The Folveshch

9. The Folveshch

When February arrived, Georgiy Yakunin, aged eighteen, became the youngest man to live in the kabina. The volunteers shaved his blonde hair off and sat him beside his brother Iakov to remain there for the rest of his life.

Something about Georgiy's decline shook the village more than even Viktor Malenhov's had. Perhaps it was because he was so young and would spend the next fifty years as a living corpse, never to marry or sire children, never to enjoy another Christmas with us. Perhaps it was because we'd all been witness to his very real terror of a being we all believed to be fiction, and of the power this fear had to render him, quite literally, paralysed. I knew one thing, though, and that was the village's curse could no longer be ignored – not now it claimed mere boys.

I visited my father less since my contractor at the factory stole more and more hours of my day. The volunteers at the kabina had looked after him well for the past eight years, keeping his remaining teeth brushed and his nails short. Papa's weight had plummeted and his skin hung loose on his face, but otherwise his condition seemed healthy enough, according to Pyotr.

Teenage Georgiy, straight backed, well built, and with the beauty of youth despite his clouded eyes, did not look like the rest of them. Not yet, at least. The other occupants of the kabina resembled wax figures that had melted in the heat, deformed and sunken as the years crawled by. Pyotr said the disease caused muscle wasting, and the proof was in Iakov's fingers. They had become as limp and useless as his leg. His spine had curved so severely that he was almost bent double, though always staring out the window ahead of him, just like Viktor had done. The two brothers sat side by side, one human, the other barely recognisable anymore; forever watching. And that, the village knew, was all that remained of Georgiy's existence.

How easily it could have been their son.

"Stefan?" Irina called during my first visit that March. A tall lady in her thirties, Irina Soldatova worked with my mother at the kabina.

My knees had gone stiff after being crouched at my father's side for the past twenty minutes, but despite this I stood to greet her. "Da?"

"Sorry to interrupt you, I just needed to talk to you."

"Go ahead."

"I'm aware you still house Aleksy Malenhov. Well ... you visit him, I mean, now that he's locked away."

"That's right." I swallowed.

And so did she. "I ... I wondered if I could see him too."

"You can't."

"Oh, why is that?"

I shot her a look. "You remember what he did here, don't you? You caught him doing it. Why would you want to visit him?"

"I just ... feel like it's for the best," she shrugged.

"Ask my mother."

"That's hardly funny, Stefan. You're the head of your household, so I'm asking you. Please?"

I jabbed a thumb towards my father. "He's the head of my household and he's still very much alive. Ask him, if you can get a word in edgeways."

I received no further word from Irina until the following evening when she let herself into the house. With a guilty expression set on her face, Mama prepared a kettle to boil and I followed Irina's form over the top of my newspaper. She helped herself to a seat opposite me and stared a while, expectant.

"Y-You look a lot like your papa did before ... before, you know."

I didn't answer her and returned to my article.

She continued regardless. "He always used to read the paper and cross his legs like that. You suit being clean shaven like him too. Just short of that fur cap he'd always wear and – "

I flapped the top of the newspaper down. "Don't talk about my father as though he's dead."

"Oh, I-I'm sorry, I was just trying..."

"Stefan," my mother chimed in from the kitchen, "I've told Irina you'll take her to see Aleksy this evening."

My dark eyes met hers and narrowed. How?

Just improvise, her gaze replied.

"Well, Irina, I suppose I'd best oblige you now you've caught me at a disadvantage," I said, rising to my full height. "Just wait here and I'll bring him to you. It's safer."

"How will that be safer?" Irina blurted. Her hands twisted in the folds of her skirt. "Isn't he chained to the wall like they say? Does he have any kind of muzzle? A mask? Svetlana told me you'd pulled all his teeth –"

"Worry not; we've sated him with a beating heart today already."

"Stefan!" It was my mother. "Stop scaring her."

I turned towards the back door and smirked out of view.

Aleksy did not live in our cellar, nor did he eat hearts. The truth is that he'd never been gagged and chained at all, and his favourite food was apple pastry, in case you'd ever wondered. We allowed him to roam the house in the day and the surrounding land when it was dark, but the villagers believed otherwise. In hindsight perhaps I should've confined him better, but at the time I remained purposefully unshaken by any of it, and instead included him in my daily prayers – it would take more than a mortal man's work to fix Aleksy.

That particular evening I found him out on the hillside, sat in the snow, dressed in a baggy woollen sweater and trousers tied with rope around his middle. He smoked a rolled-up cigarette between his finger and thumb, and I wondered from where he'd acquired tobacco in the first place.

I sat down beside him. "Privyet, malysh."

He looked over his shoulder. "Oh, privyet."

"There's somebody here to see you."

"Is there? Who?"

"Irina Soldatova."

His brow knitted. "What?"

"That's what I thought, too."

He took a final, long drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in his palm. "What does that woman want with me? I've been a good boy."

"God only knows, but be sure to look the part when you come in, okay? Oh, and don't let Mama see you with tobacco or you'll be rubbing the red marks out of your ear for a month."

He nodded and I hurried back inside out of the chill. Mama huddled in her blankets at the kitchen table with a steaming drink while Irina fidgeted with her skirt again, waiting for my return. I sat back down and threw her a smile, which she returned with just as much insincerity.

Aleksy followed in a few moments later, his hair dishevelled and grime smeared on his skin. His lips were shiny and wet with blood where, out of habit, he'd chewed at them, and he had a menacing glimmer in his pale eyes that I didn't like. To top it off, he was nude as the day his mother birthed him.

I had to hand it to him: the boy could act.