Beyond the Forest

I swallowed his words hard. I suspected every single one was true. But I'd traveled all the way to Transylvania on the slimmest of hopes and there was no way I was giving up now, even if it meant chasing after a witch from a book of fairy tales or a figment from a confused old woman's imagination.

The three of us left the meadow and Andrei led us deeper into the forest. The trees seemed to grow thicker and the forest seemed to grow quieter. And then we reached the stones.

They were no more than a small, semi-circle of broken boulders, none of them more than three feet high, but it was obvious they were a ruin of something that had once stood there long ago. And we were the only ones there.

Andrei sat on a stone and gave me a sympathetic smile. "You see? No girl. No witch."

I nodded as if I'd never actually expected to find anyone there, but I knew I was meant to find this place. The small, hidden clearing was covered in a shroud of fallen leaves, and the sweet odor of their decay mixed with the earthy aroma of the clearing to create an eerily familiar smell -- the exact same scent that had accompanied my nighttime visitor.

I was sure she'd been real and I was sure that she'd been here. "What are these stones, some kind of ancient ruins?"

Andrei nodded. "There are many of them that can be found in Transylvania, but most are far better preserved than these ones."

"Who made them?"

"The Romans most likely, it is from them that Transylvania gets its name. In Latin it means, Beyond the Forest. But there are some scholars who insist the ruins are even older, perhaps Dacian."

"Dacian?"

"Yes, the Dacians were the people who once ruled this land. But the Romans came and conquered them, subjugating them for centuries until the Huns arrived and took over."

I listened to him talk, outlining the history of his country and people, as I ran my hand over the worn stones, wondering how they were connected to Matusa Ildiko and wondering what to do next.

As I wondered, Adriana reached into her pack, pulled out some food she'd prepared for the hike, and shared it with Andrei and me. I thanked her and the three of us sat down in the stone circle to eat. Adriana watched me as I ate and noticed how I kept craning my neck around, watching the woods.

She smiled and said, "You really think you will find your witch out here, don't you?"

"I -- I don't know," I said. The idea of finding either her or her servant here had seemed a lot more plausible in the dark before dawn than it did now, in the bright mid-morning sunlight. But after the visit I'd had during the night, which I was still trying to convince myself hadn't been a dream, I was determined to keep hunting.

Adriana's thick, dark hair had tumbled down over her shoulder, and she swept it back as she said, "I do not mean to be rude, but can you tell me why you are so anxious to find Matusa Ildiko?"

I leaned back against one of the stones, slowly twisting my wedding ring back and forth. "It's because of my wife, she's...she's in a hospital back home."

Adriana lowered her head in sympathy. "I am so sorry, is it serious?"

I nodded. "She had a stroke a few months ago."

"A stroke?" Adriana said. "But she must be so young?"

"She is, she's thirty, the same age as I am. But they told me a stroke can strike down people of any age. She's been in a coma ever since, but her condition has been steadily worsening. And now the doctors...they say she doesn't have much longer."

Adriana and Andrei both glanced at each other and I could tell they were wondering the same thing: why wasn't I at my wife's side? So I told them.

"It was only days ago that they gave us the bad news. The doctor met with us in her room and told us to prepare for the worst; there was nothing they could do. My mother-in-law nearly fainted and my sister, who'd been there for both of us the whole time, took her outside the hospital to get some air.

"I was alone in the room with my wife and for the first time in my life I prayed, prayed that there was something I could do to save her. And then the gypsy appeared.

"I'd seen her there before. She worked at the hospital and was one of the women who came in regularly to clean the room. She'd always been friendly and was always asking me if there was anything she could get me. But that day...that day was different.

"She came in just like usual, but as soon as she took one look toward my wife's bed I knew something was wrong. She backed up into the sink, knocking everything over, and the look on her face was pure terror.

"I jumped up to help her and then she told me what was wrong, told me why she was looking at my wife's bed like she'd seen a ghost.

"She said there was a man standing beside my wife, cloaked in darkness with no face, and he was waiting to take her away."

Adriana gasped and put her hand to her mouth. "Bau-bau?!"

I blinked at her in confusion, not sure what she meant, but Andrei shook his head. "She thinks you are talking about Bau-bau, he is what you might call the bogeyman. He is supposed to come at night and take naughty children away to his cave. But I do not think that is who this gypsy meant."

I nodded in agreement; I knew exactly who she meant. I continued: "The gypsy told me this dark man -- who I couldn't see -- was waiting by my wife's bedside, waiting to take her away. And then she grabbed my hands and her words...the way she spoke them...sent a chill through me. It wasn't like she was talking; it was like someone was talking through her. She told me that there was only one way my wife and I would ever be together again. I had to travel to the village of Magura and find the witch Matusa Ildiko."

Adriana shivered as she listened to my tale. "But Matusa Ildiko...she is only a folktale."

"So people keep telling me, but last night I...I thought I dreamt of her. And then this morning when your grandmother said that she'd seen her servant, and now these stones. It just feels like everything is leading me toward her."

Andrei shook his head in disbelief. "Please, my bunica's mind plays tricks on her. And you are hearing and seeing what you want to believe. But believe me -- Matusa Ildiko does not exist. She never did. Go home and be with your wife, not only for her but for your family. I do not mean to be harsh, but I think it was foolish to leave her side to chase this gypsy's tale."

Adriana nodded. "He is right. You can never trust a gypsy."

I shook my head. I knew every word the gypsy had said was true because this wasn't the first time I'd crossed the dark man's path, and this wasn't the first time he'd come to take someone I'd loved away. And as I sat there in that ancient ring of stones, this was the story I told the two of them.

My mother was a strong woman. It wasn't easy moving across an ocean and building a new home for the three of us but she'd done it, and all on her own. She made every sacrifice that life demanded of her and gave us every ounce of her love. So much that, by the time my sister and I both finally moved out on our own, she was left all alone. For whatever reason she'd never remarried after my father died. She'd loved, but had never fallen in love again.

But it didn't seem to bother her. She had her friends and, of course, she had us. But in her mid-fifties I started to sense a change. She seemed distracted and sometimes even confused. Favorite dishes that she could cook with her eyes closed now had a different taste, their exact recipe no longer etched in her memory.

Both my sister and I noticed but none of us said anything. Even when we started to see other little warnings, signs that she was starting to forget how to do even the simplest tasks correctly. We put it down to age and thought we could just help her, but then something happened that I couldn't help her with.

I came over to visit her one day and, not realizing I was there, she came tiptoeing out of the kitchen. But not as if she was trying to be quiet, more like she was worried about setting off a landmine. When she saw me standing in the living room she looked as if she'd seen a ghost, but once I spoke to her and she recognized me she calmed down.

At first she denied it, but I knew that something was wrong and insisted she tell me why she'd been acting so strangely. And when she did I laughed at first. She said she'd been...seeing things. And when I asked her what type of things, she said: "Do you see them?"

I looked around the room in confusion, wondering what she was talking about, and then she told me. She said there were little men running around the room, small men, about six inches tall. Kind of like those troll dolls that used to be popular, naked with fuzzy hair and huge grins on their faces. And that was why she'd been tiptoeing out of the kitchen; she was worried she was going to step on them.

At first we thought it was funny. My sister would play along, pretending she could see the tiny men too as she tiptoed around the house. We weren't sure what was wrong with our mother. We just thought her mind was playing tricks on her. We had no way of realizing just how unfunny the final trick it had planned for her would be.

One day I went to visit her and she seemed frightened. Her hair was wild and her clothes looked like she'd been sleeping in them. Wanting her to take a shower, I tried to pull her up from the couch but she refused to budge. I thought she was worried about stepping on the tiny men. Then she whispered: "Do you see him?"

That was the first time she told me about him -- the dark man standing by the bottom of the stairs. She described him as having no face, at least, not one that she could see. But she knew he was watching her, waiting for her.

She refused to go anywhere near the stairs, including the bathroom right beside them. And when I went to stand where she said he was, hoping to prove it was all in her imagination, she just stiffened and whispered: "He's standing right beside you...looking at you."

Things were getting worse. We knew she couldn't stay in that house. So we moved her to a small apartment in a two-story building near where my wife and I had just moved in. At first she seemed to be doing better, she told us she wasn't seeing things and we hoped things had changed. But they hadn't.

About a month later a neighbor I'd given my cell number to in case of emergency called me. She'd smelled smoke from my mother's apartment, but when she'd gone over and knocked on her door my mother had refused to answer. By the time I got there both the firemen and policemen were already there, banging on her door and telling her to open it. But she was on the other side, as smoke poured out of her apartment, screaming for them to go away. They were afraid to smash the door down, knowing she was on the other side, but were getting ready to do just that when I intervened.

It took a minute before my mother remembered who I was, and when she did she tentatively cracked open the door to let me in. I held her as the firemen rushed in and put out the fire, which luckily turned out to be just a pot burning away on the stove.

The fire was out, but fear still filled my mother's eyes. As she clung to me she finally admitted why she'd been terrified to open the door. She'd peeked out the spyhole and seen who was standing and waiting behind the crowd banging and screaming for her to unlock the door -- the dark man.

He'd found her, and now that the door had been opened, my mother refused to ever set foot in that apartment again.

We'd been taking her to doctors since her problems had begun, and it was soon after the fire that they finally gave us their diagnosis. She had something they called Lewy body dementia. They told us that the hallucinations were a common symptom of the illness, and told us the prognosis wasn't good.

For her own protection we put her in a facility designed to care for people with her disease. And as it got worse they were forced to put a lock on the door to her room to keep her in. She screamed and cried for them to let her out, and one of the nurses told me it broke her heart not being able to let my mother leave her room. But I knew her terror wasn't because she was trapped in there, it was because she was trapped in there with him.

Her decline was depressingly fast and it was barely a year after we'd been forced to put her in there that she passed away. The staff told me they'd done everything they could to make her comfortable and that she'd died alone during the night. But I knew she hadn't been alone, she'd had one last visitor.

When the gypsy told me about the dark man watching and waiting for my wife I knew exactly who she meant, her description was identical to the one my mother had given me. And I knew there was no way I was going to just sit idly by and let him take one more person that I loved away from me.

As I finished my story I touched my cheek and was surprised to find a tear. I hadn't even realized I'd been crying. With all the tears I'd wept the last three months, I hadn't thought there were any left to shed. I stood up and followed Andrei and Adriana. Both of them were quiet as we headed back to Magura, but there was sympathy in their eyes. Sympathy for my pain, the love I had for my wife obvious, and sympathy for the misguided hope I'd placed in a gypsy's words.

* * *

When we reached Andrei's house, Adriana's mother was waiting on the porch. "I'm sorry," she said, "I tried to stop her but she wouldn't listen."

We went inside and found Andrei's grandmother, on her knees as she searched through old books and photos that were scattered across the floor of the kitchen.

"Bunica, what are you doing?" he cried.

The old woman smiled up at us with her toothless grin and stabbed a gnarled finger at a curled black-and-white photo as she chattered her reply in her native tongue.

Andrei listened with a stunned expression, and then turned to me. "She says she has found her."

He picked up the photo and Adriana and I gathered close as we peered at it together. The photo was black and white and showed five scared young Romanian girls, all in their teens, flanked by four men in uniform.

"Are those Nazis?" I asked.

Andrei shook his head. "No, they were the Iron Guard, Romania's own Nazis."

His grandmother leaned in and pointed at the girl in the middle, letting us know it was her. And then she pointed at the girl at the far left and told us she was the girl she'd seen at the edge of the forest the night before, the servant of Matusa Ildiko.

I stared at the photo. All of the girls looked so young, so innocent. And the girl she'd pointed to, her face was hidden by her scarf, but her eyes were haunting.

Andrei asked his grandmother where she'd found the photo and she explained that a friend had given it to her after the war. He'd found it in the offices of the Iron Guard after they'd been destroyed and had recognized her.

When he asked her how come she'd never shown it to him before, a sadness washed over her face and, as she turned to stare out the window as if it was a portal through time, tears welled in her eyes. As she told her story, Andrei translated.

"They came to the village one day, the Iron Guard. They told everyone they were looking for collaborators, but when the only people they rounded up were four teen-aged girls, the people knew what they were really looking for."

"Four?" I interrupted. "But there are five girls in the photo."

She nodded as if she'd understood my words, and continued as her grandson translated.

"As they marched the four of us back to their headquarters, a place we all feared, she appeared in our midst. She came out of the forest with a black scarf tightly wrapped around her face and, without a word, stepped into line with us. We had no idea who she was and were amazed the Iron Guard hadn't even seemed to notice her appearance.

"They took us to the small house they had commandeered and were using as their base and marched us into the cellar. But before they did they forced us to pose for this photo, as a trophy.

"We had no idea who this strange girl was, as we'd never seen her before. But we were all terrified and had no time to worry about where she'd come from, we were far more afraid of what was about to happen to us at the hands of the Iron Guard.

"We could hear them upstairs, getting drunk, and she just sat there not saying a word...waiting.

"And when they finally opened that cellar door, and we knew they were finally coming to get us we all screamed. But not her. She stepped right in front of the four of us, shielding us from them. And when she pulled her scarf aside...the look on the faces of those men...I have never seen a look like that before or since."

"What did she look like?!" I interrupted, and made Andrei translate.

His grandmother shook her head wearily. "I do not know. I only saw her eyes...such beautiful eyes...but when she removed her scarf her back was to us. And they took her -- only her -- and left the rest of us in the darkness of the cellar. At first it was quiet upstairs, deathly quiet. And then we heard the most terrible noises. Oh, the screams we heard."

"You heard her screaming?" I asked.

"Not her. When the sounds finally stopped, one of the girls worked up the courage to go check the cellar door. It was unlocked. We went upstairs and it was terrible, so terrible. There was blood everywhere and the Iron Guard...they were all dead, every single one of them. I tell you, I would not wish their fate on anyone, but those men...they deserved it."

"And the girl?" I asked. "What happened to the girl?"

She didn't need her grandson to translate; she knew what I wanted to know. In a hushed whisper, she told us that by the time they'd gone upstairs she was already gone.

"But...what happened?" I asked Andrei. "Did the girl grab one of their guns? Did she shoot them?"

He tried to ask his grandmother, but the sparkle had returned to her eyes. She rambled on in Romanian, telling him how Matusa Ildiko had answered their prayers and come at her servant's call to punish the bad men. And swore she'd seen the girl -- not a day older than when she'd last seen her seventy years earlier -- watching from the edge of the forest the night before.

"It is impossible," Andrei said, more to himself than anyone else, "she would be an old woman by now."

But his grandmother continued, shaking her head as if she'd read his mind, and insisted that thanks to the magic of Matusa Ildiko the girl was eternally young. And now that she'd seen her again for the first time in more than half a century she had to repay her for what she'd done for her and the other girls. That was why she'd been taking the food to the circle of stones, where she was sure she was waiting for her.

Andrei didn't even bother telling her that we'd been to the stones and hadn't seen any girl. He knew she wouldn't remember if he did. Instead he led her to sit at the table while he prepared dinner and Adriana picked up the memories scattered across the kitchen floor one by one.

* * *

It felt strange later that night, as I lay in bed, to turn on my tablet and read a message from my mother-in-law. I felt as If I was moving farther and farther away from the world of reality and toward the world of fable -- but I still had wireless.

Her e-mail pleaded with me to come back. She thought I'd done what I'd done because I didn't know how to deal with everything that had happened. I could picture her tears as she wrote that she didn't know how to deal with it either, but that both of us had to. And she told me that now more than ever my wife -- her daughter -- needed me by her side.

I apologized for leaving them alone and told her I'd be back as soon as possible. But I knew I couldn't return until I'd found who I'd come to find, the witch Matusa Ildiko.