The Word That Starts with S

Someone was standing behind the door and breathing so slowly, as if learning to be human. No knocking, no scratching - it simply pressed itself against the boards and listened to us being silent inside. The candle on the table trembled, though the windows were shut, and the flame leaned toward the door, as if it wanted to flee.

And beside me sat the old shepherd Zhdan, from the high pasture beyond Chornohora. His hands were scored with old scars, as if wolf teeth still held him by the bones. His heavy coat gave off the smell of sheep fat, smoke and dried thyme. He had come down from the mountains for the first time in many years, but his eyes still darted across the dark corners and windows of the inn, as if a flock were straying there. Then he leaned closer and said:

- What touches your head at night does not always leave alive the one who flinched. It happened in a mountain village where the houses stood so high that the clouds lay down to sleep on the thatch. There lived the healer Vedyslav, to whom people brought children sick with fright, cattle struck by the evil eye, and men who had begun talking in their sleep in strangers' voices.

He knew three hundred herbs and seventy whispers, but he kept one law: after sunset, never to speak the word that began with the letter S. The shepherd was young then, and he came to the healer with trouble. Three nights in a row something had been getting into his sheepfold. The sheep did not bleat, the dogs did not bark. And in the morning one sheep stood in the middle of the flock with eyes that were not its own - round, unmoving, like an owl's.

The healer looked at the setting sun and said: come at first light, for at night I may not tell you what must be done. Curiosity tugged at Zhdan's heart, and that night he crept up to the healer's house and pressed himself right against the glass. He saw the old man sitting before the stove, an open book on his knees - not a church book, not a lord's book, but one written on birch bark, where instead of letters there were knots of colored thread.

One knot, near the edge, was tied of bright red thread that fairly glowed against the fire. Then the shepherd saw a clay pot on the table, its top stretched over with hide. And on that hide someone was slowly, from the inside, pressing out the letter S with a finger, over and over.

Zhdan could not hold back and, forgetting everything, whispered into the darkness the word that rose to his tongue of its own accord - the word starting with S, by which in their village they called the night spirit. Vedyslav seemed to hear that whisper through the wall, and his face went white as a winter sky. He did not cry out and did not rise. He only looked straight at the shepherd through the glass and said: do not come in after dark. You have already said it.

Now it knows where you are. The next morning the shepherd came, as agreed. The healer opened the door, but he looked twenty years older. He gave the shepherd a little bundle of herbs - thyme, wormwood, and something that smelled of wet bark. He said to hang it on the door and whisper the words of protection three times, and added: if in the night you feel someone calling you, touching you - do not move, or you will die.

In the morning, on the door of the sheepfold, where the charm had hung, there was only a gnawed-through thread. And on the threshold lay a single sheep - dead, without a wound on it, with those same round owl eyes. In its open mouth lay a scrap torn from that same book of the healer's, tied in a knot. The knot was of bright red thread.

The shepherd ran to the healer. The door of the house stood open. The stove was cold. On the table stood that same pot, stretched over with hide, but now the hide was bitten through in the middle. The healer sat in the corner, alive, but his lips were sewn shut with coarse woolen thread. He looked at the shepherd and slowly shook his head.

On the table lay the open book. But where the red knot had been, there now gaped a hole with ragged edges, as if someone had torn out a piece with their teeth to finish what had begun that night under the window. Zhdan fled and never returned to that village, but he heard that Vedyslav lived a long while yet, though he never unsewed his lips. He learned to whisper through the woolen thread and went on healing people, but after sunset he received no one.

Even if five candles burned in the house, even if the stove roared with fire, he never opened the door again. Since then, in those mountains, when the sun sinks behind the ridge, the women drive their children indoors and say: if something touches your head in the night, do not move. Do not cross yourself. Do not blink. Do not answer with your body. There is a kind of evil that does not break down doors and does not call from the darkness.

It comes quietly, lays its fingers on your hair gently, almost like a mother, and waits. If you flinch - it will know you are alive. And once it knows you are alive, it will find a way to take you.