Ghosts in The Machine - Preview

CHAPTER 1 – PREVIEW (Prelim)
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
By Jeff Snider
Part I – WALKING WITH GHOSTS
Chapter 1
There are few days I truly remember about my life in Russia.
About my childhood. About my family. This day I remember – everyday –
like a grainy, 8mm horror movie looping in my head. This day I cannot
forget. I must remember it in every shining, serrated detail. It is why
I go on. I have become this day.
October 1974, Gor’kiy, U.S.S.R.
I rocked impatiently in the wellworn, toosmall desk as I stared
out the window of the dim, concrete block schoolroom.
Comrade Instructor Rechnoy droned on about the proud history of
the Soviet people, patriotism, the party, our responsibilities as the
new youth of the Republic. It was his usual Friday history lesson, his
weekly partyline rant – duty, service, comradeship. Today his words
words blurred into the steady whirring of the threefoot metal fan
circulating warm air from the corner.
Today more than most, we all sat on the edge of our chairs,
tensioned like coiled snakes, waiting for the clang of the final bell.
Snider, GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE, 2
All that mattered to us today was the unexpected and glorious
appearance of the sun.
September had been as dark, damp and cold as the words streaming
from Rechnoy’s mouth. We had all settled into another sullen Russian
Autumn – sentenced to a seemingly endless string of long, dreary days
spent waiting for the first snow.
Today, like an unexpected parole, we’d received a reprieve. That
morning the clouds had parted to allow the sun warmed one final
encore. The air warmed and a light breeze dried the grass. By noon,
there were small white flowers peaking through the blanket of gray
green in the back lot of the school, convinced that spring had come
early.
For me, the brightness and warmth only added to what was already
to be a special day. October 16th was my father’s birthday and tonight
we would celebrate.
My mother always made sure that birthdays in our home were
celebrated properly. On my own twelfth, she had traded 3 weeks cleaning
services for a few hours at the community center, inviting all of my
classmates and their parents. It was quite a party. There was music and
dancing, 3 cakes and a buffet made up of dishes and sweets prepared by
the guests at my mother’s request. She was nothing if not resourceful.
Tonight, there would be a special meal, we would sing a song or
two over raisin ice cream or apple cake, and we would give father his
gift. Generally my father insisted against birthday gifts for himself,
telling us there were more practical ways to use his well earned money.
This year was different. Though he had made his usual protests and my
mother had assured her usual compliance, this was a special year that
required commemoration.
Along with being his 50th year, it had been a year of change and
good fortune for our family. In April my father had been promoted to
Second Directorate, Western Sector at the transporation company where
he worked. A well deserved recognition for a loyal employee. He had
worked there as long as my memory could stretch. From my earliest
childhood memories of happy homecomings after long driving routes to
the east, the smells of grease and fuel on his blue gray uniform. As I
grew and my memory became sharper, the grease faded, his clothes
changed, and he was away from home less often. These days, he wore a
suit, with a thin gray tie and carried a brief in his left hand. Though
he wasn’t a boastful man, he began to carry himself differently –
taller somehow. My father wasn’t a man who let his pride show; pride
could be a dangerous gamble in the Soviet Union, so I was proud for
him, proud to be his son. He was certainly a dedicated worker, but
above all, he was a good father. Everything he did, my mother told us,
was so that we could go to school and get the education we deserved,
the education his country had deprived him of.
“Knowledge is the new power,” my father told Urie and I. He said
the power of the mind, rather than the sword would be the key to the
coming world, a new, better world that we would help shape and drive.
When the bell finally rang, it startled me so I nearly dropped my
books. Everyone waited for Comrade Rechnoy to give us the curt flip of
his hand that meant we were free to go and we rushed for the door –
only barely maintaining the orderly exit that was expected of us.
It was just as we had hoped. An unexpected birthday gift for us
all; a beautiful spring day dropped in the middle of a gray, Russian
October.
My father wouldn’t be home for a while, so I decided to accept
the challenge from Lev and Vadim on the tether. Tether bored me, but
Lev always made it interesting with his energy and aggression. He was
lithe and athletic, and liked to boast that he would be a soldier one
day, a General even.
Lev was killed in Afganistan sometime in the 1980’s if I remember
correctly.
Of course he won both matches, but Vadim gave him a challenge in
the second game. I asked Vad what time it was. He was the only one of
us who wore a watch. His father had given him a leatherstrapped,
military watch for his 12th birthday and he hadn’t gone a day without it
since.
4:15 – It was getting late, so I told them goodbye and began the
short walk home.
As I walked, my mind drifted back to this evening’s special meal.
Meals were generally simple at our home. My mother was a wonderful
cook, but in recent years she’d come to prefer the new products she
could get at the market, mostly boxed or frozen meals that came in one
package. They seemed to be the latest in convenience and the cost was
more than acceptable to my father. Mika and I often thought there
wasn’t enough to go around, but we held our tongues.
As I neared the entrance to our apartment block, I noticed a
strange car parked just inside the lot. There were few automobiles in
our block, so it was obvious when a strange car appeared. In the
driver’s seat of the small blue sedan sat a thick, darkhaired man with
blackrimmed glasses. He looked as if he’d once been six feet tall and
was now the poor carrier of some horrible disease that shortened his
bones, compacting his muscle and flesh over a shrunken skeleton. He
had half a cigarette perched at the corner of his pink mouth and was
pretending to read a folded magazine. He was probably one of the men
from the Property Ministry here to repair another broken door or patch
another hole in another thin apartment wall. Like most things in
Russia these days, the apartment block we lived in was not renowned by
its residents for its quality. I remember riding by the lot where our
block now stood only a few months before we moved. It was a patch of
used up farmland spotted with patches of tall weeds. Now it was the
home of a modern building complex – “the latest in manufacturing and
efficiency” – a grid of tiny two and three bedroom units housing some
40 families, most of them truck drivers employed by the transportation
service. A second, unfinished block jutted up from it’s thin, weather
cracked foundation to the east. One of many signs of our overzealous,
overcompensating public officials, my father had said. From my
bedroom, I could see the spindly, steel beams, naked first floor wood
frame, the scattered piles of abandoned materials the workers had left
behind. It made me think of photos from my father’s science books,
pictures of the half rotted, skeletal carcasses archeologists said
belonged to the great mammoths who ruled the Syberian Tundra so many
millennia ago. The grayclad construction workers had stopped adding
flesh to this skeleton nearly a year ago. There were better, more
lucrative projects to be had in Moscow. The carcass began its slow rot
the very day they left.
As I walked by the sedan, I felt a strange pang of fear come over
me. Keeping my head down, I strained my eyes to the left and chanced
another look at the man. He was looking back, the magazine no longer
between us. Our eyes met, and I stopped dead. Stopped as if I’d run
into a wall – not one of the thin walls from the block, but a heavy,
stone wall from some great, towering gulag, sentries dotting barbed
wire battlements along its top. Frozen in his gaze, a wave of dread
washed over me. Before I could fully understand the signal passing
between us, the man propped the magazine back onto the steering wheel,
severing the connection. I started walking again, quicker now, but his
stare had left me uncomfortable, cold inside. I didn’t look back.
As I opened the front door, I heard my sister, Anna insisting
that she get another taste of whatever treat was bubbling on the stove.
The door banged closed behind me and I stood in the small foyer trying
to recollect myself.
The smell finally brought me home. It was wonderful. The
combination of cabbage and sweet baked apples brought memories of my
grandparents, their stonygray farm house, the goats I tended with my
Grandfather when we visited, the big rock fireplace where my Grandmama
cooked her old recipes for us. Among the swirling mixture of smells
wafting from the kitchen, I finally picked out the one I’d hoped for.
Lamb. It was my father’s favorite as it was my favorite. My Grandmama
had written down and passed my mother her Lamb plov recipe along with
all of her treasured culinary verses the year before she passed, and
despite her assertion that no one could prepare one of them to her
standard or ability, my mother bore the legacy well.
I could taste it already. I didn’t have to ask about the rest of
the meal. There would be homemade bread, cabbage rolls and finally my
mother’s apple cake, a recipe passed on by her own mother. There would
be no halffull stomachs counting the minutes until breakfast tonight.
I stored my books away in the plywood sideboard and ran to the
kitchen. Before my mother could say hello, I asked her about father’s
gift.
“Did you get it, mama?” I pleaded, the man in the lot already a
distant memory. “Where is it? I must see it.”
“Yes, yes.” She said, smiling. “I’ve put it in my night table. Top
drawer.”
My steps sounded like a machine gun fire as I ran to my parent’s
bedroom.
“It’s in a black case,” she shouted. “Be careful. Wipe your
fingerprints off before you put it back.”
The case looked nearly as presidential as the gift I knew it
held. Thin, elegantly beveled wood, stained a deep blackbrown and
varnished to a high gloss. I caressed the shiny black carrier for a
moment, then slid the cover back slowly, revealing a small, dark gray
velvet bag. I lifted the bag, holding out my other hand and let the
heavy, silver ink pen slide from its protective velvet womb. It was
just as I’d remembered from the catalog – masculine, simple,
professional. I turned the steel pen slowly in my hand, sharp points of
light jumping off the thick, ribbed barrel, until the engraved letters
came into view.
SSG 1974
My mother had wanted to engrave my father’s full name onto the
pen, but after much discussion with the salesman, it was confirmed
that the cost of the engraving was determined by the number of
characters in the inscription. My father’s full name consisted of 29
characters, 31 if they counted the spaces. So, it was decided, with
more than a little disappointment, that initials and an inscription
date would be adequate.
The characters were small, in an elegant, traditional style. The
light danced off of the sharp engraved edges as I turned the pen in my
hand, giving it even more presence against the silver and black of the
soft, protective bag and the dark wood box. It was perfect. My father
would adore it.
We had certainly spent more on this gift than he would have
liked, spending the majority of my, my mother’s and my brother’s
personal savings. No doubt he would protest, and my mother would
“shoosh” him and insist that he is deserving and should be happy that
he has a loving family who appreciates him as we do. In the end, he
will relent and ask for more apple cake.
My mother entered the bedroom, seeing me fixed on the pen.
“He’ll know it was your idea, solnyshko.” She said with a smile.
Of all of us, my mother included, I had the strongest connection
with my father. We seemed to see things much the same way. My mother
and he were quite the opposites, which had it’s own appeal, but I would
truly be his legacy, the son who would carry on his beliefs and further
the small causes and traditions of manhood that he held so dear. Oh, he
loved us all just the same, but he and I seemed to have a connection
deeper than blood. We were two shards of the same stone.
She watched silently for a moment as I marveled at our tribute,
then quickly whisked the box from my hands and told me to head to the
bath and get cleaned up before he arrived home.
“Your dawdling brother should be home soon and will need the bath
as well,” she gave me a nudge toward the door, “so leave the water and
don’t be too long.”
I headed back down the front hall past the kitchen, smiling at
Anya and taking in one last deep breath of the sweet tasting air as I
passed. I heard my brother Uri come through the front door as I topped
the stairs, sure he would retrace my steps, heading straight for the
bedroom and the pen.
I adjusted the plastic hot and cold water knobs until the
temperature was tolerable and secured the drain plug.
As the water ran, I hung my shirt and pants on the hook by the
door and turned to look in the mirror. I saw a 14yearold version of
my father. My pride swelled further. I was glad I had the parents I
had. Glad that I lived in a house where education, hard work and family
meant something, where mother and father actually showed their
affection. Too many times, I visited the homes of friends, gotten a
glimpse of their hard, regimented lives and was thankful that I slept
in my bed. Vadim’s father treated him like the soldier he said he
dreamed of being, and his mother rarely spoke unless it was in response
to his father. I had a lot to be thankful for.
I stopped the water just below halffull as my mother always
insisted and made sure to use plenty of soap. I washed quickly, rinsed,
and stood to step out of the tub.
Just as I planted my feet on the plastic tile floor, a sound
erupted from downstairs – loud enough to startle me, even through the
closed door of the upstairs bathroom. I thought of the army cannon in
the parade we saw in Moscow when I was young. I stood still, confused.
After several minutes of quiet, just as I was steadying myself to
reach for my towel, there was a second series of sounds that made my
stomach twist. Screams. Not like the screams of Anna being whirled
round by my father, or the screams of my friends from the playgroud, or
even the screams flying from the rides at the traveling carnival. These
were deep, guttural sounds like nothing I’d ever heard before, human
and inhuman all at once.
Then someone shouting for my mother.
Running.
Feet scrambling on the tile floor.
More screaming.
Slam!
Silence.
Time stopped.
I stood there naked at the edge of the tub.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip
…into the luke warm bath water.
A sick feeling passed from my stomach into my chest. I began to
shiver, unable to reach for my towel or my trousers.
Pounding.
Crash!
More screaming.
“No! Mama! No!” came the voice, almost unrecognizable as my
brother, “Why are you doing this?” then my sister’s cries, “Mama! Help
Me! Poppi!”
Then a horrible explosion of running, pounding, ripping, half
screaming, half gagging.
Silence again.
Footsteps moved slowly through the house.
Doors. Opened then shut.
I could hear my sister crying softly from somewhere below me.
“Why?” came my father’s voice, low and calm.
Silence.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Standing, naked and freezing on the wet tile floor. The seconds
felt like months.
I was jolted as another door slammed. More shrieking.
Anya?
Another voice.
A deep voice.
A man’s voice.
A voice I didn’t recognize.
“Let her go!” he roared. “I don’t want to shoot you.”
Another scream and a thud, like furniture smashing through the
thin walls.
Two gunshots.
Boom.
Boom.
Silence.
Suddenly freed from my pose, I snatched my pants from the hook
and pulled them on over my wet legs. I moved to the door, listening
closely. I could hear heavy breathing and sobbing coming from
downstairs. Vibrations rolled through my body like electricity, small,
sharp pains in my joints as I tensed with each tremor. My mind raced
through all the times that I thought I’d been afraid.
The time I’d been chased home by two angry dogs.
The time when I was eight and I’d been caught playing with the
controls in my father’s truck.
The feeling of warm blood gush from my head after falling from
the wood beams of the carcass that jutted seven feet above the concrete
slab next door.
I quickly concluded that I had never truly been afraid.
I wrapped both hands around the chipped, metal door handle, and
after a few seconds mustered the courage to turn the knob. Slowly, the
latch released, each tiny click of the mechanism an explosion in my
ears. Pulling the door toward me, I studied the tiny sliver of hallway
that appeared along its frame. My shaking had become uncontrollable. I
was certain that I was going vomit to at any moment. My father told us
that fear was a very powerful thing. It could turn a bear into a
whimpering cub and a kitten into a roaring lion. I felt more like a
bear cub as I peered through the widening crack.
From the bathroom, I could see halfway down the stairs. I opened
it wider, making sure that it didn’t creak as I pulled it toward me.
The sobbing from downstairs continued. I crept down the hallway, toward
the stairs. My mind made another quick inventory of relevancies,
cataloging all of the upstairs hiding places we’d used on dreary
Saturdays when the weather kept us indoors. The sobbing continued. As I
neared the first step, I saw my mother and a yelp lurched and caught in
my throat. She was lying in the downstairs hallway, her green and
orange patterned dress pulled up and twisted around her thighs, blood
splattered down her leg and about her waist. Her head and shoulders
hidden through the kitchen doorway.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breath. I could feel the bile burning my
chest, trying to make its way up from my gut like the water rushing
into the empty tub.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Still shaking. I stood listening to the crying man downstairs.
I’m not sure how long I was there. It felt like hours, but it
could have been an instant. My legs had become rubber, and I wondered
if they would respond if called to run. I wondered why he had not come
up the stairs. Come to kill me as well. I almost wished he would. Then
maybe I could run, or sit, or lie down. Then maybe I could breathe.
Maybe the pounding in my head would stop and the metallic taste in my
mouth would go.
Had he killed them all?
The front door crashed open, like a rifle shot. I quickly snapped
into consciousness, ran back to the bathroom, pulled the door closed.
More shouting. Men. They were arguing about something. Angry. A few
seconds of running and crashing and shooting. Three shots this time.
Blam! Boom! Boom!
Then one. Bam!
More running.
Coming up the stairs.
Coming toward the bathroom.
Up the stairs.
Coming to kill me!
Slam! Hard into the bathroom door.
The knob turned.
I was ready to die.
“Come get me!” I shouted in my head. “You’ll have to take on a
Lion behind this door!” I would be the Lion! I would stand to face him.
The door gave way and slid open with a creak and a thud as the
knob hit the wall. A tall man wearing a dark striped suit not unlike
the one my father wore, fell into the room, hitting his head on the
sink as he crumpled to the floor. He heaved himself upward and rolled
toward the door, pushing it closed as he sat up, his back against it.
It slammed with the force of a sledgehammer. The entire house went
dead quiet.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
For several minutes he lay on the floor, not moving.
Then I heard the strange weeewaah of sirens in the distance.
I hadn’t realized it, but I’d stepped back into the tub. I was
standing in the now cold water with my back against the wall, hazy
light floated in through the opaque bathroom window above my head. The
suited man rolled slowly to his side and pushed himself up so that he
was facing me. He smiled, blood staining his graywhite teeth, and
extended his arm and sat his pistol lightly on the toilet seat next to
him.
Thick, dark blood oozed from his chest just above where I thought
his heart might be. I was suddenly and inexplicably able to feel a pang
of sorrow, pity for this unknown man dying on my bathroom floor.
Whoever he was, the humanity of his situation was undeniable. The
bleeding was worse from belly, his hands now wrapped tight around his
midsection, as if he were trying to prevent his guts from spilling into
his lap. Bright red blood seeped between his fingers in weak spurts. He
lifted his head and looked me in the eye. His breathing was rough,
gurgling when he inhaled.
The sirens were just outside now. Men yelling and running, coming
through the front door.
Through his labored breath, he said my name. My sense of reality
drained into the cool bath water. I was paralyzed.
“It’s too late.” He said, half laughing, half coughing blood,
“They’re here…” he breathed in, tapping his forehead with a bloody
finger. “It’s too late” His eyelids drooped and his head rolled to his
chest.
“Don’t let them in,” he whispered. “Don’t let them in.” and he
slumped slowly onto the bathroom floor.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

As they walked me out of the apartment, onto the lawn, past the
pulsing, redstained sheets that covered my family, I couldn’t quite
assemble what had happened over the past hour. The warm breeze had gone
cold and bit into my body. The heavy clouds of a coming storm and the
fading light of evening combined to a deep reddish black along the
horizon. I remember the sweet smell of lamb, and raisins, and blood. To
this day the smell of lamb sickens me.
From the front seat of the police sedan, I looked absently across
the lot toward the street. The short man with the blackrimmed glasses
was there. He was standing with another, taller man in a gray coat.
Both men stared at me for several minutes, then abruptly turned, got
into their blue car and drove away.
It has always struck me as strange. I could draw you an accurate
picture of the fat man – right now – from memory – down to the mole on
his left cheek.
The tall man? We stared at one another across the lot that day,
but his face eludes me. It is as if someone has taken a pencil and
erased him from my memory. That one night in Russia – every detail so
crystal clear to me, but for a dead space where his face should be.

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CHAPTER 1 – PREVIEW (Prelim)

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