Voices in the Snow

by Darcy Coates

  As they moved towards it, Clare became aware of subtle scratching noises surrounding her. Coupled with the unrelenting stench, it gave her the impression of being surrounded by rats. But the noise was wrong for rodents. She knew it from the week she’d spent trying to ignore it. Fingernails on stone. Fingernails on wood. She swallowed and tasted fear.

  Dorran stayed alert, but his attention had turned to the sliver of light. When he reached it, he crouched to feel around it. Lamplight painted deep shadows over his face. He pressed his fingertips against the wall and pushed. A muted crunching noise echoed, then the section pushed out, swinging silently on well-oiled hinges.

  They stepped through the opening, and Clare lowered her lamp as natural light replaced it. Dorran rubbed his palm against his forehead. Although his expression was stony, his lips twitched.

  As Clare looked around them, she thought the scene was familiar. She recognised the tall walls, dark, intricate wallpaper, and elaborate architraves. A support pillar jutted out of the wall every ten feet. To her left, at the end of the hall, was a window that had once had a curtain hung over it.

  They had arrived back in the third-floor hallway.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “There are secret passages in my home.” Dorran’s smile was bitter, and his lips continued to tremble. Whether it was from repressed anger or shock, Clare wasn’t sure. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I never knew. Apparently, trust is considered a luxury in this family.”

  Clare wished she could say something to help, but her tongue was dry. The first time she’d seen one of the strangers, she’d been standing at the window at the end of the hallway. She could have sworn she’d seen a figure lurking in the darkness. But a second later, it had vanished. They were now standing where it had stood, at one of the support pillars. The door had been moulded to blend in with the pillar’s edges. Clare could have walked past it a thousand times and never noticed the hairline cracks.

  When she looked back through the opening, she could see the secret passageway continuing, dipping into stairs shortly ahead. That answered the question of how the hollow ones had been moving through the house without being seen. But it raised another question: how far did the pathways go? She dreaded finding out the answer to that, but she could guess some of their destinations.

  The cellar.

  Dorran twisted to the right, towards their bedroom door. Clare followed his gaze and felt her heart skip a beat. The tall creature hovered near the stairs. Its arms hung limp at its sides. Its slack jaw twitched into an expression that might have been a smile or a grimace. It took a staggering step closer, its bowed head scraping across the plaster as it moved.

  “Careful,” Dorran said. “Get behind me.”

  The creature’s arms swung like pendulums as it rocked nearer, saliva dripping from its open maw. Dorran took a step forward, feet braced and crowbar raised.

  Something moved beside him. Pale limbs glistened in the concealed doorway. Fingers, mottled and eight inches long each, reached out, aiming for Dorran’s head.

  “No!” Clare lunged, bringing her poker down on the grasping hands as they snagged Dorran’s collar. Bones crackled. The lamp swung precariously as Clare desperately shoved Dorran out of reach of the hands.

  Dorran reacted quickly, twisting towards her, but the hands were faster. Clare swung at them but missed. Fingers tangled in her hair and yanked her so sharply that she could barely gasp. They dragged her through the doorway and into the darkness inside the walls. More bony hands wrapped around her arm and tightened on her ankle. They wrenched her in opposite directions, and Clare fell, flinching as she hit the floor hard. The lamp shattered. Its flame exploded upwards as the oil spilled, but almost immediately, something large flopped over it, extinguishing the light.

  Dorran was halfway through the opening, weapon raised and teeth bared. That was a mistake. The tall woman was on him in that split second of inattention, dragging him back and forcing him onto the hallway’s carpet. Clare tried to yell, but cold fingers pressed over her face, stifling her.

  Then the door slid closed, and Clare’s world was enveloped in blackness. The smoke from the broken lamp blended into the rancid stench and what smelled like burning flesh. Clare fought blindly, swinging her poker at the creatures holding her. One blow hit its mark, thudding into flesh and bone, but the creature didn’t loosen its hold. Clare kicked. Her foot passed through empty air. Something heavy pressed into her back, forcing her over so that she was facedown on the floor. All around her, she heard scrabbling, scratching noises. Then Dorran yelled. It was faint, insulated by the thick walls. He sounded like he was in pain. Clare reached to where the door had been, but something sharp crushed her outstretched hand into the floor. She tried to scream, but with the hand over her mouth and her lungs starved of oxygen, all she could manage was a whine.

  The creatures were chattering. The soft, animalistic noise grew in volume. She could feel a presence approaching her, but she was blind in the darkness. She writhed, trying to throw them off, and managed to get one arm free. Two more hands grasped it and yanked it down at her side.

  The chattering swelled, turning into something that sounded like a chaotic chant, and Clare squeezed her eyes closed. Something hard and heavy smacked into the back of her head, and her vision exploded into a swirl of darkness and dancing red dots.

  The pain was intense, like molten lava being poured over the back of her skull and into her eyes. She no longer felt certain of which way was up, and her limbs refused to move properly. The clammy fingers pinched as they dragged her along the hallway then down the stairs, each step jarring the pain in her head and making her twitch. Consciousness faded in and out, and with it came nausea. She wanted to scream, to make them stop, but innately, she knew that noise would bring another blow. Instead, she gritted her teeth and tried, as much as she could, to be aware of where she was being taken.

  They dropped down a sharp step, and Clare’s head smacked into the floor. The pain intensified until it was unbearable. More sparks danced across her eyes then faded out.

  When she opened her lids again, she was lying on her side on something hard and freezing cold. She knew she must have passed out, but she didn’t know for how long. She was blind. A horrible fear rose that the monsters might have clawed out her eyes, and it took effort to suppress the panic. Her eyes hurt, but not enough to be missing.

  She wasn’t alone. Noises coursed around her. Quiet enough to be whispers, the clacking of dozens of nails across stone and phlegmy, rasping breaths bled together into a terrible symphony.

  Fear choked her. She fought to push it down, to keep it under control, to keep her mind working. She lay perfectly still in an effort to avoid attracting attention. With her eyes useless, she had to rely on her other senses. The stench from the hallway was stronger than it had been before. It wasn’t helping her nausea. Only the panic clenching her stomach kept it at bay.

  By the scope of the sounds, she knew she must be surrounded by the creatures. She didn’t understand why she was still alive. She’d assumed they were mindless, that all they cared about was eating, that they would have consumed her the first chance they had.

  Moving very carefully, trying not to make any noise, Clare extended a hand to feel the surface she was lying on. From what she could tell, it was a rough slab of rock. Uneven edges jabbed into her, and the section below her cheek was cold enough to make her face ache. It was helping the headache, though, which was a small mercy.

  She no longer had her fire poker. Both her jacket and boots were gone, leaving her arms and feet cold. Clare tried to mentally run through her body, assessing for damage. She didn’t think any bones were broken. Everything hurt, from her head to the bruises across her side and back. Something solid pinched the skin around her ankle. When Clare tried to move her foot, a chain link clinked.

  Her fear crept up to a new level. She had a shackle around her foot. If this was the creatures’ doing, she had vastly underestimated the
m, their motives, and their intelligence.

  Dorran…

  Amongst the rough breathing of the bodies moving around her, Clare tried to pick up on any sign that she had human company. If Dorran was there, he was staying perfectly silent. Clare closed her eyes against the repressive dark and tried not to hyperventilate.

  She’d distracted him. He’d turned his attention away when Clare yelled, and it had allowed the tall creature to rush him and force him to the ground.

  Dorran was strong, fierce, and resourceful. But he was also exhausted.

  Her heart ached. She’d wanted to be with Dorran to keep him safe, and she’d done exactly the opposite. If he’d been hurt, she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself. A dark part of her mind took it a step further and asked what would happen if he was already dead. The pains across her body suddenly felt insignificant to the way she ached inside.

  Clare moved as silently as she could. She breathed through her mouth to minimise the noise and try to reduce the overpowering smell as she curled her body. She kept her leg still so as not to disturb the chain and felt around the restraint. It had been manufactured out of thick metal. The shackle had been intended for someone larger and didn’t fit around Clare’s leg properly. She thought, if she could turn her foot at the right angle, she might be able to squirm through.

  The chattering noise around her rose in volume, and Clare froze. A slow, steady clicking—louder than the sounds around it—was coming closer. Clare tried to pinpoint its direction, but the darkness was too disorienting.

  Quick. Before whatever’s coming arrives. This might be your only chance.

  She gave up trying to be silent. Clare got her fingers under the shackle, testing its size, and began to pull it over her foot.

  The fit was close. But even with her heel pulled in and toes pointed, Clare didn’t think she could get her foot through. Not without something to help it slide over the skin.

  “She is blind. Let us have some light.”

  Clare froze. The voice belonged to a woman, but not like any woman she’d ever heard before. The words were spoken slowly and enunciated crisply, with a faint accent that Clare couldn’t pinpoint. The voice rang with authority. She could easily imagine it belonging to some kind of aristocracy. At the same time, it had been distorted. The words sounded too dry, almost cracked.

  She shrank back from the voice. A moment later, a soft hiss was accompanied by the glow of a freshly lit candle. The light was weak, but Clare had spent so long in the dark that she still squinted.

  The hissing and chattering grew louder. Shapes scurried back from the light, their distorted faces watching it warily. Then Clare saw the woman holding the candle and had to bite her tongue to stop a scream.

  The woman stood tall, well over seven feet. Her papery-white skin was creased, partially from age and partially from the distortion her body had undergone. Lines around her lips told Clare that they had been pursed often in life. She suspected she would have seen frown lines around the eyes as well, except the lower lids had drooped. They created dark crescent-moon shapes below the eyes, where once-pink skin had turned black. It made the stark-white eyeballs seem poised to slip and tumble out. Steel-grey hair had been wrapped into a bun on top of the creature’s head, though wisps sagged out of the formation.

  The woman wore a dress that would have been magnificent before it had been torn. Its high collar brushed her chin, and its dark-red bodice was entwined with black lace trim. She clasped the candle in a bony hand, unconcerned with trying to protect her fingers from the dripping wax. She had eight fingers on each hand. Then Clare’s eyes moved down, and the malformed hand became the least of her concerns.

  The dress’s skirt had been shredded. Dark silk strips rustled with the woman’s every step, and behind them, Clare could see legs. The woman had insect legs.

  Clare pressed her hand over her mouth as she tried to shuffle farther back. Her thigh slipped over the edge of what she realised was a dais, and she froze.

  The woman’s legs moved rhythmically, almost as though she’d had them her whole life. It was clear she hadn’t, though. Gore still stuck to the exposed bone segments. They ended in sharp protrusions, like a crab’s legs, and had too many joints. Clare counted six full-grown legs, but others were still developing. Two more had burst from the woman’s waist. They wiggled uselessly in the air with every step she took.

  “Well?” The woman’s upper lids descended in what would have been a slow blink if the lower lids had met them, then they fluttered back up. “Show your respects to the mistress of the house.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Madeline Morthorne,” Clare whispered.

  The woman’s chin lifted a fraction of an inch. She swept towards Clare, the horrible clicking from her spindly feet echoing through the space. The candlelight flickered around them, and Clare tore her eyes away from the woman. The area she was in seemed to be a cavern. Rough stone walls surrounded her, and she couldn’t see the ceiling. She tried to count the creatures in the space. There seemed to be more than a dozen, but it was hard to be sure when they were moving incessantly, scurrying across the ground or climbing the stone walls.

  She hazarded a question. “Where am I?”

  Madeline’s nostrils flared, but her voice was steady and measured as she answered. “Below the cellar. In my private rooms.”

  That meant the secret passages had to spread through the whole house. They were well-built but not well used… until recently. She guessed previous generations had installed them as shelters for a worst-case scenario. A paranoid woman who built her family’s home in the middle of the forest seemed like just the sort of person who would turn them into a maze of secrets.

  Her head throbbed, and her arm ached. The cold metal was an unpleasant weight on her ankle. As Madeline circled her, Clare chanced a look at the chain. It was short and bolted into the edge of the stone slab, trapping her on the dais. The shackle wasn’t quite large enough to pull over her foot, not without scraping the skin.

  And once she got out, she had no idea which direction to go. No matter where she looked, all she saw were unyielding stone walls and the relentlessly chattering hollow ones.

  “You’re not like the others.” Clare spoke carefully, afraid of flaring anger, but trying to feel out the exact extent of the situation.

  Madeline’s eyebrow quirked up. “Of course not. They are only servants.”

  Clare swallowed. Now that she was looking, she realised the pitiable creatures were still wearing scraps of maid uniforms. She recognised the woman from the basement, with the many-jointed arms. She crawled upside down, her breastbone pointed at the ceiling and saliva trailing down her cheek and into her hair. The spines growing from her back scraped across the stones. The dress clinging to her jutting hips had the neat black-and-whites that Clare guessed the staff must have worn before the world fell apart.

  She looked aside and saw the maid she and Dorran had encountered in the attic. He’d commented that she wore the collar of a dress. It was discoloured and had been splattered with blood from some gory feast. If it hadn’t been so stained, Dorran might have recognised it as the collar of one of the staff’s uniforms.

  “These are your entourage,” Clare muttered.

  “My servants.” The voice took on a biting threat. “My personal maids who care for my needs. They have gone witless, but they still know their mistress well enough to mind my commands. Most of the time.”

  As she passed one of the creatures, Madeline extended a hand. Her multitude of fingers curled under the maid’s chin as it cowered, eyes wide and adoring. Madeline’s fingers twitched, and pricks of blood appeared at the creature’s throat. Then Madeline stepped away, and the maid crumpled to the ground, shaking and head bowed in reverence.

  Disgust curled through Clare. Madeline was treating them as something even less than pets. And they seemed to adore her for it.

  “Why am I here?”

  Clare dreaded the answer, but none
came. Madeline’s thin, bloodless lips curved into a smile. She continued to pace, a hint of satisfaction shining in her eyes, content to let the silence stretch. Clare had the distinct impression that they were waiting for something. She tried a different question.

  “You must have been outside the forest when you changed.” She knew she was reaching, but Clare needed to know if Madeline remembered what had happened to twist her so viciously. “You were travelling to Gould, right? You and the rest of your family.”

  Madeline’s face tightened, and for a moment, her drooping lower lids twitched. “You are right. The car stopped. They had instructions to travel without break, so I opened my door to understand why I had been disobeyed, and I heard them screaming.”

  “Who?”

  “The others.” Her hand flicked out in a dismissive wave. “My family. And the servants in the bus. They were going wild. Clawing at their own faces as though they were animals. Biting at each other. It was all I could do to gather my maids and lead them home.”

  Another of the creatures quivered as Madeline passed. She was circling the dais. What for, Clare couldn’t tell.

  “Did you see or feel anything?” Clare cleared her throat at Madeline’s sharp glare. “When you changed, what happened?”

  “The air.” Her expression grew distant. “It was sour. Oh, it burned when it was swallowed. How my darlings screamed. But it made us strong. It made us able to endure…”

  Wax was dripping over the edge of the candle. It trickled over the woman’s many fingers, but she didn’t so much as flinch. Whatever it was, it dulled their nerves.

  Madeline saw her staring. A hint of a smile ghosted over her pale lips. She reached out and overturned the candle.

  Clare was too slow to react. She screamed as burning wax splattered over her neck. Her headache flamed up, scorching like an inferno, as she hit her head on the dais, fingers clawing in an effort to scrape off the wax.