Double, double, toil and trouble

Something wicked this way comes...

I think I'm living next door to Baba Yaga.

Let me backtrack a bit. Baba Yaga is a witch-like character in Slavic fairytales. She flies around on a broomstick, kidnaps (and presumably eats) small children, and lives in a house that stands on chicken legs. Quite understandably, she terrifies me.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a stack of books on the landing outside of my flat. This is what the landing looks like:

My flat is the first door you see on the left; Baba Yaga's is the far one. Right next to the little coffee table you see in the righthand corner was the stack of books. I didn't pay much attention to them at first, noting briefly that the top book had some random symbols on the cover. But then on Saturday Stu made some comment about the "witch book."

"What witch book?" I asked.

"The ones out on the landing," he said. "You know, the ones with all the witch symbols on the cover." Hmm...clearly I do not recognize my witch symbols when I see them. I ran out to the landing to see for myself. We opened the book and inside were more symbols, as well as some VERY creepy drawings of cloven hooves (Satan's?) and diagrams of devil tails and random weaponry. I dropped the book as fast as I could, because it just gave me the creeps. I don't totally believe in witchcraft, but you never want to fool around with stuff like that, right?

Then we took a closer look at the other books, and they all had the words магия (Magia = Magic) or гипноз (Giipnoz = Hypnosis) in the titles. By this point, I was sufficiently freaked out, although Stu seemed to think it was all mildly funny. Maybe its because he's Scottish - don't they have a lot of Druids and pagans there?

Anyways, that's when we started wondering whose books these belonged to. And the most logical suspect is Baba Yaga, the little old lady who lives next door to us. She is approximately four feet tall, hunched over, wears a kerchief around her head, and mutters in angry Russian every time she sees us. I can only ever make out "pa-roosky," which means Russian, but I'm assuming she's most likely cursing us for not being Russian.

Oh, and did I mention she also has a familiar...er, cat who skulks around the landing and glares malevolently at me?

I thought that I would LOVE having the flat to myself for two weeks while Colleen and Stu are back in Scotland. But I'm finding myself getting just a wee bit scared alone at night...