The Lost Princess

Chapter 5

"Gde etot dom?" Bucky asks the next day as the two pack their bags, preparing to leave at nightfall. (Where is this house?)

"Yekaterinburg." She answers. "On nazyvayetsya ipat'yev dom." (They call it Ipatiev House."

"Ipat'yev dom." He repeats. Anastasia nods.

"On izvesten kak dom osobogo naznacheniya." She tells him, recalling the name from the many articles she read the previous day. (It is known as the House of Special Purpose.)

"Pochemy eto tak nazyvayetsya?" Bucky asks, his brow furrowed slightly. Anastasia clenches her jaw briefly. (Why is it called that?)

"Eto bylo mesto gde politzaklyuchennyye mogli legko "ischeznut'"." Bucky nods in understanding. (It was a place where political prisoners could easily "disappear".)

"Eto bylo v stat'yakh?" He asks. Anastasia shakes her head slowly. (Was that in the articles?)

"When I saw the name, I remembered something." She tells him. "When I was a little girl I would hear stories about a house in the woods in Yekaterinburg where many political prisoners would go and never be seen or heard from again. My tutor told me they were just stories, fairy tales, but I always thought that maybe there could be some truth to the stories.

"I think I remember that when we were being held at the house, I would ask the guards where we were. They would never tell me, they said that they would not risk me finding a way to tell someone where we were. They said it was for their safety, mine, and my family's. But I never felt safe in that house. I always felt a sense of dread. Now I think they never told me because I might recognize the name and figure out what was going to happen. By that time, almost all of Russia knew about the House of Special Purpose." She laughs humorlessly, bitterly, shaking her head slightly. "No one ever thought they would take the Czar and his family there to be slaughtered."

"Are you sure you want to go back?" He asks after a moment.

"I have to know what happened." She tells him. "Even though it will haunt me for the rest of my life, I have to know. Not knowing what happened to them is far worse than any memory." Bucky nods and the two continue packing. Anastasia marks the fastest route on a map in red and tucks it into her book bag.

The two leave the apartment building at nightfall, stealing a car and driving nearly thirty hours to Yekaterinburg. The sun is just rising over the trees when they pull up to the location. Anastasia slowly steps out of the car, Bucky following. The two walk up to the front door of the large stone building and Anastasia pushes it open, the door swinging in with a loud creak that echoes through the halls.

She takes a deep breath before stepping inside and looking around. She vaguely remembers being pushed through the door by a young soldier of the Red Army, Alexei clinging to her waist as they're marched through the house with their older sisters Olga and Tatiana. She walks up the stairs and enters the second door on the left.

"This is where my siblings and I slept." She says quietly, looking about the room. There wasn't much in it, just six small beds and a closet, everything covered in dust and cobwebs.

Anastasia walks out of the room and back downstairs, going down a hallway and opening a door that leads to another set of stairs. She walks down them slowly, opening another door at the bottom. Rats and mice scurry away from the light but she doesn't pay them any attention. She barely even realizes that they're there. She walks down the hallway, her fingers running along the wall beside her, and comes to a stop in front of a door at the end of the hall. She pushes open the door and sees the holes in the wall across from her, pieces of the dry wall and wall paper on the floor as well as multiple blood stains that, no matter how many times the floor was scrubbed, would never seem to come out.