When I was younger, I was told I was never allowed to leave my room after 9pm, one night I discovered why. (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

The heart lay, beating slowly. I could see the blood coursing through the weary veins, some of it was leaking onto the floor and was somehow beginning to surround the candles.

I stood transfixed, something was happening to me. The scraping was getting closer and closer and I could feel a presence behind me but I couldn’t turn around. I willed myself with all my strength to turn around but I just couldn’t. I was utterly mesmerised by the heart, helpless.

Tears began to stream down my face when I felt something brush past my leg - a long single strand of grey hair. But I couldn’t see who it was, my eyes were fixed on the heart and I was unable to move them.

What the hell was happening? I tried to speak but only a small whimper managed to escape my parched lips. Then...I saw her.

An old woman, limped slowly into view. She hobbled past me as if I wasn’t there straight over to the beating heart. It was a hideous sight.

She picked up the heart as I watched feebly and licked it - her elongated tongue grazed the majority of the heart. Blood began to trickle down her monstrous lips, all the way down her bulging neck. It was then that I saw her iron teeth. They were blackened, sharp and permanently stained by what looked like old speckles of blood. She bit into the heart, hard and started chewing. The noise, my god, the noise. I’d never heard anything like it. The crude smacking of her lips, the horrible crunching of the heart muscle was unbearable to my ears.

She suddenly stopped and looked at me, really saw me, like she didn’t properly see me until that moment. She looked deep into my eyes and it was then that I started to hear whispers, but I couldn’t make out anything tangible. It was a plethora of voices, all around me.

Baba Yaga began to walk towards me, her deformed stance made even more horrific by the bulge that was her back. She clutched the heart in her blood covered claw, droplets of blood fell on the floor.

I was still immobilised to the spot by whatever trance she put me in. I could do nothing.

She got so close to me that I could smell the foul air that permeated from her body, her mouth. She held the heart in front of me, in front of my face, she held it so close that I could smell the familiar scent of blood, a metallic smell. She smeared the bloody heart all over my face. I couldn’t even scream, I was completely incapacitated. Some of it got into my mouth.

She cackled then and dropped the heart to the floor, where it melted. She looked at me and whispered.

‘’You are mine now’’

Then she was gone and I fell to the ground, my breathing was erratic and I passed out.

I awoke a short while later, utterly dazed and I could barely see anything in front of me. When my vision settled a little, I looked at my hands and they were completely covered in blood, the blood dripped from my fingers onto my legs and that was when I saw a puddle of deep red. My vision was still somewhat blurry but I thought I could make out a body laying on the floor a few feet in front of me. I looked all around me and panicked, I wasn’t on the landing anymore. I was in a red room.

There were no doors and no windows and it was just me and the still body. Candles lined the perimeters of the room and nothing else was there. Next to the body, a little further away, lay a book. A different one.

I was too far away to see it clearly but I knew it wasn’t mine because mine was laying right next to me. I stood up slowly, unsure of my balance but my legs held. I wiped my hands and began walking over to the body, to the book, my body completely over taken by fear, my mind raced. I just didn’t know what to do, how to get out. For once in my life, I really just wished that I’d stayed in my bedroom. Maybe my parents did all of this to protect me, to protect me from her. But my curiosity was going to get me killed...or worse. Why didn’t I just stay put.

I moved over to the book, I wanted to avoid the body laying close by as much as possible but I knew I would have to look sooner or later. I shivered, tears began to form around my tired eyes and I wiped them away.

When I edged closer, I saw the book was open. The writing was illegible to me, it was all in Russian but it appeared to be some kind of spell book. It contained strange symbols and speckles of blood covered some of the pages. There were drawings in this book that were inconceivable to me. Drawings of torn open human bodies, drawings of hooded figures with their hands covered in blood holding human organs. Drawings of horned creatures devouring babies and children. One drawing in particular, depicted the Baba Yaga surrounded by cloaked beings, all were kneeling around her in a circle. In front of her, was a cooking pot and one of the cloaked beings held a child in some sort of sacrificial stance. It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen, aside from Baba Yaga herself of course. I shut the book and threw it.

Another part of her story that I should mention is that people have tried and failed to vanquish her. The stories about her span centuries and she is believed to be one of the most allusive creatures ever encountered. She can be metaphorically shackled though, she can be trapped by those who summon her for their own gain. But even then, those who bind her with a spell like that always end up paying a high price for trapping Baba Yaga. For using her powers. In the stories I read, she terrorised villages that mistakenly summoned her or stumbled upon the disused hut that was supported by blood covered chicken legs in the middle of a deep and thick forest. A hut she inhabited. Where she ate the hearts of children and consumed their souls. No one was ever able to truly destroy her. Not in those stories.

It was hopeless and I was utterly helpless. I didn’t know how I was ever going to escape and I really wanted to find my parents, to find out what in the world was going on and why this was happening. Did they summon her? Was this their doing? Why?

The Baba Yaga never rests. Once she is summoned, she never truly goes away. She never leaves those who have encountered her, alone.

I was crying when suddenly, the dead body in front of me twitched.

Part 4