The boy's father lost his mind in the winter of 1922.
It was the year that Renkassk felt the first cold touch of something unexplainable that would unhinge its community for as long as it existed. I was fourteen at the time this ill wind blew, and little Aleksy Viktorovich Malenhov had just turned nine.
My family of three lived across the valley from the Malenhovs' crumbling cottage, sat between the Forests of Darakyev and the village proper. Each year their home seemed to recede a little further into the hillside, sinking into the rock and conifers as the shack fell apart at the seams. As a child I'd feared that one spring the cottage would no longer be there, and the villagers of Renkassk would not mourn the vanished Malenhovs. It would be as though they'd never existed, and only I would know of the carpenter and his son that had once dwelt there. My concern did not seem so foolish back then, as the valley was full of impenetrable tension I could never find the root to explain.
Of course, it sounds ridiculous as I recount all of this to you now, as many other of my childhood tales might, but after Viktor Malenhov lost his mind ... I realised it was not impossible for people to disappear over winter after all.
The story takes me back to a Sunday morning in snow-covered December, and my father tuned in to something amiss while outside driving an axe through logs for the stove. He'd noticed the absence of chimney smoke from the Malenhovs' cottage, and the place lay dark and dormant against the surrounding white terrain. A trivial detail, you might assume, though those born and bred in Renkassk knew better than to dismiss these kinds of warnings. It meant that no fire kept the Malenhovs' home warm that day, and the dark winters of the subarctic proved fatal if not prepared for.
"Viktor's fire never goes out this time of year," my father grumbled, mostly to himself. He'd been restless all morning since, peering out the front window of our house every five minutes or so. But Papa was like that: always afraid for his peers, whether it be from God or nature's cruel schemes. He was a grizzled man approaching his mid-thirties, and wore his fur-lined cap and boots all year round. The villagers affectionately called him 'the warden' for this trait, though they were wise enough never to say it to his face.
"Something's wrong." His breath clouded up the pane as he spoke. "I'll be damned if they're not frozen to the core in there."
I joined his side and peered out too. "What if he's out of firewood?"
"Tcha. The man's a carpenter, Stefan. He has more logs stacked up outside his house than he knows what to do with."
He had a point.
"No," he continued, "something's not right. It's been hours." He shot to his feet and snatched up his coat. "That decides it. Fetch me some bread, son – a couple of your mama's rye loaves will do. I'm heading out to Viktor's and I'm taking food with me, just in case."
I tensed with excitement. "L-Let me come with you, Papa. I can help."
"Absolutely not. I may not want you to see this."
"But ..."
"I'll call on your cousin Pyotr first; at the risk one of the Malenhov's has taken a turn for the worst they'll need a doctor. Bread, Stefan. Now."
I put myself between him and the door. "Let me and Pyotr go," I protested. "You're not well either, with that cough. What if it gets –"
He brushed me aside like a stray branch. "Don't test me, Stefan. When you're a man of this community you leave nobody at God's mercy. If I'm ever in need of you, I want you to remember that." He pulled his coat collar up to his jaw and wrapped up two loaves in a tablecloth. "Call the Frantsevs for help if I'm not back by noon," he added, and stepped out into the biting cold.
My shoulders sagged as I watched his grey silhouette retreat into the conifers, wishing I'd just grabbed the damned bread for him like he'd asked me to.
"... Door," my mother groaned behind me. I had no idea she'd awoken. She lay curled within a heap of blankets in front of our woodstove, staring into the flames until it drained the moisture from her eyes. She cried a lot in winter. Pyotr told me it was some kind of seasonal melancholy that rendered her sad and lethargic. It happened that both of my parents were worse for wear as 1922 came to its hostile close, and there were only so many hours a day I could tolerate being confined to the same patch of land, reading the same weekly newspapers while they slept off their illnesses.
Worse than the boredom was the longing I felt, since it was the first winter I'd known without my brother. I had nobody to share the chores with, none of his silly working songs to make rude verses for, no-one to curl up with in the blankets and get lost in the pages of a book. Papa had dealt with Rusya's death in the stoic manner only a Godly father could bear, while Mama still mourned her youngest son as though the year since his passing hadn't healed her at all. Me? I thought about him a lot. I would sometimes even pretend –
"Stefan! Door!"
I eased the door back into its frame and returned to my position at the window, feeling almost as dejected as my mother. I wanted to help Papa go to the Malenhovs' rescue, and instead I'd been sentenced to watching over Mama like a live-in nurse. Wasn't I a man of the community yet? Wasn't I needed for anything important? It wasn't fair. Other boys at fourteen were learning their fathers' trades and helping their families keep food in the pantry. They already had their own identity in Renkassk; no longer just a man's son.
I sat in the same miserable stupor for an hour when, finally, two figures burst through the conifers and broke the spell. I sprang up from my slump, ready to welcome Papa and my cousin, and opened the door for them with a broad grin.
"Papa! How was –?"
He and Pyotr staggered through, powdered white with snow and ruddy-cheeked. Papa's breath caught horribly in his throat and his eyes were wide. He didn't even spare me a glance.
My smile faded once I realised the two men were in shock. I asked what was wrong at the Malenhovs', but it was yet another quarter of an hour or so before Papa or Pyotr found the words to speak of it. My father sat in his armchair with a blank expression, gripping a mug of hot broth so hard he could've broken it. Pyotr stood by the window, rocking on his heels with his forehead resting on the glass.
"I couldn't help him," he mumbled into the pane. His uncharacteristic vapidity unsettled me more than the atmosphere they'd brought in with them. His grey eyes had lost their lustre; his usual perky disposition had shut itself away. The man it left behind wasn't the same cousin I knew and admired. "I couldn't save him. I couldn't save him. I couldn't bring him back."
"There was nothing you could do, Pyotr," my father cut in after a while. The edge in his voice brooked no conflict. "What matters is that we tried."
"Those tracks," Pyotr continued as if Papa hadn't spoken. "Those scuffs in the snow. He was face-down on the floor ... I don't understand it. Jesus Christ." He brought his hand up to his eyes. "I thought he was ..."
"What is he talking about?" I asked.
My father's dark eyes met mine and after a pause that might've spanned lifetimes, he said, "Viktor isn't himself, son. We found him collapsed in his home, and his arms and legs were blue with cold. His eyes were ..." He circled his forefinger in front of his face. "I think he's ..."
"He's gone blind," Pyotr finished. "Viktor's eyes are white and I don't know why. I've never seen it happen before."
"He didn't respond to us at all. Pyotr tried everything while I went and looked for his little boy. He was in his bed, wrapped up in his outdoor clothes, trying to keep warm."
"Did he say what happened to his papa?" I prompted when they both fell quiet again, seemingly unable to continue. I crouched by Papa's knees, cupping his hardened hands in my own. "Does he know what happened to Viktor?"
"Viktor came home in the middle of the night," my cousin filled in. "He'd dragged himself along the ground for miles, it seems; lost most of his fingernails. And ..."
"Pyotr that's enough."
My cousin hadn't heard him. "The boy mentioned the Folveshch."
I frowned. "What does that have to do with any of it?"
"It was the last distinguishable word Viktor said before he collapsed," Papa explained. "Nothing more."
"I couldn't bear to look at him," Pyotr croaked. "That open mouth. Unblinking stare. God spare me, damn it. I still see him like that whenever I shut my eyes."
My father rested his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. "That man was a brother to me if I ever had one, Stefan; the best working and hunting partner I could've been blessed with. The sad truth is that Viktor is lost to us now. There is nothing any of us can do for him besides pray, and pray we must. I know he was your family as much as mine, and you may even hate me for leaving you out of it, but I'm relieved I spared you from ever seeing him that way."
I studied the troubled expression that he tried so hard to disguise as concern; the flicker in his gaze that hinted there was more I should know. Whatever he'd seen had truly shaken him. He didn't need to tell me he wished he could forget.
I'd been so eager to venture out on a rescue mission, so determined to prove to him I was a man, but after seeing for myself how their discovery had unsettled them I was glad I'd heeded my father's words after all. He'd been right: There were some things I was not ready for.
The news of the carpenter's eerie decline spread through the village of Renkassk far quicker than we felt was respectable for a man like Viktor Malenhov. We had Pyotr's loose lips to thank for that, though in a small community like ours, secrets became common knowledge sooner than Old Yury could tip down a beaker of beer. Offers to adopt Aleksy Malenhov came from almost every family, though the carpenter's boy politely rejected them one by one, vowing not to leave his father in hopes he might return to his former self when winter subsided ...
But by the time spring thinned the ice, Pyotr had it that Viktor was gaunt and sickly. His blank eyes stared wide and his mouth hung open into his chest, displaying a set of rotten teeth and a dry, yellow tongue. Saddest of all, I heard that Aleksy's mind and body had deteriorated too, and he became a frail child, dependent on his father's silent company.
It's only now that I realise the community should've saved the poor boy from his torment whether or not he consented. We should've adopted him; given him back some semblance of a normal life. Perhaps then he wouldn't have grown up so disturbed, and my tale might've ended here. But, as always, hindsight is a harsh mistress.
This story has been around for two years now and it's been a bigger success than I'd ever hoped for! It's been Wattpad featured, won awards and competitions, and also been promoted in reading lists by Wattpad, IncarnateMovie, OuijaMovie, fright, blairwitchmovie and many others!
I decided I'd revise the Wattpad edition of The Folveshch for its 2nd anniversary and share it all with fans new and old. It's a touch longer than the original with extra layers to the mystery of Renkassk, the Folveshch and Stefan's part in it all.