The Gray Itch

Marta had been sleeping twelve hours a day for weeks. Her skin took on a sallow, waxy quality, and she complained of an itch that no cream could soothe. I chalked it up to the long Alaskan winter, the endless dark, and the canned food we’d been living on since the pass closed. But when she started talking to herself in her sleep—not mumbling, but having full conversations in a voice that wasn’t hers—I knew something was deeply wrong.

I tried everything: doctor visits, vitamin drips, even a shaman from the next village who burned sage and muttered about ‘old tenants.’ Nothing helped. Desperate, I turned to the only thing left: the old Russian Orthodox church buried in the spruce trees. The priest there, Father Alexei, was ancient and smelled of mothballs, but he took my request seriously.

‘You must go to her,’ he said, his eyes milky with cataracts. ‘But not in the waking world. You must find her in the dream, where they keep her.’ He taught me a prayer, a strange one in old Slavonic, and told me to focus on her heartbeat while I slept.

That night, I lay beside Marta, her breathing shallow and rhythmic. I recited the prayer over and over, feeling my own consciousness loosen like a knot. The last thing I saw was the glow of the icon lamp, and then I was falling through a gray fog.

It wasn’t like any dream I’d had. The fog was thick and greasy, smelling of damp basements and stale cigarettes. I called out for Marta, and my voice came back muffled, as if I were shouting into a pillow. Then I saw them: shapes moving in the murk, humanoid but wrong. They shambled toward me, and I felt a pull, like they were trying to siphon something from me.

I remembered Father Alexei’s warning: ‘Do not let them touch you. They are miners, remnants of the old colony. They dig for warmth, and they will dig into you.’ I fought, pushing back with my will, screaming the prayer. One shape, tall and gaunt, lunged at me, and I swung blindly. My hand passed through it, and I felt a cold burn, like frostbite.

The shape retreated, hissing. But I could see more gathering, their edges sharpening, their faces becoming clearer. They were all gray, not just their skin, but their clothes, their hair, even their eyes—a flat, uniform gray. And they all wore the same expression: a slack-jawed, hungry look.

I pushed deeper, following a thread of Marta’s scent—lavender and sweat. I found her in a hollow, a circle of gray stones. She was curled on the ground, naked and shivering. Around her, the gray ones knelt in a ring, their fingers tracing patterns on the earth. One of them, older than the rest, with a bald head covered in wrinkles, was speaking in a language I didn’t know, but I understood the intent: they were claiming her, planting something inside her.

I charged, roaring the prayer. The old one turned, and I saw his mouth open too wide, revealing a darkness that seemed to suck in the light. ‘You cannot,’ he said, his voice like gravel. ‘She is soft. She is good soil.’

I didn’t listen. I grabbed him by the throat, my hand sinking into his gray matter, and I pulled. He shrieked, a sound that vibrated in my bones, and I felt something rip. The other shapes recoiled, and I saw them start to dissolve, like ash in the wind. I scooped up Marta, her body weightless in this place, and I ran.

I ran through the fog, holding her tight, reciting the prayer until my throat was raw. Behind me, I heard the old one’s voice, fainter but still there: ‘We will wait. We are patient. The itch will return.’

I woke up gasping, my arm around Marta. She was sweating, her face pale, but her eyes were open and clear. ‘I had a terrible dream,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘There were gray men. They were trying to plant something in my head.’

I held her, trembling. The sun was rising, a rare sight in the dead of winter, and it cast a sickly yellow light over the room. Marta sat up, rubbing her chest. ‘I feel better, though. Lighter. But there’s this itch…’ She scratched her collarbone, where a faint gray bruise was forming.

I looked at her, then at my own hands. There were gray specks under my fingernails, like soil. The old one’s words echoed in my mind: ‘We are patient.’

We moved to Anchorage the next week. Marta’s depression lifted, and she laughed again. But sometimes, when the northern lights flare, she gets a faraway look and scratches her chest. And at night, when I lie awake, I can hear a faint scraping from under the bed, like someone digging. I don’t sleep well anymore. And I never speak the prayer aloud, for fear that they’ll hear it and remember where we are.