Claws of Mercy

“Did you hear that Vereskovsky’s wife is planning to go to the hospital before the construction is finished?” As if by the way, Dima said. “So she won’t visit us again. It’s a pity! I enjoyed talking to her much more than to her stern husband.”

“Is she seriously ill?”

Dima almost laughed. “She wants to have plastic surgery at some elite hospital.”

“Are you serious? Why would she do that?”

“Who can understand with these beauties?”

Ruslan shrugged his shoulders. Probably Valentina Vladimirovna’s beauty is just skillful makeup. All the stars look perfect after cosmetic salons, but when you wash off the makeup, they get old and dull before your eyes. He was well acquainted with this situation on the example of one theater star, with whom his mother was friends.

“She wants to change her facial features?”

“Why would she? Did her husband fall out of love with her? Did he think she was ugly?”

“It is worse! Valentina Vladimirovna fell under the general craze – she wanted to become like a movie star. She’s very fashionable now. Everyone wants to be like her, but not everyone has the money to realize this dream. The star’s name is Athenais. You’ve probably heard of it?”

If he wasn’t too busy working, Ruslan would go to the movies. But it seems that overwork is a good thing. Otherwise, what absurd thoughts would he have been indoctrinated into by the movies? Women go to the movies and then start dreaming about plastic surgery instead of doing housework and cooking! It’s high time the star business is shut down since it indoctrinates healthy viewers with such sick thoughts.

A star named Athenais was now a mass lunacy. Ruslan didn’t know what was so special about her, because he hadn’t seen any movies with her. He had only heard glimpses on the radio that she had caused frequent suicides, and that girls who wanted to be like her had died under the knives of plastic surgeons. But the fate of Valentina Vladimirovna is not his business. If she wants to become another victim of beauty, it makes no sense to dissuade her.

“Why don’t we go to the nearest movie theater this weekend? There’s an Athenaïs movie playing right now called ‘Blood Dawn.’ It is about the struggle of violent religious sects. They say it’s more moving than Romeo and Juliet.”

That’s the last thing we need! Ruslan was already under the impression that a gorgeous girl who could easily win first prize in a beauty contest was eager to reshape her face to look like Athenais.

“No, I don’t! I’m going to sit down this weekend to work on some new blueprints.”

Dima turned away with a sigh, clearly swallowing the reproach:

“You’re so boring!”

Let him be boring, the main thing is that he’s alive. Those guys who go to movies with Athenais die in droves. Ruslan noticed in his friend’s things a glossy advertisement with some Egyptian movie and ran his eyes over the first lines. What a coincidence! This very star, it turns out, played the role of that Egyptian deity called Alais. That’s why her statue will be made of gold! Apparently, the oligarch himself was no less impressed by her than his wife.

Ushebti

The huge wooden box was delivered first thing in the morning. It was not marked “valuable cargo” for nothing. Apparently, it was museum stuff inside again. Dima had accidentally ripped off the tag and was now looking for it all over the rotunda. Ruslan decided to open the box instead of looking for the tags to it. Inside, packed in shavings and sawdust were ominous statuettes.

“These are Ushcheti,” Ruslan guessed. “Vereskovsky had ordered to make a separate chamber in the rotunda for them. I’m afraid that won’t be realistic. He doesn’t even realize that the whole rotunda will collapse if we make an extra room in it.”

“So let’s make an annex,” Dima concentrated on looking at the statuettes. “Are they made of black wood or stone?”

Ruslan took some figurines out of the drawer. The feeling was that they were about to bite his fingers.

“Why do I feel like I’m holding not a figurine but a grenade?”

“They have a very evil look,” Dima suggested.

“But they are skillfully made. The material seems to be terracotta, and this one seems to be made of sycamore.”

“They must be very expensive.”

“But they do have an ominous look to them.”

“They’re funerary statues.”

“What good are they?”

“It is just a museum, put them in a display case and admire them. Well, you can still study them.”

“Our oligarch loves such exhibits.”

“But he doesn’t know the meaning behind them.”

“What’s the point?”

“These figurines served as the dead man’s slaves. They were to do all the work for the dead in the afterlife, so that the deceased would rest after death.”

“It is fascinating! But our employer doesn’t need them, he has enough live slaves.”

“They are hired laborers, not slaves. It’s different.”

“Not much different!” Ruslan’s back was already hurting. The work was hard and the pay was small. One might as well have worked for a single tortilla, like the slaves of ancient civilizations. But his colleague was not discouraged. No wonder, because he got a smaller part of the work, so he could get busy looking at Ushebti.

“I see you like these sinister freaks very much. Do you wish you could take them back to your place?” Ruslan teased his buddy.

“It is no way! I’m not crazy.”

“What makes you think I think you’re crazy?”

“There are stories that those who have them see creepy creatures that work at night and bite if you catch them at work. One restorer was afraid to wake up at night because of them, and the next morning found that they had done his work for him so that all that was left of all the exhibits were just shavings.”

“Obviously, they can’t do work for the living and do it the other way around,” Ruslan suggested.

“What if they do it on purpose? They are slaves of the dead. We, living people, climb into ancient pyramids, take out funeral paraphernalia without asking, and the ancient gods take revenge on us.”

“It’s just a story.”

“I have heard many such legends,” Dima admitted, “and their wording is very modern. Allegedly, many collectors have suffered because of Ushebti. The symptoms of all the unfortunates are the same. After the Ushebti got into their collection, they hear the sounds of hard work at night, see aggressive laborers who work hard for their owner, and wake up in the morning in complete bedlam. To a secretary who worked at an exhibition, they gutted all the folders with documents. The movers who transported them complain that the Ushebti deliberately punctured their truck tires. One wealthy businessman, who was renovating his cottage, received an Ushebti as a gift. He left them at the cottage at the time of repair. The Ushebti worked there as fitters, roofers and dyers. In the end, the cottage was just rubble. And it was worth a lot, but the Ushebti have cleaned it up in their way.”

“And all of this was caught on security cameras?”

“No, security cameras are always broken or damaged, but there are eyewitnesses. Usually, they’re unhappy people who left the Ushebti at their place. Then they all need psychologists. Ushebti are industrious, but you have to flee from their industriousness, otherwise they will bury you under the rubble of your house, or if you are working in the field, they will drive a tractor over your corpse instead of sowing. I heard that one seamstress was helping restorers of historical costumes. They put her alive under her own sewing machine. The needle stitched all the way through her skin, even on her eyelids. That’s the work of an Ushebti!”

“How cruel is it!”

“The ancient gods are cruel.”

“Are they only the Ancients?” Ruslan had heard something frightening about modern sects.

“Yes, probably all of them, otherwise the world would be a paradise if they were kind.”

The truth seemed bitter. Ruslan regretted having unpacked the parcel. If it hadn’t been for the Ushbeti found in it, this philosophical conversation wouldn’t have taken place.

“Let’s put them somewhere so that they could add to the local exposition,” Ruslan suggested.

“I’m afraid there are no shelves for them here.”

That’s right. There were only empty pedestals around, on which the statues would soon be placed. The package with them would obviously be more cumbersome than the one with the Ushebti. Ruslan clutched one figurine in his hand and wondered how he felt. Why did it seem to him that such fragile figurines held more power than the giants?

“It felt like they could crush us all,” he thought aloud, but Dima didn’t listen to him. He walked around the rotunda with his phone and photographed the exhibits.

“I’ll keep the pictures as a souvenir. Where else will you see such curiosities?”

In any museum, Ruslan wanted to say, but bit his tongue in time. He himself had visited the Egyptian hall in the Hermitage and the Historical Museum on Red Square many times, had been to various exhibitions of Oriental and antique culture, but he had never seen such sinister and impressive figures. Somehow even the bandaged mummy in the Hermitage window did not make such a frightening impression on him as the beautiful statues?

He had seen Ushebti before, too, in museums and on reproductions in encyclopedias, but not like these. The figures seemed alive and breathing. For some reason, when he looked at them, he thought of black locusts.

“If they wake up, there won’t be a construction site left,” a voice whispered in his subconscious. He must have imagined it again.

The Ushebti resembled gods. And they were not only ancient, but also modern, almost glamorous. It seemed as if they had been specially varnished and polished.

Ruslan left the Ushebti in a box among a pile of shavings. They would not break here. If scratches appeared on the Ushebti, those who unpacked the box would have to account for the damage.

Working at a construction site has brought Ruslan to a dead end. No architect and no engineer can cope here, because the employer demands to build a new fantastic building on the skeleton of an old structure. The future palace will have to have a bunch of wings: Egyptian, Persian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Japanese, French, English, and so on. One wing will have to look like a Russian princely terem, only not made of wood. Usually terems were built of logs, but such material is short-lived, so Ruslan will have to choose stone or cement and process it so that the masonry walls resemble log walls. Even one wing in the shape of an Aztec pyramid is planned. All the wings will be connected by air passages. Hanging gardens and galleries will be located in the passages. We still need to design sites for fountains and greenhouses. The idea is grandiose! But how you could realize it?

Ruslan worked on the drawings all day long. Dinner was modest, and they had to spend the night in a tiny carriage taken off its wheels. The workers jokingly called it a trailer. Some people didn’t have enough wagons, so they slept in tents. There was no hope of a luxury hotel. There are no hotels near the construction site. There is only an abandoned hospital.

“I’d be happy to sleep there, too, if there were a decent bunk instead of a sleeping bag and a heater,” Dima complained as he fell asleep. He and Ruslan shared one trailer for two.

After lights out, only the guard on duty remained at the construction site. He had his own booth in front of the entrance, and he certainly didn’t make any noise at night. There’s a strange noise coming from wherever, like someone’s still working.

“Do you hear hammers banging there?” Ruslan called out to his colleague, but Dima just turned over on his other side and snored.

The sound of hammers was monotonous, as if a whole army was working outside, but no sounds of conversation or footsteps could be heard. Probably it was just an auditory hallucination. Overwork can do that too. The sound of hammers has been joined by the whistle of a drill. That’s exactly the whistle of a drill.

Ruslan woke up and crawled out of the cramped sleeping bag. Not even in the pioneer camp had it been so uncomfortable. His whole body ached. There was a noise and a strange hissing outside. Ruslan opened the door of the wagon, and barely managed to dodge the sparks that usually fly off from working welders. What the hell! They can’t have fireworks at night on a construction site.

Some shadows were replacing the workers, carrying bricks from wheelbarrows, pouring cement, working with trowels and picks. The work was confused and inept. It did more harm than good.

“Hey, you!” Ruslan called out, and flinched when red eyes stared at him.

They’re not construction workers. They’re not wearing helmets or uniforms. And they were shorter than grown men. The strangers were small, thin and dark, like shadows. They hissed at Ruslan with needle-sharp teeth and continued working. They were industrious, but they were wasting building material. Everything in their hands was breaking instead of being useful.

Ruslan couldn’t understand what was happening. Did he really see the Ushebti working at the construction site? Or was it all a nightmare?

There was no time to think. No one was awake but him. The guard was nowhere to be seen, and the industrious laborers were tearing everything down. Their sharp teeth glinted like needles and easily ripped stones from concrete blocks.

How to stop them? How could he justify himself to the oligarch if the building was destroyed the next morning?

Ruslan didn’t know what to do. Maybe hit them all with a crane. The Ushebti only got angry when he tried to take action. Well, now they’re going to jump on him and bring everything down with it. They might even dance on the wreckage to celebrate the successful destruction. Or is it not their job to have fun anymore? All they have to do is work. And they have to work for the dead, not the living. If they come from a burial cult, no wonder why they destroy everything. Their work is the opposite. It’s not a work for good, but for destruction.

“It is enough!” A clear, ringing voice came from somewhere above and overrode the hissing of the Ushebti. “This is my territory! Look for work elsewhere!”

Strangely enough, the Ushchebti obeyed. And Ruslan passed out in full confidence that he had just heard the voice of a deity.

When he woke up, it was night. A column resembling an obelisk had been erected at the construction site. It was probably just some block that had been dragged here and dumped wherever it was.

On top of it sat a beautiful girl who looked like a model with golden wings attached to her back. Ruslan saw her for only a moment, and then there was only a flash of sunlight. The model disappeared somewhere, as if it had never existed. Could he have imagined it? No, he could clearly see the arrogant expression with which she was watching the construction site, as if all the construction workers were her slaves. That was the arrogance with which the pharaohs watched the building of the pyramids.

Shadows at the construction site

Couriers delivered food once a week: just pizza and mineral water. No luxury was expected by the architects. Dima managed to reacquaint himself with all the couriers.

“They don’t like coming here, but they have to,” he reported. “Their employers send them. It takes a long time to get here, there are no settlements around.”

“Not one! Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“It’s strange, why build a hospital where there are no settlements,” Ruslan couldn’t get the facade of the gloomy hospital out of his head. It seemed as if some voice was calling him to go back there.”

“Maybe it was to treat some rare disease that couldn’t be allowed to spread.”

Dima looked longingly after the couriers.

“Now they’ll bring a new batch of food in a week,” he sighed. “We’ll have to stretch our food supplies for seven days.”

“You like to eat.”

“And I like to drink. And I don’t like to mess around in the mud. This construction site is filthy, like a swamp under the ground. One night I even thought I saw clawed hands coming out of the ground. Can you imagine?”

“You must have been drinking.”

“I was just daydreaming about how good it would be to work as a courier instead of sitting on this construction site.”

Ruslan noticed how heavy the couriers’ backpacks were and didn’t envy them. Couriers always reminded him of modern-day peddlers. They, too, went door-to-door and carried their goods with them.

The pizza with slices of sausage was not tasty at all. Ruslan didn’t like mineral water. We should have brought tea bags and a thermos.

“Our oligarch is in no hurry to make sure that we have a decent meal.”

“Well, it’s not an expensive restaurant here,” Dima said philosophically.

“This pizza is making me sick.”

“If you need it, I brought some Allochol for intestinal distress.

Ruslan only grinned wryly. You can’t help bad food with pills. The pizza was definitely not fresh. The slices, wrapped in foil, were covered with mold that he hadn’t noticed a second ago.

“They say everything rots fast in these places. It’s a bad atmosphere.”

“You should not build a mansion in a place like this!”

Did the oligarch not realize that all the works of art he had collected would perish in a bad climate? Or did he buy some perfect equipment to keep the building at the right temperature for storing antiquities. How much money does it take to create the same atmosphere in a private building as in a museum! It seems that Vereskovsky is fabulously rich, but he does everything with a twist. Ruslan could say with certainty that there was no other construction site like this one. Everything is done not as it should be done, but as it is more convenient for the customer.

In general, there was nothing to complain about. Ruslan adored his work. Architecture was not only a job for him, but also a hobby. His favorite occupation helped him to survive. Unloved work often makes people depressed. But with favorite work you feel useful and happy.

But just because someone is building a private Hermitage, you feel an acute sense of injustice. Ruslan himself didn’t even have enough money for a micro-apartment. And living on the corner with elderly relatives is the most difficult ordeal faced by many young adults. Renting a house is also an unacceptable luxury for most young people. Often people work hard, and their wages are barely enough for food and a bus pass.

“When I was a kid,” Ruslan recalled, “my grandparents opened a bank account in my name. They knew how hard it was to live in a dormitory, and they were saving money so that their grandson would have his own apartment when he grew up. And one day, all the savings simply disappeared from the accounts, it was promised to be reimbursed, but there was no compensation. My grandmother liked to repeat that all our money went into the deep pockets of some new Russians. In those days, many people lost all their savings, but out of nowhere, fabulously rich people suddenly appeared.”

“Are you implying that our employer made his money dishonestly?”

“How can you get that kind of wealth honestly? He’s copying Midas. He even commissioned a statue made of solid gold!”

“Maybe he’ll end up like Midas. All dishonest people get screwed in the end, but we have to please him for now if we want to get paychecks and bonuses.”

“Don’t even count on bonuses! He’s got everything on the books for his employees, but the furniture here is probably inlaid with gems.”

“If only someone would want the furniture here. I have the impression that Vereskovsky is building a temple, not a palace.”

“Do you have that impression too?” Ruslan was surprised. He thought he was the only one who looked at a drawing of a palace under construction and compared it to the Parthenon or the Taj Mahal. It looks like a temple and a tomb at the same time.

“I also have a feeling that everything here might collapse like the Tower of Babel or tilt like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” Dima confessed.

“Why is that?”

“It is because you work sluggishly. I constantly have to correct your drawings.”

“The atmosphere of this place has a bad effect on me, as if there were some evil here,” Ruslan looked around. There were only Tajiks doing various jobs, and he was expecting ghosts.

“It’s all because of the abandoned hospital and the stories they spread about it. They say that in the old days the hospital was the estate of some nobleman with a bad reputation.”

“Why do you call it abandoned?” Ruslan was indignant. “I’ve seen people going in there myself.”

“If you continue to wear your nerves out with this, you’ll soon find yourself in the hospital, and your position will be given to another architect. There were many of them around here. Vereskovsky is looking for some genius who can combine completely different architectural styles into one building. The only thing I agree with you on is that it was necessary to pay three times the price for such a complex work,” Dima drank mineral water and didn’t grimace. Apparently, he liked it.

Ruslan noticed some winged shadows on the construction site. Probably huge birds flew over the construction site.

“Since high school, when I once went to the hospital,” Ruslan confessed, “the thing I dread the most is hospitals. Forced idleness depresses me, and various medical procedures make me sick.”

Perhaps it was a mistake for him to admit it out loud. It was as if someone had heard his words and taken note.

“My sister was disappointed in doctors, too,” Dima confessed in turn. “She went to them for treatment of teenage acne. They ran her through a bunch of paid tests and prescribed expensive drugs that did not help at all. In the end, the kind doctors consoled her that she could live with acne. And if acne bothers her so much, then let her go to a psychotherapist. How’s that for a situation like that?”

“My mom usually copes with such a situation with the help of gifts. It is worth presenting the attending physicians with a bouquet of flowers or a box of chocolates, as they will treat your ailments with great compassion. Of course, sometimes there are honest people.”

“But the best way out of illnesses is not to get sick. Therefore, in my spare time I do sports and drink vitamins by the handful.”

Ruslan noticed the strange shadows on the construction site again. It seemed that they were whispering something and giving him strange thoughts about the coming immortality. No wonder. In the shadow of the temple such thoughts should come to mind. And the palace that Vereskovsky is building is exactly like a temple.

Ruslan threw back his head and looked up. There were no birds flying about, neither small nor large. So where do winged shadows come from?

“He’s spotted us!” A nasty hissing voice said.

Dima had just stepped back to throw away the pizza wrappers and empty bottles when something on the construction site suddenly tilted. It seemed as if a crane had suddenly turned, but the chauffeur’s booth in it was empty. Was the rotunda collapsing?

Ruslan looked back at it, but it too stood as still as a monument.

“You saw us!” A nasty voice whispered in Ruslan’s ear.

Suddenly something huge covered the sun. It was no longer a winged shadow, but something rectangular and bulky. A huge block seemed to have fallen off from somewhere. But from where is it? And where will it fall? If it’s right on top of him, it’s too late to run. At the same time there was the sound of falling bricks and an obnoxious giggle. Ruslan felt an unbearable weight on him, and his eyes darkened.

The mysterious brunette

The creepy giggling was in his ears. The workers couldn’t be joking like this, could they? They don’t seem to care about jokes. Everyone was swamped with work. Everyone had frightened faces. A block at the construction site had indeed fallen. Ruslan expected all his bones to be shattered, but it turned out that he had only abrasions. The rubble had been cleared away, but the bandages from the first aid kit were not enough to stop the bleeding.

“Wait, we’ll get you to the hospital,” Dima wailed over him.

His buddy’s voice was overlapped by someone’s whistling whisper. A winged shadow loomed over Dima.

“It will crush you too,” Ruslan wanted to shout, but only wheezes came out of his mouth. Somehow he was sure that the winged creature that had collapsed the block was a girl. He must have imagined it. Dima was still fussing over him, giving some urgent orders and calling on his phone. Ruslan’s consciousness was falling into darkness. Probably he was going to die now, and the winged figure he saw was an angel from hell.