Rasputin's Bastards

MASTER AND MAN

The lighthouse’s aerie was day’s last refuge in New Pokrovskoye. Golden sunlight would catch there before nightfall — and thus trapped, would flit like a moth about the complicated rigging of reflectors and lamps to send phantoms of illumination cascading down to the dark pit of the lighthouse’s base. To the eyes of Holden Gibson, it made the great round room look a bit like a disco.

There were all of ten eyes of his inside the lighthouse. Eight of them were able to focus well enough to be of use. The remaining two were blurry and bloodshot and sore, set into a skull still hammering from the effects of a half a bottle of mid-priced vodka, poured down the attached throat and absorbed through the walls of the acid-drenched stomach a foot and a half below.

The other eight eyes were in much better shape. They were able to assess the situation of eyes nine and ten promptly — drunk, crusted in puke and wallowing in piss, and tied rather too efficiently to a wooden chair in the middle of the room.

Holden Gibson had ten eyes, and those ten eyes had ten hands. Eight of them were useful. He set hands one and two to work undoing the knots around the ankles — then made sure hands three and four held the chair in place. Five and six he set to work on the wrist restraints. And with all the other work taken care of, hands seven and eight he sent to the door, to keep watch — just in case that Russian secret agent fucker Alexei had not in fact run off with Holden Gibson’s gun, but was waiting in the shadows, for Holden Gibson to drop his guard again.

Hands seven and eight paced back and forth angrily under the whirling light of the setting sun. They spasmed from fists to open palms and back again, slamming themselves into each other with butcher-shop smacks. They pulled on fingers and cracked knuckles, worried at a hangnail and finally yanked it to the quick.

Fucking Russian. He’d been the start of this. Insinuating himself into

Holden Gibson’s crew with that amnesia act. Until he’d shown up, things were going according to the order. Holden Gibson and his crew sailing off to meet a submarine — get those kids he’d been told about. He’d needed those kids. With the Internet, the magazine subscription business was taking a beating. He needed to boost the organization — give it some new blood — some—

—some talented blood.

He hadn’t known what that meant, precisely, when the old woman had made him the pitch. The old woman he’d what — met?

He didn’t recall seeing her. Just remembered a funny smell. A voice.

It had been on the telephone. It must have been a phone call.

It did all start with the fucking Russian Alexei. He’d played at amnesiac — and now the opposite was happening to Holden Gibson.

Holden Gibson. That was his name. It was not, as the voices kept insisting, John Kaye. Who the fuck was John Kaye? Someone who looked like Holden Gibson — that was for sure. Because Holden Gibson had spent his entire lifetime in the United States. He’d spent some time in Mexico, okay — and he did a lot of business in Canada — but that was practically the United States. He’d sure as shit never been to Prague — or Budapest — or a farmhouse in East Germany, and then a cellar, a deep cellar, somewhere in the Urals where the firmament of his talent was cracked and brutalized by his nation’s sworn enemy…

Hand seven slammed down on the little card table, knocking over a jug of water. Hand eight twirled a tightly coiled lock of Rasta hair, and pulled it hard.

The firmament of his talent. That was, Holden Gibson admitted to himself, a serious flaw in his John-Kaye-is-someone-else theory. He undeniably possessed this — this talent. His crew had become more than loyal since he’d had the memories flood back. He wondered, in retrospect, how much his talent had had to do with his crew’s loyalty over the years. He’d always thought it was just his way with kids — which would certainly explain how the younger ones always seemed more obedient than the older ones, who as Holden Gibson had recently learned, were hatching a conspiracy to murder him. As he sifted through their brains, he found thoughts of murder connected to Holden Gibson in an alarming abundance. Stabbing him — poisoning him — tossing him over the side of the yacht.

And all too often — there was the fucking Russian again.

They attached themselves to Alexei Kilodovich. Wanted Alexei to murder him. Like some kind of fucking saviour. And Alexei wanted to murder him too. He’d tried to two times at least. Possibly more in the past. And now he’d taken Holden Gibson’s gun and gotten Hands Nine and Ten blind drunk, and tied them up — and could be lurking anywhere. With his gun. Waiting to shoot them.

Hands Seven and Eight opened the door. Looked outside. The stars were starting to come out. Out here, they appeared in truly alarming numbers, spread over the sky in a smear of infinity. The lungs belonging to Hands Seven and Eight took a deep breath. It smelled of the sea tonight — and not much more; none of that perfume box of stinks that moved its way around this place. It was also very quiet. All that ears seven and eight could hear was a faint singing — more of that fucking Russian music — coming from the harbour, probably.

Foot seven began to idly tap on the flagstones. Holden Gibson put a stop to it as soon as he noticed. Fuck. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Who’s driving this bitch? he thought. Holden backed up, and steered Hands Seven and Eight back into the room.

He couldn’t see a thing. The disco ball at the top of the aerie had gone dark, and that did it for the rest of the lighthouse. He reached out to the rest of his eyes, the rest of his hands — and groped in empty darkness.

Where the fuck was everybody?

Holden Gibson took a breath. He was still rusty with his talent — sometimes, he’d lose a crewmember if he wasn’t concentrating; that had happened earlier today, when Alexei the Russian had gotten the jump on him. He groped around now, in a sudden panic over the idea that this was in fact what Alexei had done. Russian bastard.

“Russian fuckin’ bastard!” hollered Holden. He opened the door again, to let some of the starlight in. It did no good. He could see nothing in the room — nothing but the empty chair, and the ropes on the floor. “You fucker! I know you’re in here somewhere!”

Really?

Holden Gibson stopped. Listened — tried to place the location of the voice. It was male, and sounded Russian.

Somewhere? Do you think you can be more specific, Mr. Kaye?

Holden Gibson turned quickly. The voice had seemed to come from right behind him. Definitely Russian. “Fuck you, Alexei,” he said. “I’m not lettin’ you fuck me twice.”

The voice chuckled — still behind him. It was joined by another voice — a little girl sound, that Holden Gibson recognized somehow. She laughed. And she started to say something. Something that Holden also recognized.

Mi, she said. Mi mi mi mi.

Now, said the Russian voice. Out, old man. Heather wants her body back.

And Holden Gibson felt a sharp pain on the back of his head that felt remarkably like the flat of a shovel-blade. The last thing he heard before consciousness returned and Hands Seven and Eight drifted further from his reach, was the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw starting up — and the giggling of the little girl — of Heather — as she struggled to maintain the mantra.

Mi. Mi mi mi mi, she sang, as the chainsaw bit into bone.