The Watchers

by A. M. Shine

  ‘I needed them to attempt new guises other than my own, but I didn’t think to bring any more photographs with me. I forgot many things. What I wouldn’t give for a gun with a single bullet. Just one is all I need.

  ‘I had but one photograph. The only one I ever carry with me – that of my wife. The woman I lost three years ago now. I wasn’t thinking straight. I never imagined the effect it would have on me, to see her again, but not her. A horde of imposters, desecrating my memories of her, turning the woman I loved into my greatest fear.

  ‘And I spoke to them. I told them so much and each night they listened. It’s terrifying how quickly they learn. I shared with them my studies and the history of the world that they were denied. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. I wasn’t fucking thinking.’

  Mina looked to Ciara and Daniel, pressed together for support, standing behind Madeline whose jaw was now tensed. Had the man’s words inspired in the woman a sense of sadness or of anger? Looking at him, now close to tears as he laid bare his life’s ruin, Mina wasn’t certain of her own feelings either.

  ‘Don’t run,’ he said, recouping his composure. ‘They will catch you. Don’t think that this woodland is their prison. They can reach the lands beyond it. Your legs will only take you so far, and that’s not far enough.

  ‘You have one chance to escape. It is no longer of any use to me. I cannot travel fast enough on foot. I slipped in the woodland. I wasn’t paying attention. It’s my ankle. I’ve shattered it, and so I’m stuck here. But you can make it.’

  Mina, Ciara, and Daniel leaned forward in unison. Even Madeline, ever so collected, arched back in her chair, willing the man to speak – to gift them hope across the passage of time and death.

  ‘To the south of here,’ he continued, ‘there’s a river. It’s narrow but its waters run. With a steady pace you could make it there in…’ here he paused to think ‘…seven, maybe eight hours. Don’t let up. You must run for as long as you can. You will find a boat there, upturned and covered with a black tarpaulin. It will take you the rest of the way. I can’t guarantee that you will make it but it’s your only shot. If you ever want to escape this place, then you must go south. I have left a compass on the desk in front of you. I regret to say that I won’t need it. Not anymore.

  ‘You need the daylight to keep them underground for as long as possible. Summer is your best chance. But if your supplies are low, then maybe you can make it if you leave at first light and don’t look back. Watch your step,’ he added, looking down at his foot, ‘if you’re a damn fool like I was, you’ll never make it out of here alive.

  ‘I’ve lost everything. To top it all off, I think my mind is failing me – the one thing I have left. There are moments when I feel as though there is another. I know they can’t come above ground during the day, but what if they can? What if even one of them has found a way? Some days I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. It’s ludicrous, I know, but I’ve heard branches break. I’ve seen something. I don’t know. Maybe I’ve finally lost it.’

  Kilmartin’s hand reached for something on the desk. When it rose into view it was holding a photograph. Mina could only discern its blank underside.

  ‘I hope that in reaching out to them that I haven’t doomed us all. What if they had forgotten how to mimic us? What if my presence here has merely reminded them?

  ‘Should you make it out of here, I need you to go to my office at the university in Galway. You must destroy everything that is mine. If someone were to examine my research, they might follow the trail that led me here. More may die because of me, and I can’t – I won’t – let that happen. Promise me that you will never speak about this place to anyone, please. Save yourselves and see to it that the world forgets again. These things are wicked. They toy with you. It’s like they enjoy it.’

  The man sat back in his chair with the photograph of his wife held in both hands. Its corners were worn from his touch. Had he said enough? He had told them nothing about his research. But then, that wasn’t the purpose behind the recording. Kilmartin wanted all knowledge of the watchers wiped from the face of the earth. But why offer them safe passage, knowing that their deaths would best keep his secret safe?

  ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Run because there is nothing here but pain and death. This is their home and we don’t belong. Forgive me for what I have done. Go to the university. Destroy everything.’

  Kilmartin’s hand was seen to reach towards the keyboard, and for a moment he stared directly into the camera. The tears in his eyes shimmered against the screen. And then he was gone. His final message had been delivered. Escape was possible.

  19

  A shaft of light dropped through the hatchway, causing the ladder to gleam like some heavenly passage, as though paradise was but a short climb away. The reality was never so disparate. Night had fallen, and without the sun as their shepherd they were four lambs surrounded, and the wolves were ravenous. The moment they had dreaded was upon them.

  No one had realised the time. Even Madeline – she with the ever-functioning hidden clock – was caught unaware. The hatch should have already been shut. What use was the safe house’s discovery if they left its door open?

  ‘One of you,’ Madeline snapped, looking to Ciara and Daniel. ‘Go, quickly!’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Mina put in, already racing towards the ladder.

  She wondered how Ciara and Daniel would fare on their own. They seemed to act only when asked to do so; manual gears that grinded when put into action. The likelihood of their survival without Madeline’s supervision was faint at best, like flowers in a long frost. My God, Mina thought, I’m starting to sound like her.

  The door to the coop was still unlocked. Ciara hadn’t even closed it behind her when she returned. Not that it really mattered anymore. It was too late. There was nothing up there that they needed, except maybe a few blankets, but their mustiness was probably best abandoned. And then Mina heard the parrot’s sad little cry in the room above. How could she have forgotten about him?

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Madeline shouted at her when she realised what was happening.

  ‘I’m not leaving him up there,’ Mina replied, bounding up the ladder and hauling her body into the coop.

  She heard Madeline leap from her chair, sending it crashing back against the desk, shaking the keyboards out of symmetry. Ciara and Daniel would be standing to the side, neither helping nor hindering. They were life’s bystanders, their lives apart from the events around them.

  ‘Mina,’ Madeline screamed, ‘so help me, I’ll lock you out.’

  The light was disorientating. Mina made the mistake of looking directly at it when she climbed from the opening. Her raw eyes darted towards the door with its chains dangling loose and feckless. She was stricken by that familiar vulnerable feeling. Death always stalked them. And with the door ajar, Ciara had practically invited it inside. The bird was by the wall, beaming at her from its perch. He was the only thing worth saving and the one thing that she had forgotten. She didn’t even stop to listen, to hear for some sound of their approach. If the bulb was on, then the watchers were coming in their droves, and they were coming fast.

  Mina heard Madeline’s body lurch up the ladder, moving at a pace so swift that it was unsettling. Was she actually going to seal the hatch?

  Mina’s fingers linked through the birdcage, pulling it up and into her arms. Memories of that day in December flashed across her mind – the innocence, the panic, and the call to run when her tired limbs screamed out to fall. It was the parrot’s screeching that had caught Madeline’s ear that night. Without the yellow one she would never have made it.

  Mina stole a fleeting glance at her reflection – at the imposter mimicking her every frantic movement. Much like Kilmartin’s monsters, it copied her down to the finest detail and it remained a horror to behold. Her memory took a snapshot; the kind of photograph one hides in the back sleeve of an album and removes only in private. For weeks she had observed he
r slow and steady decline. Should the mirror shatter, as she expected, then there was no telling when she would see again what she had become.

  How would she have drawn this face if she had seen it on the street? The dark folds around her eyes couldn’t be washed away. They were dry as dead leaves glued into a scrapbook; flaky and red from scratching them in her sleep. Her lips, once so full and shimmering from a fresh ply of gloss, had shrivelled up like a pair of slugs sprinkled with a heavy dose of salt. All skin was limpid; stark against the raven hair that she would shave off given half a chance. It had grown knotted and heavy, and just another burden weighing on her mind. Her scalp was always itchy. She imagined every horrible insect she knew crawling through it, nibbling into her skin and laying their eggs.

  Would anyone recognise her when she returned to the city? She would side-step the truth because the lie was kinder. Her car had broken down. That much was true to some extent. She had found shelter in the woodland, in a house of glass and stone, and that’s where she had been all that time. But why didn’t you look for help? This was the inevitable question, and one that she couldn’t answer. She had injured herself, just like Kilmartin had done. No more questions.

  How would she slot back into the world she had lost? What if she no longer fit? She liked to think that someone – even Peter – had asked after her and missed her company. But the ties to these people were tenuous at best and non-existent at worst. Maybe no one cared. She was just the sad, quiet girl who always left without saying goodbye.

  Madeline had almost reached the hatch when Mina thrust the yellow one towards her, giving the woman no time to react and certainly no time to slam the lid down.

  ‘Take him,’ Mina shouted, forcing Madeline back down from where she came.

  Mina clambered in and dropped the door over her head, letting her full weight hold it down, both feet scrambling to find a rung for support. An encouraging click was heard when she twisted its lever. Was it closed? Did that sound mean they were safe?

  ‘What if they know how to open it?’ she shouted down to Madeline who had since dropped down to the floor, discarding the yellow one as though it didn’t belong amongst them.

  ‘Kilmartin wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble if they could just open the door above his head,’ she replied angrily.

  Mina climbed down the ladder, slowly and reluctantly. Her chin was held high as she stared at the hatch, waiting for it to lift and for the coop’s light to flood down from above, declaring their destruction.

  ‘Come on, Mina,’ Madeline said. ‘Try as they will, they’re not going to get us down here. The door locks from the inside.’

  Madeline returned to her chair. With her back turned to them she sat, her fingers’ calloused tips tapping the desk at a tempo to match their hearts. Mina, Ciara, and Daniel came to stand around one another. No words were spoken. They weren’t necessary. Each one extended a hand towards the ladder, holding its cold steel for support as though they shared a subway train to oblivion. If death was coming that night, then it would come from above and there was nothing they could do about it. The hatch’s mechanism had locked, hadn’t it?

  Surveillance cameras weren’t needed to see the carnage that swept into the coop. Their fears, their minds, and the creeping madness that such horrors inspire were enough to imagine the scene above. The watchers’ grim refrain returned, but the steel was strong. They sounded further away than was possible. It instilled in Mina a feeling of safety, like a taste she couldn’t place – a sensation forgotten. Huddled beneath the hatch that divided them from certain death, all three of them smiled. They would see daylight again. Madeline’s wide shoulders didn’t budge. Her neck didn’t turn.

  ‘Who’s hungry?’ Ciara said, playfully nibbling her lip in a smile.

  Mina instinctively looked to Madeline, like a child unsure of the rules. She couldn’t help it. In all her life she never needed permission to do as she pleased. Why should Madeline be in charge? They were all in the same situation, and they all had a say in how they handled it. And still they dithered, all eager to eat, and yet deterred by Madeline’s silence and her unspoken sway over their lives. She must have been starving too.

  ‘Would you like to join us, Madeline?’ Mina asked.

  No response. It’s not as though she hadn’t heard.

  ‘Madeline?’ she pressed, casting a confused look at Ciara and Daniel.

  ‘You eat,’ she replied. ‘I’ll eat after. I want to watch the recording again in case I missed something.’

  That was sanction enough. Ciara was snatching cans from the shelf immediately. Daniel bounded in beside her. Mina’s fascination with Madeline had yet to serve its sentence. There were moments when the woman was like them. But they were few and far between. If life after the coop was to prove testing for anyone, Madeline would struggle the most. Even in a society of four she was an odd entity.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, sensing Mina’s gaze without turning, ‘I’ll join you shortly.’

  ‘Whatever you want, Madeline,’ she replied, feeling almost jealous of the woman’s self-control.

  The ping and peel of steel, and the aromas that blasted into that tiny room were euphoric. Every can they opened was another cause for laughter. This was happiness – the sweet smell of fruit, the texture of soup, the feeling of soft meat between their teeth; so much food that it clung to their gums, and they let it linger because it wasn’t about the morsel. This was a meal.

  Daniel dragged a plastic vat of water between his legs, hugging it like an old friend. It must have held ten litres. How many trips to the spring was that? How many days traipsing back and forth around the watchers’ pits?

  They ate like animals – all hands and teeth, grinning as they made absolute messes of themselves. No manners, no apologies, with every reason to gorge their fill. They were alive and sometimes that’s celebration enough. They ate so loudly as to drown out Kilmartin’s voice. His food was all that concerned them.

  When the recording had finished, Madeline turned in her chair. She didn’t look upon them as Mina had expected, with disgust and disapproval. The woman seemed pleased that they had ransacked their food supply like clumsy, starving thieves.

  ‘We leave tomorrow,’ she said, rising to her feet as though an order had been given and they were to fall into file.

  ‘Leave tomorrow?’ Ciara asked through a mouthful. ‘But we’ve so much food and water here.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Madeline replied. ‘And that’s why tonight we eat and drink, and we build up our strength for the journey ahead.’

  ‘But didn’t the video say to wait until the summer?’ Daniel asked. ‘There’s more daylight and we’ll have more time.’

  ‘The video,’ she said, visibly annoyed, ‘has given us a way out of here. We are, each of us, healthy. We carry no injuries. Who knows what will happen in the coming days, and unlike Kilmartin there are four of us. Unless none of you noticed there is a single bucket in the corner for a toilet and the building above us has been overrun. Sickness is inevitable. Do you understand? We will never be stronger than we are in this very moment.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait a few days?’ Mina put in. ‘Just to recoup our strength. And we do have so much food here.’

  Daniel nodded eagerly, as though Madeline had dragged him within sight of the gallows and only Mina could save his neck. She’d seen him break down before and knew that every silent alarm was sounding in his head, calling his fears to attention. Given the choice he would probably have rationed out their supplies until Kilmartin’s bunker became his tomb.

  ‘No, Mina,’ Madeline replied. ‘Now is the time. I am leaving tomorrow at first light. There is one boat and one way out of here. If any of you want to join me, then you’re more than welcome. But we’re only as fast as the slowest person, and I don’t intend on stopping once we leave. Do I make myself clear?’

  No one answered. No one knew what to say. Daniel looked nervously at Ciara whose full mouth had ceased to chew
. As gladdening as the thought of escape may have been, the reality of going through with it had finally occurred to them.

  ‘Good,’ Madeline said, content that her words had been digested. ‘Now, Daniel, if you would kindly pass me the water. I think I will join you for dinner.’

  The watchers’ disruption above suddenly seemed louder. There was no telling how many of them were up there, exerting every ounce of hate in their efforts to tear that hatch apart. Mina examined the can of peach slices in her hand, with its ring pull warped out of shape, and its lid bent upwards. To the creatures in the coop the shipping container was the can, and Mina was the meal; the fruit whose juices would splash red across corrugated walls.

  Her death would come easily for the watchers. It might even disappoint them. Her bones – so brittle, so sore and light – would break like the breadsticks in her favourite Italian restaurant where they always poured generously from the bottle, and where the windows carried no scratches. She had been so sure that she would never see it again. The table for one could still be hers.

  She watched Madeline inspect the rows of cans. So meticulous was her selection, Mina wondered if the woman was even peckish. After such prolonged starvation, her appetite would probably never recover again. It was just another thing that the forest had taken from her, never to return.

  Even on its driest day the woodland was a maze of obstacles, all vying to slow them down. Kilmartin’s compass would guide them but keeping their course as the crow flies was out of the question. If they weren’t in that boat and on that river by sundown, then it would all be for nothing.

  Mina knew that the odds were stacked against them. But hope isn’t founded on certainties. It’s the belief that the bad ending might not happen. She kept her head down, not wanting her doubts to rub off on the others, listening in to hear how they were dealing with Madeline’s impatient play for freedom. Daniel was watching Ciara from the corner of his eye. She was so still, staring at the ground like a riddle she couldn’t solve. Mina suspected the worst, that her mind had been abducted by dark, unsettling imaginings, of all that she had lost and all that they now stood to gamble.