White Pines

by Gemma Amor

  It never did, and Mac, now a deadly shade of pale, never woke up. The strip of cloth soaked through and became sodden with blood within moments, and I threw it to one side in disgust. He needed a hospital, I couldn’t help him here. I had to get him out of this place, away from these people, away from the Island.

  ​I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry him back to Taigh-Faire by myself if he was unconscious. He was a large man and a dead load. I hadn't eaten or slept for a long time, and had little strength left in me.

  I made a decision. I would leave him here, return to Taigh-Faire as quickly as I could, collect the van, and come back for him.

  I rolled him onto his side and arranged him in the recovery position, propping his head so that the blood would run down and out of his mouth instead of back into his throat, choking him. He looked as if he were already dead, he was so pale and cold, but I could hear him breathing, a shallow rattle that urged me on.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me, but needing to say it anyway. I got to my feet. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  I hoped I would be quicker than the Hunter.

  I shuffled back along the road as fast as my exhausted body could take me, to Taigh-Faire. When I got there, shattered, stumbling, breathing hard and ragged, I realised I had to break into my own front door as I didn’t know where my house key was. I did this with a rock, cutting my arm in the process, but hardly noticing. I barged in and began frantically searching for my van keys, before remembering I’d left them in the van, dangling by the wheel. I lurched back to the drive where the vehicle was parked, and climbed in, fumbling and swearing and trying to turn the key with hands that wouldn’t cooperate.

  All the while, I could see and feel the Island, hovering in the background. The memories of what had taken place there tormented me.

  I got the engine to spark, reversed out of the driveway, and drove like hell to get back to Mac. I was so relieved when I saw him still lying there by the side of the road that I would have cried, had I any tears left. I leapt out, and somehow managed to half-drag, half-roll him up into the van, where he lay on the floor behind the front seats. There was an old blanket amongst the boxes I’d packed when I’d left home, which were still in the back of the van. I wrapped it around him, tucking the corners under the rear seats to anchor him in place so he didn’t roll around as I drove. I checked his pulse. It was weak, but there. He was still cold, however, deathly cold, and his skin was still that awful greyish tone.

  ‘Don’t die on me,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘Please don’t die on me.’

  I got back into the driver’s seat and took a last look at the gallows and Johnny’s body through my windshield. My insides felt like stone as I took in the young lad swinging rhythmically under the frame. He seemed so slight and thin up there, as if already fading away, already losing water and body mass and drying out like a salted fish on a rack. I thought about cutting him down, I thought about loading him into the van too, taking his body with us, but I lacked the strength, tools or time. Mac needed my help now, not Johnny. Johnny was dead.

  I rammed the van into gear and sped away from the gallows, following the road inland, my head now pounding so hard I found it difficult to steer properly. Luckily the twisting road was as empty of traffic as it had been when I’d first arrived. Back before I’d known the Island even existed.

  Except I had always known. I’d known, and repressed it. A traumatised child, carrying a terrible secret, for all these years. I hated the mainlanders for what they’d done to me. I hated them, and my Granny, for taking my finger. For feeding the beast. For making me a part of their terrible, bloody narrative.

  I hated them for keeping the Island’s secrets for so many years.

  I glanced at Mac in the rear-view mirror. He lay stone-still on the floor of the van, eyes closed. I had no idea if he were alive or dead. I pressed my foot on the accelerator, hard.

  And, for a moment or so, I thought I was going to make it.

  I thought I was going to be able to get away.

  But the Island, as Fiona had said, had other ideas.

  The further inland I drove, the worse my headache became, as if a band of metal had been wrapped around my skull. The band grew smaller and tighter with each passing mile, and the crushing pain intensified.

  I managed ten miles before my nose erupted in a messy spatter of gore, and then, I began to leak tears of blood. I didn’t even realise it was happening until my vision clouded, until the world turned an alarming shade of red. I reached up with a shaking hand to touch my damp face, and my fingers came away bloody. I looked in the rear-view mirror again, screaming when I saw the twin tracks of crimson streaking down my cheeks. The van swerved wildly, and I yanked the wheel over, correcting it, narrowly avoiding driving into the verge and rolling the van in the ditch that lay beyond.

  I kept driving.

  So, I was bleeding. So, my head felt like it was about to explode. So what. I would not let the Island win.

  After twelve miles, all the blood vessels in my eyes burst. I felt them go, a collection of tiny pops and twitches, and then my sight grew dark. The pain in my head intensified so fiercely that it was like hitting a great invisible wall at full speed. I had a moment to realise I’d been defeated, a moment to realise I was blind and still speeding along the road at seventy miles an hour, and then agonising pain ripped me to pieces. The world went from dark to complete, definitive black as I fainted at the wheel, unknowingly crashing the van into a larch tree on the side of the road.

  And thus ended my first, and last, attempt to escape my fate.

  Or, my duty, depending on how you looked at it.

  31. Defeat

  I woke to find hands on me, unbuckling my seat belt, supporting my head, sliding me out of the driver’s seat, carrying me carefully away from the vehicle. I opened my eyes groggily, but couldn’t see a thing. All was black. My head was a thing of pain, a block of excruciating agony.

  ​I moaned, and heard a dog bark, a young dog. I knew then that it was Murdo who pulled me from the bent and crumpled wreckage of my van. He carried me as if I weighed nothing, and there was something almost gentle in the way he held me. Gentle, or reverent, like I was important. But I didn’t want to be important, not to these people. I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to die. Death would be better than this endless, endless fucking nightmare I found myself living in. I struggled weakly, like a babe in swaddling robes, but I had no strength. No sight. No spirit.

  No fight left.

  ​There was no escaping from any of it, I realised. No escape. No running. No hiding. What would be the point? The things I had seen would follow me around until the day I died.

  I was defeated.

  I sagged back into Murdo’s arms. Fine. Let them take me back. Back to Laide. Back to Taigh-Faire. Back to the Island.

  Anything to stop the pain in my head.

  Anything.

  ​I heard voices as I was carried away from the wreckage, several male voices and one distinct, familiar female voice.

  Fiona.

  ​A car door opened. I was lowered. More hands came to help me, supporting my head, my back, taking my feet. I was loaded into the back of a car, laid across the seats. Firm fingers checked the pulse in my neck, and then on my wrist. A jacket was draped across me. It was heavy and warm.

  ​The voices moved away. I called out, weakly, but there was no reply. I tried to move, but someone had pulled a seatbelt across me, pinning me beneath the jacket in a tight, secure cocoon, and I was too weak to find a way out of it. My head felt like an alien entity on my shoulders: huge, and swollen. I groaned. What were they doing? Why had they left me here?

  I just wanted it to end. I could not bear such pain for much longer.

  ​‘Take me back,’ I whispered to the empty air. ‘Please. I can’t take it anymore.’

  There was no answer, but I heard the boot door pop. Something clanged against the side of the car. I heard it
thunk, metal on metal, and there was the faint sound of liquid sloshing around, too. Fiona’s voice murmured a series of instructions I couldn’t hear from somewhere nearby.

  I smelled something unpleasant. It burned my nose. I realised it was petrol.

  Why petrol?

  Mac. I had forgotten Mac!

  With a slow, breaking horror, I realised that Mac was still inside my van, the van I had crashed.

  The petrol smell intensified.

  ‘No,’ I croaked, ‘You can’t!’

  I knew what they were doing. They were pouring petrol on my van. They were going to set it alight, dispose of the evidence.

  And Mac was in the van.

  I dug deep, found a tiny grain of strength, began to flail and kick and shout. Every movement set off a violent wave of agony in my head, but I gritted my teeth and bore it. They were going to set fire to Mac.

  They were going to set fire to Mac.

  ‘You can’t!’ I cried again, with my ruined voice. ‘You can’t! Please!’

  Eventually, a car door opened near my head. I sensed a face near mine. It smelled of peppermint lozenges and hairspray and floral, dull perfume.

  Fiona.

  ‘Mac,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Is dead,’ Fiona replied, and the door slammed shut again.

  The last of the petrol splattered over my van. I heard more murmured conversation, and then Fiona’s voice, issuing an order. I wondered if she had her hand raised. I wondered if she were drawing the shape of a triangle in the air next to her head.

  There came a whooshing, rushing sound, the sound of fire catching. I could smell smoke, acrid and foul. The rushing became a roaring, and the voices of the mainlanders grew closer to me as they stepped back from the blaze.

  Mac, I thought sadly, and then the pain in my skull set me adrift, and I floated away on a sea of black. Distantly, I felt people climb into the car, and felt the engine start. The fire had taken, the job was done.

  Mac was gone.

  No loose ends.

  The car rolled onto the smooth surface of the road, did a three-point turn, and headed back to the coast.

  They were taking me back to Laide.

  The Island still had plans for me.

  32. All in good time

  I thought I would wake in my bed at Taigh-Faire. Instead I opened my eyes and found that I was lying in a small cot bed in a tiny, low-ceilinged room painted a bright shade of white. My vision had returned, although it was cloudy and spotted, and there was blood crusted around my eyelashes. My head throbbed, but then that was nothing new. The pain was more tolerable, now, which meant that I was closer to the Island once again.

  A creak and shuffle caught my attention. I lifted my head slightly. A blurry figure sat at the end of the bed, reading. I blinked, trying to clear the clouds from my sight. Eventually, I could see enough of the shadow to know it was Fiona.

  She lifted her head from her book, saw that I was awake, and carefully closed it, tucking a bookmark in to keep her place.

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said, as if she were my kindly aunt and not the world’s most monstrous woman. ‘You’re awake.’

  She stood up, set the book on the chair, and went to a window nearby, where thick yellow curtains were drawn. She twitched the fabric back with a quick, sharp movement, and light spilled into the room. I hissed, squeezing my eyes shut. My dry and cracked lips parted.

  ‘Are you my keeper, now? Is that it?’ I croaked.

  ‘No,’ she said, calm as ever. ‘Believe it or not, I wish you no harm. Can you sit up?’

  Her hand slid under my neck, and she hoisted me into a sitting position even as I recoiled from her touch.

  ‘Get off me,’ I spat, as she plumped a pillow, shoved it behind my head.

  ‘There you go,’ she said.

  I opened my eyes again. Through the small window I could now see the sky, hedgerow, fields, and the square boxy structure of Laide Post Office. I remembered that an old cottage had been set into the road, right opposite the tarmac forecourt of the building. This must be where Fiona lives, I realised.

  ‘Is Rhoda here?’ I hoped against hope that she wasn’t dead. She was all that was left of White Pines now that Mac was gone.

  Fiona left the room, ignoring my question.

  She came back a little while later with a glass of water and a steaming bowl of soup on a tray. ‘Here,’ she said, setting the tray on my lap. ‘Eat this. I made it.’

  ​‘What’s in it?’ I peered into the bowl.

  ​‘It’s just chicken. It’s not poisoned.’

  ​‘If it were poisoned, I might prefer it,’ I said.

  I slept again after I’d eaten the soup, hugely disappointed to discover that it was indeed not poisoned. When I next opened my eyes, it was dark outside. The curtains were drawn once again, but a small table lamp illuminated the room so that I could see. Another figure sat at the end of my bed, a male figure. A black and white dog stood next to him, wagging his tail slowly, nose in the man’s lap.

  Murdo.

  ​I watched him warily, and he watched me back. Eventually, I found the courage to speak up.

  ​‘Don’t talk much, do you?’ I said.

  ​He opened his mouth by way of response, and his taciturn nature suddenly made a lot more sense. I fought back a surge of sickness.

  ​Murdo didn’t talk, because he had no tongue.

  I remembered how expertly Fiona had ripped Mac’s tongue free from his mouth, how casually she had tossed the bloody organ to the dog for it to dispose of. Clearly, she was something of an expert. What mistake had Murdo made, to warrant having his tongue cut out? What other violent rules did this woman govern by?

  ​I held up my right hand for him to see. My missing little finger for his missing tongue, as if we were trading disfigurements like war veterans.

  ​He closed his mouth, and went back to watching me, stroking the dog’s head with a large, heavy hand.

  ​I rolled over in bed, blocking him out of sight with a pillow.

  ​And thought of Matthew.

  ​On the morning of the second day of my enforced bed rest, I woke and found that I could see with almost perfect vision again. Ignoring the ‘carer’ who sat at the foot of my bed- a female mainlander I did not recognise, who eyed me with mild curiosity as I roused and sat upright- I decided to experiment with my legs. If I could see, then I could escape. I could not bear to stay under Fiona’s roof for one more moment, one more second of my life.

  I folded back the bedsheets, and found I was half-naked underneath them. No matter. I was beyond giving any thought to things like clothes and bodies and decency. Not when a beach existed somewhere, littered with body parts. Not when a town full of people had vanished before my eyes. Not when a huge fucking giant haunted the land. If I had to leave this house bare-arsed, so be it.

  ​I swung my legs around and down, tentatively putting weight on them and then slowly standing, hanging onto the side of the bed in case I fell. The room spun a little, but I remained upright. Straightening, I spotted my clothes folded up on a dresser behind the carer. I went to them, never once acknowledging the mainlander, propping myself up against a wall as I laboriously slid one leg into my jeans. She tutted as she watched me, and made as if to help me.

  ​‘If you lay one finger on me,’ I said, half-in, and half-out of my jeans, ‘I’ll bite your fucking throat out, do you understand?’

  She tutted again, and left the room, presumably to alert Fiona.

  ​I dressed, and found, as I poked my head out of the bedroom door, that there were only two rooms upstairs in the cottage, the one I’d been sleeping in, and a tiny, sparklingly clean bathroom. Which begged the question: had Fiona let me sleep in her own bed? I shuddered at the thought. It was hard enough living under her roof without knowing I’d been sleeping between her sheets, resting my head where she rested hers. It made me feel dirty, thinking about it.

  I realised I needed to urinate badly, so I shut myself in her ba
throom, locking the door, finishing my business as quickly as I could in my weakened, wobbly state. I washed my hands, watching as dried flakes of blood from under my fingernails disappeared down the plug hole. My reflection in the tiny mirror over the sink was haggard, shocking. I was thin, and had a large, steering-wheel shaped welt on my forehead. My eyes were pink, bloodshot, and my hair was a matted, greasy nest. There was more blood on my teeth.

  When I emerged, I expected to be met by Fiona, arms folded across her breast, a pleasant smile upon her lips, ready to usher me back to bed. Instead, the cottage seemed empty. Quiet. I stood on the top of the stairs, listening for a while.

  Then, I called out: ‘Rhoda?’ Maybe she was being held here, too.

  Nothing came back.

  Carefully, I made my way downstairs, barefoot, and paused at the bottom of the staircase. More silence. There was no trace of the carer, and no trace of Fiona. She was probably holed up at the Post Office, I realised, selling stamps and counting out change. How I hated her.

  More than I hated the Island, even.

  The layout downstairs was much the same as upstairs, only instead of a bathroom, a tiny galley kitchen sat, right next to the living room. I looked around, searching desperately for traces of Rhoda, and knowing it would not be that simple.

  I’ll find her, I promised myself. Whatever it takes.

  I found my shoes waiting for me by the front door, and decided to steal the bright red jacket that was hanging on a coat rack next to it. It looked cold outside, breezy. As much as the idea of wearing Fiona’s clothes disgusted me, I knew I was sick, and weak. I comforted myself by making a promise to burn the jacket when I was done with it. This resolve triggered a memory of the sound of my van burning, burning with Mac still buckled inside.

  I had failed him.

  I had failed Matthew, and Luke, and Johnny, and Rhoda, if she was still alive, which I was beginning to doubt. I had failed the community of White Pines. Thinking about it, about all those people who had simply winked out of existence, made me feel dizzy. I locked my knees, took a moment to gather myself.