A lone shard of glass remained, sunken into the corner of the frame that once held their reflections night after terrifying night, when hope was still a word she’d believed in. All else had been ground into oblivion. The door that Madeline so neurotically guarded had been rent from its hinges, and the table they’d sat around was now no more than a scattering of dark, damp splinters that squeaked under Ciara’s feet. The concrete – across the floor, and the walls inside and out – was scarred in deep wounds where the watchers had whetted their claws, busying themselves in the absence of any pets to soothe their immortal boredom.
This was worse than any death. And they’d known that when they brought Ciara there, back to where her husband had whispered those impossible promises in her ear and kissed her for the very last time.
The daylight was dying, and the blackness that flooded the forest floor was spreading like a cancer, climbing that labyrinth of trees and infecting everything and anything it touched. Some horrors in life retained a terrible consistency. Ciara was huddled in the same corner where her bed of blankets had once been, cold arms clasped around colder legs, awaiting those first tremors in the earth. Hunger had hollowed out her stomach, and the thirst gnawed maddeningly into her mind, drawing every thought to the spring that had been their only source of water. But those trodden paths that Madeline had carved for them had long been lost, and she couldn’t risk straying too far from the coop lest she should lose sight of it.
Kilmartin’s hidden safehouse had been ransacked for all its worth. It was a lightless tomb where the watchers’ sweat and blood and bile had congealed into a syrupy pool. Ciara had ventured down the ladder when the thirst became too much to bear, feeling around its darkness, finding nothing. The stench alone had drawn the last of the vomit from her gut, only adding to the vileness that soaked like sewerage into her socks. She’d peeled them off shortly after returning to the surface, where she’d fallen to the floor and wept until she had nothing left to give.
The nightmare she’d survived – that which had stolen her love and cancelled her life – was nothing compared to this. There had always been someone else to make the hard decisions and see it to that the fire and all those who relied on its warmth were kept fed and alive. There’d been shoulders to cry on and hearts to encourage. There’d been voices to stave off that deathly stillness. But now, Ciara had no one. Every damp wheeze of her lungs crackled in the silence, growing faster, louder, and so tight that she strained to catch a breath.
The night before had drowned her soul in the deepest, darkest abyss of despair, unlike any she’d suffered in her short but tragic lifetime. To think how she’d once cursed the glass that mirrored their movements. It was worse now that it was gone. Without it there was nothing to stand between her and the sight of them gathered in their hundreds, crowding around the open frame to watch her – all of them mimicking some distorted desecration of the man she loved. They remembered. And they’d preyed on Ciara’s heart for their own sick pleasure, whispering to her in his voice, weeping as John had in his final moments. Whenever her eyes grew weary, the foul things had screamed, forcing her to look at them – to face the horrors that could kill her should they ever tire of her hopelessness.
In any second, the light would click on and it would begin all over again.
But, in that harrowing prelude to the watchers’ return, Ciara discerned an impossible sound amidst the silence – footsteps in the corridor, creeping closer, shuffling warily toward the coop. She heard hands scrape across its walls. She had no more tears left to cry. Ciara looked to the doorframe where the shadows gathered thickest. Some self-destructive curiosity willed her to know what agonies her life held in store for her next; maybe now, after all she’d survived, a quick death was the reward she deserved.
Somebody was there. Ciara shrank into the corner where she listened to the frantic breathing of the one watching her from the darkness.
‘Where am I?’ they asked, more fragile – more human – than Ciara’s fears had expected.
The voice sounded so similar to someone she knew, and that recognition alone was heartbreaking as it was wonderous for one so desperately in need of saving.
‘Mina?’ Ciara whispered.
If it was Mina, then why hadn’t she run to her? The friend she loved would never have let her suffer alone in the darkness of that place. No, it couldn’t have been her. Mina was safe. She was far from where the watchers would ever find her. Whoever it was, they were no more than a black shape in a dark room, and Ciara knew better than to trust something so imitable as a voice.
‘You’re not Mina,’ she whispered, balling her icy fingers into a fist. ‘You’re one of them.’
Whatever it was, it was now shuffling toward her with slow, uncertain steps.
‘You know my sister?’ the other being asked, her words quivering through the air.
‘Jennifer?’ Ciara whispered, reaching towards her.
She had never met the woman. But she’d laughed at all of Mina’s snarky little tales, portraying her as some villainous doppelganger hell-bent on conquering the world if only to outshine her sister’s achievements. Hands touched, and she drew Jennifer down beside her into the corner.
The bulb above their heads performed its first flicker, and Ciara caught a glimpse of the woman curled into her side. It may not have been Mina, but such were the similarities that she couldn’t help but wrap her arms around her. The coop’s light had weakened over the months. It now flashed on and off in lightning strikes that would last through the night. Ciara held Jennifer closer, searching blindly for her hand until their cold fingers interlocked.
‘Don’t open your eyes,’ she whispered.
Ciara awaited the thunder of a thousand feet, breaking in waves towards the epicentre of the hell that was their home. There would be one shriek at first. And then the night would be filled with them – so deafening that all other sounds would cease to exist. She stared to where the wavering light faded to darkness, where the watchers had yet to come for her, where there was only silence.
‘What’s happening?’ Jennifer cried, burying deeper into Ciara’s side.
She couldn’t believe it.
‘They’re gone.’
The woodland was empty. The watchers were out.