Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  Chapter Forty-three

  Charlie followed Hanna into the dark, stealing one last glimpse of the daylight before he entered the cave. They had both taken heavy lanterns from the ski-patrol hut. Ice on the rough, pocked walls reflected the dull electric light, the faintest noises amplified as they trod deeper into the gloom, the howl of the storm, faint droplets of water in the distance. The cave widened, so that it stretched high above their heads, the dancing lights casting frenetic, indiscernible shadows everywhere they looked.

  The passage ahead was partially blocked by rockfall, and they scrambled over the rubble. Charlie was slower, trying not to catch his lantern on the debris. Hanna waited for him, then they continued further into the passageway.

  They hadn’t gone more than a few metres before Hanna paused and whispered for Charlie to stop, her attention locked on a dark patch smeared on the uneven wall of the tunnel. There were four long dark marks there, as if a hand had dragged at the rock, trying to gain purchase with bloody fingers before being taken further underground. Hanna held her lantern up close to the wall, then took a deep breath, glanced at Charlie, and carried on into the darkness.

  Ahead of them the cavern widened again. Charlie pulled his backpack off his shoulder, checked that its contents were still there, ready to grab if need be.

  Charlie found his back wet with sweat, sweltering in his heavy coat and beanie, his heart pounding like a drum in his chest as the cave narrowed slightly. Hanna paused, glancing down at the floor where an item of discarded clothing lay.

  A dirty cardigan, old and torn. There were dark splashes on the wool, but Charlie didn’t hesitate to investigate them further. A few more echoing steps, and a tiny sock lay in the glow of their lanterns, green cartoon snakes embroidered into the material, something that might have been worn by a child not yet in school.

  Hanna’s pace quickened and she pressed on, leading Charlie into another opening, wider this time. She stopped suddenly, and Charlie drew up alongside her and shone his lantern into the hollow beyond.

  In the centre of the cave was what looked like a huge pile of rags, a mountain of them, so high that it reached almost to the jagged ceiling above. Charlie took a step closer and realized that among the pile were coats, jumpers, trousers, shirts, all of it thrown together in a vast, ragged mound. Some of them looked less aged, the styles more modern, and Charlie recognized several logos that he knew emblazoned on the discarded clothes. Other items among the pile were ripped and torn and faded as if they had lain there lost for centuries.

  Over to the left was a natural alcove in the rock, and a shining pile rested on the floor there. Hanna walked over to the glow, as if in a trance, reached down and picked up a long, thin piece of twine, a tiny golden talisman at the end dancing in the shadows. Charlie crept closer to see that the pile was a treasure trove of jewellery, rings, chains, pendants and charms, the gold and silver glistening like ice in the twilight.

  He shook his head. “We should go. We need to go. This place… It’s terrible. Let’s just light the dynamite, set it off, run. While we still can.”

  Hanna was silent. She looked at Charlie, and he saw that tears were welling in her eyes. “This was my brother’s. This was Jon’s. It was them, after all. It was those things that took him.”

  Charlie peered closer at the twine, and saw a tiny dolphin at the end of the material. Hanna wrapped it around her bandaged knuckles and looked back up at Charlie.

  “You go if you have to, but I can’t. They brought Jon here. He might still be here, now. I need to know. I need to know the truth. And I need to finish this.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  Hanna’s body was a shimmering mass of pain, the vision in her right eye reduced to a thin strip of light. Her head pounded, and the cuts on her bicep and across her collarbone leaked fresh blood through her shirt whenever she moved.

  Every step made her hurt. But anger kept her going.

  She sensed, rather than saw, Charlie’s presence just behind her, the gentle crunch of his feet, his deep, uneasy breathing.

  He had been right. The place, the caves, were terrible, like something out of the worst nightmare imaginable. But even if Charlie had refused to go with her, she would still have gone on alone into the darkness.

  Hanna squeezed her fist and felt the small dolphin talisman bite into her skin. Jon had worn it everywhere he went, his lucky charm. It had been given to him by their granddad, long dead now, a souvenir from days in the Navy. Jon had said once that he thought it kept him safe, gifted him good fortune when things turned bad.

  In the end, Hanna supposed, it had done Jon no good at all. But even so, it gave her a strange confidence, as if her brother watched over her.

  She knew Charlie was scared, and that if she had agreed, he would have fled back to the daylight in a heartbeat, but her fear was gone now, the terror from the night before, all of it fused into a cold, burning fury. She squeezed the charm in her fist tighter still, felt it pierce the skin on her palm, one more in an intricate map of dozens of cuts and wounds and slashes. She would do this for Jon, this one last thing.

  And then perhaps she would see him again.

  Hanna paused for a second, unzipped the pocket of the backpack and shone her lantern on to its contents. She had shared the dynamite between their two rucksacks, and she spotted the red plastic of the flare gun poking out from between the sticks, its thick, clumsy crimson barrel like something from a cartoon. She glanced back at Charlie, nodded at him and stumbled a few steps further, into an area where the caverns widened once more.

  And then she froze.

  The electric glow of the lanterns revealed a large, round cavern, wider than all the rest they had seen, the walls pitted with dozens of alcoves, places where the rock had eroded away over time. In each of the alcoves, by the glare of the lantern, Hanna could see sleeping figures, their eyes closed, their awful jaws sealed shut, the tatty rags of clothing that covered them shifting faintly with their breathing. It was like a painting, she thought, an awful rendering of an image from some medieval world of horror.

  And then Hanna heard a voice, familiar and at the same time foreign, and she turned to see the worst sight of all.

  In the centre of the room was a throne, a pile of clothes and rags and old newspapers with a roughly hewn wooden chair atop it, which in time had been encircled and enwrapped and overgrown by the debris around it. Among the paper and clothing and detritus, Hanna could just make out the bulbous edges of skulls and bones, and other shapes that she had no desire to linger on for too long.

  A thin woman sat in the chair, her dark eyes fixed on Hanna, the hint of a smile on her red lips, a faded white dress hanging from her gaunt shoulders. She could have been beautiful, with her long dark hair and pale skin, but as her smile widened and Hanna saw her small, sharp teeth, she felt a cold chill at the back of her skull. Charlie stepped alongside Hanna, swore and placed his lantern on the ground, his eyes wide.

  The woman’s mouth opened wider, splitting her face like a shark’s, and her words filled the chamber, the sound a mixture of the voices of dozens of souls, intertwined, speaking all as one.

  “Welcome. Welcome to our home. My name is Sabine.”

  Hanna realized where she had seen that cold smile before, her mind flashing back to the night before when Poppy had slashed and hacked at her with the scissors.

  Sabine’s voice was rich with dust and decay, a trickle of mirth running through her words.

  “I thought this might finish last night. That I could use Poppy to drag you outside to my children. You were wise to rest in the church. It’s one place they won’t tread. Poppy wouldn’t have stood it for long, once she fully became one of us. But it doesn’t matter. Poppy did what I needed her to do. I knew if she told you where we were, if she whispered the way, you’d come to me. You’ve caused me so much trouble these past few days, cost me so many of my children. Without you, without you two, the others would have been dead in hours.”

 
; The woman took a deep breath and glanced down to Hanna’s bandaged hand, and the golden talisman that hung from the crusted blood.

  “So you found my treasury. You like that one? You can keep it, for the little time you have left.”

  Hanna found herself fighting the urge to scream, to shout her hatred, to run at the creature on the throne and gouge at her eyes, tear her to pieces. Instead, she took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “It belonged to someone I loved very much. My brother.”

  The light in the woman’s eyes flickered for a moment and she stared at Hanna with fresh curiosity. When she spoke again there was something else in her eyes, a wariness that hadn’t been there before.

  “I remember him. I remember them all. Some fill our bellies. Others I make into my children. Jon, wasn’t it? He fought us. He was too strong to join us. But we used him all the same and his meat helped us to sleep these last few years. Is that why you’ve fought so hard, for so long? For him?”

  The woman’s question hung in the air, the eerie echo of dozens of voices ringing in Hanna’s ears. Gently, a millimetre at a time, Hanna started to bring up the rucksack and its deadly contents.

  Charlie swore softly next to her, and out of the corner of her good eye she noticed him staring at the alcoves, mesmerized by the sight of the twisted figures that were starting to stir and twitch. Some of them, Hanna realized, had arrived in the same school party as Charlie, several of the pupils, one of their teachers, their faces different now, their eyes slowly flickering open. Malachi, who had vanished into the storm days ago with Ryan, sat sleeping in one of the alcoves, his fingers curled into talons, his once handsome face now bulbous and malformed.

  Sabine ran her pale white fingers along the arms of her chair then glanced up at the two of them. “I can’t let you leave here. You’ve led us a merry dance, but no more. Once it’s dark, my children will find your friends. And then we’ll sleep again.”

  Hanna studied the folds of dry, aged paper at the bottom of the makeshift throne, and she brought the bag a fraction higher. “What are you? Vampires?”

  Sabine chuckled, her eyes raking the walls of the cave.

  “So much more. These are my children. They are chained to me, beholden to me, unable to stray too far from their mother, to venture too far from my side. But my power runs through them. My whispers tell them what to do. My blood runs in their veins. I have been here since the start, cursed to live out eternity in these mountains. Our numbers have diminished, but all the same, here I rule.”

  Hanna shook her head slowly, her fingers another inch closer. “They know, don’t they, the villagers? And they never tell?”

  The woman nodded slowly, the smile widening with delight. Hanna moved her fingers again, felt the plastic brush her fingertips.

  “Why did you … why did you take the adults, the teachers that brought the students to Kaldgellan?”

  Sabine glanced towards the side of the cavern, to a black-haired, olive-skinned girl, her eyes flickering open just inside the hood of her bloodstained top. Her checked trainers, Hanna noticed, were sprayed with crimson.

  “Kelsey,” Charlie whispered, and Hanna moved again, felt the butt of the flare gun slip into her palm. The woman stared at Charlie for a heartbeat then met Hanna’s eyes. For a moment she was back in the chapel hours before, Poppy leaning over her with the scissors in her hand.

  She felt goosebumps prickle her skin.

  “Fear makes the hunt so much sweeter and the feeding so much more satisfying. And the young are so much richer. We wanted to drain every last drop that we could from you. Enough so we could dream for winter upon winter, our bellies full, our minds far away.”

  Hanna started to lift the gun out of the bag into the light, slowly, so slowly. The smile on Sabine’s face fell away, as if at the flick of a switch, and her voice boomed in the depths of the cave. All around them, on the walls, dozens of sets of eyes flashed wide open, focusing balefully on the two figures in the centre of the cave.

  “You think you can hurt me before my creatures fall upon you? Before they tear you limb from limb?”

  Hanna met the woman’s dark eyes and held the gun tightly in her throbbing palm, the weapon still hidden just inside the bag. She shook her head bitterly. “You think I care? I’m ready to die. And you killed my brother, you bitch.”

  Sabine’s hands curled into claws, sharp, dirty nails digging into the arms of her wooden throne. She leaned forwards, her words low and venomous.

  “I’ll make your death slow. You’re too pure to turn, so I’ll let my children eat you, piece by piece, while you watch. First your friend, then you. I’ll make your pain last for hours. Days. The villagers will whisper your name and know the terror and dread that awaits them if they ever speak of us.”

  All around the cave, the figures started to unfurl their limbs from the alcoves, slowly, hypnotically, like spiders descending from a web. Hanna gritted her teeth and got ready to try to pull the trigger before the creatures could reach her.

  And then the screaming started.

  Tara’s voice, somewhere behind them, long and high, echoed off the walls of the cave, drowning out every other sound. For a moment, just for a heartbeat, Sabine’s eyes flicked to the mouth of the cave, to the two figures that had just emerged into the cavern. That moment was all Hanna needed. She raised the gun, pulled the trigger.

  An instant later the whole world seemed to turn into an inferno.

  The flare from Hanna’s gun struck the newspaper at the foot of the tattered throne, the clothing and rags around it catching fire instantly. The flames reached up into the air in a heartbeat, around the chair, engulfing the pale-skinned woman, catching in her hair, peeling away her skin. Her screams joined those of Tara, and all around the cavern the creatures writhed and screamed in horrifying unison.

  Hanna felt a hand pull at her arm, and she turned away from the blazing throne and saw Charlie’s face, inches from her own. “Go! Move!”

  He pulled Hanna to the mouth of the cave, just as a skeletal, blackened figure slipped from atop the pyre at the centre of the cave and tumbled down on to the floor. Dark eyes burned in the red running wax that had been Sabine’s face, framed by smouldering strands of black hair. She glared at Hanna, and her charred lips moved feverishly.

  “Kill them! Kill them all!”

  Charlie pushed Hanna in the back, hard, sending her flying towards the entrance to the cave. Nico was there, a look of pure terror on his face, Tara next to him, her mouth open, ready to scream once more.

  Then Charlie’s fingers were wrapped in Hanna’s and they were scrambling down the corridor, heat at their back, screams in their ears, a terrible stench of burning flesh in their nostrils. Their lanterns were forgotten but the blaze from behind them lit the way.

  They burst out of the tunnel and Hanna felt something land on her back, a heavy, twitching shape, and her legs gave out, the stones rushing up to meet her. From the floor of the cave, she could see dozens of creatures sprinting towards them, struggling to get out of the tunnel. Some were on fire, their ragged clothing in turn lighting those nearest to them. Their faces were twisted in jagged masks of hatred, their skin red and seared. But still it didn’t stop them.

  Charlie had hold of the flare gun and he smashed the butt of the weapon into the face of the creature that had fallen on Hanna’s back, knocking it into two other shapes that sprawled blindly from the cave beyond. Off to Hanna’s left, Tara was screaming, a bulky figure pulling at her arm as if she was a doll, trying to dig its serrated teeth into the exposed skin on her wrist.

  As stars danced in front of her eyes, Hanna realized with immense horror that the creature Tara wrestled with had once been Ryan.

  Hanna watched Nico hit at the creature with the stick he held in his gloved hand, saw it reel away. Then she turned and dug into the rucksack, pulled out the first stick of dynamite she came to, and unscrewed the cap, her mind a blank. She felt the fuse light, and watched the charge start to burn down, wondering
what she would feel first, the heat of the flames, or the teeth ripping into her flesh.

  Before either could happen, a hand reached down, clutched the lit dynamite and lifted it away. Hanna glanced up, saw the blood on Nico’s neck, the numb look in his eyes. He turned and ran at the creatures that were stumbling closer, the dynamite still clutched in his hand, and the smouldering figures fell upon him like wolves. Hanna scrambled to her feet and saw Charlie rushing to Nico’s aid. She grabbed his coat, pulling him back with the little strength she had left.

  The words fell out of her mouth in a mad scramble. “You can’t help him! You can’t! He’s been bitten! It’s going to blow, all of it! Scheisse, move! Go!”

  Charlie’s expression turned from bewilderment to realisation, and he grabbed Hanna, and started to run. Hanna left the rucksack with the rest of the dynamite abandoned on the cave floor and ran for her life. Tara was just ahead of them, on the way out of the caves. The flames from behind them still showed the way, but now the faintest pale glimmer showed in front of them, lighting the way to salvation beyond.

  Suddenly the world began to rumble, a series of explosions that seemed to shake Hanna’s world to its foundations. The cave, the floor, everything slid sideways, righted itself then tumbled away once more. Fresh, cool air bit into her lungs, and she fell, felt Charlie dragging her desperately into the light.

  Another rumble, much bigger than before, like thunder dead overhead, and Hanna’s ears seemed to scream with the force of it. Her eyes were closed, all fight gone from her, and as she felt Charlie’s fingers slip away from hers, she sensed something falling over them, embracing them, like a vast, heavy quilt. And then she knew no more.

  Chapter Forty-five

  Charlie was stuck in a dream. He was underground, in caves full of dark water, swimming, drowning, twisting, turning. Nightmarish faces of people he had known washed around him, wide mouths open in a rictus of pain and hatred. Something was on his back, pressing him down, crushing the breath out of him with its weight, suffocating him.