by R. H. Dixon
Callie felt nauseous, about her thoughts and what this might mean. ‘Because an infestation of ravens live in the tree outside the cabin.’
‘So?’
‘So it can’t be a coincidence. It’s like another piece of the puzzle.’
‘No, Cal, it’s just a fucking tattoo I had done years ago.’ He staggered sideways as though struck dizzy, but reached down for the bed and managed to regain some balance.
‘Where the hell do you think you’re going anyway?’ she said, suddenly angry with him. ‘You should be lying down for goodness sake. We need to get you cleaned and stitched up again.’
‘No.’ He stayed where he was, stooped over the bed in a hurt, broken stance, and held the key up. His eyes glinted maniacally and he bared his teeth. ‘I’m going to see what I can stick this fucker into.’
Callie jumped to her feet, her breath exploding outwards in an almighty gasp. That’s it! ‘I think I might know what it’s for!’
‘Really?’ Thurston stepped back and seemed to trip on his own feet. Unable to right himself again, he crashed to the floor with a heavy thud; the sound of cushioned bones on wood reverberated dully. Callie held her breath. The entire cabin shuddered. Seconds later the door burst open and Smiler was standing on the landing, bleary eyed and dirty. ‘Everything alright?’ He looked from Callie to Thurston and upon seeing blood on both of them decided that it most definitely wasn’t, so asked instead, ‘What the hell happened?’
‘Quick!’ Callie said. ‘Give me a hand to get him up.’
Spurred into action, Smiler rushed into the red and white room, forgetting his misgivings about the place, and grabbed Thurston by the underarms to hoist him up from behind. But Thurston was heavy and reluctant to move. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and he groaned. Smiler’s face turned red from the strain. Callie took hold of Thurston’s hands and pulled upwards, encouraging him to get back on the bed. Eventually they got him to his feet and as they eased him down, she couldn’t help but think that his blood had formed some vile coalition with the sheets, which were showing up dark red like old congealed blood, now that weak light was stealing in through the open door.
Once he was settled onto his back, Callie snatched a clean t-shirt from the pile of clothes on the floor and pressed it against Thurston’s chest. ‘Here, hold this,’ she said, placing his hands on top.
Smiler was mesmerised and couldn’t take his eyes off Thurston. There was so much blood, so much mess. ‘What happened?’ he asked again.
Callie took the key from Thurston and showed it to Smiler. ‘We found this. Inside his chest!’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘That’s pretty messed up.’ Smiler touched his head, stupefied. ‘What’s it for?’
‘We don’t know.’ Callie twiddled the key in her fingers. It was dark with Thurston’s blood. Tacky with it too. ‘But here’s what I’m thinking, supposing it unlocks the door to the tower?’ Smiler and Thurston exchanged a look that she didn’t even try to interpret in full. ‘I just have this feeling,’ she insisted.
Thurston was shivering now and his lips trembled when he spoke. ‘Where’s the door to the tower?’
‘Next door. In Smiler’s room.’ Callie folded the duvet over, covering him with it.
‘And why are you so convinced that will open it?’
‘Because no one has been up there. The door is locked and there is no key. It’s the only place in the cabin that hasn’t been explored.’ She looked at Smiler then and could tell she had almost convinced him. ‘Pardon the pun, but I think this is the key to the answers we need.’
‘Okay, let’s try it then.’ Thurston moved his arms to his sides and braced them to push himself up.
‘It might be a whole load of excitement over nothing,’ Callie said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘You stay here, I’ll go and check.’
‘But it’s only next door.’
‘Last time you didn’t make two steps from the bed before you tried to face-plant the floor. And besides, you’re too bloody heavy for me and Smiler to keep lugging about the place.’
Thurston inhaled loudly to mark his frustration, but eventually conceded with a nod. ‘Let me know how you get on. The suspense is killing me.’ He touched her hand then and she wished he hadn’t.
At the door, Callie looked back and had a disturbing thought that the bed might swallow him while she was gone. The shiny, slippery redness of the duvet enveloped him like an exposed, greedy stomach. She hated the constant symbolism the room kept projecting into her head. Hated that it was the place Thurston had opened up to her. Hated that it had devoured the knowledge that he didn’t love Freya. Hated that it had turned his admission into something terrible and seedy while revelling in her guilt. She also hated that her thoughts about Thurston were so ambiguous, but as real as his blood, which had congealed black around her nailbeds. It’s him, isn’t it? I don’t know! You’ve been staring at him all day. How long for? All day! But why? It’s him. It’s him. It’s him!
Callie turned away, afraid of the thoughts that weren’t her own, perhaps even more afraid of the ones that were, and followed Smiler to his room. As she walked her legs felt like they didn’t belong to her. Like she was floating and none of this was really happening. At the tower door she inserted the key into its lock. Anticipation fizzed in the air. She could feel Smiler’s tense eagerness beside her as if it was a real thing of substance. Even the stag’s eyes gleamed with expectancy and she imagined its nostrils might be quivering and that it might snort at any moment. Everything rested on this moment. If Callie was wrong and the key wasn’t a match, she and Smiler would have to haul their arses outside and get to work building a raft. But somehow that no longer felt like the right solution. There was a simpler way out of this, she knew it. And this was it. All she had to do was…
Plick-plick, plick-plick-plick.
‘What’s that?’ She turned to face the window. The curtains were drawn, so she couldn’t see what was tapping the glass.
Plick, plick-plick, plick-plick.
‘Shall I go and look?’ Smiler said, making no attempt to.
Plick-plick, plick-plick.
‘Maybe it’s just a branch.’ But Callie wasn’t convinced.
PLICK-PLICK-PLICK, PLICK-PLICK.
The window imploded with a splintered crash. As glass rained to the floor the curtains billowed inwards and a large black bird flew inside. It came right at them, cawing a terrible warning. Then more ravens followed; a stream of angry black plumage that raged into the room. Beaks snapped and claws pinched at any soft tissue they could find. One raven tore at the skin on Smiler’s neck, stirring fresh blood, while others pulled his hair and tried to get to his eyes. He held his arms up to shield his face and screamed for Callie to open the tower door.
Callie swiped her arm up to dislodge a bird that was tangled in her hair. It beat up and down more furiously, its wings whipping her face. Instinctively she knew then that the key would open the door, because the ravens were guarding something. Something up there in the tower. A secret about to be revealed.
Shut your stupid face.
She turned the key.
Else what?
The lock mechanism made a satisfying clunk and the door pulled open.
I’ll kill you!
Callie pushed Smiler inside and bustled in after him, swatting at ravens that tried to follow. Something wedged in the door as she pulled it closed. She gave a sharp yank and there was a head-hurting screech. Then something fell to the floor by her feet with a soft, sickening thump. Sheer darkness surrounded them, accommodating all too well the eerie sound of birds’ beaks hitting the other side of the door in a frantic tirade. Callie stood still. Unable to move. Needing to keep the door pulled shut, just in case they knew of a way to open it and come after them.
Eventually all went quiet on the other side of the door and Callie and Smiler were left with nothing but the sou
nd of their own frenzied heartbeats in the dark. And then voices. A new tirade of voices in Callie’s head. Do you know any stories? There used to be a man. How did he do it? Did it with a filleting knife. Can you imagine that? Sounds like the picnic was better off that way. But why? Not everyone hears the trees anyway. But why? That’s just how it is, sweetheart. Where is he now? She won’t hear. Where? I won’t tell. But why? I’m sorry. I think we’ve all heard enough. ‘Yes, enough!’ Callie cried, close to tears, close to hysteria.
Smiler didn’t argue.
With the threat of the birds gone, the threat of the unknown grew. Callie became aware only now of the overbearing smell wafting down from the tower, as though the cabin’s foul dankness originated in this place. In its rawer form the smell had a meatiness to it, like old blood and decaying flesh. Of something dead or dying. Something waiting in the dark. Oppressively possessive. Like the red that swathed Thurston. I’ll kill you. And the trees of Whispering Woods. Can you imagine that? Whatever it was that wanted them dead was breathing and existing in this same dark space as them. Churning the words that the trees spoke. Perhaps even creating them. Callie and Smiler had to go up. They had no choice but to venture to the top of the cabin. To face whatever truth lay in wait for them. That’s just how it is, sweetheart.
25
Callie reached for Smiler. Her hand closed around his arm. He flinched at first, then his hands were clutching at hers. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine other hands reaching out, which prompted a new sense of dread of being touched by unseen, unknown things that dwelt in the dark. Phantom hands fingering and teasing the air around them, ready to whisper-brush exposed skin in mocking caresses of hard-edged deathly promise. Or less subtle hands that were very much real and intrinsically more dangerous.
‘Do you have your lighter?’ Callie said. Her voice sounded gut-wrenchingly loud in the quiet space and she imagined it was being explored and devoured by the dark and everything in it.
‘Yes!’ Smiler’s hands left hers and she heard him patting down the pockets of his jeans. There were a few hisses and failed sparks, then an orange flame lit his face and hand, though not much else. Darkness dwarfed the lighter’s tiny glow.
‘Hold it next to the wall,’ Callie said, moving his arm because he didn’t do it quickly enough. ‘See if there’s a switch.’
He held the lighter close to the grubby unfinished plasterboard to his left and moved it about in circular motions, trying to make the most of its ineffective light. It hardly made a difference, so Callie began to pat the wall blindly, her hands instantly made gritty by what she imagined was cobweb residue and dead skin. Without much searching, her fingers found a switch. Too easy. She flicked it down but nothing happened. She was about to relay her disappointment to Smiler and anything else that might listen when a dull creaminess broke through the darkness, somewhere above. Energy saving lightbulb.
A wooden staircase, leading up, was dingily illuminated by the bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling at what was presumably the mouth of the tower room. The bare wood boards of the stairs looked dirty from years of use and disuse and the plasterboard walls where Callie and Smiler were standing, came to a sudden stop at the foot of the stairs, after which point the walls were exposed brickwork all the way up to the second floor.
Callie looked at Smiler and took a deep breath. ‘Ready?’
He didn’t reply, but when she stepped forwards he moved with her. His arm was pressed against hers and she could feel how tightly coiled he was. She was the same, her body so tense it almost hurt. They stepped onto the first stair together, but then Smiler stopped. He took a deep breath. Callie waited. And the cabin listened. ‘What about Thurston?’ he asked.
This was perhaps the last chance Smiler saw to turn around and go back, and Callie could tell he was contemplating taking it. But her resolve was stronger. ‘What about him?’
‘Won’t he wonder where we are?’
‘I expect so.’ Callie began to climb again; the boards dry beneath her feet like old bone.
‘He asked us to let him know about the door.’
‘And we will.’
‘When?’
She made a cough that didn’t leave the inside of her mouth, an involuntary reaction to dust stirring, and paused till he moved to catch up. ‘After we’ve found whatever there is to find.’
Three stairs further up and Smiler sneezed. Loudly. They both stopped to listen to what might have been roused, but heard nothing so continued on. Creeping upwards. Slowly. Callie’s hand trailed a dirty wooden bannister that felt loose and seemed too makeshift to have been intended as a permanent fixture. In fact, the whole staircase looked like an unfinished project. A refurbishment gone astray.
‘What about the ravens?’ Smiler asked, when they were almost at the top.
‘What about them?’
‘Won’t they find Thurston? Will he be safe?’
‘I closed his door as I left.’
There was an ensuing silence that was laden with Smiler’s disappointment.
‘In any case, none of us are safe,’ she reminded him.
At the top of the stairs a great staleness of stagnant air that hadn’t been breathed in quite possibly forever filled their lungs. Both of them coughed. The cabin’s tower was a stark wooden frame with layers of dust and no natural light because its windows had been blanked out with what looked like black sugar paper held in place with duct tape. All of the room’s shadows were stationary but ample enough to evoke a sense that they kept things within that moved jaggedly and quickly between two worlds – this one and another much worse. The room was bare except for a prevailing feeling of gloom, as weighty and portentous as the lake outside, and a large wooden chest that had been placed in the middle of the vast floor space, most definitely deliberately.
‘I bet it’s locked,’ Smiler thought aloud. His voice ruptured the tower’s loaded quietude, goading any lurking evils to materialise. None did. But the light behind flickered. Neither of them moved.
‘No,’ Callie said. ‘We’re meant to see whatever’s in there.’
Smiler rubbed his neck where the raven’s beak had pierced his skin. The superficial wound had begun to scab over, but his fingers made it bleed again. He carried on poking as though that was the only thing he could do. When Callie said nothing further, he felt obliged to say, ‘Shall we take a look?’ Which was a redundant question because he knew they had to.
Still, neither of them moved.
The cabin revelled in their indecisiveness, growing stronger as their nerve weakened.
‘Are you scared of what we’ll find?’ Callie asked, unsure why. Another pointless question.
Smiler’s face slipped easily into an age-inducing frown. ‘Too many bad surprises.’
She reached for his hand and gripped it, squeezing his fingers between hers, then together they crept to the chest.
Beneath the dust of however long it was rich in colour, some Indian rosewood perhaps, and the size of a decent blanket box. It was an expensive looking hand-crafted piece with black iron studs running vertically down each of its sides. Two black handles at either end made it portable and a large black clasp at the front gave the option of security. However, no padlock was in place. As Callie had predicted, they were to be allowed easy access to its contents. Investing himself in a joint discovery, Smiler huddled down next to Callie and gripped a corner of the lid. Callie lifted the clasp and together they swung it open. Inside, the chest was filled with shadows. Callie reached in and felt something at the bottom, her fingers tracing hard edges. She pulled out a small rectangular object that was wrapped in red linen.
It had to be red.
She unwound the material and let it fall to the floor, then stared with a certain amount of trepidation at the black leather-bound book in her hands. Gilded text on its front cover proclaimed it to be a JOURNAL.
Callie closed her eyes and breathed in long and hard. ‘Here we go.’ She ran
a finger over the embossed letters. A marrow-deep chill prickled its way up through bone to the surface of her skin, causing a rash of gooseflesh. She caught Smiler’s eye for a brief moment and saw that he shared her apprehension. This was it, they were about to unveil the truth. Her fingers trembled and she opened the book.
Oh God.
She stared blankly down at deeply-pressed pencil handwriting which declared that the journal belonged to: Sarah Jane Miller.
‘Pollyanna’s cousin,’ Smiler acknowledged with no hopeful expectation.
The girl who went missing.
Callie read the name over and over in her head. It seemed more personal written down. She could imagine an actual girl attached to it. The Sarah Jane Miller that Pollyanna had mentioned was no longer just some urban myth. Callie looked about the unfurnished tower room and a great wave of sadness washed over her. ‘Do you think she was kept up here?’
‘But when and who by?’
Callie shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?’ She skimmed through the journal’s pages and saw that most of them were written on. Hundreds of pencilled sentences constructed by a girl who neither she nor Smiler knew, but a girl who most likely held the answers not only to the cabin’s mystery and her own disappearance, but Callie’s, Thurston’s, Smiler’s and Pollyanna’s cryptic involvement as well. ‘Let’s show Thurston. He needs to see this.’
‘What about the ravens?’ Smiler now seemed reluctant to go back down, as though Sarah Jane Miller’s journal was not the breakthrough he’d expected and he needed time to think, to process what it might mean. He was visibly unsettled and the mention of Thurston seemed to add to his anxiety.
‘Well,’ Callie said, ‘we can’t stay up here forever.’
With the threat of her statement feeling all too real, like a dare that had to be exacted, she and Smiler went back downstairs. They found Smiler’s room free from ravens, except the one Callie had decapitated with the door. The curtains billowed at the window, but the ash tree outside was bare. Above the bed the stag had resumed its lacklustre death-stare. Nothing about the room held an immediate sense of malevolence or threat. The ravens had tried but failed to stop them finding the journal, which meant that Callie and Smiler had achieved one small victory. But at what cost, they had to wonder. The cabin still breathed all around them, watching. Waiting to make its next move.
