Yaga Resort

Jack hated camping. Specifically, he hated the kind of camping that his wife, Jill, enjoyed, which is the kind of camping that she grew up with. No RVs or campers. No, the kind of camping she liked was just in tents. And that’s how he felt. Tense. As in Past. But, maybe, he thought, he might be able to salvage something out of this relationship and this camping trip. He didn’t know what, though.

This was their first camping trip by themselves. The idea was that they would spend some time alone, and reforge some kind of connection that Jack wasn’t sure existed in the first place. He wasn’t a great planner. Making it to the next paycheck was the extent of his ambition, and money and the difference between “living” and “surviving” was his secondary occupation. He didn’t feel that he had either the time or the money to “live” when “surviving” took up so much of his energy and resources. “Living,” he thought, was reserved for those who had planned better than he had. Ah, well, he thought. What he feared most was having this alone time and finding out that they had no chemistry at all, even after years of marriage.

The most affordable campground he found online was a quaint little place called Yaga Resort. The web page consisted of a picture of the front office which was up on four pillars that looked like chicken feet, surrounded by a fence with what he hoped were Halloween tiki torches. The property manager was listed as being a Ms. (ooh, Jack thought, miss!) Vasilissa (NMN) Yaga. The website showed pictures of a simply dressed young woman, with strawberry blond hair, surrounded by a multitude of cats. The rules of the house, in a bold font, was that this was a place for couples, and not for children. Absolutely no children. Don’t think about it. Don’t ask about it. Just. Don’t. Bring. Children. Jack was a little surprised by this, since most campgrounds encouraged families. Children tended to spoil the serenity most campers sought while sleeping on pine cones and freezing in their tents. Jack liked children, however. They provided a welcome buffer between him and his wife. Now that they were going to be alone together, she wanted to spend time together, and Jack found that uncomfortable. He was socially awkward, so not having a place to hide made his stomach squirty.

“I don’t see why we couldn’t have rented a camper,” Jack said as they drove their Traverse along the paved back roads. They looked for a sign that would tell them where to turn. So far, even the GPS was sulking, and the side roads were not giving up their secrets.

Suddenly, Jill shrieked. “There it is!” The sign, in her defense, did almost seem to jump out of the underbrush at them. The yellow and green sign read, “YAGA RESORT” with a clawed hand pointing down a dirt, overgrown path. He wouldn’t have called it a “road,” except at gunpoint.

“I suggested getting a camper,” Jill said. “You said that it would cost too much money. Besides,” and she took his hand, “You would have flipped a camper with that sharp turn you just made.” Jack balled up his hand around Jill’s hand, but resisted making a full fist. He gave her hand three solid shakes.

“What would I do without you?”

The entrance gate was open like a set of Washington’s teeth: wooden, uneven and ancient as myth. The tree branches bent over the road like an honor guard of lush foliage, and for a time Jack felt homesick for his home town in Michigan. Now, there were some primal forests, the likes of which no other forest could ever compare. Nostalgia has a way of putting the gold sheen back on uncomfortable memories. The car bounced on a slight dip in the road just before the road began to rise again, and the car danced on the uneven, root infested road until it opened up into a wide clearing. The office was, as advertised, easy to spot, being up on four chicken legs, resting on the top of a small hill. What the picture did not show, much to Jack’s annoyance, was just how tall the legs were. The stairs that led to the office were steep, almost like a ladder, with no visible handicap access.

“You want to stay in the car or climb the Matterhorn with me?” Jack put the truck in park but left the engine running. Jack assumed that Jill would rather sit in the car. At least that way she’ll have air conditioning and enjoy the sight of her husband walking up a wooden ladder.

“I’ll come in with you. This place looks … interesting. I want to see what this office looks like. From the outside it looks a bit … fowl.”

The walk up the stairs was an adventure all its own. Twice they had to stop and catch their breath; the air was thinner as they climbed. “I’m getting old,” Jack said out loud. “I’ve never seen a place like this before.” Jill simply sounded like a bellow, but was trying to hide it. Jack put his hand on her shoulder and smiled. “It’s okay. Get your breath. I’ll go up and get things started. Come along when you can.” She nodded, and Jack began climbing again. Finally, he got to the front door, but there was no door handle. “Well, now what?” He looked around for a bell or a rope or something, but there was nothing. “Huh,” he muttered. He gave the wooden door three hard raps. He heard some movement and then the door opened. He was expecting that someone opened the door, and so would be, logically, just inside, holding the door. Instead, he saw an ethereal hand float back towards the shadows. In retrospect, he thought this would have been the time to nope out of there, but he had already invested the time and money to come here, and Jill would never forgive him for cancelling their camping plans. He took a tentative step inside.

The smell of sage, rosemary, and pipe smoke swept over him. The house was compact, with a stone hearth that had a kettle on a swivel arm dominating the center of the room. There were wing back chairs by the hearth, wood stacked up along the wall, and child size skulls lining the rafters and mantel. Sitting in one of the wing back chairs was a middle age man writing in a notebook, one leg crossed over the other. Despite the heat, the man wore black, and despite being indoors, he wore sunglasses.

“Excuse me,” Jack said to the man. “Are you the caretaker here?”

“Oh, heavens no,” replied the man in an accent that was like velvet to the ears. “I just came in here to visit an old friend.” Resting on the arm of the chair was a half eaten fruit that Jack had never seen before.

“Oh, hello!” The voice was the song like a chirp of a young woman, and Jack turned to see a girl much younger than her voice implied. She looked like she was in her early teens, maybe fourteen. Jack recognized her immediately as the young woman in the photo on the website. “May I help you?”

“Ah, yes. Mr. and Mrs. Hill checking in. We have a reservation …” and more than a few he commented in his head.

“How many reservations?” The girl wore a simple, blue dress with white lace around the neck and wrists. She had strawberry blond hair and eyes like the first clear sky of Spring.

“Oh, only one reservation for my wife and me …” he could hear himself stammering.

“I see,” she said and smiled like a bird in a cage. She brought a laptop out from a niche in the wall and unfolded it. “Jack and Jill Hill,” she intoned and then paused for a moment.

“No, it’s not a joke,” Jack said. He’d heard all of the jokes, but people still seemed to try to be clever. She demurred with a nod.

“How will you be paying for this?”

“The rest of my life, probably,” he muttered. When she did not respond, he gave her his credit card and waited while she input the information. She handed him a receipt and a number on a plastic square. “You’ll find your campsite down the road, across the bridge, third on the left. Be sure to go straight there, and do not pick up any hitchhikers.”

By this time, Jill walked in, with her hand on her heart. “Oh, how charming!” The dark clad stranger glanced up and then went back to his writing. Jack could see a black cat squatting above Jill on the doorsill. The cat looked at her with lazy curiosity and flicked her tail. “Oh, Jack! This is wonderful!”

Well, Jack thought, even a slotted spoon catches a potato once in a while.

They spent the first evening together having sex. She called it, euphemistically, “making love,” but since she complained and directed the entire time he came away feeling less in love than when they started. Later, they built a campfire and she cooked dinner on a grill. She had many wonderful qualities, of course, and he wished they could meet on a deeper level. But, there was a barrier there, and he wasn’t sure why, not exactly. He had his theories, of course. He decided that he enjoyed being a Dad more than he enjoyed being a husband. He wondered what that said about him. He thought about talking to Jill about this, but he was afraid of what she would say. She already had a list of all of his faults practically tattooed on her arm, and she frequently reminded him that she knew all of his thoughts, and that she knew he knew that she knew, but just to be sure was what the constant reminders were for. The term “thundercunt” came to mind, and that was the last piece to that puzzle as far as he was concerned.

“I’m going to take a walk,” he said after he finished off his third beer. She had cooked a lovely bit of campfire grilled fish with lemon and sage, and it was the best meal he had ever eaten. He kept forgetting that she was a sous chef before she became a housewife, and he wondered if all chefs were impossible to please. He plucked up his leather pouch of tobacco and his pipe and set off to explore this new environment.

“Hold on,” Jill said. “Help me clean up and then I can go with you!”

“I was hoping to smoke my pipe. You’ve always said how much it bothers you.”

“I’ve never said anything like that,” she said with narrowed eyes. “I said ‘Don’t smoke in the house’ and ‘Don’t smoke in front of the kids.’ You implied the rest.” Jack let his breath leave his body slowly. There were many different ways he could respond, but he decided to keep his wick attached to his candle.

“And you told me that you don’t like how fast I walk. I can’t walk at your pace, it takes too long and my legs cramp up.”

“It’ll be romantic!” Her lower lip began to tremble. “You know what, go ahead and go on your walk. Smoke your damn pipe and leave me here to do all of the cleaning up!” Her voice crackled with emotion, as tears began a sortie from behind her eyes. He was outflanked.

“You know what, you made a wonderful dinner, and it would be selfish of me not to help clean up. As a matter of fact, go in and have a nice rest, and I’ll smoke a bit while I clean. That way I’ll have it out of my system by the time you wake up.”

Jill smiled wryly, and then nodded gratefully. “Thank you,” she said. She went to the tent and took one step inside. “Make sure you clean up the area very well, or we’ll have bears and other animals coming by.” With that, she retreated into the tent and zipped the door closed. To Jack, it sounded like a mosquito trying to nest in his ear. He was tempted to toss the fish scraps next to her side of the tent, but then thought that would be unfair to the bear. Once the trash and food scraps were bundled into plastic bags, he decided to go on that walk without Jill anyway. He thought he remembered seeing a dumpster down the road by the Communal Showers which was halfway between the campsites and the main office.

The trees flanked him on the left and right as he walked, and the twin groove dirt road was uneven and interlaced with gopher holes and tree roots that tripped up his feet as he walked. While he walked he never saw another campsite. Usually these places are honeycombed with open areas for tents, trucks and campers, with the same types of people sitting outside, watching a fire, drinking beer, and talking. This place, though, was featureless, as though the forest consumed anyone who took shelter in its grassy hospitality. The sun was descending behind the tree tops as Jack finally found himself at a single story, brick building with a wooden sign that read, “Community Center” on the side. There were four doors on the building, with a sign on one side that read “Baba” and the other that read “Bastards.” Along the north edge of the building was a large green dumpster. Jack flung the two sagging bags into the dumpster and took a look around. The community center was on the west side of two intersecting roads. He stepped out into the crossroads and looked down every road of the intersection. North, south, east, west … still, he didn’t hear any sounds of talking, or the smell of campfires burning or drunken roaring of vacationers. He couldn’t recall if he had seen anyone when they drove through, but he was busy grinding both his teeth and gears trying to stay on the gutted road at the time.

“Huh,” he said out loud into the darkness. “I seem to be lost.”

“Lost, you say?” The voice had a velvet accent, like the one he heard in the main camp office just a few hours earlier. Jack saw an old African man wearing a wide brimmed hat and an eclectic outfit that looked like he had been attacked by a closet and had to fight his way free. In one hand he held a walking stick, and in the other he held an intricately carved pipe.

“Yes, lost …” Jack repeated, almost to himself. “Do you work here?”

“Not exactly, but I can often be found here,” the old man replied with a chuckle, indicating the cross roads with his pipe. Jack nodded and took out his own pipe and tobacco.

“Would you like some?” Jack held out his parcel of tobacco.The old man hobbled over and scooped out a more than generous heap into his pipe. The old man snapped his fingers and a flame erupted around his thumb. Humming to himself, the old man lit the mound of tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, puffing contentedly. The old man held out the glowing digit to an astonished Jack. Jack shook his head, feeling the heat dry out the inside of his gaping mouth. The old man closed his fist and the flame disappeared.

“You did me a kindness,” the old man said gravely. “I’ll repay the charity: I will tell you a little about where you are and who your hostess is …”

“She’s not from around here,” Jack said but stopped when he saw the old man’s eyes blazing with hellfire.

“Don’t interrupt,” he snapped like a turtle. “No, your hostess is from around here, but you are not. You are in her realm now, and you would do well to leave as soon as you can. Two things you need to know, though: she is called Baba Yaga! She can be helpful, but she doesn't like curious people. You know what happened to the inquisitive cat? By comparison, the cat got off lucky. The third is that if you carry a blessing, she will leave you alone. If you remember those two things, then you might survive.”

The number of italics in the old man’s warning made Jack feel uneasy. “I don’t owe you my soul, now, do I?”

“Naw,” the old man said. “I hate hatchbacks.”

Jack met up with Jill on the way back. She had an industrial size flashlight with its own battery. She was calling out, so he heard her before he saw her, and because the flashlight was like the face of God, she saw him, literally, as clear as mid day. “This is a weird campground, Jack,” Jill commented as Jack held his hands up to shield his eyes. He could see the bones of his hands clearly through his skin by the beam of Jill’s light. She turned the beam away to slash the darkness around the crossroads as though slicing a roast. “Who were you just talking to?”

Jack blinked away the spots and ghosts that floated in front of him. “I’m not sure, I think it was either the caretaker of this place or the devil. I don’t know which one I’d bet on, but I can only guess how much he saves on matches.”

“What did you talk about?” She was only half listening. She was waving the beam of the flashlight around like a paint brush.

“He said that we’re the guests of Baba Yaga, not to ask her too many questions, and that if we have a blessing on us, then she will leave us alone.”

“Oh, not that sweet girl we saw in the office!” Jill had a puppy in the rain look on her face. “But, she seems like such a nice person! And so young! I thought Baba Yaga was supposed to be an old lady, and quite ugly!”

“Face lift?” Jack didn’t know what to say. All he wanted to do was to get back to the campsite and put an end to this night as soon as possible. “Do you happen to know the way back to the campsite at all?”

“Of course …” she said, albeit a little defensively. “Did you happen to notice anything odd about this place?”

“A few ideas came up, yeah. What are you focusing on?”

“That hut, for example. Also, the fact that I can’t seem to find any other campsites around here. I don’t know how a person loses campsites, but for as big as this place is, you’d think they’d pack in as many sites as they can …”

“But you didn’t see any?” At least they agreed on something now. Jill nodded.

“Do you think that means that we won’t be able to find our campsite again?” Jill’s voice was a bit tremulous. Either that, or Jack’s mind was being stripped faster than a fishing line that hooked a Marlin.

“What we should do,” Jill said after sweeping the woods with her light again, “ is that we go to the main office and ask that Vaseline girl where our campsite is. I think it’s down this road …” She turned the incandescent beam towards where, by rights, the office should have been. There was nothing but more tree-crowded road, but this time there was movement in the bushes.

The crickets had stopped singing. That was never a good sign. In the silence, he caught the sound of ka-thump, swish swish, ka-thump, swish swish …

Jack motioned for Jill to turn off the light, and he pulled her towards the shelter of the foliage. He hoped there wouldn’t be any poison ivy, but even if there was, it had to be better than whatever was approaching. Even as Jack stepped into the bracken, he realized he was alone. He turned and saw Jill standing in the middle of the road, a flashlight that could lead ships to harbor burning a swath through the darkness, but with a look of abject terror on her face.

“Jill!” he said to her in his best stage whisper. “Drop the damn flashlight and get over here!” She ignored him. The thump and sweeping noise grew louder.

“Gah! Fuck’s sake are ye brining the sun down for?!” The voice was pitched high, and crackled, like the hunting cry of a man’s worst nightmare. A decrepit looking woman, who looked like she had passed “ancient” three times in her life, bounded up on a mortar and carried a pestle in one hand. In the other hand, she held a broom. She swung the broom around and swatted the flashlight out of Jill’s hand. The old woman propelled herself forward until her crooked nose was right up on Jill. In the moonlight Jack could see rows of steel in the old woman’s mouth that glinted like tanner’s knives. “What are ye doing out and about, woman? And why do you spoil the peace of my woods with your light and noise?”

“We’re lost,” Jill said simply. “We don’t know how to get back to our campsite.” Jill managed a quiver of a smile. The old woman sat back on her mortar and stroked her chin. “I can show you the way back,” she said in an almost pleasant tone. “But, you have to follow me, and look neither to the right nor the left. And keep that damn light off! And you …” She turned towards Jack with an accusing finger. “Get out of those bushes. You look like an idiot.”

Jack dropped the branch he was holding in front of his face and stepped out onto the road. She smelled of sage and mahogany for some reason. He decided not to mention it. She began to hop along on her mortar, using the pestle in the same way rafters use a pole. Jack figured that if she was going to show them the way, he was not going to ask questions.

Jill, however, walked so that she was close to the old woman and in a cheery voice asked, “Are you the owner of this place?” There was a sharp intake of breath, and the old woman gave Jill a sharp look.

“Yes. I inherited it from my sister.”

“Who was that pretty girl we met earlier today? Vaseline, I think her name was?”

“Vasilissa,” the old woman replied, smiling like a crocodile. “She is my step-daughter. I’m raising her to take over when I’m dead.”

“How nice!” Jill responded.

“You think so,” the old woman said. “I don’t like children, as a rule. Well, not to raise, anyway. Baste, yes. Raise, no.”

“Do you have children of your own?” Jack tried to get Jill’s attention, to warn her against asking questions (he was certain he had mentioned this) but she kept waving him off.

The old woman suddenly stopped and turned to Jill. The old woman’s eyes had grown to be almost the size of saucer plates, and her smile went from ear to ear, full of Ginsu appreciation. “You’re very inquisitive, Mrs. Hill. I think that you would like to discuss many things tonight. Do you want to talk, or do you want to get back to your campsite?”

“B-b-b-both …?” Jill’s eyes also seemed larger, but that was because they were almost jutting from her head in fear. It was almost palpable.

“Um, I think we can find our own way now …” Jack said, taking Jill by the arm and leading her away. “We’ve taken up enough of your time …”

“No,” the old woman said in a slow hiss. “If your wife wants to have her curiosity satisfied, well, I can make it last … all … night …”

Jack could feel something climb up his nose, some sort of itch. He moved his nose around trying to get rid of it. “No, really, we shouldn’t bother you anymore.”

“Too late for that, child. Much too late for that.” The old woman drove the pestle into the ground like a spear and brought the broom around, pointing the bushel end at Jill. Suddenly, Jack sneezed.

“Bless you,” Jill said instinctively. The old woman recoiled.

“Well, fuck …” she said. Then she leveled her gaze again at Jill. “Well, you’re the one I want anyway.”

Jack leapt forward and put himself between Jill and the old woman. He didn’t know why. Part of him was hoping, in some way, of seeing his wife get smacked down by this old woman, but some vestige of chivalry tripped him up. The old woman sank back onto her mortar and chuckled.

“Your campsite is there,” and she pointed at a cleared out area where they saw their tent, car and belongings all safe and sound. “Stay there tonight. Do not venture out again, if you know what’s good for you.” With that, the old woman turned around on her mortar and pushed off down the road.

“This place is not getting a good yelp review,” Jill mumbled to herself. By the light of the moon, Jack could see the old woman hold up a single digit from her hand in response.

That night, they made love again. Jack did not bother to get dressed again afterwards. He had found what he was looking for.

The next morning, Jack was awakened by the sound of squirrels fighting in the trees, the sound of their claws on bark reminding him of when his wife would use the grater to make coleslaw. He got up and opened the tent flap. He stared in wonder, his body fully exposed to the elements. The wind blew against his face and skin, causing goosebumps. From a distance, someone whistled. As Jack stood exposed to the elements, he was also aware that parents were covering the eyes of small children, and that the children were wearing uniforms and plastic helmets. He was also aware that, to the annoyance of a slightly older boy, he was blocking the outfield of a little league game. Jack waved slightly, and then stepped back inside the tent.

“What’s going on, Jack?”

“Um … I think that this is something that you can handle better than I can, Jill. It’s a sight that, I guarantee you won’t soon forget.”