by Leo Hunt
“I know. It makes sense, I suppose. I never really thought about how we must look to other people. It just didn’t bother me.”
“Why do you think they weren’t affected by . . . whatever this is?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Elza says. “The only thing I can come up with is they all drank from Ash’s cup. The one that erased your memories? I mean, that might be it.”
“Could be.”
“Can you see what’s inside your mouth?” she asks.
“I don’t know what it is. It’s not a tooth.”
“What about mine?” Elza opens her mouth, and I hold the candle as close to her face as I dare without the flame hurting her. I can see something dark and toothlike at the back of her mouth, sticking out of her bottom left gum. It could be a stone, although I don’t see how that’s possible. I tell Elza this.
“Right,” she says, “we both have rocks stuck in our jaws. Why? What on earth were we doing up there?”
“You don’t remember anything at all?” I ask.
“No. And there’s no Internet, so we can’t start there. We’re lost.”
The windowpane lights up sickly green. I put my arm around her.
“There is something,” I say softly.
She doesn’t reply.
“The Book of Eight,” I say. “It’s in my bedroom. We need the Book.”
“No —” she begins.
“What else can we do? This is a disaster, Elza. This is terrible. Whatever’s happening, it’s not just you and me this time. It’s everyone in Dunbarrow.”
“I know,” she says, “I just . . . Is there no other way?”
“I can’t think of one,” I say.
She doesn’t reply.
“So we need to get back to my house,” I say. “I don’t know if they’ll be up for that. I don’t know if I am, honestly. I don’t want to go back out there.”
“Well,” Elza says, “whatever we do, we can’t just sit here.”
We can agree on that, at least. The light from our candles gleams on the taps, the showerhead, the frosted glass of the window. The bath mat is still damp from the showers we took this morning, before we went to the park to take photos. I try to focus on these things, keep my mind from going in circles. We need to get to Wormwood Drive. That much is clear. Exactly how we’ll manage that, and when, I don’t know. One thing I hadn’t realized until we were sitting here together is how exhausted I am. I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open. It seems absurd to sleep at a time like this, but that’s what I want to do.
“Let’s ask the others,” I say. “They’ll have their own ideas.”
The others are sitting downstairs, still in the living room. Alice and Holiday are sharing a bag of chips. Mark’s eating a chocolate bar. Kirk has a can of beer and is taking a deep drink. There’s a platter of cold lamb leg on the floor, half covered by aluminum foil. Cheese rolls, mini sausages, cake in a tin. Old party food from the Moss family Christmas.
I sit back down on the sofa, Elza next to me.
“So we need to decide what our next move is,” I say.
Nobody disagrees. I continue.
“I think we need to get to my house.”
“Why?” Mark asks me.
“That’s where my — our — magic stuff is.”
“Your spell book?” Holiday asks.
“The Book of Eight. I think if there’s any chance of us stopping whatever’s happening, we need the Book.”
“Do you know that for sure?” Kirk asks me.
“No. But there’s no other way to get information that might help us.”
“We’ll need to travel across Dunbarrow to get there,” Elza says. “I think the weather puts driving out of the question, if any of the cars out there will even start. We’ll be walking.”
“We?” Alice says. “Who’s ‘we’? Since when is anyone giving me orders?”
Elza takes a deep breath.
“Alice —” Holiday says, “if we just —”
“No,” Alice says. “You listen to me for once, Holiday, yeah? We ought to get the hell out of Dunbarrow. That’s what we should do.”
Nobody says anything.
“Seriously,” she says, “whatever’s happening here, and I honestly don’t care what that is, we need to leave. Let’s go. Leave them. It’s their fault. We can follow the road up to the motorway.”
“And then what’s your plan?” Elza asks her.
“Shut up,” Alice retorts.
“No, really, Alice, I’m curious. What then?”
“We walk to Brackford,” she says.
“That’s fifteen miles along the main road,” Elza replies. “In a blizzard. That’s your plan? Not to mention we don’t even know if we can leave Dunbarrow. We have no idea how far this fog stretches.”
“Alice,” I say gently, “if we are being swallowed up by Deadside somehow, Brackford might not even be there anymore. I don’t know what we’d find, but —”
“Shut up!” she screams at me. “SHUT UP! They’re lying! How can you just sit here and listen to this? We’re not being swallowed by Deadside, because Deadside doesn’t exist, because they’re lying! How can Brackford be gone? Cities don’t disappear!”
“I don’t like this either —” I begin.
“I said shut up! Holiday, you don’t believe this, do you?”
Holiday doesn’t move.
“Alice,” Kirk says, “you gotta calm down a bit —”
Alice starts to say something else, but no words come out, just a scrambled roar of anger and fear. She gets up and runs out of the room. I hear the bathroom door slam shut.
“Great.” Elza sighs.
“Will she be OK?” I ask Holiday.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “She hasn’t been dealing with this very well.”
“How about you?” I ask her. She smiles thinly.
“Not so well either,” Holiday says.
“Do you believe me?” I ask her. “Do you think we’re lying?”
“I think you believe what you’re saying,” Holiday says. “I have a hard time with some of the stuff you just told us. I think you can see why. But I believe something I don’t understand is happening in Dunbarrow tonight. I think Alice does, too, but she won’t admit it.”
Kirk grunts, takes another swig of beer. “It’s totally nuts. Ghosts and magic books and whatever else. But I don’t see what they get from lying,” he says. “And we all saw what happened down in the town.”
“I believe you,” Mark tells us quietly.
“All right,” Elza says, “we can work with that.”
“So what do we do?” Holiday asks us. “You really think we should head to your house?”
“Yes,” I say. “I don’t see a choice.”
“Why not stay here?” Kirk asks. “Wait for it to blow over?”
“We don’t know if it will,” Elza replies.
Mark nods.
“This thing, whatever it is,” I say, “we don’t know enough about it. But maybe this is just the beginning.”
“And if we get to your house, to this book, you’ll be able to stop it?” Holiday asks.
“Yes,” I say, more confidently than I feel.
“Staying here keeps us fairly safe, because of my hazel charms,” Elza says. “We have food for a few days at least, more if we’re brave enough to venture out and raid a corner shop. There’s no running water, but I suppose we can drink melted snow. We’ve got a lot of firewood. Thing is, we don’t know how long this . . . event, anomaly, whatever it is, will last. What happens if the snowstorm lasts a week? A month? Longer? Things start to get more difficult.”
“Same deal at Luke’s place,” Kirk replies.
“Right,” I say, “but we can make a start at fighting back once we’re there.”
“Be dangerous getting across,” Mark says. “Snow, fog . . . must be way below freezing out there. Like the Arctic. We could die just walking down the road if we aren’t prepared.”
“That’s without whatever else might be out there,” Elza adds. “The Knights will be looking for us, plus whatever happened to the people in Dunbarrow . . . it’s not going to be easy.”
We consider this.
“I still reckon we stay here,” Kirk says.
“Don’t be a baby,” Holiday snaps. He startles. Elza smiles at this.
“We can go across the fields,” I say.
“I dunno about that,” Mark says. “In the storm there’s no way to know where we are. We could go around in circles. That’s dangerous.”
“All right,” I say, “so we go through town. Landmarks, places to shelter if it gets too bad.”
“More chance of running into other people or spirits,” Elza says.
“I’m with Mark,” Holiday says, looking at her feet. “Those fields are so exposed. We could get lost.”
“Town, then,” I say. “We agree on that.”
“Yeah,” Kirk says. He finishes his beer and crushes the can against his knee.
“So when do we go?” I ask.
“How’d you mean?” Mark replies.
“I don’t know what time it is. None of us do. But it must be four in the morning at least. I’m exhausted. I dunno about you.”
“What if this gets worse?” Elza asks me. “What if we run out of time?”
“I honestly don’t know if I could make it to my house right now,” I say.
“Me either,” Holiday agrees.
“I think we need to sleep, regroup, prepare ourselves properly,” I say to Elza.
She’s still frowning.
“Let’s vote,” Holiday suggests.
“All right,” Elza says. “Who thinks we sleep?”
I raise my hand, along with Holiday. After a moment Kirk does as well. Elza and Mark stay as they were.
“Carried, then,” I say. “We stay here a few hours, try to get what rest we can. Then we head out for Wormwood Drive.”
“What about Alice?” Kirk asks. “She ain’t voted.”
“She’s not going to want to go outside,” Holiday tells him. “Whatever she says about leaving Dunbarrow.”
“Well,” Elza says, with fake cheer, “sweet dreams, everyone.”
We bed down in the front room, bringing blankets and pillows from upstairs, using the sofa cushions as mattresses. It feels like the weirdest sleepover I’ve ever had. Alice eventually emerges, red-eyed, and immediately lies facedown without speaking to anyone else. There are beds upstairs, of course, but nobody seems to want to be in separate rooms tonight. I feel like we’re a litter of puppies, huddled together for warmth. The fire burns itself down, candles sit on the mantelpiece beneath glass coverings. I lie on my back, with Elza next to me, listening to the tidal whisper of her breathing, the empty howl of the wind outside. The ceiling is firelit, deep orange, and every so often a pulse of green or blue will taint the room from outside. I lie awake for a long time, feeling a gentle pulse in my gums where the stone tooth is set. I don’t know when I fall asleep.
I’m kneeling on frozen ground. The swans are set before me like a feast. Their necks are broken. They’re laid in a ring around the three warding stones. The light circles around and around this clearing, but it can’t get out. We’re birthing a miracle.
Elza kneels beside me. Her face is rapture.
I’m me but I’m not me. There’s something else behind our eyes.
The bird-woman is talking to us. She has two voices, and one is only for special occasions. She takes something from the sky between her fingers and plants it in the ground.
I think it was the Winter Star.
There’s something growing from the earth behind her, a stem of ice, veins of light. The swans are moving, dead but moving, flying backward in a circle. Their necks are snapped but they’re still flying.
The bird-woman is speaking again. She rests her hands on my chin.
I open my mouth and she reaches inside.
I wake up and nothing has changed. The room is dark; it’s still nighttime, the fire burned down to embers and ash. I listen to the wind wailing. No light outside, just fog and snow. I know there was a dream, something about birds . . . but the memories dive out of reach, like slippery fish into a black pond. I remember dead swans, but that’s it, and for all I know I’m just remembering the bird we found on the road back to my house, yesterday morning. What happened at the Devil’s Footsteps? What is it that happened in those missing hours?
I sit up. My mouth feels dry, the new stone tooth tender but not terribly painful. I can feel my pulse there, a low drumbeat.
“Luke?”
A quiet voice. It’s Holiday. She’s sitting wrapped in blankets on the far sofa, head tilted toward the ceiling. I thought she was still asleep.
“Still dark,” I say, the way you tell people obvious things when you can’t think of anything else to say.
“I’ve been trying to count in my head,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted some way to know how long it’s been.”
“How long have you been counting?” I whisper.
“I don’t know. Hours.”
“Yeah. Time in Deadside is like that.”
The wind picks up again. It seems like it’s stopped snowing, at least from what I can see.
“Did you really go to the world of the dead?” Holiday asks. I can’t see her face properly, just the shape of her head and hair.
“I really did.”
“I don’t know what to say about that,” she replies.
“I’ve never really known either. Sometimes it feels like a dream.”
“So we do live after death,” she says.
“Everyone does, yeah.”
“So my grandma’s still there.”
“Somewhere,” I say. “And her grandma, and her grandma . . . for as long as there’s been people, I think.”
“Is it a horrible place?” Holiday asks me. “Where they are?”
“The part I saw was pretty bad,” I tell her. “But I think there are other bits.”
“Good,” she says. “Good.”
I don’t really know what that’s meant to mean. It’s hard to talk about these things. There’s another green flash outside. I wish we had some way to time them. I wonder if the gaps between them mean something specific. The room smells stale, musty sleeping bags and last night’s sweat. A guy, Mark or Kirk, turns in his sleep and mumbles.
“Where’s your mum?” Holiday asks me.
“I don’t know. Last I saw she was outside Dunbarrow. Where’s yours?”
“Brackford. They went to see the fireworks by the river.”
I’d like to say they’re OK, tell Holiday her family is fine, but I really don’t know. I don’t know how far this has spread. Maybe the whole world is like this right now: ice and fog and green ghost light in the sky. Maybe it’s just us. Maybe this is all happening in the split second between midnight and the New Year, and nobody outside of Dunbarrow will ever realize anything went wrong.
Elza sits up beside me. Her hand runs over mine, gently touching the gap where my little finger used to be.
“I sort of hoped it would be dawn,” she says.
“It’s been like this for a long time now,” Holiday replies. “I think the blizzard’s stopped, though.”
“Really?” Elza says. “That’s interesting.”
“We should go soon,” I say. “Before the snow starts again.”
Elza stands up, moves awkwardly across the living room, stepping over the other boys. She loudly rattles at the ashes with her poker, then kneels down and arranges fire-lighters and some logs. After a few moments her effort births a new yellow flame, which hungrily spreads over the wood. She rattles the grate again, sparks flying up the chimney.
Kirk raises his head. I can see his face now in the firelight, Holiday’s, too.
“Sorry,” Elza says, “did I wake you?”
Kirk just snarls and crawls out of his sleeping bag, stumbles off, presumably to the bathroom.<
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“It doesn’t flush,” Elza calls. “Go in the yard! Far away from the house!”
Kirk growls again.
Alice and Mark seem to be awake as well, but they don’t say anything.
We eat breakfast, more of the same food from last night: Christmas dinner stuff, a breakfast that doesn’t make sense. Green grapes, chocolate cake, a bag of cheese straws. Elza’s kitchen is an icebox, cold leaching in through the broken window. Snow has settled on the floor in a thin dusting, with Kirk’s footprints leading to the back door. I’m thinking of sweeping it up, but I leave it. More will come in. The snow’s piled high in her yard, the shed almost invisible. The fog presses around the house but can’t make it inside. I feel like we’re inside in a glass bowl that a giant dropped into cloudy water.
We dress to leave, raiding Elza’s parents’ closets, looking for woolly sweaters, scarves, anything large and warm. I end up wearing two sweaters, big gloves, waterproof pants over two pairs of jeans, and hiking boots double-lined with socks. Everyone else looks similarly ridiculous, like overstuffed scarecrows.
There are some arguments about light. We can’t use flashlights: the bulbs won’t work, like anything else electrical. Even though it’s not as dark as a proper night would be, nobody likes the idea of going out without anything we can see by, especially with the interiors of buildings being as dark as they are. In the end we take matches and rags and firewood, thinking that maybe we can start a fire or make torches if we have to. We take two long synthetic ropes, kitchen knives, a camping ax, and the four-man tent Elza’s dad keeps in the loft.
With nothing left to prepare that we can think of, I push open the door and we step out into Dunbarrow. The wind reaches for us, plunging icy fingers deep into our flesh. The fog swirls and eddies just beyond the hazel charms’ reach, waiting for us to join it. Everything is gray and white, a world without warmth or color, a world to vanish in.
It becomes obvious this won’t be a short journey. The snow isn’t falling anymore, but it has settled in drifts of anywhere between thigh high and taller than our heads. The fog advances on us and then retreats, like a wolf following a flock of sheep, reducing our visibility to mere feet and then lifting to reveal the entire snowbound street. Elza and I are at the front, by unspoken consensus, with Alice and Holiday behind us, and Mark and Kirk bringing up the rear, still wielding their weapons. We’re walking in the middle of the road, back down Towen Crescent. The light is low, but it’s not the dark you’d expect from midnight; more the dim haze I’ve come to associate with Deadside, lit from above by some uncertain source. My ears are primed for any hint of hoofbeats or voices out in the snow, but all I can hear is the wind.