White and Other Tales of Ruin

From that direction came the continuing sounds of conflict.

“Do we really want to just walk into that?” I said quietly, reaching out to touch Laura’s shoulder.

Chele was looking around, probing the mud gently with her feet on either side of the wall. “We have to. Remember, we’re not meant to be here at all. We broke in to find your daughter.”

I felt a stab of guilt at that, the fact that Chele was only here because of me, but she’d come of her own accord. And her voice held no of blame.

Does she feel nearer to her son now? I thought. My daughter’s a stranger to her, but does rescuing her make Chele’s dead son seem that much closer?

“Those demons, those caves.”

“Another scene,” Chele said. “We saw several ourselves before we left the coach, remember? We just slipped from one to the next. Accidentally or on purpose it doesn’t matter.”

“But if the demons are integral to this place … the law-keepers … surely they’d have just followed us through?”

Chele strode along the wall several paces and stood with her hands on her hips. She seemed to have found something that pleased her. “I don’t pretend to know any more about this place than you,” she said, and I felt almost annoyed at her ignorance. “Now come look at this.”

Laura and I followed to where Chele was standing and looked down. There, moored against the outside edge of the garden boundary wall, bobbing on the gloopy current, sat a shallow dinghy complete with paddles.

“How long has this place been like this?” I said. Long enough to have boats … a long time.

“It’s just a scene, Dad,” Laura said then. “Make believe made real.” She rubbed her wrists and winced as the muddied scabs broke. Blood showed through and dripped into the mud river creeping past the wall. A part of her would forever be in Hell, now. A part of all of us, because we had all taken cuts and lost blood. It would merge with the mud, and perhaps tomorrow it would be a part of something even more terrible.

There was a prolonged bout of gunfire from upriver and a roar as another building collapsed, unseen.

“Let’s not think about it,” I said, thinking all the same. Machine-guns, pad-rifles, it was a war up there. And here we were preparing to paddle right into it. “Let’s just go.”

Chele knelt at the front of the dinghy, with Laura in the middle and me at the back. It sank so that its rim was almost at the level of the mud, and I feared that any surge or wave would swamp us, the weight dragging us instantly down to whatever lay below. I knew that we wouldn’t be the first or last bodies added to this rancid river.

Just as we were about to set out the thudding shock of a pad-rifle sounded from somewhere nearby. The rounds roared along the street, and I saw the flowering explosions of brick and mortar as they struck a house on the opposite side. Great clots of masonry strafed the mud, its splashes remaining visible for a few seconds as they were carried away on the current. Windows burst in, a third of the roofing slates were smashed into the air like a flock of startled birds, the front door and surround exploded into the guts of the house, holes the size of our boat appeared across its facade. We ducked down as low as we could get, frightened but fascinated, and watched in awe as the house slumped down into the mud like a tired old man. The pad-rifle continued firing for a few seconds more. It pounded the debris into dust and then fell silent, until the only sound was the crunch of the mud river sucking the house remains down into itself. Soon, the only sign that a building had existed there at all was the central staircase, exposed to the elements like the bare backbone of some long-rotted beast.

“That was from nearby,” I whispered.

“Stray rounds,” Chele said.

“No way, that was sustained. Someone targeted that house. This one might be next.”

“If we move they may see?“

“If we don’t,” I said, “they’ll find us when they come looking.”

“Maybe we can be on their side,” Laura said quietly. I was almost relieved at the naivete of her statement. There was some child left inside her after all.

“Row,” I said, untying the rotten rope and pushing us away from the wall. Chele picked up an oar and sank it into the mud.

It was like rowing through porridge. Although the mud flowed like a river and kept its own level like water, when I tried to pull on the oar it felt like concrete. I could see the muscles standing out on Chele’s neck as she heaved. Laura sat in front of me, stroking the terrible wounds on her arms with muddy fingertips. I thought about infections and gangrene and pollution, and as if conjured by my musings a rat the size of a small cat ran along the top of the wall we had just vacated. It stared at me with a hunger than could never have been manufactured. This may just be a scene, as Chele had said, but its components were real enough.