The Beast in the Red Forest by Sam Eastland Page A

to climb down, but when his feet touched the floor, he found that he could barely stand. It felt as if his bones had been removed.
    One of the nurses took hold of Kirov’s shoulder, trying to push him back, but Kirov, in his morphine-fuelled delirium, punched her on the chin and laid her out cold on the red linoleum floor. Then the other nurse attacked, kicking his shins with her blunt-toed shoes and pulling his ears while she called for the doctor.
    Angry and completely confused, Kirov fought against the woman, staggering around until his legs gave out from under him. His head struck the floor with a crack.
    From where he lay, Kirov noticed a pile of severed arms and legs heaped into the corner.
    The face of a man appeared above him. He wore a white smock smeared with blood. ‘You fool!’ he shouted, as he pressed something cold and wet against Kirov’s face. ‘These people are trying to help you!’
    A sickly sweetness, smelling like paint thinner, filled Kirov’s lungs. ‘Damn you,’ he managed to say, before he tumbled back into oblivion.
    *
    Kirov woke with the sun on his face. His chest was covered with bandages and his bare feet poked out from under a grey army blanket.
    He was by himself in a small room, which appeared to have been converted from some kind of closet. It had one window, against which the ice-sheathed branches of a tree tapped as they jostled in the breeze. The walls of the room were a pale brownish yellow, like coffee with milk that had been left in a mug and gone cold. The only thing aside from his bed was a collapsible chair in the corner.
    Vaguely, he remembered hitting somebody. A woman. No, he thought. That can’t be right. I would never have done such a thing.
    Then he leaned over and threw up, surprised to find a bucket already waiting on the floor beside his bed. He groaned, still hanging almost upside down, and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his hospital pyjamas. Although Kirov’s sight was blurred, the sunlight melting into rainbows everything on which he tried to focus, he was relieved to see his boots standing at the foot of the bed, along with the canvas bag containing Pekkala’s revolver.
    As he lay back, Kirov noticed a movement on the other side of the room. A man was standing there, hidden until that moment by the glare of light pouring in through the window. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.
    The man did not reply.
    ‘Do I know you?’ demanded Kirov.
    The man walked towards him, still masked in the flare of the sun.
    In that silhouette, Kirov thought he recognised Pekkala’s shoulders, like plates of armour slung across his back, but his vision was blurred and his mind kept skipping, like a needle jumping on a record.
    The man reached out and Kirov felt the warmth of a hand pressed against his forehead.
    ‘Sleep now,’ whispered the stranger.
    As if the voice compelled him, Kirov slipped from consciousness, wading out into the black lake of his dreams.
    *
    The next time he woke, it was evening.
    A nurse was tucking in the blanket, her back turned towards him.
    ‘Where am I?’ asked Kirov.
    ‘In the hospital,’ the nurse replied, ‘not far from Rovno, where you were wounded yesterday.’
    ‘I dreamed I hit someone,’ said Kirov.
    Now the woman turned to face him. ‘Is that so?’
    Kirov gasped as he caught sight of her black eye.
    ‘I must have had that dream as well,’ said the woman.
    ‘Forgive me,’ muttered Kirov.
    ‘In time, perhaps,’ she told him
    ‘There’s something else I dreamed,’ he said, ‘or thought I dreamed, at least.’
    ‘What was it?’
    ‘A man, standing right over there by the window.’
    ‘I was on duty all afternoon, and nobody came into the room apart from me. But don’t think you’re going crazy. They gave you morphine for the pain. That stuff can play tricks with your mind.’
    ‘I saw him, too,’ said a voice.
    Kirov glanced towards the doorway, where a man sat in a wheelchair. He had lost both his legs halfway down the