by A. M. Shine
‘Excuse me,’ Mina called out in a shrill whisper.
The book was carefully closed and placed down so that its length was parallel to her pens. The doll smiled and nodded its head, acknowledging Mina without disrupting the peace.
‘Did you know Professor Kilmartin when he was a lecturer here?’ Mina asked.
‘I did,’ she replied. ‘I think his work is fascinating. I used to sit in on his lectures whenever I had the chance.’
‘When did he leave the college?’
‘Oh, let me think,’ the doll said, her eyes straying towards the ceiling, ‘He took his sabbatical maybe three years ago. I thought he was only going to be gone for a year, but he still hasn’t returned to us. It’s a shame. I used to love listening to all those fairy stories.’
The bearded receptionist had to work the reading room’s door handle with his knee, as both arms were cradling the cardboard box. Rolls of paper and stiff folders poked out of it like a bouquet of drab flowers. The doll watched him unblinkingly as he used his back to close the door after him.
‘Now then,’ he said, out of breath as he placed the box down on the table, ‘that’s everything.’
He stood stiffly for a moment with both hands pressing into his lower back, as if the task of retrieving the research from the basement had been a trial like no other; worthy of applause, or maybe some ibuprofen to ease his headache.
‘Okay,’ he said, glancing awkwardly over at the blonde doll at the desk, ‘well, if you need anything else just let me know.’
‘I will, thank you,’ Mina replied.
‘Right, okay,’ he said, stuffing one of his hands into a pocket as he turned to leave. ‘Cool. I’ll see you later.’
The doll beamed at the man until the door eased closed behind him, and then returned to her book, dabbing two fingers on her tongue before turning a page. Never had a paperback looked so huge in those tiny hands.
Mina laid out the contents of the box on the table. This was all that remained of Kilmartin’s academic legacy. After he failed to return, they must have cleared out his office and bundled his papers into storage. It had sat on a shelf in the university’s basement ever since, waiting to be discovered or, as would be the case, destroyed.
There were folders bulging fat with paper, all dog-eared and grubby from fingerprints. Some were the professor’s own research. Others were scholarly papers with vast tracts of text highlighted in pink and yellow blocks. It would take Mina months to trawl through it all. But that was never her course. The box would burn in minutes, and the facts therein would leave this world as smoke.
Three rolls of paper were bound in elastic bands like broken telescopes. Mina snapped them free and spread them out on the table. They were maps; all black and white except where Kilmartin had marked in red the location of the woodland. There it was, posturing as something normal – hell, as she knew it. Her hands tightened around the map, and she had to fight the urge to tear it to shreds. To the south she saw the river. The professor had scrawled an X beside it. There was no way to pinpoint how close the coop was to it. Mina started leafing through the other charts but stopped herself. Don’t, Meens. She pushed them aside before her eyes could make sense of them. She didn’t want to know where it was.
The texts were all studies in folklore and Irish mythology, as Mina had expected. They treated the myths as stories because, of course, that’s what they were. These books would be pardoned from the flames. The maps wouldn’t be so lucky.
One book stood out from the others. Its crimson leather binding was spongy, and its corners had faded. This was Kilmartin’s journal. This was what Mina had been searching for. Its pages were handwritten in a scrawl as cryptic as Ciara’s address. Page after page of what must have been the man’s thoughts and theories; the making of an obsession that would inevitably destroy him. Mina froze when she leafed as far as that page. The professor was no artist, but his sketches packed a punch. There it was – Mina’s home, her prison, and her sanctuary. Kilmartin had drawn a rough design of the coop and the steel chamber buried beneath it. She flinched from the very sight of it, nearly letting the journal slip from her fingers. This was where it all began. Mina recognised its every inch. Despite the sketch’s simplicity, she could feel again its cold concrete. She could taste it on her lips. Her eyes squinted involuntarily; a nervous twitch triggered by memories of that fluorescent light whose buzzing she could still hear in some distant corner of her mind.
As Mina turned to the next page, a photograph slipped out and landed on the table. Her knees weakened at the sight of it. She sat with one hand over her mouth, detaining the scream that yearned to escape.
Mina recognised Kilmartin, clean-shaven and smiling, seated at a candlelit restaurant table, the camera’s flash caught in the window behind him. He bore little semblance to his recording. He was young, and he was at peace. His left hand pinched the stem of a wine glass. Sitting across from him, looking directly into the lens, was Madeline.
Her hair shone like sun-kissed sand. The woman’s smile was one of coy reluctance. She was beautiful and she was bashful, and she was happy. Her skin was taut and smooth. She had leaned in to pose with her thin, elegant arms in view, and her hands were not as Mina remembered them. They were neat and manicured. Her silver necklace was worn over a simple black dress, and she appeared shorter than was possible. The Madeline that Mina knew touched on six foot. She was this towering fount of bitterness and misery. The woman in the photograph couldn’t be her Madeline.
Mina struggled to her feet and approached the doll at the desk. Simply standing was a challenge. She wasn’t sure if she would even be able to talk.
‘Do you know who this woman is?’ she asked, sounding close to tears, her jaw tensed.
The woman took the photograph. Her smile stood fast, but a palpable sadness fell over her eyes.
‘That’s Professor Kilmartin’s wife,’ she said. ‘They look so happy together, don’t they?’
‘How did she…?’ Mina couldn’t get the words out.
‘She passed away from cancer. I think it must be five years ago now.’
‘What was her name?’
The doll handed Mina back the photograph. Please, she thought, don’t say it. Don’t say it.
‘Madeline,’ she replied. ‘Her name was Madeline.’
25
The door to Mina’s apartment had been smashed open. Ruptures split at the point of impact, around the lock and handle, where a single devastating blow had rendered it open. Its pine wood within the cracks looked like exposed bone. She could hear the yellow one. It sounded distraught – twittering and flapping against its cage; the way it reacted whenever Madeline was close by. Maybe the bird always knew, and just lacked the words to warn them. With a gentle push the door swung in. The floor was a hash of splinters and chipped paint. It was possible that whoever spooked the parrot was still in there, somewhere.
‘Hello?’ she called out.
The bird, upon hearing her voice, fell silent and tucked its wings. Mina leaned in, listening. One minute passed, and then another. A pigeon cooed in an overhead gutter, but inside there was nothing. Either the apartment was empty or whoever was inside wanted it to seem that way.
‘Madeline?’ Mina shouted. ‘Are you in there?’
After she left the university Mina had sat by the Corrib River, on a low, stony ledge, staring blindly into its flow, plagued by visions of two Madelines. There was the real Madeline – the smiling woman who had dined by candlelight, the one who had been dead for five years. And there was the other.
On the Long Walk – a narrow road aligned like a pier by the water’s swell – life went on. A couple had sat further down from her, whispering like two spies sharing secrets. A man strode past, walking a rough-haired terrier whose little legs took ten steps for every one of his. A pair of ducks clung together, letting the flow guide them towards the bay like two lovers eloping.
Something Madeline once said to her kept repeating over and over
, so that now her cold lips mouthed it without her even realising. They’re leaner and they’re longer. They’re leaner and they’re longer. The Madeline that Mina knew was tall. Her arms were skeletally thin, and those hands were monstrous. All protruding veins and gnarled fingers. They just looked wrong. Mina had never seen the woman’s body. Madeline had always kept it hidden beneath that blanket, never revealing more than an extended arm, and only when necessary.
‘Get your fucking head together,’ Mina had whispered to herself; scrunching her eyes closed. ‘This is crazy.’
She would have known. If Madeline wasn’t human, then she would have known, wouldn’t she? They had spent every night together. They had shared meals at the same table. They had held hands, for Christ’s sake. Mina always thought that she was strange, her face so devoid of nuance and expression. But that was Madeline. That’s the way the woman was! Mina still thought of her as a woman, but what if she was wrong?
Kilmartin’s wife had been dead for five years. Isn’t that what the doll had said? All that remained of her were photographs. But the man had shown one of these to the watchers. In order to understand how the changelings altered their appearance he had encouraged them to practise on her image. There is no knowing what he told them. All that Madeline knew – the history, the myths, and the lies that Mina had believed – she could have learned them from him, creating a backstory that none of them would ever question.
Mina dragged the brim of her hat down over her ears, trying to block out these thoughts like an alarm bell she couldn’t ignore. Where did Madeline go all those days when she disappeared? The woman hardly ate. She never even seemed to close her eyes. The alarm was getting louder.
What Mina wouldn’t have given for a friend; someone to patiently sit beside her, and just listen. She wasn’t seeing sense – that’s all it was. Despair and sorrow had been her peers for too long. She had succumbed to their point of view and their cynicism. Of course she would sooner call Madeline a monster than assume that the worst of the horror was over. But it wasn’t. The facts couldn’t be ignored.
The professor thought he was losing it. The isolation and the stress of his endeavour had bested him. He feared that he was no longer alone during the peaceful hours, when the sun chased the watchers back into their dens. But it couldn’t be called paranoia if it were true. Mina thought back to what the man had said: I know they can’t come above ground during the day, but what if they can? What if even one of them has found a way?
Mina stepped over the threshold, tiptoeing through the hallway and into the kitchen. Her foot swept the wooden slivers towards the skirting boards. Nothing had been stolen or damaged. Not that she supposed for a moment that her home had been burglarised.
It had to have been Madeline. The thought of Ciara forcing entry was absurd. And besides, why would she have come back? If Mina hadn’t spent so long by the riverside she would have been at home when the door crashed in. Maybe Madeline had rapped those knuckles like wrecking balls against its wood, seeking shelter – a safe place from the surrounding city. But Mina suspected otherwise. She had come looking for her because Mina knew the truth.
The camera that Ciara found was no more than a gloomy memento, like a lock of hair from a lost lover – the heart-breaking variety. But her notion that it might still store some footage had elicited from Madeline a choler that she had tried to conceal. The very sight of it seemed to raise her hackles. They had agreed to never speak of their experiences to anyone. What if Madeline didn’t trust them to do so?
Mina couldn’t stop the questions coming, and yet she failed to flower a single answer. A million what ifs had grown around her like weeds, taking over, choking all else into submission. She pondered the purpose behind the masquerade. Madeline was a chameleon mastering a new colour. Alone her oddness could be identified, but in the company of others it would be less apparent. Is that why she had kept them alive?
Mina had walked to the university with her head down, eyes set on her shoes. She might as well have been wearing blinkers. Madeline could have pursued her in plain sight, and she would have been none the wiser. She needed someone to tamper with Kilmartin’s research, to erase the evidence. And Mina had done just that.
She had slipped the man’s diary into her handbag. There was an old-fashioned CCTV camera above the door, staring directly at her, and so the misdeed was carried out under the table, where neither the doll nor the unblinking eye could see. The maps were folded as quietly and discreetly until they could fold no more. Kilmartin’s research had not been disturbed since his disappearance. It was highly unlikely that anyone would come looking for it now.
What were Madeline’s intentions once the papers had been destroyed? Mina had to contact Ciara. She had jotted down her phone number before she left. If Mina could harass a neighbour for the loan of a phone, she could call her. Luckily, wherever An Diadan was, Ciara was safe.
It was in the hallway, by the draught of her broken door, Mina realised that something was missing. The piece of paper where Ciara had jotted down her address and its directions was gone. Madeline had taken it.
26
Ciara
Ciara was drawn to the hot coals. She sat on the marble hearth, mesmerised by the cracks of red burning in the black. In the forest, where Madeline tended to the fire like it was a sick child, branches and twigs had kept the flames alive, but they never gave off a warmth like this. Ciara gave it one final stab, flaring sparks like golden sea spray, and returned the brass poker to its holder. She looked to the mantel. It held a line of photo frames of varying styles and sizes, like a timeline of her life with John before they set out on that Sunday drive. She considered them with a smile that belied her sadness, envying the woman who stood beside her husband. The room had floors of light maple, with an oval rug – soft like hotel carpet – in front of the fire. She had left the lamps off. The wallpaper’s pattern was subtle enough to be lost in the evening light.
She would close the curtains soon. The sight of the windows made her uncomfortable. Ciara’s house was isolated. The once manicured lawn had grown wild, and the surrounding flower beds were graves of rotted stems and shrubs. Over the wall were fields of nothing, and in the very distance – far, but not far enough – she could see a few trees in the dying light. There wasn’t another house around for miles.
The coop’s light would be coming on soon. She tried to imagine how it looked. Was its glass still in place? Had all those tins been torn into sharp little shreds? Ciara held her hands over the coals to stave off that cold feeling she got whenever she thought about it. She should close the curtains soon. There was no telling what could be out there, looking in.
Ciara had idled outside her home long after the taxi pulled away, leaving her alone for what felt like the first time in her life. She suffered an uneasy disconnect with the memories laid before her. It was as though she and John were still in there – the ghosts of what could have been, sharing in a happiness that she would never find again. She had no clue as to what day it was, but it felt like Sunday. The spare key was where he had hidden it, under the flowerpot to the right of the front door, untouched since his hand had held it.
‘You promised to get me home,’ she whispered, rubbing the dampness deeper into her eyes. ‘Well, I’m home. We’re home.’
The stillness was harrowing. Ciara drifted from room to room, too afraid to touch anything lest it dissolve, and she should awaken back under the coop’s light. Someone had been there since they left. She remembered that Sunday so vividly. The couch’s cushions had been rearranged. The television remote wasn’t where she had thrown it. The dish rack had been cleared. Was this really her home? It must have been her parents’ doing. Or what if the Gardaí had sent someone to investigate their vanishing? While she and John were trapped in that forest, someone had come looking for them, studying her home like a crime scene, treading their dirty boots across her floor and touching things that didn’t belong to them.
She had taken the ph
one from its station, still unsure as to what she would tell her parents, but she needed to hear their voices as much as they needed to know that their daughter was alive. Familiarity drew her to her corner of the couch; the last place she had sat. The child in her still hoped that her life would magically reset. John’s head would peer around the doorway, offering to take her on some wonderful adventure to spice up their weekend. She would run into his arms and tell him that they most certainly were not. Ciara placed the phone down and eyed it like a bomb that she should have known better than to touch. She wasn’t ready. There was peace there, in the silence, with John. And she wasn’t willing to disturb it just yet.
Ciara took a long bath, misleading her thoughts with the pleasures she had promised herself. For over an hour she lay immersed in bubbling soap, woozy from fragrances that her nose had forgotten. Now and again the house would creak, and her eyes would snap open. No matter where her mind wandered, the watchers were there, standing around Danny atop that hill. How had they been so blind as to lose him? And why did he run back to the forest? Mina never told her what she had seen.
Her pyjama bottoms had warmed by the fire, and her woollen hoody hung open over her T-shirt. Her body didn’t feel like her own. Her clean skin and its floral scent had to belong to someone else. Ciara looked towards the window, and to the darkness beyond it. Night had fallen. Without the coop’s light to mark the end of the day, she hadn’t noticed. She paced over and snapped the curtains closed. Never had so swift an act been so satisfying. She went about switching on the two tall lamps in opposing corners of the room. It was starting to seem a little more like home. Something that Danny never knew. What she wouldn’t have given to have him with her now. Even during those weeks when she had shunned him – hating him for taking Madeline’s side – he still offered her his food when he didn’t have half enough to share. Whenever she left the coop, she suspected that he plumped up her blankets to make them comfier for her. He was always so kind, and so afraid. She was the one he came to if something was worrying him, and Daniel’s worries followed him like a loyal dog, scratching at his legs when they didn’t get enough attention.
