Secrets in the Dark

by Darcy Coates

  Fast enough to get to Beth’s before sundown? Time was ticking away from them. Clare didn’t want to think about spending a night out on the road. They had packed for it—they had blankets, food, water, and even toiletries—but only as a precaution. Clare guessed it had been too much to hope that they could make the trip without any hitches. Even so, the idea of being outside at night, in the world that now belonged to hollows, didn’t sit well with her.

  Then a new thought pressed into her mind, and she glanced at the fuel indicator. The little needle hovered over the lowest marker, just above the ominous E.

  “We’ll need fuel,” Clare said, hating that her voice cracked.

  “Mm. Any thoughts of where we could find some?”

  She pictured the service station they had passed in the town and the grey creatures teeming in the streets. The hollows lurked in places where they could hide from the sun: abandoned houses, overturned cars, or the forest. If Clare could find a service station in a field or down a lonely stretch of highway, they might stand a chance. She unfurled the map and stared at it. The only service stations she knew about were part of towns or cities.

  Dorran didn’t know the area and was relying on Clare to guide them. He kept his eyes on the road. She had the impression he was trying not to put her under pressure. In a strange way, that only made it worse.

  Think! We can’t just keep driving and hope we stumble over a remote station. Where else could we get petrol? If we find an empty car off the side of the road, we might be able to syphon fuel out of its tank… but we’d be gambling on that.

  The car would have to be parked somewhere remote enough that there were no hollows around. It would need to run on petrol, not diesel. And they would need some kind of pipe to pull it out of the tank.

  Then Clare’s mind lit on the solution, and her stomach turned sour with dread. “Marnie’s. She lives on a farm. Remote. She keeps cartons of fuel in her shed for the equipment.”

  On some of Clare’s visits, she’d helped Marnie with her chores. She could picture the shed and its clutter of knickknacks. Bright-red bottles were stacked on a shelf next to gardening supplies. That was the surest bet she could think of.

  “It would be convenient…” Dorran spoke carefully. “It’s on our route. But, Clare, you know the risk. That she might still be there.”

  That her remains might still be there. Maybe not a body, specifically, but blood. Torn clothes. Bone fragments that the hollows had failed to consume.

  “Yes.” The map crumpled under Clare’s tightening fingers. “But we don’t need to go into the house. The fuel is in the shed. We can grab it and be out of there in less than a minute. It’s remote and surrounded by bare farmland, so there probably won’t be any hollows there when the forest offers security and more food.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll go.” Up ahead, a sign poked out of the side of the road, its arrow pointing towards an offshoot. Dorran slowed as they approached it and turned the car towards their new destination.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Clare knew the road well. A big elm tree sat to the left, tilting so badly that it would need cutting down within a few years. That was what Marnie had always said. She’d been saying it for as long as Clare could remember, and each year, the tree grew older and tilted slightly more, yet still remained undisturbed.

  Sentimentality. It needed to be killed, but no one wanted to do it. They all grew up driving past that tree. Sitting under it. Talking about how badly it leaned. It was like a friend.

  The car bumped over copious potholes. The road saw a moderate amount of traffic from the rural properties flanking it, but never enough for the government to justify resealing it. Every time a pothole grew too bad to ignore, they would fill it, like putting a plaster on a scab that only got worse over time. Some of the potholes had been filled five or six times, their dark asphalt bowed into a bowl shape as they were gradually worn back down. By that point, there were almost more patch jobs than original road left.

  The car’s engine rattled with every bounce, but it endured. Clare thought it might actually take them all the way to Beth’s and back as long as they could feed it enough fuel.

  A dark shape appeared on the side of the road. Clare craned her neck to see it. Dorran’s expression darkened, and he took some of the power off the accelerator. “Ah. We’re passing it, after all.”

  “Passing it?”

  “My family’s caravan. This is the road we take to reach the Gould estate.”

  “Oh.” Clare had been so wrapped up in her worries about Marnie’s property that she hadn’t even considered the significance it might have for Dorran. She pressed a hand over her mouth.

  “I had wondered how far they might have gotten before—well. This is the answer.”

  “Did you want to stop?”

  “No. There is nothing for me here.”

  The car slowed to a crawl as they neared the procession. At the front were six luxury cars. They were older models but maintained well. Even after the snow and rain, their black paint still seemed to glimmer. Behind it were two private busses and horse floats. The staff’s transport. The cars all had open doors. Madeline Morthorne had told Clare about the change. She’d said the air burned. They must have opened the doors to try to escape it. Except, there had been no escape for any of them. A streak of blood ran across one of the bus windows. A child’s boot lay on the ground outside the second of the family’s cars.

  His nieces and nephews. He spent years trying to protect them. And now… they’re just gone.

  “Dorran—”

  “I am fine.” His voice was a monotone. A flash of emotion passed over his eyes, bright and desperate. Then he blinked, and it was gone again. “It is in the past now. Regret is not beneficial.”

  “I won’t push.” Clare watched him closely. “But… you know you can talk to me. If it would help.”

  He pressed on the accelerator, and the engine rattled threateningly. But as the abandoned procession faded into the distance, he slowly relaxed. The hardness vanished from around his eyes as he gave her a thin smile. “Thank you.”

  They followed the slowly curving road. Clare knew what to expect up ahead: the wood fence posts and their strings of barbed wire. Then the disused field that bordered Marnie’s property. The hill with two straggly birch trees. The rock formations. The smooth driveway leading towards the farmstead.

  Marnie had once worked the area with her husband. They’d grown stone fruit and raised goats. They had been two of the most hardworking people Clare had ever known. When her husband passed away a decade before, some of the neighbours wondered whether Marnie might sell the farm and move into town for a quieter life, since she was in her late forties and on the plumper side. A lot of people wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d taken the opportunity to retire.

  Clare had asked Beth about it, and Beth had laughed. “If there are two things Marnie hates, it’s raisins in her cakes and doing nothing. She’ll keep the farm.”

  And she had. She’d restricted what she’d done on it; their flock of sixty goats was gradually whittled down to her four favourites. The fields no longer carried huge stretches of produce. Instead, she’d built up the area around her house, installing a chicken coop and a garden patch. She must have had money saved up, because she never sold any of her land and lived on what her garden grew.

  Clare loved her aunt. When Marnie gossiped, it was only about positive, uplifting news. The barn cats that were supposed to keep the farm free from mice were moved indoors and turned into lazy lap cats one by one. Clare sometimes thought Marnie had the biggest heart out of anyone she knew.

  As the farm came into view, Clare squeezed her hands in her lap. It was physically painful to look at the buildings, knowing what had most likely happened to their occupant.

  “It’s the shed up ahead, closest to the house,” Clare said. A vegetable garden separated the two buildings. The chicken coop’s door hung open, like it always had during the d
ay, to allow the birds to roam through the grass and pick bugs. They would have been eaten. As would the cats and the goats. As the car crept along the gravel driveway towards the shed, Clare scanned the fields for any kind of life and found none.

  “Would you like to stay in the car?” Dorran asked.

  She didn’t think she could speak coherently, so she shook her head instead. He turned the engine off but left the key in the ignition as he opened the door. They stood beside the car for a moment, watching the area and waiting.

  The house was uncharacteristically calm and neglected. Clare had never seen it without lights glowing through its curtains and the smell of stews or the sound of music coming from it. Trying to separate her mind from her memories, she searched for any shadowed areas that could be hiding hollows.

  The barns were dark, but their doors were closed and bolted. There were trees scattered about the yard, but none dense enough to create coverage.

  Then she looked at the ground. The field, saturated, had turned to mud. She scanned it but couldn’t see any disturbance caused by humans or animals. If hollows were in the area, they hadn’t visited the farm recently.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  Dorran opened the car’s back door. He gave Clare the crowbar and took the hatchet for himself. After being inside the car for so long, Clare felt like she might suffocate if she tried to constrict herself any further, and she shook her head when Dorran offered her a mask. They left the car doors open as they stepped towards the barn.

  Thirty seconds. Grab the fuel and get out.

  The barn’s large entrance was designed to allow tractors in and out. A simple latch door had been set into its corner. Marnie, being more trusting than the world probably deserved, never locked it. Clare undid the bolt, nudged the door inwards, then stopped to let her eyes adjust.

  The space was nearly empty since the larger farm had been closed. Marnie still kept her hobby garden equipment arranged neatly on the tables and shelves closest to the door, though. Shovels and spades, a hoe, gloves, endless varieties of fertiliser, and chicken feed were arranged in neat order.

  Dorran stopped beside a basket. He reached towards it, hesitated, then pulled his hand back. Clare approached and saw he was looking at packets of seeds.

  “I wasn’t sure if it would be… disrespectful.” He cleared his throat. “She has some varieties our own garden doesn’t. But if you would prefer to leave her property the way it is—”

  “No, it’s okay. Let’s… let’s take them. It will be like carrying a little part of her back to Winterbourne.”

  He gently scooped up the packets. Clare felt a swell of affection for him. His life had been a ghastly example of what family should be, but that didn’t stop him from respecting—even caring for—Clare’s own. He was kind, and a lifetime in a madhouse hadn’t been enough to change that.

  Clare found the red containers of fuel stacked on wooden shelves, half hidden behind cartons of feed for the goats. Marnie had eight of them. She usually stocked up in bulk and waited until they were almost empty before driving to the nearest service station and filling them again. Clare lifted the jugs, testing their weight. Five were empty, but three were still full of sloshing liquid. Enough to get them to Beth’s and home.

  “There should be a funnel somewhere,” she said.

  Dorran held up a white shape. “Here.”

  “Great. Let’s get filled up and get back on the road.”

  Dorran reached out to take the jugs, but Clare blocked him. She sent a pointed glance at his bandaged hand.

  He raised his eyebrows in return. “At least let me carry some.”

  “One. You may have one.” She offered it to him, and he chuckled as he took it. Clare carried the other two as they returned to the shed door.

  Scrappy clouds were gathering above them, slowly choking out the sun that had done so much work to melt the snow. Dorran took his carton of fuel to refill the car while Clare closed and bolted the barn door. Marnie wouldn’t have liked it being left open. It was a sad gesture—too little, too late—but it was one of the few things Clare could do. A lump in her throat ached as she stored the remaining two cartons in the back of the car. Dorran finished filling the car and left the empty jug beside the barn door.

  “Okay.” Clare lifted her chin and tried to shake herself free from the memories of being at Marnie’s house. They had fuel. They had a seemingly clear road ahead of them. No hollows had disturbed them. There was still a long way to get to Beth’s, but it was starting to look a little less daunting.

  “Will I drive, or would you like to?” Dorran asked.

  “I’ll take this stretch. You’ve been driving for a while. Have a rest. We can swap back later.”

  As Clare rounded the car to reach the driver’s door, her eyes drifted towards Marnie’s cottage a final time. She would miss its peaked roof. The garden was dead thanks to the early snow, but she could still visualise how it looked in spring and summer, full of lush, stunning flowers and vegetables. She wished her last time seeing it hadn’t been like this, with its rooms silent and its windows dark.

  Wait… those are boards.

  Clare stopped with her hand resting on the open door. Her mouth felt oddly dry. In the dark windows, in place of the usual gauzy curtains, thick wooden boards had been nailed into place.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Dorran…”

  He looked from Clare to the house and back. “What’s wrong?”

  If she boarded the windows, she must have heard about the hollows coming. If she heard about the hollows, that means she survived whatever effect deformed people. And if she survived all of that… she might still be alive.

  “I think… I think…”

  He rounded the car and put a hand behind Clare’s back to steady her. His dark eyes narrowed as he scanned the cottage. “What do you see?”

  “She was trying to defend the house.”

  “Ah—the boards.”

  Three weeks had passed since the last normal day on earth. That was a long time for someone to survive on their own. But we did. Dorran and I survived. Why not Marnie? She’s used to being snowed into her property. She has food stores and a well behind the house. Is it possible she’s still here? Is it possible she made it through the end of the world?

  “I have to see.” Clare tried to step out of Dorran’s hands, but he held her back.

  “Wait, Clare. What if she’s in there, but no longer alive?”

  That was a very real fear. But Clare took another step forward. “I have to see. I have to be sure.”

  “All right.” He let go of her and picked up his hatchet again. “Keep close to me.”

  Clare’s heart stuck in her throat as she approached the door. Her mind was fractured. Hope of finding her aunt battled against the knowledge of how slim the likelihood was. If Marnie was still inside, she would have heard their car approaching. She should have come out to see them. And yet, the house stayed dark and quiet.

  But Clare couldn’t give up. Not while the chance still existed, no matter how slim.

  Her boots sank up to the ankle in mud as she passed through the garden. Marnie’s bright-blue door had always felt inviting, but it seemed less welcoming with the windows on either side boarded up.

  Please. If she’s still here… if she’s still alive…

  Clare reached for the bronze handle. A cord hung beside handle, and Clare knew tugging it would ring bells through the house, a symphony of cheerful little chimes announcing visitors. Instead of touching the cord, she twisted the handle, felt the latch click as it unlocked, then watched the door swing open.

  The hallway was barely visible in the gloom. Dust gathered across the floor and the myriad of knickknacks perched over cluttered shelves. With the boards over the windows, only narrow slats of light made their way inside to pick through the shadows.

  A bucket of nails with a hammer resting inside, leftovers from boarding up the house, sat to one side of the door. On the o
ther side were two luggage cases made of faded purple cloth, sitting up on their ends, ready to be carried out the door. Fine dust lay over the handles.

  Clare knew the cases. She’d pictured them in her mind a dozen times since waking up at Winterbourne. Marnie would have packed them, ready to be picked up, waiting for Clare to take her to Beth’s bunker.

  But Clare had never come. The cases, unopened and untouched, were enough to confirm Clare’s fears. Marnie was no longer alive. Hot tears pricked her eyes, but Clare still couldn’t stop herself. She took a careful step deeper into the house.

  She could picture what must have happened. Beth had called Marnie. She’d told her to be ready. And so Marnie had packed. She’d stood by the door, just like Clare had imagined, her luggage ready and waiting, staring at the long, empty road.

  If there are two things Marnie hates, it’s raisins in her cakes and doing nothing.

  When the car didn’t arrive, Marnie would have rolled up her sleeves and done what she did best: look after herself. She’d hammered the boards into the windows. She’d probably ensured her chickens were outside, just in case she didn’t make it through the day to give them food.

  The quiet zones—the patches of lost contact that resulted in an area being infested with the hollows—had started in the cities and gradually moved outwards. Marnie’s remote farmstead would have missed the first waves. How long did she have? Two, three hours? Half a day? And what happened once it finally caught up with her?

  “Clare—”

  The word was a whisper in her ear. Dorran’s hand fixed over her shoulder and tightened. He began to pull her back.

  Clare heard it too. Sounds coming from deeper in the house. Dragging. Shuffling.

  No. No. No. Please, no, not this.

  Something shifted at the end of the hallway. A narrow slat of light passed over it, glancing over a familiar floral blouse. Marnie’s grey hair, normally fluffy, lay limp against her head. Her head had flattened as though squashed. Bones, rounded and large, made her skin bulge out. Bones around her chin. Bones around her cheeks. And the largest bone, the one on her forehead, extended forward so far that the swollen skin half covered her eyes beneath.