The First Fall

by Daniel Willcocks

  “You’re thinking too hard, that’s the problem,” Ian said, his upper lip frothed with foam from his Carlsberg.

  “I have to. This has to be good. A tale rich with enough story and background that the readers fall in love. It’s not just the physical characters that the readers love, it’s the world. The country, the ambience, the very setting is a character in itself.”

  Ian let out a small exhalation from his nose. “You sound like a right pretentious twat. Do you hear that in yourself?”

  They laughed as the smattering of patrons mumbled around them. The stale scent of spilled beer and ale hung in the air, thick in the sticky residues left in the weaves of the carpets.

  “Why don’t you just strip back what you did before? Don’t over-analyse it. Pare it all back and start from scratch. Think simple.” Ian leaned forward suddenly, hand slapping the table as his eyes widened. “Why don’t you do the opposite of what you’ve done before?”

  Alex raised an eyebrow.

  “No, think about it. Burning Sands was all about Egyptian culture and pyramids and all that shit that we’ve seen in a thousand documentaries, right? Mummies and traps and all that crap.”

  “I hope this isn’t how you talk to other people about my books.” Alex grinned, a slight shake in his head. “No wonder my sales are beginning to decline.”

  “Do the opposite. Go somewhere barren. Somewhere where there is no story. Somewhere that remains a mystery to most of the civilized world but could yield some interesting reading. Somewhere like… An island off the coast of New Zealand, or… the Atlantic…”

  “That’s an ocean.”

  “I’m just spitballing, here.” Ian unlocked his phone screen and navigated to his Maps app. He flicked his finger across the globe until it settled on a mass of white at the northernmost reaches of Alaska. “There. That’s where your next book is going to be set.”

  At the time, Alex had shrugged off Ian’s enthusiasm, taking it as nothing more than the rambling idea of a tipsy friend. Yet, as the days wore on, the notion wormed its way into his mind. It became a parasite, and soon it was all he could think about.

  He dived into study, spending hours each day looking into the unremarkable community who chose to live hundreds of miles away from the embrace of modern civilization. Over time he unlocked the secrets of his next story, ideas percolating even as he booked his flight and prepared to jet off for his solo trip to Alaska. Mystery swam in the legends regaled around the Denridge campfires. Enigma shrouded them, coddled in the arms of the Drumtrie Forest.

  Something was there, he was sure of it. Something he could shape into his next bestseller. Denridge Hills was his best chance at a future success...

  But, oh that chill.

  Alex hadn’t been sure if it was the physical presence of isolation that seeped into his bone marrow from the moment they soared over the dense forest and Denridge came into view, or if it was perhaps the guilt at dragging a fifteen-year-old kid so far from home just months after his parents—Alex’s sister and brother-in-law—had passed, but something was off. When they stepped offe the plan he accepted that chill as an unwelcome companion. There was no escape.

  Even now, lying under the copious number of sheets and blankets, his body refused to reach any kind of equilibrium in temperature. Lying in the dark and staring up at the beamed ceilings, his mind reeled. He could feel his tiredness in his lower lids. His lips were chapped and sore. His hair felt brittle and thick, more like straw than the soft texture he had been used to when able to live in warmer conditions.

  Still, it’ll all be worth it. Four more weeks and we’ll be out of here.

  His screen pulsed with a white glow from the corner of his room. He rarely turned the computer off, knowing that an idea could strike at any minute and, like catching a trout in your bare hands, if you didn’t react fast, it could escape downriver and disappear beneath the mirk. A thick black block of text decorated the digital white page—the results of his latest writing sprint in which he chronicled his experience of visiting the Iñupiat tribe who lived a couple of miles out towards the Arctic coastline. The Iñupiats were some of the last truly native Inuits to exist in the world. This far up north, they had struck a deal with the people of Denridge Hills that they would be allowed to hold onto their customs and the borders of their grounds in which they hunted, slept, bred, and survived.

  Alex had found a guide who was able to take him out into the barren tundra only a week ago. Together they had barrelled along the snow on a sled led by seven of the most beautiful and obedient dogs Alex had ever met. Their coats displayed shining blacks, whites, greys, and even oranges as they sprinted under the hazy glow of the low-hanging sun.

  He had visited the Iñupiat people and stayed with them inside an igloo for a single night. With their conversation translated by Alex’s guide, he asked the burning questions he could not find an answer to on any side of the internet. There he learned about their customs and their lore. He probed about their gods and their superstitions. While there were some questions that the Iñupiat people were lax to answer—particularly when it came to their tribal leader who had been taken with a sudden sickness—Alex gleaned enough from his visit to fill the entirety of a dozen pages of his notebook.

  That visit had informed the first three chapters of his new novel, for which he had yet to adopt a title. He planned to go back there, if he could. One final visit to follow up on a number of questions which had sprung into his mind on the ride back to town. If only his guide would agree to take him back again.

  Alex’s mind buzzed with a hive of thoughts. He rolled over in his bed, eyes finding the line of amber light which spilled from beneath his door. Just two rooms away Cody would be fast asleep. At least in slumber the kid could escape the pains of the last few months. While Alex covered the pain of the loss of his sister by diving deeper into his book than he had with any other project, he wondered how the kid was truly coping. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose both of his parents so young. His breakdowns at both his school back home, as well as Denridhe Hills High School just three weeks back showed that there were cracks there that were breaking, although when he was face-to-face with Cody, he hardly showed any emotion whatsoever.

  Alex rose from his bed and beelined for the desk like a lazy fly drawn to a UV light. There were small chips and scratches in the desk’s surface, initials carved from the former residents of the house, an ink spill in the corner which could never be erased without a full tin of elbow grease. He jogged the mouse and read over the last paragraph he had written, foregoing sleep and deciding that he may as well make some kind of progress while he was up. Writing always made him feel better, no matter the situation.

  His fingers worked away at the keys, dancing and clicking without conscious thought. His eyes rarely strayed to the keyboard anymore, his mind and body so familiar with its layout that there was little point. After an hour he had written another page, and to him that was good.

  Alex reached for the glass beside him and found it empty. His fingertips cradled the lip which had developed a small ring of frosty condensation. His throat dry, he teased open his bedroom door and walked to the bathroom.

  Water rushed noisily from the tap causing Alex to flinch as he poured himself a drink. When he shut the tap off, he waited in the ambience of the distant ghost choir and cocked his ear for any disturbance from Cody’s room. When none came, he tiptoed back into the hall.

  As he passed Cody’s room, he paused.

  Cody’s door was open. Not all-the-way open, but the door that was usually shut tight now had the latch resting against the doorjamb.

  Alex pressed an ear to the door. When no sound returned, he gently pressed the door open a couple of inches and peeked inside.

  It took a moment to adjust to the darkness. There was a strange red glow that didn’t make sense to him, as though cast from a lava lamp of some kind. Alex had had one as a kid, the bubbles blue and the light green. When he stared u
p at the Aurora in the night sky he often thought back to that lamp, about a simpler time when the world made sense and his sister was alive.

  But Cody had no lamp to speak of, and Alex doubted that Cody would have been able to purchase one from the modest Denridge shops. Those were mostly reserved for the necessities like groceries, butchers, fishing tackle, hardware, and clothing. Drawn in with a daunting curiosity, Alex opened the door further, now able to make out the shapes of Cody’s furniture in the gloom. His eyes scanned the crooked doors of the wardrobe, glossed over the picture frames on the dresser, and finally found the empty bed.

  For a half second, Alex believed his mind was playing tricks on him. That strange red hue cast an almost dreamlike state over the room, and he was almost certain he would wake up at any minute. Another step into the room and he realized that that was not the case. Like a blind man exploring his surroundings he stumbled towards the bed and patted the sheets, as though Cody might be hiding somewhere underneath the mound of scrunched up material left pushed to the bottom of the bed.

  “Cody?”

  He dropped to his knees and checked beneath the bed, letting out a sudden cry as he fell backwards onto his hands. Strange dark eyes glinted at him from beneath the bed, some wicked creature cloaked in darkness. Only, when Alex caught his breath, he realized there was no creature at all. Just the reflection of the large black buttons of one of Cody’s jackets.

  Alex let out a weak laugh and pushed himself back to his feet. Something caught his attention from the corner of his eye, and he turned towards the break in the curtains.

  “What the hell…?”

  Alex moved towards the frosted glass in a dreamlike state, his attention now entirely belonging to the Aurora. It danced merrily in the sky, pulsing and waving for as far as he could see in either direction. Alex knew that the natives of Alaska and beyond once believed that the Aurora was the resting place of many of the world’s fallen creatures. He had seen paintings and displays of deer and bears and fish and eagles created from the very fibres of the alien light, soaring across the sky in an enchanting array of colour.

  Yet, he had never seen anything like this.

  The Aurora eddied and weaved in the hues of a colour that immediately made Alex think of blood. A serpent of nausea coiled in his stomach and slithered up his throat, teasing its tongue out of his mouth to taste the air. He swallowed hard and pushed the creature back down, wondering what possible natural phenomenon could make the sky look as though it had broken, and God was bleeding.

  He turned his gaze down into the streets, wondering if anyone else had noticed this strange occurrence, expecting to see a neighbour or two standing outside of their houses to bear witness.

  There was none of that. The sleepy town slept on.

  What Alex did notice, however, as the first flurries of a fresh storm of snow began to fall from the dark clouds gathering around the Aurora, were a series of fresh footprints in the snow, leading away from his house, and out into the town.

  He turned back to the room, spying the empty space where Cody’s basketball sat when it wasn’t being bounced inside his room, and sighed. Ever since he had received news of Kathrin’s and Tom’s accident, the burden of parenthood had been a constant nag in the back of his mind. Cody was fifteen, nearly sixteen, and for that he was somewhat thankful. Alex had avoided having children of his own, not because the opportunity didn’t present itself, but because his work was his life, his love, his child. While he was thankful now that he didn’t have to change Cody’s nappies and feed him milk every few hours, the teenage years were always going to be some of the most trialling to any parent. Rebellion was baked into their blood and, to Alex, this might have just been the most reckless act that he could think of right now. To wander off in the middle of the night in a strange town where nightly temperatures plummeted to well below freezing. In a part of the world where polar bears roaming the town were a genuine threat, and wolves gathered in merciless packs searching for a fresh kill.

  And then there was the case of the Aurora. Alex’s mind struggled to comprehend any kind of possible science behind its strange hue. Whatever it was caused his gut to wither, his heart to beat faster.

  Five minutes later, Alex strapped up his boots and pulled on his gloves. He raised his hood about his head and headed out into the night. The only solace running through his mind that perhaps, somewhere further down the line, this would make a great story for his book.

  5

  Cody Trebeck

  The wind was picking up. Cody could feel it begin to buffet them as though the wind had hands. He trapped his gloves in the crevices of his armpits and squinted against the flakes of snow that flurried around them. For the tenth time in as many minutes he questioned his decision to blindly follow Kyle out into the night.

  The four of them walked ahead of Cody and Brandon. They barely batted an eyelid when the pair arrived at Sophie’s house just as she was leaving through the back door and emerging through the side of the building. Amy, Kyle, and Travis sniggered and muttered something among themselves, sparing nothing more than a single glance back at Cody and his companion before leading the way towards the school.

  Only Sophie held Cody’s gaze and offered a weak smile. It was enough to send a flush of warmth through his system and make his heart flutter.

  But even that faded as Amy hooked her hand around Sophie’s arm and led her onwards.

  Denridge Hills High School lay at the farthest limits of the town. Divided into a cluster of larger buildings, each unit looked to Cody more akin to the industrial warehouses dotted around London’s spaghetti junction motorways than a place for education and learning. Their externals were painted corrugated metal with reinforced sloped roofs to take the strain of the winter’s heavy falls. The windows were few and far between, and those that did break the endless walls of sheet metal and insulation were inches thick, designed to keep the elusive heat inside the building and resist the frigid temperatures.

  Around the back of the buildings was a courtyard bordered with a high mesh fence. It was there that the school children were allowed their respite from the blinking fluorescent lights and endless drones of their teachers, but only on the days when the sun was high and the snow was forgiving. Out of the thirty school days Cody had been in attendance at, the courtyard had been closed off for at least twenty-five of those days. There was a gymnasium inside that soon became crowded when all students gathered together to find somewhere to break up the monotony of their day and chat with the kids from different classes.

  And it was for that particular gymnasium that Kyle had set his sights.

  The school loomed from out of the growing snowfall like a freightliner through the fog. Its emergency lights gave a dull spectral glow that appeared to Cody like the bright lights of some demonic hell beast. Instinctively, he shuffled closer to Brandon, and Brandon shuffled closer to him. Kyle and the others appeared unfazed as they tossed the ball back and forth and sent laughter into the air.

  “How are we supposed to get in?” Cody scalded himself for not realizing the fault in their plan. “The school’s locked up at night. The doors will be padlocked.”

  Brandon shrugged. Beneath the folds of his insulated clothing, only his eyes and the bridge of his nose poked out. When he spoke, Cody had to strain to hear the muffled tones. “How am I supposed to know? This was Kyle’s great idea.” His cheeks rose as he grinned. “If there’s no way in, we can just cut home. Sophie’s not going to judge you for that, is she?”

  Cody looked over at Sophie, wrapped tightly in a snow-white puffy jacket that hid the alluring curves of her body. Curves which he found himself absently staring at whenever she walked ahead of him in the halls. There was something about Sophie that called out to him and made his knees weak, and he struggled to put a finger on it. Perhaps it was the fact that she was in the year above, and for high school kids we all know that those years mattered. If he could get into a relationship with an older woman, that wo
uld go a long way to accelerating his social status among the boys in his year who still hadn’t let go of his emotional breakdown.

  Or maybe it was because she was just so…

  Normal.

  There was no other word for it. While Amy’s ego was so tied up in her appearances and the rat race of schoolyard popularity, Sophie didn’t seem to care about any of that. She liked Amy as a friend (though Cody couldn’t understand why), but she didn’t act like the other girls in her year. When Cody had stepped out of the nurse’s office after a large portion of the school had witnessed his breakdown, Sophie had been one of the first girls who had met his eye as he walked back to class. He expected her to turn away, giggle, maybe even shake her head in disgust. Instead, she had smiled.

  “Tough being the new kid, huh?”

  Cody’s mouth had flapped, the words refusing to materialize. A strange guttural sound escaped his throat.

  Sophie let out a soft laugh. “We all go through it. It’ll pass soon. Trust me, you’ll be fine.”

  With that, she shouldered her bag and disappeared around the corner.

  Cody was so lost in his thoughts for a moment that he almost walked into the back of Kyle. It was only thanks to a swift tug on the arm from Brandon that he looked up and realized they had stopped.

  Kyle turned to Travis, his eyes flashing with excitement. “Did you bring them?”

  “Do you even need to ask?” Travis unzipped his jacket, turning from the direction of the wind and masking himself in shadow. A moment later he revealed a pair of bolt cutters which had been hidden in his inner pockets. He stepped towards the mesh fence and opened their jaws.