The Folveshch

8. The Folveshch

Aleksy's disappearance did not relieve the villagers' woes for long, however. When news transpired of winter's ninth victim – my former romantic rival, Ivan Zhilov – any hope left in the community derailed once more, especially for my sweetheart, who had always withheld the softest part of her heart for her first love.

I spent the next year between contracts, visiting both my father and Ivan at Mama and Marina's respective behests, and at home, tuning out Aleksy's tantrums.

Nobody else in Renkassk saw the boy nor heard of the Folveshch again until early January 1932 – the Christmas period according to our church's calendar.

Although Christmas celebrations had been formally banned just over fourteen years prior, being so grossly isolated against the rest of the nation we still dared to enjoy the festivities as normal. For decades the Frantsevs – family farmers for generations – had hosted wonderful annual feasts in their barn, to which each family would attend to drink and dance past midnight.

Already half drunk on beer and Christmas cheer, I decided I'd bring Aleksy along as part of the diminishing Alyovich family. Humour me. I'd lost sleep over the idea of leaving the boy locked in the house with only the mice for company, while the rest of us ate and drank our fill, and endured Old Yury's inflated tales of some far-off war. It was only that evening that I felt it was worth the gamble of involving him in the festivities at all; I even went as far as giving him a new cap as a gift.

My mother remained at home, so entangled in the clutches of her seasonal melancholy that Christmas passed her by unnoticed. At the Frantsevs' farm I felt disconnected without her beside me, even in a room crammed with friends and extended family I'd known all my life. It seemed nobody but Pyotr and his city-born wife would speak more than two words to me while Aleksy was near.

Despite the hostility I felt towards us I ate without abandon, as did the freak I'd burdened myself with. I caught the villagers exchanging whispers behind their hands and their gazes towards me were cold. Probably gossiping about the fact Aleksy was eating turkey and carrots – like normal people – and not a bowl full of organs. Perhaps they wondered why the warden's son ever extended any sympathy towards a cannibal in the first place. Or perhaps they thought I was on his side ...

Looking back I needn't have been so paranoid about what my community thought of me or Aleksy, because it was not he who caused distress that year.

It was Georgiy Yakunin, Iakov's younger brother, who burst in mid-feast, wailing the Folveshch's name with tears rolling down his cheeks.

The door swung wide and the maddened boy stumbled into the barn. His pupils were mere pinpricks in his eyes.

The gaiety stopped dead.

"I can't take it!" Georgiy shrieked. His voice wavered over the crackle of the old gramophone. "I can't take this anymore!"

From the gathering his mother swooped to his side. "Georgiy, what's wrong?"

Like Aleksy, he'd never quite been the same since his loved-one had fallen silent. "It's calling me, Mama," the boy whimpered. His face and eyes were scarlet. "It's calling me. It's calling me like Iakov."

"What is?" Tomas Yakunin asked.

"I can't tell you. I just can't." He clamped his eyes shut and began clawing at them, muttering hurriedly to himself. "I can't. Can't. No, no. I –"

His father gripped his wrists before Georgiy did any lasting damage. "Son, get a hold on yourself. It's Christmas."

"No, no," he wailed. "If I tell you, it'll be here. Following me. The long night. Could be anywhere. C-Calls for me to go to it ... It knows. Lord's mercy. I'm going mad, Papa!"

I felt a pang of fear in the hollow of my chest. Beside me, Aleksy tugged at the elbow patch on my sweater, an unsightly smile spreading from ear to ear. "It's not me," he mumbled.

I lowered myself to him. "What isn't you?"

"The Folveshch has decided it wants Georgiy –"

"Not that again," I cut in. "Can't you see the boy needs help?"

"Da, you're right, but you know what it means, don't you?"

"Nyet."

"It means I have another year before I end up in the kabina with him."

And yet as I listened to him foretell his own sad fate I dismissed it – didn't even comfort the boy. If Aleksy had decided for himself to believe in horror stories, why should I have fuelled his fears? If I paid any attention to it, it would be only a matter of time before he ended up in the same state as Georgiy.

In truth the sight of the Yakunin boy unsettled me far more than Aleksy's hypothetical predicament. The entire community witnessed Georgiy's breakdown on the jolliest day of the year, and I was part of it, never able to erase that Christmas from my memory.

Georgiy screamed and cried so vehemently that his eyes bulged from his head, utterly inconsolable, until his parents insisted the Frantsevs close all the shutters and lock all the doors. Georgiy sat whimpering in the corner of the room for the rest of the night, hugging himself and staring dead ahead.

And after that he never spoke or moved again.