by Luka Petrov
With a deep breath, he had fallen inside. Breathless and filled with nausea, his stomach crawled, and the hairs on his arms raised to the point of painful anxiety. He thought of the stories they had told him of the one true God, of how the bearded spirit protected the small and the weak in times of need. But nowadays, he could not recall the prayers to those angels, nor the last time the angels had helped him to survive.
He felt abandoned by that old man of the sky as if he had gone away from the Earth long ago. The albino’s footsteps creaked against the damp wood below, the rope tugging slightly against his waist; he was almost at the end of its tether. At the other end, it was unraveling to its last few threads. He walked up the steps, finally inside the old house.
The albino never truly believed in the God that he was instructed about. He had been abandoned over and over again, only to find his true salvation in the very sister that he swore to protect and who protected him. The way he saw the world, how could there be a God above that would allow the world to be like this. He did not know of a time when the Earth was not plagued by the infection or when anarchy governed their lands. He was born after all of that had happened, but he heard stories of how the Earth used to be. How it used to have laws, order, civility, and kindness. That was a God he could believe in. Not the one who allowed the Earth to kill the weak and where evil prevailed. This God had abandoned the Earth long ago, and now it was under a demonic rule where no one could be trusted.
The albino opened his rose-colored eyes, glancing around the spacious gloom of the building’s entrance. It was once the front desk of an old hotel, but the pale man was unaware of this, imagining it once have been a grand castle or palace. A dusty chandelier hung from high above, looming down with heaviness and decay, its contorted position threatening to collapse at any moment. Around the room were clusters of mummified bodies covered in dust and dirt from head to toe, their eye sockets now hollow and black, gazing forever up to the ceiling.
The pale-skinned man knew what he was looking for, what all men looked for in the cursed lands—medicine, bottled water, alcohol, and tinned food. But around him, he saw only the white powder of detritus and age, everything preserved by some unexplained material. He continued to wind around the room, the cord still tugging at his waist, until he found himself behind the counter. There was a rusty bell, sheets of paper strewn about on the wood, and below him was another corpse, this time of a woman, her hair still preserved. White tufts of it stuck out of her skull, her face bone dry, gaunt, and skeletal.
The albino reached down into a leather purse that hung around the woman’s waist, unclipping it with a quivering finger. Popping open the latch of the bag, inside he saw several items of interest: a bottle of half-consumed whiskey, a small book, and a ring bearing a single key. Items that seemed familiar to him, but he would never know their significance. He did not have time to fully take in the woman who laid by the door, hair as white as his. He whined a whimper of joy, slipping off the backpack to fill it with the items. Now in his mind was a possibility of survival. Zipping the bag open, he was confronted with a plastic interior filled partially with rainwater and dirt. He slid the bottle and the book inside, putting in the bell from the table but keeping the key in his hand. Outside, the wind whistled, the rain picking up.
The rope began to tug hard on him, bells jangling, as if it was being pulled from the other side. The albino knew that his time was up, that the savages were calling him back from behind the ley line. With a desperate breath, he looked around at the contents of the room, searching for something that would require a key. But with another great pull, he stumbled to stay put, but failing that, he allowed himself to be dragged outside of the hotel. There was some ugly feeling in him, as if he’d known this place before, but it was too late for his mind to grasp the meaning behind it. Too late before the rope had pulled him to the door, outside into the rain and the mud. Unknowingly of the significance of where he stood, he yielded to the tugs of the rope. He was merely a puppet on a string, yet within those walls laid the very answers he’d searched for his entire life.
The albino turned his body, now scurrying down the broken steps, tumbling out through the forest. With eyes wide open, he looked up into the treetops then down onto the damp soil full of broken branches, fungus, and stones. It was then he was confronted by those swathes of half visible forms, fog-like figures flickering and swimming around him in nauseous blots, his breaths becoming shorter and stronger. His large eyes began to bulge at the sight of their rapid motion, unable to stay closed. His long tongue stuck out of his mouth, blood dripping from his throat. He spat and coughed out the fluid from his lungs, moving desperately forward. Up ahead, as the attacking shapes moved over his pink pupils, he could just about make out the end of the forbidden place. There the tribe stood, banging pots and pans, warding off the same devils that plagued his every step.
He could feel the shadows’ grasp loosening, the spirits fading away from view, but now their explicable patterns seemed to stain his vision, the sky turning darker, the ground writhing as if filled with moving worms. His ears were now deaf—no sound penetrating the silence but pure ringing. Each step seemed more difficult, each breath full of soil and poison. The once-strong man was now weak and pathetic, his white skin blotted with red sores, his gums and mouth full of blood. Reaching up to his head, he felt his curled hair coming out in clumps, receding into his fingers. Tears ran down his cheeks as his body shivered from cold.
When he could no longer walk, he crawled, whining like some animal. The rope kept tugging his pelvis, his hands sliding through thorns and stones, the veins of his body now visible and pulsing. The albino’s fingernails loosely fell away, brittle and breakable, teeth falling out en masse. Blood, bile, and stomach acids dripped from his mouth. Soon, his movements became sluggish, his sight hazy. He felt sucked into the dream of the woodland, the singing in his ears loud and piercing. He felt for the first time as if he would never leave, as if he would never see his sister again. Doom echoed inside his skull.
The tribe dragged the albino back, pulling the backpack from his spine with some excitement. The albino looked up at them, but he saw nothing. He could only feel the vibrations of their footsteps in the ground, only feel the brutality in which they treated his damaged body. “Ah, git ye a bell, a book ‘n’ some whiskey…” he managed to whimper, reaching for a hand to hold. “Ah did guid, didnt ah?” He grasped out for sympathy, moaning for help. His job was done, so now he wished for him and his sister to be free. But this was not how things were done. One stamped on his wrist, holding it down as he pried the keys from his veiny fingers.
Another set a new rope around the albino’s throat, tying it tightly against the pale skin to pull him upward. One showed the key to the others, each muddied figure cowering to observe it. There was a number engraved on the inside of it, 102, alongside a keyring depicting the Ring of Brogdar. Such keepsakes were rare. To these men, it was a sign from their Goddess, as it was exactly where they had found their slave and bound his sister to a post. The coincidence was proof of their success. They shared the whiskey in the smallest sips, only the leader reading from the book. It was a map of the Orkney islands, full of handwritten annotations and burnt around one edge. The Orkney Islands, the archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, their home. Now changed since the apocalypse happened. Such a map might be the keys to survival.
By the white man’s feet, they dragged him through the mud, the albino screaming toothless cries, as they led him to the bog of Bincarth Woods. It was a huge, deep pond full of peat, far away from the woodland. It was a long swampy marshland covered in clusters grass. Bincarth Woods were dominated by beech and sycamore on the main land of the Orkney Islands
They arrived at an uneasy platform of wood, like a boardwalk of rotting planks that extended out across the bog. Their animal bones beat against their crude instruments, much dancing and writhing done. Some of the women kissed the men, others slapping or touching the ensla
ved gentleman.
They stood him up with several hands, grasping his body in many fingers. Through the milky pink of his blind eyes, it was apparent that he could only just see their shapes, his heart thudding at great speed. The albino tried to recall his prayers, whispering them under his breath. He asked the angels to fly down and place his sister in their nest, for holy God to come and bring him to safety. His sister was held captive back at the sandy beach, while he was forced into the cursed forest. But nobody listened, the sound of crooked music and mad chanting filling the air. The rope of his neck was pulled tighter from behind him, tight enough to strangle out his shallow breaths.
One by one, they stabbed into him, rusted blades entering from beneath the nipple. The blood spilled from his pale white flesh, memories flooding through his mind. The cold air seemed to warm for a second, their hands scrambling to cause more wounds. And finally, he felt the sensation of air, of being tossed into the bog by the group, stones descending down on his body. Each stone weighted him, further pushing his face beneath the surface.
2. Strange Days Ahead
The car screeched across the dirt path, its car lights flickering on and off. Sometimes the dark of the forest would appear light in the beams of its headlights, the tall sycamore trees flashing into view like statues of the night. Rain fell heavily against the roof of the car, the mother crying out into the night. She heaved and huffed with every breath, her huge swollen stomach writhing with life inside it. Her blonde hair was slick with sweat and rainwater, her eyes focused on the forest in front of her. Though the radio was switched on, the airwaves were pure static bursts. No radio communication had functioned for months previous, and satellites had been rendered useless. Word of mouth communication became paramount, people returning to the use of birds and letters.
Since the apocalypse, word of mouth or using birds were the only two forms of communication that were consistent and reliable. Radio waves ceased. Satellites, although orbiting the Earth, were useless. They were floating pieces of space debris, with no manner in which Earth could connect to them, not with the constant blackouts. Electricity was a rarity, and a luxury at best.
In front of her on the dashboard, was a book of maps, the island of Mainland, the largest of the Orkney Islands, splayed out across it. In the midst of labor, she drove herself at great speed by those diagrams and winding red lines, following them through hazy eyes. On the seat beside her was a leather purse, inside it enough money to pay her way. With one hand on the wheel and other on a bottle of whiskey, she slugged hard at it, groaning loudly and hurtling through the dark. Then, with the sound of a loud clunking, the engine of her vehicle cut out, the vehicle winding freely down the path.
Struggling to stabilize the car, the mother screamed out, turning the wheel to prevent the tires from sliding off-road. And there, amid Bincarth Woods, the car ceased all motion. She stared, wide-eyed and breathless, into the dark of the wood, rain thudding against the metal of the roof. Moments later, she had stumbled out of the vehicle, flashlight in hand, stumbling into the damp of the forest. But the flashlight would not switch on, leaving her totally in the dark without direction or a glimmer of vision. It seemed as if she walked for ages, following only her vague memories of that map, her contractions getting shorter and shorter apart. The gloom seemed unforgiving, endless, no sense of understanding but what she imagined.
And then far up above she saw it, what she had only heard spoken of in whispers, the phenomenon of the Merry Dancers, the Northern Lights. High up above the clouds, a fierce solar wind collided with magnetic particles, lighting up the sky in waves of rippling green. The light seemed to rise in intensity, becoming brighter and more pronounced with every minute, until the mother could move across the forest with relative ease. But with each step, her womb threatened to eject. Tears streaming from her eyes, she felt as if she were lugging a sack full of rocks with her, weighing her down into the depths of water. Then suddenly, out of the dark, she saw the trees thinning out into a clearing, and there, in the center of it, was the building she searched for, the hotel known as Woodwick House. Suddenly, from the abyss of the dark, there was hope, the miraculous green above her acting as her guide.
Almost collapsing with the weight of her belly, she held its tortured surface and felt the kicks and pulls of its contents, screaming and shouting as loud as she could. She screeched as loud as a harpy, wailing out shamelessly across the wood, desperate to harness the attention of passersby. Since the last blackout, the hospital on the island had shut down, leading to midwives and doctors working out of a network of buildings. The hotel was once such location, now changed into a neonatal unit. Just as the mother stepped foot toward the property, seconds away from reaching its steps, a nurse dressed in white hurtled down the white staircase and grasped the mother in her arms. Together they entered the building with haste, briskly walking into the light of the entrance.
Everything was illuminated by the flames of candles placed around the smooth wooden counter. Few people were there in the waiting room, one cradling a baby in her arms by the entrance, weeping softly to herself. The mother saw this but ignored it, huffing and puffing through saliva and pain, her legs dripping with urine and liquid. The nurse escorted her up an ornate staircase, images of the island displayed on its walls, reminiscent of the tourist hotel it once was, but now converted into a neonatal unit. The dim gloom of the candles giving the building the air of a seance, the only form of light able to be used given the blackouts. A minute later, the mother lay on a gynecological table, her legs resting in stirrups. The candles here were red and tall, casting huge shadows of the mother’s body against the wall.
Time after time, she pushed, the nurse encouraging her and squeezing her hand. The mother screamed with a piece of wood between her teeth, no anesthetic available to dull the pain. “Tis th’ miracle o’ life, lassie,” whispered the nurse, her words bringing no hope to the agony of the mother. Through the glaze of tears and disorientation, she saw shapes in the room--dark figures that clustered around her, looking down from above like a faculty of watchers. They writhed about hideously, appearing as if they were both there and not, flickering by the candlelight. These visions tormented her mind, her gasps becoming breathless, until finally she passed out from the pain, her eyes quivering to a close.
When the mother awoke, the candles had been snuffed out, the room now lit by the hazy daylight through the windowpane. Moving was difficult, her stomach now a flap of useless skin, her legs shivering like jelly and numb to the touch. She awoke without children in her arms, dried blood still caking the surface of her skin. It was cold enough for her to see her breath, clouds of it steaming into the room. Through the weight of the blankets, she stumbled out, crawling along the floor, shivering and gasping as she went. She grabbed her leather pouch before making her way to the door. She pried open the wooden door and looked down upon the staircase. All was empty, not a person in sight. Her fingers clasped around the bars of the banister, using them for support as she moved like a snake, slithering down the stairwell.
Finally, she reached the front desk and clambered her arms up onto the side of it. There she saw the bell, its brass shining in the vague white light of the surrounding windows. She slapped it hard with a bloodied hand. The ding resounded around the walls, its echoes sharp and tinny. She continued this for some time, pressing it again and again, but nobody ever replied. Her cries for help did nothing either, only seeming to echo like voices in a cave. She wept for her children, confused and weak. Looking down at the desk, she saw a large book, heavy with old binding. On its face was a title scrawled in marker pen and partially laminated: BIRTH REGISTER OF WOODWICK HOUSE 2003-
The mother’s heart raced, thudding quicker than ever. She pried open the sticky pages with her dark red fingertips, her nail snapping as she turned through dates and columns, handwritten names blurring into a sea of ornate letters. Once her eyes had focused on what had been written, she saw that along with each date, beside it was t
he name of a mother, the date of her arrival, and the condition of her child. All said one deafening sentence, a terrifying term that struck fear into her mind, slicing through her deepest anxieties. Dead on arrival. Her tears fell upon the page, lips quivering, unable to accept the possibility. Finally, she reached the blank pages of the book’s back. They had only been dated since the time of the last blackout. And there, like the only light left in the kingdom of God, was her name written in black ink. Her name, written beside the date of several nights previous, and a single sentence all of its own: Twins, alive; Oculocutaneous albinism.
The mother did not know of the meaning, but alive meant that her babies were breathing somewhere, and that meant that everything in the world was good. Her legs quivered, threatening to collapse at any moment. And it was then that she turned her head to see the figure that lay on the carpet—the woman who had sat there nights before, who had cradled her baby in fits of tears. She now simply lay beside the door, her body up against the chair, her skin covered in pox-like sores. Her eyes were white, tongue hanging out and gray. In her arms was the bundle of cloth held tightly to her chest.
With that, the mother fell to the ground, scrambling for the bottle of whiskey in her purse. She sipped from it, leaving it half empty, placing it back into the leather interior. Her weeping was shrill and tempered, threatening to turn into cries of madness. But there in front of her, just beneath the back of the desk, was a telephone and a cord, a white wire curling into the wooden surface. Her fingertips grasped at its handle, slowly bringing it to her ear. But all she heard was a distant whining, a high-pitched tone that rang through her ears. Pressing buttons did nothing, producing just empty plastic clicks without any response. She allowed it to drop to the carpet, her weakened bones shivering themselves onto her back.