Stolen Souls

36

PLASTER AND WOOD dropped away until the first hole was big enough for Galya’s shoulders. A gap of four centimeters, then more wooden slats, plaster on the other side of those. A few minutes more and she had put a fist-sized hole through that. She dropped the drawer front to the closet floor and wiped sweat from her brow.

The voice above shrilled and undulated. Galya ignored it. Her shoulders and elbows throbbed, pulsing as if still hammering at the wall.

She reached through the opening, her fingers finding cool air. Stretching upward, she felt a hard, smooth surface. Downward, coarse fabric. Towels, she thought. A closet, like this one.

Where did it open to?

She strained, splintered wood catching on her sleeve. Her fingertips found wood. She pushed. A door gave way. A breeze stroked her fingers. She withdrew her arm and put her eyes to the hole. Daylight, weak but insistent, showed the contents of the closet. Beyond, a hallway, banisters, a handrail.

Galya lifted the drawer front again. She turned it in her grip so the sharpest corner faced the hole. The slats gave more easily now that she was forcing them outward, away from the joists they were nailed to. She grunted with each blow, feeling a deep and hot satisfaction as each piece of wood and plaster fell into the closet on the other side of the wall.

The voice from above answered every strike with a wounded cry. Fevered with the exertion, Galya imagined it was the house that howled, protesting the injuries she inflicted upon it. She howled back as the hole opened out, larger and larger, until light from the hallway beyond touched her face.

Galya let the drawer front fall. She coughed as plaster dust prickled her throat and lungs. It coated the inside of her mouth, so she rolled saliva around to clean it, then spat on the floor. Mama would have scolded her for such an unladylike act. Like a beast in a field, Mama might have said.

Galya laughed, then shot a hand to her mouth. She tasted blood, realized her hands were blistered and cut. Her heart knocked hard against her breast.

“Calm,” she said to herself.

She sniffed, spat again, then snaked both arms through the hole, her head following, then her shoulders, still tender from being forced through the gates of a building site in the early hours. The splintered ends of the wooden slats scratched at her clothing. She pushed stacked towels out of the way and grabbed the forward edge of the shelf they sat upon with her hands. She pulled.

Her feet cleared the floor by no more than a few centimeters. She pulled harder. Sharp points of wood pierced her top and through to her chest. The fine chain around her neck tightened, then snapped, and she felt the cross drop away. She kicked at cool air, trying to force her weight forward. Her heel connected with the closet’s doorframe, and she understood. She wedged one foot at either side of the door and pushed with her legs.

Her top ripped on the wood, jagged splinters cutting stinging tracks along her stomach and sides. She pulled with her arms and kicked forward with her feet until her own weight dragged her across the shelf and through the hole. Towels tumbled around her as she fell to the floor on the other side, the jarring of her shoulder and neck cushioned by the thick carpet.

Galya rolled onto her back, gasping, dust billowing in the air above her. She coughed, and burning pain flared in the muscles between her neck and shoulder. No air to scream, she drew her knees up and clenched her jaw. Black points appeared in her vision, like deviled stars.

Slowly, she pulled air into her lungs, pushed it out again, in again, until her vision cleared. She rolled to her side, holding her shoulder steady as she moved, then got to her knees. Towels lay strewn on the carpet, its pattern darkened by age, flowers interwoven across it.

The paint on the banisters was a dull brownish yellow, the wallpaper the same. It was as if someone had closed the door of this house thirty years ago and never returned. Even the air seemed tainted by decay.

Galya climbed to her feet and stretched her arm out, testing the pain in her shoulder. It eased as she moved the joint. She held her breath and listened. The voice from upstairs still rose and fell, but now it seemed to tire. At first, Galya thought it might have been a dog, but now she knew it was human. A human in pain.

On the far side of the room Galya had escaped from was a narrow flight of stairs. She could only see the first few steps before they rose into darkness. The cries echoed from up there. She turned her eyes to the stairs leading downward, out of this place of strange men and locked doors.

Did the owner of the voice need help? Of course. But Galya had to get out before the man returned. What if the voice belonged to a girl like her? Had he trapped someone else in this house?

She stood still for a few long seconds, the desire to flee battling the need to help whoever cried so, locked in place by indecision. What if it were she who was closed away up there, crying out like an animal?

“I will help,” Galya said.

She walked to the staircase and stared up into the black. A cold draft swept past her and ascended as if following her gaze.

“Hello?” she called in English.

The voice stopped dead.

“Hello?” Galya called again. “Who is there?”

The voice rose once more, louder than before, more ragged as it reached its highest pitch.

Galya looked back to the stairs leading downward, took one step in that direction. She halted, one foot in front of the other.

A thought entered her mind, hard and unforgiving: Mama would help.

Galya knew this to be true. She turned and mounted the first step. It creaked under her.

The voice paused, then grew to a shriek, tearing down from the blackness above. Galya put a hand on each wall, steadied herself.

“Help,” she said.

She climbed, slow and deliberate, fighting the urge to turn around. The walls felt damp against her palms. Every stair moaned as she passed. The air chilled, and a deep odor cloyed at her senses, like the smell of the animals on Mama’s farm, those that were sick and dying.

The darkness thinned as she reached the top. She saw two doors, one closed, the other open. Weak light slipped through onto a small landing, no more than a meter square.

Galya pressed the open door with her fingertips, let it swing inward, more light flowing out to her. A single bed, more like a cot from a prison cell, stood beneath one window cut into the roof. No other furniture save for a plain wooden chair and a rail with a few men’s clothes hanging from it.

She looked back to the closed door. A key protruded beneath the handle. She turned it, felt metal move on metal, tumblers realigning. The door loosened in its frame. She turned the handle.

The smell hit her first. Urine and feces layered on bile and bleach. Galya brought a hand to her mouth and nose. The howling ceased, cut off by a rasping inhalation.

A bed stood across the room, its headboard against the wall, the eaves of the roof rising up like a church steeple above it. A form lay twitching beneath the blankets.

Galya stepped across the threshold, felt cold floorboards under her feet. She moved slow, watching the bed as she approached. The shape cried out. A thin hand reached up into the shaft of light that cut the stench-ridden air.

A woman’s hand, worn by age, nails long, yellowed and cracked. Scars crossed freshly scabbed cuts on the skin.

“Hello?” Galya said in English, her voice too quiet to be a whisper.

The voice answered, an ululation that died to a hiss as the woman’s lungs emptied.

“Do you need help?” Galya asked.

A head rose from the pillow, a hollowed face blotched red, spidery white tendrils of hair reaching out from a pink scalp. The woman’s black eyes stared, a toothless mouth opening and closing. The cords of her neck trembled at the effort of holding her head upright, until they could support it no longer. It dropped back to the pillow as she moaned.

Galya drew alongside the bed. The woman gaped up at her. Drool ran from one twisted corner of her mouth, her gums pink and shining behind thin lips.

“Aaaahhhh,” she said, her mouth wide.

“I can’t understand,” Galya said. “Do you need help? Do I get someone? A doctor?”

“Mwaah,” the woman said. Her arms reached up, hands like claws, but her stick-thin legs remained still beneath the blankets.

“What do you want?” Galya asked.

The old woman hissed through her gums and grabbed Galya’s arm. Galya tried to pull away, but the woman’s scarred fingers knotted around her wrist like hard vines. With her other hand, she reached up to the top of the wooden headboard. It was chipped and splintered, dried blood staining its varnish. The old woman dragged her fingers across its surface until a new wound opened.

“Don’t,” Galya said. “You hurt yourself. Is bad.”

The old woman tightened her grip as Galya tried to back away. She brought her bleeding forefinger down to the bedclothes covering her midsection and slashed lines across it.

“Please stop,” Galya said. “I’ll get help.”

The old woman pointed at the bloody shapes she had smeared on the sheets. Galya looked down at them and felt the aged hand release her wrist. She studied the shapes, the red lines, crisscrossing on the stained fabric. As she stared, they began to make sense, the lines making a connection in her mind.

Three letters.

One word.

RUN.