The Pass (Wattys 2019)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nika suffered through the cold as she tried to sleep, that night. She'd been out there long enough for a mild case of hypothermia to set in. She was shivering so badly, it quickly made her ache. Peter was concerned. Really concerned. He'd been there on Annapurna, where she'd almost died of hypothermia, and he was worried about a repeat of that incident. And he didn't get less concerned the more she told him that she was fine. Finally, she relented to his pleas and curled up in his sleeping bag with him in an attempt to get warm.

It was comforting in more ways than one: the last thing she wanted in that moment was to be alone with her thoughts. His presence calmed her, to the point where she'd eventually managed to fall into a fitful sleep.

Nika wasn't able to escape the visions and sounds that had sent her running out of the tent without even bothering to put on her boots or her coat. In fact, it was even more vivid when she closed here eyes than when she'd had them open.

It had been years since she'd dreamed of her father, the day everything had happened. Normally when she thought/dreamed of her family, she thought of the day-to-day operations: her father using them as punching bags, the screaming ,the drinking, the religious fervor from her father's side of the family. She remembered the secret shrine in the basement, Sundays spent being forced to stand and kneel in front of a crucifix, eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ under her father's watchful eye. She remembered her father slapping her if she recited a bible verse incorrectly, and she still knew the verses he used to recite while whipping her with a belt until she started bleeding by heart. He was a religious zealot like the mystic Rasputin, and it was even worse when he was drinking And she couldn't remember him when he was sober.

Oddly enough, she didn't remember the day her father snapped. Not much, anyway. She remembered screaming, hiding in a wardrobe, being afraid. And then, the police were there. She knew that something had happened between then, but that was blank area in her memory.

That night, she remembered. She remembered more vividly than she'd ever remembered anything in her life.

She was back in that tiny, dilapidated house. Everything was just as Nika remembered: warped floorboards covered with old rugs, yellowed wallpaper. And, of course, the screaming. It was almost constant, since there hadn't been a time when her father wasn't druink. He hadn't given a damn about who that anger was directed towards: he yelled at anyone and everyone who crossed his path.

That day, he was yelling at her mother. Nika was fourteen. Boris was ten. The two of them shared a bedroom in that house: it was the only way he could sleep with his crippling anxiety. He was sitting on his bed, reading a book for school. Nika was writing a letter to Peter back in Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha. She'd gotten used to ignoring the screaming the same way people in big cities got used to the sounds of traffic. Boris, of course, never got used to it.

"Nika, I think it's worse than normal," Boris said He was staring at the door, listening to that day's fight.

She didn't even look up. "You say that every time. Try to relax; he's going to pass out, and we'll finally get some peace and quiet."

"I don't think so," Boris said. "I think he's finally snapped. He sounds too coherent to be drunk, this time."

So, he'd noticed it, too.

Nika sighed and looked up at Boris. "Listen: I know it's loud, and I know he scares you - he scares me, too - but it's fine. They're just going to yell a little more until one of them gets the last word, dad will go for a walk to clear his head. Those two are like clockwork, and they aren't going to change, now."

As if on cue, Nika heard her mother scream. And it wasn't like the way she normally screamed while she fought with her dad. This was more primal, fearful. Unlike anything she'd ever heard, before.