The Folveshch

17. The Folveshch

They found me in the morning outside their home on the hillside, unable to respond to them. However hard I tried to lift my arms or move my tongue to speak, I couldn't. Why, you ask? Because it was as though I'd never known how to. I'd been stripped of the gift of speech, and even if I was able to speak to them then, I didn't know how to begin explaining who I was and what I was doing so far from home. I'd lost everything. Almost, anyway. All that remains to me now are my thoughts. These fragmented, fixated memories, and it's torture.

My good Lord ... How must I have looked that day, sprawled out in the snow?

It was a woman who peered into my face first. "Everything's going to be okay, honey," she said.

"Get away from him," barked a man from nearby. "You don't know what he was doing out here."

"He's as good as dead, Viktor," the woman replied, taking a hold of my hand. I could not feel the warmth of hers. "Jesus Christ! Put that axe down you coward! I don't think he could hurt us even if he tried to. Poor thing. Where do you think he came from? And why is his mouth hanging open like that?"

"God knows," said the man, kicking my legs onto something wooden. "Never seen him before. Darakyev, maybe?"

"It's a way to walk. You don't think ...?"

"Think what, Roza?"

"You don't think he wandered off Strangers' Pass, do you? You know, like that old folk tale?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Well," Roza said as she struggled with the weight of my dead arms. "Look at him: blank eyes, hanging mouth, can't speak, can't move. Poor soul's just a shell. It fits."

"No. What this young man needs is some rest and a cup of warm ale. He's probably lost and tired, and he'll be back to himself in no time once the practitioner has seen to him."

"Da," she breathed, "perhaps you're right. Maybe then he can tell us what happened to him."

After a long journey tucked up in a sled I arrived at the infirmary in Darakyev. It took two men to lay me on a table on my back, and then the practitioner began feeling for my heart and breathing rates. He shone a candle into my eyes, massaged my limbs, tested my reflexes, and pricked my fingertips one by one with a needle.

"Well," the practitioner sighed finally, stowing away his instruments, "he's drawing blood and his pupils seem to respond a little to light, but I can't seem to get any more out of him than that. And he was like this when you found him, you say?"

"That's right," replied the man named Viktor, stood somewhere near my feet. "He's not said a word."

"Just like that tale," Roza mentioned again. "Have you ever seen anything like this?"

"No, I haven't, but we'll do our best to find somebody who has. I believe that's about all –"

"Will he be all right? Will he get better?"

"It's difficult to say at this point, but we'll do our best with him. If you'd please leave me to tend to him ..."

Roza took my hand again and stroked away the strands of hair that had fallen into my eyes. "I'll come and visit you soon, honey," she whispered, inches from my ear. "You take care of yourself."

After the couple departed, the practitioner and his assistant wheeled me into a seat in a small room that clung to the tang of mould and old urine. In fact, it still does. I might've enjoyed the comfort of the bed by the wall at least, or the old oil paintings scattered across the walls, but instead the practitioner spun me around to face the window, and I could do nothing to protest it. Back then it was still the long polar night outside and the sun wouldn't rise fully for another five weeks.

"I don't know what you thought you were doing out there, Stefan," said the practitioner. I remember feeling concerned that he already knew my name without me ever telling it him. "If the Malenhovs hadn't found you in time, you'd be dead from the cold. Dead! Do you understand that? No, of course you don't you brain-dead cripple." His slap came sharp, loud, but it didn't hurt. He sighed again. "I'm sorry. Forgive me. Never thought I'd have to say this, but I'm locking your door from now on. I can't risk having you out in Renkassk, however the hell you managed it. You've not moved or said a bloody word for the best part of a decade and nobody here knows why, and still you go out for a little stroll one night? I don't think so, Stefan." He gave an incredulous scoff. "I don't think so."

He wiped away the condensation on the window pane with his sleeve.

"Let us put it behind us though, shall we?" he said softly; his back to me. "It won't happen again, I assure you. Hm. Bit dark and stormy out, but it's better than looking at the same four walls all day, isn't it, my good man?"

If I knew how to thank him, I would've, even if I didn't mean it. He turned and clapped me on the shoulder, peering into my face for a fleeting moment and sparing me a joyless smile that crinkled the corners of his grey eyes. There were flecks of silver in his hair.

... It was Pyotr.

He disappeared out of the room before I could tell him I was his cousin, shouting something at his assistant about a key.

The door has been locked ever since.

Even after so long reliving the final moments before I became trapped here, I cannot recall everything that happened that night. I know these things for sure: the storm, the shack, the corpse ... and a boy I'd known as Aleksy, but beyond that, none of it fit then, and none of it fits now.

Aleksy had lied. My father wasn't dead. My mother hadn't killed herself. I was not a lonely child who'd foolishly taken pity on some supernatural being. No. No. I was Stefan Alyovich. Nyet. I am Stefan Alyovich. I was twenty-three years old and have no sense of how old I am now. I was a builder from Renkassk. I had a wife – she was kind and always sad. I killed and skinned my first buck that summer.

Stefaaan.

I was sane.

I am sane.

Everything I did in those nine years was real. Aleksy told me it was on loop, but I know he was trying to hurt me. It's all wrong. Do you see? It was simply routine. Routine... A part of clockwork community life in Renkassk.

Stefaaan ...

It wasn't me who lost his mind in the winter of 1922. It wasn't.

Who is that kid anyway? Where did he come from?

The mousy haired boy with the dirty face standing in the snow outside, looking in with that wicked, wide smile full of jagged teeth. Blood trickles down his scabbed lips, dripping off his chin and into his scarf.

He looks like Aleksy. Almost.

Most days he stays there for hours, smile unflinching. Even the winter winds and bustling snowstorms don't drive him away. Pyotr can't see him. Pyotr can't hear him calling my name.

Before the night, close the shutters tight, lest the Folveshch wander in...

Stefaaan ...

Close your ears to the sounds of your fears, should the Folveshch bear its grin ...

But Aleksy never comes indoors. In fact he doesn't do anything at all, and yet I tense up inside for reasons I can scarcely recall, no matter how hard I try and see through him.

According to the man I believe is Pyotr, I will never be cured. I remain frozen in time inside my own mind, pondering the reality of my own life, past and present, until the day I'm no longer alive. But then ... I'm not even sure if I even really am alive.

... Should the Folveshch bear its grin ...