Whiteland

by Rosie Cranie-Higgs

  Shyly, she peeps from under her lashes. ‘You don’t know what we’ve done to your sister.’

  The room seems to tunnel. The lights are too bright. You don’t know what we’ve done to your sister.

  Kira can’t breathe. ‘I have to leave.’ She scrambles to her groaning feet. Her faded words come from someone else. The room sways. ‘How do I leave?’

  Another laugh tinkles. Enny’s words are light. ‘Oh, you can’t leave. There is no leaving.’ Gliding upright, she smiles beyond Kira. ‘Not from the Kyo, my love.’

  Oh, God. The other women are drifting toward them, folding into each other as they sigh through the arch. The candles wick to life in their palms.

  Horror spools from Kira’s chest, so potent she can smell it. The air is growing colder. ‘What do you mean, there’s no leaving?’ She backs away from the pool. Every muscle tenses to run. ‘Who are you?’

  Enny’s smile unrolls. ‘I told you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ Kira swallows. ‘You said you were dead.’ She whips a look around. The women are encroaching, silent and soft. She backs away, away, away. ‘Who are you?’

  The woman cocks her head. ‘We’re the women of the Kyo. The raped, the murdered, the defiled. The denied.’ The smile drops. ‘The forever.’

  A whisper of assent rises up from the shadows. ‘No.’ Kira shakes her head. The women surround her, but she has to get away. ‘You’re mad. You’re all mad.’

  ‘We are not.’ Pressing her hands in a prayer, Enny sighs. Kira dips her gaze. Her tilted head and cratered eyes suggest the opposite. ‘We are trapped, and we want to leave. Your sister and your mother and the Whispers, oh, they gave us what we need. One of us.’

  A murmur rustles around the room, an almost melodic hum. ‘I can’t help you leave.’ Kira’s voice quavers high. Now she can’t stop it; not anymore. If she thought she felt fear in the forest, she was wrong. The scale of her terror never ends.

  ‘Unfortunately’—Enny sighs—‘you can’t.’ It’s the disappointment of kings and queens. If she wasn’t so inhuman, her sadness would be pain and tormented, unbearable grief. ‘So why should we help you? Your sister was useful.’ She drifts across the stone. ‘But you, my love, are nothing.’

  Her head tips to the side, too far. Kira’s mind fills with terror, her head with a roar. A click. Another. A third. Enny’s neck jolts to ninety degrees.

  It cracks. Kira’s stomach curdles, souring, ill. She doubles over. The splintering echoes off the rock, and as Enny’s face changes, as her mouth begins to scream, terror and adrenaline collide. Kira runs.

  The screaming swells. The women blur. Their faces leap out as she passes, but now they’re all the same: screaming, dead, contorting, dead, each adding to the holy chorus until it’s a ricocheting, cataclysmic screech. Slapping her hands to her ears, Kira scrapes through the arch and away.

  Icy darkness. Ringing ears. Her breath plumes in front of her. Unsteady in the black, she blunders, tripping on uneven ground. Her arms fly out. There’s no escape. There’s—

  Her hands slam into rock and jar. Thrown off balance, Kira gasps, rebounding onto the floor. Her hip screams as she lands on the bone. A gasping sob rips from her throat. There’s no escape. There’s nothing. Nothing but stone…

  …And the growing glow of candles.

  Kira scrabbles round as it glimmers up the walls. The chorus swells, discordant. The screaming women drift through the arch, spirits, banshees, ghouls. Kira tries to stand, but her legs won’t work. Another sob rasps. She can’t feel her knees. Her thighs tingle and numb to nothing. She wrenches at them with anchor-heavy hands, and as the nothing spreads up her torso, her arms, she’s shunted across the stone.

  ‘Stop!’ Colliding with the bone-cold wall, she gasps. Her spine roughly lodges in place, her shoulder blades sharp against the rock. ‘Stop it!’

  The women drift closer. The screams scream on. A manic laugh strikes up. ‘Let go.’ Kira shakes her head. Her skull scrapes stone. Pain blooms hot, and she sobs. ‘Just stop.’

  Hysterically, the laughter heaves. One by one, the screams cut off. The hellish women wait.

  ‘I told you,’ Enny calls as the shrieking echoes ring. ‘There’s no leaving.’ Her broken neck has righted itself. She steps toward Kira, smiling. ‘And now you’re going to see.’

  She waves a pleasant, gracious hand.

  The flames extinguish. The women fly forward. ‘No!’ Kira yells as their long arms reach, trying to writhe, to escape. The laughter returns to ring in her ears. Her head is locked, her lips heavy. Her throat is a straw pinched shut. She can’t blink. The stretching, leering faces scream. Their scratching fingers burn cold, searing through her skin.

  Kira’s terror takes her over. It’s black and roaring, rushing in.

  Here, we all are dead.

  Kira opens her eyes to green. Her heart is sharp and pounding, her mind a black, coalescing panic—what happened to the cave? The women? The paralysis? Is she okay? Is she dead?

  Blinking away her speckled sleep, she squints at the canopy of green. Presumably, she’s not dead. If heaven, hell, or any afterlife exists, it’s unlikely to resemble a forest.

  Especially not this forest. It hits her with a certain, dreaded relief: the women have dropped her in the forest. After all of that, she’s back where she started, cold and lying in the snow. The sickly scent of pine has never been so sweet. Fingers freezing, palms slipping, Kira clambers to her feet. Brushes snow from her arms, her hair, her legs. Beats it from her back and breathes. Pine. Light. Clarity. Better.

  Even better is the fact she can move. Kira stretches, relishing the clicks of her back, the pops of her arms and knees. Freedom: something she’s never considered in a close, physical sense. Paralysis: something she never wants to again. Although its fear dwindles with the faintness of a dream, her body’s not ready to forget. None of her is.

  Which means she has to stay on her guard. Kira turns a complete three-sixty. This part of the forest is hardly different to where she and Callum met Erik. Blankets of snow, crisp and unbroken. Pillars of trees, marching in lines. Maybe, with a stroke of luck, it is the same part. She’s well overdue for a coincidence and might actually come across Callum.

  Or the village. The village with the torches. The village with the torches that chased her en masse. The memory arrives to scorch her eyes, as striking as the fire they bore. Kira’s shudder almost makes her bend double. Maybe it wouldn’t be luck after all. Who knows how long she was trapped in the Kyo? The village could still be searching, baying for her blood.

  A crunch sounds behind her. Shot cold, Kira spins. It’s the gravelly crispness of a boot on snow, and inhaling through her nose, she stills. Fifty metres off stands a man.

  He’s alone. His thick woollen poncho is much like Erik’s, hefty boots ankle-deep in snow. His motionless back is to her. Tensed and wary, Kira observes him. Russet-haired and braced and tall, broad and stiff and staring.

  The slow crunch sounds again, the boot over snow. Kira holds her breath. The man hasn’t moved.

  Which means there’s someone else.

  In a blink, she’s on the sidelines watching the hushed, waiting scene. Hidden by a scraggly bush and a leaning, whiny tree, she starts. How is—what—

  In a blink, it doesn’t matter. Shock hits her, hot and dizzy: walking toward the man is her mother.

  ‘Mum!’ Kira shouts before she can think. Anna does nothing as she stumbles from hiding, doesn’t show a glimmer of surprise. So what? After all the worry, she’s here. She’s alive. ‘Mum—’

  Kira staggers. She’s back beside the tree. Disoriented, she grabs the trunk. Anna continues her slow, sly walk, her focus never leaving the man. Kira’s head spins. A voice slinks in: watch, my love. You’ll learn.

  The words caress her temples, breathy and amused. It’s as if she’s back in the Kyo.

  Terror plunges its hands through her chest, withdrawing them dripping and bloody. Kira slumps against the whiny tree. She
should have known: this isn’t real. Anna and the man aren’t here. The women didn’t drop her back in the forest. They’re toying with her. It’s a game.

  She should have worked it out before her hopes ran high. Anna’s face is younger than it should be. A thin, blonde braid loops over one shoulder, and not only is she wearing a dress, but it’s long, and heavy and rustic and full. Kira bites her cheek. The lining is blistered. She saw in the Kyo that Anna hasn’t changed from Romy’s T-shirt and leggings. This is either a cruel illusion, or…

  And now you’re going to see.

  Smoothly, her mother reaches the man, and now—only now—Kira knows. It’s not Anna taking her victim by the hand, leading him away like a puppet. It’s not Anna who, with a smug, curving smile, swishes off into the trees. It’s not Anna’s tail poking out from her skirts.

  It’s her mother from before. It’s Anneliese.

  I don’t want to see this. Kira thinks it with such ferocity, such a gulping, bubbling horror, that Anneliese almost seems to hear. For a second, she pauses, as if she might turn. Fists clenched, face hot, Kira stiffens.

  With a minute headshake, the monster carries on.

  It isn’t a blink that does it this time, but a tentative releasing of breath. Her head swoons, and it’s night. Kira staggers back. A wall looms before her. She thought the Hyrcinian birds were impatient, but this is a whole new scale. Manipulation by teleportation.

  If only Callum were here; that’s the kind of thing he’d say. But he’s in the real world, while she’s tossed around a dream.

  A dream that likes to toss her into things. Kira retreats until the wall stops looming, thrilling with uncertainty. It’s not just a wall; it’s a cabin. Smoke trickles from the roof. Around the corner, golden light spills onto the snow.

  Kira’s stomach tugs like a gentle fishhook. Briefly, she shuts her eyes. Okay. She’s meant to see something, and she’s meant to see it now. Resigned, she folds her arms tight and trudges after the light. If she doesn’t, she’ll get tossed there, too, and with every tug, every whirlwind movement, she’s growing sick of being controlled.

  The front of the cabin is a friendly face. Two windows wink on both sides of the door, and where a wreath or a welcome sign could hang, the sketch of a tree, portentous and skinny, digs its grooves in the wood. Kira shivers. Everything is light, cosy, and bright. With the ashy forest knotted around it, it should be the perfect woodland haven.

  Without her mind’s permission, Kira’s feet start to move. Hey wars with oh, my God, and they both drown in cold. She’d have liked a few more seconds, a few more minutes, a few more years to prepare for what lies beyond the windows. The man, her mother? The man and her mother? Or something else entirely, the threat to beat them all?

  Kira’s feet line up in front of the glass. Staring through her toes, she steels herself. The cabin is silent; maybe it’s empty? She can hear her breath and the wind through the trees, so the dream-truth hasn’t left her deaf. The sharp tang of pine smoke curls from the chimney, and—

  Her eyes flick up to the window’s glow. The treetops whisper. Watch, my love.

  On the cabin floor, the man lies sprawled, naked and staring at the ceiling. Kira’s innards bunch and tangle and knot: he doesn’t think, doesn’t know, doesn’t move. Straddling his thighs with her dress hitched high, Anneliese lifts a knife. He doesn’t think, doesn’t know, doesn’t move, and she plunges it into his stomach.

  He screams.

  Kira opens her eyes to moonlight. Her heart is sharp and pounding, the echo of a yell raw in her throat—what happened to her mother? The cabin? The man? The crude knife that gutted him?

  It’s gone. It wasn’t real. Kira shuts her eyes again. When the black swept in, and she crumpled to the snow, the cabin shimmered to nothing. The Kyo made her see it, and the Kyo pulled her out.

  And now, they’ve dropped her…where? She drags her eyes open and forces them to stay. How can she tell if this is real?

  It doesn’t matter. In a blurring of her eyes, her mind reshuffles. The women, the cave, the paralysis; thank God she’s out of there. Freedom: something she’s never considered in a close, physical sense. She shudders. Paralysis: something she never, ever, ever wants to again.

  A grim determination settles, and she pulls herself from the snow. One: find out where she is. Two: get back to Callum.

  One: she’s still in the forest. It hits her with a certain, dreaded relief. The moonlight is striped with thinning branches as spindly as Hallowe’en. It’s bluish and cold, bright and bold. Something jars in her mind. The moon?

  Kira’s heart slips down, down, down, plunking like a stone in water. The moon hasn’t risen since she entered Whiteland. For that matter, neither has the sun. Kira presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. What a beautiful, plausible game of the Kyo’s, to drop her on the outside, back at the start. She can hear the manic laughter, the drilling banshee screams. Let’s drop the girl on the edge of the woods! She’ll never get back in! Huzzah!

  They’d never say ‘huzzah.’ Kira almost laughs at the ridiculousness, the hopelessness, the impossibility fogging her brain. This is madness.

  ‘This is madness.’ She breathes, to ensure she exists. The puff of air through her lips grounds her. Swallowed by the trees, her quiet voice grounds her. Her sodden clothes ground her, clinging to her skin. ‘Impossible.’

  This grounds her most of all. Callum, and their scoffing at the word. Everything that’s happened, and everything it means. Kira brushes back her snow-clung hair. She has to get back in.

  Okay. She’s here; she’s grounded. To her left, right, and rear lurks thick, gloomy forest; in front lies a healthy swathe of moonlight, speckled with diluted trees. Let’s go.

  In a minute or so, she hits the edge of the forest. In a minute and a half, she knows. The Kyo have thrown her out of Whiteland.

  To add torture to toil, she knows where she’s been put. Her body sags like a puppet relinquished. A road cuts through the last of the trees, glinting white and straight. If she cranes her neck left, there’s the metal barrier. If she cranes her neck farther, there’s the car park. Yes, Whiteland is awful, with its raging, perilous social Darwinism, but she was there with a purpose—she was there for her family. If she doesn’t get back, she has nothing.

  Nothing, though. Poised in a moment of disconnect, she hovers above the road, above the forest, above her body, caught by the thought of letting this go. Right now, she could. Holding her frozen breath, she could. It’s tantalising, almost a need, to let go of it all. She could take this road until the pavement ends, blinker herself like a horse, and live. Call the police. Work with them. Be human.

  Is she not?

  Not the point. Kira rubs her eyes, not to clear them but in the futile hope it’ll help her think. The night is deadened, muffled the way only snow can manage. The world zeroes in when all you have is white, and a sharp sense of holding your breath.

  ‘Shh.’

  The sound is out before she can comprehend why. Once it is, though, it’s visceral. Her lips purse, fairly awkward, and hold. She’s telling herself to shut up?

  Yes. Touching a finger to her mouth, she forces her hands to her sides, balling into flexing fists. Thinking is hopeless. Thinking outside of Whiteland is hopeless. Maybe the Kyo have thrown her out, but she needs to get back. Her chest twinges, cold and liquid. Mum. Dad. Romy. Callum. They’re all in there. All that matters is getting them—

  A tawny owl hoots. Kira chills, her twinging chest leeching cool through her limbs. That clarity, that sharpness of breath? She hugs herself, shifting her feet, kicking out thoughts of running away with the force of a mushroom cloud. No. No. Sure, she could flee, fetch food, water, chargers, but what would have happened by the time she gets back? Would she even be allowed back in?

  The same owl hoots, sweeping in a shadowed swoop above the midnight road. Scanning the road, Kira curses it balefully. She’d trade a hundred owls, and a hundred normal worlds, for—

 
; The curse gutters. Her breath sticks. Twenty metres up the road, a woman steps out of the forest.

  Kira quashes the cartoon urge to rub her eyes and look again. Tall and curving and brazen, the silent woman is nude. It prickles Kira’s skin just to look at her, but breathing deep with contentment, she spreads her arms and runs.

  Kira slips behind a tree as the spectre flies toward her. No shoes, no clothes, yet she floats down the road. Her skin glitters, pale and opaque. Her hair sails out behind her head. It’s as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. Kira’s arms goose bump. It’s as if she isn’t human.

  Without a sound, the woman flies past like a ghost, or a flickering film reel. Counting to five, ten, fifteen, Kira cautiously reemerges.

  Seven metres up the road, a fully clothed man steps out. Kira’s chest jolts. Unreality rushes, distant, hollow, bright. She knows the blue shirt he was given for his birthday; she thought, at the time, they should vary what they wear, instead of both living in checks. She knows the battered brown boots that, try as she might, Anna’s failed to introduce to the bin. What’s more, she knows the reverse profile, the right ear that sticks out more than the left and the brightly silvering hair. Her dad.

  He follows the woman, hands in pockets. A strangling dread takes Kira by the throat.

  Kira opens her eyes to the sound of seagulls. Her tired heart pounds. Her mind is a blazing, tumultuous confusion, but the dream is already slipping away. The forest. The moonlight. The owl. The bizarre image of her father and the woman. It felt so solid, so material. What’s real, if that wasn’t?

  Maybe she’s losing the ability to tell.

  It doesn’t matter. In a blurring of her eyes, her mind reshuffles. She was adrift, as she often is, in the purgatory between asleep and awake. She lucid-dreamed again.

  Thank God.

  Propping herself on her elbows, Kira blinks her bleary eyes. Sea. Sand. Sky. She’s sweating in a swimsuit, sunning on a towel, and surrounding her is the beach.