Wickerman Cove

Part 8: Ghost Trails

The motion of the car kept lulling Stephanie to sleep.

Well, it probably technically wasn't a car.

It shouldn't have been a surprise, since Penny was wearing 20lbs of black velvet and crinoline in 90° summer heat, but the 'car' was actually a converted hearse: she'd taken out the rack where the coffin would lay to create a sleep/cargo area (which was actually really useful, since it meant Renard could curl up in the back).

Privacy came from black velvet drapes, and frosted windows with designs of a deer skull set against strange, arcane-looking circles. It meant Steph had been able to ask Penny to help clean her wounds – which weren't much worse than deep scratches, apparently – and change into her dirty-but-not-as-dirty civilian clothes.

Another good thing was that Penny had spent a chunk of change on the engine and suspension – or maybe that was the good thing about buying a hearse: they didn't want to make a whole lot of noise or jog the body around.

Either way, Stephanie spent most of the trip asleep. It was okay, considering that while Penny had her hands on the wheel she basically couldn't speak (she had a speaking app on her phone, but it was pretty much texting and driving, which wasn't something either of them wanted in a car that handled more like a truck).

It was too late to get a gun – Maine gun laws were relaxed compared to New York, but the stores still operated the hours you'd expect from civilised human beings, so they weren't open until morning. She considered getting the knife out of her bags – her Corps issue Ka-Bar — but it was hard to imagine who would want Penny dead so much they'd ram her off the road, or what good a knife would do if they tried.

In her sleep, Stephanie went back to Mali – the village. She was clearing the house again, but this time it was endless. She only had a pistol and the rooms went on forever. There was always another curtain, or another screen door. She cleared out more and more women, until they made a column of shuffling, frightened bodies that stretched out forever.

The house was darker this time. As was the nature of dream logic, it was green and black until she forgot about her night vision goggles, then it was just dark, with figures melting in and out of the impossibly deep shadow. She moved through the house with well-trained hypervigilance, heart pounding as figures in pale brown desert camo emerged from the shadows.

Steph put bullets in every one of them, and they kept coming. She fumbled with her pistol between shots. Its weight refused to give her any indication of how many rounds she had left. It could be half a magazine, it could be one. She had to look.

Her hands kept betraying her, fumbling as she tried to get the magazine in and out, like they were wrapped in cotton wool. The whole activity felt new, as if she'd only ever read about it. The number of rounds wouldn't even stay straight – six, then three, then ten, then two. How long before she was out? She kept meaning to stop and check how many spare magazines she was carrying, but she just... didn't. She even tried to count how much brass was on the ground, but the casings just kept rolling away into the darkness.

Through all of it, there was a figure. She couldn't see well enough to know if it was a man or a woman: two arms, two legs. A head... probably. It was wearing normal European winter stuff, like an overcoat and dress pants, worn to the point where they were almost rags. Too hot for the desert heat, not warm enough for the desert night.

It never disappeared so much as it just... stopped being what she'd thought it was. One second she'd be about to get a good look at it, then it was a table, and its coat was a drape moving in the wind.

There were figures in the shadows all around her: a young guy, Malian, younger than most of the women who'd been kidnapped, locked onto her, his eyes wide and white as he tried to squeeze himself out of a shadow barely as wide as his head. He reached for her with his eyes, like she was the only that could save him, one arm reaching in jerky, frantic, grasping motions as he tried to drag himself into the dim light.

"You don't understand," he said, in English, his fingernails – already broken and ragged – leaving scores in the rough plaster wall. "It's cold. The Gui—"

He didn't have time to say anything else. She put a bullet in his head. He slipped back into the dark, which claimed him like the depths of the ocean.

Her gun was empty. Steph knew it with a sick certainty. Her pockets were all empty too – she wasn't even in battledress, just her base fatigues. No spare magazines. Not even a knife or keys. Just a small, now useless, pistol.

The shadows were full – figures of every kind you could imagine: black, white, brown, Asian. Emaciated, with wide, wild eyes that locked onto her like drowning sailors. They reached out of the darkness. They flowed in from all sides, absorbing the floor, walls and ceiling into nothingness.

The only thing she could see ahead was the figure. It still wasn't a man or a woman. It had a hat now, as well as the overcoat, with a body that writhed and shifted underneath. It was impossible to look at for long. Looking might mean seeing, and part of her knew she would never be the same if she allowed herself to know what it looked like.

The dark had almost reached her. Steph's body was impossibly heavy. Her arms hung uselessly at her sides. It was hard even to move her eyes. All she could do was fix her gaze on the overcoat, paralysed by her own weight, as the darkness crept in.

"Whuf."

Something was behind her. Steph barely suppressed whimper as foetid breath wafted across her face: warm, wet, foul. Something at once furry, cold and wet, quested around the back of her neck, probing down the back of her jacket. She couldn't feel her hands anymore. Everything had been enveloped in darkness.

"Whuf," the thing said again. The hot, foul breath made her gag.

Actually, it tickled.

With a cognitive lurch, Steph realised that she was sitting in the hearse. Despite the fact that her heart was thundering, dragging herself out of sleep felt like pulling a truck. The night was dark inside and out, reducing their world to the road ahead and the looming tree canopy.

Renard was licking her ear.