The Cryptid Cabal: Origins (Book 1)

With lids drawn shut, he reclines on the towel, careful that his feet not go over the edge… listening to the sounds of the surf… the waves lapping the shore. Children scream with delight as the cold water rushes up to meet them then retreats.. He could hear the murmur of the throngs around them but not make out any words. The sun scorched his fair skin as the blinding white light pierced his eyelids.

The gentle rhythms of a new life.

He took a deep breath, crossed one leg over the other, and immediately felt the one thing he hated about this “new life” — the sand. They were always at the beach, it seemed.

Considering his upbringing, the complaint seemed ungrateful, even entitled. From birth through adulthood, all he’d known was the icy winds blowing in from the north through every town in Russia, and none felt more isolated than his own: Yakutsk.

Just south of the Arctic Circle, it was known as the coldest city in the world. His mother used to say, “Everyone in Yakutsk goes to heaven when they die. The Devil wouldn’t dare step foot in such a hostile place.”

It felt a million miles away from this beach, where the constant presence of sand — especially under his feet in the entryway at home — drove him as mad as the permafrost once did.

Nothing more than hot, beige-colored snow as far as he was concerned.

He should feel like the luckiest man in the world. So why didn’t he? What vague anxiety, difficult to voice, let alone source, kept him from enjoying this moment?

“Ivan…” a voice murmured just above the din of people actually enjoying their day at the beach.

Again… “Ivan?”

…

"Ivan!”

He felt a hand smack his knee. Opening his eyes, there she was, looking looking over at him from her neighboring towel, the rays of the sun forming a halo behind her head. An angel.

His angel… Polina.

“What is it, love?” He asked.

She motioned to the surf before draping her arms back over her knees. “Should I call them out from the water?”

Ivan let his head fall back against the towel. Waves of gratitude — they didn’t have to keep a vigilant eye on the children here. That and the fact they were always occupied suddenly washed over him.

This is what the beach was about.

Ignoring your kids.

“Why?” Ivan entreated before waiting a beat, letting the question hang in the air between them before Polina’s silence made him nervous. “I mean, what for, love…? They’re having fun… probably.” He laughed to himself. The half formed answers sounded half-drunk. “Nyet, uh… yes… they are having fun. No doubt.”

The silliness didn’t register with Polina. “For sandwiches, Ivan, they haven’t eaten and we’ve been here for some time now.”

Ivan grimaced. “They’ll live. I’m sure of it. Think about what we grew up on. Cans of moose…”

Before he could correct himself - “Moose? You ate moose from a can?”

Ivan laughed. Hardy. Comfortable. “Did I say moose?!”

Polina chuckled, “You did. You said moose.” She turned back towards the surf. “I’m going to call them up for not moose sandwiches.”

Ivan closed his eyes. “Of course you will…” He murmured under his breath. “Why… even… ask.”

“What?” Polina asked, turning swiftly as she craned her neck, back arched, eyes flitting from Ivan to the crowds around them, searching.

“I said… I… love to bask, dear… in the sun, you know?”

“How about moose for you…” She always knew. How the hell was that? She should have worked for Soviet Intel, he’d always thought that.

Thank God it was a line he never dared cross.

When she turned back toward the water, Ivan noticed her glance — longingly, for a moment, then sour — at his arms, his shoulders, his chest. Then she was back to searching for their girls.

He sat up on the beach towel and chuckled to himself. “Not quite the Soviet bear I once was, yes?”

“What?” Polina asked, her head moving ever higher, the brim of her big straw hat catching more of the breeze, flapping about. Her back was to him now, facing the surf.

“I saw that. You looked at my body. Like I’m a piece of meat you’d open up…” He mimed removing the tape from butcher paper, then feigned a look of abject disappointment. Pretended to wrap it back up and hand it over. “… ‘what is this lean shit.’”

“Lean?”

“Oh, so I’m fat?” He pinched his midsection. “Can you grab anything here besides skin? No… no I don’t think so.”

The corners of her lips curled upward. She stifled a laugh. “You could use…” she glanced over her shoulder, looking him up and down. “… some hard labor.” She resumed her search.

He laid back down, resting his face on his hand, elbow dug into the towel, about ready to fall asleep — “Do they have trains from Havana to Siberia?”

She smiled, for a moment, then cast a solemn gaze at the red towel underneath her, looking crimson between her legs from her shadow. She shook her head. “We shouldn’t joke. So many… too many.”

Ivan realized then how good — no, how great — they had it. He sat up straight and moved in closer, gently rubbing his hand along the back of her arm.

“It was in poor taste. We’re the lucky ones. I should… I should realize it more often, anyways.”

Polina said nothing. She didn’t move, just continued to gaze out at the surf.

Something about her searching nudged uncomfortably against the back of Ivan’s mind. There I go again, overthinking the moment. Ruining it. Joking in the wrong way, apologizing for it, then analyzing the reaction.

But still… how long had she been looking out there for the girls? Why hadn’t she seen them amidst the conversation?

His attention moved to the surf just as a bigger wave crashed on the beach and children seemed to scatter in every direction. Adults sitting closer to the water picked up their things and moved up the sand. The tide was coming in.

Ivan searched amongst the children for his own as they ran back down while the water retreated, gathering enough churning momentum until it came racing towards them again.

He couldn’t see them.

“Are you still looking? Because…” He asked, choosing his words carefully, patting Polina on the back and speaking softly so as not to alarm her. Getting her worked up over the children was all too easy considering how they got here…

Here…

Here…

Where is here? Ivan thought to himself. He couldn’t name the place. Hadn’t Polina just said it?

How could that be?

He felt the blood drain from his face. His shoulders suddenly felt as if he were back in Yakutsk instead of the gorgeous white sand beaches of… of…

Ivan shot up off the towel and stood up. He put a hand over his brow to block out the blazing sun as he scanned the shoreline.

He spun around. Saw the stairs — stairs that didn’t seem quite right, angled in strange ways as they came off of what looked like an impossibly high concrete retaining wall from the streets above. The angle seemed steeper, almost distorted, like looking through a warped lens.

For a moment, he looked beyond them, tried to get a better look at the tops of the buildings he could see.

He didn’t recognize any of them.

It felt as though coming to this spot on the beach — their spot — was something he, Polina, and their daughters did quite often.

Except they didn’t.

His focus shifted. Palm trees along the shore drive, no surprise there. But the cars… they zipped back and forth, yet the people crossing over to the beach side did so calmly before continuing along the railing on their way down those treacherous stairs.

“Where are they, Ivan, where?!” Polina shouted, the desperation growing with each word.

Ivan spun back around toward the beach, and something hit him… Polina.

She was still seated on the towel, her back to him. She hadn’t gotten up from it. Not once. Even now, with her voice cracking from desperation, she sat facing the surf — searching, endlessly searching, never moving from that towel. He could feel her judgment even from behind, as though every moment she spent scanning the water for their children was an accusation aimed squarely at his back. All the ways he’d failed them. All the time.

Now he shouted back at her, his voice crackling with nervous anger — “If you’re so concerned, why aren’t you—”

That’s when he heard it.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

A hollow, metallic clanging sound. Over and over.

BANG… BANG… BANG… BANG, BANG!

While Polina did not even flinch — neither to Ivan’s outburst nor the sound that had to be slamming into her ears more furiously than his — Ivan felt every nerve in his body stand at attention.

Straining.

Frayed.

Bang… Bang… bang…

Softer now.

BANG!

Ivan almost punched the air itself, his tall, lithe body tensed up and ready to obliterate whoever was causing that damned sound — then he heard a little girl giggling.

“You hate it. You always hate it, Daddy.”

Warmth moved through his body all at once and the voice, as recognizable as it was soothing, taunted him. “I’m gonna do it again, uh oh!”

He realized where it was coming from, looked down at the sand, and there she was: Anya. His cherubic six-year-old daughter. She had a toy shovel in one hand and a copper bucket nearly as big as she was turned over on the sand.

She’d been smacking the hell out of that thing. He smiled as he looked at the bottom — covered in tiny dents.

He looked up at her, smiling. “You’re going to bust the bottom of that thing one day, and you won’t have a bucket anymore, you know that?”

“Yes, I will.” Anya said back as she squinted, grinned, and leaned forward over the bucket.

“Oh yeah, how do you figure that one?”

“You’ll buy me another one. You always do.”

Ivan chortled. Then the statement hit him. “Always do” — has she broken this bucket before? Why don’t I remember that?

He shook off the feeling and looked over his shoulder at Polina for backup — a reprimand, or at least a knowing smile for what a sucker dear-old-dad could be for his youngest.

She hadn’t turned around. Her back remained facing him, still in the exact same position as before. Facing the water. Hat flapping in the breeze.

Eerily still.

“Mila…” Ivan said apprehensively. “Polina, did you… do you see her?”

She said nothing. Perhaps she was angry with him.

He turned back to Anya. “Anya, were you back there the entire time?”

She laughed as she looked up at him and started banging away at the bucket once again.

“Anya, stop…”

She giggled.

“Anya.”

She giggled more, smashing the shovel against the bucket harder now.

“Anya, stop it! Now tell me, where’s your sister?”

“Heh-heh-hehhhh!” Her laugh echoed deeply until the last remnants of it sounded like thunder.

This time, as she banged on the bucket, it sounded like bombs going off. Memories flooded Ivan’s head. It reminded him of war.

“Where’s your sister? Anya, do what Daddy—” he stopped, mid-sentence, at the horror of watching Anya’s eyes opening wider and wider, the eyelids and skin around them pulling back further and further in slow motion until he could no longer look, for it seemed like they’d reveal the insides of her skull if he stared long enough.

He spun back around, chest heaving, pulse quickening until he thought his heart might explode. Behind him Anya laughed again. BANG… BANG… BANG.

When he turned to face Polina, all suspicions had been confirmed. She was still in the same position, though her hand now covered her brow as she stared at the surf. Searching. Eternally searching, never moving from that towel.

Ivan studied her closely now, no longer worried about the whereabouts of his older daughter, Mila, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why it no longer mattered.

Polina was frozen in place — like a mannequin.

The relentless banging had stopped, but he could hear Anya moving around behind him, could even feel her kicking up the sand as she stomped around.

Polina hadn’t so much as peeked back to smile at her. To say hello. To ask where Mila was. Not even to admonish the impish little devil they’d brought into this world and christened with the name “Anya.”

The only sound now was the wind blowing across the beach. There were no voices. No children laughing. Not even the sound of waves crashing against the surf.

Ivan’s mouth felt dry as a bone. He licked his lips, wanting to say something to someone, but found that he couldn’t. His throat tightened up.

Then, one sound returned. Just one.

BANG, BANG, BANG… BANG… CHAKA, CHAKA, CHAKA — DOOOOOM!

Ivan spun back to yell at Anya, bent over at the waist, ready to pick her up and throw her if that’s what it took — but she wasn’t banging on the bucket at all. She was lying on her back in the sand, staring up at the sky, wide-eyed, eyes filled with tears.

Ivan felt his heart pulling on every nerve and muscle inside his chest, literally aching, awash with an unbearable sense of grief. He wanted to cry. He wanted to grab her.

But he couldn’t move.

Finally, Polina’s voice piped up from behind him —

“My love?” she said.

“Yes, my love,” Ivan replied before slowly shifting his feet in a circle, the intense feelings of traumatic anxiety growing in his chest as he turned to face her though he couldn’t figure out why.

“There is no Mila,” Polina said. “They took her.”

She’d said it practically gleeful and Ivan’s heart plummeted… and then, completely facing her now, he understood the reason behind the terror — Polina stood, but she wasn’t acknowledging him.

Her face was gone.

Ivan choked. Unbidden, his hand flew to his mouth as his other shot out, attempting to ward off the awful sight while keeping himself from suffocating.

But it wouldn’t recede. Instead, Polina neared, and where her features should’ve been the gruesome expanse of flesh writhed, like the parts were there, just barely hidden — straining against the skin from underneath, a mouth trying to form, eye sockets pressing outward but never breaking through.

He began to creep backward over the hot sand —

“No… no, Polina, what—”

The skin where her mouth should be began to pull back harder, sucking in on itself until blood began to ooze, forming a slit. A guttural, demonic voice belted out — ”Why did you bring us here?!"

The teeth broke through the thin veneer of skin covering them; more blood poured out as her body twisted and contorted, crimson droplets forming on the sharp edge of her chin while other eddies of blood slid down her neck… Ivan’s gaze following the droplets as they fell to the sand and congealed.

He gasped for air while staring at the pool of blood growing larger and larger… until it formed its own little tidal pool.

His chest tightened some more. It felt as if a dump truck had been dropped directly onto his chest from a considerable height. Just when he thought he couldn’t take the pain any longer, something slammed into his back, squeezing the last of his breath out of his mouth.

The world went pitch black.

He found himself falling — not drifting, not sinking — falling, back through a black and depthless void.

The echoey wails of his infant child drifted from above. Looking up, he saw fluid shapes — indistinct while familiar — like scenes from his lifetime falling faster than him, slowing as they approached, allowing him a moment to bear witness: his children being born… being read to… he and Polina’s first kiss… moments stolen while the kids were napping to simply hold each other, or even better, to laugh.

Ivan reached out as these willowy sheets of gossamer memory came within arm’s length… only to feel the desperation to return to those moments as they began to outpace him, disappearing into the inky darkness below.

Each bit of distorted ephemera allowed one final glimpse of the life he’d lived just before he felt like nothing more than a disembodied, innocent ball of consciousness. And as they disappeared, he could sense that something had gone missing inside of him. Never all at once — it felt like losing track of moments tied to one particular person… until, as if by some random sum, enough had passed that he’d completely forget them.

First Anya went… then Mila…

The sense of mere consciousness existing where something more full, more alive, had once been gnawed at itself. Even worse, it seemed to want more. And as it wanted, so it was given, eating one man’s perception of himself and the accrued experience of one life — meeting Polina, their wedding, boot camp, the horror of Stalingrad, his last day there, meeting Stalin himself, his early days as an intelligence officer, receiving news that his mother had died in a sudden Nazi offensive… all that he’d ever done or felt, for better or worse.

A sadness overwhelmed what was left, but he couldn’t name it as such. No concept of the cause, let alone the effect.

Until it came back… the clanging sound.

Echoing louder and louder, it awakened something inside of him as his descent slowed.

I know that… I know that, he thought, without understanding how the capacity for thinking through words had somehow remained amidst all he’d lost.

THE BUCKET.

That goddamned bucket… and… the beach.

Instead of pushing it out — ever the irritable, anxious, put-upon father, wanting nothing more than a day of peace and quiet, a time-out from the constant demands of parenthood — he embraced the sound. Let it guide his mind, if not his body.

He no longer had a body, or at least it seemed.

A torrent of memories, of Ivan, came rushing through like a stampede of wildly determined horses — Polina, Anya, the fact that Mila was missing on that beach…

The beach.

Havana.

Cuba!

The goddamned benefactors.

They’d paid for this life. This escape from the increasingly paranoid totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin.

Ivan’s mind raced: Have I been found here and shot? On this beach? Did they slaughter my family too? Am I caught in a memory loop? How did I… but I never even got out of Ber—

SLAM!

His eyes opened and he gasped for air. Only this time, he wasn’t in some hazy, nightmarish void.

This time, he knew exactly where he was.

Berlin. April, 1945.

I’m lying on my… face? I’m on my face. That blurred gray is the sky — no. Asphalt. The clanging bucket — machine gun fire.

THWOOSH!

Another slamming sound, followed by metal scraping against metal just before one last and final thud.

That was a door, he realized, followed by the muffled sound of footsteps quickly descending a set of metal stairs until they faded away.

He heard a screeching, fiery, tearing sound approaching from his right. Just as he went to turn his head and get a look at what was coming, he yelped in pain.

The harsh, gritty asphalt laid across the rooftop dug into his nose and cheek. The reflexive fear of losing his hearing lent enough coordination to clumsily get his hands up over his ears.

Soviet artillery — the Red Army. General Zhukov.

The shots fired over the top of Berlin from the east quickly gave way to the sound of crumbling concrete and shattered windows.

That was goddamned loud. And close. Too close.

People screamed. The gunfire intensified, or at least Ivan’s perception of it did.

Lifting his head as he struggled against the pain in his neck and the pressure against his upper back — a rucksack — everything in his field of vision still appeared blurry at best. All the sound was still muffled. His nerves were beginning to fray. And, of course, his face fucking hurt. It felt like raw hamburger.

Why face down? Are those goons stupid? Were these the best people to get involved with?

And they left him here to figure it all out on his own and with no time in which to do it. He was lying there, staring at the dark shadow outline of his own head, contemplating the visions of the beach, of his family — all from that needle plunged into his neck just before he’d been dragged up here.

Why had they drugged him to such a point?

More gunfire. Another explosion.

He tried to shake it off. Focus on seeing… then standing.

“The mission… the mission…” Ivan kept muttering, his voice cracking as he searched his mind for why he was here.

And provisions… provisions!

That word tumbled into his thick, Russian skull. Where were the provisions? More importantly, how long until his vision cleared up so he could see them?

Ivan closed his eyes and tried to relax. Tension would help nothing until he was ready to move. He needed to conserve energy.

But there… in the darkness behind his eyelids… two beatific, smiling faces greeted him like angels come to rescue him from hell.

His daughters, Anya and Mila.

He’d see them again…

That was the mission.