Stolen Souls

39

GALYA KNEW BE FORE she tried that the doors would be locked, but hope and fear made her do it anyway. She went to the front first, found it sealed tight, reinforced by a heavy padlock. She pulled inward, aware of the futility of it as she did so, but the door was solid. Wood, no glass, its surface glossed by thick paint.

She went to the kitchen, and her stomach reminded her with a growl that she hadn’t eaten in … how long? No time to think of that. Instead, she turned her mind to the door leading to the backyard. She jerked the handle. Again, no movement. A flutter of panic in her breast. She placed a hand over her heart, kept the fear in its place.

The window above the sink.

She grabbed the net curtain that covered it and pulled. It fluttered to the floor like a dying angel. She lifted one of the wooden chairs from around the small table and threw it against the glass. It clattered to the floor, the window intact, but a mug dropped from the drainer and smashed on the tiles. She looked down at the shards and saw red spreading across a yellow football shirt. She blinked the image away.

Reinforced double glazing, the same as the room she had been locked in. She knew that to try to break it would waste what strength she had remaining. But what to do? She couldn’t stand here waiting for him to return.

Galya went back to the door and took hold of the padlock, turned it as far as its bar would allow.

Every lock has a key.

Look for it.

She opened each drawer in the kitchen, found nothing but blunt cutlery and useless junk: old batteries, plastic fittings from self-assembly furniture, rolls of tape. The kinds of things people threw away when they had no use for them. But not this man.

In the last drawer, right at the back, she found an old mobile phone. Its casing was bright pink, a shining flower sticker applied to the back of it. She wondered for a moment where he had acquired what looked like a little girl’s phone, but she halted her thoughts before they went too far down that path and caused the fear in her breast to rise up and overpower her. She pressed and held the phone’s power button.

The screen remained a blank gray, so she dropped it back into the drawer.

When the cupboards revealed nothing more, Galya left the kitchen. Two more rooms led off from the entrance hall. She opened the first, but the door met resistance after a few centimeters of movement. She could barely squeeze her head through the gap and see the darkened interior.

Boxes stacked almost to the ceiling, some containing papers, others holding worn tools or household items. Amongst them, bags of old clothing, blankets, and sheets. One of the piles had collapsed, pushing rubbish against the door. A smell lay thick on the air, damp and dust lingering, unable to escape. Galya guessed the door hadn’t been opened in months, perhaps years. She pulled it closed, returned the gathered detritus to darkness.

The second door opened onto a living room. A single couch stood at its center, a low table in front of it, a large Bible upon that. The ticking clock on the mantelpiece was the only other item she could see in the room. Another net curtain softened the muted daylight from outside.

She crossed the floor to the table and looked down at the book. A faded and yellowed bookmark lay across the pages, a picture of Jesus kneeling, his blue eyes meeting those of a child, a verse in a complex script beneath the image. Galya read the word “suffer” and searched her memory for its meaning in Russian. When she found it, she looked away.

She noticed another piece of furniture in the room, obscured behind the door she had entered through. An antique writing desk, its roller top open, a dozen or more small drawers arranged around a larger one, all looming over a leather mat like the walls of a castle. Drawers perfect for hiding a key.

Galya opened one after another, finding each empty save for a few scraps of paper. Finally, she pulled the handle of the larger drawer, but it did not move.

A certainty she knew to be foolish settled in her gut: the key she sought was in there. She pulled out the smaller drawers on each side of it, four in total, leaving gaps big enough for her hands. The wood felt cool and dry against her fingers as she reached in and ran them along the drawer’s flanks. She twisted her hand so that her fingertips squeezed through the narrow gap at the top, hoping she could reach inside to feel the drawer’s contents.

Something was there, something soft, like a velvet cloth. She pushed harder, the wood digging into her flesh, until her knuckles jammed in the small space. It hurt, but she ignored that sensation, concentrated on another. Something hard— no, several somethings—beneath the velvet, their presence barely perceptible to her touch.

Galya pulled her hands free, skin tearing from her knuckles, red beads appearing in the tiny channels the wood had cut. She sucked at them, tasted salty metal, and remembered the Lithuanian, his eyes wide, the bubbling in his throat.

Nausea came in a warm wave. She rode it out as she thought.

The kitchen. Find something to pry open the drawer.

She went as fast as her stinging soles would allow and found a knife, heavy stainless steel, an ivory hilt. The kind of knife Mama would have used to cut hard butter, passed on to her by her own grandmother.

Galya returned to the desk and slid the knife into the gap at the top of the drawer, close to the lock. She pushed up and back, but the desk rocked against the wall, its movement stealing most of her force. She braced it with her hip and tried again.

This time, all her strength was applied to the thin panel of wood. It bowed, but did not break. She crouched down, wedged herself against the desk, pushed up with her legs.

The wood cracked. Galya giggled. Pressure pulsed against her temples.

Once again, she pushed with all the power in her body, and the wood gave way, the drawer’s face splitting in two, leaving the lock clinging to a few splintered scraps. Galya breathed hard, her cheeks hot. She pulled the wood away and reached inside.

The velvet bag snagged on the splinters. She slipped her fingers inside the red circle and felt the hard things inside. She knew immediately they weren’t keys, or anything like keys, even before they spilled out onto the cracked leather desktop.

Her mind stumbled over the objects, trying to match them to some context from her experience. Jewels, she thought, creamy white pearls with jagged ends like plant roots.

Roots.

Not jewels.

Her stomach turned on itself. She pulled her hand away from the small hard things, scattering them across the leather. They formed a loose circle, arranging themselves prettily for her, a chorus line of enamel and blood flecks.

A row of teeth smiling up at her.

The dizziness might have dragged her to the floor if not for the faint sound of an engine outside.