Dark Winter (12 page)

She turned to look directly at Beth, who shook with fright. As she was trying to process the image in her head, the light flickered back on, and the ghostly figure disappeared around the corner.

Beth managed to get to Ward Three, but the girl had glided in ahead of her. The girl left bloody footprints that made a squelching sound as she walked. Beth diverted her eyes, and could see someone familiar - recognising the back of Toril’s head. Jacinta was lying down. A nurse was tending to her. The girl had disappeared, and Beth realised just how un-nerved she was.

Just as she was able to speak to Jacinta and Toril, the little ghost girl appeared behind the nurse, bringing her hand down against her back, in a stabbing motion, the blade protruding through the nurse’s chest. Beth looked on, horrified, unable to speak.

Then the ghost girl turned to Beth. She smiled at her, showing blood between her teeth. She raised her right hand, and drew her index finger across her neck. Beth started to hear the ghost girl speaking to her.

“Hello Beth,” she said. “There’s always a plan. A design. Nothing ever just happens, and you can’t escape your fate. Two will die. Don’t forget that.”

She then picked out an apple from a pocket in her dress. She bit into it, and blood splattered onto the floor. Beth recoiled in horror as her hand was holding the same bloody apple with bite marks in it.

The ghost girl was nowhere to be seen.

*                            *                            *

“Young woman? Can you hear me?”

The nurse was shaking Beth, who stood as if she was in a trance.

Another voice. “Her name is Beth, she’s our friend.”

Beth came out of her trance-like state.

“Oh..Oh God…did you not see that girl? Where – where did she go? There was a knife….blood…where is she?”

The nurse regarded Beth curtly. “Young lady, this is a hospital. Sometimes you’ll see blood and knives here. But there is no-one else here. You’re imagining things, girl.”

You’re imaging things.
That’s what Curie had said. Now this nurse was saying it. Could they both be wrong?

Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah.

She could hear a little girl laughing. Beth spun around as she felt a finger scrape along the back of her neck.

“Jesus! Can’t you hear that?” Beth said aloud, not really paying much attention to the nurse.

“Hear what?” said the nurse. “Look, if you need help, I can a doctor up to see you.”

“That’s okay,” Toril interjected. “She’s with friends now. We’ll look after her.”

“Fair enough,” said the nurse, non-plussed. “Here to help if you need anything.”

Jacinta was sleeping on the bed.

“She’s out cold,” said Toril, “But she’s going to be just fine. Beth – what happened to you?”

Toril poured Beth a cup of water. Beth sat down, and recounted the night’s events to Toril as best as she could recall them, with one exception. She didn’t mention seeing the girl in the white dress that was covered in blood.

Wouldn’t want your friend thinking you are imagining things, would we Beth?

After she had finished talking, Toril asked “Do you think the boy is dead?”

Beth said that she didn’t know, and felt beyond awful for leaving him there, but admitted that he ‘probably was’ dead.

“You did your best,” said Toril. “We all did Beth. The doctor said Jacinta can go home in the morning. Turns out she didn’t break her leg after all.
We just imagined things.
”

You did your best.

We just imagined things.

“It
was
just a stupid game, right Toril?” asked Beth.

“It
was
a stupid game, Beth, you’re right.” Toril said. “I won’t be messing with it again, you can be sure of that.” Toril wasn’t sure she had convinced Beth of that, much less herself.

Two friends had been put in severe danger because of the ouija board, and things had happened tonight that was more than the ‘weird’ Toril had previously been wishing for.
Too much weird,
thought Toril.

Too much had happened to dismiss the events entirely, but they had been through enough for one day. Toril and Beth fell asleep, but Beth’s slumber was infected with nightmarish images.

Curie, swinging the axe. The figure who coerced them to play ouija, until ‘two will die’ was spelt out. The stench of death from him. The boy in the bag, laying on the school grounds. The ghost girl with the pretty dress. The knife being stuck repeatedly into the nurses’ back. The bloodied apple appearing in Beth’s hand. A fingernail scratching her neck.

Make it stop, Jesus. Dear Lord, make it stop.

More images.

The girl with the bloodied mouth, was skipping. As she skipped, Beth could see her feet were landing on something. It was the boy in the bag. The girl’s feet were denting the bag in the middle, and the boy’s limp hands flapped wildly, as if controlled by some deranged puppet master.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah. Two will die.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah. Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah.

Outside, it had finally stopped raining.

Ronald Winter had been driving for twenty-five of his forty-six years, and in all that time, he had never come close to having an accident. There had been no choice to swerve to avoid the girl in the road.

It wasn’t a particularly dangerous stretch of road. At least, it didn’t have that reputation. What the hell was someone doing in the middle of the road?

It was hard to deny the facts, even though he lay, his body crushed against the airbag in the car. His nose, broken. Blood was everywhere.

Daphne. Where was Daphne?

The airbag had hit her full on, and her body had absorbed most of the impact.

In the haze, Ronald wasn’t sure, but it seemed, as the car perched dangerously on the cliff side, that a girl, a young girl, maybe ten, or twelve years old at the most, was peering into the window on Daphne’s side.

Ronald recognised the dress. He had bought a very similar one for my tenth birthday. He remembered, in the haze, just how happy I was when I opened it as a present for Christmas one year. My laughing was infectious.

The girl opened a small purse pocket, which was attached to her dress. Ronald craned his neck to see what she was doing.

Drawing her finger from the pocket, her hands were covered in red ink.

No, not that. Not ink.

Blood.

Writing in reverse on the window, she spelt out ‘Two Will Die.’

Ronald recoiled in horror. There was nothing he could do except sit there, crushed up against the airbag, and the crumpled dashboard behind it. There was no way to tell if Daphne was alive or not, but he hoped that she was. He would give anything for that.

In a voice that surely came from the pits of Hell itself, Daphne’s head swung round at an impossible angle to mouth the words ‘Two Will Die’, to Ronald.

Ronald noticed something else. The girl bore a necklace, with a letter ‘D’ fashioned in gold.

Grinning through bloodied teeth, the girl drew her finger across her neck, threw her head back and began to laugh.

I had secured the door, but I also knew that Alix could burst through if he wanted to. I shuddered as a draft poked through the beams anyway. The old wood-cabin wheezed its disapproval.

Troy…well, he was a different matter. I actually liked Troy a lot. I thought we had gotten on well in music class, as well as could be expected for someone like me. I always thought he was more grown-up than some of the other boys, and this really appealed to me. I refused to believe that Troy would let Alix attack me, but when those two got something into their heads, it was hard to stop them. It was perhaps the main reason that they were so popular at school. They just acted like free spirits and did whatever they wanted to do.

I could hear the girls talking. It was deathly quiet in the woods.  Of all people I hoped that Toril Withers could understand me. Her interest in the occult, Satanism, and white witchcraft had appealed to me to the point that I did want to talk to her about the Mirror, and the strange markings on my hands.

Toril was saying to the group that parts of Gorswood Forest was haunted. There was supposed to be a house similar in size to Rosewinter that existed in the most eastern point of the Forest, but no-one had ever found it. Remember St Margaret’s Hospital? The ruins aren’t far from here. They say the ghosts of the Great Hall roam these woods on a regular basis.

Haunted? This was news to me, but given the night’s events, I couldn’t discount anything. I refused to look in the fridge again, but hoped that I really had just imagined the plates of maggots and fleas. If I ever needed to lose weight, I would just use that image as my motivation.

Jacinta Crow was saying that she thought I was weird. Funny, I thought the same thing about her, and I’m sure I was not the only one. Her blonde hair was not really blonde at all, but almost white, like an old lady’s hair. She had a monotone way of speaking, more like a boy’s voice than a girl’s, and she kept herself to herself. No-one expected that she and Toril would become very good friends. Some had even sniggered that Toril chose Jacinta because ‘she made her look good.’

Beth O’Neill, on the other hand, seemed to hold the balance of power between the two girls. She seemed to be the voice of reason and sanity amongst the occult fantasies of Toril, and the deadness of Jacinta’s cold blue eyes, that would betray not a single emotion.

When I asked how she had ended up becoming such a close friend with them, Beth had half-joked one time with me on how “You can’t ever know what Jacinta is thinking, and you sure don’t want to know what Toril is thinking.”

I hoped that Beth would ensure the two girls turned back, and that Troy could keep Alix at bay. I wouldn’t mind Beth and Troy coming in though, weirdly enough. Though  for my own peace of mind, I’d have to make sure that whatever in the fridge, was no longer there.

Alix Andrews was already 6’1” tall, and played for the county rugby team. Right now, he was in front of the door to the wood-cabin. Like I was seven again, I hid under the bed sheets. My nerves had been tested enough for one night. I really could do without this.

Over by my dressing table, the drawer started to push itself open. The Mirror which Nan had given me glistened slightly, and an eerie blue glow reflected from the glass. My eyes peeked over the top of the bed sheet, but I dare not move an inch. I still didn’t really know what powers the Mirror had, though Nan, whose health had deteriorated rapidly in the months following her giving me the Mirror, told me as much as she could, or dared to.

I lay in my bed, half-asleep, half-awake, but oblivious to the goings on outside in the woods. Dreamily, I thought back to the last time that Nan and I had had a meaningful conversation. Perhaps the blue haze from the Mirror affected me in the same way that it did to Nan.

One night, she came into my room. Looking around, she surveyed my room with her sharp eyes. “Pink on white walls, Milly. About time you updated the look, I think. I keep white roses in my room every day, you know. Keeps the place fresh. You ought to try it sometime.”

“I like it the way it is, Nan,” I said politely.

“Want some chocolate?”

“Not right now. Thanks, though.”

“We all grow up eventually, Milly.”

I smiled at my godmother. “Nan, you don’t usually come in here.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t come in here.  A young girl’s bedroom is her sanctuary, after all. Remember I told you that, Milly.”

“Yes Nan, I’ll remember, I promise.”

“Do you have it safe? The Mirror?”

“I do. It’s in that drawer over there. I have it locked up and everything.”

“I rather doubt a simple locked drawer would keep it from mischief. You’re sure it’s there?”

“
Yes
Nan,” I said, almost harshly. I checked it every night. It was always there.

Nan just tapped her forefinger against the drawer. To my amazement, I heard the locking mechanism simply un-click, and the drawer slid open.

“I’m proud of you, Romilly. However, I’m truly sorry to have brought this on you.”

Brought what on me, exactly?

Nan continued. “The fact is, you’re innocence personified. I could not,
would
not entrust this to anyone else.”

“Nan, I really don’t understand. Just what is the deal with this Mirror of yours?”

“Not mine. Yours. So pick it up.”

“I don’t want to Nan. In fact, I’m happy for it to stay over there.”

“You must understand that I have passed it to you, so I can no longer handle it. I’m so, so sorry, my dear child.”

How could I refuse her? Impulsively, I grabbed the Mirror and felt something pass through me. My hands, which had been just a little marked from a year earlier, started to deepen in colour, in patches on my skin. Soon, blotches of purple appeared around my wrist and knuckles.

I looked up at the old lady. “Nan, what is happening to me?”

“You are starting to bear the Mark, Milly.”

“I really don’t understand, Nan.”

Sitting next to me, Nan pointed at the Mirror. “Looks so innocent, doesn’t it? And yet, evil can be found in the most innocent of things, don’t you think so, Milly?”

I supposed so. I had no idea. I did think that Mum would be even more cross with me than usual. She was already sore with Nan over the ‘mysterious marking’s that appeared on my hands, just over a year ago, and now they were deepening.

“Milly? Are you listening to me?”

“Well, yes, Nan, of course.” I still really didn’t know what she meant.

I wanted to ask her why I bore these markings. “Nan, am I….cursed, or something? What do these markings mean? Can I ever get rid of them?”

“No and No,” said Nan, confidently. “You are not cursed, and you cannot get rid of the markings. You can hide them though.”

Nan pulled out a very small package and handed it to me.

“You’ll love these, they are very pretty. Go on, open it up.”

I loved presents, but had to consider that Nan’s
gifts
were bordering on the bizarre of late. The contents were not what I expected.

I had seen them before. “They’re….they’re gloves. Lace gloves,” I said simply.

Nan laughed heartily. “Deary me, what a cold way to describe something so wonderful. Milly, these are magic gloves. They hide your markings, for the most part, and while you wear them, you won’t hurt anybody, and no-one and no
thing
can ever, ever hurt you.”

“I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, Nan,” I said.

“Or any
thing
, I suppose,” Nan added. “I don’t want you to come to any harm either. Now. Do you understand why I gave you the Mirror last year?”

“Honestly? Not really.”

Nan then told me how she read the tea leaves one night, and the reading had scared her to her very soul. The reading said that I would die if I travelled with my parents on holiday, on the occasion of my fifteenth birthday.

“I knew then that I just had to give you the Mirror. After all, I’ve…seen enough of life, Milly. You’re young, with your whole life ahead of you. I want you to enjoy it, and live it to the full, just as I have.”

Nan went on to say that no matter what fuss my Mum kicked up, no matter my father’s insistence that I was still his little girl, that I was
not
to go on holiday with them. I said that there was no way that Dad would let me stay in Rosewinter on my own, but Nan retorted that staying in the family home, on my own, with the Mirror, was an impossibility.

“You have to take it to Rosewinter then. Whatever horrors you face, I know you’ll be safe there.”

Rosewinter? The wood-cabin? The place of the bloodied apples and where Nan had a heart attack? Safe??

“It’s probably collapsed by now, Nan. I don’t think Dad’s had the time to do much with it of late.”

Nan told me that I had to convince my father to do the place up, if that was the case.

“Don’t you take no for an answer, Milly, no matter what your father says.”

“Sure thing, Nan.”

Remember that a young girl’s bedroom is her sanctuary. Remember that, Milly.

Remember –

“Hey! Winter! Open the door!”

My thoughts were broken by the nasal tone of Alix Andrews.

Remember that a young girl’s bedroom is her sanctuary. Remember that, Milly.

I was still hiding under the sheets. Surely, that stupid boy wouldn’t have the nerve to break in here.

This was ridiculous. Why should I hide in fear? It’s those outside who are causing the problem. I wanted to make them feel fear. In this state of mind, I flipped from scared to fearless in a second.

I concentrated hard. I tried to make my thoughts as one – disciplined and focussed. But it was all too difficult. This ability was new to me. I might be powerless to stop Alix Andrews breaking in, but I could make him leave.

I sat up in bed, and, swinging my legs around, placed my feet on the floor.

“Open up, little piggy!”

Alix was laughing hard. His blonde, curly hair, bobbed around his head. With that shock of hair and manic smile, I thought that, from what I could see of him through the cracks in the wooden door, he looked like some crazy clown. That’s an image I didn’t like at all.

Another thought entered my head. Why wasn’t Troy, reasonable, dependable Troy, doing something to stop Alix? Or even one of the girls? Surely they all knew what he was doing was wrong.

“Little piggy!” guffawed Alix. “I said….open up!”

Finally, Troy spoke up. “Alix, leave it. Let’s go. Leave her alone.”

Alix turned to Troy.  He had a pained look on his face, and was no longer laughing. “I – I have to get in here Troy. It’s hard to explain, but I just have to. Don’t come any nearer now.”

The temperature dropped so quickly that the girls – Toril, Beth and Jacinta, cupped their shoulders.

“Brrrr!” said Beth. “Where has
that
come from?”

“I don’t know,” said Toril. “I do think we should get out of here though. Alix! Quit messing around. It’s not safe to go in there.”

Alix ignored Toril, so I focussed my energy on her instead. She was into all things strange, and this experience certainly counted as one of those times. If I could somehow communicate with her, she might be able to stop Alix. I didn’t want him to get hurt, but if he crossed the thresh-hold, I could not be held responsible for what might happen. Though, knowing my luck, I bet that I would be held responsible.