All nightmare long, p.28
All Nightmare Long, page 28
“Lina!” Eadric shouted again. The singing faded in and out, seeming to shimmer through the falling snow. Flakes danced to the voice.
Eadric ran. There was no warning, no tensing of muscles. One moment he was still clasping his wife’s clothing, the next he leapt past Winfrid and darted across the small clearing. He scrambled up the steep slope and soon disappeared among the trees and falling snow. Winfrid watched him go. He breathed lightly because Eadric had come so close, and he had smelled of death.
When Winfrid turned back to the woman, she was also gone. He searched for her footprints in the snow, and then saw movement across the slope as she dashed between trees.
Logs settled on the fire with a shower of sparks. A chunk of meat fell into the flames, spitting and letting off black smoke. The singing drifted in from somewhere far away, and though Winfrid turned left and right, he could not tell which direction it came from. But there was something about the song that terrified him. Though high and light on the surface, and it was sung with a mocking humour, and not with the voice of a little girl.
This voice sounded ageless.
In a land like this, with snow falling and cold seeping through his thick habit and woollen undergarments, a fire would be the safest place. But this one no longer felt safe. It poured sick smoke at the sky, and as he turned to flee he tried to summon a prayer, a plea, to help him on his way. He muttered to God, and then shouted at Him. It seemed that the more he prayed, the closer the silent surroundings crowded in around him.
He stumbled across the slope towards the west, slipping eventually down a steep hillside towards a valley bottom. The singing had ceased, left behind or faded away. He slipped several times, falling onto his back and escaping injury when his bag broke his fall. Everything he owned was in there, the material things at least. His heart contained his true riches; a knowledge of God, and a soul given over to goodness. I am good, Winfrid kept telling himself, and in that mantra he found courage. A sense of evil hung dense all around him. It hid behind tree trunks, hunkered down beneath rocks tumbled from the heights an endless time before, danced from snowflake to snowflake, daring him to find it. And though he feared this evil—unknown though it was, and more awful because of that—he also felt secure in his beliefs. The worst could happen to him and God would be there on the other side.
At last he reached a place where he thought he could rest. It was gone midday, the smear of sun in the sky already hidden behind the western hills, and his pounding heart had begun to settle.
A stream gurgled merrily along the valley floor, the flat ground on both banks smoothed by virgin snow. Winfrid crouched beside the water and enjoyed the sound. Better than his own heavy breathing, the crunch of his feet through snow and fallen leaves, his grunts as he’d slipped and fallen. Better than the singing.
“God’s voice,” he said as the stream ignored him.
“God does not speak.”
Winfrid fell onto his behind, hands sinking into the snow to find wet, muddy ground beneath. He clasped at the mud, securing himself to the world.
Across the stream, in a spread of snow unmarred by prints, stood a little girl. She wore a simple dress made of rough, grey material, poorly fitting across her shoulders and dropping almost to her ankles. It was thin and holed. She did not appear cold. Not her body, at least.
But her eyes were ice. Their glimmer was frozen as if at the moment of death, and her pale skin was mottled blue.
“God speaks through me,” Winfrid said, and the little girl laughed. It animated her face and shook through her body, but gave her no semblance of true life. Lina, he thought. This must be Lina the singer, and her voice is even more terrible than her song.
“Your pride pulsates within you,” she said. “You take your vow and assume too much.”
Winfrid pushed himself to his feet. Mud was wet and slick between his fingers. “And you speak well for a farmer’s little girl.”
“I’m not little anymore.” Her laughter had ceased, but the smile remained. Like a slash in dead flesh.
“Then what are you?”
The girl tilted her head to one side, a wolf observing its prey.
“Your parents mourn you.”
She looked him up and down. He felt her gaze upon him, rough beneath his clothing. Wherever she looked, he was colder than ever.
“I’ll return to them soon.”
“Did they hurt you? Whoever took you, did they...do things to you?” he asked, already knowing this was wrong. The French had had no hand in this.
“You don’t even know who they are.”
“Then tell me.”
She ignored him, finishing her assessment and then turning to walk away.
“Wait!”
Across the other side of the stream, Lina strode towards the trees. Winfrid could have gone after her. But that would have meant splashing through the icy waters, and if he did that, he would risk freezing if he did not stop to dry his clothes. He had seen plenty of weak, sick people dead from the cold, and he had no desire to lie with snow filling his glazed eyes.
Besides, he could do nothing for her. The way she moved, the disregard, her calmness in this cold brutal landscape, all seemed so unnatural. So unholy. He went to call her again, but then the singing recommenced, and he had the disconcerting sense that it did not come only from her.
Just before she disappeared into the forest, the girl paused and looked back at him. Squinting through the flitting snow, he just made out her mouth moving. It did not seem to match the strange words of the haunting song.
Then she was gone, and the thick mud between Winfrid’s fingers was starting to dry and grow hard. It showed that he exuded the heat of life, at least.
Where Lina had stood, there were no marks in the snow.
He believed he was fleeing the song. There was nothing Winfrid wanted more than to lose himself to anyplace where that monstrous girl was not, and as he struggled through the snow, he craved his simple room in the monastery. Away from there, he was lost. Until recently, life at the monastery had been peaceful, calm, and safe, and Winfrid had rarely considered travelling farther than the next village. Now, with so much destruction and murder in the land, with hopelessness almost manifest in the marsh mists and the silent landscapes of snow, he had no idea what dark things were abroad.
Such time might attract horrendous things.
The snow fell heavier. Any hint of the sun was obscured in the uniform grey. Perhaps it was late afternoon, but he could not be sure. The heavy gloom seemed intent on confusing him. The landscape, too. One patch of woodland looked the same as another, and when a breeze blew up, whisking snow into the air and driving it in drifts against trees and rocks, he lost his way completely. He might have been travelling in circles, but drifting snow covered his tracks.
I should have stayed with her, tried to help her! The child was lost and alone, terrified by her ordeal, and he had probably scared her more than anything. But though guilt inspired such thoughts, truth shoved them aside with a sneer that might have suited the girl’s own face. He could not fool himself. Realization that she was something unnatural assuaged the guilt, but in its place was his own harsh, growing fear.
So he hurried on, hoping that he saw no place he recognised, praying that he did not hear that song again. He was leaving Eadric and his wife to some unknown fate, but he could do nothing for them. Even if he knew what their girl had become, he was useless. God does not speak, the girl had said, and the memory of her voice caused him to shiver, his vision growing hazy and unsure. He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes, but in memory there was only her.
Staring at him with those dead cold eyes.
“God save me,” he muttered, pushing away from the tree and moving on. The snow was deep here, coming almost up to his knees in places, and the long habit grew heavy where snow and ice stuck around its hem.
He struggled on through a dense forest, the stark tree canopy offering little shelter from the snowfall. A while later, as light began to fade and shadows emerged from their daytime hiding places, he found a place to rest.
It was barely an overhang, but the rocky lip of a shallow ravine offered some shelter from the weather, and the snow cover was lighter than elsewhere. He dragged a log into the sheltered area to sit on, then went about building a fire. He carried a flint and kindling in his bag, and was relieved to find it still dry. But to find other wood to burn, he had to root around on the sheer walls of the ravine, reaching up onto narrow ledges to rescue fallen leaves and twigs that had gathered there. Though damp, they would be his best hope for a constant flame.
He hoped the practicalities of survival would divert his mind from what had happened. But he found himself pausing every few moments and cocking his head, listening for the one thing he dreaded hearing. The breeze remained, but it carried only the gentle patter of snowflakes against the rocky wall above him, and the creaking of trees.
God does not speak. The words echoed back at him, however much he cast them aside, however hard he disbelieved them. She had been not only mocking but confident, a certainty in herself that belied her years. I’m not little anymore.
It took Winfrid a long time to light the fire, and by the time he had an ember and nursed it into flame, dusk had settled around him.
The growing fire made the night even darker. He welcomed the crackling of the flames, but for the first time in his life he feared what lay beyond. Darkness had rarely troubled him, because he had always been surrounded by safety at the monastery. Even fleeing the French and the devastation they had left in their wake, God had been with him to soothe any doubts about what might lie beyond his nightly fire.
Now he saw glimmering eyes among the trees, heard the creak of snow compacting beneath cautious feet, smelled the carrion rot of creatures stalking the shadows just beyond the reach of his fire’s light. He sat close and took comfort from the heat, but he could not sleep. Weary though he was, each time he closed his eyes, something jarred him awake. He hoped it was memory. He feared it was something else.
Winfrid tried to position himself as close to the steep slope as he could, but even then, his back felt exposed. He prayed. He stood and circled the fire, realised that the snow had ceased, looked up at the clearing sky and the stars and moon silvering the landscape.
When the breeze died out and moonlight revealed the deserted woodland around him, he began to settle at last. He ate the last chunk of stale, hard bread from his bag, and drank the final dregs of ale, thankful that the bottle had not been smashed. Thirst and hunger attended, if not sated, he finally closed his eyes to sleep.
The screams shattered his dreams and scattered them across the snow. He stood quickly and staggered as his sleeping legs tingled back to life. Snatching up a burning log from the fire, he turned a full circle, wondering whether he had heard anything at all.
Maybe I just imagined—
Another scream, long and loud, sang in from some distance. It changed to a series of short, sharp cries that seemed to echo from the cleared sky.
“Not wolves, not foxes,” he whispered, comforting himself with his voice. “Nothing like that. That’s human pain.”
He shouldered his bag and started through the woods. Away from the screams, the agonies, and whatever might be causing them. He imagined Lina smiling in the shadows, her childlike shape hidden beneath the trees and as ancient and uncaring as the hills. Guilt pricked at him but he was only a man, a monk who had never raised a hand against another. How could he help?
There was movement ahead of him. Shadows shifting, flitting from one tree to another, and when he paused and stared they grew motionless. He held his breath, heart thumping in his ears. Edging sideways, downhill and away from the shadows, he came to an old trail heading through the trees and down into the valley. He followed, glancing over his shoulder and seeing movement behind and to his right.
Following him.
Winfrid tried not to panic, running at a controlled rate instead of a headlong dash that would wear him out, trip him up, injure him and leave him prone and vulnerable to whatever—
Another scream, and this was much closer, coming from just ahead of him past where several trees had fallen across the trail. He skidded to a halt and pressed in close to the splayed branches, hunkering down so that his habit and cloak gathered around his knees and thighs.
Ducking down lower, he saw beneath one tilted trunk to what lay beyond. His breath froze. His heart stuttered. Vision funnelled so that all he knew, all he saw, was the grotesque, moonlit scene playing out not thirty steps away.
A man was impaled on a tree several feet above the ground. A broken branch protruded from his chest, bloody and glistening, and he was clasping it, trying to pull or push or twist himself away. He writhed and kicked against the tree, every movement bringing fresh pain inspired another scream.
Who put him up there? Winfrid thought, and then Eadric and his wife came into view, running to the tree, reaching up, and for an instant Winfrid believed he was going to see the man saved. It was the natural thought, the only good one, and it lasted less than a heartbeat.
Because he remembered the dead man he had seen hanging from a tree the afternoon before, and what had been done to him.
Eadric tugged at the scraps of clothing the man still wore, ripping them away. The man kicked feebly, and the woman caught his foot, pulled his leg straight, and hacked at it with an axe.
The man screeched.
Eadric sliced at his other leg with a knife, cutting away a chunk of flesh as big as a fist and dropping it into the snow. Blood spattered and sprayed, drawing sickly curves across the ground. Moonlight blackened the blood.
Winfrid wondered how they could both still look so thin, so weak, considering the meat they had been ingesting.
But perhaps the flesh of your own was poison.
“No!” Winfrid shouted, pushing his way through the branches and clambering over the trunks of the fallen trees.
The woman glanced back at him, surprised, but Eadric continued cutting. He worked only on the man’s thigh, and already the victim was bleeding out. He cried now rather than screamed, shaking uncontrollably so that Winfrid heard his ribs creak and break against the snapped branch.
“What are you doing?” Winfrid shouted. He ran towards the couple, and the woman turned on him with the axe raised.
“We’ve got to eat,” she said. “Got to stay strong so we can find Lina.”
“Lina is gone!” Winfrid said.
“No!” Eadric said, still slicing, dropping gobbets of meat to the ground and wiping blood from his face. “She’s still with us. We hear her singing.”
“That’s not your daughter you hear,” Winfrid said. Tears filled his eyes, then anger dried them away.
“Stay out of our business,” the woman said.
“Killing people to eat is a work of evil, so it is my business.”
“We don’t kill them. We find them.”
“Then who—?” Winfrid said, and then the singing began. At his back, perhaps as close as the trees he had just been hiding behind, the song floated across the small clearing and seemed to freeze the scene in place.
In Eadric’s and the woman’s eyes, delight and disbelief as they looked past Winfrid.
The dying man saw only horror.
Winfrid turned and saw Lina approaching him. Three others were with her, two women and a man, and Winfrid knew that he was in the presence of the unholy, the monstrous. They presented themselves as human—scraps of clothing, pale skin marked with dirt and scars, an air of insolence—but they were clearly something else. Their eyes betrayed that.
“Lina,” her mother whispered.
Winfrid went to his knees and began to pray, and Lina stared at him. Her mouth was not quite in time with her song.
They passed him by.
“Lina, we knew, we waited, and you’ve come back to us,” Eadric said.
The singing ceased. Winfrid found his feet again and backed towards the fallen trees. Before him, Lina and the three adults. Beyond them, her desperate and insane parents, hands marred with the dying man’s blood, chunks of meat from his wretched body melted into the snow at their feet. The hope in their eyes was grotesque.
But it did not last.
Lina and one of the women took her mother down. The other man and woman pounced on Eadric. Neither of them screamed as the beasts bit hard into their throats, their necks, opening them up and gasping in the sprays of blood that arced into the starlit night.
Winfrid tried to back away further, but his feet would not move, his legs would not carry him. He was as bound to witness this horror as the dying man stuck on the tree. For a second, the two of them locked eyes but then looked away again, the terror drawing their attention.
A new song began. It held nothing of Lina’s previous tune, which though unsettling had been light and musical, singing of uncomfortable mysteries best left untouched. This new song was made up of grunts and sighs. The sounds of gulping and swallowing. And then the sickly groans of ecstasy as Lina and the others bit, lapped, and raised their faces to the stars, their bodies squirming in intimate delight as blood flowed across their pale skins and into their heavily toothed mouths.
What monsters are these? Winfrid thought, but he could dwell only on what he saw. It horrified and fascinated. The victims on the ground were thrashing beneath the weight of their attackers, and he caught sight of the mother’s face only once. Eyes wide in disbelief. Throat wide and gushing. Her daughter dipped her head down again, seemingly lowering her face for a kiss but then pressing herself into her mother’s open neck.
She drank and groaned, and the woman died.
Winfrid still could not move. He had to watch, and he saw the moments when Eadric and the man on the tree perished also. That left him alone with them, and when Lina stood and turned, he thought she was coming for him.
But she paused, only looking his way.
“Because I’m a man of God!” he shouted. “Because He does have a voice, and you hear Him in me! That is not pride. That is faith.”
