‘Romy isn’t mad.’ Kira’s eyes snap to his through her hair. For the barest of seconds, she’s as fierce as her sister. ‘She’s not all right, but it’s not madness. It’s something else.’ She drops her eyes again, her face hard. ‘I just don’t know what yet.’
‘Okay.’ Callum levers himself back up. ‘Okay. I’m sorry. But the fact remains that Romy could be saner than a saint, and it wouldn’t mean this place exists.’
He tugs at a loose thread on his T-shirt, an idle façade of indifference. That’s a bridge in his mind he’d rather not cross. Kira said it last night: it goes against science, against logic, and everything we’ve grown up knowing.
‘Yes, strange things happened in the forest.’ He pulls the thread to its death. ‘Really strange things, as a matter of fact. But it doesn’t mean we wandered into Narnia.’
‘You weren’t saying that last night,’ she says tersely. And he’s the one calling out madness. ‘You weren’t saying it while it was happening, either. You were just as confused as I was, and just as worried when we thought we were losing our minds. You can back out all you want, claim that we saw things, felt things, that weren’t there, but you’re not convincing me.’ Kira looks at him sideways. ‘I don’t even think you’re convincing yourself.’
She can only assume he’s listening. As bad as she is at keeping still, he’s found another thread to tug at. ‘You said that what we saw was impossible,’ she continues, less accusatory than before. Her own coping strategies are hardly perfect. ‘Whatever Whiteland is, whether it’s a real place or a name Romy chose, she still knew we’d been there. She knew what we saw, and she’—she flicks her fingers, fishing for words—‘it was like she had a list. Checking things off in her head. The river that we thought was an ocean. She knew that, too. That we thought it was an ocean. And the wooden window.’
She thumps back against the headboard. ‘How could she know that, Callum? How could she know any of that, unless it belongs to a place? A place she’d actually been, where something strange happened? You found her in the clearing where everything started.’
Watching her warily, Callum nods.
‘Right.’ Sitting forward again, Kira crosses her legs. ‘And something strange had happened to her when you found her. Strange is going to go the same way as impossible, but it’s the only one that fits.’
The shirt hem finds its way back to her fingers. Outside, the train whistles, a car honks its horn. ‘There’s a pattern,’ she continues with a little less gusto. ‘All three of us experienced something in that part of the forest. And going back to my original point’—she determinedly meets Callum’s eye—‘Mum knows what happened to Romy. What happened to Romy is linked to the forest. Even if this wasn’t such a messed-up knot of stuff’—she flicks her fingers again, pausing them in place for emphasis—‘where else would Mum go to find answers? If she’s trying to bring back her daughter’s mind, and she has to go somewhere to do it, where would she start but the place that took it away?’
Callum huffs. ‘I thought Romy wasn’t mad?’
Kira opens her mouth. Closes it. ‘I…’ She pulls a face. ‘She’s not. Not in herself.’ Her mouth winces. ‘But I didn’t tell you everything that happened at the hospital. I don’t think she’s mad, if we’re even allowed to say things like that, but I think something mad is inside her.’
Romy, alone, naked in the dark. Help me. The image that took her, and shook her, and sucked, and then flung her back to life.
KIRA, NO, I CAN’T GET—
In a hush, she relays this. Only a hushed part of her mind can stand to remember.
Callum doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t brush it off. He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t speak for so long that it’s the worst reaction of all.
‘Romy asked for my help.’ Swivelling, Kira slides from the bed. She can’t sit in silence. She has to do something. The room seems to swirl with absurdity, as thick and pungent as smoke. She can’t look at Callum. ‘So I’m going to help her.’
She retrieves her outerwear from the floor. Only when she’s put it all on does Callum speak. ‘Going where?’
Kira shoots him a look that says clearly, are you stupid? He tips his head back on his neck. ‘The forest. I’m not religious, but I’m praying for your soul.’
He’d be praying for his, too. The dread that ballooned up his throat as she spoke, as she described the shitshow, the horror show, the horror…it’s impossible to vocalise, but it shut his vocal chords, clamped them with a pressure he didn’t know existed. All that comes out is a burning desire for none of this to be real.
‘I take it you’re not coming, then,’ Kira says shortly. Buttoning her furry-hooded coat to the neck, she stamps into a pair of pixie boots and grabs her phone from the bed. ‘Good. I don’t want to feel any more like a fool. I know this is messed up, Callum, but it doesn’t make it any less real.’
She’s cutting so close to the truth he can almost feel the knife. ‘Oh, I’m coming.’ Scooping up his coat and sweatshirt, he follows her into the hall. ‘Just wait.’ He grabs her sleeve. ‘Wait a second.’
With a sigh, Kira turns. ‘What?’
He falters. Three seconds. Four. Five. ‘Don’t feel like a fool.’
She narrows her eyes, searching his. Three seconds, four, five, then, ‘All right.’
Callum relaxes. ‘Then let’s go.’ He makes himself smile, makes himself tease. ‘I might think your knowledge of life is based too strongly on seventies horror, but I’m coming. It’s the most scandal this village has ever seen.’
Kira casts him a motherly exasperation. ‘If you mean The Evil Dead, that wasn’t the seventies.’
They clatter down the stairs. He grins. ‘You know your horror films.’
‘I know a lot of films. And I don’t believe Romy’s been possessed by the trees.’ Kira pulls on her gloves, pulls up her hood. ‘If you’re going to try to be clever, you should really do it right.’
‘Wait.’ Halfway across the restaurant, she turns. Her hip butts a chair. ‘Ow.’ She rubs her leg, heading back to the bar. ‘Hazal?’ she calls into the kitchen. Wincing at how demanding it sounds, she adds, ‘Sorry.’ She rests her awkward arms on the bar. ‘I just—are you there?’
Slowly, the kitchen door swings open. ‘I’ll meet you at my steps.’ Callum touches her arm. ‘Supply pit stop. Better safe than hungry.’
Kira nods, and he leaves. With an expression that looks deliberately blank, Hazal emerges from the kitchen, an embroidered tea towel tight in her hands. ‘Yes?’ she says, looking Kira up and down. ‘Is all okay?’
It’s like the typical British thing of asking how are you? and expecting only fine in return. Kira nods, although clearly, nothing is okay. ‘Do you know where my dad is?’ she asks. ‘I guess he could be in his room, but I didn’t hear anything. Last time I saw him, he was down here, and—’ She cuts herself off. Not the time to waffle. ‘Sorry. Um, have you seen him?’
Hazal’s face doesn’t change. ‘No.’
That’s it. No elaboration. Kira’s face starts to heat. Her leg starts to jig. ‘Okay.’ Looking away, more awkward than ever, she digs around in her jeans. ‘I have—’ She pulls out the note. ‘This.’ Folding it small, she places it on the bar. ‘If you see him, could you give it to him? I’ll message him, too, but he needs to see this. I found it in my room.’
Hazal’s hands tighten on the towel. Her eyes trail down to the paper. Sitting between them, it feels like a gauntlet, far, far bigger than its palm-sized square. Kira fights the urge to snatch it back.
Weirdly slowly, carefully slowly, Hazal picks it up. ‘Okay,’ she says. Without looking, she slides it into her apron pocket with what is definitely fake apathy. ‘I give to him.’
She turns away. Kira forces a smile into her voice. ‘Thank you,’ she calls, as Hazal returns to the kitchen. The door swings shut. Kira flinches. Dismissed.
In the pantry, Hazal waits for the chimes on the hotel door to sing. ‘Good th
ing,’ she says, ‘she is polite.’ She nods at Mathew asleep between the shelves. ‘If she came in to look for me, you have to do that to her as well. These people.’
Straightening judiciously, surrounded by leaning stacks of goods, Lena regards the rumpled man. Mouth half-open, ragged, unwashed, he looks like a tramp in the dark, cramped space. ‘One nosy English person is enough.’ She nudges him with her boot. ‘We need to get him back to his room before your staff come back.’
Hazal lines a packet of cinnamon sticks up with the rest. ‘And he won’t remember?’ she asks. The Whispers. Mathew going where he shouldn’t, as if Anneliese is hiding in corners. Lena, thinking fast.
Lena sighs. For a moment, she looks so tired. ‘No,’ she says. ‘He won’t.’
Past a troupe of tiny children, dragging snowboards and helmets; past the cars that never move, the pines, the chalets throwing out sweetened woodsmoke; down the same road, but this time with a quiet trepidation reserved for presentations or the two attempts it took to pass her driving test. Kira watches Callum from the corner of her eye. If he shares her cold worry, a sheet of ice in her chest, then he’s a far better actor. Hands in his pockets, humming “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya” shamelessly off-key, he could be going to the shops, or the pub.
Skirting the ice beside the sledging hill, the forest snakes into sight.
No; it doesn’t snake. Kira drops her eyes. It marches. It taunts. Callum can think her gullible, superstitious, whatever, but anything could wait inside. Things worse than whispers in her ear, oceans, and pretty little birds.
Listen, don’t go back, Kira. The Whispers are planning to—
KIRA, NO, I CAN’T GET—
‘Why go when you’re so nervous?’ Abruptly, Callum stops walking. ‘No one’s making you.’
The very real voice slices off the memory. Forced from her thoughts, Kira starts. ‘What?’
Callum lifts three fingers. ‘You stopped talking the second after I showed you my pockets of treats.’ He drops one. ‘You’ve been walking slower than a kid sent to see the head.’ He drops a second. ‘And’—he gestures across the car park—‘you’re acting like the trees might eat you if you’re fool enough to look them in the eye. If you want to go back, go back. I’m sure your dad would prefer not to have someone else wander off.’
Callum sways his upper body behind them. It demands more effort, but manages to look lazier than turning his head. ‘You could go back to the hotel, be his drinking companion. You could go back to the hotel and be my drinking companion. It’s been enough of a day already that I’m ready for a beer. Or’—he sways back to the forest—‘you can swallow your fear, follow your mother, and help your sister. I don’t mind.’
A smile ghosts toward Kira’s lips but stops behind her teeth. ‘I thought’—she rubs her uneasy mouth—‘you were praying for my soul.’
On the sledging hill, two craft collide. Voices squeal, laughter erupts, a voice warns Kevin to stop.
‘I am.’ Callum pivots at the English. Kira doesn’t need to: over the last several days, in several places, she’s heard the same unruly Kevin chided for several unruly things. ‘But I can do that whether I’m drinking beer or traipsing into fairyland. The choice is yours, madame.’
Kevin hits a bump with a squeal of glee. On the spur of her amusement, Kira chooses. ‘You tell yourself that,’ she says, moving into the car park before she can think better. ‘Tell yourself you’re humouring me, that you’re here for the ride. That it’s just the most scandal this village has ever seen.’ She tips her head, bats her eyelashes. ‘I’ll believe that when you do.’
Callum pushes her head upright with one finger. ‘“I’ll believe that when you do,”’ he mimics, a young-girl imitation. ‘Come on, if you’re coming.’
Ignoring the frozen ground, iced to a perfect cake, he picks up speed toward the barrage of trees. ‘You’re a child, Callum,’ Kira calls. ‘You’re a child in denial.’
‘Oh, I’m not in denial.’ Refusing to stop at the edge of the tarmac, he hauls himself boldly up the bank, leaps onto a precarious woodpile, and looks expectantly down his nose. ‘I’m very self-aware.’
Kira snorts. Yesterday, she said effectively the same.
From the smugness of his smile, he remembers. ‘I thought you were curious?’ Extending a hand, he waggles his fingers. ‘Treat it like you’re in The Hobbit. “I’m going on an adventure!”’
Kira shifts her weight to one hip. ‘Because standing on sticks is an adventure.’
She forges a cautious path up to Callum’s castle. The king is not amused. ‘They are not sticks.’ He spreads his hands: see? ‘They are logs. I’m still not a child. And I don’t see you up here, daring to conquer.’
He’s right about that. The scent of the logs is refreshing, newly cut pine in the biting cold, but calling them precarious is kind. Kira turns toward the trees. Stark stalwarts against the off-white clouds, they’re the true kings, bushes and saplings tangling around them like subjects before a throne.
‘I’m doing what you said.’ She shoots him a wide-eyed innocence. Disgruntled and clumsy, Callum jumps to the ground. ‘You told me to treat it like a joke.’
‘I did not.’ Stoically, he ignores her, clapping snow from his gloves. ‘I said treat it like we’re in The Hobbit. There’s a difference.’
Offering him a sweet smile, Kira says nothing. His ego could probably use a break.
On the edge of the clearing, they stop. ‘What happens now?’ Callum asks. The bowl stretches away from them, its glittering snow unmarked.
‘I don’t know.’ Kira rubs her hands for warmth, flecked with disquiet. ‘I didn’t think that far ahead. I just wanted to feel like I was helping. Or trying to, at least.’
Callum nudges a strip of wood with his boot. There are several around. Kira almost feels sad. He never did get his kindling. ‘Well…’ His boot pauses. He frowns. ‘I was going to say we can look for some sign that your mum’s been here, but it’s all just snow.’
It’s all just snow.
‘Whatever we do’—Callum nods at the bowl—‘I’d rather not stay here. I can’t explain yesterday, and I don’t fancy having another go.’
It’s all just snow. Kira slumps inside. His words strike a chord of futility: what is she trying to achieve? Did she think she’d find Anna, trotting through the forest like a faun? A note, pinned to a tree, explaining what happened to Romy? A trail of breadcrumbs?
It’s all just snow. What if it is just a forest?
‘Kira?’ Callum is watching her, hankering for a decision. ‘That offer of beer is still—’
Sliding from her face, his eyes narrow over her shoulder.
The back of Kira’s neck prickles. He’s craning to see better, lips parting as he peers through the trees. ‘What is it?’ she asks uneasily.
Callum’s voice is as bewildered as his gaze. ‘Mist.’
Mist, and a lot of it. The path back to the car park is entirely, immaculately white, inching toward them in a desert-style dust storm. Kira falters, double takes. Not inching; it’s moving, creeping, sweeping, encroaching upon the trees until they fade to white themselves. She steps back.
‘That…’ She retreats until her hand meets Callum’s arm and her ankle brushes the tree. ‘That wasn’t there before. Was it?’
‘No.’ Callum’s face is oddly blank. Colder than the shade within the trees, colder than the sporadic gusts of wind, the mist crosses the last patch of ground and enfolds them. ‘It wasn’t. And I think we should leave.’ He looks over his shoulder at the growing haziness of the clearing, to the clarity of the forest beyond. ‘Now.’
A shriek cuts through the mist.
Kira freezes. ‘What was that?’
Another cry slices behind them. It sounds like a bird taking chase.
Callum jerks for her hand. His grip isn’t warm, like he’s offering comfort; it’s cold and crushing, as though he needs hers. ‘I don’t know,’ he whispers in the dead, muffled silence. ‘But we
really need to leave. It doesn’t feel right.’ He urges her away from the tree, farther into the clearing. ‘It’s not right. Mist doesn’t come from nowhere.’
Another step. Another. Kira can’t help but remember the voice, the tickling snicker: hello. Her hand crushes under Callum’s fingers. Another step, soft and crunching. The air is clammy, breathy. Another.
They’ve almost reached the fringes of the mist when a low growl curls through the trees.
Kira whips around. ‘What was—’ she stutters, but a large, dark shape, looming from the white to their left, stops her words in their tracks. Callum’s hand goes slack around hers. Her heart bounces down to her belly and back. ‘Oh, shit. Callum?’
His voice is garbled. ‘Yes?’
The truth is here. With a snort, the shape ducks its head to charge. Kira grips Callum’s fingers tighter. ‘You need to start believing.’
Yanking Callum with her, she spins around. His weight is unbalancing—run, goddammit—but she pelts across the clearing, stumbling, tripping, thumping through untouched snow to the rise.
The bird keens as they scrabble up the slope. Flail over the top, continue to run. The shriek echoes again, joined by a thudding, low like the thundering of hooves. Kira’s legs almost cave. It’s following them.
Into a different clearing, pretty and dotted with benches. Crash out the other side, blunder through a weaving, winding, snowy tunnel, every bush and every root itching to interfere. Callum flings his arm out as Kira trips, cries out, grabbing her wrist to tug her faster, faster, past small, frozen pools and snow-laden shelters, burnt-out campfires, and dip, rise, dip. The forest is never-ending.
And the mist is catching up. Kira dares a look back. Another cry strangles in her throat; she thought they’d been fleeing, flying ahead of its damp, white curtain, but now, it’s almost here. Her heart bashes its head bloody. Her breaths come fast and barbed. How do you escape what doesn’t get tired?
Whiteland Page 15