The Watchers

by A. M. Shine

  ‘We have to move!’ Madeline screamed.

  Mina dropped to her knees, holding Ciara like a doll. ‘It’s okay,’ she gasped, running her fingers through her hair. ‘You can do this.’

  Daniel joined in, helping Ciara to her feet. She hobbled for a step, but she could walk. ‘I know,’ she said, shaking now, those dazzling green eyes as vivid and hopeful as ever. ‘We’re going to make it.’

  Mina held her face, her cold fingers caressing those soft cheeks that had shrunk since they met. Ciara’s honesty was incorruptible. The truth was the only card she presented to the world, and Mina sided with Ciara’s optimism like a stray cat that had finally found a home.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Madeline called back to them.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Mina asked, as the thought of the end jolted some feeling back into her bones.

  ‘Can’t you hear it?’ she whispered. ‘Can’t you hear the water?’

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ she replied.

  ‘Come on, quickly,’ the woman snapped back. ‘The river is close.’

  Was Madeline lying to them, dangling their freedom like a carrot on a string? Mina strove to hear any sound other than their bodies breaking forward. But was it getting brighter? Their eyes had attuned to the dim, scraggy shade of the woodland. Now there was light in the distance, and between the trees she saw the first splinters of sky.

  Their course through the woodland had been a full day’s labour. They had fought for every southerly step. If the forest had had its way, its ivy would have cocooned their bodies; making them as much a part of its hellish decay as it would always be a part of them. But the treeline was in sight, and it spurred them on with an energy that ached. The soft breeze reached out to them. Its scent of petals and herbs whelmed the spoil of damp and dying wood. It was some heavenly hand pulling them from the darkness and into the light, where grasses grew tall beneath the blood-red sun.

  Mina collapsed from the woodland. One last tacky strand of weed released its grip on her, and she was free. Her hands fell on grass that was soft and cool to the touch. The yellow one’s cage toppled over and he clawed at the satin tufts that slipped through its bars. They had reached open ground. The vastness of the landscape – the forgotten colours and sheer sense of awe kept Mina on her knees, dumbstruck by the beauty of it all. She beheld a world more magnificent than she had remembered.

  The grasses led down a hill. They moved in soothing waves in the wind, singing the softest song. Decay had seeped through the forest floor, but here there were luscious greens of life as far as the eye could see. The sun burned like a fireball crashing over the horizon, its flames flashing through powdered clouds, dissipating in colours that Mina could taste and smell, and with her arms outstretched she fancied she could feel them. The distant Connemara hills gleamed in the dying light. The blades of grass slipped between Mina’s toes and swayed like silk across her open palm.

  The river wasn’t far. Now she could hear it like a low lullaby. From where they stood, Mina could see its water trickling through the shallow, and flowing proud in the deep, shimmering like a bed of crystals beneath the sun. It was shored by slabs of stone and great scatterings of pebbles, as though nature – the artist – had placed each one with care. But she couldn’t see the boat.

  Mina heard Ciara and Daniel breaking through the trees behind her. The ecstasy of the open sky stole the last air from their lungs. Their voices carried no words, only the garbled disbelief that they had made it. But their moment was short-lived. They had arrived just as the sun’s last flake of light was being doused. Night was falling, and with it came the watchers’ screams. Like a doomsday siren, their voices howled in their hundreds.

  ‘Quickly,’ Madeline shouted, ‘they’re coming.’

  The watchers were agile. They were faster. Long limbs now glanced between branches. Naked shapes, slick with sweat, torpedoed through lightless tunnels. Nature’s wilderness succumbed to the chase; never hindering, never slowing them down. The watchers would find the trail immediately. There would be no hesitation, no communication between them that couldn’t be screamed into the night’s sky.

  The rush of bodies broke around the stone portal, white waves of flesh rippling beneath the moonlight. The sound of splintering wood filled the air like the cracking of a thousand whips spurring them on. They flashed between trees, these shadows that snarled and screamed. In the darkness they could see. No step was misplaced. Every claw of earth launched them onward. Nothing would stop them. Nothing could.

  Mina stood, fingers tensed around the yellow one’s cage, staring into the forest’s lightless depths where their voices surged like a tempest. Branches seemed to claw towards her as though the damnable place was alive, its fingers seeking to drag her back into its gut.

  Ciara grabbed her arm, twisting Mina around and breaking the woodland’s spell over her. ‘Come on,’ she shouted but she was hardly heard over the pandemonium.

  Every second counted. Without the sun as their guardian, each action that followed would save or cease their lives. Kilmartin was organised. His misguided venture wouldn’t have lasted a single night had he not planned every diminutive detail. If this was his escape plan, then the boat couldn’t be far. They ran to the riverside. Madeline’s pace left them all floundering behind her. She was knee-deep in water before Ciara’s legs had remembered how to run.

  ‘Where is it?’ she shouted, twirling in circles and sploshing water around her. ‘It has to be here!’

  ‘Over here!’ Daniel called out.

  The boy was heaving the tarpaulin out of place. Kilmartin hadn’t just thrown a cover over the boat, as Mina had expected. A hollow had been dug into the earth, the exact length and width to slot in the vessel and hide it out of sight. Mina came to Daniel’s side and threw her arms around him. She would never have found it. She knew that much for sure.

  ‘We have to get it into the water,’ she shouted.

  Ciara, out of breath and holding her sides in place, was the last to arrive but she went straight to work. She wiped the clammy hairs from her face and threw Mina that smile that meant everything – we’re going to make it.

  The pit was sodden. When Mina gripped the boat’s frame she could feel the softness of its wood, where the water had soaked in, rotting its edges. Kilmartin’s one miscalculation – he had buried it too close to the river. It would still float. They just had to get beyond the watchers’ reach. Once they were safe, then the boat could sink like a stone and Mina wouldn’t care.

  It was a wooden skiff, painted battleship grey but tarred black where the water had bruised through, and it measured maybe fifteen feet, if Mina had to guess. The boat wasn’t quite what she had imagined. Her artist’s eye had conceived a streamlined speedboat with racing stripes and an engine that would roar them into the sunset. The reality was a little less sensational. But it would fit all four of them and the bird. Mina dropped the cage into the boat, and the yellow one shrieked and sang like a captain bellowing orders to its crew. It was surprisingly light to lift between the four of them, as though Kilmartin had modified it to suit the needs of one man. A pair of oars had been placed side by side beneath it like two ceremonial swords. Fortunately, these were aluminium, and had persevered through the flood. Had they been carved from wood they would have crumbled in Daniel’s hands as he jumped into the hollow and threw them up onto the grass for Mina. Every exertion was a challenge for them, such was their fatigue. But this was the end, and Mina couldn’t believe it was happening.

  ‘Keep your focus!’ Madeline said to them. ‘We’re not out of here yet.’

  Together they slid the boat through the high grass, pushing all their weight into it, exhausting what strength remained. Mina’s bare feet couldn’t find their grip and she nearly slipped down face first. The boat crunched and cracked over the loose stones before sploshing into the water, soaking them in seconds. The river’s flow was cold enough to numb their skin that spectral shade of blue, startling their nerves
and sinew into action.

  The watchers’ screams were intensifying, rolling through the night’s sky like thunder. Mina tried to hold the boat steady as Ciara struggled to clamber up and into it, flailing like a fish splashing silver. When Mina looked to Madeline, she found the woman’s gaze fixated on her, as if she had been watching her the entire time, waiting for their eyes to meet.

  ‘What, Madeline?’ she panted. ‘What are you doing? Get in!’

  ‘The boy,’ was all she said, almost sadly. ‘The boy isn’t here.’

  Where was Daniel? In the commotion of hurtling the boat down to the river, Mina had lost sight of him. Was he not pushing it with them? Her last memory was of him clawing his way out of the pit after having passed her the oars. She started to wade back towards the riverside; the moonlight sparkling like polished steel on its black water, straining her vision to focus where the night was darkest, where the forest grew from the hilltop like a shrine to all her fears and nightmares.

  ‘Don’t do it, Mina,’ Madeline said. ‘You’re too late.’

  It was never too late. They were a family, and nobody was getting left behind. That’s how they had gotten this far, and that’s how they would get home. Mina’s feet splashed onto the pebbled shore, detached from feeling and reason, aware only of her unhinged need to get Daniel on that boat.

  ‘There, Mina,’ Ciara called out from behind her, ‘towards the forest.’

  Mina saw him, stained with the lightest wash of moonlight. Daniel was approaching the treeline with slow, uncertain steps as though it were whispering to him, seducing the boy back into its hellscape. Could she make it to him before the watchers broke out into the open? Such was the report of their voices, Mina was surprised they hadn’t poured into the night’s air already.

  ‘Danny,’ she called out, scrambling up the hill as he edged further away from her. ‘What are you…’

  Then she saw it; that which had stolen Daniel away from them, tripping him at the final hurdle. She fell to her knees, planting both hands into the grass like bulbs, close enough now that she could hear him speaking. Mina stared in stunned disbelief at the one standing amidst the trees, motionless as a portrait.

  ‘Come on,’ Daniel was saying to him, ‘please, hurry. She needs you!’

  The man’s pale face and shoulders swelled from the shadows like a phantom. His jaw and cheekbones were solid, and the brow heavy. Shadows leaked over eyes that glinted with a lifeless glaze. There was no expression, just that sinister vacancy that kept the lips pursed and narrow.

  ‘Come on, John,’ Daniel shouted, reaching out his hand towards him. ‘They’re coming! We have to go!’

  ‘Daniel,’ Mina said, lifting to her feet and staggering a step backwards. ‘That’s not John.’

  That voice from the pit; the darkness Mina had disturbed. Had it followed them from there, arriving before the others? Daniel retracted his hand slowly, balling it up into an unsteady fist, and looked back at Mina. It was that second of realisation – the regret, the fear, and the sad acceptance of the end – that would haunt Mina forever. She had sketched Daniel’s face so many times, studying its every kink and nuance. But this was the culmination of all his fears into a single look, centred strongest in those eyes that met Mina’s with a love that was heart-breaking. She retreated backwards, silently pleading with Daniel to run to her, but still that thing was watching him, pinning him in place.

  ‘Run, Mina,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t look back.’

  He was invincible when they believed in him. But he had strayed too far from Mina’s reach, and into the watcher’s unblinking gaze. He had never looked so young nor so terrified. All the while, the screams grew closer. They were out of time. She couldn’t wait for him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered before leaving the boy behind.

  Mina raced through the cool grasses to the beat of a thundering heart. She could see the boat. Ciara had the yellow one’s cage held on her lap, and in front of her was Madeline, oars locked in their sockets, her long arms already taking them south. But Mina knew that Madeline was too strong – too determined – to break away so slowly. She was waiting for her, watching and listening, counting down however many seconds remained until Mina was deemed a lost cause; just like Daniel, and John before him.

  She was sorry for not standing up for him all those times that Madeline beat him down. She was sorry that she hadn’t told him how special he was, so kind and strong. And, most of all, she was sorry that she had failed to save him. He had gone back for Ciara’s sake; thinking of others, risking his life for their happiness. And they didn’t even realise that he was missing.

  Mina needed to know if he was coming. She would run to him, hold him, and carry him if she had the strength. But when she glanced back to the forest, Daniel was where she had left him, and the watcher had stepped into the open, towering over him on its spindly legs, skeletal in the moonlight, its long arms arched out by its sides, taloned fingers spread wide. The creature’s body was grotesque in its proportions, and yet that face – now slanted to one side with its eyes entranced – was still John’s. For so long the boy had been watched behind the glass – safe and oblivious to its eerie fascination – and now he was within its grasp.

  The boat had drifted deeper into the river like deadwood kicked from the shore. Madeline couldn’t wait much longer. She was stalling, tempering her urge to drive the oars through the wash. Both she and Ciara looked to be shouting, their arms thrashing about the stars, guiding her home, but their voices were lost to the watchers’. Mina splashed forward, crashing into the deep, catching only sharp glimpses of Madeline leaning forward from the boat, reaching for her as it swayed back and forth so violently as to almost capsize. That icy water spilled into Mina’s lungs, choking, distorting her senses. A weightless weakness overcame her. Legs couldn’t kick hard enough. Arms were stretched out only to linger lifeless in the water, too tired to return to her. But Madeline seized her like a hawk, dragging her to the surface, floundering and helpless.

  Mina retched, vomiting water onto the soft wood that cradled her, and Madeline grabbed the oars like sacred weapons, her knuckles bleaching white, all strength summoned to see their journey through. They looked back to where Daniel stood alone, dwarfed by those who crept into the moonlight, those monsters in masquerade. More of them had reached the open. Mina counted five spindly bodies, pacing around the boy, as though goading him to flee. Predators dallying with the weakest of the herd, ogling his soft flesh and every trembling part of him. The moon was never so bright; like a fearful eye it shone upon them, revealing the faces that stared down at Daniel from their lofty shoulders, snapping at the night like starving animals.

  It was the single most terrifying sight that Mina had in her life beheld, the kind that leaves malleable minds deformed. These things were aware of the horror they wielded. They brandished their worst to splinter the boy’s heart before breaking his body. Daniel collapsed to his knees, gazing up at the ring of faces all mimicking his own, each one warped into an abhorrent reflection resembling both boy and monster. Some wore features that were chillingly convincing, others grotesquely deformed. They circled him like giants, as more of them manifested from the woodland, their pale skin skulking in the black. There must have been twenty of the fiends swarming around him. Daniel hid his head in his hands, waiting for the inevitable, for the claws and teeth seen only in nightmares until that moment.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Ciara wept as the oars creaked and groaned in Madeline’s hands.

  ‘They’ve waited a long time for this,’ Madeline replied. ‘They’re going to make it last.’

  ‘Oh, Danny,’ she cried; all her cracks torn apart anew, exposing her tired heart.

  The forest’s ragged treetops stretched under the sky like ramparts, its branches swaying and cracking as more bodies tore into the open, fattening the crowd of their kind, all gathered around Daniel – their prize; one priceless enough to distract their attention. Some scattered down the h
ill in fleshly waves, slicing through the tall grass, rallying back like a kettle of vultures. Some sprinted around the gathering on all fours like enormous insects. The distance and the dark conspired to keep Mina from identifying the masks they now wore. Had they assumed the face of another? Was Daniel now surrounded by their faces, the only ones in the world who cared about him; those who now held some chance of escape because of his sacrifice.

  The watchers’ screams intensified as their circle closed around him. Daniel lowered his hands, resigned to the end. Mina watched as his head tilted back, looking up at the creatures staring down at him. Their ancient breath engulfing him in its sickness. She hoped his thoughts had flown elsewhere; anywhere but under their heaving shadows, talons flexing, the starlight winking in all those black eyes.

  Mina remembered John’s cries for help, drawn from him with surgical precision; torturing, damaging, but only killing when there was nothing left of him to save but Ciara’s memories.

  ‘Don’t look,’ Madeline whispered. ‘The boy wouldn’t have wanted you to see this.’

  Mina turned her back on the woodland, her body coiled like a creature under threat, convulsing uncontrollably as she fought the urge to throw up. It was too much. She couldn’t accept the horror of what was happening. It felt as though only the smallest, weakest part of her was in that boat. Whatever strength she had left, and all that happiness that could have been, was by Daniel’s side. Mina held her cold hands to her ears. Madeline’s silhouette worked the oars like a mechanical engine, and behind her, Ciara hugged the yellow one’s cage, her head at rest atop it, weeping.

  Every ancient voice suddenly screamed as one. An unhallowed cacophony so intense that it did more than bore through Mina’s eardrums, it flooded into her skull. It caved in her throat so that she strained to steal any air. It seized every receptive part of her and attacked it without mercy, igniting a fear so blinding that it burned. But Daniel’s pain was over.