“Are you okay?” the young priest asked, his brows lowered in an expression of worry. Emil did not want his pity.
“I’m fine,” he said, his shoulders as rigid as if he were ready for a fight. He could already sense the burn of judgment as he rose to his feet. It wasn’t enough that he was the devil himself, attacking elderly ladies and feeding them to crows. Now he also disrespected priests.
Adam sighed and once again touched Emil’s shoulder, as if he’d never heard about the concept of personal space. “Were you friends? Maybe you’d like to join me at the parsonage to cool off? This must have been a huge shock.”
Emil gritted his teeth and jumped over the ditch, making some of the good people of Dybukowo step back in response. As if he could infect them with the stench of death that had clung to him since childhood. For once, he didn’t see Adam’s proposition as an opportunity to get under the man’s cassock, because nobody deserved to interact with a waste of space like him.
He would fail Radek and embarrass him in front of the friend who’d agreed to take a chance on Emil. Zofia lay dead, mutilated as if she were a character in a horror movie despite the sun shining brightly, the sky being blue, and birds chirping happily in a bush. And maybe it wasn’t his fault. But what if it was? What if it hadn’t happened to her if she’d stayed home knitting sweaters for her grandchildren instead of heading his way?
He couldn’t stand even thinking about it, and his dream of a short time away now appeared like the most selfish decision of all.
“I don’t need company.”
He could hardly breathe, let alone speak, so saying those few words left his throat raw and tasting of copper.
“I said stay there,” Nowak repeated in the same tone he used whenever he told Emil to stay away from his son. It was easy to ignore him most days, but the imperative tone made Emil ball his hands into fists and wish he could punch Nowak’s moustache off his face.
But he wouldn’t. Because this day was bad enough without being arrested for assault.
Adam swallowed. “Emil, come on—”
But Emil sped up, head lowered, hands stuffed into his pockets. Maybe he should have anticipated this. The only reason hope ever entered his life was to crush his dreams like a ball of fire and smoke.
Maybe he really was cursed?
He managed to tear himself away from the mean voices, but the motor of a car buzzed ever closer, and Emil moved to the side of the road, heading toward the dark hills ahead. It was time to get drunk and wallow.
He grunted when the Range Rover rushed past him and blocked his way as if Nowak believed he was a policeman in an American action flick. The door on the driver’s side opened, but Nowak didn’t bother to leave his vehicle. “I said stay, you punk! The police will need to talk to you.”
There had never been any love lost between Emil and Radek’s father, so warnings like this were always on the table. But while they had usually been about something vague, Zofia’s death and the fact that this time Nowak wasn’t the only one pointing a finger at Emil, made the threats serious. Even if Emil couldn’t see the police believing that he somehow turned the wild crows into his personal kill squad to target the elderly.
Emil joined Nowak in the staring contest. “You know they won’t be here for at least another hour. If they want to talk to me, I’ll be at home.”
“Don’t you think they won’t come. They will. I heard you’d planned to travel today. Don’t you dare pull my son into your shady business.”
“There is no ‘shady business’.” Emil bared his teeth. Oh, how he wished to tell Nowak he’d been fucking his son for two years now. But he couldn’t out Radek for the sake of petty vengeance, so he just simmered in his fury. “Unless you mean my side business of devil worship. I was actually going to Cracow to show Radek the ropes in that. Just that my crows got a little out of hand.”
Nowak exhaled like a raging bull, and the red flush peeking through the thinning hair at the top of his head suggested his brain was about to cook. “Watch it,” he said but didn’t protest when Emil walked around his car and hurried toward his fortress of solitude.
Emil was glad to be out of everyone’s sight, but the burden of Zofia’s death weighed heavily on his heart, and he could barely cope with the onslaught of anguish he felt when he approached his house and saw the black swarm on the trees surrounding the homestead. It was as if they’d only left to unleash mayhem on the one kind soul in this godforsaken village.
Their bead-like eyes stared at him, but as he wondered whether they hadn’t chosen him for their next victim, one cawed in greeting, and others followed. He picked up a rock and tossed it at one of the trees in helpless fury, but when the projectile passed between the birds and dropped back to the ground, they didn’t as much as flinch. As if they were ready to accept death if it came at their master’s hand.
Emil dashed into the house that smelled of old wood and herbs, like his childhood, like his life, and the tension in his muscles eased somewhat once he filled his lungs with this familiar air.
He’d only ever seen a dead person once before. He hadn’t been allowed a glimpse of his parents’ charred corpses, and his grandmother’s body had never been found. But Grandfather had passed in his bed. He’d fallen asleep and never woke up, leaving the suffering of arthritis behind.
There was nothing peaceful about Zofia’s death. She’d been brutally pecked, and claw marks had covered her arms as if she’d been fighting for her life to the very end.
He dropped into his grandfather’s old armchair, and as he sank into its well-worn upholstery, the living room struck him with its hostility. Its warm tones and worn charm had always brought him peace, but as he sat in the corner, all he could see were sharp angles, about to tear into him the moment he looked away.
He took several inhales, staring at the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the beams. With the light off, the ceiling drowned in shadow made darker by the contrast with a narrow trim of bright wooden panels encircling the room. Grandma had painted the planks herself, and the images of wild flowers, even if faded, still reminded Emil of her.
Peace slowly sank into his bones as he took in the wooden walls decorated the old-fashioned way—with Christening and First Communion certificates that featured pastel drawings, with photos of a happy family that didn’t yet know it was about to be torn apart. He was the last Słowik left, and he would be the last of his line.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t bear to change anything. The house he lived in was over a hundred years old, and since he wouldn’t have children of his own, he didn’t feel like he had the right to claim it. It was still the house of his grandparents, where furs and hand-woven blankets were stored in wooden chests, where heat came solely from a tiled stove, and where a gas oven was a modern luxury only installed after Grandma had gone missing.
Emil exhaled and looked to the other side of the room, where a wooden mask stared back at him with empty eyes. The black and white lines painted over poppy-colored skin exaggerated the bony shape of the devil’s face. Most depictions of this kind presented Satan in a silly way, to make light of his powers. But the handmade mask, which had been in Emil’s family for decades, had canines of the kind that could rip people open, and an unnerving pattern of dots around the eyes. Its horns weren’t those of a goat or bull either—spiraling toward the sky and ribbed.