The Aitvaras of Užutrakis Garden
There is a creature in Lithuanian folklore called an aitvaras—a household spirit said to bring wealth to its master.
To get down from Matas’s little room on the third floor of the summer house, you had to cross a long balcony that curved around the triangular roof. At the far end stood a long, steep staircase leading down to a glassed-in veranda, and from there a door opened into the house itself. It was difficult to move and sometimes slammed shut, and once that happened, it could only be opened from inside the house.
Matas rather liked it that way. He was thirteen, and he had grown thoroughly tired of his parents constantly checking on him: Have you tested your blood sugar? Have you eaten? Did you remember your medicine? He knew they meant well, but still... Up there, he was his own master. None of the adults liked climbing the steep stairs, his younger sister was afraid of heights, while Matas could scamper up quickly, using his hands as well as his feet. That was where he slept in summer.
Matas had type 1 diabetes. Before eating, after eating, or whenever he felt strange, he pricked the tip of his finger and touched the drop of blood to a test strip in his glucose meter.
His mother always reminded him never to eat anything sweet without testing first, as though he might somehow forget.
"I know!" he would tell her.
"You always say you know!"
"Because I do know!"
After dinner, his parents gave his sister Monika two little chocolates from Aunt Audronė. Matas did not get one. Normally he was used to such unfairness, but that evening it made him unusually sad. Angry, even. He flung his fork and knife onto his plate. It rang out and nearly broke.
"Enough! Stop behaving like a little child!" his father snapped.
Something angry began bubbling inside Matas. Why could everyone else take whatever they wanted, eat whatever they wanted, while he had to count every bite, watch his own hands, stab his finger? Red with anger, he ran upstairs to his room. The veranda door slammed, and the wooden stairs thudded softly beneath his feet. His mother shook her head at his father, then pulled the veranda door open again so Matas could come back whenever he wished. As always, it stuck: the top opened when she tugged the handle, but the bottom remained wedged in place and had to be pulled hard.
The entire house was shaped like the letter A, with the roof sloping steeply down on either side. Matas’s attic room was narrow and smelled of pine boards warmed by the sun. There were actually two small rooms up there. The first served as an anteroom and held a sofa where it was pleasant to sit and read. In the room beyond, where Matas slept, there was space for little more than the bed—an old wooden bed with a massive headboard and footboard, facing the door.
"Like my own private little apartment," Matas thought.
By day, dust glimmered in the sunlight. At night, the corners beneath the roof grew dark, and the room became a little frightening—but pleasantly so.
Matas woke eighteen minutes past two.
The electronic clock glowed blue, though it did not illuminate the room. For a while he lay still, annoyed that he was awake. Everything was completely silent.
Then something moved behind the footboard.
Matas’s body stiffened with instinctive fear. The sound was like straw being slowly pressed beneath a palm, or something sticky being peeled from a wooden board. Beneath it came a gentle rustling, as though someone were folding paper in the dark.
"A mouse," Matas thought. "A mouse has found a wrapper somewhere."
He relaxed a little.
Then came a far less pleasant sound—wet and shiver-inducing, as though something in the darkness had licked its teeth.
Without thinking, Matas pulled his legs towards himself. The bed creaked. He could feel the empty, cool space between his toes and the edge of the blanket, which had caught somewhere near the footboard. Beyond it lay only darkness. He could also see the silhouette of the door, with moonlight seeping through the gaps around it.
"Do not let it know you are awake. Perhaps it will leave you alone."
The seconds passed slowly. Matas tried to breathe as though he were asleep, though how was he supposed to know how a sleeping person breathed? He kept his eyes barely open. In one corner of the room, moonlight cast a shadow that crept slowly across the floor.
Then something suddenly coiled there in the corner.
A grey rope, perhaps?
Something pulled it back behind the footboard, making a wet sliding sound.
"There are no ropes there," Matas thought.
Not a rope.
A tail.
A shudder ran through his whole body. He lay perfectly still until at some point near dawn he finally fell asleep.
When he opened his eyes, the room had changed beyond recognition. The wind stirred the curtains behind him, patterned with red poppies. Sunlight fell in a bright rectangle across the orange floorboards. Not a trace of fear remained.
Even so, when Matas sat up, he cautiously peered behind the footboard.
Had he only dreamed it?
No. Something lay on the floor: six small parcels, neatly wrapped in white paper and arranged in two rows.
He slowly put one foot down, then the other. The boards were warm and pleasant beneath his soles. The room fitted so poorly with the nightmare of the previous night that he began to doubt whether events had happened as he remembered them.
He weighed one parcel in his hand. It looked much like a wrapped bar of soap and was almost as heavy. Inside was a solid bar of milk chocolate, dense and fragrant with something like vanilla.
It was wonderful.
And he could not eat it.
Matas gathered the gifts into both hands and opened the door to the balcony. Gardens and fields shone all around him, with a pine forest in the distance. He usually admired the view whenever he left his room, but now his mood was too dark. He went down into the veranda and from there into the main room, where the whole family was eating breakfast: his parents, his sister and his grandmother.
Matas did not quite know what to say, so he simply placed the chocolates on the table.
"What are these?" his mother asked.
"I don’t know. You brought them up during the night, didn’t you?" Matas lied, although he was not entirely sure it was a lie.
"No, we didn’t. Where did you get them? We told you to speak to us before buying anything."
"I don’t know. I thought you left them. That’s what I said!"
His father looked up from the newspaper and glanced at his mother. She frowned.
"Throw them away."
"Perhaps we don’t have to throw them away," his father said, already reaching for one.
Matas knew what his mother was thinking: that he had done this himself, somehow trying to punish them because he was not allowed to eat sweets. He knew because something similar had once really happened.
Then Grandmother spoke. She sat at the far end of the table, cutting cheese into thick slices.
"Where did you find them?"
"Upstairs. On the floor."
"Throw them away, as your mother said. Do not touch them again."
Matas saw doubt pass through Grandmother’s eyes—or perhaps even a shadow of alarm. She looked directly at him but asked nothing else.
Evening came, and Matas climbed back to his room. After a full day, he no longer believed such horrors could truly have happened the night before. Besides, if something had left him chocolate, perhaps it was not so bad.
It was true that he had thrown them all away.
Well—all except one.
Now, alone, he unwrapped it. He checked his blood sugar and made sure his insulin pen was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table. Then he ate the chocolate.
It was hard, just the way he liked it, but melted in his mouth. It seemed sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. The best chocolate in the world.
Only it seemed that, although it melted, it never quite disappeared. The sweetness went on and on until his teeth began to ache. At last Matas could bear no more. He spat the chocolate into its wrapper and threw it away.
He woke shortly after two with a pounding headache. His mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to his teeth, and the slightest movement made nausea rise in his stomach. His shirt clung to his back with sweat.
Worse still, he badly needed to use the toilet, but that meant reaching the chamber pot on the floor.
And there, beyond the footboard, he once again heard the sound of folding paper.
Something was quietly working.
Something that probably had a tail.
All the comfort of daytime had vanished. The room was thick with the stifling heat of a nightmare.
Matas curled beneath the blanket. It was hot and damp with sweat. His hand found the glucose meter on the bedside table. In the darkness, he pricked his finger and touched the test strip to the drop of blood. He did not even need to see what he was doing.
The device beeped and displayed:
HIGH.
His blood sugar was beyond the meter’s measuring range.
Quietly sobbing, Matas knew he needed insulin. But the pen lay in the bottom drawer, almost at floor level.
And down there was... that creature.
It would hear him.
"Mum! Mum!" he began shouting through his tears.
At last the door opened. His father ran across the room, saw the glucose meter, hoisted Matas onto his back like a small child and carried him downstairs.
Some time later, Matas lay in his parents’ bed. The clock showed four in the morning, and his mother and father sat on the edge of the mattress.
"Do not get up," his mother said quietly. "Everything is all right. Your blood sugar was very high. I have never seen it that high. How many of those chocolates did you eat? Tell us the truth. We won’t shout."
"Only half of one, Mum," Matas replied.
His mother glanced at his father, and his father gave the smallest shake of his head.
"But the floor was covered with chocolates and empty wrappers," he said.
Before falling asleep again, Matas saw Grandmother standing in the doorway. Her face was twisted with worry.
"I’m not sleeping there!" Matas shouted at his parents the next morning. "I’m never sleeping in that room again! There is something there, I’m telling you! Something keeps bringing me those chocolates!"
"Calm down, darling. What could possibly come in across the balcony?" his parents tried to reassure him.
Later, when everything had settled, Grandmother came to Matas. She looked at him tenderly.
"You know, I was little once too. In summer I used to sleep on the sofa in the room beside the door, while my older brother slept where you sleep now."
"Yes?" Matas asked cautiously.
"Yes. I will tell you what I heard from my brother, and you listen carefully."
Grandmother moistened her lips and paused for a long moment.
"There is a creature people call an aitvaras. No one will believe us, but I know it is real. They say it brings its masters whatever it thinks they desire."
Silence followed.
"So it is... good?" Matas asked.
Grandmother studied him. He was not laughing. She gave a quiet nod and continued.
"No," she said coldly, and Matas’s skin prickled. "It listens, but it does not understand the way a human being does. Perhaps it is a spirit, perhaps some kind of beast, but it listens to our voices—or even our thoughts. It attaches itself to a person."
"Like a dog?"
"No. Differently."
Grandmother’s voice became low and ominous, the way it did when she told frightening stories.
"It clings like a burr. Once attached, it will not let go. It thinks it is serving you. That does not mean it is kind."
"So it is dangerous?"
"Yes. That is what I am trying to tell you. The war separated my brother and me. He was nearly grown when they sent him to the front. He told me only as much as I am telling you now. I was still very young, but before he left, he ordered me never to sleep in that room. I saw how frightened he was for me. I thought the aitvaras had abandoned us long ago. When I was a child, I sometimes heard something at night—in the ceiling, in the roof, between the boards. Perhaps it is still there."
The band of evening sank lower, uncovering the stars on one side while leaving the sky red, red on the other. Matas sat on the balcony and watched it. He did not want to go to bed.
But darkness came. Lights appeared in the windows of the surrounding gardens, and it was time for him to sleep. He tossed and turned, unable to rest. When he finally looked at the clock, it was two in the morning.
Something rustled on the balcony.
The door opened soundlessly, as though its hinges had just been oiled. Matas lay still, watching the darkness above the footboard.
At first, nothing happened. A light breeze crept in through the open door.
Then something moved in the doorway—and moved very quickly.
It was so dark that Matas felt more than saw it: something appeared to enter the room on four legs.
Tap, tap, tap.
Its feet touched the floor gently, like those of a cat, only a much larger one with sticky paws.
Then, for perhaps two minutes, nothing.
The roof boards creaked. The curtains stirred. Branches scratched at the window. A storm seemed to be gathering outside.
At that exact moment, the footboard cracked softly. The creature was timing its movements to the other noises. It did not want to wake him.
Very slowly, two small white points appeared above the wooden board, perhaps two of Matas’s handspans apart.
A shudder passed down Matas’s neck and through his body. Every muscle tightened, and he involuntarily drew back.
The eyes in the darkness shifted.
Could it see that he was awake? It must have noticed him flinch. It probably saw perfectly in the dark.
The white points—the eyes—began to rise.
Something pale appeared above the footboard.
Something feathered.
A chicken.
In the faint starlight, Matas could see only its limp, dangling neck. The dead bird hung from the creature’s jaws, though the jaws themselves remained invisible.
The Aitvaras seemed to be waiting.
Waiting for praise for its gift.
Matas nearly screamed.
He closed his eyes and repeated in his mind:
"It is good, it is good, it is good. It only brought a chicken. It only brought a chicken..."
When he opened his eyes a few minutes later, the white points were gone. There were no more sounds. The bedroom door slowly swung shut and finally slammed.
Only the chicken remained on the floor, and several drops of blood stained the white bedding.
By morning, everything once again seemed like an impossible, nightmarish dream.
"You say it brought a chicken?" Grandmother asked. "It understood that the chocolates made you ill, so now it brought you a chicken. Give it to me."
"But, Grandma, the cat took it."
"What cat?"
"Felytė, the neighbour’s cat. I saw her sitting on the balcony yesterday evening. In the morning the chicken was gone, and I saw cat tracks."
"That is not good. Not good at all." Grandmother frowned. "Tonight you will sleep with me."
Matas slept properly beside Grandmother for the first time in several nights. He had told his parents he wanted to spend time with her while she was still alive, just as she had instructed him, and they allowed it for one night.
There were no monsters in Grandmother’s room.
Even so, when Matas climbed upstairs the following morning, he found a dead cat neatly laid beside his bed. It was Felytė, the same neighbour’s cat that had stolen the Aitvaras’s chicken. Her eyes were glassy, and her throat had been bitten through.
Matas’s father said he would no longer be sleeping upstairs and that a badger must have got into the walls. They would have to deal with it. Matas saw his parents speaking together uneasily. They could find no sensible explanation.
He overheard them wondering whether Matas, craving attention, might have found a dead cat outside and carried it upstairs himself.
Or perhaps something worse.
Grandmother merely advised them to end the holiday early.
Three more nights passed. Matas stopped going upstairs entirely and slept beside Grandmother each night. The holiday was almost over. Soon they would return to Vilnius, and Matas could hardly wait.
Every one of those nights, something upstairs shoved the bed and made it bang against the wall.
It was Sunday. Matas felt unwell that night. Grandmother promised to stay awake, but before long her breathing became deep and even.
The inner door of Grandmother’s little extension opened directly into the shared veranda, near the staircase leading up to Matas’s floor.
Something rustled.
The bedroom door flew open quickly but silently, then stopped just as suddenly, caught by an unseen hand so that it would not strike the cupboard beside it.
As Matas sat up in bed, he understood at once.
The Aitvaras was coming.
A scream escaped his mouth but ended before it had truly begun. He saw two white eyes in the darkness, and then a hand closed over his mouth. It was as small as a child’s hand but impossibly strong, damp and radiating inhuman heat. Black nails pressed against his face. One dug into his nostril. It hurt, but the hand was like iron.
A grey tail flicked into view.
Then something stabbed into his thigh, like the sting of an enormous bee.
The pain became a dull sensation, then a strange coldness spreading through his body. Matas struggled, but the creature pinned him to the bed. He felt its breath against his face.
It was dark, yet he saw a broad muzzle beneath round white eyes, three small pits where a nose should have been, and a lipless mouth opening and closing as the creature breathed rapidly. It was filled with long, thin teeth, curving inward like fishing hooks.
The cold numbness spread through Matas’s arms until they no longer obeyed him. It climbed into his neck and mouth. He could no longer shout, only wheeze. Soon he felt nothing but a faint tingling, and then even that gave way to a sense of absence, as though he had no body at all.
He watched the hand withdraw behind a wing covered with something halfway between feathers and bristles. Nothing held his mouth now, but his mouth no longer worked. There was nothing he could do.
"Grandma," he could only think. "It has come to take me."
The monster turned towards Grandmother, but she slept deeply. It crept close and sniffed her.
Matas saw its silhouette. Its body resembled an enormous, hideous moth. Behind the wings, beneath its belly, something moved and bent with wet little motions—perhaps a mass of tiny hands, perhaps insectlike spines.
Very gently and very quietly, the creature seized Matas with some kind of appendages and carried him away. Through the veranda, up the stairs, then through two doors and back into his room.
It laid him carefully in his bed.
With half its body upon the mattress, the Aitvaras moved its head like an insect, turning first towards the door and then towards Matas’s legs. Its wings opened with the sound of adhesive tape being peeled apart. Twisted hands emerged from beneath them, touched Matas’s feet and stroked them.
All the while, the Aitvaras looked into his eyes as though considering something.
Matas understood.
The cat had stolen the chicken, so the Aitvaras had torn it apart.
His legs had carried him out of the room and into Grandmother’s bed.
Now it was deciding what to do with them.
Slowly, still watching Matas’s eyes, the creature bent over his feet. Then it turned away. Its head plunged down and began twisting horribly from side to side.
Matas could feel nothing and could barely see. He only felt the bed begin to shake violently.
He tried to scream, to cry, but could produce only a wet gurgling sound.
The Aitvaras had not come to eat Matas.
It had come to keep him.
Morning came.
Matas opened his eyes. Very slowly, he moved his lips.
"Help..." he breathed, surprised that he could speak again.
A minute later came the sound of footsteps, and his mother and father rushed upstairs. Matas could not sit up. The lower part of the blanket was dark and soaked with blood. The footboard was spattered as well.
His mother pulled the blanket away from his legs.
Below the knees, only bones remained, gnawed clean.
Such was the aitvaras of the garden at Užutrakis.
Translated from the Lithuanian original at https://sutemudirbtuves.lt
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