One day he was in high glee, for he had made a looking-glass which possessed this peculiarity….The most beautiful landscapes, when seen in it, looked only like crooked spinach, and even handsome people became repulsive….
From The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
I
The house stood in splendid isolation on the edge of a great expanse of moorland. Nothing extended from it, no wires or cables (electricity came underground, Dominic had explained). A television aerial hung uselessly from the chimney stack and a half-formed track – no more than two broken lines of potholed earth on either side of a rough grass ridge – stretched for a mile to the narrow moorland road, itself an inconsequential line amidst the relentless spread of grasses and heather.
She had stayed out longer than she intended, in the gathering dusk and the earth’s slow turn from the sun. For two hours she’d walked, until she had entered the rising wall of the plantation and found herself enveloped by the densely growing trunks and the narrow, misty black gaps that separated them. The wind brushing through the fine needles overhead was like a multitude of awoken voices, speaking in fierce whispers, telling of the coming of this delicate wanderer. As she walked she thought of what they had abandoned to gain this desolate place.
Their small and diminishing social circle. They’d allowed it to diminish. None of their university friends had pursued them.
Their jobs. They were temporary anyway. She’d happily given up hers. No one in the office really knew who she was – just the strange-looking girl who never spoke.
Relatives they had distanced themselves from. It was to be just the two of them, at the beginning of their new life together, in their first home, an undisturbed existence.
But there amongst the trees she felt something dark and foreboding, a vague memory like a warning, straining to be recalled, a flash of red in her mind. Dominic said she had an overactive imagination and berated her when she forgot to take her tablets, which she often did. Even so, she quickened her pace along the edge of the firebreak, catching her ankle painfully on a hidden, trailing bramble.
On her return to the house she found him sat in his chair in the living room, leant in and focused, his small, slippered feet side by side, flat on the floor, not one but two reading lights carefully angled and shining down on the book’s pages. The book was about wood.
‘I was wondering where you’d got to,’ he said, without looking up.
‘Were you worried?’
At the end of the plantation, she had paused and watched the door of the house open. He had stepped out into the glow of the outside light and come to the gate, looking right at her but without seeing her. He’d surveyed the track and the moorland. Though he kept saying how stunning the landscape was, he’d hardly left the house in the months since they’d moved in. The closing door had made a faint tap in the vast, barren landscape. She’d found it reassuring, this display of concern.
‘What could happen to you out here?’ he asked.
‘Plenty could happen. How is it?’
He glanced up, taking a few seconds to process her question, and then said, ‘It doesn’t burn well when it’s not properly seasoned – which isn’t the same as not being wet.’
Built up against the ancient, moss-hung, drystone wall that surrounded the house, there was a battered woodstore. In a brief foray to the land on the other side of the wall, he’d gathered several large branches and dragged them into the yard, where he’d hand sawn them with great effort and stacked them meticulously. Fires to keep them warm. To keep him warm. A solitary, broken line of smoke-to-be, rising unobserved and drifting. The house was increasingly cold but they were yet to light a fire.
‘There’s always the heating system,’ she said, referring to two gas cylinders stood in a red cage outside. But money was tight and he was reluctant to use them.
‘We have to get warm one way or another.’
She pulled the blanket round her slender shoulders, wrapping up against the September chill that seeped through the aged walls. She could still smell the forest, as though a part of it had crept in with her. She glanced round to nothing but the darkened corner of the room. Beneath the blanket, she ran a tentative finger along the cut on her ankle.
The sudden sound of smashing glass startled them both. With eyes widened, Dominic placed his book on the table and walked quickly over and peered out into the hallway. She followed. The hall mirror was in myriad pieces on the floor and the front door was stood wide open, letting in a cold gust. Dominic shook his head. ‘You must not have closed it properly,’ he said, beginning with his foot to push the shards of broken glass into a pile.
The mirror had been hung on the wall when they’d moved in. She hadn’t liked it at all. It was ugly and something about the glass made her face appear strange; longer and paler and more tired than she was. She’d wanted to take it down but Dominic had said to leave it where it was. So instead she’d hidden it beneath a piece of cloth.
‘Here, let me help.’
But he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he knelt and started using his hands.
‘What are you doing!’ She tried to pull him back.
‘No.’ He shrugged her off firmly. ‘It needs tidying,’ and he kept pushing at the pieces until his hands were cut in several places. Only then did he stop and stand, seeming confused.
‘Why did you do that?’ She was exasperated.
‘Because it needed tidying Gemma. Why the hell didn’t you close the door properly? Look at this!’
He held up the bloody mess of his fingers and stomped quickly down the hall to the kitchen and started running the tap.
She went upstairs in search of plasters, muttering to herself, ‘I did close it properly. I’m sure I did.’
But increasingly she did not trust her own mind.
II
She sat up in bed, wide awake and alert and listening. She had dreamt that the front door had blown open again. The red digital lines on the clock read 01:00. Outside, the wind was still strong, roaring like an untamed beast. Periodically the joists shook and the house creaked. Dominic shifted restlessly in his sleep and muttered something fraught and unintelligible. She could not shake the sensation that the presence she had encountered in the plantation was still out there. It was past 03:00 when she eventually fell back to sleep, and she slept long into the morning. She awoke with a groggy head and a nauseous stomach. Dominic was not in the bed but he’d left her tablet and a glass of water on the bedside table.
She clothed herself and went downstairs and in the hallway slipped on her coat. The sun was a hazy white fireball in a greying sky. The wind had dropped to a placid breeze. She found him on the other side of the house, stood in front of the wood store, his shoulders drooped, his thin arms hung by his sides.
He’d sawn the wood precisely, even using a tape measure to cut each piece to the same length. The logs were stacked in a pile of rich orange circles, the sunlight strong enough to draw out the concentric, spiralling detail of the grain.
‘They’re rotten,’ he said. ‘How can they have rotted so quickly? It was all freshly fallen.’
‘Rotten?’
She crouched and looked closely at the logs. All she could see was compact, solid wood, still replete, she imagined, with moisture and sap. She ran her fingers over the rough surfaces and caught the sweet smell.
‘They’ll never burn,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell you what it is. Come and look.’
He led the way back round the house, his pristine work boots oversized and faintly ridiculous on his feet. He pointed at the plantation. She noticed how tired he seemed. Exhausted in fact.
‘It was fine before but now it’s dying. The trees are all dying.’
The pines through which she had passed the evening before stood tall and proud. They swayed gently in vibrant, green undulations. They couldn’t have looked more alive, like they could start a slow march towards the house.
‘They need cutting down before everything gets infected.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll call the Forestry Commission. We don’t want that on our doorstep. That’s most likely why the logs are rotten.’
With gloved hands he spent the rest of the morning throwing the logs back over the wall.
In the evening, as they prepared their meal, he said, ‘Why have I got these on?’
‘Because of clearing up the glass last night. The broken mirror. You cut yourself, remember?’
Her unease felt palpable to her, but he didn’t seem to have noticed it at all.
‘You have an overactive imagination, Gemma.’
Before she could say anything further, he had removed all the plasters.
‘See, nothing,’ he said. Across his fingers, the cuts showed in vivid red lines. One finger in particular was worse than the others. It had a nasty gash and an ugly swelling, that was almost visibly throbbing.
After a supper of chicken and roasted vegetables she followed him into the cold living room and they resumed their places from the previous night. She watched him huddled wearily over his book, reading a chapter on tree disease, she’d noticed.
‘Have you worked it out? The problem with the plantation?’
But instead of answering her question he studied her intently.
‘What’s wrong with your face?’ he said, turning one of his reading lamps on her, like he was about to perform an interrogation.
She shielded her eyes from the sudden brightness. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s all blotchy.’
Nervously she touched her cheeks. Her skin felt normal enough.
‘I don’t know. Where is it?’
‘All over.’
‘An allergic reaction maybe? The chicken? Was it cooked properly?’
‘That would make you sick not bring you out in a rash.’
The only mirror was now the one in the bathroom upstairs. Apprehensively she stepped in front of it and her heart began to race. There was no sign of a rash anywhere to be seen. Her face was as it always was; pale and clear and unblemished.
She sat on the edge of the bath and thought hard. All day something had been bothering her, the flash of red, the vague memory becoming clearer in her mind. A fairy tale she knew when she was a girl. The Snow Queen. There was a wicked sorcerer. He’d made a mirror that distorted everything it reflected so that good things looked bad and beautiful things looked ugly, and the mirror had smashed into millions of pieces and the pieces had got inside people and made them see things in that way too. She still shivered at the vivid recollection of the hooded creature that her infant mind had conjured. Then she thought of the disquiet in the plantation, the strong wind, the door blown open and the mirror smashed on the floor. She thought of Dominic’s vigorous sweeping; pieces of glass quite probably finding their way into the cuts on his fingers. She thought of his utter conviction that the plantation was dying.
It couldn’t be, could it?
An idea came to her. In their second bedroom their few possessions were neatly stacked in boxes, the contents of which Dominic had listed in thick marker pen on the sides facing into the room. In one there was a bottle of body spray. It was a cheap gift from her mother when she’d moved away to university, which she’d almost thrown straight out after a bad reaction. Indian Night Jasmine Fragrance Mist, read the faded label. She returned to the bathroom and removed the lid. A sharp, citric smell hit her nostrils. She looked at herself in the mirror again and wrapped a towel round her shoulders. Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes tight and began to compress the top of the bottle.
At first, the tiny droplets landing in fragile wet bursts on her skin was almost soothing but quickly the irritant effect began to take hold like it had done before; a tickling, burning sensation that spread over her face. She sprayed until the liquid was running down her cheeks and over her chin. She gasped, resisting the urge to rub at herself and go to the sink and wash her face clean. She sat and bent over double. She walked around in circles. She took deep breaths.
Eventually the discomfort subsided. Her skin felt prickly and taut. In the mirror she saw that, like last time, her face was covered in ugly red patches and lumps. She wondered what sane person would do this to themselves. But I’m not sane, she thought, remembering that she’d forgotten again to take the tablet which Dominic had left for her.
When she entered the living room he frowned, and her self-doubt grew. There’s nothing wrong with him, she thought. He can see the awful state of my skin.
She was on the brink of giving into the temptation to scratch at herself when his face began to change. She hadn’t seen him smile in weeks it felt like. Her heart began to race again.
‘Wow, that’s amazing. You look, just….radiant.’
‘I put something on.’
‘Well it worked. That’s obviously the stuff to use, whatever it is.’
And then he actually put his book aside, came over to her and, taking her head gently between his hands, kissed her forehead, right where the skin was raw. She forced a smile in return.
Well it worked. She repeated the words to herself. Yes, it worked, she thought. You have no idea.
He pondered her for a moment, still smiling. His normally youthful face was pallid. He picked up his book and continued to read. Shortly after he fell into an uneasy sleep, the pages of the book spread open like a fan. As she listened to the wheezing irregularity of his breathing, she felt an overwhelming urge to free him from what she was now sure had taken hold. Quickly and without a sound, she went down the hallway to the kitchen.
III
It dawned on her that if his understanding of what was beautiful and what was ugly was being reversed, would pain become pleasure? She shuddered at the thought. In the kitchen she eased open the drawer. The vegetable knife was there, small with a narrow blade and a frighteningly sharp tip. A tea towel was hanging on the back of a chair and she took that too.
In the doorway she hesitated, checking that he was still asleep. Then with a swift movement she entered, went to him and sat on his arm, holding it firmly against the chair.
He was awake now, suddenly alert, struggling to free himself from beneath her slight frame, frantically trying to work out what was happening.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ He began pushing at her with his other hand. She tightened her grip, causing him to cry out. It brought her both relief and dread that he still felt pain. She leant forward and dug the blade into the swollen gash and pulled the knife towards herself, cutting open his finger. He screamed. Blood oozed and ran down his wrist and began to drip on to the floor. He lashed out with his free hand, digging his nails into her. She swung her elbow hard and caught him square in the forehead and he slumped back with a groan. She manoeuvred the blade around inside the flesh of the cut, catching what she realised must be the hardness of the bone. Her hands were covered in his blood.
‘Stop, please.’ He could hardly speak the words through sobs of pain.
But she did not find what she was looking for.
Self-doubt flooded back in.
Was this whole thing really just her overactive imagination after all?
But then she saw it, twinkling on the blood-spattered carpet and she leapt off him, a surge of energy racing through her. She pressed the towel into the wound, wiping her hands on it at the same time.
‘Keep it on. Hold it tight. I’ll get some bandage.’
She picked up the shard of bloodied mirror from the floor.
‘What’s that?’ he mumbled. Water ran from his half opened his eyes. There was sweat on his brow despite the cold of the room. He could hardly hold the towel in place. He was utterly drained.
‘It’s what was embedded in your finger,’ she replied, triumphantly.
She dressed the wound as best she could.
‘It needs stiches.’
‘I don’t understand.’ His voice was faint.
‘The cut needs stiches.’
‘No, I don’t understand what’s been happening to me.’
She eased him up out of the chair and led him into the hallway where she helped him put on his shoes and threw a coat around his shoulders.
‘That wood wasn’t rotten at all,’ he said. As he spoke there came from outside the house a sudden crashing sound. The front door burst open and a bitter wind struck them with great force. Dominic bent forward and covered his head with his arms.
‘What the hell…?’
Pushing aside the hair that was whipping across her face, she found the switch for the outside light.
‘Quick!’ She took hold of him.
In the yard, the wind had caught the bin, where last night she had deposited the shards of broken mirror. The bin had toppled over, spilling its contents across the ground. She watched with a momentary fascination that quickly turned to alarm as the pieces rose up in a circling column in the air.
‘I see you found my mirror.’
Visible just beyond the reach of the light, a figure had appeared against the black of the night. Watching her unblinkingly from beneath a red hood, was a gaunt, snarling face with a sharpened, angular nose, ragged, purpling lips and bulbous, wideset eyes of an unfathomable blackness, filled with demonic intent.
Just as she had imagined him.
‘Why the hell didn’t you close the door properly Gemma,’ said the creature in a mocking, hollow tone. Its hands were raised as it conjured and directed the wind towards them. Dominic seemed frozen in a state of shock.
‘It needs tidying Gemma.’
The cut on her ankle was throbbing again.
‘Become like him.’ The voice echoed all around. ‘No more confusion over what is beautiful and what is not. Everything will be beautiful. Everything!’
Then she held up the piece of glass extracted from Dominic’s finger.
‘Too late.’
The creature gave a haunting, howling cry; sharp and grating, rising above the wind. She realised a split second beforehand what was going to happen, and she dropped to the ground, pulling Dominic with her. Just in time. The circling shards came flying through the air towards them, hurtling over their heads and splintering against the house. As quickly as they could, they crawled to the car. She reached up and opened the door and they threw themselves onto the back seat and she yanked the door shut behind them. The shards came hurtling back and spattered and tinkled against the car window. She clambered awkwardly into the front and slid down into the driver’s seat. As she started the engine and took hold of the wheel, she saw that the backs of both her hands were bleeding in several places where she must have been struck. There was no time to deal with it now. The wind was becoming stronger. She saw that the cage containing the gas cylinders was beginning to shift and tilt. The creature was moving towards them, its hands still raised, master of the wind. The TV aerial rattled down into the yard, followed by the chimney pot which smashed into pieces just beside the car, causing Dominic to shriek. She pressed down hard on the accelerator and the car roared across the yard, skidding on the gravel. The creature jumped back, with an insect-like movement. The gate flung open with a splintering crack as the hinges were torn from the gatepost. She spun out onto the track and they bounced and scraped along over the uneven surface, Dominic being thrown around like a bag in the back.
They reached the moorland road and the wheels ran with relief on the tarmac and only then did she dare to stop. She flicked on the interior light and with great care, picked out the glass from her hands, clenching her teeth against the pain of each extraction. None had gone deep. She placed them in the well by the handbrake, to be carefully disposed of later, far from any human flesh.
Dominic was slumped over, moaning half consciously. Suddenly in the distance there was a loud explosion. Dominic jumped. Out of the back window she saw a ball of flame lighting up the moorland.
‘What was that?’
‘The gas cylinders, I suspect. We need to get out of here.’ She pulled away, shifting quickly through the gears. From the back seat she heard Dominic exhale slowly.
‘I feel so exhausted,’ he said weakly.
‘I’m going to get you to a doctor,’ she replied.
She glanced back and glimpsed the glow of the fire. She wondered what was becoming of their new home. Dominic’s head lolled to one side. His eyes were closed and he was gripping the now blood-soaked bandage that she’d managed to secure around his wounded finger. But she could distinguish that a little of the colour was already returning to his face.
The sight of the headlights tracing the sliver of road as it disappeared rapidly beneath the car, was like watching the shadows at last being cut open. A faint, white haze appeared on the brink of the horizon. With her cut hands, she tightened her grip on the wheel and sped on through the still night, carrying them towards the lights of the city.
Emerging Worlds 
Leave a comment