from Japan. He says it’s to stop me from running around like a headless chicken.’

  Jack took Grace in his arms and kissed her and held her close. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he told her. ‘How’s Project Totally Bananas?’

  ‘The kids are staying overnight at the University Children’s Hospital, so that we can give them a last check-up before they leave. They don’t have the least idea what’s happening to them, but they all seem happy enough.’

  Jack said, ‘I had a call from NBC before we left home. They want to interview you as soon as you get back – you and the kids. You know what the Inquirer is calling you? “Amazing Grace”. And I agree with them. You are amazing.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Jack. Those kids were living in such terrible conditions. They were cold, they were hungry, they weren’t being given any medical attention. Anybody would have done the same as me.’

  ‘Whose doll is that?’ asked Daisy, pointing at Anka.

  Grace held her up. ‘Her name’s Anka. She used to belong to a little girl called Gabriela.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Gabriela? I’m afraid she died. She was only about the same age as you.’

  Daisy carefully took Anka out of Grace’s hand. She pulled Anka’s dress straight and brushed back her hair.

  ‘She’s weird. But she’s very pretty, isn’t she?’

  ‘Gabriela said that Anka stopped her from having nightmares.’

  ‘Can I look after her? Oh, please! I can take her to school for show-and-tell!’

  ‘I think she needs disinfecting first.’

  ‘But then can I have her? She’s so cool. She makes Barbie look totally dumb.’

  Jack raised his eyebrows, as if he didn’t always let Daisy get whatever she wanted. Grace said, ‘OK, then. But I want you to remember that this will always be Gabriela’s doll, and you’re just keeping it for her, in her memory.’

  ‘I will. I promise. Anka and me, we’ll say a prayer for Gabriela every night.’

  It took over three weeks to place all the children in their various homes and hospitals, but at last Project Totally Bananas was all over, and Grace found that she was free again. Unexpectedly, she felt bereaved, as if the children had been her own, and she had given them up for adoption.

  But one evening in the second week of April she received a call from Frank Wells, the picture editor of Oyster magazine, who wanted her to go to North Vietnam to shoot travel pictures.

  ‘Just don’t bring back a plane-load of Vietnamese orphans, you got me? If you do, Oyster isn’t going to pay for their air fares.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Frank. I think I’ve done my Mother Teresa bit for one lifetime.’r />
  She poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and switched on David Letterman. She never watched much TV, but Jack was away for three days in San Diego, and the house always seemed so silent without him, especially after Daisy had gone to bed.

  She was sitting on the couch, leafing through Good Housekeeping and half listening to the TV, when she heard Daisy cry out. It was a strange cry, more like a moan than a shout. It sounded to Grace as if Daisy was so frightened that she couldn’t even articulate.

  ‘Daisy! Daisy, what’s wrong?’

  She threw aside her magazine and ran up to Daisy’s bedroom, which was the first on the left at the top of the stairs. Daisy cried out again, but this time her cry was shrill and piercing.

  Grace flung open the bedroom door. It was dark inside, but she was instantly aware that there was something in there – something huge and black that smelled of smoke. Something that shifted and crackled, like breaking branches.

  ‘Mommy! Mommy! What is it? What is it? Mommy, what is it?’

  ‘Come here, Daisy! Come here, quick!’ Grace held out her arms for her and Daisy scrambled off her bed and almost threw herself at her. Grace backed out of the bedroom door and set Daisy down on the landing. Then she reached inside and switched on the light. Daisy was sobbing and she herself was gasping with fright.

  She could hardly believe what she saw. In the far corner of the room, as high as the ceiling, stood the figure of a woman dressed in dusty, black sacking. Her hair was stuck up on top of her head with some kind of mud or wax, which made it look like a bundle of twigs, and it was her hair that was making the crackling sound as it brushed against the ceiling.

  Her face was long and emaciated, as if it had been stretched, and her skin was jaundiced. Her eyes were huge and red-rimmed, with yellowish pupils. Her mouth was curved downward to reveal a jagged crowd of sharp-pointed teeth.

  Her arms were insanely long, and almost reached from one side of the room to the other. Both of them were lifted up high, and her fingers were stretched wide like claws.

  ‘Jestem głodny,’ she croaked.

  ‘Who are you?’ Grace demanded, although her words came out like broken pieces of china. ‘How did you get here? Get out!’

  ‘Jestem głodny,’ the women repeated, more urgently this time, and she beckoned lasciviously toward Daisy, and stuck out the tip of her tongue, which was pointed and slippery-gray, like a snake. Her long chin was covered in black bristles.

  It was then that Grace glanced downward, and saw how the woman had materialized. Gabriela’s doll Anka was lying on the floor, half hidden by the comforter that hung down from the side of Daisy’s bed. Anka’s eyes were closed, as they always were when she was laid down on her back. But her mouth was wide open, and thick black smoke was gushing out of it.

  The smoke had risen up into the room and twisted itself into the shape of the woman in black sacking. Like a genie rising out of a lamp, thought Grace.

  She looked up again. She was so frightened that she felt as if her skin was shrinking. The woman was swaying toward them, her claws still lifted, her eyes gleaming. But now Grace understood who she was, and what she was – or at least she thought she did. All of the nightmares that Anka had swallowed to protect Gabriela had come pouring out of her, as black and as noxious as burning oil.

  It was Baba Jaga, the Polish witch of the woods, the ever-hungry devourer of innocent children.

  ‘Jestem głodny,’ she rasped, for the third time. ‘I am starving, you understand me? I have need to eat.’

  Daisy said, ‘Mommy,’ but Grace pushed her toward the stairs and said, ‘Run, sweetheart! Run! Get out of the house just as fast as you can!’

  ‘No!’ screamed Baba Jaga, swaying toward them. ‘I must have her! I must suck her bones!’

  But Daisy scampered down the stairs, whimpering, and Grace stood her ground. Although her voice was shaking, she managed to say, ‘I have plenty of food for you, Baba Jaga. I have so much food you won’t feel hungry for another year.’

  Baba Jaga’s tongue darted out again, and licked her sharpened teeth. ‘I do not believe you. You do not want me to eat your girl, that is all. But I will eat your girl, I promise you, and I will eat you, too, and I will chew your intestines like pasta.’

  She lashed out at Grace, and caught the sleeve of her sweater in her claw. Grace tried to pull herself away, but Baba Jaga drew her closer. Grace turned her face aside, but she could feel the prickle of Baba Jaga’s chin hairs against her cheek, and she could smell Baba Jaga’s breath. It smelled like the Cienisty Orphanage, of boiled turnips and dirty disinfectant water and rotten chicken. It smelled like children’s despair.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Come on. Come with me. I will give you food.’

  Baba Jaga’s eyes closed. Unlike human beings, her eyelids closed upward. Then they rolled down again, with several fine strings of sticky residue clinging to her lashes.

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed. ‘But do not try to trick me. The people who have tried to trick me, their skulls surround my hut.’

  Slowly, Grace edged her way out on to the landing. Baba Jaga followed her, with her claws still snared in the sleeve of her sweater. Although she was mostly made of black smoke, and appeared to have no legs, she walked with a lurching, complicated limp.

  Grace led the way slowly down the stairs to the hallway, and through to the kitchen. For some reason, she had imagined that Baba Jaga would not be reflected in mirrors or windows, like a vampire. But as she crossed the kitchen she could see the witch clearly in the shiny black glass of her oven, and in the windows that looked out over the yard.

  She could see herself, too, pale faced, but looking surprisingly calm. Is that really me? she thought. Me, with a real, live witch?

  There was no sign of Daisy anyplace, and Grace prayed that she had left the house and run next door, or even further.

  ‘So where is this feast that you have promised me?’ asked Baba Jaga. ‘I see no food anywhere, only you!’

  ‘Please, be patient,’ said Grace. She led Baba Jaga through to the utility room beside the kitchen, where she kept her washing machine and her tumble dryer, and also her freezer chest.

  She switched on the fluorescent light, and then she went over to the freezer chest, unlocked it and lifted the lid. Inside it was heaped with frozen turkeys, frozen chickens, pies and fish and packets of vegetables. Icy vapor poured out of it and sank to the floor.

  ‘This is all for you,’ she told Baba Jaga. ‘You can eat all of it.’

  Baba Jaga stared at the frozen food wide eyed.

  ‘This is for me?’

  ‘Everything. Fish, chickens, pastries. Ducks. Blueberries, too.’

  With no more hesitation, Baba Jaga tore her claw away from Grace’s sleeve, reached into the freezer, and dragged out a whole frozen pike, which Jack had brought home last year from a fishing trip on Marsh Creek Lake. With a sharp crunch, she bit into it, and tore away half of its body.

  Grace said shakily, ‘Good? What did I promise you?’

  Baba Jaga turned toward her, her mouth filled with chewed-up lumps of frozen fish. She said nothing, but when Grace tried to take a step away from her, she took hold of her sleeve, and pulled her back.

  ‘After cold food, warm food,’ she warned her.

  Grace raised both of her hands to indicate that she wasn’t thinking of going anyplace. Baba Jaga released her again, and started to pull out rib-eye steaks and hamburgers. Grace couldn’t believe that she was able to eat them when they were frozen solid, but her teeth bit into them voraciously, and she chewed and swallowed everything – frozen meat and frozen fat and frozen bones, and even the frozen plastic bags they were wrapped in.

  At the bottom of the freezer there were four frozen ducks. Baba Jaga reached down and tried to wrench them free, but they were all frozen solidly together, and wedged beneath boxes of frozen pastry.

  She tugged and tugged at the ducks, gasping in frustration. She leaned further and further over the side of
the freezer chest.

  Grace thought, if this doesn’t work, I’m going to be killed, and eaten, and that will be a nightmare. She thought of the horror of Daisy returning home, to find her body ripped apart like Gabriela’s had been, in the woods.

  But suddenly, Baba Jaga climbed right into the freezer chest, and knelt on top of the pastry and the bags of frozen peas. She grasped the ducks with both hands and pulled at them, cursing and spitting.

  She raised her head and said to Grace, ‘Find me a knife. And do not think of trying to kill me with it. I cannot be killed by stabbing – or hanging for that matter, or poisoning, or drowning.’

  Grace said, ‘OK, I understand.’ She turned away, but immediately she turned around again, and took hold of the lid of the freezer chest, and slammed it down, and locked it.

  Baba Jaga screeched in fury. She began to beat on the lid with her fists, until dents appeared all over it. Then she kicked at the ends and the sides, and threw herself left and right, again and again, so that Grace was terrified that the whole freezer chest would fall over, and Baba Jaga would be able to crawl out.

  ‘I curse you!’ screamed Baba Jaga. ‘I curse you a thousand, thousand times over! I curse you so that worms will crawl out of your eyes instead of tears! I curse you so that you will be blind and deaf and your skin will burn like fire! I curse you!’

  But Grace dragged over one of the kitchen chairs and sat on top of the freezer chest and stayed there, even while Baba Jaga was thumping and banging and rocking it so wildly that it moved halfway across the utility room.

  ‘Gabriela,’ she prayed. ‘Wherever you are, please help me.’

  She hung on and hung on, while Baba Jaga continued to scream and curse. After a few minutes, however, Daisy came into the utility room, carrying Anka. She looked very pale and serious.

  ‘Mommy?’ she said. ‘I ran next door but there was nobody there and then I got scared that the witch was going to hurt you so I came back.’

  ‘She’s locked in here, sweetheart. The witch is locked in here. I just have to keep her here until she freezes.’