Stories from Yakutia

Failed Fortune Telling

The native Yakut faith is a classical paganism: each area and each important sphere of activity is teeming with spirits which are responsible for it. However, after Yakutia became part of the Russia in the XVII century the local beliefs were to some extent assimilated with the orthodox Christianity and underwent considerable changes, and gained theistic elements. Nevertheless, nature spirits did not go to anywhere. One kind of them are so-called "shilikuns". It is believend that they live underwater most of the time in various water bodies and do not interact with people in any way. Traditional Yakut belief does not consider them evil, however you couldn't call them particulary kind either. Their appearance is not described in detail, but they are usually imagined as water imps — anthropomorphous, with some "fish" features. Say hello to Lovecraft's Insmouth.

So, about a meeting with shilikuns. They get out from underwater only once in a year — during the Christmastide. Normally, they only leave at night to gather in any abandoned houses and shacks, away from settlements and play cards with each other there, lol. They bet their own "underwater" money, looking similar to gold coins. People brave or foolish enough are to go to an empty house on the day of Christmastide and hide under a table or elsewhere, and cover themselves with fabric. Of course, it is necessary to dress up properly, as empty houses, naturally, are not heated, and January temperatures (translator's note: Orthodox Christmas is on January 7th) easily reach -50°C. If you are in luck, the house will indeed serve as a game parlor to a party of local shilikuns.

As shilikuns gather and the betting pool increases, one must shout as loudly as one can and knock the table over. Frightened shilikuns will bail and leave their money, lol again. Only, it has to be spent within three days — after that gold of shilikuns will turn into seaweed from which it came.

But material enrichment is not the only reason to stalk out a shilikun meeting. During the game they are far from silent and actively discuss future events and the fate of poeple living nearby, so if you do not spoil their party and listen carefully, it is possible to get a hold of valuable information on the future and on your family. It is one of classical local Christmas fortune-telling customs, but I, for one, do not compute how fucked up in the head one has to be to go alone to an empty house on a -50° night and spend it there waiting for supernatural creatures.

And now the actual coolstory that I was told in my childhood and that made me loose sleep at night. A paradox: it has no direct relation to shilikuns, but it was necessary to explain them in order to get the sense of the story.

So, Central Yakutia, January, Christmas-tide, severe frosts. Two strong young brothers decide to go to listen to shilikuns and if luck is on their side, get a hold of a tidy sum of money.

Since people take Christmastide fortune telling "seriously" around these parts, (various girls' fortune-telling on wax, mirrors and needles, of course, do not count), they told nobody about their plan, even their parents. They chose an empty old hut on a glade near their village (such buildings are common in Yakutia, people used to live with their whole families on separate glades). In the evening, having wrapped themselves in the warmest clothes they could find and having taken a couple of bottles of vodka, the brothers left for their destination. The mood was good, together they thought they had nothing to fear, having gotten used to cold — generally, all was well.

Having arrived to the place, they climbed under a shabby table as was called for, and covered themselves with a thick blanket. They sit, talk about this and that in hushed whispers, sippink vodka from time to time. Lighting a fire was a no-no, as shilikuns would get spooked and wouldn't come, moonlight would have to do. By the way, old Yakut houses, such as this one, are conjoined to a barn, with a single door standing between them, so that people wouldn't freeze their balls off going via the street in winter. And so the brothers were sitting there for several hours, it was already after midnight, both were already rather tight-lipped and sleepy. And then barn's door began to creak. Brothers got tense, - "shilikuns begin to gather" - they thought. But then everything went silent, then again the door began to creak, this time louder - the sound clearly indicative of the door slowly opening.

And then a sound is heard from the barn, reminiscent of a chicken's clucking. It was here that the younger brother's nerves got the better of him, as he shouted on the top oh his lungs, jumped out from under a table and rushed to the exit. The elder brother, naturally, follwed him. Only he was not so lucky: as the younger brother ran out out of the house, the elder brother's leg got cought on a doorstep and he fell down near the entrance. He began to cry out for help, and almost immediately ceased, as if he was being choked, then shouted as though he was being burned alive. Younger brother could only run faster, shitting tons of bricks. His brother's screams didn't stop until he reached the edge of the glade. Having reached the edge of the woods, he looked back, but couldn't make anything out, as the shack was quietly standing in the moonlight.

So, he dashed for about an hour before he reached his home village. At once he everything to his father, and got almost beaten down by himfor being such a fool, as he should've at least inquired about the house where they were going before going there. It turned out a long time ago, before the revolution, that hut housed a family each member of which died in close succession without any obvious reasons. The commonly accepted explanation of that time was that "an evil spirit gobbled them up". Since then nobody lived on that glade, even despite it's fertile land. No shilikuns, of course, would party in such a place, they are not exactly evil after all, but someone else would be very likely interested in two fuckwits that came to the on the darkest hour.

Anyway, the father with the younger brother quickly gathered up, got in their car and raced to the hut. They reached it quickly, and the father was berating his son for leaving his brother behind for the entirety of the road. Everything seemed quit when they arrived. The younger brother flat out refused to leave the car, and even his teeth began to shake. So the father had to venture into the damned place alone. The elder brother laid on snow exactly where he fell, face down. Traces on the snow indicated that he didn't move much and died in the same pose as he fell down. The body had stiffened due to the cold. The father already began to sob. There was nothing left to do, so they put his body in the car and went home. Back home, when they took off all multiple layers of his clothes, it turned out that on his back, under a right shoulderblade, there was a huge bruise as if someone had hit him with a huge fist right through all the layers of clothes.

Later the younger brother has told of what he saw right before he ran away. When the barn door once again began to creak, he raised the blanket a little and saw under moonlight a 3 meter tall black human-shaped silhouette moving their way, so he screamed and dashed away...

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