Where the Devil Says Goodnight (Folk Lore 1)

He’d been so reluctant to look through those personal items, but fate finally made him face his family’s past. He opened the chest.

Adam shifted closer, and Emil had to stifle a gasp when Adam nudged him with his knee as he sat cross-legged next to Emil.

“What is that?” Adam asked, picking up a Y-shaped branch that had been carefully peeled of bark.

Emil turned it around in his hands but shrugged in the end. “No idea. Maybe there’s an explanation in one of the books.”

But what instantly drew Emil’s attention instead was a large photo album bound in leather. The label at the front read, Kupala Night.

“Now, this is a treat,” he said and leaned that bit closer to Adam, all too eager to torture himself with the popsicle he couldn’t lick. “You’ve heard of that holiday, right? It’s also called Midsummer night. Or St. John’s Night for the very religious.”

Adam shrugged. “There’s festivals. People put wreaths with candles on the water or something, but in the cities it’s just another opportunity to drink and have fun. I’ve never been.”

Emil opened the album. “Let me guess, Mommy didn’t let you? Look, it goes back to the twenties. That’s really cool, actually.”

He briefly stopped breathing when Adam reached over his thigh to trace the somewhat overexposed photo depicting a group of men and women in pale clothes and large wreaths in their hair. People of importance were there too, including a man in elegant clothes, a priest, and a nun. The beginning provided little material, but the farther forward the pages went in time, the more photos there were and of better quality. All of them depicted the holiday his grandmother considered the most important in the year, far above ‘Church Days’ like Christmas or Easter.

He smiled in surprise when one of the pages featured a black and white photo of a couple, and while it took him several moments to realize why they seemed familiar, recognition hit him like a mallet. “Those are my grandparents,” he uttered with excitement, and when he saw the flowers in his grandfather’s hair atop the usual crown of oak leaves, he tapped it with his fingers. “Must have been when they got engaged. Look, he’s wearing her flower crown. That’s what it used to mean. It’s the sixties, so they were barely twenty back then.”

Emil leaned over to show Adam. “It’s nice to see them like this, you know? So happy. My grandma’s body was never found. The general consensus was that she had been attacked by a bear or wolves, because she walked into the forest on her own and never came back.”

Adam’s fingers rested on Emil’s forearm, golden and warm like the sun outside. “I’m sorry. It must have been hard on both of you.”

Emil swallowed. “It happened less than a year after my parents died. I was seven I think, but I remember her vividly.” When he turned the page, even the somber atmosphere lifted from his heart for a moment. “Don’t look!” He laughed and covered Adam’s eyes so he wouldn’t see the whole collection of photos featuring people dressed only in wreaths as they ran into the lake where the Kupala Night festivities always took place in Dybukowo.

Adam grabbed his fingers, chuckling as if they were studying the album just for the fun of it. When they were together in the sun, the burning fear of the unknown dispersed, as if they’d been friends since forever and knew there was nothing they couldn‘t take on.

“It’s artistic nudity though!”

“Right. They allow that at church after all.” Emil winked at Adam, and they looked through the photos page after page. “No! It’s Mrs. Janina.” He pointed out a smiley young woman hiding her nudity behind a tall man. “Can’t believe this shit.”

In the seventies, the festivities seemed to involve hundreds of people who had to have come to Dybukowo from all over the region, but as the years in the album passed, the groups seemed smaller, and in 1991, just one photo featured a group of more than ten people.

Emil’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s me, and that’s my mom.” He pointed to his mother holding a baby. He barely remembered her and Dad, only glimpses of a happy childhood taken away because he couldn’t keep his hands away from a box of matches.

“You have her eyes and nose,” Adam pointed out, and it was true. While her features were softer, the overall shape remained similar. Maybe he should take his time and find more albums that weren’t about celebrations, but a happy yet mundane life?

But there was no reason to stop browsing through the album despite the festivities clearly dying down in the nineties. Emil flipped through a bit faster, but Adam grabbed his arm. “Wait. Back.”

Emil raised his eyebrows, but went two pages back where Adam touched a picture that featured people Emil didn’t recognize, even though they stood right next to his mother and his own six-year-old self.