Prologue
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When terror descended upon the estate of Count Bessmertny, it did not come loudly, as one might expect.
Instead, it was drowned by the howling wind and the crackling of his fireplace.

Nevertheless, Bessmertny dismissed the starless night and the clamor of his shutters as he sat in his study, his gaze fixed on the book in his lap.
Pushkin's latest piece, The Queen of Spades.
Surely, it was the latest talk in all of the empire's drawing rooms and soirées, but especially in those in St. Petersburg, where Count Bessmertny's heart belonged.
Most definitely it did not belong here, in this desolate wasteland around the Lake Ladoga, where spring had not melted frost yet and illiterate peasants sullied the ground.
The count snorted.
He could nearly hear what they would say back home! These noble ladies and dashing officers!
Oh, how much his soul desired to embrace the golden city once more, this cold jewel of Russia.
If only the rumors about his wife had not spread there...

But they had. So he did not hear clinking glasses and rustling silk, but only the distant howling of wolves.
It had been a cold winter. A cruel winter. Surely, they were hungry. More hungry than usual.

The count, however, did not worry, he only frowned in annoyance.
For the only animal he cared about was his old dog Pyotr, sleeping soundly at his feed as his master sat in his leather chair.

But still, from time to time, he found his eyes wandering to his window, peering at the edge of the forest.
Its silhoutte blurred with the black sky.
In this moments, he caught himself thinking about his young wife.

The gorgeous princess Avdotya Golitsyna, the star of her social season - and now she was gone. Missing for months already.
She had disappeared out of his house like smoke slipped through a window.
As if she had never existed.
Only that all of her belongings had remained untouched.
They were the only witnesses of her existence.

He sighted as he fixed his eyes back on the page, yet the letters did not make sense in his head. They barely formed words. So he only stared at the ink. His head was empty.

A sound in the house made him twitch.
He shrieked.
A servant? A serf? But then- it was quiet again.
No voices. Not even a creaking floorboard.
He slumped back in his chair, when Pyotr suddenly let out a whimper.

"What is it, old boy?"
He smiled, yet strange doubt gnawed
at his heart.
He wanted to scratch his old friend's head, wanted to feel the reassuring warmth of the fur, just as the dog leaped to his feet and clawed at the door.
The whimpering intensified.
Even the shadows seemed darker, their black fingers clutching for the light

The count stood up, wanted to cross the room- But then he saw it.
His gaze caught the window - and his heart stuttered.
A ghost, he thought. A wraith. A rusalka.

A woman slipped from wood and mist. She was dressed in white. With a face pale and raven hair caught in a glint of moonlight.
She wandered through the wavering grass, bright as the sun against the darkness.

Count Bessmertny's heart stuttered in his chest.
He knew her face. He knew her. He would have recognized it anywhere.
His wife.

Instinctively, he grabbed the cross around his throat.
O Lord my God, I confess that I have sinned against You in thought, word and deed.

Still, count Bessmertny did know neither sin nor crime of his that deserved such punishment.
He did not know - or even understand- anything, but there was no place for reason or cognition in him anymore.
He could only stand there and watch through the window as the ghastly creature slipped through his front door.

"Mistress!"
It was the scream of his housekeeper Tatiana that made him snap.
His hand closed around the next letter opener, his grip firm, as he stormed out of his study, his heart thundering, and plunged into the foyer of his house.

She was no demon, he recognized, as he saw her shivering body in Tatiana's arms.
She still wore her night gown, the same from months ago, torn, wet and bloodied. Dunya did not even wear shoes, no.
Instead, her toes were swollen and black, devoured by the frost.

He awakened from his numbness.
The letter opener clanked on the marble floor.

"Dunya!", He called for his wife, but as her green gaze met his, fear burned in her eyes.

"Forgive me", she cried. "Forgive me. Please, I did not- I did not-"

"Shhh, it's fine, everything is fine", Bessmertny muttered as he embraced her and pulled her hands to his chest.
They were cold as a corpse's.

"He has damned me", she whispered with tears frozen on her cheeks. "He has damned me. I swear to god and all that is holy, I did not want this. Please don't blame me, Felix Mikhailovich, please don't blame the boy."

"Which boy -"
He did not need to finish his sentence for he saw the treacherous curvature beneath the night gown.
His throat tightened.
They had never consumated their marriage.

Count Bessmertny should have felt anger. Oh he could have blamed her.
Cheating on him? When they had still been in St. Petersburg? With a prince even? Or a peasant? Running away to escape the consequences, only to crawl back to him now?
But deep down in his heart, he knew that it was not like this. That it was not the melodramatic story the people in court desired to hear.
He knew that nothing in this night was normal simply by the looks of her eyes. They were filled with terror.

This man might have damned her, but in this night, the saints had forsaken Count Bessmertny.
He knew what was the inevitable.
So after this glance, he mourned his wife before they could even put her in the ground.

"Who?", He simply asked. "Who commited such an atrocity? Who dared to do this?"
He would challenge him to a duel. Even if it would claim his own life. One could not simply touch his wife and-

"Forget it, Felix Mikhailovich." He barely heard her hoarse voice. "This is no man you can challenge. No mortal you can defeat. This is- He is-"
Her face became even paler.
"He is beyond all."

He could not bring himself to complain when the pains of labour started the same night. He could only hold her hand.

"Something wicked this way comes", she gasped between cramps, slipping into a fever once more. "Beware what lies behind the fog. Beware the soul in the needle, on the island behind the five times ten removed land, in the three times seven removed ocean. Beware."

The child came quietly.
It did not scream, it did not even move, it was just an ugly lump of flesh.
The creature was more dead than alive - and strange relief flooded Bessmertny's veins at the sight.
It soon faded as he saw his wife, lieing there with blood seeping out of her.

He touched her cheeks.
They were covered in sweat and had lost their once rosy color. Even her eyes had become dull.
"Forgive me. Take care of my son, take care of the boy", she whispered for a last time. "Please, Felix Mikhailovich."

The moment Avdotya's last breath left her cold lips, screams erupted from the babe.

As Arkady Bessmertny entered his life, he took another.
The boy was never granted the innocence of childhood.