White

He sighed heavily, made a sour face, and shook his head. Two weeks had passed, and Dan, like all the island's inhabitants, was still reeling from that single event. On the other hand, it didn't take much for the town to be seething and buzzing about the same thing for a month. In the small, hermetic community, crammed together on the island of Icel Ayshan, nothing escaped public notice, nothing was passed over in silence, nothing was forgotten too quickly. And to keep people occupied, to entertain them for a few days, all it took was a little romance, a bit of gossip, a small theft, someone's tearful tears. Then, word spread quickly through the town that so-and-so had done this and that, that so-and-so had done this and that with so-and-so, so-and-so. They would argue in a hundred voices—how, why, where did this come from? And they were wringing their hands, wondering how this could be possible, who could hear it? And as soon as one scandal died down, another immediately followed – as if by chance. Sometimes the beginning of a new one coincided with the end of an old one.

However, this event significantly disrupted this rhythm. It occurred shortly after rumors began that young Bill Bailey was making love to Róża Gunssen. Not everyone knew about that yet, and now there was new news. Something had happened that was beyond the comprehension of the quiet islanders – gossipers, because they were gossipers, but peaceful people, despite everything. An overwhelming and terrible incident.

A body had been found. Somewhere on the eastern shore, a few steps from the water. Almost no one had seen it, except a fisherman who lived in the area, a priest who, summoned to the body, rushed over on foot, and a few peasants who helped bury him. Although found by the water, he didn't die from it. Naked, blue, but dry. A stranger. He probably arrived and died right after emerging from the sea. And there was something else the witnesses couldn't ignore or discuss in any detail. Everyone muttered about the terrible eyes—but nothing more.

And the crowd went on to talk about the pale corpses by the water and the terrible eyes. And each—unsure of their true appearance—invented their own vision of what they considered terrifying. One spoke of red eyes. From other quarters, rumors came of completely white eyes—neither blue, green, nor brown. An

incomprehensible shiver gripped everyone. Within the community, relationships remained intact; what's more, people became more united, bound by the same fear of the unknown. For who knows if the deceased didn't bring a plague with him—like a rat. And why did he die there, so out of the way? And didn't someone help him—with a curse or with their hands? The islanders trusted each other, but they always looked askance at strangers—and at everyone, without exception. Like bandits, murderers. And now they saw everyone as a potential corpse, to be found the next day, with terrifying eyes. When someone came to trade, they took the goods, pressed the payment into their hand like blackmailers, and retreated. And when they looked at strangers, they looked so wild and terrifying that the newcomers took the money as if they were placing earthworms in their hands. Eventually, they stopped coming.

Dan McAbber gasped, made a sour face, and shook his head. Horrible. And immediately he thought he had to go on living, not die of fear. He took a swing and struck the tree. Splinters flew.

***

Shortly after the sun passed its zenith, an incredible boom shook the forest. Only someone who had heard it somewhere—off the island, of course—would have said it was a gunshot. The loggers stopped their work, each looking in a different direction—one up, one behind them, the third to the left—as the boom echoed throughout the forest, coming from all directions.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dan McAbber saw an invisible force tearing the bark from the tree to his left. He felt pain in his left eye. Then the warmth of pulsing blood flowing from that spot.

Uncertain, as if considering—do this or not?—he rolled onto his back.

"Ugh, McAbber! What's wrong with you?"

"I'm dying..." Dan groaned.

"Oh, hell! What have you done, McAbber?"

The lumberjack placed his huge paw over the wound, covering his eye and half his forehead. Red blood was seeping from under his wrist and between his fingers. Scott thought the giant must have hit his eyebrow with a work tool—it hurt terribly, and the blood gushed so violently that it was frightening.

But McAbber lowered his hand and showed him a blood-gushing cavity, with a slitted eye embedded in it. His other eye was clenched tightly—as if he were overprotecting it. Pain twisted his face as if someone were trying to feed him garlic.

"Doctor! Call for doctor, damn it!" Scott roared. And then he muttered over Dan, calling upon the gods, asking—how? who? why?

Dan just lay there. He didn't answer, didn't listen. Pain clogged his ears and mouth.

Scott had to search for the cause himself.

He looked for Dan's axe. He found it two yards away. It was clean; not a drop of the blood that had flowed from McAbber.

And only one tree, to the left of the fallen Dan—who himself was as strong as a tree trunk—beared strange marks. A wound, as if inflicted by an animal that tears to kill, not to feed. A gunshot. As if someone had, for some strange reason, been aiming for the forest—and Dan had accidentally gotten hit because the shot had gone crooked. Or as if someone possessed had tried to kill McAbber and missed, only damaged him. But why would anyone want to send this man to his grave? He was a good man, after all...

***

The doctor examined him and pronounced his eye completely useless. The bullet—for everyone agreed that McAbber had been struck by a ricochet—had reduced the eyeball to pulp. The eyelids were intact, surprisingly, but the sliver had to be removed, because it would only rot in the socket and infect the entire body. Several of them took Dan under their shoulders and tried to lift him—which he didn't object to, but he didn't help either. He was as heavy as one and a half other men. In the end, they lifted him, set him on his feet, and held him by his arms to keep him from falling. He hung his head. His eye drooped to the ground. They

tied a bandage around his head, covering the socket. Someone had a clean scarf in the provisions basket; it was sufficient. They carried him to the wagon where, in the evening, they would carry timber to the sawmill, and there, among the logs, they laid him—stiff, woody. Him—Dan McAbber, the epitome of health and manhood. His—the model Scotsman, red-haired, bearded, mustachioed, six feet seven inches tall; muscles like loaves of bread, shoulders thick, powerful, and broad as the Cross of the Lord. A chest like a shield, it would protect the entire island from the enemy if he came. Dan McAbber, of whom they said he could wrestle with a bear, now lay there, barely breathing.

"I'm dying..." he whispered to Scott, who sat beside him on the logs as they were carted into town.

"You're talking nonsense, man!"

Scott knew his way around, and Dan knew his. He was preparing to die. His eye seemed to have slid out, and with it the seed of horror lodged in the bloody tissue, but the wounded man felt it had taken root within him, pulsing, writhing, and growing into his flesh. He settled into the wagon, which was tossing and shaking him, as comfortably as possible for himself and the archangel he'd been expecting: he stretched out, his arms pressed to his sides, his hands placed on his stomach, his fingers interlaced, so that the messenger from the afterlife wouldn't bother with him unnecessarily, so that he wouldn't have to move, tug, or adjust—because if he got angry, he might strangle him, or give him convulsions, prolonging his cruel death. Dan, on the other hand, wanted—if he had to die—to go peacefully, without his own noticing.

Then, in that creaking wagon, halfway to the McAbbers' house, where he lived with his wife and son, Dan saw once more the terrible eyes of the corpse by the water. Pale blue, with pupils like pinpricks. And he imagined himself with those eyes. This image haunted him the entire journey and there was no way to shake it off, because although Dan was missing one eye, the other—either in solidarity or out of grief—had lost sight

.

Dan McAbber didn't die. He didn't recover either. He fell ill for good. For weeks he lay in bed, delirious, seething inside himself. Late spring came, and he was stuck under the covers, sweating all day long. First, he swelled up and turned cherry red from the fever. As if death wanted to eat him, pasteurized. And Dan ate nothing. There was no way to feed him—he spat everything out. He only gulped water when a jug was held to his mouth. If he didn't eat, he lost weight. No one made a fuss yet, because the man was a powerful man, and the disease couldn't consume him so quickly. However, his wife, who stayed home alone with him at night—because she'd sent her son to his grandmother—grey hairs of grief appeared in her hair, for her husband was slipping through her fingers like sand. Three weeks later, she was sitting over a weakling who looked nothing like her husband. A complete stranger was occupying Dan's bed. Pale, gaunt, and gray. His head was tied up so that his eye was covered.

***

"Jenna... My head is splitting..."

After four weeks, Dan woke up and spoke. But you could immediately sense that this wasn't the same Dan. He looked different and was a different person. Where had he called her by name before? He'd called her little sun, little butterfly. And her name, spoken in that worn, weak voice, sounded terrible.

"Want some water?

" "Give me... And block out the light... It's... killing me...

" "What are you saying?" Jenna said, startled; the jug almost fell from her hands.

"Do you hear... what I'm saying?"

"Y-yes... I'm blocking it now!

" "Or not... I want to sleep... in the closet...

" "In the co-cellar?"

"In the closet... The light is killing me... Just give me a blanket to cover myself with... I'll go to the closet..."

She gave him a thick blanket and, seeing him sitting there and not moving, threw his pillows, duvet, and sheets off the bed to go air them. She felt his watchful eye on her constantly. She took the sheets, wrapping them in her weak arms, and carried them outside. When she disappeared through the door, Dan—emaciated, gray, and white—rose and with slow, unsteady, yet somehow firm steps walked to the closet. He closed the door behind him.

When Jenna returned, having hung the sweaty, musty sheets outside, she noticed that her husband was gone.

"Dan?" she asked, concerned.

"Here, in the closet...

" "But... You were serious...

" "Absolutely..." he muttered. He was sitting on the ground in the dark, cold, gloomy room, crumpling the blanket in his fingers. A small vent hung an elbow above his head. It cast a dim trapezoid of light on the floor.

"Want something? Can I get you some water? Bread? Porridge?

" "Nothing yet... And... please... don't come unless I ask you to..."

"Fine..." she replied. She nodded sadly, and tears were clearly welling up in her eyes. She quickly closed the door and ran out of the house. She must have burst into tears.

Dan closed his eye. He rested his forehead on his hand and whispered to himself...

"God..." he sighed heavily. "That woman... It's terrible... She's so emaciated... Disheveled, pale, swollen... Those painful eyes of hers... I can't stand it... She... she terrifies me... She's killing me... I'm afraid of her...

"

She waited. She listened for a call, or even a sigh, for her to come and hug her. And nothing. Four days after he'd locked himself in there and forbidden anyone from entering. On the fifth morning, while she was still asleep, he called. Once. And when she didn't appear within five seconds, he called her a second time, louder and angrier.

"Do you want food or drink?" she asked, fearfully slipping into the dark closet.

"Bring me a bowl of water and a razor..." he drawled.

"Dan... You haven't eaten in weeks...

" "Fine... Give me a slice of bread... And a bowl. And a razor..."

She nodded and left. She cut a thick slice and brought it to him along with the things he'd requested.

"Did I ask for such a thick one?" he hissed, shaking the piece of bread in his hand.

"Eat, please...

" "I'll eat..." he gasped. He broke off a piece, dipped it in water, popped it in his mouth, and began chewing.

After fifteen minutes, he called her again.

"You can take the water and razor now..."

Jenna looked up at him anxiously. He was sitting exactly where he always was. He probably hadn't even moved. He was staring at her with contempt. He was bald. He had shaved his gray beard and gray head.

"Jesus..." Jenna whispered to herself.

"I need to put on something else..." Dan said.

"I'll bring you a fresh shirt right away!

" "No... Everything scratches, itches, stings... Like this beard, this hair, and this eyebrows... Ask a priest for a habit. They have such delicate ones like no one else on this cursed island.

"

She brought it as he ordered. She begged, and they gave it to her. She quickly headed back home, great suffering etched on her face, her eyes wide open, as if watching from afar to see what her husband was doing at home. No one stopped her. They followed her with their eyes, but they were afraid to approach, to accost her, to ask the reason for his sadness. And in the privacy of the room, Jenna watched with horror as her husband became a monk. Baldness, habit, water, and bread—that was how he lived now. That was how he died. He seemed to exist, yet he wasn't there at all. As if he didn't want to exist; as if he didn't like to remain in this world any longer. He stared at everything with his single eye, disliking nothing, grumbling at everything. His delicate skin—it resented touch. He refused to hug or kiss. The cold and the heat irritated him. He scolded Jenna when one day she brought him cold water. The same as always, straight from the well. He ordered it heated. He didn't want to talk. He drawled short, precise orders. And even a short "yes" made his blue upper lip tremble nervously—like a rabid wolf's. Jenna stopped saying anything—she only entered the cupboard on command and wordlessly left to do as he ordered.

***

"Where have you been for so long? I called and called—and nothing!

" "I'm sorry... I was at my mother's... Sean asked about you...

" "Yes?"

"Isn't it normal for a child to ask about their daddy? He wanted to see you... I told him you were still feeling unwell..."

Then Dan glared at her with his one eye—as if she'd uttered a grave curse. As if she'd called the war a skirmish. But he didn't say anything.

"...but I think it would mean a lot to him," she continued, lowering her gaze, "if you'd... come see him.

" "I don't know... I don't want...

" "Dan, we're family! I'm his mother and I want to be with him. You're his father." Is it so hard to understand that a child wants to be with both his father and his mother? Together!

"But, as you so nicely put it, 'I don't feel well'..."

Then Jenna's eyes widened. She crouched down so that the light from the window vent illuminated her face. Pale blue irises with slit pupils gleamed in the round whites, full of fury.

"O-okay..." whispered Dan fearfully. "Let him come...

" "And we'll sleep together in the room.

" "Y-yes...

" ***

Jenna watched Dan with the same gaze as he looked at her son, slightly sour. At his timid request, she closed the shutters, but she was already accustomed to the darkness and could see well in it. She frowned.

The child, equally uncertain, stood opposite the pale, bald, thin man.

"Come on, give Daddy a hug!" Jenna pushed Sean toward Dan, keeping her gaze fixed on the other man.

The boy – as red-haired and chubby as his father once was – hesitantly embraced the figure leaning over him, as if afraid he would break it.

The day passed in conversation. It seemed like the mother was talking to the child, constantly glancing at Sean pointedly, suggesting he speak to both parents, not just her. At most, however, he glanced at his father's sour face and immediately returned his gaze to Jenna. She, in turn, kept her gaze fixed on her husband. In this way, they chatted about what was going on in town, what was going on at Grandma's. A thousand small, trivial matters. They ate dinner. Sean and Jenna; Dan refused.

Shortly after dark, Jenna put Sean to bed. She was as tired from the day as he was, so she too was getting ready for bed.

"I'm going to the cellar," Dan grumbled, just as he had been grumbling at her for a long time.

She gave him the same ominous look.

"No. You're sleeping with us.

"

Dan was suffering. He shaved his head almost every day now because his hair was growing out again and again. His habit was light and delicate, but the floor in the closet crushed his backside. The sensations intensified, causing him increasing pain.

But that night, as he slept in the room with his family, something utterly mad happened. In his dream, he heard their thoughts. True, they were quiet and dissipated when he focused on them, but they irritated him. He got up and sat on the bed. He was just looking for an excuse, an excuse to wake his family with a scream, to scold and scold them. His sleeping wife no longer glared at him with her deathly gaze. This emboldened him.

After a moment, he despaired. He withdrew his feet from the floor and lay down again. Suddenly, something stung him. He felt a piercing pain under his back. When he rose, the stinging stopped. He quietly slid off the bed and, crouching beside it, reached under the sheets. He felt something small, spherical. He grabbed it and pulled it out.

A pea... He raised it to his eyes and examined it as if it were some miracle—with a huge, wide-open eye.

Then he placed it on the table. He took a knife from a hook on the wall. As if he wanted to cut the tiny ball in half and eat that miserable half.

But no. He passed the table and moved silently on. The knife proved to be the solution to his torment.

In one move, he orphaned his son and widowed himself.

Then he took a swing at his future. The one who had, for fun, slipped a pea under his sheets. He read it in her thoughts. Then he killed her too.

***

He left Jenna and Sean, slumbering eternally at home. He went out into the night sky. To lull those who were awake; whose thoughts were pounding in his head ever louder. He distinguished them. He knew who they belonged to. He sensed where they came from. There he went, banging on doors. There he slashed. He went around many houses. He stained many floors with blood. On the island, no one locked doors. Dan pounded until the echoes in his skull died away. Then he stopped. He perched on a tree stump and twirled the knife, resting the blade on his index finger. He saw no movement and sensed no human presence around him. But he could only see with one eye. And with it, he saw only the present—the here and now.

In the second, empty eye socket, all the images he had seen in his entire life gathered. Clearer than ever. He reviewed them all and soaked in anger. Because so-and-so, then-and-then, so-and-so. So he went on killing. He broke in and murdered those who had wronged him a year ago, ten years ago, or even as a child.

He strayed into the forest. The one he had passed through with Scott that day. And he grew terribly angry when he remembered that while he was dying, the forest didn't weep for him. He was dying, and the thicket above him was playing carefree.

In a house at the edge of the forest, he found a fire. Before he set the thicket ablaze.

He walked briskly to the edge of the island. To the water. He woke up on the ground, a few feet from the cold surface. He fell asleep when he reached the shore, having first started

a

fire in the forest. Overnight, everything—not much of it, and what's more, compact, cramped—burned away. The town, which clung tightly to the forest, caught fire and was also reduced to ashes, and with it its inhabitants.

***

The morning was neither too cold nor too hot. Dan felt the delicate material of his habit against him. Around him—silence. No people. No thoughts. He achieved peace.

He crouched on the shore and rocked—back and forth. He pondered, his lips pursed. He sat down on the cool sand. He noticed that his habit—brown when Jenna had brought it to him—was now black. His hands were thin, wiry, and white—unnaturally white. Hair no longer tried to grow on his head, even though he hadn't shaved it in two days. He was someone different now—changed, new. No longer Dan McAbber. The name itself irritated him; it contained so many stinging, quivering sounds. So he invented a new one, one he could think, speak—and not shudder with disgust. He named himself...

White.

***

White looked into the dark depths and saw his reflection. A thin, white face and a bald head. He looked, but he couldn't see his eye at all. He leaned forward, and only after a moment did he realize he saw it—only that it was black. Not only was the iris dark as ink. The white as well.

Leaning forward, he felt a weight in the other eye socket. Disbelieving, he unwrapped the scarf wrapped around his head. He looked into the water—and was even more astonished. He touched it.

"No..." he whispered. "It's impossible..."

He didn't feel the touch. But the fingers touched the eye. A completely black, cold, slippery eye. True, it couldn't see—but it was there nonetheless. The second one. Paired.

He was frightened. But only a little.

***

He sat. Calm. For many gray days.

Suddenly, a sound struck him. It hadn't happened on Icel Ayshan in a long time. Not since the fall, when it silenced everything and everyone.

He grabbed the knife at his belt and instinctively—before he could think—slashed in the direction of the terrible, ominous growl. He stabbed himself in the stomach, in the hunger-wracked viscera. He hadn't eaten in months because he didn't want to; he believed he didn't need to. But his wasted, emaciated body demanded its own with a loud growl.

He closed his eyes as the pain from his lower abdomen spread throughout his body, then froze them.

He opened that seeing eye and watched fearfully, yet impatiently, waiting to see what would drip from the open wound. One might say he fantasized for those long seconds before the ichor spurted. He expected black, oily blood. Or green venom.

Then he remembered how wrong he had been about the terrible eyes of the corpse above the water. He had once imagined them as pale blue, with pupils like pins. Now he knew what they really looked like. They were black. Not just the irises. The whites too.

Water flowed from within the White One.