For Those Who Dream Monsters (3 page)

“Take
me with you,” it said. “I’ll show you things you’ve never seen.”

Officer
Jones looked round and saw the black cat eyeing him dispassionately.

Adam waited nervously in the International Arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport’s
Terminal 1. Born and bred in London, Adam had never thought of himself as the
type of guy who would import a wife from Poland. His parents had made sure that
he’d learnt Polish from an early age; while his English friends had played
football or watched
Swap Shop
on Saturday mornings, Adam had been
dragged kicking and screaming to Polish classes in Ealing. But it had all paid
off in the end when he went to Poland one summer and met Krystyna. Since that
time, the smart, pretty brunette had relocated to London and moved in with
Adam. They were engaged to be married, and it seemed to Adam that all the
members of his fiancé’s family had already visited London and stayed with them
– all, that is, except Krystyna’s grandmother, and that was who Adam was now
waiting for. Krystyna had not been able to get the day off work, and Adam was
now anxiously eyeing every elderly woman who came through the arrival gate, in
the hope that one of them would match the tattered photograph that Krystyna had
given him.

Eventually
a little old lady came out alone. Adam recognised her immediately and started
to walk towards her, stopping abruptly as he saw the woman slip, drop her
glasses and, in a desperate effort to right herself, step on them, crushing
them completely. Upset for the woman, Adam began to rush forward, only to halt
as she started to laugh hysterically. She muttered something under her breath
and, had he not known any better, Adam could have sworn that what she said was
“little pig!”

The sleigh sped through the dark forest, the scant moonlight reflected by the
snow lighting up the whites of the horse’s eyes as it galloped along the narrow
path, nostrils flaring and velvet mouth spitting foam and blood into the night.
The woman cried out as the reins cut into her hands, and screamed to her
children to hang on.

The
three little girls clung to each other and to the sides of the sleigh, their
tears freezing onto their faces as soon as they formed. The corner of the large
blanket in which their mother had wrapped them for the perilous journey to
their grandparents’ house had come loose and was flapping violently in the icy
air.

“Hold
on to Vitek!” the woman screamed over her shoulder at her eldest child, her
voice barely audible over the howling wind. But the girl did not need to be
told; only two days away from her seventh birthday, she clung onto her baby
brother, fear for her tiny sibling stronger than her own terror. The other two
girls, aged two and four, huddled together, lost in an incomprehensible world
of snow and fear and darkness.

The
woman whipped the reins against the horse’s heaving flanks, but the animal was
already running on a primal fear stronger than pain. The excited yelps audible
over the snowstorm left little doubt in the woman’s mind: the pack was gaining
on the sleigh – the hungry wolves were getting closer.

That
winter had been particularly hard on the wolf pack. The invading Russian army
had taken the peasants’ livestock and, with no farm animals to snatch, the
wolves had been limited to seeking out those rabbits and wild fowl that the
desperate peasants and fleeing refugees had not killed and eaten. Driven
half-mad with starvation, the wolves had already invested an irrevocable amount
of energy in chasing the horse, and instinct informed them that it was too late
to give up now – they had to feed or had to die.

The
horse was wheezing, the blood freezing in its nostrils as it strained through
the snow. Its chestnut coat was matted with sweat whipped up into a dirty foam.
Steam rose off its back like smoke, giving the bizarre impression that the
animal was on fire.

The
woman shouted at the horse, willing it on, and brought the reins down against
its flanks. She had only been fending for herself for three days – since the
soldiers had tied her husband to a tree, cut off his genitals and sawn him in
half with a blunt saw – but she knew instinctively that without the horse she
and her children would die. If the starving wolves did not kill them, the cold
would. They still had many miles to travel – and they would never make it on
foot. The time had come to resort to the last hope her children had left.

The
woman pulled on the reins, slowing the horse to a more controlled pace. She
tied the reins to the sleigh, the horse running steadily along the forest path.
She tried not to look at her shaking, crying children, clinging onto each other
as they were thrown around the sleigh – the pitiful sight would break her, and
she must not break. She must not lose the battle to keep her children alive.

“Good
girls,” she muttered, without looking back, “hold on to your brother.” She stood
up carefully in the speeding sleigh and reached over the side, unfastening the
buckles on the wicker basket attached there. She opened the lid as slowly and
as carefully as the shaking sleigh would allow. The sight that greeted her made
her stomach turn, as fear for her children gave way to shock and panic. She
howled in despair. A sudden jerky movement sent her sprawling back into the
sleigh. She pulled herself up and clawed at the basket again, tearing the whole
thing off in an effort to change the unchangeable.

“Little
pig!” screamed the woman, her eyes wild and unseeing. The children screamed
too, the madness in their mother’s voice destroying the last remnant of safety
and order in their world. “Little pig!” she screamed. “They took the little
pig!”

The
woman fell back onto her seat. The horse was slowing. An expectant howl pierced
the darkness behind the sleigh. The woman grabbed the reins and struck at the
horse’s flanks again. The animal snorted and strained onwards, but even in her
panic the woman knew that if she tried to force any more speed out of it, she
would kill it, and all her children with it.

The
howling and snarling grew closer, forcing the horse’s fear onto a new level. It
reared and tried to bolt, almost overturning the sleigh, but its exhaustion and
the snow prevented its escape from the hungry pack.

The
wolves were beginning to fan out on either side of the sleigh, still behind it,
but not far off. One of the beasts – a battle-scarred individual with
protruding ribs and cold yellow eyes – broke away from the others and made a
dash for the horse, nipping at its heels. The horse screamed and kicked out,
catching the wolf across the snout and sending it tumbling into the trees. It
pulled itself up in seconds and started back after its companions.

The
reins almost slipped from the woman’s bleeding, freezing hands. She tightened
her grip, wrapping the reins around her wrists. If only they were closer to her
parents’ village, she could let the wolves have the horse – it was the horse
that they were after. But without the horse they would all freeze in the snow
long before they reached safety.

The
pack was catching up with the sleigh now; the wolves spilled forward, biting at
the horse. The woman shouted at the wolves, whipped at them and at the horse
with the reins, but there was nothing she could do. She cast a glance at her
daughters: the two little ones pale as sheets, Irena holding onto Vitek as if
he were life itself. And Vitek – her perfect little boy. The woman remembered
her husband’s face when she first told him he had a son. His face had lit up;
he had taken the little boy from her and held him in his big, strong arms … her
husband … then an image of the last time she had seen him – seen his mutilated
corpse tied to the old walnut tree in the orchard…

She
was back in the present, fighting to save her children – losing the fight to
save her children. The little pig was gone – she had put it in the wicker
basket at the side of the sleigh and fastened the straps when the soldiers were
getting drunk inside her house. She had gone back to the barn to get the
children, to flee with them under cover of darkness to what she hoped would be
the relative safety of her parents’ village. Someone must have seen her put the
little pig in the basket, someone cruel enough to take the time to do up the
straps after sentencing her children to death in the wolf-infested forest.

The
little pig was gone and another sacrifice was needed in its place to protect
the horse. The woman prepared to jump out of the sleigh. She turned to Irena
and shouted, “Give Vitek to Kasia!” Irena stared at her mother blankly. “Give
your brother to Kasia!” The woman’s voice rose to a hysterical pitch.
Four-year-old Kasia clung onto her two-year-old sister, and Irena began to cry,
clutching her brother even tighter. “Give him to her!” screamed the woman, “I
need you to hold the reins!” But even as she said it, she knew that the
six-year-old would never be able to control the terrified horse. Her own hands
were a bloody ruin and she wondered how she was able to hang on as the frantic
animal fought its way forward.

“Irena!
Give Vitek to Kasia – now!” But Irena saw something in her mother’s eyes that
scared her more than the dark and the shaking sleigh and even the wolves. She
clutched her brother to her chest and shook her head, fresh tears rolling down
her face and freezing to her cheeks.

A
large silver wolf clamped its jaws onto the horse’s left hind leg. The horse
stumbled, but managed to right itself and the wolf let go, unable to keep up
with the horse in the deep snow – but not for long. As the chestnut reeled, the
sleigh lurched and the woman panicked. She had to act now or lose all her
children. She could not give her life for them because they would never make it
to safety without her. But a sacrifice had to be made. If she could not die to
save her children, then one of them would have to die to save the others. She
would not lose them all. One of them would have to die and she would have to
choose. The delicate fabric of the woman’s sanity was finally stretched to its
limits and gave way. She threw back her head and howled her anguish into the
night. All around her the night howled back.

The
woman turned and looked into the faces of her children. A sharp intake of
breath – like that taken by one about to drown. She took the reins in one hand,
and with the other she reached out for her beloved son – her husband’s greatest
joy; the frailest of her children, half-frozen despite his sister’s efforts to
keep him warm, too exhausted even to cry, and the least likely to survive the
journey.

“Give
him to me!” she screamed at Irena. The girl struggled with her mother. The
woman wrenched her baby out of her daughter’s grasp and held him to her, gazing
for a moment into his eyes. The woman smiled through her tears at her son. Snow
was falling on the baby’s upturned face, the frost had tinged his lips a pale
blue, but in the woman’s fevered mind, her baby smiled back at her.

Two
of the wolves had closed in on the horse and were trying to bring it down. The
woman screamed and threw Vitek as far from the sleigh as she could. There was a
moment’s silence, then a triumphant yelping as the wolves turned their
attention away from the horse, and rushed away into the night. Irena cried out,
and her little sisters stared uncomprehendingly at their mother, who screamed
and screamed as she grabbed the reins in both hands and whipped the horse on
into the dark.

As the first light of dawn broke across the horizon, an eerie sight greeted the
sleepy village. The sleigh rolled in slowly, as the exhausted horse made it
within sight of the first farmhouse. It stood for a moment, head drooping,
blood seeping from its nostrils, its mouth, from open wounds along its flanks.
Then it dropped silently to the ground and lay still.

In
the sleigh sat a wild-eyed woman, staring but unseeing, her black hair streaked
with white, reins clenched tightly in her bloody hands. Behind her were three
little girls. Two were slumped together, asleep. The third girl, the eldest of
the three, was awake – she sat very still, eyes wide, silent as her mother.

“Irena?” Adam reached the old lady and touched her arm. “I’m Adam.” He bent
down and picked up what was left of Irena’s glasses. “I’m sorry about your
glasses,” he told her, handing the crushed frames back to her.

“No
need to be sorry,” said Irena. “It’s just a little pig.”

Adam
was taken aback. It was bad enough taking care of Krystyna’s relatives, but she
had never said that her grandmother was senile.

Irena
read Adam like an open book.

“A
little pig,” she explained, “a small sacrifice to make sure nothing really
terrible happens … during my visit.”

“I
understand,” said Adam. He did not understand, but at least there was some
method in the old lady’s madness, and that was good enough for him. He paid the
parking fee at the ticket machine, and they left the building: a tall young man
pushing a trolley and a little old lady clutching a pair of broken glasses.