‘Ørenna.’ Scrambling to kneel on the edge of the bed, Romy’s face contorts. ‘You’ll want to go back.’ She twists the sheet in her hands. Kira can’t help it; she flinches. ‘I know it. You’ll want to find out if what you saw was real. You’ll want to see if there’s something there that explains what’s going on.’
Metal breath. Veined eyes. Their faces are inches apart. The rest of the ward is beyond the world, out of the atmosphere. Kira’s breath feels moonwalk-thin.
‘And what is going on?’ she whispers. ‘What happened to you in the forest?’
For a moment, she thinks Romy didn’t hear. No change in her face, no change in her posture, hunched on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t blink. If anything, she shrinks. A vein shudders in her neck.
But then she bows her head.
‘Curiosity kills more than cats,’ she says flatly.
When she looks up again, she’s begun to change.
It’s a subtle change at first, but one Kira can’t ignore. Romy’s eyes darken in her paper-pale face, and as they grow dark, they grow wide. Deepening to black, the blue leeches into the white, and in a matter of seconds each socket reflects the night that left her lost.
Kira’s heartbeat shudders and skips. ‘What was that?’ Romy looks away, warped with a grimace, but it’s too late. ‘Are you okay? Do I need to get a doctor?’
‘You can’t go back.’ The short words jerk. Her grimace grows in grooves, her eyes rogue and gaping. She hides her face in her hands. ‘You can’t go back to Whiteland.’
The seconds seem to throb. ‘But what is Whiteland?’ Kira asks. Against all her better judgement, she’s still sat, still close, still alone with her sister in the atmosphere. What is happening?
‘Romy?’ she ventures when Romy just breathes. Shoulders heaving, a rasp in her throat. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
No response. Kira extends a cautious hand, retracts it. She’s not brave enough for that; not now.
Brittle enough to break, she’s half an inch from bolting. Romy’s face. Did it change? Was it a trick of the light? Intense fluorescents can mess with your head. Or a reaction to medication? The beginnings of a seizure? Kira bites her lip, hard. She thought her sister barely human. She thought it wasn’t her, but Romy looks so vulnerable, so forlorn, crouched on the bed in a hospital gown. Whatever hides behind her fingers, Kira can’t help but hurt.
‘Romy?’ She extends a hand again. ‘What’s Whiteland, Romy? Why can’t I go back?’
Romy’s fingers drop like a shot. ‘You can’t,’ she hisses. ‘You. Just. Can’t.’
Kira’s doubts fly away. It wasn’t the light; Romy’s eyes are black, and growing, growing, growing.
‘You can’t,’ she repeats. Her eye sockets stretch. Taut, pulsing veins, both bulging and caving. Kira’s stomach plunges, like she’s had three coffees too many and not enough to eat. ‘Not ever. You mustn’t.’ Her eyes flash blue. ‘Help me.’
Kira’s mounting fear hitches. ‘What?’ With those two words, the distorting girl before her sounded like… ‘Help you? How?’
Beyond the curtain, a nurse rattles in, her cheer ringing out of tune. The ward door opens and closes. Why has Anna not come back yet?
Romy takes a long, rattling breath. ‘Help me.’ A pause, then, ‘Help me.’
Her irises flicker blue again, a spark in the black. They latch onto Kira’s like a fishhook and pull her into the night.
Romy, alone, naked in the dark. Shadows lick her skin, not two-dimensional but thick like tar, like an oil spill coating a bird. Help me. She scrambles to her blurring feet. Kira, I can’t get out. Kira. They’re dead, they’re the Kyo, but listen to her. She plunges forward. Listen, don’t go back, Kira. The Whispers are planning to—
The hospital glare is blinding. The oily black wanes. It sucks Romy’s fleeting image with it, the naked form that starts to scream.
KIRA, NO, I CAN’T GET—
Kira’s head swoons. Reality swoops. She’s back like a frozen slap.
OUT.
The shriek inside her mind snaps off. Outside, the cataclysm is loosed.
‘I believe you heard her.’ Romy’s distorted face wrenches back, ferocious, whitening to bluish ice. Paper for skin, stretched across her cheeks like a skull. Eyes protruding as her face recedes, turning to fire with the depths of the dark. They’re black holes and caverns, 8-balls and obsidian. ‘Listen to me, she said. She said. You can’t help anyone.’
She cranes her neck forward and spits in Kira’s face. ‘And you. Can’t. Go back.’
‘Romy—’
Kira’s cry perishes. Romy’s mouth is stretching, her words becoming a gargle as it elongates to a rattling hole. As black as her eyes, but longer. Yawning. ‘You…’ She wheezes. Her neck cricks with her tilting head. Now, she is inhuman, dark corridors and haunted asylums and hunching figures in The Blair Witch Project. ‘Can’t…’
A noise rumbles from her throat. Washed with breathless, wildfire terror, Kira scrapes her chair back. The noise is a groaning, creaking moan, and it swells and grows and grows and swells until Romy flies forward and screams.
‘You can’t!’ She snatches Kira’s shoulders. Nails pierce skin, and Kira cries out. Romy drives her down into the chair. ‘You…can’t…go…back!’
Every word is a shake. The bawling becomes a wail, a screech, an animalistic howl. Kira’s head snaps back and forth. The pain is hot and jarring. Back and forth, back and forth. She can barely see. Flying like a rag doll, she can barely breathe. Why is no one hearing this? Why does no one help?
Whatever’s in Romy doesn’t want them to.
‘You can’t!’ Romy shrieks. ‘Out, out, out! Get out! Get the fuck out!’
Kira’s vision blurs. Dizzy, nauseous, assaulted by the smell of metal and Romy’s peach shampoo, she flails for her sister’s arms. Her head is burning. The jerk of her neck throbs through her skull. ‘Get off me!’ She gasps. ‘Get off! Ah—’
Catching the hospital gown, she yanks. Romy tumbles to the floor with a keening cry. Unsteady, chest heaving, Kira scrambles to her feet, backing up against the wall. ‘You’re not Romy.’
Romy’s distorted face wavers up. She landed on her head, but undeterred, she sways on her hands and knees. ‘I am.’ A hacking laugh rips from her throat. The pain of it rings off the walls, a wheeze like a fox’s screech. ‘I am, I am!’ She grins. ‘I am!’
Kira shakes her head violently. ‘No.’ She presses tight against the wall. Cold white nips at her spine. ‘You’re not. You’re not—’
Human.
‘Help!’ Fear paralyses her, but also makes her scream. She tries to move her head but can’t.
Can’t?
‘Somebody—’ Her voice cracks. ‘S’il vous plaît? My sister—’
‘No one will help you.’ Romy continues to laugh, holding fast to the bed and scrabbling to her feet. ‘They won’t even hear you. Not anymore. Can’t you feel it?’ The air seems to throb. ‘Little huldra, you’re alone.’
Kira swallows a whimpering sob. ‘No.’ She shakes her head, again, again. She’s stuck. Can’t run. Can’t see the room, can’t hear a thing but laughter. ‘Please, just stop.’
Regaining her balance, Romy reaches out, stumbling toward her. ‘Why?’
‘Romy, please.’ Terror swells up in her throat. ‘Just stop. Leave me al—ah!’
A pair of hands hauls her away from the wall. The ward blurs. She spins, her body flung a few feet toward the door, and the owner of the hands, a woman in a flowered dress and a Matrix coat, plants herself before the monstrosity of Romy.
‘Stop,’ the woman orders. Stepping toward Romy’s rocking, keening body, she is commanding and resolute, a confident north-European drawl. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Leave them alone.’ Another step, slow and watchful. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Her limbs tense, wiry and taut. She looks, Kira thinks distantly, like a predatory cat. ‘You’re an abomination.’
Romy’s la
ughter pitches. ‘That’s what you’re calling it?’ She throws her arms wide. ‘Lena, Lena, Lena, don’t be so polite.’
With a great heave, she sends the laughter into a howl. Kira starts to shake. She needs water, she needs air, she needs the toilet. She needs to scream. ‘That’s not Romy,’ she stutters. It strangles in her throat. ‘That’s not my sister.’
The woman looks round. ‘Correct.’
She pushes Kira half-behind the curtain. With that one word, fresh horror swoons, swooping up to hysteria. That’s not Romy. It’s not even human. If it was, it isn’t anymore.
Then what is it?
Kira stares through the paisley curtain. Breathe in. Breathe out. Romy’s obscured, and someone’s in control. The woman, whoever she is and wherever she appeared from, seems to know what’s wrong; and even if she doesn’t, she’s better at crisis management than anyone else in the ward. Either that, or Romy’s right and nobody could hear.
Not possible.
Is any of it?
Kira shuts her eyes and keeps them still. Breathe in. Breathe out. Iodine slithers up her nose, mixed with curdling hospital food, lavender perfume, the bright red flowers. The ward behind her is growing louder, more confused, shouts and questions and scurrying feet. Romy’s sunk back to concave laughter, shrieking something unintelligible.
Breathe. Kira digs her nails into her palms. She’ll be getting permanent grooves. It’s impossible to tune out, even as the words become clear: we’re all dead here, we’re all dead here—
In a sudden dying sputter, Romy’s mania subsides.
Kira’s eyes flick open. Beyond the curtain, perfect silence descends. She twists the hem of her Aztec top around her fingers. Is this the lull before another storm?
Stepping back, the woman gives her a nod. Kira hesitates. Three seconds, five seconds, ten. The blood is loud in her ears, but biting hard at her cheek, she pushes back the curtain.
Slumped on the bed, Romy’s eyes are closed, her skin warming from its uncanny, death-white grave. She could be asleep; apart from her skewed limbs, she could have been all along.
Fraught, drained, as if she ran a race that ended too soon, Kira turns to the woman. ‘What did you do?’ Her voice is limp, incredulous. She clears her throat, dodging the arriving cavalry. A bustling clamour of questions and fretting, the nurses, part annoyance and part concern, bundle her sister back into bed. ‘Is she going to be—’
‘She’s fine.’ The woman’s black eyes burn into Romy, sparking with a tight-lipped, white-lipped rage. Faint sweat trickles from her spiked black hair, melting into her collar. Righting her Matrix coat, she turns to walk away. ‘I didn’t touch her. Just do what she says.’
Kira backs into the wall to let her pass. ‘Do what she—what? In what—what respect? How?’
The woman skirts a worried doctor, raises her hands above her head, and mimes a snap. ‘Don’t go back to Whiteland.’ Dropping her hands into her pockets, the woman ducks her head and picks up into a stride. Struck dumb, Kira stares. Nurses, visitors, patients, they part before her, Moses with the sea, and she’s almost reached the door before Kira jolts back to her senses.
‘How do you know about that?’ The word ricochets around her mind. ‘What’s Whiteland? Wait!’ She raises her voice, close to a shout. The woman sweeps through the open door. ‘You can’t just leave!’
At the top of the stairs, the woman shoots a short, sharp look back. The warning is obvious, even with the whole of the ward, a doorway, and a corridor between them. ‘Just listen to the—your sister,’ she calls. Kira’s bewilderment swells. The woman is already turning away, her words a strain to hear. ‘She’s right. You’ll be safer.’
Kira lets her hands fall back to her sides. ‘Safe from what?’
Safer than what?
‘Kira?’ The door bangs open. Anna shoves through. ‘Romy? Kira!’ Her eyes land on Kira, and she forges an unforgiving path down the ward. ‘Oh my God, Kira, what happened?’
The commotion surrounding Romy hits her mother like a train. Kira watches any last colour leave her skin, her body reeling in a double take. The nurses, the newly arrived doctor, her unconscious daughter…her eyes fly between them, stretching. ‘Oh, God.’ She lifts a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God.’
Kira doesn’t know what to say, what to feel. ‘What happened?’ Mathew barges up behind them, stony hands clapping Anna’s shoulders as the chaos hits him, too. ‘Christ on a bike.’ He tears his attention from the doctor blusteringly questioning her cluster of nurses. ‘Kira?’
‘We were just…’ Kira shakes her head, again, again. Just what?
‘Madame?’ An angular nurse taps Anna’s arm. ‘Est-ce que je peux parler avec vous?’
‘Kira?’ Mathew prompts, as the nurse starts to jabber to her mother in feverish French. ‘You were “just” doing what?’
Her mind is a mess of nebulae, cloudy, tainted, far. ‘I…’ She works her mouth. ‘We, we were talking, I guess, and then she went crazy. Again.’ She ducks her head. ‘Shouting at me, and groaning, and laughing. I don’t even know how to describe it. Her face.’
Black holes, caverns, 8-balls, obsidian. Kira swallows and hugs her ribs.
‘Come here.’ Mathew pulls her to him and wraps her up. She hugs him back hard. ‘It’s okay.’
It’s not, but he’s her dad, and that’s what dads say.
‘It’s mad,’ she mumbles into his coat. The puffy material squeaks. ‘It was mad. It was scary. Her face didn’t look real. Her eyes, and her mouth, and her skin…’ She shuts her eyes, her whole body tensing. ‘And then she threw herself at me, and I pushed her off, and, and’—she pulls away, gesticulating—‘she was coming after me, making this noise, and then…’
Her eyes trail over to the bed. Better not to mention the peak of what she doesn’t understand: the way Romy stopped. Moving from floor to bed in a second that no one saw, returning to normal on the orders of a stranger. ‘She collapsed. Just fell down, like she fainted. I told you, Dad, she needs help.’ Her voice climbs, either desperate or despairing. At this point, probably both. ‘That’s the second time today she’s attacked me.’
It was meant to be accusing, but it goes unnoticed. Anna turns back from the nurse, offering them a weary, seesaw smile, and Mathew’s attention is with her at once.
‘She’s moving Romy to a private room.’ Anna inclines her head at the doctor, bending intently over Romy’s bed. ‘And she recommends that we take her home as soon as she’s well enough. Physically speaking, because of the cold. Mostly. She—’ Anna puts her fist to her mouth, her insides scooped and emptied. Her eyes close. Her chest shudders. ‘She said that because Romy needs serious psychiatric care, we need to sort it out in England. One of the nurses overheard some of what she said to Kira and saw most of what happened. Romy flew at her unprovoked.’
She presses knuckles to teeth. Kira forces her face not to move. How much did the nurse hear? How much did she see?
‘I’ll deal with this.’ Taking Mathew’s hand, Anna sighs, the brittle smile peeking back out. Kira looks up at her father. Troubled, silent, strained. ‘Because of the language. Not that there’s much to deal with yet’—she gestures at the doctor, the nurses, the ward in general—‘seeing as they don’t understand what’s gone on. The nurse I just spoke to said Romy’s asleep. Not unconscious; asleep.’
Mathew’s trouble deepens, to dusk, to night. ‘So she threw a fit and fell asleep?’ He blows out through his mouth, long and slow. ‘This…okay. Okay.’ He rests his hands on Kira’s shoulders. Kira glances up. And he thinks he’s confused. ‘I’ll go with Kira back to the hotel. Get us flights home. Two days’ time? Three?’
Anna lifts a hand, lets it fall. ‘Whichever works out best. Ideally, as soon as possible.’ She hugs him quick, tight. ‘Look after her.’
It’s a whisper, a breath. It’s probably not meant for her to hear. Kira averts her eyes, a little chilled. She always could read lips.
Look after her.
You’ll be safer.
Anneliese.
‘Mum,’ Kira says suddenly, as Anna hugs her, too. ‘Who’s Anneliese?’
Anna’s lips pause on her temple. She steps back again, smiling, tightening her ponytail. ‘I’ve no idea. Why, love?’
You should have told me.’
Halfway to his room, grapes, Berliner, and beer in hand, Callum stops. The voice is faint, but when it comes again, he carries on. His mother. From the other side of her door, what else did he expect?
Something creepy. He lowers elbow to door handle, lips moving in a way that could be a smile, if he let it. A portent, or the ghost of Christmas yet to come. The Grim? He rolls his eyes. Dear God. Today’s “The Day That Was.”
You have a perverse interpretation of catastrophe.
He stops again, rigid. The handle bounces up to knock his funny bone, but the oddity is distant, barely felt. He didn’t think that.
He didn’t hear it, either. It was…his forehead creases. Air, or words in leaves. A hiss through rain. Something he never thought he’d have to describe. Was it actually there?
You have a perverse interpretation of catastrophe is not a phrase he’d imagine hearing. Come on, he thinks; a real, solid thought. Whoever she’s talking to, best to leave her to it. The beer will get warm; the grapes will go soft; the doughnut is dropping sugar on the rug, and after work, followed by the forest, followed by work, all he wants is to finish Parmenides and have a damn good sleep.
His mother is speaking again. Despite himself, he listens.
‘It’s not perverse when people were there.’ Carol’s voice is sour in its fury, and Callum does a double take. His mother? Really? ‘Did you give any thought to that? Did you give any thought at all to what would happen? Hazal does have a catastrophe on her hands. Everyone ran out, and who can blame them?’
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