Voices in the Snow

by Darcy Coates

  Very slowly, she lifted her head. She’d been aware of the light around her, but it had taken a second for the relevance to sink in. The garden’s door was open. That wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right. Dorran was always careful to keep it shut tightly and preserve the warmth their precious plants needed.

  Clare glanced towards the cellar archway. It remained empty. Then she looked towards the door leading back into the main parts of the house. It was shut, the way she’d left it when she’d come into the room.

  “Dorran?” Her voice was a croak. Perfect, undisturbed silence was her only reply. Clare pushed herself to stand and staggered forwards.

  There was no one inside the garden room, no one she could see at least. Clare squinted through the fog of stress as she reached the entrance and leaned on the open door for support.

  She’d spent so much time in the space over the recent week that she could picture the scene by heart. Snow peas were stretching tendrils up their trellises. They were small, but enthusiastic. The tomato sprouts were still tiny. Their delicate, fuzzy green leaves reached towards the artificial lights above them, not seeming to notice or mind that it wasn’t the sun. The lettuce had three leaves apiece, and Dorran had said they would need only two more weeks before there would be enough to start picking.

  Clare stepped through the doorway, and a moaning wail wrenched from her chest. Their beautiful garden—their love, their pride, their survival—was dead.

  The plants had been dug out of the ground. Not eaten, but uprooted. What had been perfectly smooth beds the day before were now mounds and valleys of dark-brown soil. Bruised leaves poked out. Exposed roots withered in the lights’ heat. Not a single plant had been spared.

  “No, no, no.” She clutched at the sides of her head as she shook it. “This can’t be real.”

  It’s a delusion. It has to be. Please, let this be all in my mind.

  She reached towards the closest plant, a small tomato. Its stem had broken when it had been dug up, and clumps of dirt still held to its delicate, hairlike roots. Its leaves had started to wilt. She touched the sap that had beaded at the bent section of the stem. She felt how limp the foliage was and how crisp the delicate roots were.

  “No.” This was real. She couldn’t imagine such detail. She couldn’t imagine such nuanced sensations. The garden was gone, churned up, destroyed. “No!”

  This can’t happen. They can’t die.

  She lifted the tomato plant back upright and gently, carefully scooped soil around the damaged roots. When she let it go, the top flopped back over where its stem had broken. Clare moaned. But she didn’t stop. There might still be time to save some of them. Some of the plants hadn’t been shredded in the massacre. If I can just stop the roots from drying out…

  She darted among the beds, trying to right the plants she could find and scooping soil back around them. Tears ran down her cheeks, and Clare didn’t try to stop them. She wasn’t being as delicate as she knew she should be. Her hands shook. Crumpled, torn leaves flecked the soil. There was too much to do. And the remaining plants were withering with every passing moment.

  “What have you done?”

  The familiar voice cut through her. She turned. Dorran stood in the garden’s open door. She didn’t know how long he’d been watching her, but he was sheet white. His dark eyes, normally so comforting, were wide as he stared at the carnage.

  Clare took a step towards him. “We can… we can save them.”

  He looked at her, but there was no affection in his face any longer. He sounded like he was in pain. “What have you done, Clare?”

  She looked down at her hands. They were filthy with dirt. It clung under her fingernails like blood from a crime scene. She cowered back. “This wasn’t me. I didn’t do this.”

  “You didn’t—” He pressed his hand over the lower half of his face and closed his eyes, seemingly trying to swallow words he knew he would regret. When he took the hand away, he was trembling. “This was important. You knew how important it was. We will starve without this.”

  “I know! I know!” Fresh tears ran, and she was powerless to stop them. “I didn’t do this! There are people in the house. Monsters. They look human, but they—”

  His fist slammed into the door.

  Clare flinched as the sound of the jarred metal echoed around her.

  Dorran spoke slowly, but there was a deep, burning ferocity in his words. “There is no one here.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. She clenched her dirt-caked hands at her sides as she tried not to crumple to the ground. “I didn’t do this. They did it.”

  “Were you so desperate to convince me of your delusions?” His eyes were colder than the ice outside. “You would damn us to make me believe your lies.”

  “No! Dorran, I swear!”

  He took a pace towards her, and she stepped back. Her eyes burned from the tears. She didn’t know what else she could say.

  “I gave you everything.” He whispered, but each word hurt her more than if he’d screamed them. “Wasn’t that enough?”

  “Please. I… I…”

  He towered over her. She’d never felt the height difference as acutely as then. His lips shook, but his eyes were steady and unyielding. “Get out.”

  She ducked and ran past him. He didn’t try to stop her. Clare’s legs gave out as she neared the door, and she clutched at the structure to stay upright. When she looked over her shoulder, Dorran wasn’t watching her. He was staring at the ruined gardens, his shoulders bowed.

  She got her legs back under herself and kept running. The tears blinded her, but she didn’t slow down to see her way. She burst through the door into the long waiting room, then into the foyer. There, she collapsed onto the cold marble floor and wrapped her arms around her head.

  Her chest ached as she strained to breathe. She wished she could die. Then, maybe, she wouldn’t be able to cause any more damage.

  A little voice was whispering in the back of her head that maybe Dorran was right. Maybe she had destroyed the garden. Out of the two of them, he was the sane one. She trusted what he said, didn’t she?

  Maybe she’d never gone into the wine cellar at all. Maybe the twisted, broken woman wasn’t the only delusion. Maybe the encounter had been all in her imagination while she had mindlessly clawed out their precious plants.

  A wail choked in her throat and fell silent. She smacked a fist into the side of her head. The shock helped her think, at least a little. She lifted her eyes. The front door stood twenty paces away, bolted but easy to open.

  Beside it, in the foyer’s corner, next to the carefully crafted side tables and coatracks, were their snowshoes and coats.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nothing tried to disturb Clare as she buckled on the snowshoes. She already wore the thick, puffy jacket Dorran had given her, and she zipped the spare over the top then pulled on the gloves. She didn’t have time for all of the other precautions she’d worn the previous trip—the extra layers of socks, the second pair of pants, the hat—but that didn’t matter. She only needed to get to her car.

  The door was immensely heavy. She leaned her weight on the handle to wrench it open. On the other side, the snow drifts were up to her shoulders. Clare found a chair along one of the foyer’s walls and used it to climb out.

  Cold wind buffeted her as soon as she tumbled down the embankment. Clare squeezed her eyes closed and took a moment to let herself acclimatise. In some ways, the freezing sting was nice. It distracted her from the way her insides felt like they were tearing themselves apart. She gave herself a second, then she got the snowshoes under herself and stood.

  She remembered the way to the forest. When Dorran had led her out there, he’d taken her down the main driveway then speared off to pass the groundskeeper’s cottage. She followed the same path, struggling up one side of the dunes and skidding down the other.

  Her body was worn down. Even though she’d been awake for less than two hours, she felt ready to co
llapse, close her eyes, and never open them again. The forest’s edge looked impossibly far away. The sun was nowhere near as warm as it had seemed from the windows. A hazy fog had spread over the sky, reducing visibility and giving the environment a sense of impending twilight.

  She pushed the weariness down and instead grasped the kernel of pain and fear inside of herself. She squeezed it, making it hotter, and let it fuel her as she hiked towards the forest.

  The groundskeeper’s hut was visible. The snow had abated slightly compared to the day she and Dorran had taken shelter in it, and more of the stone walls were exposed. The little tunnel they’d dug to the door had been thoroughly filled in.

  Walking past the structure was painful. She tried not to relive that night when they’d shared the mattress and huddled in front of the fire as the elements assaulted them from every direction. An internal assurance had told her they would be fine if they just stayed together. That memory hurt too much. She thought it would hurt for a long time to come.

  Past the groundskeeper’s cottage, the ground levelled out. Clare guessed it was a clearing ahead of the forest. She fixed her eyes on the tree trunks, which were nothing but a blur of grey and shadows through the snow, and kept her numb, shaking legs moving.

  The sky seemed to be growing darker. Clare watched it with one eye, but she didn’t know what she would do if it swept over her. She wasn’t going back to the house. The groundskeeper’s cottage would be locked. If she could get to the forest, it would help protect her from some of the elements. But she could survive outside for only so long.

  Her plan was simple—reach the radio and contact Beth. Then she could see if there was any way someone could reach her. Even if it took a few hours, she could sit inside her car—assuming the crash hadn’t fractured it too badly—and be protected from the worst of the cold.

  It was a poor, broken plan with many opportunities for failure. The radio could be wrecked from water damage. Bethany might have given up and turned off her half of the pair. The car might be buried under six feet of snow if the crash site was in an area where the trees funnelled the flakes. It was the only plan she had left, though. Her one lifeline.

  Not that she deserved it. Under the gloves, her fingers were still caked with mud. The farther she walked from Winterbourne, the more convinced she became that she was responsible for destroying the garden. What other explanation is there without reaching into the realms of fantasy?

  Tears ached as they turned to frost on her eyelashes. Dorran hadn’t deserved that. He’d never raised his voice with her or even been irritable before. He’d been nothing except kind and patient. She owed him her life. And in return, he’d lost his only source of food.

  She felt sick. Clare hoped, with one less person in the house, his stores would last until he could regrow the garden. Or maybe she could convince someone to go and check on him. They would need a helicopter to reach the property. She wasn’t sure if she could talk a search-and-rescue team into dropping off supplies to a house that almost no one knew existed and that was otherwise uncontactable.

  The forest’s shadow passed over her, and she half closed her eyes as the temperature fell even lower. Every breath felt like it was burning her lungs. At least the wind would be gentler once she was among the trees.

  She stepped over the first bank of roots and staggered as the snowshoes threatened to upend her. The massive, many-layered pines had largely protected the forest floor from the incessant snow. It still clumped there, often in enormous drifts, but patches of clear ground were visible too. Clare couldn’t wear the snowshoes any farther without risking breaking them. She unfastened them and left them propped against a tree at the forest’s edge. One of the estate’s gardeners might find them there eventually and return them to their little closet.

  She stepped into the forest and relished the feel of bark under her gloves. The insides of Winterbourne Hall had been almost entirely devoid of life. She, Dorran, and the garden had been the only living things there.

  Banksy Forest was an incredible expanse. Some of the oldest trees had died, collapsing over and slowly rotting to feed the next generation. What was left was ancient and gnarled. The trunks were immense and often twisted by wind, other plants, or simply their own weight. Several trees had split down the middle but still grew leaves on both halves.

  As Clare climbed deeper, she was able to appreciate the generational difference. Younger trees had grown in between their forbearers. Sometimes they were fully grown, as large as their sires, but discernible because they didn’t conform to the straight rows of the previous generation. Others were small—the perfect size for someone to move into their living room for Christmas. A few tiny trees struggled to survive in the low-light environment of the forest floor. The younger plants tended to be spindly unless they’d been lucky enough to grow in the space left by one of the fallen first generation. Shrubs, winter-hardy vines, and the occasional fungus had made their home in between the pines.

  Once, Clare saw a flurry of motion in the distance as some animal—probably a rabbit—fled. She didn’t know which direction led to the road. All she had was Dorran’s mention that it lay straight ahead. She kept walking, struggling through the snow and over exposed roots, breathing heavily and unstable on her feet.

  She hadn’t expected the walk to be short. There would be no way for the manor to be so unknown if it were too close to the road. But the farther she hiked, the deeper her anxiety set in. The frightened little voice in the back of her head asked what she would do if she’d gone in the wrong direction and completely missed the road. She didn’t have much of an answer beyond wandering around until she either found the street or the manor again.

  Or die of exhaustion.

  Her feet ached, and thirst began to make its presence felt. She’d had a drink that morning when she’d brushed her teeth but nothing since, and the stress had dehydrated her. She ran her dry tongue over parched lips. The forest’s interior was, at least, a few degrees warmer thanks to the trees’ insulation. Her face still stung from the cold, but her core was warm. She tried to focus on that.

  The ground tended down suddenly, and Clare staggered into the snow-filled valley. The dirty white powder came up to her knees, and she began struggling through it to reach the next hill.

  Then she stopped and looked to her left. The valley continued on for a hundred meters before gently bending out of sight. “Oh,” Clare whispered. The layer of snow hid the asphalt, but the even, straight edges were unmistakable. She’d found the road.

  She managed a shaky smile. Her life was a mess, but at least she’d been able to do one thing correctly. She looked to the right then back to the left, trying to guess which direction her car might be. There were no visible signs. She chose left.

  The snow was hard to wade through, so Clare climbed back into the forest. She clutched at low branches to help her navigate around the trees. It was surprisingly hard to recognise the road when it was full of snow, but she thought she might know the bend ahead. It was about halfway through the forest, if her memory served.

  She tried to pick up her last memories of driving. She’d entered the forest. It had been snowing furiously, and she’d breathed a sigh of relief as the ancient growths gave her protection. After that…

  Clare blinked and shook her head. She thought she remembered hearing some kind of noise. She reached for the sound, but it was gone before she could grasp it. She visualised the scene. Her phone had been in the cup holder. Her bag had been in the passenger’s seat. Had she packed anything else? If she was visiting Marnie, she usually tried to bring some supplies that her aunt couldn’t get easily at the tiny nearby village. That usually meant paints and watercolour pencils. Marnie loved art, but the general store didn’t sell anything better than crayons.

  Clare was almost certain she hadn’t brought any art supplies that day, though. She remembered glancing into the rearview mirror. There had been something in the back seat, something large. A box, maybe? What k
ind of box was I bringing?

  Like the rest of her memories, it faded almost as soon as she clutched at it. Frustration took its place. Those were the last few normal hours of her life. To be denied them felt painfully unfair.

  She reached the corner and followed the bend in the road. Something large and red lay up ahead, curled in between two trees. Clare took a quick breath and began jogging. She’d found her car.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Clare had bought the little red hatchback secondhand a year before moving to her cottage. The car had been good to her. Beth had always worried when Clare drove the car on ice or snowy roads, but all it needed was good-quality snow tyres, and it handled the winter conditions well. It had been a reliable beast that had taken on a bit of a personality and started to feel like part of Clare’s tiny family.

  Seeing it broken hurt her deep inside. Its bonnet had crumpled. Lumps of bright-red metal, softened by layers of snow, twisted up towards the sky. As she neared it, Clare could see the tree she’d hit was one of the forest’s originals. The giant had been tilted back from the impact. The damage to the roots was most likely bad enough to kill it.

  Clare pressed one hand to her throat. It was hard to see her car like that. Harder still was knowing she’d been the one to cause the damage. The Banksy Forest route was one of the safest in the area. The road was wide and gentle with no sharp turns and good visibility all around. She was practiced at driving in snowy conditions. Clare couldn’t understand how she’d gone off the path so drastically.

  She ran her hand along the car’s body as she circled it. Fuel had leaked out of the engine, though it had long mixed in with the snow. The driver’s door hung wide open. The bend in it told Clare that the impact had popped it out. The windshield had a massive crack across it, though the safety glass had stayed in one solid lump.

  Clare looked down at her stomach, where the bandages hid nearly healed cuts. She’d come to believe the glass from the windshield had sliced into her. But seeing it still in one piece, she had to assume maybe metal had poked through into the driver’s seat and done the damage instead.