The room is getting darker. Out of the window I can see wooded hills on the eastern horizon, catching the last orange tinge of daylight, as the sun sets behind us. On the table by the bed there is a candle and a tinderbox. I strike a spark with some difficulty, as if the air is damp, and nurture a little fire to light the candle. The illumination it gives is meagre and yellow, serving only to heighten the shadows in the room, rather than dispel them. I rise and cross to the window. Taking a last look at the vestige of sunlight fading from the tips of the distant trees, I close the curtain and return to the bed, to sit and wait. There is now no running away. It is night, and I must stay here. I am dressed as if for bed, in a simple shift. My day-clothes lie folded on a chair. When I was a younger woman I worshipped my father. He was Professor Jakob Braxton of Helsingfors, and although as a girl I could not study under him at the University, I was his helper, his assistant, his student in all but name, and the person he chose to carry on his work after his death. He was a Swedish Finn, which meant that we were subjects of the Tsar. And as non-Russians and intellectuals to boot we were doubly suspect. We found it difficult to move around freely, and the Russian police and those malodorous, bearded priests made life difficult. They mistrusted and feared my father's arcane research, resented the fact that when he had converted from Lutheranism it had been to Catholicism, rather than to their religion. When we had managed to leave the Empire we found things only a little easier. Nobody likes to be reminded of the dark things of the world, everybody wants to pretend that they don't exist, and when these things emerge the evil acts they do are put down to something else. There are no werewolves, just rabid dogs. There are no dreadful spectres, just tricks of the light. There are no ghouls, just grave-robbers. There are no... Since my father's death I have had to grow several layers of tough skin. I am a woman. I travel alone when I can, engaging an ad hoc chaperone when I have to. I meddle in things which the world considers unseemly for a woman, I ask questions, I probe, I make demands. "Can't she find a man?" they say with curled-lipped derision. This morning I had left my current chaperone in the town, some fifty kilometres away from here. It had been difficult to hire a horse, but eventually I found someone who let me have a tired hack at an exorbitant rate, and I had ridden alone until I found this abandoned, ruined Staedtel, unsure in which empire or province it stood, in a land of debateable borders. Every roof was falling in, every door hanging by a single hinge, except for this house, the largest. As I approached, it seemed to have an air of the same age and dereliction as the other buildings, but close-to its soundness betrayed some sort of occupation or use. The roof held, the door stood erect. I dismounted, and slapped the horse on its rump to make it run away. I wanted to leave myself no avenue of escape. If I survived the coming night that would be enough. If I did not, then it was certain that I would have no need of a horse. Looking at the house, I saw that a simple carving had been made in the stone lintel. A heart. The last element of a coat of arms of a once-great family, this device was one amongst many dispersed on the lintels of houses throughout central Europe. It looked innocuous, but it made me shudder when I considered its implications. But still I pushed at the door of the house half hoping to find it locked. It was not. I entered and shut it behind me. Today I have burned so many bridges behind myself. Time passes – how late in the night is it now? The candle wavers and is dim, still burning feebly though the air is not damp at all – it is dry. I look towards a far corner of the room, and it seems to me that the angles where the walls and floor meet are all wrong, growing sharper, more acute, distant. It is as though all the dust in the room is gathering itself into an absurd plane against that corner. Something is happening. Something is coming. I rise, for I must meet my adversary standing. The dust is moving, swirling into shapes only to dissolve again, one moment seeming to grow a trunk and limbs, the next forming unnatural cubes and cylinders, and then falling into a writhing heap. Now it gathers itself with purpose, and I watch as it forms at last into a figure, the whirling dust transforming itself into a flowing, white robe, undulating over a female body. There she is, suspended in the crackling, electric air, her feet about half a metre from the floor, her arms held out from her sides, her hair rippling like midnight grasses in the wind. She is iridescent, shimmering, unearthly, terrifying. And beautiful, oh yes she is so beautiful. I must stand still for now. I must conquer my own fear inside me. That is the first battle I must win, for if I lose it, then I will lose the battle that is to come after, the battle with her. I raise my head, and look at her steadily, with all the calm defiance I can muster. On the humming air she floats. Then, wasplike, she flits to my left, then behind me. I feel a frisson as she seems to hover only a bare centimetre from the back of my neck. I am vulnerable, but I make no movement. Now she is back in front of me, hovering still, just out of arm's reach. She closes her eyes, and gives an almost ecstatic hiss through her teeth. Then she opens her eyes and looks at me. She speaks, and her voice reverberates weirdly.
