Chapter 16 #2
“Very well.” Nik picked up his broken lamp and made his way up the stairs, with the two men marching up right behind him.
Trailing his hand against the house as he walked, he felt the warmth of Mama protecting him.
“If you two will stay outside here,” Nik said, “I’ll head in and get the box as well as the money. ”
“Fine,” the first man answered, backing away from the windows and the light they cast, hiding instead in the shadow of the large tree in the front yard, the very same tree where Mama had taken her own life.
If they knew the scene that had played out there, it would have been one of the last places where they’d feel safe.
He heard the second one say, “How do we know he won’t just lock himself in there?”
“If he does, I have a key, bolvan.”
“Right.” Then there was a pause. “But just so’s you know, I’m not goin’ in after him.”
“Don’t matter. He’s got to come out sometime.”
Nik just shook his head and went inside the house, their words trailing off as he left them behind. When he entered the nursery, he found a mug of water and some powdered pain medicine to soothe the growing lump on his head.
“Spasibo, Mama,” he said, mixing the powder into the water and gulping it down.
Then he turned and uncovered the little box and the bag of winnings from their hiding place in the corner of the room and began heading out the door, when he noticed that in place of the mug of water, there was a shiny gun.
He stopped. “No, Mama. I understand you want to protect me. But this man is your potomstvo, your offspring. I don’t want to hurt him. Perhaps he can help.”
The rocking chair began squeaking, and Nik smiled at it and nodded, then left the room, heading outside. He found the men there, pacing.
“What took you so long? This place makes me polzet. What’s the word?” he asked his friend. “Oh, popeyed.”
“That’s not right. It gives you the fish in the belly, not fisheyes.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Calm down, you two,” said Nik. “Here. This is the box Mama gave me. Do you recognize it?”
The men studied it for a moment and then shook their heads. “Sorry. No.”
“Hold on. Didn’t your dyedushka tell you when he crawled out of the well he dropped something?”
“He did what?” asked Nik.
Ignoring Nik, the large man answered, “Yeah. That’s right. I forgot. What was it my mama told me . . . It was something about a tin and a game.”
“A dangerous game?” Nik asked.
Both men stared at him. “You know it?”
“I think so. Mama sang me a song my first night here.” Nik hummed for a minute and then sang.
On the morrow, I’ll give you
a cherished family tin,
and with the help of God, you’ll
place it right in front of you,
while playing the most dangerous game.
Please remember your mother.
Sleep, good boy, my beautiful,
bayushki bayu.
“I didn’t understand it when she sang it,” Nik confessed.
While he stared at the box, the big man said, “My mother told us that until the day he died, my grandfather insisted that when his brothers and sisters started disappearing, a beautiful angel, his own mama, came to him, wrapped him up in a blanket, and lowered him into the well. She told him it was a game. That he had to stay very, very quiet until she came to fetch him, and that when he came out, she’d leave him the key to a tin containing the family secrets or family treasure or some such thing.
“Turns out, she never did come to get the lad. When he finally crawled out after he was nearly dead himself from hunger, he discovered his entire family was gone, including his father. The key, which was left at the top of the well, was forgotten. When he did return to retrieve it, the key slipped back into the well and was never recovered.”
“How old was he when it happened?”
“I don’t remember. Five or six, I think. I was named after him. He was called Eldar.”
“Was Eldar the last baby your prababushka had before she died?”
“Yes. Why?”
Nik nodded. “No reason. It’s just . . . I think she wants us to recover that key.” Nik put one hand on Eldar’s shoulder and his other one on Andrey’s. “I have a fairly strong rope, but I’ll need the two of you to pull me back up.”
* * *
Nikolai soon found himself dangling painfully from a very thin rope wrapped over his shoulders and between his legs, supporting him like a harness.
Strapped to his chest was a too-hot lantern that dribbled oil on his pants and threatened to send him up in flames.
It wasn’t the best of his ideas, but it was all he could think of in that moment.
It didn’t take him long to search the rocks at the top, which was where he’d hoped the key would be found, but there was nothing there.
Once he got past the rocks, he knew there was no place for the key to go but all the way to the bottom.
Nik also knew the likelihood of finding it was slim to none.
Pressing on, the two men lowered him down, down, down, until the tiny circle of light at the top became so small Nik felt like he’d descended into the depths of hell itself.
The only way he could cope with the tiny space that closed in on him, stealing the breath from his lungs, was to shut his eyes and focus instead on the pain caused by the rubbing of the ropes on his skin.
When his boots finally splashed into water, he breathed a sigh of relief that he could at last focus on the task at hand.
Oh, how he wished he could use them for their magic, but the best they could do at the moment was give a weak flutter of shoelaces.
They were barely more useful to him than a regular pair.
In fact, they were even letting foul water into the top, soaking his feet and turning them numb with cold—something he hadn’t experienced since he’d owned them.
“Zamechatel ’no,” he mumbled to himself before calling out, “I’m down!
” But there was no answer from above. It was likely they couldn’t hear him, which was soon proven true when he was lowered further, not that it mattered much.
The water was only thigh-deep anyway. It was frigid though.
He knew he wouldn’t be able to work very long before he lost feeling in his hands as well as his legs.
“This is ridiculous,” he said, standing there, lantern raised over the black water, shivering with cold. Letting out a sigh, he hooked the lantern on a root that protruded out into the well and, seeing no other options, sucked in a breath and dove underwater, using his hands to feel for a key.
When diving in a well, one finds a myriad of strange and awful things, especially when probing with bare fingers.
The men had given him a bag with which to collect items, so anything Nik brushed against that felt hard and smallish went into the bag.
He was fairly certain some of them were pebbles, but he couldn’t tell.
He didn’t consider himself a squeamish fellow, but the amount of mucus-filled globules and pulsating, tentacled things he found shocked him.
When he exited the well, he was sure he’d spend the next few hours focused on the sanitation of his person.
The only problem was that the well was the place from which he drew his bathwater.
When Nik was absolutely sure he had to leave or else lose his extremities, he yanked on the rope and then began the slow ascent. He couldn’t remove his fingers from the rope by the time they pulled him out.
“Gaw! Boy’s near froze off his yaytsa! Better put him near the fire.”
“Ya know I don’t like goin’ into the house.”
“I’m not much for it either, but we got no choice if we want to save the lad. Ghost won’t let us have the treasure if we don’t. She’ll hide it from us again. You know what she’s like. She’s taken to this one.”
“You’re sure there’s a treasure?”
“Durak. I told you my family was wealthy. Look at this place. There has to be an inheritance. Why do you think I’ve been coming out here facing these ghosts all these years?”
“Fine. In we go, then build him a fire, and back out. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
The door opened as they carried him into the house, and a blazing fire sprang to life in the hearth. Nik tried to mumble a, “Spasibo, Mama,” but his lips just knocked together along with his teeth.
Andrey ran from the nursery with a change of clothing for him, which was, of course, provided by Mama, and the two men helped him into them.
As Nik thawed by the fire, sipping a warm mug of sbiten that had appeared at the hearth, the greedy men grabbed the bag he’d scrounged from the well and headed to the front door, which slammed and locked of its own accord.
“Rotten luck, that,” said Andrey.
“Don’t think it’s the bad one though,” replied Eldar. “Calm yourself, Prababushka,” he said loudly. “We’ll help the boy.”
“Yeah. We’ll keep an eye out.”
They sat down and started sifting through what Nik had found at the bottom of the well, discarding most of it as rubbish. The two men jumped nervously every time they heard a noise.
When Nik was sufficiently warm, he slid closer to the table, examining the pile of items they were keeping, which included a few coins, an earring, and some metal pieces they might be able to reuse.
None of the things they’d collected looked like a key.
Then one of them set aside a matryoshka nesting doll.
“What’s that?” Nik asked.
“A child’s toy,” Eldar said.
“May I see it?”
Eldar pushed the muck-covered doll over to Nik and continued pawing through his pile.
Picking up a cloth and dipping it in hot water, Nikolai cleaned the doll’s face and uncovered a sweet-faced grandmother wearing a dress bright with the same purple-and-cream tones that he’d uncovered in the kitchen.
Her bow mouth and cheeks were pink, and her bright eyes were rimmed with lashes. “Hello, Mama,” Nik said softly.
Carefully, he opened the nesting doll and found another woman. This one had white hair, not gray like Mama’s. Her dress was blue. The next one was a redhead who looked a lot like Stacia. Then a blond who reminded him of Veru. The last was a child.
Nik twisted the tiny doll, trying to open it.
“It’s likely the last one. Most of them have five.”
“Some have more,” Andrey said. “My mama had one with ten.”
Ignoring them, Nik kept at it. Finally, it gave. Inside wasn’t a doll but a tiny silver key.
“Hey, fellas?” Nik said, holding up the key. “I think I found it.”
“Now look,” said Eldar. “Before you go getting any ideas. Anything in this house, including that there tin box, belongs to me. It’s my rightful inheritance, see?”
“That’s right,” Andrey said. “Belongs to him.”
Nik raised his hand with the key between his fingers.
“That’s fine with me. If you two want it all, you can have it.
I won’t fight you for it. You’d clearly win.
I mean, it’s two against one. Now, if you were to go up against me in cards, that’s a different story.
No one can beat me at that. Cards are my game. I always win.”
“That so?” Eldar said.
“Yep,” replied Nik. “It’s just a gift. I was born with it, I think.”
“Okay. Tell you what—let’s play to see who gets to open the tin. Now, it’s just to open it, mind. Don’t mean you win the contents.”
“Sounds fair to me. Though I might want to raise the stakes a bit. Say, if I win, I get to live.”
Andrey looked at Eldar and shrugged. “Seems fair enough. Boy almost did die to bring us the key.”
“Yeah, all right. But we get to deal.”
“Only if I get to cut the cards.”
Eldar grinned and lifted his hand to take the cards from Nik, but then the deck lifted away from both of them, and a chair was yanked away from the table. The cards landed in front of the empty chair, and they heard a voice say, “I think tonight it’s my turn to cut, don’t you agree?”
A gleaming knife with a sharp blade sank into the wooden table, and the invisible specter laughed.
The cards flew around the table as if controlled by unseen forces, whirling incredibly fast. The two men screamed and tried to run, but something pushed them back down in their seats. The laughter suddenly cut off.
“I said we’re going to play, and tonight I think I’ll be in charge of the stakes.”
Sweat and tears began rolling down the faces of the other men, but Nik remained still and calm, at least on the surface. “Hello, Yuri,” he said, plucking his hand of hovering cards from the air. “I’ve been waiting for you to make an appearance.”