Stories from Yakutia

By a Nameless River

It is a little atypical for local folklore because evil spirits ("abas") are usually not described as corporal beings, but as indistinct, or in the form of silhouettes, hiding in darkness, with their faces being impossible to properly make out, they suddenly appear and disappear, etc., well, as in all the other pastas. Nevertheless, this story is frequently told at campfire, and some local writers even wrote stories based on it.

Again, it concerns two brothers. To the elder one is about 30, younger one is about five years younger. Both were professional hunters, and autumn come, both went deep into the deep woods, where the game is not yet spooked by man, for a couple of months. It was not their first foray, so they were reasonably seasoned and did not worry about anything, the woods were like a home to them. They settled down near some nameless river in the woods, quickly built a makeshift hut, made a campfire, in accordance with the local tradition fed the spirit of fire (and through it, all other local spirits) with food and alcohol to get their patronage, and went off to hunt. There was a lot of game, in just two or three of days they shot a shitload and were already joyfully rubbing their hands, imagining how much money they stood to get for all of it (this was during soviet times).

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth day the first snow went down. It was evening and the brothers were sitting in their hut after a day's hunting, have their supper, talking of this and that, the fire burns, it is warm and cozy in the hut — and suddenly they hear the sound of footsteps outside. It was heard cleary due to the fresh snow. Their first reaction was to grab the guns — what if it's a bear? But no, the steps are quite human, their sound approaches to the door, and a female voice says: "Br-r, so cold!" The brothers were dumbstruck. Meanwhile the door opened, and a young woman, quite beautiful, in good clothes enters the hut (truth to be told, it was a little old-fashioned for the soviet times, but fashion was not the cheif concern in the woods — keeping war was). Having seen the brothers, she joyfully says that she is from a village nearby, left for a walk in the woods and got lost, had been wandering all day long and was getting ready to meet her doom, when she had noticed the brothers' campfire. The brothers exchange worrysome glances — they had good knowledge of the area, and there was no villages in a 300 km radius.

But the woman was quite real, shivering from the cold, and they, being the gentlemen that they are, courteously invite her to sit by their table, and have some tea and soup. She eats all that with gratitude, tells them about herself, how, supposedly, frightened she was and how grateful to them she is now, etc. The elder brother is quickly swayed by the beautiful stranger, and only responds with occasional nods, while the younger one, sho was quite a shut in in his daily life, only keeps glancing at the guest with suspicion.

Having found the right moment, he excuses himself from the hut under the pretext of having to take a leak. It was already getting darker, but terribly so. He follows the woman's footsteps on the fresh snow further and further into the woods, and eventually finds himself at the coast of the small river. The river did not freeze yet — if the woman crossed it, she would all be wet. The younger brother's suspicions grow as he recalls all kinds of dark ancient hunters' tales of eldritch evil spirits that live in the deep woods, and according to the legends, these spirits are so ball-crushingly powerful that next to them any regular abas is child's play. Ultimately, he decides on sharing his thoughts with his brother and work out the plan on the go.

When he returns to the hut, the party has already started, a liquor bottle is open, love is in the air, and the elder brother is clearly thinking with his dick rather than his head by now. And who can blame him — he is not married, and the woman looks very appetizing, and doesn't seem to mind his advances. Younger brother tries to slip into their conversation - "our hunting equipment's becoming wet under the snow, let's go and get it", but only gets a laconic "Fuck off" in response, while the woman, for just a single moment, glances at him with such nonfeminine, even inhuman eyes, that the younger brother immediately shits bricks and moves away. He sits gloomy by himself in a corner, meanwhile the older brother's tryst with the woman is moving closer and closer to the bed.

But he does manage to snatch the right moment when his brother has to go outside before going to a bed. He tries to tell him all about the footsteps, about the terrible look the woman gave him and that her story holds to no scrutiny, but all the elder brohter can see is incoming pussy, in addition to bein drunk. It all ends when the elder brother corners the younger against the wall of the hut and promises to disperse a good beating if he keeps on it. Younger brother is dumbstruk — his brother was never like thism not even when drunk.

Finally, the couple settled in a corner of the hut, and put a makeshift screen between themselves and the rest of the hut. As light goes out, the younger brother quietly lies in the other corner, listens attentively to the characteristic sounds and droops. Just in case, however, he keeps his loaded double-barreled gun under the blanket. And so he lies there, as the lovemaking continues, and he is soon overcome by sleep.

He is woken up by a gnashing sound. Since the coals are still lit, he deduces, it hasn't been long. The strange gnash obviously comes from a corner where the woman and the older brother lie, and each gnash is followed by either a groan, or a quiet whail in his brother's voice. The younger brother jumps up from his bed and with a gun raised rushes to the other corner. As he pushes the screen aside with one hand, keeping the gun ready in another, he sees that his brother is sat on by some dark silhouette of not so female shape, with the blazing yellow eyestaking half its face, gnawing on his brother's neck — and the sound must be that of teeth meeting vertebras. The elder brother only quietly groans.

Younger brother very nearly fainted from such a grizzly sight, but nevertheless unloaded his gun right between the creature's eyes. With a loud squeal, the creature jumped off its prey and made a run for the exit (sometimes retellings add that before leaving it hissed "Should have finished you off first"). Younger brother shoots again, the creature lets out another scream and dashes out of the hut, crashing down the door on its way. Younger brother hurries to nudge the coals for at least some light and and checks on his brother, but it is already too late, for his eyes were rolled up, the throat was gnawed through and through, and all the bed was covered in blood. Another strange detail is that later the younger brother did not find any traces of blood on the floor or at a door, despite hitting the creature twice with his gun.

As soon as dawn came, the surviving brother ran back to the settlement. He then returned with the team of men to take his dead brother's body to dismantle the hut. Since then, "Abasy-Yurege" (the Small River of Evil Spirits) was what the river was called.

There was a man, by the way, in our village, a hunter too, who claimed that this Abasy-Yurege was in the Aldan ulus (translator's note: ulus is a complex term, meaning something like "land", "peoples", or "district"), and that he has been to those places a few times, and once even spent the night at the small river, and nothing supernatural had happened. Who knows?

© 1996 Archive66