by T Seth, Dina
It’s for this reason that Bostor is the first to hear the screams. He jerks upright in his cot, trying to listen. All he can hear are the snores of his friends, and the bunged-up snuffling of Sion, who has permanently blocked sinuses. Even the forest seems quiet tonight. But if so, what was that n—?
There! Another scream! Bostor is sure about it this time. It was loud enough to wake the others, who sit up in their cots rubbing their eyes and mumbling.
“What the Heck is that?” snaps Griff. “Can’t a man sleep anymore?”
“I think it was Hawthawn,” Bostor tells the dark room. “Screaming … A blood-curdling scream! What could be the matter?”
The Doc, frowning, climbs to the window in his nightshirt and peers through the murky glass. “I can’t see anything. It must have come from the front of the cottage. We should ingestivate – um, investigate.”
“You gotta be kiddin’,” says Griff. “It was prob’ly just an owl.”
A low, raspy groan echoes through the night, as though a wounded creature is gasping for its last breath. It makes the little men’s skin shrink on their bodies to hear it.
“Th-that’s no owl!” says Bostor. “I’m not going! You go, Griff.”
“Forget it, it was the Doc’s brilliant idea. He can do it!”
“M-me? What about Sion? Or Daer? They should go!”
“Those idiots?” sniffs Griff. “They’ll get ripped to pieces in seconds by whatever’s out there. Quit shakin’ in yer boots – I’ll go look, an’ you lot can back me up. Right?”
“Right!” chorus the others.
Out goes Griff into the hallway, sneaking in his slippers, gown and nightcap, with a candle trembling in his hand. Griff had long ago proven himself to be the bravest of the lot of them, but even he can’t help shaking at the memory of that airy groan, as though a corpse had come to life and was howling at the moon…
The stairs creak one at a time as Griff descends into the main room. This was where Snow White made their meals; darned their clothes; danced to their instruments. She had been living with them such a short time, but she had changed their lives for the better.
The front door is still shut. A shadow moves at the window. Griff tiptoes across the kitchen and peers through the lead latticework on the glass, hoping to see a clue to the screams from outside. But there is nothing.
Gingerly he moves to the door. He is about to open it when there is a sharp noise behind him, and he whirls around with his heart in his throat – only to see the other little men standing on the staircase: his supposed ‘backup’.
“Keep quiet, will ya?” Griff rasps.
The Doc comes down for support. The others remain where they are, cowering behind the banister.
Griff takes hold of the door handle and opens it a crack. His round eye glances across the clearing, the treeline, the path … All he sees is a low, dark mass lying in the dirt a few feet away from the cottage.
“I think I see Hawthawn,” he tells the Doc. “I’m gonna go out an’ see … He looks hurt.”
The Doc nods. “I’ll wait here.”
“ ‘Course you will.”
The night air is cool and still. Neither the grass nor the trees move under the gaze of the gibbous moon. Griff listens for signs of life as he creeps out towards Hawthawn’s prone body, but hears nothing. To the left is the water trough. To the right is the shed, and the path leading to the diamond mine where they dig all day. Everything seems safe enough.
“Hawthawn?” Griff calls quietly. “That you?”
He snoops over – but soon wishes he hadn’t. Hawthawn’s body lies in a pool of thick blood, which covers his chest and arms. His head is twisted, separated from his body by two inches of exposed spinal column. The neck has been eaten away. His face is blank and grey. His skull has been shattered to a pulpy red-black heap, splattered outward.
Griff’s stomach heaves and he vomits into the grass. Someone calls, “Griff?”
“Don’t come over here!” he shouts, holding out a hand and wiping vomit from his lips with the sleeve of his tunic.
The Doctor, as usual, doesn’t listen. He runs over to tend to Hawthawn, not realising that he is long past saving. Griff is about to send him back when he sees the figure in the bloody dress lurch from around the corner of the cottage to grab the Doc from behind. Griff recognises the pale, once-beautiful face over his friend’s shoulder. It is Snow White’s face, but those are not her eyes. Snow White is gone, and Death inhabits her mutilated body.
She rips into the Doc’s neck with her teeth. The Doc screams and screams, but she had surprised him and he can’t catch his balance. He tumbles backward in a slow motion fall. By the time he is on the ground and she is on top of him, he has already lost one of his five pints of blood. His screams melt into a bubbling wail as blood wells out of his throat. He is drowning in his own life-fluid.
With the living corpse of the princess hissing and bashing the Doc’s skull against the wall, Griff runs for the door to the cottage, screaming for the others to get back inside.
But the undead girl has spun around and grabbed Griff’s leg, making him trip. She sinks her teeth into his calf, biting through cloth and skin, drawing blood.
“Griff!” screams Bostor, and he jumps out to grab Griff by his outstretched hands. Together the gang pull Griff into the cottage and away from the rasping creature with the wide open jaws and lolling, wet tongue.
He barrels into their shouts of terror and confusion, then slams the door shut behind him.
“Lock it!” he screams. “Board up the windows!”
“What the Heck is going on? Your leg…!”
“They’re dead! Sorfius, Hawthawne, the Doc – they’re all dead! An’ it’s Snow White what killed ‘em!”
“Snow White?” says Bostor. “But she’s dead, Griff!”
Griff slaps him across the face. “You don’t think I know that, you idiot? Whatever happened, she’s not all the way dead! Some evil spirit’s in her rottin’ body and it’s after us! Poor Hawthawn’s head was smashed to pieces … She ate his brain out of it…!”
“What about the Doc?” asks Sion, licking his dry lips. “We can’t just leave him out there!”
“He’s already gone, mate,” says Griff, tying a torn towel around his leg to stem the bleeding. “She practically had his fingers in his brainpan before he hit the ground.”
“What did this to her?” wails Bostor.
“It’s like some sort’a disease,” Griff replies. “It’s changed her. Made her into a man-eater. Her soul is gone out that body, but the body keeps on livin’…”
Sion sneezes into his hands. He catches the spray, then leans back, his eyes watering, and sneezes again.
When he looks up again, Griff, Bostor and Daer are staring at him.
“What?” says Sion, looking back at the others. “Don’t just stand there looking at me! We’ve gotta do something! We need weapons! The picks and the shovels – we should get ‘em!”
“Hawthawn already put ‘em away for the night,” says Bostor, turning to the window. “In the shed…”
“No way in Heck am I goin’ out there again!” Griff says in no uncertain terms.
“We can’t stay in here forever.”
“Maybe it’ll just go away?”
“Knowin’ there’s four more juicy brains in here to eat? Not likely. We need to fortify the place, defend it … Sooner or later, someone’ll come by and save us.”
“I’m not so sure,” says Bostor. “Something about the Forest has felt strange for a couple of days, now. I hardly see any of the animals or birds – not since the Witch tricked Snow White into biting that apple.”
“You want me to go out there with this busted leg!?” roars Griff. “Am I the only blasted one here with any guts!?”
“Daer and I will go,” Bostor volunteers quietly. “Won’t we, Daer?”
Daer nods. He has never been much of a talker. He’s of the simple-minded type, who barely puts anything into
words. He has no imagination and most of the time doesn’t seem to even know what’s going on. Giving him a pick and putting him in that diamond mine had been about the riskiest thing the Doc had ever agreed to: Daer is a liability to himself and others. As Griff put it, he is a ‘bloody simpleton with nothin’ between his ears but a lump of ore’.
Even now, with his friends quivering with fear around him, he smiles stupidly and agrees to go out into hot water to fetch a few axes from a shed.
“Get to it,” Griff grumbles. His leg is already burning from the pain, and despite his tourniquet the fire seems to be spreading up to his thigh.
~
CHAPTER THREE: SNOW WHITE AND THE MANY CORPSES
In which the desperate turn on one another; and a black sickness spreads through the Deep Forest.
“Alright,” Bostor says to Daer, “just follow me, and do exactly as I do, okay? We need to get to the shed, unlock it, grab the tools, and get back to the cottage as quickly as we can, okay?”
Daer nods, his large ears flapping ridiculously.
“Ugh … Alright, let’s go. That thing seems to move pretty slow so I bet if we’re quick, we can get this done. Ready…?”
Bostor bursts through the front door and into the night. He doesn’t stop to look around. He runs and jumps over Hawthawn’s bloody corpse and heads straight for the shed, which is under a rocky overhang about fifty years away. He gets to it with the key already in his hand and jams the key into the padlock.
“Daer?” he calls over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the lock. Why won’t his hands stop shaking!? “Daer, are you with me?”
The padlock clunks open. Bostor throws it aside and yanks open the door, jumping inside before he dares turn around. He was expecting to see some new horror, but there’s nothing there … Not even Daer.
“Daer? Where are you?”
Nothing. Just silence…
Inside the cottage, Griff is sitting in a chair beside the table, nursing his leg wound. He is astonished at how painful it is. The girl’s bite had been hard and deep, slicing through the muscle. But why does it burn so? It throbs so hard Griff can barely sit still.
Nearby, Sion sneezes again and looks out the window, trying to see Bostor and Daer in the darkness beyond. He wipes his nose on his sleeve, as he’s always done.
Griff watches him from the table. “How long have you been sick, Sion?”
“What?” He turns away from the window. “Oh. I don’t know, a few weeks … It feels like I always have a cold.”
“I’m surprised it ain’t contagious…”
Griff grits his teeth against a sudden surge of pain. What is happening to him? His vision is wavering, his hands are trembling … He should lie down, before he falls down … But although he’s dizzy, he doesn’t feel faint. In fact, he feels kind of hungry. There is a gnawing ache in his belly. What is it? What does he crave? The nagging dissatisfaction makes him irritable.
Sion is saying, “Well, it probably is contagious, I suppose … But we’ve always been lucky, we seven, haven’t we?”
“Lucky?” Griff snarls. “Snow White is dead! Hawthorne and Sorfius and the Doc are dead, you idiot! It’s because of you!”
“M-me?” says Sion, shocked at the accusation. “What have I done?”
“You brought this disease here! You changed her into … that! And now she’s taking us apart, one by one!”
“I didn’t do anything! Griff, you’re not thinking straight!”
Griff gets up shakily. He can barely see. His eyes roll back in his pock-marked head. “Don’t tell me … what I’m thinking, Si … You’re a plague carrier … A Typhoid Mary! Somehow … you did this…”
Sion is concerned now. He’s never seen Griff like this – aggressive at times, yes, but violent? But he’s not simply violent, he’s also clearly unwell. Sweat pours down his face and darkens his clothes. His skin has gone sickly pale, almost green.
“Griff, you’re not well!” Sion shouts, as Griff drags his feet towards him. “You need rest! None of us got any sleep, but if you’re sick…”
“I’m sick alright. Sick of you! You and your wretched sneezing, sneezing, sneezing … I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even clip my toenails without hearing your blasted nose honking away! And now you’ve gone and make Snow White sick too, and killed her, or changed her somehow…”
“No! It was the Witch Queen! She gave Snow White poison. That’s what killed her!”
“Maybe what killed her, but not what brought her back!”
“Griff!”
Sion has his back pressed against the desk. Griff is practically on top of him now, dripping with sweat and saliva, his eyes lolling in their sockets like grey boiled eggs. Griff reaches out…
—and then collapses at Sion’s feet. A long, slow exhalation leaves Griff’s body, and all at once he goes unnaturally still, as though having turned into a piece of stone.
“Griff?”
Sion kneels to shake his old friend’s shoulders. Griff’s clothes are soaked with sweat. What had come upon him so suddenly?
“Griff?”
Nothing. Griff is dead.
Sion falls back in disbelief. Tears well up in his eyes, and he turns to the window. Why is this happening to them? They’d been so happy for so many years, safe away from Everedge’s prejudice and cruelty. Then Snow White came, and things were perfect, just perfect: she made them happy again, and gave them a reason to want to get up in the morning and rush home after a long day in the mine. How had things turned so horrible so quickly?
He barely finishes his thought. A corpse rises silently behind him, a spectre in the silence of the room between Sion’s mournful sniffs. Then Griff’s stiffening body lunges, its teeth searching furiously for Sion’s throat…
Outside, Bostor turns his attention to the shed and gathers up everything useful he can see. There are the shovels and the pickaxes, but they used up all the blasting caps making a new tunnel at the mine last week. The simpler tools are all they have, but they’re better than nothing.
When he turns around with his arms full of axes, he comes face to face with a woodland deer.
He breathes a sigh of relief. For a minute there he thought he was in danger.
To scare off the deer, he bangs the picks together and shouts. “Go on, git!”
But the deer doesn’t move. It just stands stock still in the moonlight and stares at him with pale eyes.
Then Bostor notices the filmy white cataracts over its big eyes, and the bite marks in his neck and flank...
“Oh, my God…!”
He swings blindly with a pickax and hits the snarling deer in the shoulder. It makes a horrendous hissing noise and bucks violently, nearly kicking Bostor to the ground. But he holds onto the ax with all his strength and pulls it free with a wet squelch, then swings again at the undead animal. The point of the pick goes deep into its skull, piercing it all the way through. The deer drops to the ground, gives a few last kicks with its spasming hind legs, then goes still.
Fuelled by adrenaline, Bostor abandons the pick wedged in the animal’s undead corpse and runs back to the cottage with the remaining three clutched tightly to his chest.
“Daer!” he screams. “Where the Heck are you!?”
The front door is open wide. Panicking, Bostor drops two of the picks just outside the door and bursts in brandishing the last. He sees Griff standing over a body – Sion’s body – with his mouth drenched and dripping, his eyes already gone to the pale lenses of the undead. Black veins spread upward from his bitten calf and disappear under his pants. There are black veins standing out on his neck and around his eerie eyes.
Griff hisses and then lunges for Bostor, the blood of Sion flying from his red lips.
~
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PRINCE HAS COME
In which a potential saviour arrives in the nick of time.
Seven days ago a young man heard a song. That song was sung by a beautiful servant in the Queen’s cour
tyard, and that young man was a Prince.
The Prince is young and inexperienced in many matters of the world. His life has so far consisted of boring lectures and classes on elocution and swordsmanship. It is all rather dull, when one thinks about how much action and adventure there is awaiting a person out there in the wide world. There are men making names for themselves, righting great wrongs, conquering evil armies. Our Prince has hardly ventured outside his father’s castle for the last twenty years.
