Apex Book Company

Welcome, stranger, to Novorossiysk. Nice weather, da? You should come here in winter time: these old ships you see here in the harbor are frozen solid then. But this balmy May sun is something to cherish, I agree. In a few weeks time it’ll be piping hot, you can bake eggs on the pavement. Come sit down with this old sailor, warming his old bones in this warm Spring glow.

The weather here is a bit like us: it doesn’t like to do things halfway. Moderation is like drinking vodka through a straw: it completely misses the point. What do you mean: you want a smaller beer? Njet. We only serve pints here. And the beer is only good for vitamins and thirst: for that glow inside we drink vodka, of course.

You like this bar, shaped like a big beer barrel? Actually, the door through which you entered used to be the ceiling. Long story, I might tell you if you give me the right incentive. Did I mention that–as any Russian worth his weight in roubles–I drink vodka? Ah, you suspected as much, good for you. The usual, Ivanova, spasiba.

Have a vodka, too, stranger. Urpinskaya, the good stuff, distilled locally. Feel it sliding down your throat like a little angel peeing on your tongue. Beats all that fancy stuff like Stolichnaya and Gorbachev, right?

You think nothing ever happens in this provincial town? Not true, my friend, those in the know can tell you a thing or two. Problem is that all this talking really taxes our larynxes. We need to lubricate them frequently to keep them going.

Very good, this round you’re ordering. Spasiba. Incredible how my memory clears at the sight of these drinks. I’m an old sailor, several body parts don’t work like they used to. Not all, mind you. Just look at these girls going to the Spider Club over there. Like our vodka, they’re the best in the world. No competition. That is, until they get married: then these tight bodies gain a little mass over time. Njet problem, because by then they know how to prepare a mean borscht that stands in your stomach like a slab of concrete. But right now, they are a sight to behold, stirring up things left unused for too long…

But I digress. You must have noticed some things that are out of the ordinary here. Take Vladimir’s Ark House. That’s right, that shining white boat, stranded ashore and secured by mortared cobblestones, with its metallic blue window panes and a bow sharp enough to cut the world. Whatever nonsense they tell you, tovaritshch, about him being an eccentric, an old man losing it and such: bullshit, frishetch. He had a good, solid reason to do this.

Then there’s Andrey and Irena’s red restaurant ship: Dikchi. Funny how it stands on those welded struts, holding the vessel well away from the water. This is not a tourist drawing gimmick, oh no, my comrade from overseas. They had their reasons as well.

It was in the last year that the old Iron Curtain was still up and the workers were robotni very hard to complete the last part of the Kaspian Pipeline. Just some fifteen kilometers more to go and it would reach the Black Sea, here at Novorossiysk. Then the oil from the rich Kaspian fields could flow to our little port and be exported to the vile, capitalist West. The money would be used for the good of the people, and not for the apparatchiks, of course. That gleaming new Politbyuro they were building in the center, provided with all those decadent western luxuries like air-conditioning, microwave ovens and big refrigerators, had nothing to do with all those expected oil riches, of course.

And the Russian common man, missing out once more, did what he always did: become very melancholic, work just hard enough to escape punishment, and drink illegally distilled vodka in the somber sunset after robotni.

However, this sunset promised not to be quite so mundane as its countless predecessors. As the low-hanging clouds over the bay took on golden and crimson hues against a sky turning a deep, dark purple something else shimmered through the lingering haze. Hypnotised, like hybrid children we watched the sea. Sometimes feelings of dread, ominous forebodings become so thick you can smell them, taste them, even chew on them. Instead of obeying your deepest instincts and make a run for it, you stay, mesmerised, and accept your fate.

Slowly, majestically, an enormous shadow rose from the depths of the bay. The only sound breaking the heavy silence was the rushing of cascading waterfalls as it rose through the surface. A giant amalgam of dark brown seaweed, black mud, crusty mollusks, slithering sea snakes and sharp rocks shining as so many teeth and talons all somehow configuring the body contours of a gargantuan man.

It was Ptholow, of course. Any Caucasian kid raised with our local folklore tales could tell you that. Ptholow, lurking beneath the Black Sea, rising when the time of reckoning has come. We couldn’t believe it.

You see, Ptholow is our version of the bogeyman: a convenient monster to put fear in our kids when they are disobedient. And since Russian kids are the bravest in the world, they need quite a large monster to be scared. So: enter Ptholow, a 300-meter monster towering over all, the epitome of your worst nightmares. But nobody really believed it existed. Until then.

Until it rose from the Black Sea bay, splitting the air like the Second World War monument at the hill of sixteen colored flags. Da, that sharp triangle pointing to the sky at an oblique angle. Although I doubt even the brave, giant, Zadkinesque soldiers sculpted on it could have stopped it.

Eeriest of all, it remained completely silent. If not for those great fountains splashing down from it, one might imagine we were viewing some humongous special effect. But that sense of irreality was soon squashed when the ground began to shake as Ptholow started to walk. Towards us.

Our women are strong–sometimes too strong if you ask me–but the sight of Ptholow rising from the sea, of that creature, that thing that should not be, turned even those nerves of steel into jelly. One of those beautiful blond babushkas sought refuge in my untrembling arms. Actually, every muscle in my body was frozen with fear, but she didn’t know that, da? However, as that deliciously curved woman was wriggling in my embrace, some parts did inadvertently come alive. Crazy, the things people do when they are filled with the fear of death. Some scream and panic, some flee or run amok, and some just grab their last chance to…

But I digress. Njet, kid, not now. Can’t you see I’m talking to this stranger, here? Just take these roubles and buy yourself some ice cream. And leave me alone. Where was I? You think he looks like me? Impossible, I’m a bachelor, a poor old sailor, haven’t touched a woman in ages.

Anyway, as madness reigned in our city, the creature crossed the mountains. Da, those peaks over there, the last offshoots of the Caucasian Mountains. Reports of what it did over there were vague, wild and contradictory, but most agree on this: Ptholow went to the work site of the Kaspian Pipeline, grabbed the last part of the big pipe in his monstrous hands and put it in his abomination of a mouth, like a giant sucking on an immensely long straw.

Nobody could actually proof this, and even a giant creature like Ptholow can hardly drink a dent in the vast amounts of oil in our Kaspian fields. But we did not doubt about what it was doing. Believe me, we Russians have a sixth sense when it comes to knowing when people are in dire need of a drink.

Before it returned to the depths from whence it came, it made a small detour right through the center of our little town. It must have tread on tiptoes, as the damage it did was absolutely minimal–with a single exception, that is. Of course, apart from hardly any physical damage it did cause considerable psychological chaos, chasing a lot of people beyond the wall of sleep.

Not for as long as you’d think, though. Even the fear for the Hunter of the Shadows subsides if you have the constant surveillance of our benighted state breathing down your neck. And especially if you consider that Ptholow was not really interested in the common man…

You don’t understand, tovaritshch? I’m coming to that, are all you westerners always in such a hurry? We take our time here to tell a decent story. So take it easy and have another vodka, nastarovja! That’s more like it, comrade, not like those tiny sips you’ve been taking so far. Good to see that my narrative moves you to tears, as well.

Where was I? Sometimes Urpinskaya clears your brain so thoroughly you almost lose your thread. Well…yes, while in stranger times even death may die, here Ptholow merely got back to wherever from the bottom of the Black Sea it normally dwells. Maybe to continue its timeless sleep, who knows. Probably it’s still lurking beneath the sea. But I suspect it doesn’t need to come up again as it can now take its sips directly from the offshore loading station, presumably at night. I suspect the Great Old One doesn’t like light much.

So, nastarovja, my friend, to Ptholow. Of course the authorities tried to cover it up. And cover up it did as they got a taste of their own medicine. They blamed the Chechnyan rebels, they blamed the Afghan terrorists but we know what we saw.

So it was just a lonely soul looking for a decent drink. Njet problem. That’s normal. Still, Vladimir had his white boat taken out of the harbour and anchored it firmly to the ground with cement and cobblestones. Not to flee from Ptholow, as you seem to think, but to give it room to enter the city when it returns. You see, the apparatchiks are still lingering around, not to mention this new mob called mafia.

Remarkably little damage was caused by the light earthquakes in Ptholow’s wake. Some broken windows, a few sagged old warehouses and this bar here: the wooden barrel was actually standing up. But Ivanova decided to leave it like this, and it gave us some extra seating space in the bargain, breathing room for foreigners if you like.

Andrey and Irena welded struts under their red ship and placed it still very near to the bay. Also symbolically moving aside for an eventual new visit, a bit like a subtle invitation. May 9 may be the official holiday of the revolution, here in Novorossiysk it’s the day we remember the coming of Ptholow. Free vodka with every meal you order in Dichki’s on that date. There’s the dark deception of the state that kills the light, and there’s the Dark Old One, roaming free, providing a little light in our somber existence.

Because, living at the bottom of the Black Sea, you develop a taste for the dark. Our spirits probably look like seawater to Ptholow. But we think that crude oil tasted like the very best vodka to it. Nastarovja!

So our beloved state rebuilt the Kaspian Pipeline. So they blamed others. But we remember what we have seen. Thing is, they will never admit it took them 3 months to dig up the brand new Politbyuro from under a humongous heap of dung. But even when the last gram of shit was carefully removed, even after an indeterminate amount of desperate scrubbings: the stench would not go away. Eventually they had to demolish that hateful building, as no-one would go in there. Ptholow, spasiba!

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Peter is a sailor who, after travelling around the world on merchant vessels, now works for an offshore company in the Black Sea. A few years ago, he started committing some of his musings to paper. To his utter surprised, English is not his native language, he picked it up on his travels and subsequent reading of tons of paperbacks he found that a couple of American magazines were willing to publish his stories. Look for them in “Intracities”, edited by Mike Jasper, and “The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, vol. 2″, edited by Alex Irvine and T. Davidsohn. “Thick and Thin” is his third sale, to appear in the Summer ‘05 issue Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest.