As time passed and alcohol flowed, the mumbled consolations of the mourners grew steadily louder. Anecdotes involving the late Billie were shared, conversations grew lighter and laughter became easier to release. The mood of the wake gradually transformed from the bleak sorrow which had permeated the crematorium to a spirited celebration of the life of the young woman.
The noise of the revelry drifted out to the beer garden but left Ewan Holmwood unaffected. His face remained grim, his body rigid. Though alone, he spoke out loud.
‘You believe that these devils, these Vadātājs, caused your death and have haunted your spirit ever since. You also think that they killed my cousin simply to taunt you. And now that I can see you, it’s possible they may target me. Am I missing anything?’
‘I’m sorry to put you in this position, Ewan.’ The words were accompanied with a cool breeze, a sensation Ewan was becoming familiar with. Together with the fact that no one else acknowledged the presence of the woman sitting across from him, Ewan readily accepted that Lita was a ghost despite previously having given no regard to the existence of an afterlife.
‘But why do you think the Vadātājs are behind all this?’ Ewan asked, resolutely refusing to panic at the danger he may be in. He reasoned that before he should worry, he would gather as many facts as he could to see the whole picture. He would then be able to concoct plans for his safety. It was a simple case of risk assessment.
‘To understand that, you’ll need to know my family history,’ Lita answered.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Ewan said with a shrug.
Lita took a deep breath before she continued. Must be a force of habit, Ewan thought. She surely doesn’t need to breathe.
‘For as long as I can remember, my mother feared the wrath of the Vadātājs. She told me that they had taken umbrage with my family and that they forever tormented us. She did not know why, only that she believed – truly believed, more than anything else in life – that they wanted us all dead.’
‘That’s…’ Ewan struggled to find the right word, and instead said, ‘That must have been hard to deal with as a child.’
Lita gazed into the middle-distance, as if she were peering through the years and into her past life.
‘It was all I knew,’ she said, her tone flat. ‘I don’t know if it ever felt wrong. I know I never questioned it. I trusted what my mother said. I had no reason to doubt her, and no worldly experience to even think to challenge her.
‘When I was old enough, she told of the time she realised the curse was real. Like me, she had been raised with the knowledge of the Vadātājs and their war on our family name. Her brother, Arnold, was nine years older than her and he married when my mother was twelve. Within a few years, his wife Lidija had graced him with twins, Jemma and Staņislavs. The Vadātājs wiped them all out two years later.’
Ewan remained silent. Partly because he did not want to interrupt Lita’s flow but also because they were no words he could conjure to describe the horror he felt at the atrocity of killing babies.
‘My mother said that the house they lived in collapsed,’ Lita continued. ‘The official investigation stated that the cause was likely to have been due to a ruptured gas main, but the lack of scorching or fire damage made it impossible to be certain.’
‘It could have been just an accident,’ Ewan ventured.
‘Perhaps, but there was no natural reason for the house to have fallen. The damage was restricted only to Arnold’s home. Neighbours were interviewed but had not smelled gas prior to the event. And from the rubble they were only able to retrieve the bodies of Arnold and Jemma. Lidija and Staņislavs, my mother’s sister-in-law and nephew, were never found.’
Ewan felt a chill creep down his spine which had nothing to do with the cold air that accompanied Lita’s presence. He wondered what injuries could have been delivered upon Lidija and her son for there to be no remains among the debris.
A voice behind him made Ewan jump, though he was successful in stifling a shriek.
‘Whatcha doin’ bro?’
Ewan spun around to see a look of concern on his sister’s face. Her eyes were unfocused and she was swaying gently. Ewan glanced at Lita, then remembered that Sandra could not see her so turned back to his sister.
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘just reminiscing.’
‘’Sokay,’ Sandra slurred. ‘I’ve come to say ta-ra ’cause I’m, I’m goin’ home.’ She threw her arms around him, almost falling in the process. Ewan stood up to steady her, throwing a quick apologetic glance at Lita.
Lita smiled, seemingly glad of the light-hearted interruption. ‘She’s so drunk,’ she giggled.
Thoughts moved with glacial slowness in Sandra’s head. She knew she had had too much to drink but couldn’t remember which one had been the one too many. She couldn’t really remember what she had drinked. Drank, she corrected herself.
Holding on to her little brother, she wondered if it was obvious that she was drunk. She had spoken slowly in an attempt to avoid slurring her words, and she knew her sentences had made sense but she couldn’t remember clearly what she had just said.
When she heard Ewan say, ‘She’s so drunk,’ in a girlish voice, she knew she wasn’t fooling him.
What the hell, she thought. It’s a sad… thing and there’s no judgement in family. Occasion, it’s a sad occasion.
She shook her head, trying in vain to dispel the hissing sound at her ears.
Half-carrying half-guiding her, Ewan escorted Sandra back into the pub and into the safe arms of their father. His dad assured him he would see Sandra home, and insisted Ewan get a taxi when he left; he would bring him back tomorrow to pick up his car.
Though he had only had one pint, and had not yet finished it, Ewan told his dad he would. His father had his hands full with Sandra and didn’t need the extra worry of Ewan’s safety as well. Lita had followed them inside, but the place was too busy and noisy for them to talk so they returned to the beer garden.
‘So Arnold and his daughter were killed when the house collapsed,’ he recapped, ‘but his wife and son were not found. What do you think happened to them?’
‘It was believed that the Vadātājs had destroyed them before they demolished the house.’ Lita’s voice was cold and steady as she answered, though Ewan suspected it was due to a forced detachment rather than a lack of emotion.
‘Destroyed them?’ he asked, uncertain of such a vague term.
‘Shredded them; pulverised them; ground them to dust. There was no way to know for sure.’
‘Could they not have gotten away? Escaped somehow?’
Lita shook her head. ‘Highly unlikely. If they had, they would have sought out my mother and her family.’
Hesitantly, Ewan voiced his doubt: ‘I just find it difficult to believe that the Vadātājs could make people disappear without a trace.’
Sandra tried to doze in the car, but her spinning head and the sound of rushing air made it impossible.
‘Do you need a hand getting her inside, Stan?’ somebody asked.
Staring intently at the driver, Sandra fought to bring the face into focus. He looked familiar.
‘No, I got her, Terry.’
Terry, the driver was Terry. Her father’s oldest friend.
‘I love you, Terry,’ Sandra told him.
Terry grinned at her, saying, ‘I know, pet.’
The door beside her opened and her father leaned down to help her out of the car.
‘I love you too, Daddy,’ she said.
He said something to her, but his voice was drowned out by the insistent hissing sound.
‘You said that the tragedy that befell Arnold and his family was told to you,’ Ewan said. ‘You don’t remember it yourself?’
Lita smiled despite the sad tale. ‘Arnold was nine years older than my mother,’ she reminded him. ‘This happened when she was sixteen, long before I was born.’
‘So you’re relying on the word of your mother?’
‘For that incident, yes. But I was present when the Vadātājs came for her.’
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ Ewan asked. He suspected Lita would open up to him but was aware there was a small chance that talking about the death of her mother may be too traumatic for her.
Lita focused on the distance again, her eyes glazing over as she peered through the years.
‘By 1990, it was just me and my mother. My grandparents had passed away years before – peacefully, I’m glad to say – and my father had left when I was a child. To this day, I still wonder whether he had fled because of the fear of the Vadātājs.
‘I don’t know how well-versed you are with Latvian politics’ – Ewan shrugged apologetically – ‘but ’90 also saw the start of Latvian independence movement. We’d been under Soviet rule since the end of World War Two and sought freedom for our nation. The following January was a bad month. The Soviet military tried to seize the Vilnius TV Tower but were met by opposition.
‘My mother and I were there, though not by design. She was the first of over a dozen to be killed by the Soviets.’
Ewan was quiet for a moment. Although he had not previously heard about these events in Latvia, he found them easy to believe given the recent invasion of the Ukraine. But, as dreadful as civilians being shot by soldiers was, he could not see any link to the Vadātājs. He asked Lita to explain further.
‘I saw the soldier who killed her,’ she said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘He looked scared, unsure of how to deal with the rebellion in front of him. Then there was… that sound; his eyes changed, his face went slack and I knew he was no longer in control of himself. There were a few people between him and my mother, all shouting and jeering, but he aimed straight for her and fired.’
‘The sound?’ Ewan asked, lowering his tone to match hers. ‘What was that sound?’
Lita looked him directly in the eyes. ‘When the Vadātājs break into this world, their coming is always preceded by a prolonged and violent hissing noise.’
Laying in her parents’ spare bedroom, Sandra felt the room twirl and spin. It reminded her of the sensation of being on the Waltzers; that dizzying feeling of her head reeling while her stomach lurched, all accompanied by the sound of the air rushing past her ears.
The noise was beginning to irritate her. She been drunk before and was not a stranger to the fluidity of the room, but the incessant hissing was new. It was like she had a fly trapped in each ear.
A flicker of movement in the corner of the room caught her attention. Her eyes failed to focus on the motion so all she could discern was a faint wisp of swirling smoke. The sound of escaping air increased in the room, to the point that she could feel the vibrations through her body.
Before her eyes, the drifting smoke seemed to pull together, coalescing into a human shape.
As the hissing sound finally faded, the dark form stepped toward her.
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