by A. M. Shine
When the bus arrived at the coach station, not one of them made any attempt to move. The concrete was back, but it was smooth and clean. It kept them safe from the maddening crowds and muted the sounds that spoiled the air. There was glass, too, and behind it the lights of the station’s lobby, where strangers dallied in loose clusters. Some carried the tiredness of a journey’s end, others the fresh excitement of a trip just beginning. Mina recognised it all, but the memories didn’t seem like her own. They felt as though they had been stolen from a movie or stage performance; a fictious world populated by actors where only she knew what was real and what wasn’t. She had stepped out from the curtain and seen the monsters that had, all the while, been watching them.
The tourists trickled down the short steps of the bus, silently and neatly. Some glanced back at Mina. Others were careful not to turn their heads for fear of making eye contact. A young girl waved at the parrot before being dragged onward by her mother. She had Spanish eyes and black curly hair and wore pink wellington boots that squeaked. Mina instinctively studied their faces from the corner of her eye, but not for those reasons that inspired her sketches once upon a time. She looked for any expression, some tangible proof that they were human. Such fears, she whispered to herself, were irrational. But one of the many lessons that the forest had taught her was that her fears don’t care.
Mina ran her fingers down the cold glass. The significance of its transparency was ingrained in her psyche. But whenever she looked away, a thin reflection watched her in the periphery of her vision, as though she was haunted by her past self – the one still sitting on the floor of the coop, waiting to be saved.
The driver closed the door after the last passenger had stepped off. He rubbed his hand through his snowy beard, working his gums as if sucking on a strong mint, and looked at the oddities that he had picked up, settling eventually on Mina as their representative. As though the woman with the caged bird seemed the sanest one amongst them.
‘Do you want me to call someone?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know if you’ve any family who might be looking for you. I can call the guards or maybe the hospital? It’s whatever you want.’
Mina looked to her companions for an answer, uneasy in the role as spokesperson. Madeline’s lips were sealed. No surprises there. Never had the woman appeared so unsure of herself. All that she knew and learned had gotten her this far. But now these skills were worthless when faced with a lobby full of new faces and the steady rumble of their voices. Ciara sat with her arms crossed tight as though she might fall apart if she ever released them. She stared agog at the driver as though she hadn’t understood a word he had spoken.
‘I don’t live far,’ Mina replied, coughing to clear her throat, ‘just on Mainguard Street.’
‘And are you all staying together?’ the driver asked.
Mina hadn’t thought this far ahead. They were, quite simply, together. There was never any choice in the matter. Eventually they would each go their separate ways, but the horrors they shared were still too strong to be divided.
‘Yes,’ she said, firmly, ‘they’re staying with me.’
The driver nodded understandingly and returned to his seat. He slipped back on his belt, and the door squeaked closed. Another loud sibilance came from beneath them, right before the engine’s warm drone drowned out all other sounds.
‘I’ll get you as close as I can,’ he shouted back to them. ‘We can’t have you walking through the town looking like you do.’
The sights of the city were as Mina had remembered. As she had every day imagined them to be. She caught glimpses of faces by glowing shopfronts, pockmarked with shadows, and some she thought she recognised. Maybe she had drawn them or passed them on the same street so many times that they had earned some place in her memory. Was this how it must feel to die and return as a ghost? To see how the world moved on without you, only to find that it never even realised you were gone.
The bus slowed to a stop. Its indicators clicked like a metronome over the low grumble of the engine. Mina could see her street; a mirage that stayed solid. There was a queue of taxis patiently lining the rank. Some of the drivers’ faces were visible by the light from their phones. She turned away sharply. Her fears manifesting in beads of sweat. It was John’s face that haunted her the most. She knew it couldn’t have been him, and yet it had looked so human. Could the watchers wear all their faces with such ease? Mina imagined a hundred versions of herself standing amidst the trees, all staring skyward at the cracks of moonlight dancing in their dead eyes.
The take-away on the corner, with its wide windows, was bright as the coop. Those four words – stay in the light – were all that Mina’s mind could see, above the fireplace, in that room where she had sat so many times, wondering if she would ever make it home. She watched the oblivious diners, chewing on food that she had forgotten the taste of. It was bizarre to think that she could casually stride in and buy a warm meal. No bird traps. No foraging. Did people ever realise how lucky they were? Her hand felt around the pocket of her jeans and touched the hard shape of her keys. To think she had nearly tossed them away that day when Madeline had found them.
‘Are you going to be okay?’ the driver asked.
‘We’ll be okay,’ Mina smiled tiredly, looking at the others. She wanted to embarrass the man with torrents of gratitude but she couldn’t find the words. Talking to someone outside of their closed little circle felt strange. The door made a short screech, and the city sounds slipped into earshot.
‘Go on,’ the man said, smiling back. ‘Whatever hell you’ve all been through, it’s over now.’
‘Thank you,’ was all Mina said, and never had she so sincerely meant it.
The floor of the bus carried a light carpet, like worn felt, that her toes had enjoyed. It made the pavement outside feel all the colder. They stood together on the street, looking like tourists who had travelled from a very, very poor country.
‘Nearly there,’ Mina whispered to the golden one, who looked both thrilled and terrorised by everything that was happening.
The bus didn’t pull away immediately. The door to Mina’s apartment building was only thirty or so feet away; cobalt blue and scratched to white where one of her neighbours always missed the keyhole after a night out. What if her key didn’t fit? It had been in her pocket for so long that one of her protruding bones might have warped it out of shape. She took a deep breath, and felt her ribs rising. Please work, she thought. Her wrist turned. She leant her weight against the door and pushed it open. As the others funnelled in after her, Mina could hear the bus driving off.
The automatic lights blinked awake before the door clicked behind them. Mina heard Madeline’s nostrils sniffing behind her. The stone-tiled stairs and entranceway must have been mopped that morning, as the whole place stank of bleach. Mina had forgotten what clean smelt like. Her home was only three floors’ worth of stairs away, and they met each one with care and silence, listening out of habit for any sound not of their making – a habit founded on fear. Even the bird respected it.
‘Home sweet home,’ Mina said as she slotted the key into her apartment’s door.
The storage heaters had squandered electricity every night, and the boiler would have heated the water, too. It was so warm; so perfectly suffocating. To think of all those days Mina had huddled by the stream, dousing her body in liquid ice, her heartbeat racing against the cold. Forget about it, Meens. We’re home now. She switched on the light and stopped in the doorway of her kitchen come living room; a single space burdened with a dual purpose.
Mina didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. So, she did both. This little room – this most ordinary, insignificant little room – framed a million memories before her eyes. Moments, once deemed as dispensable, were recognised and revalued.
Christmas-themed junk mail was piled in the basket on her kitchen table; fold-out flyers for supermarkets and cheap envelopes embellished with bells and holly. An old box of matches lay atop
its crest. Beside it ran a trail of dry tobacco, spillage from a hasty roll. She used to leave traces of it everywhere she went. One of the two chairs was pulled out, with her favourite burgundy scarf draped over its back. I could have done with that over Christmas. The clothes horse by the window was bare save for a single sock that looked like it had shrunk in the sunlight. The dirty plates were in the sink. The half-full bottle of wine still perched on top of the fridge. Had she known the winter that lay ahead of her, she wouldn’t have left a drop behind. A faint feeling of dust was everywhere. The room was a time capsule. Jennifer had not come looking for her. No one had.
Madeline strode straight over to the window. God bless any poor people who might have looked up and seen her. She watched the street as though everything was new to her. Gone were the trees and their concrete cell, and that one view into nothingness. Madeline still watched the world through glass. But there was finally something to see – the world they had so longed to return to, unchanged from Mina’s memories and yet different in every way imaginable.
Daniel should have been there with them, probably entwined into a shock of nerves and unease as though he had landed back at a stranger’s house party and was too shy to speak to anyone. It didn’t seem possible that she wouldn’t see him again. Mina had overheard his conversation with Ciara that last night beneath the coop, but never had the chance to speak to him about it. Daniel had no family to miss him. His father – that cruel bastard – would never know how brave his son had become; a better man than he could have ever been.
Madeline’s eyes darted around the room as if following an insect. Mina guessed that the normality of their surroundings had left her bewildered. She was struggling to adjust, too. They seemed to stand around out of politeness, waiting for someone else to experience happiness first. In the coop, when the light was on, it was routine to do nothing, to breathe and wait. Doing nothing was something they had each mastered.
Ciara ambled awkwardly around the room, examining it like a prospective buyer, taking into account the curtains, the flooring, and the layout of the furniture. Aspects that even Mina had never lent much thought to. But her attention kept straying to the two windows facing onto the street, and then back to the door. It carried none of Kilmartin’s reinforced locks or chains should something come scratching at it.
The night wouldn’t be theirs again for a long time. And even then, regardless of what beauty they found in the moonlight, they would never feel safe knowing what walked beneath it.
‘Welcome to your new home,’ Mina announced to the yellow one, placing the cage on the kitchen counter. It beamed at her as though it secretly understood. The little bird had been with her every step of the way, and their journey was finally over.
The overhead light was too reminiscent of the coop, and so Mina plugged in the old-fashioned lamp that came with the lease. Frayed tassels hung sadly from its lampshade, faded to an insipid yellow. Its glow was kinder on the eyes, and it made the room feel a little more like home – the real home. It seemed much bigger and far more colourful than Mina remembered.
‘It’s not very fancy,’ she said, standing like a stranger in her own sitting room, ‘but you’re welcome to stay with me for as long as you like.’
‘Thank you, Mina,’ Madeline said; the first words she had spoken since they boarded the bus.
They had made it, just the three of them. There was no John. No Danny. If their escape from the forest was cause for celebration, then they had more reasons to grieve. And Ciara, more than Mina and more than Madeline, had left so much behind her. Mina had gotten the chance to say goodbye to her mum, and still she regretted all those things she hadn’t said. Ciara never had that comfort.
‘I know what you both need,’ Mina announced, eager to distract Ciara, to postpone the mourning of the life that the watchers had taken from her.
‘What’s that?’ Ciara sniffed, sweeping a single tear slowly from her eye.
‘Some proper home-cooked food,’ Mina said, already pacing onto the kitchen tiles. ‘I’m sure I’ve something here that we can eat. Just don’t expect any birds or fucking berries, okay?’
‘Okay!’ Ciara laughed, eyes still sparkling. Her face was never so beautiful than in those moments when she smiled.
The freezer’s contents were cracked from their icy tomb. If it was edible, it was cooked. Mina knelt beside the oven, watching the food brown like a breaking news report. Ciara was soon busy stirring soup and baked beans with a wooden spoon in each hand. Madeline’s attention finally strayed from the window as Mina placed some plates down on the table, like a dog that heard the clink of its bowl. Amidst a cloud of steam, the food was devoured. No one seemed to care how hot it was. The hotness was probably the best part of it.
Mina dragged the spare mattress from the wall of her studio and let it drop onto the floor, sending sheets of paper swirling through the room. Her nostrils tingled from the eruption of long-undisturbed dust, but the sneeze never came. The blank canvas still occupied the easel, dabbed only in lint and wasted potential. Her artistic enterprise had yet to find its feet. Soon, she thought.
They slept in the living room that night. Between the mattress and the couch there was enough space for them all. The heaters had withheld ample warmth to last the night, and the dim glow of the lamp was practically darkness compared to what they were used to.
There was never any question in Mina’s mind about staying together. She told herself that she was doing it for Ciara. She, especially, needed the company. But Mina needed her just as much. Madeline had returned to the window, dissociating herself from them as she always did. The woman looked so disappointed in the half-light of the wall’s recess. Mina sat on the mattress, with Ciara and the yellow one beside her, leaving the couch for Madeline should she have wanted it.
‘What am I going to tell my parents?’ Ciara asked. ‘And John’s? I’ve been missing since the summertime and they’re…’
‘You’ll tell them nothing,’ Madeline interjected, ‘just as we agreed.’
Easier for some, Mina thought. Out of the three of them, Ciara was the only one who probably had family missing her.
‘But they’ll have so many questions,’ Ciara said. ‘I’m not such a good liar, Madeline. What if they don’t believe me?’
‘Even if you did tell them the truth,’ Mina put in before Madeline could answer, ‘they would never believe you. We’ve nothing to prove that we were even there.’
‘That’s not entirely true,’ Ciara said nervously, rooting into her pocket. ‘I do have this.’
In the soft light Mina couldn’t quite make out what she was holding. It looked like a black matchbox with a wire dangling out of it. She had certainly never seen it before that moment.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, leaning in for a closer look.
‘I found it in the forest,’ Ciara explained. ‘I think it’s a camera, but I’m not sure. Maybe it has some memory in it. For all we know it could be hooked up to a PC and we could show everyone that the watchers exist. Then they’d believe us!’
Madeline’s head turned in a flash, frowning at the device as though its presence alone was a threat to them; a bomb that could detonate in Ciara’s hand, sending their world up in smoke.
‘You have to destroy that,’ she said, with noticeable venom to her voice.
‘We’ll see,’ Ciara replied, slipping it awkwardly back into the tight pocket of her jeans. ‘It’s just a little keepsake, Madeline, and I’m fairly sure it’s broken.’
Madeline’s gaze lingered on Ciara. Only Mina saw the look in her eyes. The woman wasn’t in charge anymore. Those days were behind them. Big deal if Ciara wanted to hold on to the thing? Kilmartin said that he had destroyed all his research in the safe house. And it was highly unlikely that the broken camera lens held anything more than scratches.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mina said. ‘I’ll go to the university, and I’ll deal with whatever remains of Kilmartin’s research. There’ll be no evidence th
at the watchers or that woodland ever existed, and nothing to lead anyone there. It’s over. Can’t we just get our lives back, please?’
Madeline didn’t reply. Maybe Mina had averted an argument. But as calmly as the woman conducted herself, both hands were clenched to keep them steady, and her eyes burned like amber stones in the streetlight. Just when Mina thought they had unravelled all the woodland’s mysteries, she looked at Madeline – at the last conundrum, the one she might never solve. The woman had saved her life. She had taught her how to survive. Could Mina do the same for her?
The time had come for everyone to get some rest; everyone, that is, except for Madeline, who stayed stubbornly at the window, monitoring the street below.
‘Aren’t you going to get some sleep?’ Mina asked her.
‘I’ll sleep soon,’ she replied without even turning her head.
Ciara was the first. Curled up like a kitten on the mattress, she dozed off the moment she rested her head. Mina listened for a while to the soothing sound of her breathing, and soon she couldn’t stifle her yawns, nor could she keep her tired eyes from closing. The warmth and the novel sense of safety were like a sedative, and her body gave in without a fight.
When Mina awoke, fresh daylight was streaming through the window, and Madeline was gone. No note was left behind explaining why.
‘Where could she have gone?’ Ciara asked, sitting on the couch with the birdcage on her knees, keeping the yellow one entertained.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Mina replied, peering outside in the off chance that Madeline was sipping a coffee in the café across the street. ‘I don’t even know where she lived before the coop.’