Dark Winter (4 page)

15
th
October. My Birthday’s Eve. One more day of being fifteen.

On this, the last night before my parents were due to return, I didn’t need my special sense of things to appreciate the sudden cooling of the temperature that just hit the main room, but there was a more to it than that. A menacing chill enveloped me, making the hairs on my hair stand up. A simple sigh from me, releasing vapour into the air, and it would have been visible to all that something not of this world had made the temperature plummet.

It was usually at this point I really
would
see a ghost. Oh, my Nan had talked about ghosts before, and how she had seen them on many occasions. I liked her ghost stories, and although I’ll admit her ‘Zeryths are coming to kill you and only this mirror can stop them’ story freaked me out more than the others, I found myself being a glutton for punishment.

I would ask her to tell me lots of ghost stories, then, when I would try to sleep, I would be unable to, and be screaming downstairs to anyone who would listen, to come up and console me.

I’d be even too scared to get out of bed to switch the light off, because, well, that’s when
They
would get you. I couldn’t have that, could I?

Not bothering to use mirrors anymore, I looked at my reflection in the window and lightly brushed my long brown mousey hair. It’s wavy, although I’ve grown a fringe in the last few years, and the bangs hang over my right eye. I like it just-so, and I’m not getting my hair cut, no matter what my mother or anyone else says. It seems that I am destined to stop growing past five foot seven inches too.

But here, no-one is saying anything. There are no kids here from the school I used to go to, and my parents are a long drive away from here. One of our neighbours from the town did frequent the woods though, even on nights like this, so maybe if I need help, I would just have to shout. The damndest thing of all, was that I had agreed to my Nan’s request, or rather her insistence, that I be here now.

Tonight, things seem way too quiet. The silence was defeaning. I lay with my eyes to the ceiling, when I heard it. Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud. The sound of an apple hitting each step of the stairwell.

I gripped the bedsheets a bit tighter. What a time to be alone.

Take a deep breathe, Romilly. You imagined the thud, okay?

Usually, this suits me just fine because I like my own company, and wish to be left to my own devices. I distracted myself with thoughts of my past, as I wasn’t sure what was to become of my future.

At school I was the proverbial wallflower, and it was a reputation well deserved. I don’t mix with others easily. I’ve had friends in the past. Beth O’Neill, who I would partner with in  Home Economics, Toril Withers from Drama class, and Jacinta Crow who would sit next to me when Beth and Toril weren’t there.

I somehow tended to mess up even the good things in my life, and whilst Beth had previously spent time with me at Rosewinter, there was scant chance of a repeat now.

The wind howled incessantly in the woods, and that, combined with the darkness that comes all too quickly in these late summer evenings, really unsettled me. I try to be rational, say to myself that there is nothing to worry about, and yet I can’t shrink away from the uneasy feeling that something has happened to my parents. The thought of losing them scares me even more than the other unshakable feeling - that something really horrible was about to happen to me.

When I get these feelings, I do the only thing any sensible person would do. I reach for the kettle, and make a cup of tea. It helps to settle the nerves on the long dark nights.

As I turn the water tap on, it croaks into life. The pipes rattle like the bones of a skeleton, being dragged from a grave without its permission. In that same moment I shudder violently, and cup my hands around my shoulders.

What was that
? I feel like someone or some
thing
touched the back of my neck, moving my hair to one side. It can’t be the case though, I am here on my own.

I am here on my own, and I am in total control
. I this say to myself, over and over again, as if to reaffirm that I really am in control of everything, even if I’m not.

I was told to try this by one of the school teachers, who said that “Other children’s words can only hurt you, Romilly, if you let them. You can’t control what they say, but you can control your reaction to them.”

This was all sound advice, unless you were the target of name calling at school. Teachers themselves were rarely, if ever, the target of playground bullying, so they couldn’t possibly understand what I had been through.

The feeling won’t go away though, and I know,
I just know
, that I did not imagine that…whatever it was that brushed the back of my neck. I cup the back of my neck with my hand, as if by doing so, I will be safe. A fake assurance, but assurance nonetheless.

I tell myself I am being silly. I tell myself that Mum and Dad are fine, and that they will be here to meet with me tomorrow morning. I really should just enjoy my last night of freedom. Outside, the simple pleasantness of September was gone. October growled with disapproval. Winter was coming. How brutal would my cold friend be this time?

I gulped down my tea, and slid into my very warm and comfortable bed. The cup is still half-full, when I arrive at my most peaceful sleep.

An ear shattering noise rudely awakens me.

I sit, bolt upright, in my bed, with such force that my arms are almost ripped out of their sockets.

The door to the wood-cabin burst open, and found my peaceful-yet-slightly-unnerved world, shattered. The noise was deliberate. It wanted me to know fear. It wasn’t going to kill me in my sleep. It wanted to look into my eyes as my life ebbed away.

Whatever had been hunting me all this time, had now found its quarry. If my Nan was right, some bog-eyed zombie with no legs and blood filled eyes, would make a move to claim the Mirror.

One thing was for certain. I was no longer alone.

*                            *                            *

16
th
October. My Birthday. Just past mid-night.

Happy Birthday, Romilly. Hope it’s not for the last time.

Although the noise shook the hell out of me, it shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise. After all, I knew what she had come for, but it didn’t make my job any easier. I didn’t like to kill anything, even if it was dead in the first place, but I had no doubt she would kill me if I hesitated.

I had seen her kind before, but only in my dreams, which had a nasty habit of coming true of late. Nan wasn’t mistaken. This zombie-girl, humanoid appearance aside, bore little resemblance to you or I.

Still, she wasn’t your traditional, slow walking, dead eyed, drop-and-splat-in-one-hard-stroke kind of zombie. That kind of zombie remained in the movies, and she didn’t look to me like she had just walked off-set, and made her way to my little abode.

Her bedraggled black hair was wet with something, it clung to her face. Burned into her forehead –
branded
perhaps – were the strangest of markings, and though the rest of her face was almost normal, she had no lips to speak of. Her teeth stuck out from behind her skin, like a skeleton. She might have been human at one time, but to me she now looked like she was ridden with infection, disease and the over-riding stench of death. Her skin was a greyish-yellow, making her look slightly jaundiced. Nothing so disgusting looking could possibly be for real, and yet, here it was, dripping blood on my floor, which dissolved the wood, making a hissing, fizzing sound as it splattered everywhere.

If I concentrated too much on her looks, I would be forgiven for neglecting the axe she was holding, the blade of which seemed far too large and cumbersome for someone of her size to wield.

As if reading my thoughts, she let the heavy blade hit the floor, which made a clunking, scraping sound on the floor as it travelled, awkwardly but purposely towards me. Shards of wood gave way as she approached me. I noticed that the axe was already covered in blood, skin, and bits of bone. She wore a white blouse that had been reddened by blood and dried by time – if time existed where she came from.

Whatever she was remained strangely corporeal when swinging wildly at me with an axe, and yet I could almost see right through her.

I really wanted to kick out at her but was severely under-dressed. My nightgown was far too long, and I was in my bare feet, and the splintered wood from the door and the floor that had been cut up by the axe, was drawing pipettes of blood from my toes. Talk about being totally unprepared for my first visit by a Zeryth. Having them come into your nightmares and then, coming into your home, were two completely different things. I scream myself awake from a nightmare. This was for real though, and I had to deal with the situation head-on.

Some people at my school, even my parents, had said I used humour as soon kind of defence. Maybe I do that, but here, I am very scared.

What could I do then? I tried my hardest to scream at her, but no words would come from my throat.

Remember you’re in control, Romilly. What they say or do can’t hurt you.

I had always been told in self-defence class to put your hands up in front of your body to put an adversary off, but something told me this was not going to work this time. I had forgotten to ask the instructor what to do if a zombie-girl ends up in your house uninvited. I’m sure the response would have been “
Oh. Zombie self defence class. You must have missed that one
.”

Still, the non-zombie classes hadn’t been a total waste. Keeping my hands in some sort of guard, as she swung at me, I managed to put her off from hitting me full-on. Nearly three years of irregular kung fu training had passed, but I still felt I knew practically nothing.

I wasn’t as lucky with the next stroke. The Zeryth brought the axe down towards me and it caught the left side of my body, and my nightdress ripped all too easily.

Getting courage from somewhere, I’d had enough of this. I grabbed at her hair, and yanked at it, only for it to come off in my hand, with a clump of rotten skin attached to it.

Feeling rather disgusted, but still needing to stay focussed, I slammed the skin and hair on the floor, and punched her jaw, only for it to break way slightly and her jaw hung open like a broken plastic bag billowing in the wind.

The whole experience was making me gag, but there wasn’t time to worry about that.

Spinning around my room in nano-seconds, I was looking for something to throw at her that would cause some real damage, when I realised that I actually did have a weapon to hand, my calm-the-nerves-cup of tea. In my frenzy I grabbed at the cup and it nearly tipped over. Okay, I had lost some of it, and the warmish liquid was spilling all over the floor, but I had enough left, so I threw the remainder of it towards her face.

Ruing my bad luck, I grimaced as the tea, which I hoped would at least delay her coming towards me, passed straight through her face. She continued to swing the axe wildly at me, which I had experienced was all too real, and I wondered how I could fight someone who was solid when and where she needed to be, and not, in other ways.

Expecting her to back off, it was then that I realised the she had no feet, to speak of. What the hell? Weren’t zombies supposed to have legs? Of course, she wasn’t just any zombie. She was one of the Zerythra, and she absolutely would not stop until she had taken the Mirror from me, and kill me in the process. Nan’s prophecy was here, right in front of me. Bloody hell.

It seemed that her leg stumps turned into mist into where you would expect feet to be, and she could just glide about the place, ready to sting you like a wasp. I momentarily recalled disturbing a nest of yellow-jackets wasps in our garden. They’d sting you repeatedly, just as she was attempting to do now. One attack was swiftly followed by another.