by A. M. Shine
15
Ciara
Twigs and rotten branches crunched beneath Ciara’s feet. She flinched with every step, as though the ground itself could shatter, dropping her into a lightless hell where all her fears converged, plotting new ways to torment her. The well-trodden path she had known was lost, and she fought through its ruins like a worm listening for the crow’s searching patter, expecting in each moment to be picked out of place and devoured. All around her the trees braved their wounds. Sap bled from where the watchers’ claws had torn deep into the very heart of them, lashing out at anything within their reach, driven by a rage that had yet to be calmed, and one that would return with the dying of the day.
The spring water had never felt so far. Ciara hadn’t visited it for weeks. Not since Mina had assumed sole custody of the job. She was sure that she knew the way but now she had her doubts. The woodland had changed overnight. It was, however, the loneliness that troubled her most – that feeling that even her own shadow had abandoned her. There was no one to believe in her, no one to offer a smile when she needed it the most. Her eyes sparkled like gemstones in the morning light.
‘Oh, John,’ she whispered, ‘just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse.’
Ciara spoke to her husband often, gleaning from his memory the will to keep going. He would have wanted that. His last act was for her – his fateful attempt to seek help. To give up was to go against the man’s dying wish, and a world full of watchers couldn’t make her do that.
‘We’ll be home soon,’ Ciara said, as she stopped to catch her breath, the damp air clawing through her throat. ‘We’ll be free of this place, just the two of us. Just like always.’
The last month of Ciara’s life haunted her memory like a moment. There were no days. And there were no nights. She became indifferent to the coop’s light. And her daily combs for some trace of John repeated like some purgatorial torture. Ciara’s was a soul dissevered, searching for its missing half.
The others carried out the mechanical motions of survival, aware of what they had done but seemingly unaffected by it all the same. Every struggle needs a purpose. John was hers. And they had rallied to Madeline’s side to take that away from her, abandoning the best of them to those things, just to save themselves. His cries for help remained like a ringing in her ear, loudest when she watched them going about their jobs; those who never knew what it was to love and lose someone, and to know that person’s loss could have been prevented.
Ciara had nurtured Daniel like a puppy, only to have him snap at her when she needed him most. He was more Madeline’s pet than hers now. Cruel masters breed only cruelty, and the boy had learned from the worst. Mina could have taken those keys if she had wanted to. Ciara came to realise that she cared only for herself; always rambling around the woodland on her own and studying them under the coop’s light as though she were a watcher in disguise. None of them could be trusted. If only Ciara had known this sooner. She would never have let John go.
But something changed in her that night when Daniel stole the keys. Ciara was still too numb to emotionally connect with what was happening, acting more spectator than participant. She had watched the boy slide his back down to the floor, trembling, covering his face in shame as though Mina and Madeline were stood at the window, shaking their heads in disappointment. If Ciara was pleased, then she had forgotten how to smile. The dark fog of depression had obscured all other identifiable feelings. It was deserved, surely, that they should share John’s fate. Executioners with their heads on the very block that they once stood over, wielding their own selfishness like an axe. These thoughts trespassed in Ciara’s mind like strangers, uninvited and unwelcome, and utterly unrecognisable.
She had looked to the mirror, squinting in disbelief at who she had become. Mina’s voice outside the coop was a million miles away, her words registering only as sound, like a soft rain that would fade away at any moment. Ciara was listening instead to someone else. She had pictured John standing behind her, hands on her shoulders. There was a framed photograph above the fireplace just like it. Maybe that was the memory she had borrowed. What would John say to those who had let him die? Ciara knew that he would have forgiven them. He would have thanked them for keeping her safe. As agonising as the man’s final moments had been, it was nothing compared to the horror had he seen her running towards him.
Ciara toiled through the forest, stepping warily over its many branches and meandering roots. The light was a welcome novelty, but its presence was felt only because the canopy above had been so distraught by the watchers’ movements the night before. Like a tsunami of bodies, they had crashed through it, their strength and number obliterating all that stood in their way. Nature’s colour palette was unchanged – blacks and browns, and woolly mosses that still retained a faint floss of green.
Amidst this pallor – where the daylight fell in sickly patches – something caught Ciara’s eye. Had she not been paying such close attention to her every step then she may well have walked it into the soil, losing it forever without ever knowing it had existed. She took it in her hand and held it to the light. It was a white cable, manmade, like a piece of electrical wiring. John always took care of all the DIY stuff. One of its ends was cut, and some coloured threads frayed out from inside it. On the other end was attached a small black plastic cube, with what looked like a mirror on one side, no larger than a fingernail. Ciara glanced around her, searching for some clue as to where it had come from. It could only have fallen from one place – the branches above. She quickened her pace and made her way back to the coop.
During her walk, she fidgeted tirelessly with her discovery, examining it from every angle, caressing every inch of it, as though it were a magic lamp and within lived a genie that held all the answers. Ciara had hoped that she could present it to the group with some explanation as to what it was, but the implications of the thing – if there were any – were lost on her. What if it was nothing? What if Madeline should mock her for bringing back something so insignificant? Like a dog that found a stick in a forest, hoping to impress its master. If only John was there. He would have known what it was. Ciara closed her fist hard like a knot, hiding what she had found. Whatever it was, it was hers.
16
Daniel
Daniel had dashed around the forest in a panic. For every second spent outside the coop he was like a sailor thrown from his vessel. His fears and weaknesses barraged him in waves, and he struggled to breathe. There was shattered wood everywhere, and stones uplifted, but no rocks large enough to crack the cement. His shoes slid through the slimy blackness that was probably soil. He didn’t like to look at it. It had no colour, really; just the sickly sheen that dripped from the leafless branches above.
Whatever was happening and whatever new hell-gate they were about to enter, Daniel didn’t care. He would do as he was told. He would follow Madeline’s lead because whether he liked to admit it or not, she was in charge. She could be trusted to keep them safe.
Flashbacks of the day before played out like an out-of-body experience. It was him, running terrified like a fox with a hound snapping at his heels, fuelled by blind instinct and no other thought than to go faster, with no thought given to tomorrow. He couldn’t take it anymore, being trapped night after night with her. Daniel couldn’t take a drink of water without worrying that he might spill a drop, and that Madeline would make another example of him in front of the others. Even in those moments when he was alone, he still couldn’t keep his hands from shaking. Sometimes he cried so hard that he couldn’t breathe.
It was as though his past follies were fated to repeat themselves over and over, punctuating and defining his pathetic existence with the same mistakes. His father had confiscated the keys to his motorbike; symbolic of the jailer who ruled his life. The old man took sick satisfaction in denying him even the simplest pleasure, not unlike Madeline. Daniel knew the beating that his father would bring down on him for taking them without his permission.
And so, when he squeezed them in his hand, he had no choice but to follow through with it; to ride and never look back. Snatching Madeline’s keys was an instinctive act, like a muscle memory that had worked once before, and Daniel’s desperation had whispered in his ear that it might work again.
Would he have let Madeline back in had Ciara not peeled open his fist and taken the keys from him? He didn’t know. Mina shouldn’t have been left outside. But once that door was locked, the damage was done, and he couldn’t see any means to fix it without inviting Madeline’s rage upon him. Mina would come to hate him just like everybody else.
Daniel stared down at the stone, sizing it up, imagining its coldness against his hands. ‘Okay,’ he whispered. ‘This is going to hurt.’ He edged it forward with the tiniest steps, ignoring the pain and the irreparable damage he was no doubt bringing upon himself. Its unwieldy heft bent his body out of shape, like a fishing rod pulled to fracture. But this was it. This was the hammer that would crack the ground. Sweat seeped through his pores and pooled in his armpits. Every squelch of soil and every wheeze that burst from his throat brought him that little bit closer, slowly and sorely. Each ounce of pain that was his to suffer was another pardon for what he had done.
17
Mina
‘We can’t tell them,’ Madeline said. ‘They’re not like you and me. They wouldn’t understand. Since they each came here, neither of them has sought out the truth. They honestly don’t seem to care. One is too young, the other too stupid. Keeping them both alive has been a chore.’
‘But what difference does the truth make?’ Mina asked. ‘Despite what you know, do you have any intention of ever escaping this place?’
‘I did,’ she replied, ‘and there are days when I still do. But you get one shot at it, Mina. We can’t outrun them, even in the summertime. I’ve toyed with many ideas. I even tested them, and the results were all the same.’
‘What do you mean you tested them?’ Mina asked.
‘I thought that maybe I could hide from them. If I travelled as much ground as I could before nightfall, and then dug a hole in the earth, concealing myself for the long night under a cover of soil with just enough air to breathe, then I would have a day ahead of them. I could have made the journey slowly, but always out of sight, and only with daylight on my side.
‘With this idea in mind I buried a dead bird as far from the coop as I could reach. I buried it so deep, Mina. No one would ever find it, and no predator could ever catch scent of it. But the next day, when I returned, the earth had been carved asunder. They had found it.’
‘So, we’re fucked then?’ Mina said, looking through the window’s lattice of etches and to the trees that stood sentry over their lives; a prison of wood, with wardens that could sniff out the smallest jailbird.
‘Maybe not,’ Madeline replied, looking at the floor. ‘All the time I’ve been here, searching for a way out. I never thought – not in my wildest dreams – that it could be beneath me.’
‘What do you think is down there?’ Mina asked.
‘Somewhere safe to wait out the night, even if that’s all there is.’
If the watchers had existed for centuries, and record of mankind’s encounters with them enjoyed such ease of access, then of course another had sought them out. But how – with their threat so constant – could they possibly exploit the precious day-lit hours to build within the woodland?
‘We’re not dying here,’ Mina whispered, and before she could say any more the front door creaked open.
Her eyes met with Madeline’s when they heard the boy’s tired, pained breathing echoing through the corridor. Mina hoped that he had found what Madeline wanted. Despite everything, she still wanted him to succeed, to find his place in a puzzle where none of them really fit. The boulder rolled into sight first, and then Daniel followed behind it, his spine so hooked that he strained to stand upright when he looked to them, searching desperately for their approval.
‘That should do the job,’ Madeline said to him, stepping against the wall, guiding Mina alongside her with the gentlest touch of her hand.
Daniel was spent – worn down to the bone. Mina saw how the pain reached like a rope around his neck, pulled taut, dragging him down. The promise of rest had forced him to that point, to the supposed end, but his role was far from over. Madeline’s spiteful eyes guided him towards the room’s centre. He wiped the sweat from his brow and secured his hands around the stone’s cold sides.
Mina stood beside Madeline, surprised by how she had come to be there, nestled in the wings of a woman whom she couldn’t make up her mind to trust or not. A lot had changed in twenty-four hours. Life in the woodland was, if anything, unpredictable. She wanted to help Daniel, even if her strength would do little to allay the boy’s burden. But no, Madeline’s hand slowly closed around her shoulder and though not tensed, its presence held her in place. Mina knew it was cruel to stand back and watch Daniel suffer, but in that moment, in Madeline’s debt and seemingly under her control, she did just that.
The boy’s pale skin burned red. Sweat soaked his forehead and gathered like a gutter above his lip. He lifted the stone as high as his aching arms could manage, and let it drop each time like an anvil on the weakness in the floor – this oddity in a world that couldn’t get any stranger. There was the dull thud and the ringing chime, like a single-note song. Every time it disturbed the air the cracks grew larger, like a frozen lake breaking beneath their feet. It wouldn’t take long. Mina was glad of this, for Daniel’s sake.
The sound of stone cracking down on cement reminded Mina of home – her real home; of that summer when the city council tore up the street right during tourist season. Outside her window they had strewn about their orange cones, and for five days straight they had hammered, and they had drilled until she almost forgot what silence sounded like.
The cavity grew deeper. Daniel’s every exertion was almost violent. His war alone was with the floor. It was as though this little victory – after so many defeats – was all that mattered.
‘We should help him,’ Mina whispered in Madeline’s ear. ‘He’s going to hurt himself.’
‘It’s the least he deserves,’ she replied.
The boulder sank into the cement like an anchor finding its niche amidst the deep, and they all heard it – the clash of stone against steel. The floor had given way. Daniel collapsed beside it, his every muscle wrung of life, his veins pulsating with a pain that would last a lifetime. But it didn’t matter. His job was done. He had earned his place amongst them.
Madeline didn’t hesitate. She was standing over their discovery before Daniel’s shoulders had even felt the floor. Mina wasn’t so eager. There was no knowing what was down there.
‘Mina, come and look at this,’ Madeline said, her voice carrying no hint of delight or depression.
Embedded in the floor was a black steel hatch, square in shape, with a silvered handle; the kind you pull and twist like an airlock. Madeline knelt beside it and picked aside the shards of cement. She wiped the dark metal clean with the palm of her hand.
‘What is it?’ Daniel asked, still spread across the floor, staring at the ceiling.
‘Daniel, please,’ Madeline snapped, drawing her eyes over their discovery.
She tapped it with her knuckle. The echo of steel occupied the room, hanging in the air like a thought. Was this what they had hoped for?
‘It’s a door,’ Mina said.
There was no discussion about it. Madeline’s leadership was far from democratic and her curiosity wouldn’t wait for a vote. With Daniel enfeebled on the floor and Ciara still procuring water from the spring, there was only Mina left to present some opposition. But she said nothing. Why waste her voice on someone who wouldn’t listen?
Madeline’s bony hand reached for the handle. Mina thought of the watchers’ tunnel system surrounding the coop, every passage leading to this one spot – the centre of it all. She imagined them, silently gathered behind the black ste
el, waiting for it to open.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she whispered.
‘What other choice do we have, Mina?’
The mechanism clicked and the hatch was seen to lift ever so slightly. Mina held her breath. The desire to see what lay within was outweighed only by the dread of what it might be. The lid rose as though it was fresh from a factory line. There was no creak of rust or squeal of damp. Mina wouldn’t have been surprised if there had still been a price tag on it.
Daniel rolled away when he realised what was happening. Even with all the strength squeezed out of him, still he found the energy to be afraid. Madeline was sniffing around the opening like a foxhound. After an especially long and almost savoury intake of air, she looked to Mina.
‘They aren’t down there,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they’ve ever been down there, judging by the smell.’
‘What does it smell like?’ Mina asked.
‘Metal,’ Madeline replied, thoughtfully. ‘And leather and…’ she took another deep breath ‘…linen.’
There was no light below, just darkness; unbroken and undisturbed. Mina peered blindly into its depths, primed to fall back lest her fears be realised. She couldn’t smell anything. She could see even less.
‘Hello!’ she shouted, and her voice dropped down the steel throat; no echo, no response. The dark was empty. The rungs of a ladder were aligned to one side. The little daylight that crept through the coop revealed the uppermost two, and no more. On the plus side, nothing had yet climbed up the ladder. But the next step was obvious. There was only one way to know what was down there.
Mina imagined her sister shaking her head disapprovingly. This is a bad idea, Meens, she could hear her saying. How many times had Jennifer repeated that famous line? It had become the slogan for all of Mina’s decisions. Studying art in college was a bad idea. So, too, was smoking and drinking, and being single. Just being Mina seemed to be the worst idea imaginable. Luckily, Jennifer couldn’t see her now.