by Tim Lebbon
By midday we had done what we could. The kitchen, one of the living rooms and the hall and staircase were left open; every other room downstairs was boarded up from the outside in. We’d also covered the windows in those rooms left open, but we left thin viewing ports like horizontal arrow slits in the walls of an old castle. And like the weary defenders of those ancient citadels, we were under siege.
“So what did you all see?” I said as we sat in the kitchen. Nobody denied anything.
“Badgers,” Rosalie said. “Big, white, fast. Sliding over the snow like they were on skis. Demon badgers from hell!” She joked, but it was obvious that she was terrified.
“Not badgers,” Ellie cut in. “Deer. But wrong. Deer with scales. Or something. All wrong.”
“Hayden, what did you see?”
He remained hunched over the cooker, stirring a weak stew of old vegetables and stringy beef. “I didn’t see anything.”
I went to argue with him but realized he was probably telling the truth. We had all seen something different, why not see nothing at all? Just as unlikely.
“You know,” said Ellie, standing at a viewing slot with the snow reflecting sunlight in a band across her face, “we’re all seeing white animals. White animals in the snow. So maybe we’re seeing nothing at all. Maybe it’s our imaginations. Perhaps Hayden is nearer the truth than all of us.”
“Boris and the others had pretty strong imaginations, then,” said Rosalie, bitter tears animating her eyes.
We were silent once again, stirring our weak milk-less tea, all thinking our own thoughts about what was out in the snow. Nobody had asked me what I had seen and I was glad. Last night they were fleeting white shadows, but today I had seen Jayne as well. A Jayne I had known was not really there, even as I watched her coming at me through the snow. I’ll be with you again.
“The color of death…” Ellie said. She spoke at the boarded window, never for an instant glancing away. Her hands held on to the shotgun as if it had become one with her body. I wondered what she had been in the past: I have a history, she’d said. “White. Happiness and joy.”
“It was also the color of mourning for the Victorians,” I added.
“And we’re in a Victorian manor.” Hayden did not turn around as he spoke, but his words sent our imaginations scurrying.
“We’re all seeing white animals,” Ellie said quietly. “Like white noise. All tones, all frequencies. We’re all seeing different things as one.”
“Oh,” Rosalie whispered, “well that explains a lot.”
I thought I could see where Ellie was coming from; at least, I was looking in the right direction. “White noise is used to mask other sounds,” I said.
Ellie only nodded.
“There’s something else going on here.” I sat back in my chair and stared up, trying to divine the truth in the patchwork mold on the kitchen ceiling. “We’re not seeing it all.”
Ellie glanced away from the window, just for a second. “I don’t think we’re seeing anything.”
Later we found out some more of what was happening. We went to bed, doors opened in the night, footsteps creaked old floorboards. And through the dark the sound of lovemaking drew us all to another, more terrible death
three
the color of mourning
I HAD NOT MADE LOVE to anyone since Jayne’s death. It was months before she died that we last indulged, a bitter, tearful experience when she held a sheet of polyethylene between our chests and stomachs to prevent her diseased skin from touching my own. It did not make for the most romantic of occasions, and afterward she cried herself to sleep as I sat holding her hand and staring into the dark.
After her death I came to the manor; the others came along to find something or escape from something else, and there were secretive noises in the night. The manor was large enough for us to have a room each, but in the darkness doors would open and close again, and every morning the atmosphere at breakfast was different.
My door had never opened and I had opened no doors. There was a lingering guilt over Jayne’s death, a sense that I would be betraying her love if I went with someone else. A greater cause of my loneliness was my inherent lack of confidence, a certainty that no one here would be interested in me: I was quiet, introspective and uninteresting, a fledgling bird devoid of any hope of taking wing with any particular talent. No one would want me.
But none of this could prevent the sense of isolation, subtle jealousy and yearning I felt each time I heard footsteps in the dark. I never heard anything else—the walls were too thick for that, the building too solid— but my imagination filled in the missing parts. Usually, Ellie was the star. And there lay another problem— lusting after a woman I did not even like very much.
The night it all changed for us was the first time I heard someone making love in the manor. The voice was androgynous in its ecstasy, a high keening, dropping off into a prolonged sigh before rising again. I sat up in bed, trying to shake off the remnants of dreams that clung like seaweed to a drowned corpse. Jayne had been there, of course, and something in the snow, and another something that was Jayne and the snow combined. I recalled wallowing in the sharp whiteness and feeling my skin sliced by ice edges, watching the snow grow pink around me, then white again as Jayne came and spread her cleansing touch across the devastation.
The cry came once more, wanton and unhindered by any sense of decorum.
Who? I thought. Obviously Hayden, but who was he with? Rosalie? Cynical, paranoid, terrified Rosalie?
Or Ellie?
I hoped Rosalie.
I sat back against the headboard, unable to lie down and ignore the sound. The curtains hung open—I had no reason to close them—and the moonlight revealed that it was snowing once again. I wondered what was out there watching the sleeping manor, listening to the crazy sounds of lust emanating from a building still spattered with the blood and memory of those who had died so recently. I wondered whether the things out there had any understanding of human emotion— the highs, the lows, the tenacious spirit that could sometimes survive even the most down heartening, devastating events—and what they made of the sound they could hear now. Perhaps they thought they were screams of pain. Ecstasy and thoughtless agony often sounded the same.
The sound continued, rising and falling. Added to it now the noise of something thumping rhythmically against a wall.
I thought of the times before Jayne had been ill, before the great decline had really begun, when most of the population still thought humankind could clean up what it had dirtied and repair what it had torn asunder. We’d been married for several years, our love as deep as ever, our lust still refreshing and invigorating. Car seats, cinemas, woodland, even a telephone box, all had been visited by us at some stage, laughing like adolescents, moaning and sighing together, content in familiarity.
And as I sat there remembering my dead wife, something strange happened. I could not identify exactly when the realization hit me, but I was suddenly sure of one thing: The voice I was listening to was Jayne’s. She was moaning as someone else in the house made love to her. She had come in from outside, that cold unreal Jayne I had seen so recently, and she had gone to Hayden’s room, and now I was being betrayed by someone I had never betrayed, ever.
I shook my head, knowing it was nonsense but certain also that the voice was hers. I was so sure that I stood, dressed and opened my bedroom door without considering the impossibility of what was happening. Reality was controlled by the darkness, not by whatever light I could attempt to throw upon it. I may as well have had my eyes closed.
The landing was lit by several shaded candles in wall brackets, their soft light barely reaching the floor, flickering as breezes came from nowhere. Where the light did touch it showed old carpet, worn by time and faded by countless unknown footfalls. The walls hung with shredded paper, damp and torn like dead skin, the lath and plaster beneath pitted and crumbled. The air was thick with age, heavy with must, redolent with faint hin
ts of hauntings. Where my feet fell I could sense the floor dipping slightly beneath me, though whether this was actuality or a runover from my dream I was unsure.
I could have been walking on snow.
I moved toward Hayden’s room and the volume of the sighing and crying increased. I paused one door away, my heart thumping not with exertion but with the thought that Jayne was a dozen steps from me, making love with Hayden, a man I hardly really knew.
Jayne’s dead, I told myself, and she cried out once, loud, as she came. Another voice then, sighing and straining, and this one was Jayne as well.
Someone touched my elbow. I gasped and spun around, too shocked to scream. Ellie was there in her nightshirt, bare legs hidden in shadow. She had a strange look in her eye. It may have been the subdued lighting. I went to ask her what she was doing here, but then I realized it was probably the same as me. She’d stayed downstairs last night, unwilling to share a watch duty, insistent that we should all sleep.
I went to tell her that Jayne was in there with Hayden, but then I realized how stupid this would sound, how foolish it actually was.
At least, I thought, it’s not Ellie in there. Rosalie it must be. At least not Ellie. Certainly not Jayne.
And Jayne cried out again.
Goose bumps speckled my skin and brought it to life. The hairs on my neck stood to attention, my spine tingled.
“Hayden having a nice time?” someone whispered, and Rosalie stepped up behind Ellie.
I closed my eyes, listening to Jayne’s cries. She had once screamed like that in a park, and the keeper had chased us out with his waving torch and throaty shout, the light splaying across our nakedness as we laughed and struggled to gather our clothes around us as we ran.
“Doesn’t sound like Hayden to me,” Ellie said.
The three of us stood outside Hayden’s door for a while, listening to the sounds of lovemaking from within—the cries, the moving bed, the thud of wood against the wall. I felt like an intruder, however much I realized something was very wrong with all of this. Hayden was on his own in there. As we each tried to figure out what we were really hearing, the sounds from within changed. There was not one cry, not two, but many, overlying each other, increasing and expanding until the voice became that of a crowd. The light in the corridor seemed to dim as the crying increased, though it may have been my imagination.
I struggled to make out Jayne’s voice and there was a hint of something familiar, a whisper in the cacophony that was so slight as to be little more than an echo of a memory. But still, to me, it was real.
Ellie knelt and peered through the keyhole, and I noticed for the first time that she was carrying her shotgun. She stood quickly and backed away from the door, her mouth opening, eyes widening. “It’s Hayden,” she said aghast, and then she fired at the door handle and lock.
The explosion tore through the sounds of ecstasy and left them in shreds. They echoed away like streamers in the wind, to be replaced by the lonely moan of a man’s voice, pleading not to stop, it was so wonderful so pure so alive…
The door swung open. None of us entered the room. We could not move.
Hayden was on his back on the bed, surrounded by the whites from outside. I had seen them as shadows against the snow, little more than pale phantoms, but here in the room they stood out bright and definite. There were several of them; I could not make out an exact number because they squirmed and twisted against each other, and against Hayden. Diaphanous limbs stretched out and wavered in the air, arms or wings or tentacles, tapping at the bed and the wall and the ceiling, leaving spots of ice like ink on blotting paper wherever they touched.
I could see no real faces, but I knew that the things were looking at me.
Their crying and sighing had ceased, but Hayden’s continued. He moved quickly and violently, thrusting into the malleable shape that still straddled him, not yet noticing our intrusion even though the shotgun blast still rang in my ears. He continued his penetration, but slowly the white lifted itself away until Hayden’s cock flopped back wetly onto his stomach.
He raised his head and looked straight at us between his knees, looked through one of the things where it flipped itself easily across the bed. The air stank of sex and something else, something cold and old and rotten, frozen forever and only now experiencing a hint of thaw.
“Oh please…” he said, though whether he spoke to us or the constantly shifting shapes I could not tell.
I tried to focus but the whites were minutely out of phase with my vision, shifting to and fro too quickly for me to concentrate. I thought I saw a face, but it may have been a false splay of shadows thrown as a shape turned and sprang to the floor. I searched for something I knew—an arm kinked slightly from an old break; a breast with a mole near the nipple; a smile turned wryly down at the edges—and I realized I was looking for Jayne. Even in all this mess, I thought she may be here. I’ll be with you again, she had said.
I almost called her name, but Ellie lifted the shotgun and shattered the moment once more. It barked out once, loud, and everything happened so quickly. One instant the white things were there, smothering Hayden and touching him with their fluid limbs. The next, the room was empty of all but us humans, moth-eaten curtains fluttering slightly, window invitingly open. And Hayden’s face had disappeared into a red mist.
After the shotgun blast there was only the wet sound of Hayden’s brains and skull fragments pattering down onto the bedding. His hard-on still glinted in the weak candlelight. His hands each clasped a fistful of blanket. One leg tipped and rested on the sheets clumped around him. His skin was pale, almost white.
Almost.
Rosalie leaned against the wall, dry heaving. Her dress was wet and heavy with puke and the stink of it had found a home in my nostrils. Ellie was busy reloading the shotgun, mumbling and cursing, trying to look anywhere but at the carnage of Hayden’s body.
I could not tear my eyes away. I’d never seen anything like this. Brand and Boris and Charley, yes, their torn and tattered corpses had been terrible to behold, but here… I had seen the instant a rounded, functional person had turned into a shattered lump of meat. I’d seen the red splash of Hayden’s head as it came apart and hit the wall, big bits ricocheting, the smaller, wetter pieces sticking to the old wallpaper and drawing their dreadful art for all to see. Every detail stood out and demanded my attention, as if the shot had cleared the air and brought light. It seemed red tinged, the atmosphere itself stained with violence.
Hayden’s right hand clasped the blanket, opening and closing very slightly, very slowly.
Doesn’t feel so cold. Maybe there’s a thaw on the way, I thought distractedly, perhaps trying to withdraw somewhere banal and comfortable and familiar…
There was a splash of sperm across his stomach. Blood from his ruined head was running down his neck and chest and mixing with it, dribbling soft and pink onto the bed.
Ten seconds ago he was alive. Now he was dead. Extinguished, just like that.
Where is he? I thought. Where has he gone?
“Hayden?” I said.
“He’s dead!” Ellie hissed, a little too harshly.
“I can see that.” But his hand still moved. Slowly. Slightly.
Something was happening at the window. The curtains were still, but there was a definite sense of movement in the darkness beyond. I caught it from the corner of my eyes as I stared at Hayden.
“Rosalie, go get some boards,” Ellie whispered.
“You killed Hayden!” Rosalie spat. She coughed up the remnants of her last meal, and they hung on her chin like wet boils. “You blew his head off! You shot him! What the hell, what’s going on, what’s happening here. I don’t know, I don’t know…”
“The things are coming back in,” Ellie said. She shouldered the gun, leaned through the door and fired at the window. Stray shot plucked at the curtains. There was a cessation of noise from outside, then a rustling, slipping, sliding. It sounded like something flopp
ing around in snow. “Go and get the boards, you two.”
Rosalie stumbled noisily along the corridor toward the staircase.
“You killed him,” I said lamely.
“He was fucking them,” Ellie shouted. Then, quieter:
“I didn’t mean to…” She looked at the body on the bed, only briefly but long enough for me to see her eyes narrow and her lips squeeze tight. “He was fucking them. His fault.”
“What were they? What the hell, I’ve never seen any animals like them.”
Ellie grabbed my bicep and squeezed hard, eliciting an unconscious yelp. She had fingers like steel nails. “They aren’t animals,” she said. “They aren’t people. Help me with the door.”
Her tone invited no response. She aimed the gun at the open window for as long as she could while I pulled the door shut. The shotgun blast had blown the handle away, and I could not see how we would be able to keep it shut should the whites return. We stood that way for a while, me hunkered down with two fingers through a jagged hole in the door to try to keep it closed, Ellie standing slightly back, aiming the gun at the pocked wood. I wondered whether I’d end up getting shot if the whites chose this moment to climb back into the room and launch themselves at the door…
Banging and cursing marked Rosalie’s return. She carried several snapped floorboards, the hammer and nails. I held the boards up, Rosalie nailed, both of us now in Ellie’s line of fire. Again I wondered about Ellie and guns, about her history. I was glad when the job was done.
We stepped back from the door and stood there silently, three relative strangers trying to understand and come to terms with what we had seen. But without understanding, coming to terms was impossible. I felt a tear run down my cheek, then another. A sense of breathless panic settled around me, clasping me in cool hands and sending my heart racing.
“What do we do?” I said. “How do we keep those things out?”
