Stolen Souls

22

DREAMS SHIFTED FROM darkness to light, from joy to terror. Galya was a child again, and her grandfather held her hand in his. The old man’s skin was coarse and cracked, and he smelled of tobacco. They walked along a path in the dark woods near her birthplace close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. Wild things watched from the trees.

Up ahead, she saw what might have been a little girl with yellow hair. She hurried her step, straining her eyes to focus on the shape. After a few moments, she realized the coarse skin no longer rubbed against her own; her hand was empty. She looked back along her path. Papa lay there on his back, those coarse hands folded across his chest, his face pale in what little light this place offered.

Growls came from the trees around him. A snout appeared from the undergrowth, low to the ground, sniffing the trail of the dead man. Then another, and another, dogs emerging from the woods to feast on her offering.

Galya opened her mouth to shout at them, but the earth tilted, throwing her down on the stones and rotting leaves. The ground lurched, pitching her against Papa’s body. Except Papa no longer lay there, and she rolled in the stones and mud. The dogs advanced, and she knew they had not come to feed on her grandfather. They had come for her. She tried to get to her feet, to get away from them, but the mud held her down like a warm blanket.

They pounced. She raised her hands to shield herself. Their mouths felt like hard hands on her body, their teeth like blunt, graceless fingers. As she drowned in the mud, they probed her ears, her ribs, her toes, her thighs, everywhere but those secret places reserved for a lover she might never meet. Finally, they parted her lips and ran across her teeth.

Galya smelled sweat and sour milk and knew she was dreaming. She swam upward through the mire, desperate to wake, but she tired, the effort too much. Instead, she let the darkness take her down into its belly, swallowed by a sleep so thick she thought she might have died.

As she sank, the hands left her, summoned by another voice, an animal howl in the distance.