Vourdalak — The

Pierre, being a rational man from Paris, did not believe in such things. He laughed at the family’s fear. That night, when young Gorcha’s sister fell under the spell of the smiling grandmother, Pierre tried to reason with the old woman.

Gorcha left to hunt down and kill a notorious bandit. The family has a deadline: if he is not back by midnight, they must assume he has been bitten. When Gorcha returns—haggard, hungry, and unnervingly cheerful—the family knows the truth. The slow, agonizing disintegration of this family unit, as the father begins to call his children to dinner (with them as the main course), is a masterpiece of psychological dread. Tolstoy understood that the scariest monster is not a foreign invader, but a parent who no longer recognizes you. The Vourdalak

The door groaned open of its own accord. The family’s dog, which had been silent all evening, began to whine—not bark, but whine—and backed into the ashes of the hearth, pissing as it crawled. Pierre, being a rational man from Paris, did