Winter's Shadow (3 page)

Mr Denning shrugged. ‘
Trinity Times
? Never heard of it.’

Winter wasn’t surprised. Nobody read the
Trinity Times
except for geeks like Harry and perhaps some of the teachers. Winter hadn’t bothered to read it herself until Principal Sorensen had suggested she join the publishing team as a photographer.
Suggested
wasn’t really the right word – Sorensen had more or less told Winter that if she didn’t work with Harry and the other newspaper dweebs for extra credit, she was in danger of flunking. Academic probation, she’d called it. To Winter it felt more like blackmail.

‘Be sure to send me a copy. I’m sure Mrs Danvers would like it for her bulletin board.’ Mr Denning began walking towards the path leading through the woods to the Heritage Centre. He paused at the edge of the clearing to wave goodbye. ‘Hope you get what you’re looking for, Miss Adams.’ And with that he turned and set off along the path.

I hope so too,
Winter thought as she watched the woods swallow him.

Above the trees, a cloudbank the colour of fresh bruises loomed. If she didn’t finish up here soon, she was going to get drenched on the journey home.

With that in mind, Winter turned back to the dark doorway, took a deep breath and entered Pilgrim’s Lament.

Winter drew her jacket tightly around her body as she crossed the threshold. She tried to convince herself that it was the sudden drop in temperature that was making her shiver, not the eerie atmosphere of the church. Her nose wrinkled in disgust as the stench of mould and mildew pricked her nostrils. It smelt
old
here. Old and stale. At least she could see. Diagonal shafts of weak sunlight stabbed through the holes in the church’s roof, lighting Winter’s way through the gloom.

She ducked beneath a ragged curtain of spiderweb, keeping her eyes peeled for any black scuttling shapes. Hadn’t Mr Denning said something about spiders? Looking around at the scattered debris on the floor, it was easy to imagine her foot sliding into a pile of rotting wood and thousands of tiny, hairy, black bodies running
up her leg. If she saw so much as one of those eight-legged little monsters she was out of here – academic probation or not!

It suddenly occurred to Winter that this was the first time she’d been in a church since her parents’ funeral six months ago.

Six months
. . .

To stop her mind from dwelling on that miserable day, Winter lifted the Nikon to her eye and began snapping images of the shadowy disarray. The process distracted her, but Winter knew the sadness still lurked on the periphery of her consciousness, waiting to drag her down. As long as she kept busy she’d be fine.

Viewing the church through the camera lens, Winter was struck by its starkness. There was hardly anything here. No pews or confession booths, just a bare altar at the front of the church, and beside it, the splintered base of a charred pulpit. Any furniture that hadn’t been reduced to ash had been piled up and pushed to the edges of the room, presumably to make space for the vagrants who’d used Pilgrim’s Lament as a shelter over the years.

As she looked down at her feet, Winter was interested to see what looked like red moss growing on the floor in thick patches between the empty beer bottles, cans and charcoaled wood. On closer inspection she realised it wasn’t moss at all, but the remnants of a plush carpet, which must have lined the aisle before the church had fallen to ruin.

It was hard to imagine a religious congregation ever gathering here. Winter felt as though she was walking through the carcass of a huge, rotting leviathan – some horrible dead monster that had been left to decay on the mountain and was now nothing but bones and dust.

The church felt more than old.

It felt dead.

Winter shivered at that particularly morbid thought. The darkness suddenly seemed alive around her. She could hear wind whistling through the cracks in the walls, the sound both mournful and ominous.

The sooner she was done here the better.

Winter quickly began snapping off shots to finish the roll of film, taking less care than she should have to frame her photographs. They didn’t all have to be masterpieces, so long as one or two were usable. She had enough confidence in her technique that she didn’t need to spend hours agonising over every angle. Just take the shots and get out!

After a few minutes of this frenzied snapping, Winter realised, with no small sense of relief, she was down to her last frame on the roll. She glanced around for something worthwhile to photograph for her final subject. A flash of colour drew her eye to the far eastern wall. Pushing past a large pile of rubble so she could see what was creating the dappled rainbow, Winter made a surprising discovery. It was a tall stained-glass window that had been previously obscured from her view by a large column – one of the few remaining roof supports.

The bottom portion of the window was missing, but the top half remained a stunning testament to the artistry of stained glass, standing in marked contrast to the gloom and squalor of the church. The image was an exquisite depiction of the Madonna holding her hand out in benediction, rendered in vivid blues, reds and yellows. The artist had taken particular care to infuse the Madonna’s face with the appropriate blend of beauty and piousness.

Her sense of dread momentarily forgotten, Winter moved closer for a better angle of the stained glass.
This was the one!
Winter was suddenly filled with confidence that this particular shot all but guaranteed the extra credit she needed to pass the semester. Harry Francis would sing her praises to Principal Sorensen, and Winter would be released from probation. She might even be able to use the image in her personal portfolio, which was currently limited to a few shots of the lighthouse on Whistler’s Peak. As long as she didn’t mess it up.

Adjusting the exposure to retain the vibrant colours, Winter raised the camera to her eye, carefully framing the window in the viewfinder. Her finger began to depress the button but froze mid-action. Winter’s breath caught in her throat.

She wasn’t alone.

Winter slowly lowered her camera, careful not to make any noise. Through the broken pane of the stained-glass window she could see the remnants of an ancient graveyard, all but hidden by the tall grass and weeds that had crept in from the surrounding woods. Blackened tombstones rose above the grass here and there like strange fungi, weathered by the elements and the passage of time. Standing over one of the graves, dressed in a simple grey suit, was a young man.

He was angled away from her so she couldn’t quite see his face, a bouquet of wild flowers in his hands. Slowly he knelt and placed the flowers at the base of the gravestone, with a degree of reverence that told her how much he cared about the person buried there. As he straightened, a gust of wind blew through the trees, buffeting his
clothes and freeing the black curls from his brow. Winter could see his face more clearly.

He was beautiful.

Her eyes traced the contours of the man’s superbly wrought face, searching for a flaw and finding none. His skin was a deep golden brown, his bone structure startling in its perfection: high cheekbones, straight, slightly tilted nose and a sculpted jawline covered in fine stubble. By far his most striking feature was his eyes, which glittered like emerald stars in the shadows of the graveyard. Winter thought she detected a sadness about him, a haunted quality shadowing his features, which made his beauty all the more striking. And she couldn’t look away!

Something about the man demanded her attention, calling to her on an instinctual level. Winter’s pulse quickened, her body flushed with heat, but she was only vaguely aware of these physical responses. It was as though watching the man had lulled her into a kind of dream state. Her thoughts slowed, any lingering fright at realising she wasn’t alone faded away. Nothing seemed to matter but the stranger.

She bumped against the window ledge, the sensation bringing her back to herself. Had she been trying to walk towards him? Troubled by this lapse in self-awareness, she quietly stepped out of view. What was wrong with her? She was spying on a stranger, observing what was clearly a private moment, but she couldn’t help herself. Even now the urge to peek around the window frame
at him was maddeningly strong. Too strong to resist. His beauty demanded her attention.

Winter stealthily leaned around to watch him again, a question finally occurring to her – what was he doing here?

The church was far enough from the road that it was unlikely a person could stumble across it. Besides, Winter was certain the only pathway here started at the Heritage Centre, and a wanderer wouldn’t have been able to pass by without Mr Denning seeing him. The old man hadn’t mentioned to Winter that there was going to be anyone else down at the church today, which led her to believe he didn’t know about the handsome stranger. The man was as much a trespasser in this forgotten place as Winter.

Winter raised the Nikon and framed the stranger through her lens. There was little conscious thought behind the action, just an almost instinctive urge. It was the same urge that had drawn her to the Madonna: to capture a subject of such pure aesthetic worth. Silently, she shifted the focus until the stranger’s exquisite features were brought into sharp relief. Again, the notion flashed through her mind that what she was doing was somehow wrong.

Winter took the picture, and immediately regretted her decision.

At the sound of the shutter, the man stiffened and jerked his head towards her. His eyes locked onto hers, and the intensity of his gaze forced her to take a step
backwards, as though he’d physically pushed her. A strange thought flashed through her mind –
he was seeing her! He was really seeing her!
– and behind this was another, much clearer thought –
what had she done?

Winter continued to back away, still staring at the stranger, unable to break the spell of his gaze. Mid-step her foot caught on a piece of fallen timber and she lost her balance.

Whack!

Her back slammed against the supporting column and she slid down it onto the floor, vaguely conscious of her shirt being shredded by the rough wood. There she stayed, feeling a mixture of shock and embarrassment.
Nice job, Winter,
she thought,
really smooth!