Viy
Three nights in a haunted church, and the student who looked when he was told not to
Page 1
Three students from Kiev walked home for the summer: the philosopher Khoma Brut, the rhetorician Tiberius Gorobets, and the theologian Khaliava. They had left the main road and now, as the sun set, the endless steppe stretched before them without a single village in sight. The path had vanished. "Which way now?" asked Khaliava, his voice thin in the wind. "The devil himself wouldn't know where we are." Tiberius Gorobets peered into the gathering gloom. "We should never have taken that shortcut. We are utterly lost." Khoma, always the most practical, shielded his eyes and scanned the horizon. He was about to suggest they prepare to sleep in the open when he saw it. "Wait! There's a light," he said, pointing to a tiny, distant spark. "Far off. It must be a farm. We can find shelter there."
Page 2
The light led to a lonely farmstead. Khoma knocked on the gate, and an old woman with small, glittering eyes opened it. "We are lost travellers, grandmother," Khoma pleaded. "Let us stay until morning. We will sleep anywhere, even in the hay." The old woman shook her head, her face a mask of wrinkles in the moonlight. "There is no room," she rasped. "Go on your way." But the students insisted, promising to pay. Reluctantly, she let them in, but separated them, leading the theologian to one hut, the rhetorician to another, and showing Khoma into an empty sheep-pen. "You will stay here," she said, her sharp gaze lingering on him. He was too tired to argue and made a bed in the straw, but a strange uneasiness kept him from sleep.
Page 3
Suddenly, the door creaked open and the old woman entered. She leaped onto Khoma's back, and he became her horse, galloping out of the yard and rising into the air as the moonlit earth sped by below. "Let me go, you devil's creature!" Khoma shouted into the wind. Desperate, he began to chant every exorcism he knew. "In the name of all that is holy! By the sign of the cross!" The witch weakened, and they tumbled to the ground. Free, Khoma seized a heavy branch. He turned and struck her once. A terrible cry echoed across the field, but it was not an old woman's voice. Where she had fallen now lay a young woman of stunning beauty. Horrified, Khoma dropped the wood. "What have I done?" he whispered, before turning and fleeing without looking back, running until he reached the distant spires of Kiev.
Page 4
Khoma fled back to the seminary, trying to lose himself in ordinary life, but the vision of the girl in the meadow haunted him. A few days later, the Rector's deputy appeared in the main courtyard. "Khoma Brut! The Rector summons you!" he called out. Students stopped to stare. A murmur went through the crowd as the deputy strode towards Khoma. "What's this about?" a friend whispered to Khoma. "They say a rich Cossack captain has come from a hundred leagues away. His daughter is dying and she's asking for you by name." Khoma felt a cold dread. An ornate carriage waited outside the gates. The Rector had already given his permission. "I don't know any Cossack captain," Khoma muttered, but he was already being led away. There was no refusing.
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Khoma arrived at the Cossack captain's estate to find the household deep in mourning. The daughter was already dead. The captain, a stern, grey-haired Sotnik, led Khoma into the main room, crowded with mourners. On a table lay an open coffin. Khoma pushed through the crowd and froze. It was the beautiful witch from the meadow. A gasp escaped his lips. "It is her!" he whispered, stumbling backward. He turned to the Sotnik. "I cannot do this. I am a simple man, unfit for such a task." But the Sotnik grabbed his arm with an iron grip. "You will stay," the captain said, his voice hard with grief. "My daughter asked for you. You will pray for her soul for three nights. My men will see to it." The doors were barred. There was no escape.
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At nightfall, the Cossacks led Khoma to the village church, a small wooden building set apart on a hill. They carried the coffin inside and placed it in the center. "A thousand gold pieces if you succeed," the Sotnik told him, his voice flat. "And a thousand lashes if you refuse." Then the Cossacks left, locking and barring the heavy oak door from the outside. Khoma was alone with the dead witch. He lit the candles on the lectern, their small flames pushing back the immense darkness. He knew he was trapped. "A holy circle will protect me," he told himself, his hand shaking as he took out a piece of chalk. He drew a large circle around himself on the floor, a boundary of sacred protection. Then he opened his prayer book and began to read, his voice trembling in the vast, echoing silence.
Page 7
Khoma survived the first night. In the morning, the Cossacks let him out, his hair newly streaked with grey. He walked straight to the village tavern and spent the day drinking, trying to drown his terror. He jumped onto a table, swaying. "I am a Cossack's son!" he boasted to the patrons. "Do you think I am afraid of a dead girl? I've seen things that would turn your hair white!" But as evening approached, his fear returned. He slipped out and tried to run for the woods, but the Sotnik's men caught him. "Let me go!" he begged them, struggling in their grip. "I cannot go back there. I will die!" They ignored his pleas and dragged him back to the house to await the second night.
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The second night was worse. A scratching began at the door, then a furious pounding. Giant wings beat against the walls and claws scraped the windows. A chaos of monstrous shapes and shadows pressed against the glass, trying to get in. They could not see him. "Let my prayer be a shield!" Khoma chanted, his eyes squeezed shut, not daring to look up from his book. "Deliver me from this evil!" The entire church seemed to groan under the assault, the old timbers shaking. He knew the circle was the only thing keeping the horde at bay. His voice grew hoarse as he recited the words over and over, his body trembling, listening to the cacophony outside and waiting for the first crow of the rooster that would signal the dawn and his salvation.
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On the third night, the witch rose from her coffin. "Bring Viy!" she shrieked, and the doors burst open. A horde of monsters flooded the church, but they could not see Khoma in his circle. There was a rumbling as a squat creature caked in black earth, Viy, was led in. His eyelids hung to the ground. "Lift his eyelids!" the monsters chorused. "We cannot see him!" As they struggled to raise the leathery curtains from Viy's eyes, an inner voice whispered to Khoma: *Do not look!* He knew it meant his death. But his curiosity was stronger than his fear. He could not resist one quick, fatal glance. Viy saw him. "There he is!" the gnome king boomed, pointing at him with an iron finger. The entire horde turned as one.
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The monsters rushed Khoma. When the rooster crowed, they were trapped by the light, and the church became their tomb. Years passed. The building fell into ruin, choked with weeds, a place everyone learned to avoid. Back in Kiev, Khoma's friends would sometimes remember him over a drink. "A pity about Khoma," Gorobets would say, raising his glass. "He was a good fellow, for a philosopher." Khaliava would nod sagely and give his final verdict on the matter, a conclusion that satisfied them both and let the matter rest forever. "He perished because he was afraid," the theologian would always declare. "If he hadn't been afraid, you see, the witch could not have touched him." They would drink to that, and speak of him no more.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
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