They will not know what they saw.
It’s cold, a sigh and a rustle. It’s almost there on his skin, snaking around the base of his neck.
No. He shakes his head sharply. He should move. Forget Parmenides; he should sleep. This is called being madly overtired, making a mountain out of the other end of a phone call. Paranoid, like he and Kira were—
‘It doesn’t matter if they know or not!’ Carol snaps. A sighing, rippling pause, then, ‘You should have told me what was going to happen.’ She drags her voice down to a painful hush. ‘I could have—’
The beer bottle slips from Callum’s hand. He hadn’t realised it was loose, but it thunks to the wood, and the words snap off. ‘Dammit.’ He crouches, fast enough to stop it rolling. This is the perfect time to leave. He can stop listening, devour his snacks, and forget about today tomorrow.
The door opens.
He heard. Not one voice, now, but two, three, a swelling sigh of wind. His mother’s face is slate. ‘What did you hear?’ she whispers.
Behind her, the wind pulses. Callum straightens up. A hundred versions of nothing, really skitter through his mind, but is there any point denying it? He’s treading on invisible eggshells. Everything inside him is cold, but he doesn’t care for lies. ‘What did you not want me to hear?’
Carol steps forward. The hem of her cardigan lifts, her hair fluttering up from her collarbone. She’s scared.
This is definitely something creepy.
‘Everything,’ she says, and then he thinks nothing more.
Kira throws a ball against the wall of her room, time and again and again. A museum souvenir from one of Romy’s lighter moods, it’s a St. Bernard and a bottle of rum, sat contented in a snowstorm. The dog’s grin seems to grow every time the ball returns. As a result, she throws it even harder. Stupid rum-drunk happiness. It’s neither the time nor the place.
Throw, catch. Throw, bounce, catch. Mathew taps on the adjoining wall, his third-time plea for her to stop. Frustrated, she pushes out her lips. The monotony’s keeping her sane. Dulling her mind into doing nothing, just making sure it continues. To be fair, it’s probably exceedingly annoying.
That doesn’t mean she’ll stop. She could do something else—go and talk to her dad, distract them both—but she did that after tea and only came out worse. It wasn’t that Mathew hadn’t tried; for once, he just hadn’t managed to transmute his own worry into reassurance.
Or maybe, this time, she’s seen too much for it to work. He put his arm around her, and they had a beer while he searched for flights and she talked about something, anything. Her January exams, the hospital, her current paintings, Romy, New Year’s Eve plans, how they acted in the car. All of this, he said, has shocked him enough to short-circuit a house; he shouldn’t have lost his temper, even if she was, and he smiled weakly, very much losing her own. When he added that he’d had a feeling since landing in Geneva, a feeling that had pulsed when they drove up the mountain, she was done.
It was too much. At the same time, it wasn’t enough. Her insides were coiled, jittery, and after what she and Callum had seen in the forest, hearing her dad talk about pulsing atmospheres, strange feelings, and the creepy isolation of the village was winding her up to break. She finished her beer, hugged him hard, and said she was going to study. That she was feeling strung out, too, and might as well be productive.
It was true; but she was, and is, far too antsy to focus. She tried revising The Handmaid’s Tale. She tried getting her head around metallic minerals, again. Taking geology is one thing she’ll always blame Dad for. She tried thinking up rewards for if she passes, but so far, the boomerang ball has been the only thing to work. Now, even that’s falling flat.
If only Mum would get back. Kira’s pout morphs into an impatient, restless scowl. At least there’d be something new to mull over. They wouldn’t be waiting.
Who’s Anneliese?
I’ve no idea. Why, love?
The scowl smooths into a sigh. It loops in her mind, snags on a hook, and won’t let go. Anna didn’t wonder at her question. A denial of knowledge, an extra hug for her and Mathew, and off they went. She has a thousand things on her mind, but still. When the word was something Romy came out with…
Catching the ball, Kira rolls over. A hefty sigh whooshes. The hefty bed creaks. The tiny ticking cuckoo clock announces 9:00 p.m. She closes her eyes. It means nothing. Let go.
You can’t go back.
Help me.
That’s not Romy.
Correct.
Lying in a muted, face-mushed gloom, Kira’s hearing sharpens. The chimes on the restaurant door. Glasses clinking from the bar. The crackling fire on the landing.
Footsteps.
She listens. They continue on, past her door, merging into muffled voices on the other side of the wall. Kira worms her arms beneath her chin. Think of the devil; at least, if nothing else, she’s broken the silence.
When the tap comes on her door, Kira doesn’t need to look. Winter and mint precede her mother into the wooden room.
‘How are you doing?’ she asks, soft. The bed depresses as she perches on the edge.
That’s not Romy.
Correct.
Anneliese.
Kira says nothing. Staring at the headboard, at every gnarl of wood and groove of carving, she sighs; the question is an unavoidable roar, yet she’d rather study metallic minerals than ask it. Not knowing is bad enough, but knowing could be worse.
She’d also rather ask it than live in her thoughts. She sighs again. ‘What’s wrong with Romy?’
She regrets the phrasing at once. ‘No.’ The words hang heavy, an anchor not quite scraping the ocean floor. ‘I mean. I mean, is she going to be okay?’ Wriggling to sitting, Kira holds up her hands. ‘Sorry. I really didn’t mean it how it sounded. Do the doctors know anything yet? Why she collapsed, or why she’s being so violent?’
It’s Anna’s turn for silence. Her narrow cheeks move in, and out, as though she’s considering options. ‘Not to my knowledge,’ she murmurs. Then, as if this is the only answer Kira needed, ‘What happened at the hospital?’
Kira fights to keep her eyes on her mother. Romy, screaming you can’t go back! ‘Did no one tell you?’
Looking up, Anna sits back, one blanket-reindeer farther down the bed. ‘I heard some of it from the nurse, but I’d like to hear it from you.’ She shifts again. Her eyes have manned the guard posts, and the drawbridge has been raised. ‘She didn’t understand all of what you and Romy said.’
Kira dips her head. Something else unavoidable, roaring. Anna’s watching, another half-reindeer between them, but Kira’s got nothing to give her. How can she even attempt to explain? How can she describe Romy becoming someone else—something else—who knew what happened in the forest? Who launched herself from her bed, warped and impossible, because they were talking about a place that can’t exist? Who was then sent to sleep by a stranger who didn’t touch her, or says she didn’t touch her? Kira fights to keep her face innocent. What can she say? What should she say?
‘I understand,’ Anna says when the quiet starts to ring. Kira looks up. She’d bet her painting of Karliquai that her mum really doesn’t. ‘You don’t want to talk about it yet, or you can’t. I understand that. What Romy did today is awful, and it’s obvious she hasn’t been…’—she picks her words carefully, treading even more so—‘herself.’
It’s inadequate. Her eyes narrow. Age of the understatement, Kira thinks but doesn’t say. No one needs Romy responses right now.
‘Love.’ Anna takes her hand. It’s subdued, concerned: maybe Kira’s face is speaking for her. ‘Like Dad said, we’ll sort this out. To be a cliché that you’ll hate, today was the straw that broke the camel’s back.’ She squeezes Kira’s fingers. ‘Okay?’
Kira nods, slow, thinking. ‘Will you take her to Dr. Beech?’
The psychiatrist Romy refuses to see, an efficient, smiling city man. If he can help, then this is not the di
sconcerting web it appears; and if that’s the case, maybe the events in the forest can also be explained. Explained away. Mistakes caused by disorientation, the confusing similarities of the landscape, hallucinations beckoned by the morning’s horror—maybe by snow-blindness, ignoring dictionary Callum. Maybe she was riddled with delusions, and he was dying to get away.
Either way, everything Romy said would be irrelevant. Brushing aside the uncanny knowledge about where she and Callum went, and the woman in the flowery dress, it’s all coincidence. Ramblings that struck a chord but meant nothing in the end.
This is how she lies to herself; this is what must be true.
‘…But we’ll help her however we can,’ Anna finishes. Whatever else she said, Kira missed it, and she drags herself from her fervent thoughts. Anna is watching the window, the glowing colours from the train line lamps, a fox scurrying into the snowy field, the stars above the mountains. Kira frowns. Gazing at the night, she’s perfectly composed. It’s not like her. She’s tears and fear, as she was this morning; she’s worry and fretting and edges. As much as it isn’t true, Anna never seems strong.
‘Has something changed?’ Kira leans into her pillow mountain. ‘You’re…’ She pulls a scarlet woollen blanket up around her shoulders. She’s what? ‘Calm, I guess. If me and Dad can stop worrying so much, that’d be great.’
Pinpricks in the gloom, Anna’s eyes shift to her. ‘I’m as worried as you both.’ The tiniest hint of a huff. ‘I’m always worried. But I’ve—’
She stops. Kira waits, but nothing else comes. ‘You’ve what?’ she prompts. Staring through the bedclothes, Anna’s pinpricks are wide. ‘Mum?’ She sits up properly, head tilting. Anna’s expression is shadowed. ‘What have you done?’
‘A lot of thinking.’ Rubbing her forehead, Anna folds her hands atop her jeans. ‘And I realised that I’ve been worrying so much because we’ve never done anything. We’re making the decisions now, not Romy. To use another of your hated clichés’—she rises from her perch, brushes creases from the bed, and offers a smile—‘it was a lead balloon, and I should have recognised it long ago.’
She moves to the door. ‘Wait.’ Kira scrambles across the bed. ‘That’s not what you were going to say.’
She slips to the floor. The golden bedside lamp doesn’t reach over here, and in the shadows, she’s sure: Anna knows something she doesn’t want to say. Maybe it’s the greyscale dark, giving hazy, shifting impressions of secrets, but they’re close, almost eye to eye. Her mother is unsettled.
‘What is it?’ she asks. Anna’s smile is holding, but wearing thin. ‘What were you going to say?’
A pause. Grainy, aware, full of the ticking cuckoo clock, voices in the restaurant, the lingering smell of fondue. Anna nudges the door open, her hand on the wood. ‘Kira,’ she says lightly, in the parent-tone that says the subject is finished. Stepping into the hall, she starts toward her room. ‘Give me a minute to freshen up, and we’ll go down for a drink. I think we deserve it.’
Everything about this is strange.
‘Why did you stop speaking?’ Kira follows Anna into the fire-lit hall. With the smile refuelled, Anna turns.
‘Everyone forgets what they’re going to say.’ She shrugs, thin and delicate. ‘Everyone gets distracted.’
Kira winds her fingers into her sleeves. Questioning her mother is uncomfortable; she’s rarely felt the need. ‘You didn’t forget,’ she says. Call it instinct, or intuition, but there’s something here that isn’t right. There has been since she ran into Callum in the mist. ‘People only use “everyone” when they’re defending something they shouldn’t.’
Kira half-expects her mum to laugh, to say she’s being silly. But all she gets is a measured look. ‘Leave this alone.’
Anna’s smile is gone.
‘No.’
Kira hurries down the hall. Blood dum-dums in her temples. Leave this alone. You’ll be safer. Look after her. Three-word proclamations, and they rip her inner lies to shreds. ‘“This?” What’s “this?” What aren’t you telling me?’
Anna tips her head back. ‘Nothing.’ She fixes exasperated eyes on a beam. ‘There’s nothing. I’m just tired.’ She glances at her closed room, pulling her hair from its band. That, at least, looks true. ‘Can you please not give me the grilling you gave Dad? I’m not keeping anything from you, and honestly, your attitude toward us is getting a bit much.’
Anna moves to open the door.
‘I have an attitude because this is madness.’ Kira steps to block her path. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, and it’s insulting that you won’t admit it.’ She spreads her hands. ‘Do you think I’m too young to understand? Is there something about Romy, or, I don’t know, our lives? Our family? Come on, Mum.’ Her face screws up of its own accord. Disdain, discontent. ‘Surely we should be together on this? Instead of keeping secrets?’ She pauses. ‘Have you even told Dad?’
The door opens. ‘Told Dad what?’
Blinding light slices the hallway. Pulse leaping, Kira starts. Mathew is a silhouette.
‘Do you—’ She clears her throat and regains her composure. ‘Do you know what’s going on with Romy?’ She shifts her weight to one hip. Dum-dum. Blood. ‘What’s really going on?’
‘Leave it, Kira.’ Anna’s voice is clipped.
Mathew’s eyebrows lift. ‘What do you mean?’ He fixes on Kira. His beer can groans in his hand, his eyebrows sinking low. ‘Anna?’ He looks to his wife. ‘What’s this about?’
‘She knows something about what happened to Romy.’ It comes out in a desperate blurt. Kira carries on regardless. ‘She’s acting like she doesn’t, but she does. She slipped up when she was in my room—’
‘Shut up!’
Anna cuts across her, hoarse and fractious. It echoes about the rafters, a ricochet of shock. ‘Just stop! You asked what was wrong with Romy, but—what’s so wrong with you that you can’t—Mathew, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’ She shoots her husband an odd entreaty, buckled and ineffective through her anger. ‘She’s upset. It’s been a horrible day for all of us, and she’s searching for an explanation.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’ Kira snaps the ends off her mother’s words. ‘I’m not clutching at straws, if that’s what you’re saying. Why are you lying?’
‘Kira,’ Mathew begins, a warning rumbled low.
‘If you’re so concerned with secrets, why don’t you tell us what you and Romy were talking about?’ Anna lifts her shoulders: well, go on, then. ‘How about what you did today when you were meant to be in the hotel?’
Kira folds her arms. ‘I went to the forest to see where Callum found Romy.’ It’s not the whole truth, but it’s enough.
Deflating, Anna’s shoulders drop. She didn’t think she’d get an answer; it’s in her posture, her widened eyes, the cogs working behind them. The silence is loud again: the crackle of flames, a door shutting in another branch of the hall. Tick, tick, tick. The asymmetrical clocks click on.
‘Fine.’ Face twisting, Kira turns her back on her parents. Anna lost for words, Mathew out at sea. The stairs creak and moan as she flings herself down them. It’s not worth it. If Anna won’t even tell Mathew the truth, she’ll never tell her, and there are far better ways of wasting time than raging at a mother-shaped wall.
Tearing her coat and boots from the stand, Kira blusters a storm through the restaurant.
‘Do you know where Callum lives?’ She pulls up short in front of Hazal. Halfway through the kitchen door, the woman turns. ‘You know each other, right?’
Hazal nods pointedly toward the tables. Restive, impatient, Kira follows her gaze. Heads have turned to stare, drinks paused in hands. It isn’t silent, but quiet. Whether or not they understood it, they must have heard the whole familial exchange.
Normally, she would have been flushed and contrite. Now, she tosses them a sweeping glare. ‘Please.’ Lowering her voice, she steps closer to Hazal. ‘I need to see him. It’s important.’
Upstairs, a door slams. Hazal’s gaze flits to the ceiling, and subtly, she steps back. ‘Important to me you don’t disturb everyone.’
Every bone is stern, her expression engraved. Kira winces. Her parents’ muffled voices roll toward a fight. ‘I know.’ She fights not to jig her leg from impatience and a stirring embarrassment. The argument is heating fast. ‘And I’m sorry. I really am. You have no idea how much I—we—appreciate what you’re doing.’ She pulls a face, pouring it full of rushed regret. She has to get away. The walls are pressing in. She wrestles her coat on, flushed with heat. ‘I just—I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with Romy, so we can all get out of here.’
Hazal turns away.
‘Please?’ Kira rushes into a plea, unintentionally childlike. ‘I know it doesn’t make much sense, but I need to find Cal—’
‘Left of the train line, first house up.’ Hazal pushes through the kitchen door. Soup and chocolate drift out, mingling with the fondue. ‘Use the little steps.’
The kitchen door snaps shut. Kira is dismissed. Pulling up her hood, she ducks her head and hurries out into the night.
It’s hard to decide what’s more suffocating: the blanketing cold or impenetrable dark. All at once they’re upon her, thick, smothering, crisp, and she’s infinitely glad she doesn’t have to go far. The only light for miles floats from gallant stars and train line lamps. The moon shirks its duties behind snow clouds. The hotel’s heat falls rapidly away. Left of the train line, first house up. It’s not far.
Up the drive, through the hotel gate. The left side of the tracks are unblemished, the snow dotted with an embedded path of stones. Kira stops at the bottom. Brushed with powder and a glint of ice, they wind up from the road like lilies on a pond. “Steps” is a loose term. One foot wrong and she’ll break her neck.
Or at least a leg or two. Bleakly, she starts to climb.
It’s a miniature winter wonderland, a spectral night of ice. A thick, frosted archway heralds the top of the stepping stones, rough-hewn from the hedges bordering the garden. Stray twigs brush her coat, snow evading her hood to nip her skin. Surveying the box-cut scene, Kira shivers. The garden is a long, sweeping square, rising sharply to meet a small wooden chalet; the windows shine with a dim, flickering glow, and Christmas lights line the balcony, twitching red, green, bright red, out. Footprints lead steeply to the door, distant in the dark.
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