Tim Lebbon - White and Other Tales of Ruin

“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.