A cold wind rushed along the tall grass, the winter air staining the land with frost. The afternoon sun was barely visible through the ashen gray of the sky. The stones stood tall in the ground, their cold silence a stark contrast to screams heard in the distance.
Mud and paint were thick upon their faces, their teeth yellowed and riddled with holes. Their hair was matted, caked with dirt, and full of threaded beads, long, dreaded hair that clambered down their spines, smelling old and untouched by soap or disinfectant. They coughed and sputtered as they walked, many of them sick with infections as yet unrecorded. Some had lumps on their flesh like tumors, others bore cleft palates and overbites. They wore tough woolen jumpers and hiking raincoats, clothes to protect them from the rains leaking down from the heavens, toxic water that fell down onto their hoods and backpacks.
There were sixteen of these dark figures marching slowly through the afternoon light of Bincarth Woods, groaning a tune as they went. They passed a dilapidated sign directing them to the wood, now halfway buried within the ground. The sign had served as a warning to those entering, even with it half-buried into the ground, the sign still served as a warning post. A post telling the travelers not to enter this part of the island.
The song they sang came from the gutters of their throats, a grunting of a much older kind, an inner singing that filled the landscape. Some of them banged drums made of dog skin, coarse hair still coming out of their surface. Others bashed together pots and pans, making sounds to ward off the spirits of the forest.
With them, they carried their black bone banners and signs made from old traffic icons and salvaged wood. On them was painted a set of symbols, two large ovals with a marking inside each hole. This was a graven image of some significance to the caste of travelers, the sigil of an old goddess who ruled over the land. It was a goddess they had inherited only after the Nine Years of Lights, a goddess that currently answered their prayers. A goddess whom they served because she had protected them thus far. They became wholly devoted to her, and would never worship another deity again. Before the world tuned to this, they did worship a different God, one who they believed was almighty and powerful. The one, everlasting God. However, since the Earth they knew had changed, so did their beliefs. They now worshipped the goddess.
The leader of the pack was distinct, hunchbacked, with a grizzled face full of piercings and wrinkles. Threaded through every inch of his ink-blackened face through loops of old skin were bird bones and spikes. His tiny, narrow eyes stuck out a pure white, gleaming against the dark pigment of his cheeks. Duct-taped magpie feathers were clustered around his cheeks and forehead, crafted into a crude headdress. His body was tied with dyed rags, dried skins, and shamanic bells. Most of his teeth were missing by now, only the silver ones remaining, but he grinned wide, rain dripping into the gaps of his mouth. In his heavily-ringed hand was a blue rope, one end tied to the neck of a tall and pale man.
The roped man was a shirtless, white-haired figure with snowy skin and eyes of the darkest pink. He was the group’s recent captive, held for several nights, a slow-moving albino, strong and muscular, with white curled hair. They bound his large hands behind his back, tethering him helplessly like a bear in the circus. He whimpered and wept as a child would, and, unfortunately for the captive, he had the mind of one too. It was his poor intelligence that had led to his capture. If the pale man did not walk forward, one of the members in the group would lash him with a belt, marking his back with burning welts. So, he stumbled on forward, mouth gagged with cloth, groaning in pain from his injuries. The cold rain coated his skin in a film of poison, his eyes wincing through the wind.
Soon they approached a forest where the sun barely punctured the canopy of the trees on its journey to the ground, a place where the sycamores were tall and gnarled and grew close together, a place where the rotting skeletons of hanged men swung from the branches, others crucified to the trunks with old nails. Their arms were affixed to forking branches that emerged from the tree trunks. These trees, known as the Crucifiers, stood beneath the thick canopy of the sycamores. The Crucifiers were dead, smaller trees where all of their foliage had fallen off. These naked trees were perfect for crucifying anyone who did not fall into line. There were no crows here to peck the corpses clean, no insects crawling in the undergrowth, no evidence of animals having explored the ground floor. It was a forbidden land, a place where the Earth had been contaminated by something more than the acid rain.
The procession walked on for some time, their pale slave coughing and limping in front, moving forward until the trees thinned out, until the air itself seemed colder and stranger. When the hanging corpses had ceased their creaking, they could hear another sound in the air, like tinnitus echoing through a metal cylinder, a distant whining beyond the air itself. Here, the trees were flecked with a furred white moss, a fungus that grew on the wood. And beneath the trees were wildflowers, bluebells of faded violet, growing proudly from the roots.
When the leader saw these flowers underfoot, he screamed a command at his men while flailing his arms wildly in the air. Everyone stepped back as if to avoid stepping into the no man’s land, stepping back from something invisible marked by each flower. These were the dreaded ley lines, the sacred spaces not reserved for humankind. Soon, they saw that crooked posts had been dug into the ground around the soil and the trees themselves, perhaps to signify the barrier was there—a warning left by a past traveler.
The albino knew what kind of place this was, the familiar smell of metal and rotting wood creeping into his nostrils. This was a cursed hill, a place that if a man spent too long, he might never return. His mind was especially simple and childish, yet the albino’s heart trembled with understanding, sensing the danger embodied in those mossy trees. He too stumbled backward, cowering away from the land, but he was pushed back over the line by the tribe’s leader and left to fall gracelessly into the mud below. There he lay, defeated and trembling for a single moment before pushing himself over. He remembered what his sister had said one day—never lie with your back to the enemy.
The captive turned around to see some of the men and women had lit their sticks with paraffin cloth and were now standing in a protective circle around their feathered leader, faces lit by fire, accompanied by the banging of pots. They watched the albino through their dirty faces, through the pigment and makeup. Some wore cloth masks with holes cut out for eyes. One of the drummers approached with heavy Velcro boots, plastic bags used for inner linings. He threw the albino a tall camping backpack, the large bag falling into the mud. The leader took one hesitant step forward and dropped to a crouch in front of the white-skinned goliath.
Pointing into the woodland ahead with a grunt, he gestured toward the backpack while looking intensely into the young man’s eyes. “Go intae th’ woods ‘n’ pat whitevur ye fin’ intae this poke,” he mumbled, the older man’s lack of teeth giving his words a haunting deafness. “Understan’ me, don’t ye boy?” The albino stared back into the jangling piercings of the man’s eyelids and nodded slowly in reply.
The albino was being used to enter a certain place, a cursed area the others were too afraid to go into. It was a task reserved only for slaves and those who were already poisoned. There was an understanding between the shaman and the albino, a crippling knowingness in both their eyes. But the shaman smiled as if to pronounce the other man’s death without words, dribbling spit down his chin of hanging metal, right down to the soil between them.
Soon the albino’s hands had been unbound, his wrists sore and bloody from rope burn. For a second, he stared at his gorilla-like knuckles, breathing heavily, his arms full of pins and needles. He fantasized about killing this raggedy man and his band of stinking followers, about cracking their skulls and sticking his fingers in their eyes. But one had a rifle pointed directly at his head, something the albino knew meant death.
Sometimes people had no bullets, but sometimes they did. A red-faced woman stationed back in the circle of stones many miles away, had a knife held to the throat of his sister, her body bound to a wooden post. And she was the albino’s light and hope. She was all things good in the world. So, the albino would do nothing. He would comply and do what they asked in the hope he might make it out of the forest alive. Witnessing men’s heads being shot in point blank range was something he had experience with. The result was not pretty. Seeing this several times over, although he felt nothing for their heads being blown off, he did not want this to happen to him. How would he protect his sister if the contents of his skull sprayed over everyone? He had to remain alive, to protect his sister and comply with what the savages asked of him. It was the only way he would have a glimmer of hope of being released.
She was his albino twin, exquisitely beautiful and she protected him for all of this time. He would not allow anything to happen to her. If either of them was to survive this ordeal, he would see to it that she did rather than him.
Minutes passed with the drummer banging and thudding at the skin of the drum slowly and methodically, the chanting beginning again. They had tethered the blue rope around the albino’s waist, the cord covered in knotted bells and empty tin cans so they could hear how far he’d gone. And with a final push, he was shoved way over that invisible line, hurtled forward into the dense woodland, walking straight over the violet-colored weeds. As soon as he entered there, the sound in his ears grew louder, like someone whispering radio static into his feeble brain. It was the sound of the poisoned land, of ghosts and spirits best left alone. It was a sound he’d been warned about—the sound of a nightmare tonguing your ear.
The sound of raspy voices filled his heads that it would have been impossible to think straight. Yet, he would have to continue to move forward, marking on past the ley lines into the cursed land. That land that had been cursed since the apocalypse.
The albino lugged himself forward, flexing his free hands to get the blood flowing. Below him, he could see an overgrown road, a place where vehicles had passed many years before. He followed this pathway, the dirt pockmarked by the evidence of past exploration. In the soil he saw the torn fabric, empty cans, and plastic bottles, but nothing of any real usefulness. Eventually, the fungus of the trees seemed to turn from a glorious white into a dark and exotic red, giving the bark a rusty and blood-colored hue.
Then, behind those trees, the albino spotted the building, clearly the place they desired him to search through. It was some kind of decaying manor house covered in faded green vines and the burnt black of past fires. It stood tall in the earth that had sunk around it, giving the place the appearance of arising out of a pit. A satellite dish stuck out of the top, bent over, and hanging by a thread. The white fixtures of the manor’s stairwell, its doorways, and windows still remained intact. But the rest was in a poor, dilapidated condition. Its roof was collapsed inward from rainfall and time, but once upon a time, it had been a place of great importance.
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It was apparent why the albino was sent to this manor. The manor probably had useful items that the savages could use to help protect them. From far away, the manor appeared to have thousands of items suitable for survival. His job was to get what he could and to leave himself enough energy to make it back alive and to deliver the goods.
The albino’s steps grew heavier as he walked toward it, his breaths harder and shallower. It was as if the air was sucked out of his lungs, replaced by a pungent odor and cold smoke. The evening had crept closer, the light fading from the land. The distant sound of the pots had drifted away, now leaving only the whine of the bad place and the whistling of a horrid wind. From the corner of his eye, he saw ponds of water, swamp-like holes where the ground used to be. He did his best to step across or around, remembering how deep some of the bogs would go.
Through heavy, bruised eyelids, the albino looked at the empty hole of the house where the door used to be. There he saw movement, a quivering in the air like heat from an exhaust pipe. Then something seemed to move along the house, almost like a pattern. They were the things he’d only heard spoken of by the campfire, the vague black shapes that danced and crossed the walls. They looked like passing shadows moving at high speed, reflecting onto each crooked surface of the house. They resembled the larvae of flies on the surface of pond water, moving at some speed, but they were the size of tall people and disappeared every second. The albino began to retch at the sight of them, bending over to vomit onto the ground. The smell of pungent wood rot and metal was strong in his mouth and nose. The pattern of their motion brought headaches to his brain and blood dripping from his nose. Their effect was known to make the mind became unstable, thoughts scattering like marbles on glass.
Everything in his body told him not to move forward, not to get closer to the murky shadow puppets that surrounded the stone building. But he knew if he returned to those people with nothing in the bag, the savages would kill him. The Albino knew it would not then just be death for him but likely for his sibling too. So, he bravely closed his eyes and trudged forward, the bells jingling loudly as he moved toward the mouth of that doorway. The shapes closed in on him, making the air dark with their presence. They appeared neither animal nor human, as abstract as they were alive. They seemed like light itself, making no sound but flickering endlessly, like a candle in the throes of rain.
With a deep breath, he had fallen inside. Breathless and filled with nausea, his stomach crawled, and the hairs on his arms raised to the point of painful anxiety. He thought of the stories they had told him of the one true God, of how the bearded spirit protected the small and the weak in times of need. But nowadays, he could not recall the prayers to those angels, nor the last time the angels had helped him to survive.
He felt abandoned by that old man of the sky as if he had gone away from the Earth long ago. The albino’s footsteps creaked against the damp wood below, the rope tugging slightly against his waist; he was almost at the end of its tether. At the other end, it was unraveling to its last few threads. He walked up the steps, finally inside the old house.
The albino never truly believed in the God that he was instructed about. He had been abandoned over and over again, only to find his true salvation in the very sister that he swore to protect and who protected him. The way he saw the world, how could there be a God above that would allow the world to be like this. He did not know of a time when the Earth was not plagued by the infection or when anarchy governed their lands. He was born after all of that had happened, but he heard stories of how the Earth used to be. How it used to have laws, order, civility, and kindness. That was a God he could believe in. Not the one who allowed the Earth to kill the weak and where evil prevailed. This God had abandoned the Earth long ago, and now it was under a demonic rule where no one could be trusted.
The albino opened his rose-colored eyes, glancing around the spacious gloom of the building’s entrance. It was once the front desk of an old hotel, but the pale man was unaware of this, imagining it once has been a grand castle or palace. A dusty chandelier hung from high above, looming down with heaviness and decay, its contorted position threatening to collapse at any moment. Around the room were clusters of mummified bodies covered in dust and dirt from head to toe, their eye sockets now hollow and black, gazing forever up to the ceiling.
The pale-skinned man knew what he was looking for, what all men looked for in the cursed lands—medicine, bottled water, alcohol, and tinned food. But around him, he saw only the white powder of detritus and age, everything preserved by some unexplained material. He continued to wind around the room, the cord still tugging at his waist, until he found himself behind the counter. There was a rusty bell, sheets of paper strewn about on the wood, and below him was another corpse, this time of a woman, her hair still preserved. White tufts of it stuck out of her skull, her face bone dry, gaunt, and skeletal.
The albino reached down into a leather purse that hung around the woman’s waist, unclipping it with a quivering finger. Popping open the latch of the bag, inside he saw several items of interest: a bottle of half-consumed whiskey, a small book, and a ring bearing a single key. Items that seemed familiar to him, but he would never know their significance. He did not have time to fully take in the woman who laid by the door, hair as white as his. He whined a whimper of joy, slipping off the backpack to fill it with the items. Now in his mind was a possibility of survival. Zipping the bag open, he was confronted with a plastic interior filled partially with rainwater and dirt. He slid the bottle and the book inside, putting in the bell from the table but keeping the key in his hand. Outside, the wind whistled, the rain picking up.
The rope began to tug hard on him, bells jangling, as if it was being pulled from the other side. The Albino knew that his time was up, that the savages were calling him back from behind the ley line. With a desperate breath, he looked around at the contents of the room, searching for something that would require a key. But with another great pull, he stumbled to stay put, but failing that, he allowed himself to be dragged outside of the hotel. There was some ugly feeling in him as if he’d known this place before, but it was too late for his mind to grasp the meaning behind it. Too late before the rope had pulled him to the door, outside into the rain and the mud. Unknowingly of the significance of where he stood, he yielded to the tugs of the rope. He was merely a puppet on a string, yet within those walls laid the very answers he’d searched for his entire life.
The albino turned his body, now scurrying down the broken steps, tumbling out through the forest. With eyes wide open, he looked up into the treetops then down onto the damp soil full of broken branches, fungus, and stones. It was then he was confronted by those swathes of half visible forms, fog-like figures flickering and swimming around him in nauseous blots, his breaths becoming shorter and stronger. His large eyes began to bulge at the sight of their rapid motion, unable to stay closed. His long tongue stuck out of his mouth, blood dripping from his throat. He spat and coughed out the fluid from his lungs, moving desperately forward. Up ahead, as the attacking shapes moved over his pink pupils, he could just about make out the end of the forbidden place. There the tribe stood, banging pots and pans, warding off the same devils that plagued his every step.
He could feel the shadows’ grasp loosening, the spirits fading away from view, but now their explicable patterns seemed to stain his vision, the sky turning darker, the ground writhing as if filled with moving worms. His ears were now deaf—no sound penetrating the silence but pure ringing. Each step seemed more difficult, each breath full of soil and poison. The once-strong man was now weak and pathetic, his white skin blotted with red sores, his gums and mouth full of blood. Reaching up to his head, he felt his curled hair coming out in clumps, receding into his fingers. Tears ran down his cheeks as his body shivered from cold.
When he could no longer walk, he crawled, whining like some animal. The rope kept tugging his pelvis, his hands sliding through thorns and stones, the veins of his body now visible and pulsing. The albino’s fingernails loosely fell away, brittle and breakable, teeth falling out en masse. Blood, bile, and stomach acids dripped from his mouth. Soon, his movements became sluggish, his sight hazy. He felt sucked into the dream of the woodland, the singing in his ears loud and piercing. He felt for the first time as if he would never leave as if he would never see his sister again. Doom echoed inside his skull.
The tribe dragged the albino back, pulling the backpack from his spine with some excitement. The albino looked up at them, but he saw nothing. He could only feel the vibrations of their footsteps in the ground, only feel the brutality in which they treated his damaged body. “Ah, git ye a bell, a book ‘n’ some whiskey…” he managed to whimper, reaching for a hand to hold. “Ah did guid, didnt ah?” He grasped out for sympathy, moaning for help. His job was done, so now he wished for him and his sister to be free. But this was not how things were done. One stamped on his wrist, holding it down as he pried the keys from his veiny fingers.
Another set a new rope around the albino’s throat, tying it tightly against the pale skin to pull him upward. One showed the key to the others, each muddied figure cowering to observe it. There was a number engraved on the inside of it, 102, alongside a keyring depicting the Ring of Brogdar. Such keepsakes were rare. To these men, it was a sign from their Goddess, as it was exactly where they had found their slave and bound his sister to a post. The coincidence was proof of their success. They shared the whiskey in the smallest sips, only the leader reading from the book. It was a map of the Orkney islands, full of handwritten annotations and burnt around one edge. The Orkney Islands, the archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, their home. Now changed since the apocalypse happened. Such a map might be the keys to survival.
By the white man’s feet, they dragged him through the mud, the albino screaming toothless cries, as they led him to the bog of Bincarth Woods. It was a huge, deep pond full of peat, far away from the woodland. It was a long swampy marshland covered in clusters grass. Bincarth Woods were dominated by beech and sycamore on the main land of the Orkney Islands
They arrived at an uneasy platform of wood, like a boardwalk of rotting planks that extended out across the bog. Their animal bones beat against their crude instruments, much dancing and writhing done. Some of the women kissed the men, others slapping or touching the enslaved gentleman.
They stood him up with several hands, grasping his body in many fingers. Through the milky pink of his blind eyes, it was apparent that he could only just see their shapes, his heart thudding at great speed. The albino tried to recall his prayers, whispering them under his breath. He asked the angels to fly down and place his sister in their nest, for holy God to come and bring him to safety. His sister was held captive back at the sandy beach, while he was forced into the cursed forest. But nobody listened, the sound of crooked music and mad chanting filling the air. The rope of his neck was pulled tighter from behind him, tight enough to strangle out his shallow breaths.
One by one, they stabbed into him, rusted blades entering from beneath the nipple. The blood spilled from his pale white flesh, memories flooding through his mind. The cold air seemed to warm for a second, their hands scrambling to cause more wounds. And finally, he felt the sensation of air, of being tossed into the bog by the group, stones descending down on his body. Each stone weighted him, further pushing his face beneath the surface.