by A. M. Shine
Mina regretted all the times she had been so hard on Madeline; so quick to criticise. There was good reason for the way she was. But her survivalist’s agenda wasn’t selfish. She had taken care of everyone and asked for nothing in return. Not even their kindness.
‘Okay, I’ll try,’ Mina whispered, so low that she wasn’t sure if she had spoken.
The woodland was stricken with the watchers’ chorus. It sent tremors through the walls. Mina could feel them reverberating against her skull. Their voices were louder than ever, and they were everywhere. The door would hold. It always did. But what did that matter when there were three open frames in the next room? She thought of the markings on them, imagining a claw so sharp that it could slice through stone. Mina wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t let Madeline down.
She visualised her apartment exactly as she had left it. Mina wasn’t sitting on the hard cement with the cold stealing across her bare feet. She was in her kitchen with its faded countertops, on the top floor. The afternoon sun hung outside the open window like a child’s balloon tied to the longest piece of string. There was warmth in the air and the smell of summer – hot cobbles, and herbs from the market. The vegetables were already prepped on that colossal chopping board that Jennifer had given her for Christmas. There were splotches of wine in one of its corners. They never came out, no matter how hard she scrubbed it. The tortillas were at a low heat in the oven. Mina wasn’t shivering in the dark. She was in the sun, cooking the simplest lunch with her only ingredients, working her way through a bottle of Rioja.
Deadwood cracked outside the door, wrenching Mina back to reality. All had fallen calm after the storm, and yet now there was movement; bodies crawling on all fours, relishing in the night that was theirs, and only theirs, for they had killed all else. The coop had been so quiet. Its glass was thick, and the walls were strong. In the darkness of that corridor, Mina heard everything. The watchers were closing in around them.
Survival relied on them being in the coop so that they could be seen. Stay in the light – it was that simple. How would the watchers react when they realised that two of their pets were missing? And what would they do when eventually they found them?
The hollowness of the living room amplified every sound. If anything had entered, Mina would have known. She could hear the wood splitting in the fire. Sparks cracked like gunfire. She listened to her heart, pleading with it to soften lest the things should be drawn to her. Then she heard it – that sinister, rasping snarl, and the sound of claws gripping into the window’s frame. There it perched, peering into the room, searching.
What followed was the dull clap of skin on stone. Mina’s fingers were still intertwined with Madeline’s. The watcher scuttled across the floor, sniffing furiously. There was nothing remotely human about it. This thing was a restless animal, driven neither by conscious thought nor soul’s desire. It craved only soft, living flesh, and it thirsted only for blood.
Mina watched the firelight from the darkness. It flared across the wall and against the coop’s locked door. Every evening, before the view of the forest was displaced by their reflections, she had hoped to catch a glimpse of these things that held them captive. They were leaner and they were longer. That’s all she knew because that’s all she had been told. Madeline once said to her that it was a blessing having never seen them. Mina pursed her eyes shut.
The watcher approached the other side of the wall. Its clawed feet notched into the floor. Mina could hear every foul, guttural breath, and imagined hot saliva pouring through its teeth, scalding the cement like acid. Was it staring at her through the concrete? Few blocks stood between them. Their talons could probably pick them apart like polystyrene. What if it had caught their scent? Neither Mina nor Madeline dared to move, to breathe, to think too loud in case the thing could hear their thoughts.
The watcher scurried across the room. Its shadow spilled onto the wall. It was standing at the doorway. Mina buried her face in Madeline’s shoulder. She had kept her safe all this time. Maybe she still could.
Mina recognised the jangle of her handbag’s buckles. She had left it beside her boots, in front of the fire. Not that it mattered anymore. That thing was drawing its filth all over it. She heard its fake leather tear like sheer silk. All her worldly belongings clattered to the floor. Pencils rolled, and pages swished open. Mina’s sketches – her strangers, her friends – were gone. Somewhere there was a page with her face on it; the portrait that captured all that silly sadness that now seemed so irrelevant.
Madeline drew her closer, preparing for the inevitable. Could she feel Mina’s heartbeat and the hope draining from her soul? The shadow on the wall was seen to expand. The watcher was approaching the corridor. Its feet thundered on the floor, getting closer and closer.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Mina had promised her mum that she was going to be happy, that she was going to live her life. I can see you in the sunny south of France, a famous artist with a vineyard all to your own cheek, she had told her. Mina had laughed through the tears. Her mum always made her smile, even in the last days when she was nearly too weak to talk.
A sudden symphony of screams filled the forest. The shadow by the doorway stalled, listening, its head twisting from side to side, deciphering the call of its kind. Madeline and Mina’s absence was the cause. The watchers had gathered by the glass, searching for their missing pets. And now their unhallowed shrieks marked the beginning of the hunt. They would scour the forest, disbanding in all directions, chasing their prey with a speed that was in itself terrifying. They would not rest until they had found them.
The shadow by the corridor’s end disappeared in the blink an of eye. Mina heard its claws chafe swiftly on the frame and it was gone, answering its summons. Their screams filtered into the surrounding woodland, growing more distant with each agonising second. The watchers were communicating, dispersing in a perfect circle, leaving no stone uncovered, no pit unchecked, flashing between trees and across their highest branches. From the living room there wasn’t a sound. The hearth was a soundless bed of burning embers.
It would take but a single watcher to return and to discover their hideaway. One voice could recall the rest, and they would descend upon them from all sides. The shadows were theirs, and the shadows were everywhere.
Madeline peeled away. She climbed to her feet, as quietly and cautiously as her tired bones would allow. Mina came to rest against the wall like a broken mannequin, too petrified to follow her. She watched Madeline’s silhouette walk the length of the corridor with the lightest steps. It was darker now. The fire was all but dead.
‘Daniel,’ she said softly, ‘please open this door. I am sorry. If you do not wish to let me in, then I ask only that you save Mina. She doesn’t deserve this.’
There was silence as Madeline and Mina waited for their fates to be decided. And then the first lock clicked out of place, and then the next, until the coop’s bright light dispelled the corridor of darkness.
13
‘I can tell you what I know,’ Madeline said. ‘But I don’t have all of the answers.’
Mina peeled back her hair with trembling hands. Elbows came to rest on knees as she sat on the floor, spine curved against the wall. They were in the coop. They were safe. She drew the bird’s cage between her legs. The parrot tottered on its perch, full of the joys, its lilac beak almost turned into a smile.
‘It’s okay,’ Mina whispered, ‘I’m back.’
Her hands settled somewhere on her head, holding in whatever sanity remained, like egg creeping through a broken shell. Memories and fears exploded like fireworks in the black behind her eyes. The floor seemed to falter left and then right, swaying like the wildest ocean. Every breath was long and laboured as a bellows worked by hard, unforgiving hands. She was shaking but that was standard. If pressed she couldn’t think of a time when she wasn’t. It was always cold, or it was always terrifying, and that was the way of things.
The coop’s light had h
it her like a hard tonic, potent and disorientating. It was all that she wanted – the safety of the all-embracing white. But now it left her blinded and confused in a room where two bodies paced in one corner and Madeline stood in the other. It was Mina who had spoken first. None of the others knew what to say. The boy was inconsolable. The girl was bitter. Their leader, now usurped, was as poker-faced as ever.
She didn’t tackle Madeline like she had planned, with her open sketchbook in hand showing the study of the burrows, parading like a petulant child all the mistruths that she had been fed alongside berries and gritty, sticky nuts. In that room – that horrible, lonely room where a hundred eyes could watch their every move – Madeline was her only friend. Daniel and Ciara may have opened that door, but they had also held it shut. When Mina spoke, she did so only to Madeline, and she asked the only question that really mattered – what are they?
‘When I came here, to this place,’ Madeline said, looking to no one in particular, ‘I didn’t expect to find them.’
Mina’s head rose, eyes squinting. She had suspected for so long that Madeline knew more than she was letting on, and now that the truth was within her grasp – the answers to all those unspoken questions – she could barely keep her chin up. Was it even important anymore? Was surviving enough without knowing what was trying to kill you? Maybe that’s just life.
This was the calm. These were the moments – sacred and silent – before the watchers returned from their search.
‘You came here on purpose?’ Mina asked her. ‘Why?’
‘I came here because of what I had read,’ Madeline replied, ‘but I never believed for a moment that it was true.’ Here she became uneasy and shifted her gangly frame against the wall.
Daniel and Ciara had retreated to the coop’s far corner. He had dug himself into the bed and watched Madeline like a child awaiting punishment. Ciara stood near him, close enough for solidarity’s sake, but only a few short steps from abandoning the boy outright. She was the one who had opened the door, and it was she who now held the keys. One month too late to make a difference for her own sake.
‘What do you mean?’ Ciara asked, her voice stern and older. ‘You knew about these things?’
‘No, I didn’t know that they actually existed,’ Madeline replied, glancing warily towards their reflections in the mirror. ‘They’ll be back soon once they realise where we are.’
‘What did you know exactly?’ Ciara pressed; it was like squeezing juice from dried fruit.
‘I knew that people had gone missing here,’ she said. ‘There are records going back centuries. And superstitions – I suppose, you could call them – passed down, delivering the same message. They all warn against ever entering this place.’
Mina and Ciara exchanged a look of bemusement. Every answer they coaxed out of her was just another question in disguise.
‘How do you know all of this?’ Ciara asked.
‘History,’ Madeline replied solemnly. ‘I was a historian. A lifetime ago, it seems.’
Again, silence. Mina couldn’t fathom why the woman was so guarded, like a bat with her wings folded tight against the world. She noticed Ciara’s hand tensing around the keys, her eyes flashing with a curiosity that wouldn’t rest. Not until she had wrung Madeline dry of every ounce of information. That was, after all, the unspoken deal – admittance for knowledge.
‘You had better start talking,’ she said to her, ‘or so help me I’ll throw you back outside.’
Mina was torn. Her allegiance swung between them like a pendulum. Madeline had shown her such kindness that night, and she would stand by her should Ciara act on her threat, but she also needed to know the truth. Didn’t they all deserve at least that?
‘If that’s what you want?’ Madeline replied, sliding her body down the wall and settling beside Mina. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’
Ciara abandoned the little boy in the corner and came to sit on the table, facing Madeline. Was there ever a moment when there wasn’t some division between them? It didn’t matter why Daniel had locked them out. So long as Madeline opened up, he was on his own.
‘The earliest record of it I could find was in a journal,’ she began. ‘It’s unlikely that anyone examined the source before it was shelved in the university’s basement. The handwriting and language alone would be enough to deter most scholars. It dated back to the thirteenth century, by which time the Anglo-Norman forces had seized most of Ireland. Connemara had little to offer them. It was wild, open country with no established defences. But still they sent scouting parties there. That was, after all, the Empire’s way. Greed and expansion, even when the prize was no more than bogland. I can’t imagine they expected to find anything too removed from the ordinary. Some indigenous resistance, perhaps, but such skirmishes were more an inconvenience than a genuine threat to these men. Soldiers, all of them – trained, seasoned, and well equipped. They could handle themselves.’
‘The journal belonged to a soldier?’ Ciara asked, leaning forward like a teacher’s pet keen to ask the obvious questions.
‘No, the author was of Norman stock, but he was only planted here as a foreign dash to dilute the local scene. He was a blacksmith. And so would have had dealings with the military. He socialised with some of them, and that’s how he came into contact with the soldier who had travelled west with a full party and returned with only one other.’
‘But wait,’ Ciara interjected, ‘if something horrible happened to these men, then surely there would be more written about it?’
‘This expedition was a failure and an embarrassment. Posterity celebrates success, and these men were denounced as cowards. Ciara, you really shouldn’t be so naïve at your age.’
‘What happened to the scouting party?’ Mina asked, guiding the history lesson back on track, mildly irked by the interruptions.
‘For days they traversed the country, happening on scattered nests of dwellings. Neither shared the same language and no arms were raised. These were harmless people and for the most part ignorant of the invaders’ ever-expanding occupation. But the soldiers went deeper. There’s no knowing where their journey took them, but it inevitably brought them here.’
‘And they went into the forest?’ Ciara asked, much to Mina’s frustration.
‘If any homegrown opposition hid in the area, it was likely that they would use the woodland for cover. Seeing as there are no other forests in the area, the soldiers entered with justifiable caution. Some stayed back to guard the perimeter, and as darkness was fast approaching, they also went about setting up a camp for the night. Our survivor knew something was wrong, or so he told the blacksmith. The horses were anxious and wouldn’t settle. And it was so quiet. No birds, no beasts. And soon there would be no light as the bloodied dusk congealed on the western hills.’
‘The horses knew what was in there?’ Ciara butted in, again.
‘I should imagine so,’ she replied. ‘Their smell alone would have been enough to cause the animals distress.’
‘They do smell awful, don’t they?’ Ciara agreed.
‘Christ,’ Mina whispered under her breath. ‘Can we just let Madeline talk, please?’
Ciara crossed her arms and leaned back; the first faint rays of a smile dampened in an instant. Madeline’s hand squeezed Mina’s knee. She was either pleased that she had spoken out or else she was warning her not to trifle with the emotional mess who held all the keys. Regardless, she picked up where she had left off.
‘The author of the journal wrote down everything the soldier had told him. Suffice to say, recounting the events upset him greatly. Maybe he was searching for just one person who would believe him.
‘At nightfall he heard the sounds that we know all too well. Any unfettered horses bolted immediately. One man was dragged across the earth as the animal kicked off with his hands knotted around its reins. Then there came the panic-stricken cries of his retinue. Each one silenced. Their death throes cut short. The soldier didn’t hesitate. A
long with another man who had lingered on open land, preparing the camp, they rode until their horses collapsed. The others – the ones who didn’t flee immediately – died like the rest. Their screams were the last sound he remembered, and then it was just blackness, and the horse’s hypnotic gallop through the whistling wind.’
‘What happened to the two men after that?’ Ciara asked timidly.
‘The blacksmith heard only rumours. There was talk that the military covered it up. It was possible that the men were executed for abandoning their party, or maybe they took their own lives. It doesn’t matter. Record of their experience survived.’
‘And there are others?’ Mina asked. ‘Records, I mean.’
‘Yes, a few. The most recent one that I know of was discovered by a colleague of mine. He was writing a paper on insane asylums in the nineteenth century and delved into the records of the institute in Ballinasloe. There was one case in particular he brought to me. A patient who raved incessantly about a forest, claiming that there was an evil there that had taken his brother. He used to imitate the watchers’ screams.
‘It was during the famine. The men were starved, desperate, and they knew better than to enter. They would have heard the stories surrounding it, and I don’t doubt that they believed them.’
‘How do you know it’s the same forest?’ Ciara asked.
‘Because there are no forests of this size in Connemara or, at least, none that appear on any map, be they old or new. This place we each found was meant to be hidden. And I think we know why.’
The watchers’ clarion call quit their search. The horde was returning; their untold claws and teeth primed to punish – to make an example of those who had deceived them.
Daniel buried himself under the blankets. Was he hiding from them or the watchers? If he had had his way, Mina knew that she would still be out there with Madeline, dreading their last moments. He had proven himself to be the weakest of them, and that weakness had almost gotten them killed. His blankets shivered as boughs were heard to crack and split. The watchers thundered towards the coop like an avalanche. The golden one flailed about its cage, feeling the force of its wings, yearning desperately to be free, to fly far away from that place.
