It’s like some sick kind of stop-motion film, sped up. I watch myself as the days pass, caring for Nori, who wastes away in her bed. She is so thin, so pale, so thirsty. The other me tries to feed her the peanuts, but Nori rejects it all. The other Silla wishes she had fresh apples. Gowan always brought the apples from the apple tree.
The other Silla wanders from the chair by the window, peering out into the woods, to the chair by the bed, sitting beside Nori and reading to her, feeding her, cleaning her, crying for her.
Day passes day passes day. She visits the window often, but the view doesn’t change. No one comes.
One day, another long day of suffering, Silla finds a journal. It is old, so old, that it has calcified somehow, the cover turning hard as stone. It is cracked down the middle. She finds a pen, opens the broken book, and begins to write.
I peer over her shoulder.
They say I’m crazy, she writes.
Days, nights, days.
No Gowan. No sign.
Nori grows thinner, sicker, thinner. She stops taking water, too, after a little while. The other me looks better, but not much.
The food is gone now. Only one dried apple left, which she was hoping to avoid because it has some mold on the side.
I watch as Silla feeds it to Nori, instead of taking it herself, even though she knows Nori won’t keep it down. But she must try. She has to try. I watch the slow painful bites, the excruciating swallows.
And then—
And then I am in the other Silla. I am her, and she is me, and there is ink on my fingers, which are curled around a broken book. I am so hungry. The pain is constant, inevitable, wholly distracting.
I try to feed Nori, but she is no longer awake or responding. Terror like a blinding flash hits me, and I check—she’s breathing. Shallow. So shallow. I begin to cry, but there is no water in my body.
I try to say Nori’s name, but there is not enough strength even for that.
I climb into the bed next to my sister, clutching her to me, and I fall asleep.
Please… I think. Please, Gowan. We need you.
When I wake, Nori is ice cold in the bed beside me.
“It gets bad after this.” Gowan is standing in the shadows of the room.
“I know.”
I stay in bed for a long time. The smells get pretty bad, but I won’t let go of her, and it soon passes. There’s something wet in the bed with us, but that passes, too. I can’t… I can’t do this.…
And I’m out. Watching. Once more a spectator. The other Silla is in the bed, and I am standing at the foot of it.
I watch myself linger on, staring with yearning, desperate eyes at the window.
I watch myself write, sicken, suffer, and very slowly… die.
“This is what happened,” I say.
Gowan, beside me now, nods.
“This is how I died. How we died.”
He nods again.
“I’m to blame.”
He faces me, takes my shoulders. “No. You can’t think that. It was so hard back then, all that talk of war, people running scared.… People died. So many people died. Cath was weak and sick, and she went mad and killed herself. That’s not your fault. Nori died from some kind of wasting sickness and that was not your fault.” He pauses. “You couldn’t have saved her, Silla.” He pauses. “You starved to death, and, yes, that was your choice. But… you have to forgive yourself, Silla.”
“I died,” I whisper. “I’m… dead. I’ve been dead… this whole time?”
“Yes.”
I look up at him. “Are you even my Gowan?”
“Yes.”
“Are you… dead, too?”
He takes my hand. “Yes.”
“And you’ve known I’m dead since the moment you came out of the woods…?”
“Yes.”
I take a moment to process this information, but something is niggling at me, is wrong.
And then I see it.
“No.”
All this… all this is happening inside the Creeper Man’s lair—his cave. It’s a trick! Oh, God. I nearly fell for it. He’s trying to distract me from finding Nori. This is an illusion, a trap!
I push Gowan away from me, and I’m back in the forest. Before he can stop me, I run. I need to find his cave again. I need to find it and go in strong. I will find him and face him and I will kill him and save my sister.
I run for a long time chased by Creaking
and
The growl of my stomach
and
The retching of Nori throwing up
and
A symphony of suffering.
And then he’s there. The Creeper Man.
He is tall.
He is thin.
A dark outfit.
Like tree bark.
He has no hair.
No eyes.
No nose.
Only one
wide
mouth.
Which smiles.
Nori is crying for me somewhere. Gowan is watching from a distance away. I fill up with rage and hate, and I rush at the Creeper Man with a branch in my hand. I strike him, but he grins. I hit again and again and again, over and over, feeling my body weakening with every blow. I am so tired. I haven’t eaten anything in so long. He’s too strong for me. Always grinning with that wide mouth.