White and Other Tales of Ruin (7 page)

“
What do you think the things out there are?” Hayden asked. “Lock pickers?”

Ellie glanced at his back, looked at me, shrugged. “No,” she said, “I don’t think so. But there’s no use being complacent. We can’t try to make it out, so we should do the most we can here. The snow can’t last forever, and when it finally melts we’ll go to the village then. Agreed?”

Heads nodded.

“
If the village is still there,” Rosalie cut in. “If everyone isn’t dead. If the disease hasn’t wiped out most of the country. If a war doesn’t start somewhere in the meantime.”

“
Yes,” Ellie sighed impatiently, “if all those things don’t happen.” She nodded at me. “We’ll do the two rooms at the back. The rest of you check the others. There are some tools in the big cupboard under the stairs, some nails and hammers if you need them, a crowbar too. And if you think you need timber to nail across windows … if it’ll make you feel any better … tear up some floorboards in the dining room. They’re hardwood, they’re strong.”

“
Oh, let battle commence!” Rosalie cried. She stood quickly, her chair falling onto its back, and stalked from the room with a swish of her long skirts. Charley followed.

Ellie and I went to the rear of the manor. In the first of the large rooms the snow had drifted up against the windows to cut out any view or light from outside. For an instant it seemed as if nothing existed beyond the glass and I wondered if that was the case, then why were we trying to protect ourselves?

Against nothing.

“
What do you think is out there?” I asked.

“
Have you seen anything?”

I paused. There was something, but nothing I could easily identify or put a name to. What I had seen had been way beyond my ken, white shadows apparent against whiteness. “No,” I said, “nothing.”

Ellie turned from the window and looked at me in the half-light, and it was obvious that she knew I was lying. “Well, if you do see something, don’t tell.”

“
Why?”

“
Boris and Brand told,” she said. She did not say any more. They’d seen angels and stags in the snow and they’d talked about it, and now they were dead.

She pushed at one of the window frames. Although the damp timber fragmented at her touch, the snow drift behind it was as effective as a vault door. We moved on to the next window. The room was noisy with unspoken thoughts, and it was only a matter of time before they made themselves heard.

“
You think someone in here has something to do with Brand and Boris,” I said.

Ellie sat on one of the wide window sills and sighed deeply. She ran a hand through her spiky hair and rubbed at her neck. I wondered whether she’d had any sleep at all last night. I wondered whose door had been opening and closing; the prickle of jealousy was crazy under the circumstances. I realised all of a sudden how much Ellie reminded me of Jayne, and I swayed under the sudden barrage of memory.

“
Who?” she said. “Rosie? Hayden? Don’t be soft.”

“
But you do, don’t you?” I said again.

She nodded. Then shook her head. Shrugged. “I don’t bloody know, I’m not Sherlock Holmes. It’s just strange that Brand and Boris …” She trailed off, avoiding my eyes.

“
I have seen something out there,” I said to break the awkward silence. “Something in the snow. Can’t say what. Shadows. Fleeting glimpses. Like everything I see is from the corner of my eye.”

Ellie stared at me for so long that I thought she’d died there on the window sill, a victim of my admission, another dead person to throw outside and let freeze until the thaw came and we could do our burying.

“
You’ve seen what I’ve seen,” she said eventually, verbalising the trust between us. It felt good, but it also felt a little dangerous. A trust like that could alienate the others, not consciously but in our mind’s eye. By working and thinking closer together, perhaps we would drive them further away.

We moved to the next window.

“
I’ve known there was something since you found Jack in his car,” Ellie said. “He’d never have just sat there and waited to die. He’d have tried to get out, to get here, no matter how dangerous. He wouldn’t have sat watching the candle burn down, listening to the wind, feeling his eyes freeze over. It’s just not like him to give in.”

“
So why did he? Why didn’t he get out?”

“
There was something waiting for him outside the car. Something he was trying to keep away from.” She rattled a window, stared at the snow pressed up against the glass. “Something that would make him rather freeze to death than face it.”

We moved on to the last window, Ellie reached out to touch the rusted clasp and there was a loud crash. Glass broke, wood struck wood, someone screamed, all from a distance.

We spun around and ran from the room, listening to the shrieks. Two voices now, a man and a woman, the woman’s muffled. Somewhere in the manor, someone else was dying.

The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over the senses, but your stomach still knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well. For a second you live that death, and then shameful relief floods in when you see it’s someone else.

Such were my thoughts as we turned a corner into the main hallway of the manor. Hayden was hammering at the library door, crashing his fists into the wood hard enough to draw blood. “Charley!” he shouted, again and again. “Charley!” The door shook under his assault but it did not budge. Tears streaked his face, dribble strung from chin to chest. The dark old wood of the door sucked up the blood from his split knuckles. “Charley!”

Ellie and I arrived just ahead of Rosalie.

“
Hayden!” Rosalie shouted.

“
Charley! In there! She went in and locked the door, and there was a crash and she was screaming!”

“
Why did she —” Rosalie began, but Ellie shushed us all with one wave of her hand.

Silence. “No screaming now,” she said.

Then we heard other noises through the door, faint and tremulous as if picked up from a distance along a bad telephone line. They sounded like chewing; bone snapping; flesh ripping. I could not believe what I was hearing, but at the same time I remembered the bodies of Boris and Brand. Suddenly I did not want to open the door. I wanted to defy whatever it was laying siege to us here by ignoring the results of its actions. Forget Charley, continue checking the windows and doors, deny whoever or whatever it was the satisfaction —

“
Charley,” I said quietly. She was a small woman, fragile, strong but sensitive. She’d told me once, sitting at the base of the cliffs before it had begun to snow, how she loved to sit and watch the sea. It made her feel safe. It made her feel a part of nature. She’d never hurt anyone. “Charley.”

Hayden kicked at the door again and I added my weight, shouldering into the tough old wood, jarring my body painfully with each impact. Ellie did the same and soon we were taking it in turns. The noises continued between each impact — increased in volume if anything — and our assault became more frantic to cover them up.

If the manor had not been so old and decrepit we would never have broken in. The door was probably as old as all of us put together, but its surround had been replaced some time in the past. Softwood painted as hardwood had slowly crumbled in the damp atmosphere and after a minute the door burst in, frame splintering into the coldness of the library.

One of the three big windows had been smashed. Shattered glass and snapped mullions hung crazily from the frame. The cold had already made the room its home, laying a fine sheen of frost across the thousands of books, hiding some of their titles from view as if to conceal whatever tumultuous history they contained. Snow flurried in, hung around for a while then chose somewhere to settle. It did not melt. Once on the inside, this room was now a part of the outside.

As was Charley.

The area around the broken window was red and Charley had spread. Bits of her hung on the glass like hellish party streamers. Other parts had melted into the snow outside and turned it pink. Some of her was recognisable — her hair splayed out across the soft whiteness, a hand fisted around a melting clump of ice — other parts had never been seen before, because they’d always been inside.

I leaned over and puked. My vomit cleared a space of frost on the floor so I did it again, moving into the room. My stomach was in agonised spasms but I enjoyed seeing the white sheen vanish, as if I were claiming the room back for a time. Then I went to my knees and tried to forget what I’d seen, shake it from my head, pound it from my temples. I felt hands close around my wrists to stop me from punching myself, but I fell forward and struck my forehead on the cold timber floor. If I could forget, if I could drive the image away, perhaps it would no longer be true.

But there was the smell. And the steam, rising from the open body and misting what glass remained. Charley’s last breath.

“
Shut the door!” I shouted. “Nail it shut! Quickly!”

Ellie had helped me from the room, and now Hayden was pulling on the broken-in door to try to close it again. Rosalie came back from the dining room with a few splintered floorboards, her face pale, eyes staring somewhere no one else could see.

“
Hurry!” I shouted. I felt a distance pressing in around me; the walls receding; the ceiling rising. Voices turned slow and deep, movement became stilted. My stomach heaved again but there was nothing left to bring up. I was the centre of everything but it was all leaving me, all sight and sound and scent fleeing my faint. And then, clear and bright, Jayne’s laugh broke through. Only once, but I knew it was her.

Something brushed my cheek and gave warmth to my face. My jaw clicked and my head turned to one side, slowly but inexorably. Something white blurred across my vision and my other cheek burst into warmth, and I was glad, the cold was the enemy, the cold brought the snow, which brought the fleeting things I had seen outside, things without a name or, perhaps, things with a million names. Or things with a name I already knew.

The warmth was good.

Ellie’s mouth moved slowly and watery rumbles tumbled forth. Her words took shape in my mind, hauling themselves together just as events took on their own speed once more.

“
Snap out of it,” Ellie said, and slapped me across the face again.

Another sound dragged itself together. I could not identify it, but I knew where it was coming from. The others were staring fearfully at the door, Hayden was still leaning back with both hands around the handle, straining to get as far away as possible without letting go.

Scratching. Sniffing. Something rifling through books, snuffling in long-forgotten corners at dust from long-dead people. A slow regular beat, which could have been footfalls or a heartbeat. I realised it was my own and another sound took its place.

“
What...?”

Ellie grabbed the tops of my arms and shook me harshly. “You with us? You back with us now?”

I nodded, closing my eyes at the swimming sensation in my head. Vertical fought with horizontal and won out this time. “Yeah.”

“
Rosalie,” Ellie whispered. “Get more boards. Hayden, keep hold of that handle. Just keep hold.” She looked at me. “Hand me the nails as I hold my hand out. Now listen. Once I start banging, it may attract —”

“
What are you doing?” I said.

“
Nailing the bastards in.”

I thought of the shapes I had watched from my bedroom window, the shadows flowing through other shadows, the ease with which they moved, the strength and beauty they exuded as they passed from drift to drift without leaving any trace behind. I laughed. “You think you can keep them in?”

Rosalie turned a fearful face my way. Her eyes were wide, her mouth hanging open as if readying for a scream.

“
You think a few nails will stop them —”

“
Just shut up,” Ellie hissed, and she slapped me around the face once more. This time I was all there, and the slap was a burning sting rather than a warm caress. My head whipped around and by the time I looked up again Ellie was heaving a board against the doors, steadying it with one elbow and weighing a hammer in the other hand.

Only Rosalie looked at me. What I’d said was still plain on her face — the chance that whatever had done these foul things would find their way in, take us apart as it had done to Boris, to Brand and now to Charley. And I could say nothing to comfort her. I shook my head, though I had no idea what message I was trying to convey.

Ellie held out her hand and clicked her fingers. Rosalie passed her a nail.

I stepped forward and pressed the board across the door. We had to tilt it so that each end rested across the frame. There were still secretive sounds from inside, like a fox rummaging through a bin late at night. I tried to imagine the scene in the room now but I could not. My mind would not place what I had seen outside into the library, could not stretch to that feat of imagination. I was glad.

For one terrible second I wanted to see. It would only take a kick at the door, a single heave and the whole room would be open to view, and then I would know whatever was in there for the second before it hit me. Jayne perhaps, a white Jayne from elsewhere, holding out her hands so that I could join her once more, just as she had promised on her death bed.
I’ll be with you again
, she had said, and the words had terrified me and comforted me and kept me going ever since. Sometimes I thought they were all that kept me alive
I’ll be with you again.