The daylight had been Mina’s only measure of time, and she’d lain on her side since Flanagan left, watching it darken to night, listening out for the occasional canter of hard-heeled shoes in the corridor outside. After the coop, the bulb above her bed felt no brighter than a flame on a wick, casting out the darkness without casting very much light. The yellow one – so easily enthused by the lamest distraction – had already succumbed to the tedium. He was now sound asleep, wings folded, his little head bowed in dream. Lucky for some. He’d been spared the hostile theories that kept Mina’s eyes from closing. She imagined the island of Ireland as one fat nest – a labyrinth of tunnels reaching from coast to coast and all places in between. What if over the centuries the watchers had been creeping up from the earth, silently stealing lives and positioning themselves like spies to await some terrible signal? And what if that day was finally due?
The doctor’s words still lingered in the air long after they’d been spoken. The watchers were getting bolder, risking exposure, leaving a trail that the authorities were brushing over with their own wilful ignorance. Mina had been right though – others did know about them – but never had a victory felt so bittersweet. What difference did it make when a rational lens deemed all those who knew the truth irrational, turning victims into supposed lunatics?
It’s only a matter of time before it gets out into the open.
‘And what then?’ she whispered to herself, wishing she had asked Flanagan that same question when she’d had the chance.
At least there’d be no more disputing her warnings, or her sanity for that matter. Lynch might even apologise for doubting everything Mina had told her bar her name.
Kilmartin’s kid was still out there, digging deeper by the day, awakening all those black eyes in the darkness. But there were camera crews, news reporters, and so many other witnesses on site; someone must survive to warn the world. Too many had already lost their lives because Mina had failed to act, like a child hiding under her bed, waiting for monstrous feet to gather around her.
‘I’m glad one of us is getting some sleep,’ she mumbled to the yellow one before silently screaming though another yawn.
A sudden blindness caused Mina to flinch up from her pillow. The lonely bulb had been extinguished – so too had the tall lights of the car park outside her window – leaving the cell in perfect darkness. She lay there, eyes wide but seeing only the room as she’d memorised it, pinned to a mattress that creaked with each nervous breath stolen from her lips. And then there was a sound amidst the silence, low but getting louder – getting closer. Footsteps were crunching across the car park. Mina unfolded her limbs and crawled clumsily up to her feet, disturbing the yellow one who began to whip his wings about his cage.
‘Keep it down, will you,’ she whispered to him. ‘Somebody’s out there.’
Mina reached her nose up to the window ledge. But where those steps had fallen, there was now only a cold and steady stillness. That didn’t change the fact that she’d heard them. It might have been one of the Guards plodding innocently over to inspect a dodgy fuse box or something. And yet this explanation – plausible as it was – didn’t make the dark any less ominous. The bird was still upsetting himself, chirping out every dissonant melody in his repertoire. Mina fell to her knees beside him on the bed and slipped her fingers into his cage.
‘It’s okay, I’m here,’ she said, like a mother consoling her upset child. ‘It’s just a power cut. There’s no need to cry.’
And yet she knew as these words were uttered that there was every fucking reason to cry. The watchers must have witnessed her arrest. Such was their determination to drive her off the road that they wouldn’t have renounced their pursuit so easily. They’d have bided their time and waited for the Guards to bundle her into the back seat, and then they would have followed, keeping to the lightless wilds that flanked the road on either side. How could she have been so stupid to hope that she was safe here of all places. She’d been caught and gift-wrapped for them to come and tear her open. Is that why the yellow one had acted out? Had he detected a presence outside their window where she’d only heard footsteps?
‘What’s out there?’ she whispered to him, her nose pressed to his cage.
The click of shoes was now approaching from the corridor. Mina discerned the rattle of keys as their holder fumbled to find the right one. There was a slide and a sharp click and the cell door opened, revealing a silhouette framed by the moody red glow of the station’s emergency lights. Judging by the shape – or lack thereof – it was the same Guard she’d spoken to earlier; the one who liked to chomp down on his fingernails between meals.
‘The power’s out, Mina,’ he said, spinning his ring of keys. ‘First time this has happened, but sure it’s not the end of the world. We’ll struggle on.’
‘What caused it?’ she asked.
‘No idea,’ he replied, not the least bit fazed by the night’s odd turn. ‘It’s just you and me in the station, so one of us will have to take the blame for it.’
‘What do you mean just you and me? Where are the others?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘they’re out on a call somewhere.’
‘Were you outside a moment ago, in the car park?’
Mina saw his bulbous head shake in the darkness. ‘No, I’ve been up in reception. Someone has to keep an eye on things here, you know.’
‘But I thought I heard someone,’ she said. ‘Actually, no, I definitely did. They walked right past my window.’
‘Well.’ The Guard chuckled. ‘Hopefully it’s an electrician because we could be in the dark for a while, I’d say. My advice would be to get yourself some sleep and…’ His silhouette turned to face the reception, revealing the full extent of his pot belly. ‘Hello,’ he called out, ‘is someone up there?’
‘What’s going on?’ Mina said, uneasy at the thought of any more surprises.
‘Sorry, Mina, one sec,’ he said, basked in that dusky red glow, still peering toward the corridor’s end. ‘It’s probably one of the lads. What would you call it? Reinforcements, that’s the word. Hopefully they know more than I do about getting the power back on. Hello!’ he shouted. ‘Johnny, is that you? He’s coming down,’ he said, turning to Mina. ‘He’s fairly handy with these sorts of things.’
Whoever Johnny was, his strides were slow and measured, barely imprinting a sound. Mina saw the Guard outside her cell bend his head around the dim light, presumably trying to confirm the identity of the one approaching him. The lack of any friendly banter between them meant that he’d yet to make his mind up.
‘Would you ever say something?’ he said as he strayed out of Mina’s sight, leaving the door to her cell open. ‘Hang on,’ she heard him say. ‘What do you think you’re doing? You’re not allowed—’
An almighty thud echoed through the corridor, swift as it was violent. The Guard’s keys jangled their last as they fell to the tiles. Mina shrank back against the wall, arms fastened around the yellow one’s cage, staring petrified at the open door as those same serpentine steps recommenced their journey towards her.
A body came to inhabit that crimson space, their silhouette as lean and long as Mina had dreaded; shoulders above the one it had silenced. It stood so ghostly still – this featureless horror, so at home in the darkness that it watched Mina without need for light. She could feel the yellow one’s wing brushing nervously against her palm. Maybe he’d already surrendered too, composing himself to face the end with some level of quiet dignity. He’d always been the bravest of the two of them.
‘Mina,’ came a voice, like a dream she’d forgotten.
The stance and stillness tugged at a thousand memories, and in the murky red light, she noticed hair hanging as mist past their shoulders.
‘Madeline?’ she whispered; speaking the name alone brought her back to that time.
‘Come on, Mina. We have to go.’
Even with that familiar voice beckoning her into the light, she still refused to believe it.
‘How do I know it’s you?’ she said, staying loyal to her own distrust.
The one in the doorway was heard to sigh with impatience as their head turned to glance back up the corridor. Their profile fit the claim, but voices and faces weren’t enough anymore to truly convince.
‘We don’t have time for this, Mina.’
It was Madeline’s voice – that familiar undercurrent of bitterness washed through her every word.
‘If you are who you say you are,’ Mina said, ‘then what was written above the fireplace? What were those words that you told me to live by?’
The other was staring at her as Mina awaited the answer that would save or surrender any hopes she had of escaping that cell alive. Even odds yet again – the story of her life.
‘Stay in the light,’ Madeline replied softly. ‘And it was you who taught me to live by those words, Mina.’
Despite all those doubts and drunken criticisms, the woman had come back for her, just like she said she would. Mina limped onto her feet, knees wobbling as she strained to steady herself, wondering why death seemed to take such sick pleasure in teasing her time and time again. The yellow one fluttered his wings when she reached back for his cage. No wonder he’d kept his cool, the clever little bastard. He may not have been Madeline’s biggest fan but he’d learned to tolerate her company: a masterclass in forgiveness seeing as how she’d once alluded to eating him.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Mina asked in a shrill whisper, calling to mind in that second just how pissed off she was with her. ‘You said you’d come find me weeks ago.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she replied with her signature succinctness before walking away. ‘They would have followed me.’
Mina scampered after her through the door and along the red-lit corridor; any space not contained within that cell felt alien to her now, and the unearthly mood lighting wasn’t helping. It made her pine all the more for fresh air and clean moonlight. Slumped lifelessly on the floor, she saw the Guard. He’d landed badly, with his arms all twisted at odd angles after Madeline had cast him with great strength and very little effort into the brick wall.
‘He’s not dead, is he?’ Mina asked, struggling to keep Madeline’s pace with the cage rattling against her hip.
‘No,’ she replied indifferently, ‘he’s sleeping.’
Hopefully this Johnny lad would buy him a stiff drink to soothe his bruises. He was one of the few Guards who hadn’t treated her like a wild animal being transferred between cages.
‘Where have you been?’ Mina asked, her socks sliding across the tiles.
The woman stopped on the spot and swung around to face her. ‘Mina,’ she replied, the hollows around her eyes flooded with shadow, ‘now is not the time for questions.’
‘But how did you know I was here?’
‘That’s another question, Mina,’ Madeline said before turning her back on her again.
The station’s reception was up ahead, basked in that same ruby red glow as the corridor, fathering more shadows than it did shapes. Mina saw someone pacing back and forth, arms folded, their shoulders aligned towards them, hinting at some expectancy. But the Guard had let slip that he was manning the desk alone that night. Whoever it was, their presence hadn’t deterred Madeline’s drive towards them. For a thrillingly rare and rosy moment, Mina hoped it was Ciara waiting for them. She’d imagined the squeeze of their embrace, the joy and the tears – the rejoining of two broken parts.
‘I told you to stay in the car,’ she heard Madeline snap as she struggled to keep up with her long legs.
‘I don’t know where you got the notion that you can tell me what to do,’ said a voice that skidded Mina to a stop. ‘The Guards rang me, remember. You’re lucky I even agreed to bring you along. And in case you’ve forgotten, I am her sis—’
Mina stood in the reception’s doorway, birdcage in hand, staring at this uncanny reflection of herself – identical to the eye, but a stranger beneath the skin. What with everything being so fucking red, any distinctions of their own design were now far less prominent. Her sister’s hair looked lighter, but not the awful blonde that was fake as the daft nails she glued onto her fingertips. Her clothes, too, were divested of their original colours. Everything about one was concordant with the other, and most striking of all – imbued in a light that softened the skin and cleansed it of cosmetic – their faces were one.
‘Mina,’ Jennifer said, looking her sister up and down as she quickly straightened her shoulders, forever trying to appear taller even though they shared the exact same height.
Words never grew naturally between them, and over the years that aridness had extended across the full gamut of affinities. Even as children – two stems growing side by side – their differences were impossible to ignore.
Mina looked to Madeline – the ancient shapeshifter who she’d more in common with than her own twin. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me?’
The night wasn’t finished with its surprises just yet. Mina had been dreading this day, and the circumstances of their reunion weren’t exactly going to make it any less painful, especially in light of the fact that it took a phone call from the Guards to bring them back together – hardly serendipity at its finest.
‘It’s nice to see you too, Mina,’ Jennifer said, indulging in that deriding little scoff of hers that had been the cause of one too many fights over the years. ‘Can one of you tell me why it’s so red in here? And where is everyone?’
Mina had thought her sister was sharper than this.
‘They’re the emergency lights, Jen,’ she replied with a sigh, turning to Madeline. ‘I’m guessing you cut the power?’
‘What?’ Jennifer snapped, taking a step closer. ‘Who cut the—’
‘I didn’t cut the power,’ Madeline interrupted, head tilted back as though she were listening to anything but the twins. ‘It was like this when we got here. That’s why I told your sister to stay in the car,’ she added, glancing over to Jennifer.
The Guard himself said that this was the first time the station had lost electricity; one of his last acts before being promptly rag-dolled against the wall. Mina thought back to those furtive steps she’d heard outside her window; they’d followed too soon after the blackout to be coincidental.
‘So you’re free to go, are you?’ Jennifer asked, looking around her, still trying to fathom the station’s red-tinted emptiness. ‘Would you like to tell me why you were arrested in the first place, Meens? I’m guessing drink was involved again, was it?’
‘Ciara’s missing,’ she replied, too tired to rise to the fight, ‘and they think I’m responsible.’
Though Mina knew what connotations the word missing really carried.
‘And why exactly would they think that?’
‘Because I was at her house the night they picked me up.’
‘What were you doing at—’
‘Jesus fucking Christ, Jen, can you just believe that I didn’t do anything wrong? She’s my friend. I only went to see if she was okay. And she wasn’t. She’s probably dead; I don’t know.’
The silence that followed hinted at neither belief nor doubt on her sister’s part, just that same deep-rooted disappointment, about as surprising as a gloomy cloud spitting down rain.
‘I do believe you,’ Jennifer said eventually, however forced it may have sounded. ‘But you have to understand, Mina, that I haven’t seen you since…’ She paused, catching herself. ‘You just disappeared – gone without a word – and when we last spoke you weren’t exactly making a whole lot of sense.’
Madeline remained a tight-lipped bystander, stoic as a heron, her gaze fixed to the ceiling.
‘Do you know if Ciara’s okay?’ Mina asked her, scrabbling above her fears to solicit the one answer she dreaded above all others.
Madeline had kept her pets alive in the woodland. Maybe, even after releasing them from that lightless cage of branches and thorns, she’d remained their stubborn guardian at a distance.
‘I don’t know, Mina,’ she replied, still dedicating the core wealth of her attention to whatever she’d noticed above her head.
Jennifer watched on impatiently, every angle of her body pointing towards the front door, not so subtly advertising a desperate desire to go home. ‘Can we leave now?’ she said. ‘I do have other—’
‘Quiet,’ Madeline snapped, raising her hand, having clearly heeded some sound beyond the range of the bickering twins.
Mina clamped her lips shut and, amazingly, Jennifer did as she was told too. The yellow one was acting all antsy again; lashing out the occasional wing and padding back and forth around his beam as though he couldn’t get comfortable on it. This was never a good sign.
‘What is it?’ Mina whispered to Madeline, so low that even the sister standing by her side couldn’t possibly have heard her.
‘Listen,’ she replied, pointing to the ceiling.
And then, standing inert amidst that eerie red glow where the shadows reigned supreme over the light, Mina heard it too – a gentle tapping on the station’s roof, as though there were somebody above them, stalking across its slates.
‘They’re here,’ Madeline said, her eyes snapping to the other side of the room, where another succession of steps was heard to join the other.
‘What are you talking about?’ Jennifer asked. ‘Who’s here?’
Mina slapped her sister on the arm. ‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ she whispered. ‘For fuck’s sake.’
There weren’t enough years left in their lives combined to make her believe what was out there. Mina didn’t want to believe it herself. She recalled what Madeline had said once, that night when Ciara battled to break through the door and run to her dying husband’s scream.
They always find you.
John. Daniel. Ciara. Mina’s turn was long overdue.
‘How many are there?’ she asked, pressing a palm to her chest, trying to rebalance her breathing, but she was losing more air than she could catch.
Madeline lowered her head and listened, counting the noises, isolating the bodies creeping in the moonlight above them.
‘Three,’ she replied, ‘maybe four that I can hear. But, Mina, there’s no telling how many could be out there.’