A STORYTELLING OF RAVENS

by R. H. Dixon

  ‘And…Smiler. What about Smiler?’

  He shrugged. He didn’t have the answers she sought and right now he had a new problem. A problem all of his own. A problem that filled him with quickening dread. Now that he was in the hallway, safe but exerted, he was aware of something most alarming: he didn’t have a heartbeat.

  21

  ‘I have to go back out.’ Callie paced about, raking her fingers through her hair. She couldn’t keep still. Couldn’t get Smiler out of her head.

  ‘No,’ Thurston said. He looked on the verge of collapse, clutching at his waist with both hands. His face retained a film of feverish sweat and his skin was the colour of wallpaper paste. A grazed swelling on his eyebrow extended down to make the area around his left eye puffy and darkened. His lips drew back as he spoke, ‘You can’t. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘But I have to.’

  ‘What happened?’ Pollyanna’s voice was an unexpected addition to the gloom of the hallway. She appeared in the doorway like a spectral shadow and looked between Callie and Thurston. Her eyes conveyed a quiet dread as she asked the question that reinforced Callie’s guilt, ‘Where’s Smiler?’

  Callie made for the door resolute in her decision to go back out, but Thurston was surprisingly quick to stop her. He put his large hands on her shoulders and held her firm. ‘No, Cal,’ he said, his voice a strained bark. ‘What the hell do you expect to do out there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, both surprised and discomfited by his strength. ‘But we can’t just leave him.’

  ‘There are at least two of those things out there,’ he reminded her. ‘Even if Golden managed to get away, he’s likely to be hiding up a tree or something.’

  ‘So?’ Callie shook her head, perplexed. ‘What do you suggest we do?’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘For what?’ She shrugged away from his hands, angry at him for trying to undermine her both physically and mentally.

  ‘Morning. That’s all we can do.’

  ‘But what if he’s hurt?’ Pollyanna said, her black eyes wide, childlike and needy. ‘What if he needs help now?’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do to help.’ Thurston’s own eyes showed vexed frustration. He’d moved and was blocking the door with his body now. ‘It’d be suicide to go wandering back out in the dark. Even if I was well enough what good would that do? Those things are easily three times as big as me.’

  Callie closed her eyes and massaged her forehead with anxious fingers. She knew that what he was saying was true, but his logical reasoning didn’t make it any easier to accept that they were in no position to offer help to Smiler. She shook her head despairingly and turned, unable to face him anymore, unable to face anyone, and slouched through to the lounge. Her limbs felt heavy, her heart heavier still.

  ‘So that’s it then?’ Pollyanna called. ‘You’re just going to leave him out there to die?’

  Callie sat down on the couch and buried her face in her hands. She felt drained to the point of numbness. ‘Thurston’s right, if we go outside we’re as good as dead.’ Then it would mean that what Smiler did would have been for nothing. He saved us. He saved me. Her eyes became hot with tears. She readily accepted that she bore some responsibility for what had happened to Smiler. If she’d believed him when he’d told her there was nothing in the village, they might not have made the trip. If she’d run that bit faster, he might not have had to take a diversion into the woods to save her sorry arse. If she’d insisted that they stayed at the church, they might have been safe. If, if, if. All useless hindsight that didn’t change a thing.

  The couch shifted as someone sat down next to her. She didn’t turn to see. Knew it was Thurston. Then she felt his hand on her back. Warm. Sturdy. The more vulnerable side of her, she thought, would like to seek refuge in his arms and stay there till morning. Like a child, shedding all responsibility. But the fiercer part of her wanted to push him off and to tell him to get the fuck away. He seemed so calm. Too blasé. He didn’t share her guilt. It wasn’t his fault.

  That’s right, it’s not his fault.

  Her shoulders sagged and she chose neither to crumble into him nor to slap him away. Instead she allowed his hand to rub warm, soothing circles on her back.

  ‘Why don’t you try and get some sleep?’ he said.

  She did look at him then. ‘How the hell can I sleep with all this going on?’

  He looked sorry for the clear inanity of his suggestion. For inciting such a backlash. Seemingly at a loss for what else to say or do, he touched her hand; an overly intimate response that forced her to maintain eye contact. Then, as if obliged to say something, anything, he said, ‘We’ll look for him in the morning. Together. Or I can go out and you can stay here, in case…well, you don’t have to go.’

  What he meant was that he didn’t expect Smiler to be alive, she thought, and that if they found any dismembered body parts it might be too distressing for her. ‘Of course I’m bloody going,’ she said, scowling at his implied doubt over her strength of character. This second rebuke prompted him to move his hand back to his lap and for this Callie was sorry.

  In the ensuing silence the cabin offered no comfort. It stifled their lungs with its fetid smell and coated their skin with a grimy chill. Pollyanna had moved to her usual spot by the window, but nobody had seen her get there. She was motionless and didn’t speak. In fact, nobody said anything else. All three of them held onto their own thoughts, all of them eager for morning. Thurston stayed close to Callie and managed to doze on and off, in short bouts of closed-eye stillness with his neck cricked to one side. Having little to no emotional bond with Smiler, Callie wasn’t surprised by the ease with which he let go. She watched him each time he slept and was confounded by the confusion of emotions that welled up inside her; a love-hate blend mostly dominated by anger. But her anger at him, she knew, was a direct result of being angry with herself. This anger also extended to Smiler and Pollyanna. And the trees. The bloody trees. She closed her eyes and was convinced she could see the red that was running through her own veins. She heard voices, the memory of the trees talking in the woods. She tried to remember what they’d said. Tried to make sense of their words. That’s just how it is, sweetheart. How what is? Lived here as it happens. Right here? Something really awful. Like what? Take a guess. I couldn’t possibly. Suppose that depends. On what? Why does anyone do anything? Suppose that depends. Exactly! All except the small boy. What boy? But why? But why? But why indeed! It doesn’t make sense. That’s just how it is, sweetheart. She clutched her head and stifled a sob.

  When, eventually, the lake could be defined as a separate entity to the night, and the lazy sun was approaching without haste, Callie stood up. Thurston’s weary but alert blue eyes opened and he watched her. She could tell he hadn’t really been sleeping because of the instant level of awareness in his expression, which in turn made her wonder if he’d known she’d been watching him. ‘All this sitting about’s driving me nuts,’ she said, feeling awkward as well as the need to explain herself. ‘I’m going to take a shower. It’ll keep me busy till it’s time to head out.’

  Thurston lifted his eyebrows, such a minute tic it was hard to tell if it was in direct response to what she’d said. Then he closed his eyes and resumed apparent restfulness. Pollyanna didn’t react at all. She carried on staring at the outside world as though nothing within the cabin existed.

  Callie trudged off to the bathroom, where she turned the shower on and waited till steam billowed above the plain white shower curtain, hitting the ceiling and spilling out into the rest of the bathroom, before stripping her clothes off. The showerhead was affixed to white tiles above a standard white bathtub and along the same wall was a toilet and small frosted window. The window had no blind or any other covering, but Callie didn’t care. Peeping Toms were the least of her worries. On the wall opposite the bath was a sink and large mirror. The bathroom was basic but functional. In need of a good scrubbing. D
irt was ingrained in the grouting on the wall and floor tiles and mould spores decorated the ceiling above the window wall. Callie hung her clothes on a peg on the back of the door and stepped into the bath, careful not to let the grubby shower curtain touch her. Jets of water covered her face with a rush of hotness that stole her breath. A metal soap holder, screwed to the wall at elbow level, held a bar of soap that was sitting in a pool of white scummy water. Callie left the soap where it was and just stood beneath the water, allowing the heat to thaw her bones and ease her aching muscles. She stayed there thinking, till her skin was red and her thoughts were even more so with the pounding of her own blood and the sound of someone else’s words. Something really awful. The trees in her head. Take a guess. Bony black silhouettes. Lived here as it happens. Moving and swaying. All except. The hush-a-hush-hush of leaves. Blowing. The small boy. And the snarling, chasing something. Something really awful. Something worse than hate. But why? Desire. Suppose that depends. The pounding of paws on earth like a rapturous heart. And the howling. A longing, needing, wanting. But why? That’s just how it is, sweetheart. No! I want… I want… I want… Take a guess. All of the time. All of the time! Why does anyone do anything, sweetheart? Obsession? As it happens. Yes.

  When she imagined the sky might be some shade of sugared almond and she felt sick with a sense of vertigo because of her own thoughts, Callie turned off the shower and pulled the curtain open. Beads of swirling steam clung to the cold air, creating droplets of water on the porcelain sink and toilet. She reached over for the fresh towel she’d left in the basin and saw that the mirror above it was opaque with condensation. As she wrapped herself in the towel, her body pricked with gooseflesh. Not because the morning chill overpowered the shower’s effects, but because she heard a voice right there in the room with her. Clear. Real. ‘How can she be here, Dean? She can’t be!’

  Dean!

  Uncle Dean?

  It was the same voice that Callie had heard coming from Smiler’s room the day before, only this time it was uncomfortably close.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she said, doubting her own sanity.

  No answer.

  The trees?

  A sharp burst of water spurted from the showerhead and landed on the enamel by Callie’s feet with a heart-thumping jolt. Ghost fingers touched her scalp. She pulled the towel tighter around her body and listened to the ceiling fan that continued to burr with a normality that somehow seemed to negate the voice she thought she’d heard. But she had heard it. She knew it. Slowly, tentatively, she stepped from the bath and for reasons unknown felt compelled to wipe the steam away from the mirror. The film of damp greyness she now thought might be concealing a parallel world of dead things, because the mirror was some portal. A window for the cabin’s victims to reach back through. With an arm outstretched, she leaned forward and took a deep breath.

  This is silly. You’re being silly.

  Her hand was shaking, her nerves shot.

  Using her palm, she cleared away the excess moisture in one quick swipe.

  And that’s when she saw a woman with long black hair staring straight back at her. Callie had never seen a ghost before and reeled at its ordinariness. Her wet feet slipped on the floor tiles and she floundered for a moment, trying to regain some balance, but gravity brought her down hard, smacking the back of her head against the edge of the bath. Then everything glittered black.

  When she came round, Callie reached for her head and groaned. For a fleeting moment she could have been in her own bed with a stinking hangover, but the red-black pain from the crack of enamel against her head pressed against the backs of her eyes with a ferociousness that snatched away the thought before it was fully formed. Her elbows hurt and coccyx throbbed. She was on the bathroom floor. In the cabin. And she’d seen a ghost. The fluorescence of the ceiling light shimmered like stardust and she worried she’d slip out of consciousness again. Securing the towel, which had come loose during her fall, Callie sat up and leaned against the bath panel. Hardly daring to look but needing to, she saw that the mirror was now clear, reflecting only white tiles and ceiling.

  The woman was gone.

  Elsewhere in the cabin a door slammed, making the bath panel tremble behind her. Urgent footsteps made Callie sit up straighter. A familiar voice was then calling her name. She scrabbled to her feet and caught sight of her own haunted face in the mirror. ‘Smiler!’

  22

  Callie flung open the bathroom door and fled through the cabin. She clutched the back of her head with one hand, to lessen the thudding soreness that resonated through her skull after each crashing step, and gripped the towel fold at her chest with the other. When she got to the lounge door she came to a sudden halt, mouth agape. Smiler was in front of the wood burner. Every part of his skin and clothes was caked with dry mud.

  ‘Holy shit, Golden!’ Rising hysteria made Callie feel like laughing, but she found she couldn’t even summon a smile. ‘You’re alive!’ She hadn’t known what to expect, what state she might find him in. Perhaps better. Probably worse. But he was standing and moving and that was great. And all of him seemed to be intact.

  The whites of his eyes appeared whiter than usual, contrasted against the mud mask. But his teeth were just as yellow when he smiled at the sight of her there. He lifted his arms as if to validate his present state of being alive and said, ‘Just about.’

  Thurston was standing behind the couch, his hands gripping the leather so hard his knuckles were white. ‘Looks like you got off pretty lightly, all things considered.’

  Smiler was taken aback by this criticism or doubt or whatever it was. He gawped at Thurston for a moment then shrugged. ‘I guess luck was on my side.’

  ‘How did you manage to stay alive? All night. Out there.’ Thurston’s face displayed all the cynicism that his tone implied.

  ‘Frigging hell, what’s this?’ Smiler’s fists tightened at his sides and his eyes glowered. ‘I gave them the slip and found a hollow tree to hide inside, is that okay?’

  ‘Pretty convenient.’

  Dried mud cracked on Smiler’s brow. ‘It certainly didn’t feel convenient.’

  ‘Did you stay in the tree all night?’ Pollyanna asked, trying to sound casual in an indifferent kind of way. Her eyes betrayed her awe, however, and it was astoundingly clear to everyone else in the room that Smiler was something of an idol to her. Much more than a teenager’s saccharine dream of cherry lips and dripping honey. Ever since he had arrived at the cabin he had wasp-stung her heart with a fervour that neutralised her acid tongue with many imagined alkali kisses and gave her a reason to wake each day. She hadn’t moved from her place by the window. Would probably rather stick pins in her eyes than let him know or think that she cared. But the fact she was too preoccupied to light a cigarette only proved her painful secret: she was in love. And love such as this was like dying.

  Smiler’s hands relaxed and he reddened beneath his mud-layer. ‘Yes. But I wouldn’t recommend anyone else try it.’

  ‘Why not?’ Thurston wanted to know.

  ‘Because.’ Rubbing his neck, Smiler’s demeanour prickled as he attuned to Thurston’s continuing disparagement. ‘It was uncomfortable as fuck.’

  ‘Didn’t it talk to you?’

  ‘The tree?’

  ‘The tree.’

  ‘What’s your problem, man?’ Smiler stormed to the foot of stairs, passing close to Thurston while continuing to hold his gaze. ‘I don’t need this shit.’

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’ Callie wandered further into the lounge but stopped again when she became altogether too conscious of her nakedness beneath the towel.

  Smiler’s expression softened as he spoke to her, ‘For a lie down. I didn’t get any sleep.’

  ‘Join the club.’ Thurston huffed and moved round to sit on the couch.

  Callie threw Thurston a look of disdain, then said to Smiler, ‘Good idea. We should probably all grab a few hours. We’ve a raft to
build later.’

  ‘A raft?’ This time Pollyanna seemed keen to spew some negativity, but Callie cut her short with a tired, ‘Don’t fucking start,’ before tramping back to the bathroom to get dressed.

  The bathroom was empty. The woman gone.

  How can she be here, Dean? She can’t be!

  Callie hurried back into yesterday’s clothes, not wanting to linger for too long. All of the steam had dissipated and the chill had returned to the room with biting freshness. She was too afraid to look at the mirror again but could remember the ghost-woman’s face all too well. She tried to recall if she’d known her from somewhere, but couldn’t think where and suddenly didn’t want to in case the thought alone could rouse the dead. And who knew how many spirits the cabin might keep.

  By the time Callie went back to the lounge Pollyanna and Smiler had disappeared and Thurston was alone on the couch. ‘You look like shit,’ she told him.

  He smiled – his eyes squinting in that guileful way – but even so, he looked deeply troubled about something. ‘You’ve looked a lot better yourself, sweetheart.’

  She tried to laugh in response but it was a pathetic effort. ‘Go and get some rest,’ she said. ‘You may as well use the spare room upstairs.’

  ‘Nah.’ He shook his head, his eyes not leaving hers. ‘You take it. I’ll sleep on the couch.’

  ‘If you’re trying to be a gent,’ she said, putting her hands on her hips, ‘you’ll take the spare room and let me have the couch.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the spare room?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she lied.

  ‘As long as you’re sure.’

  She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to be sure about – the spare room being okay or her being okay about the couch – but she said that she was and watched as he went upstairs. He didn’t say another word, his broad back serving as conversational closure.