Dark Winter Read online

  The building itself had been in our family for a few generations, and was situated about three miles from our normal home in a picturesque forest named Gorswood, after the town’s founder.

  At school, there were rumours that Gorswood Forest was a place where the bad people of the town got rid of their problems. It wasn’t uncommon for a body to turn up, found by someone walking their dog, or children playing in the woods. After a while, the police lines would be taken away, and things would get back to normal. I was never told not to go to Gorswood Forest.

  Even so, I didn’t see it like the other children did. I liked the fact that there was a clearing around the site, and the trees folded in their leaves and branches together to form a protective barrier from the sun. I would risk bruising my toes, kicking large stones that lay on the ground, onto their other side. The reason? Small craters they would leave in the ground would reveal the blackest of black soil underneath, and I would admit that the scent that filled my nostrils would put me on a high for the rest of the day.

  In the daytime, at least, I love it in the summer months. I’m not a huge fan of the sun itself, which would beat down on me from such a low level, but in the forest, I was protected from such things. There were two huge red oak trees that stood like Roman pillars, protecting our wood-cabin.

  My Nan would have none of it. “Protected? Not likely. Not when you choose to build a wood-cabin on the site of an old mental hospital, where people killed themselves rather than be handled by the nurses. Safe? Ha! Whatever was the old fella thinking?”

  Nan would be chastised whenever she came out with things like that.

  “Nana, don’t do those scare stories in front of Milly, please,” my mother would say.

  She’s only a child.”

  My Nan would protest. “But they are not scare stories! What about the axe-”

  Mum would say “Whisht!” and wave her hand dismissingly. Mum had won, for now.

  I could be sure that Nan would fill me in later.

  Our woodland retreat was not named Rosewinter by chance. My grandfather on my mother’s side of the family, had built it, and when he died, the place was bequeathed to my father, and he gave it a name because “It’s bad luck for a place not to have a name.” My grandfather did not believe in such things, but my father was a superstitious type, always throwing salt over his right shoulder, or saying touch wood whenever he felt the need. I’m with my granddad on this one.

  The design of the house itself, was supposed to have been inspired by Old Tahoe architecture, a style that represented the exquisite beauty of Lake Tahoe as well as the peacefulness of the wilderness surrounding it.

  One year, we had all taken a late holiday to the Western United States, and stayed near to Tahoe, which straddled the borders of California and Nevada. My father had said that this place had a profound affect on my grandfather, so he built the wood-cabin with this in mind.

  The Old Tahoe architecture blended seamlessly and harmoniously with the environment, and although we were nowhere near the granite cliffs surrounding the deep blue edge of Lake Tahoe, it had its own charm and sense of character.

  The main house had two large bedrooms upstairs. There was also a garage, an extremely luxurious master suite, and upstairs guest room. The only thing I didn’t like was the creaking floorboards. They had been treated with wood oil so many times by Dad that they were kind of the blackest brown you would ever see. There was so much liquid lacing the grain that creaks should not have been happening. They creaked a lot, not that you would notice in the daytime. At night, all that changed.

  All the same, the guest room was by far the nicest, so when I was at Rosewinter, I always made sure I stayed in that one. It had a huge bed, almost twice size of my own back home, so it was an easy choice. Our neighbours, the Dawsons, would often pass by and shout me a ‘Hi Romilly’ a few times. I know they did this out of reassurance for me, but in that huge bed, I felt just fine and safe. I would mumble or wave a ‘Hi’, back at them.

  When I asked my father why he had called it Rosewinter, my father said “Two letters from your name, two from your mother’s, and the rest from our own.”

  This made sense to me. My mother’s name was Selena. I always thought that was a much better name than mine, but when I heard the alternative – Sue, I was so glad they christened me as Romilly.

  I was also glad to have my mother’s name as part of my own. I was christened Romilly Selena Winter. The priest, Father Brannigan, said to my parents at the time, “Romilly. What a lovely name.”

  Turning to another priest, Father McArdle, he said quietly, “The Lord be praised for that. I might just have stammered over Sue. Selena. Winter. Too many bloody ‘S’s, you see.”

  Turning back to my parents, he said, “You must be very proud.” Those priests were wily, and gave nothing away, and my parents were none the wiser. My Nan, who was older and wiser, had also been present as my godmother, and never failed to miss a trick. She told me what they actually said at my christening a few years ago. Later I stopped going to church with my parents, and tried to con my them that I was going to mass with my friend Beth, when I actually wasn’t doing anything of the sort.

  Rosewinter itself was two storeys high, made of very fine cedar wood, and had a huge main room, kitchen, bathroom, out-house, five bedrooms, and the attic. Of course the windows were large so you could see quite far in the daytime. One of the windows had an ever-so-slight crack in it, and was more dusty than the others because we didn’t clean it, and so far Dad hadn’t had the time, or made time, to replace it.

  At night-time though, it’s pretty claustrophobic, and I’m relieved when night finally gives in to the new day. I had convinced myself on many occasions that I had seen ghosts hovering outside the window, but I think the images were just remnants from my Nan’s many ghost stories. I had convinced myself that ghosts didn’t exist, that parents told you about the demon in the bathroom that would get you if you didn’t go to bed early and stay there for the whole night. One time, I broke that rule, and got to the toilet by tip- toeing past my parents’ bedroom. I would go down the stairs in the house, there were thirteen steps of course, and enter through the living room, across the long kitchen floor, to the toilet.

  It would be so dark, but I couldn’t put the light on. So I would reach a bony arm into the toilet room, my fingers scrambling for the light switch, which was the type that was not fixed to the wall, but dangled from the ceiling. That’s when a hand would grab mine. No chance to go to the bathroom. I would just run back to my bedroom, heart pounding in my chest so loudly that it was sure to give my whereabouts away to the ghost, or even worse, alert my parents that I had been running around the house in the night.

  Not here though. If anything was to go down, Rosewinter was the safest place to be. So why do these images appear outside of the window? Is it my over active imagination? Maybe it is. Or maybe, it’s just something I feel I have to put myself through. You have to conquer your demons, right? Otherwise you live your whole life in fear. I won’t live my life like that.

  The wood-cabin was safe and warm inside, but it was plain for all to see that the place had seen better days. My father was working longer hours than ever before, and he just didn’t have time to maintain everything. The cracked pane of glass was a case in point, and was the least of his worries.

  My parents had been away for a long weekend, but would be back the day after next – my birthday, in fact. I was looking forward to their return. This year, more than any other, I had heard things in the woods that really unnerved me. Wolves that howled nearby, bats that screeched through the night sky, the screams of a young girl as she was brutally slain in the woods. The scrape of a would-be killer’s axe outside my door.

  “You’re never bad, but you could be worse.” My Nan’s words echoed through my head. I opened the drawer where I kept the Mirror, and wondered if it was all true. Could this simple looking mirror really keep evil at bay?

  “Meaning wh
at?” I asked her one time.

  “Meaning that what I’ve told you up to now, is child’s play. There are scarier things than the boogeyman, my dear, and you’ll need to be ready for when they come.”

  I had a look on my face that said For God’s Sake, so my Nan elaborated.

  “You won’t know what a Zeryth is, Romilly, but you probably do know what a zombie is. Imagine you had a zombie, that had no legs below its knee stumps, that could glide towards you, attack you at will. Spit blood at you that could burn through your skin like acid.”

  Lovely image, Nan. “But you can hit zombies and they drop in one,” I retorted.

  “Not these zombies, because they are collectively known as Zerythra. They can become solid, or non-solid at will. Makes them very hard to kill, you see. But if you have the Mark, it’s possible.”

  Nan showed me the marks on her hands. I had seen them before of course. They looked like burn marks at first, maybe done by a tattooist high on something. When going out to bingo or to play bridge, she would wear gloves that covered them up like magic. That was cool, but I didn’t believe this story. But she was deadly serious about it.

  I bit my lip. “Did you do it Nan? Did you kill one of these…Zeryths? Honestly, I don’t want to kill anything.”

  Nan expertly evaded my questions.

  “No choice. They will kill you. This is no time to be squeamish. The Mirror contains Zeryths, and can stop future ones. Like it or not, you’re going to need this Mirror one day, Romilly.”

  Another bite. “Sure thing, Nan.”

  I dismissed the story as total fantasy at the time. Here, alone at Rosewinter, safe, the doubts began to creep in. I admit for the first time to myself, that the scare stories are getting to me.

  I caressed the Mirror, running my finger along the outside rim. I put it back in the drawer, and my sleep was disturbed that night.

  * * *

  In my dreamlike state, I recalled my fourteeth birthday. Nan gave me the strangest of gifts.

  It wasn’t just another scary story, although Nan could be relied upon to come up with a real spine-tingler, at any time of night.

  What made it most frightening was how the stories Nan told were actually true, even if some felt rather implausible. Or maybe they were dressed up a little. In any case, I was always petrified when going to sleep, but I just couldn’t resist from asking for ‘one more scary story.’

  Nan was older than me, in any case, and I had found out about her age purely by accident. My mother had left some documents lying around, and I caught sight of the year of her birth – 1905. Wow, because I had no idea she had been born so long ago. I respected her even more then.

  The particular story centred around a church in the village where my Mum had lived in Ireland, before coming to England as an adult. Mama, an elderly lady on my mother’s side, gave the two girls – Nan and her friend Dana, an envelope with money to give as a donation to the church.

  The church itself was very old, and was rather imposing to two eleven year old girls. They had been in the church before, but on the night in question it looked even more scary. Back in those days, you wouldn’t have to worry about the place being locked. You could just walk right in.

  Entry to the church was via a huge oak door that opened down the centre. The building had one large spire to the right of the roof, and a huge window of stainless glass was on the front of the old church. Statues of saints and bishops surrounded the building, looking for all the world like gargoyles standing on watch.

  It was a dark winter’s night. It wasn’t snowing, but it looked like it just might do that, so the two girls hurried into the church with the envelope.

  The floor made a loud noise as the girls walked on it. Echoes reverberated around the church hall. Hurriedly, Nan made for the table near the altar of the church and placed the envelope down on it.

  There was no-one in the church except the two girls. At that moment, the table rose up – it was a figure, in the cloth of one of the convent nuns. Except that, there couldn’t be a nun here, not at this time.

  The hair stood up on Nan’s neck, and she ran, screaming and swearing out of the church, with her friend Dana following her, bewildered about what was going on.

  The floor was highly polished, and very shiny, and Nan nearly did the splits on the floor, before collecting herself and getting out of the church as fast as she could.

  A local policeman stopped the girls to see what all the commotion was about, and when it was explained to him, whilst he may not have believed there was a ghost in the church, the girls believed it. He escorted them close to home and bade them good night.

  I asked my Nan, “So, is that it?”

  She said, “Aren’t you scared, even a little bit?”

  I had to admit I was, but it perhaps was the fact that this had been the sixth night in a row in which Nan had told me a ghost story. I conveniently neglected to say I had been watching horror films on my television into the small hours. My nerves were on edge more than usual.

  “I think so,” I replied weakly.

  “But you were expecting more,” she said.

  “Well, yes!” I stammered, with perhaps too much honesty.

  “But isn’t it more scary when it’s left like that, Milly? If the ghost just fades away, what is there to be scared of?”

  “That it might come back,” I answered, a bit too quickly. I was almost correcting her about calling me ‘Milly,’ but it was her pet name for me, and she had told me a story even though she was tired, so I let it be. Her next words stopped me in my tracks.

  “No, it’s not that,” said Nan, “but that it might never go away.” She hissed the word away, which added to my state of increasing unease. Jesus. Why did I do this to myself? I was sure Nan enjoyed terrorising me. “Or can never be killed, or banished. Those ghosts are the ones to watch out for, Romilly.”

  I tried to regain my composure.

  “Is it a true story Nan?”

  “It’s true,” said Nan simply. “The stories are always true.”

  “What about the made up ones?” I ventured a smirk.

  “Especially the made up ones. Especially those. But I think you’re too old to be hearing ghost stories. Maybe Romilly, you should try being in one. I’ve seen my share of ghosts over the time.”

  “I…I’m not sure I’d like to see a real ghost, actually Nan. Not for real.”

  “Wouldn’t that be great,” said Nan, with a hint of despondency, “if we could choose to see ghosts or not.”

  Without saying a further word, to my surprise, Nan got up out of bed and went to her dressing table.

  Opening a drawer, she brought out a rectangular box which had small flowers drawn all over it. It was damaged at the edges. I already knew what was in it.

  Nan wore a huge smile over her face, and motioned me to sit on the bed next to her. “Here’s something that just might scare you then.”

  “Here.” She handed me the box, gesturing “Come on, Milly, open it.”

  I gently fingered under the lid. I had already made up my mind that I wouldn’t like what was ever inside.

  “Open it,” said Nan, a bit more sternly, but not in any unfriendly kind of a way.

  Stifling a sigh, I bit my lip and pulled the lid off.

  Inside the box was a mirror, the very one I had seen a year ago at Rosewinter. My Nan’s eyes sparkled.

  “You see this, Milly? You see it, don’t you?”

  I certainly saw something. Something rather odd. As Nan lifted the mirror out of the box, her hand seemed to merge with the handle of the mirror. I then convinced myself that my eyes were playing tricks on me, and that nothing had really happened. I rubbed my eyeballs a little too roughly, but soon regained focus.

  “Look into the mirror, Milly,” said Nan, holding the mirror right in front of me. It seemed very old, perhaps as old, if not older, than Nan herself, and whilst the glass itself could do with a clean, the ornate rubies that adorned the golden mirror w
ere sparkling.

  But there was a problem. I don’t know if Nan’s ghost story had left me un-nerved, but I just didn’t want to look into it. But Nan was always kind to me, and I trusted her implicitly, so refusing her wish wasn’t on.

  So, I looked into the mirror, and saw just what I expected.

  “I just see me, Nan.” Christ. Just look at my hair. I really did need to fix it. My eyes were sunk into their sockets, and black bags hung underneath. I almost looked like someone you would see on Jeremy Kyle. What a mess. I would simply have to forget the horror movies, and get to sleep earlier. Channel Four were having a Hellraiser season, and I had only watched the first two. If Pinhead ever compiled a list of possible prom dates, the way I was looking, I could qualify.

  “Look a little longer, Milly,” said Nan. “Then, then you will see.”