White Pines by Gemma Amor

Author:Gemma Amor [Amor, Gemma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781793845610
Publisher: amazon
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘I don’t understand,’ Matthew whispered, staring at the empty wasteland where the town square had stood. The silver-haired woman had collapsed into Mac’s arms, and was babbling hysterically. The teenager wiped tears from his face, which had gone from pale white to a blotchy, shocked shade of red.

Luke just kept holding my hand, confusion writ large across his face.

‘It’s gone,’ he said, and I heard Matthew let out a great, shuddering breath as he heard the boy say this.

‘Where’s it gone?’ He asked, and then he repeated himself.

‘Please, where’s it gone?’

I tore my eyes from the scar to look at him. And I had a moment of blinding clarity.

An ocean, where slate roofs poked out of the waves. A chapel, half submerged in the tide-line.

A beach, full of bodies.

A cast-iron water pump sticking out of the sand. Other things that once belonged somewhere else.

It wasn’t a dream, I realised.

If I’d had anything left in my stomach to bring up at that moment, I would have.

The man with the fish tattoo spoke up. ‘No,’ he said, as if quarrelling with a friend over something inconsequential. ‘No, that isn’t possible.’ And before any of us could stop him, he started to march downhill, towards the place his town had been, saying over and over again in business-like tones: ‘No. No, no, I don’t think so.’

I had a moment then, when I felt something shift in the air, when a feeling of absolute dread gripped me tight as I stared at the retreating form of the man. I remembered the piper, snapping out of view. I remembered Matthew, there one moment and then suddenly, not.

‘Stop!’ I shouted, suddenly, as the man left the shadow of the cairn. ‘Come back!’

‘What is it, Megs?’ Matthew said, voice thin with fear. ‘What do you know?’

‘Stop!’ I screamed again, but it was too late. The fish-tattooed man took another step, still shaking his head and muttering to himself, and I saw a quiver, a change in the atmosphere around him, as if the air was flexing, shivering with a strange, uncontrollable energy, and then, in front of all of us, he simply winked out of existence.

The silver haired woman screamed again, and Mac made as if to repeat the same mistake. The teenager snapped out a hand, and grabbed his shirt. ‘No!’ He said, face piebald with fright. ‘Don’t, it isn’t safe!’

‘I don’t understand what just happened,’ Matthew whispered, and in that moment he sounded no older than the small boy who gripped my hand.

I looked down at my feet. Why us? I thought again. Why are we still here?

Then, I saw why, and grunted in surprise.

‘What?’ Said to Matthew, in a hushed voice. It felt suddenly rude to speak out.

I pointed to the ground near our feet, and he looked down. Where we stood, just below the cairn, the land was still grassy and green. The grass made a definitive ring-shaped strip around the base of the cairn, about five or six feet deep. Outside of the shadow of the cairn, outside of the green circle, everything was charred, spent, and empty.

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