Dark Winter: Last Rites

by Hennessy, John

Beth had already put her coat on whilst I ran these thoughts through my head.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “You mean, where are we going?” she asked in return. “We are going to Gorswood Forest. To the edge of the Eastern part, by the looks of things.”

  Christ. She actually believes the Mirror, Toril and all the answers we needed are there.

  I had to grab my coat, because there was a strong possibility that she was right.

  You Can’t Trust A Witch:

  Chapter 12

  Toril kicked the dirt on the ground. She cursed under her breath, not out loud, but especially not in this place. East Gorswood Forest, and the devilish entities that lay within it, would want to feed off its negative energy. They would find Toril, and feed on her. She knew it. She was smart enough to know that. Her curses were barely audible.

  Lunabelle had apparently deserted her. Toril had been foolish to think that the old witch wouldn’t have used a spell to cancel out one of her own. But Lunabelle had been right about one thing – taking the Mirror to that place would have been far too risky.

  All the same, Toril had felt deceived.

  “You can’t trust a witch,” she said to nobody in particular.

  She tried to think of it logically. “Or maybe I can’t trust some people.” After all, she hadn’t given myself or Beth valid enough reasons to trust her.

  Maybe my thoughts were getting through to her. I needed to catch up with Toril, but of course I believed she still had the Mirror in her possession.

  How upset would I be with her when I discovered that not only did she no longer have the Mirror, but that she had given it to someone who was a member of the Circle, a coven I had been under instructions to break?

  Yes, I know those instructions came creaking out from a rusty broken CD player. I know I believe I heard my Nan say those words. Maybe it was just what I wanted to believe.

  It ends when you break the Circle.

  I always believed it was a capital C. A small c could mean anything, absolutely anything. The small friendly circle I had with Beth, for instance.

  Toril was still keeping her logical hat firmly jammed on her head.

  “So I gave the Mirror to Lunabelle for safekeeping. I go to that place to save my Mum, even though it appears to be a fruitless endeavour. Then I end up battling Curie, or the demon inside him. Or both. The result? My mum dies under the weight of those stones. A Zeryth tells me that Curie cannot be defeated by a mere witch like me. I return, and Lunabelle is nowhere to be seen.

  Logically…..there’s no logic to this course of events.”

  Oh Toril, are you saying that with your brilliant mind, you are out of ideas? My burning body and Beth’s blood weep for you. We really do.

  I know. I’m being bitchy. I need answers to so many things. Toril of all people should understand what it is like to lose something you hold dear. For me, the Mirror is only special because my Nan bequeathed it to me. It seems so odd to me now, I miss it. It was killing me while I had it, now I would just give anything to see it again.

  Toril felt complete with her wand and pentacle, but those are basic items for a witch. How strange it is to me that now, I feel incomplete without the Mirror.

  Then it hits me like a tonne of bricks.

  All things pointed to the fact that the Mirror could not be allowed to exist in this world any longer. If it come to it, could I really destroy the Mirror?

  ***

  Toril sat on the grounds of the forest once more, just like she had been doing before Lunabelle appeared out of nowhere.

  Toril realised what I had known for a few years; that being in contact with the Mirror made you vulnerable. Anyone would end up addicted to and corrupted by its power, even if they didn’t know what to do with that power.

  Toril looked at her hands. Yes, the marks were there, just not as strong as mine. Maybe the marks would deepen over the years, just like they had with Nan. It’s strange to me now, but as I think again about that dear old lady, her hands became a sight of beauty for me - never repulsive.

  Time really does change our perception of things. What makes our blood boil one moment, can be forgotten about years later. Why do we have such an inability to deal with things? Why do we blow things up out of all proportion? Why can’t we just all get along?

  I now know the true nature of the mission; the path my Nan set me on all those years ago.

  The Mirror must be destroyed, because its very existence threatens to destroy all of us.

  I must destroy it, even if by doing so, it ultimately claims my life.

  ***

  Toril had decided to take my advice. It had taken her two years to take that advice, but never mind all that, better late than never, so they say. Actually, what I had told her wasn’t advice. I had told her, the day she let Troy sacrifice himself to the Zeryths to save us; that her logic was flawed.

  It may have been some kind of guiding principle for her, but now, even Toril could see that her logic was more than a bit off. Logic could play no part in this if we were to recover the Mirror.

  That’s right. We would have to work together to recover the Mirror. We just didn’t know that yet.

  ***

  Toril wanted to use unique kind of spell, one that would find a witch. That’s not as easy as it sounds. First, she was in the wrong place. The House of Redwood, or Diabhal Takh, stood less than half a mile from where she sat with her head in her hands.

  That would alert the Zeryths, the Erinyes, Curie, Dana, Diabhal himself, and lead them to her precise location.

  Toril came to the same conclusion that I would have – she could not use that spell. Not here. Not now.

  As she waited, Toril thought Lunabelle might just return. She actually believed it for a second.

  But for a witch, a second can be a very long time. If you don’t believe me, just ask her mother, whilst those stones were pummelling her ribs, kidney and chest.

  If I ever do meet Tori-Suzanne, in this life or the next, I’ll be sure to ask her.

  “She’s not coming back,” Toril said ruefully. If I had been standing near Toril when she had said that, I would have asked her to clarify exactly who she was referring to – her mother, or Lunabelle?

  Maybe it was both of them.

  She returned to what she was doing before Lunabelle turned up.

  “This time, if anyone so much as moves a leaf in the trees, I’m blitzing them. No warning, no questions, no nothing. They’ll be just…gone.”

  The majority of the infamous book was full of Wiccan spells, some for good, some for ill. A long, overblown history of the Circle. Denzel Tanner had told Toril to read the book, to read between the lines. Perhaps Toril hadn’t taken heed of his words as much as she should have done. She didn’t trust him when she first laid eyes on him, and his actions only confirmed her feeling of unease about him.

  Then, there were three pages at the back, completely blank, or at least, to the non-witchfolk (and there were many of those about). Lunabelle had inferred that only the One Witch could see what was on those pages. Toril now possessed a book that was as old as time, with a pentacle infused with her own powers, and a wand which now made the likes of Curie back off. In their previous encounter, Toril had been unable to inflict any damage on him at all.

  You have only succeeded in banishing him to that which he calls his home.

  She just lacked the Mirror. That would have given her absolute power.

  God. If I’d been near Lunabelle, I’d have kissed her.

  Only Toril can use the book, Lunabelle can’t. She believes in the Prophecy, otherwise she might have tried to decipher it herself. In her position, I know I would have.

  Toril looked at the pages, trying to see something, see anything. An hour passed, then another. Nothing appeared on the pages.

  I knew what she was thinking. She was trying to apply logic to something that defied logic.

  Toril closed the book, and placed it beside her
outstretched legs. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. It was just five days to Halloween, and whilst some of us would admit to liking the scary aspects of it, in our deepest thoughts, we really didn’t to see those things in the dead of night. She closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again, something from the book would reveal itself.

  Halloween was responsible for bringing out all kinds of crazies. Hadn’t we seen enough for one lifetime?

  ***

  “Christ, Beth,” I said. “Slow down, will you?”

  I don’t think anyone walked better in boots than Beth did. She was literally racing ahead of me in the direction of Gorswood Forest. I hadn’t been back there since Rosewinter had been burned to the ground.

  I knew ghosts haunted those grounds. But having come up against things we had faced recently, seeing a ghost would be a welcome relief. The only people who are scared of ghosts are those that have never seen one, but live their lives afraid that one day, they really will see one.

  No-one sane can live their life like that.

  “Beth!”

  “I can’t slow down Romilly, not after all that. I thought we should put as much distance as we can between that Ouija board and the forest.”

  I couldn’t agree more with Beth, but she was leaving me for dead. I realised that whilst I had previously practised kung fu, Beth was good at running. As she told me one time:-

  ‘In my family, you learned to keep your eyes open, your ears keen, and your legs lean. You would never know when the police would be right behind you.’

  Beth’s uncles and extended family sometimes led her astray, not that she knew anything about that of course. They would hand a six-year old girl things that she wasn’t supposed to be holding. Some of the O’Neill clan avoided the long arm of the law, but a good few of them had been detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

  Beth had never broken the law, probably the first O’Neill not to, but she learned one useful thing – picking locks. I can’t imagine how useful that skill is. You never know when you might need something like that.

  Beth was quite insistent that what she had saw was a clear path to the Mirror, or at least, a link to the Mirror. We would be able to get it back. I realised I had said something previously about living my whole life and never set my eyes on that Mirror again, but the strangest thing of all was just how much I missed it. I missed it, hated and detested it; and I loved it, all at the same time.

  Just how had my Nan coped all those years?

  Only two more streets to go and we would be on the outskirts of the forest. Beth had slowed down, but only a little. So long as I kept up with her, she didn’t mind. I wanted to remind her about racing ahead of people, and what that did to Jacinta, but decided it wasn’t the time.

  If we did everything right from now on, we couldn’t bring Jacinta back, but we could at least honour her memory, and make sure she didn’t die for nothing.

  “Ready?” asked Beth. “Ready to go in?”

  “No,” I said, “but we’re doing this anyway. Are you sure you know where we’re going, Beth?”

  “I’m sure. I know the woods better than most of you in this town.”

  I had no idea where Beth’s confidence had come from, but here she was, being very clear about what she wanted to do, and how things were going to be done, and in what order. If anything, she was acting more like Toril.

  I didn’t want her to do that. The world might not be able to cope with one Beth, but I was pretty sure I could not cope with two Torils in the world.

  Something was driving Beth on with a sense of purpose I had never seen before. She showed no pain from the previous knife wound, or the demon Dana pushing blood from her chest and out of her mouth. It was as if Beth had decided to tell them to go to hell.

  Maybe it was the Glenfiddich she had consumed at home, but Beth never turned her head, not even slightly, in the direction of The Dying Swan. I was thirsty once again, but not for alcohol. I could have drunk the ice water off a snowball, if there had been any lying around. The winter this year was a bit strange; snow had fallen just a few days earlier. Then a late burst of extremely strong sun had come, and melted it all away. Typical British October.

  No-one exactly knew how large Gorswood Forest was.

  If you looked at a map, it would seem reasonable enough. But on foot, we felt tiny, insignificant, vulnerable, and the forest was closing in around us.

  God, Beth. I hope you’re right about this.

  She had been running with a piece of paper clasped tightly in her hand, her crudely drawn map guiding us to somewhere; but was not filling me with the greatest of confidence.

  Right now, I could determine our precise location. The Dying Swan was a mile behind us; bustling with merriment. We should have been joining those people, instead of chasing…whatever we were chasing.

  Half a mile ahead, in a north-east direction, lay the ashen remnants of Rosewinter.

  I’m so sorry. Mum. Dad. Nan. Even you, the old building of wood, glass and stone. I am sorry. If I ever survive this, somehow, I will make it up to you.

  A mile and a half beyond that, was St Margaret’s Hospital. It was becoming a bit of a ruin itself now. It seemed to me that the forest, far being from a place where things would grow, it actually consumed anything that went into its midst.

  Another problem kept circling in my head. It was difficult to think, so hard to concentrate. It was like a swarm of wasps were building a nest in my head. I could not think straight.

  My vision began to blur. I wasn’t going to faint; but I was struggling to focus. I realised what happened to Jacinta, because now, it was happening to me.

  ‘The Demon, Belial. He is not going to let you go, Romilly.’

  Maybe the demon had waited. But he did not fool me – I was far from convinced that he was gone. But to never let me go? What did that actually mean, in practical terms?

  “Beth!”

  I thought I was screaming her name, but I heard how it really sounded. Weak.

  I stopped running, but my head was still spinning. The woods had encircled me, ready to devour my body.

  Whatever that map had said about the East was only partially correct. Maybe we didn’t have to go to East Gorswood anymore.

  It was coming for us.

  ***

  There was no doubt Beth wanted to get to the X on the map, but I know too that she would have waited for me. She would not have wanted us to get split up.

  The ghosts in the woods had convinced her that I was still close behind her. Every time she looked, she would shout me an ‘Okay, Milly?’ and my doppelganger would nod.

  Looking towards the ashes that used to be our summer-house, I saw an image, apparition, trick, whatever you would like to call it, of two people who were close to Beth. It was the image of a bedroom. In the bed, were a couple – though I had never seen them before, I took it that they represented Beth’s parents.

  On the outside, the hallway leading up to the door was a man. He walked like he was stooped, and he was carrying a bag in one hand, and an axe in the other. He hammered at the door, attempting to get inside. For some reason, the door was locked. It was such a confusing image. Beth’s parents had lived in a house, not an apartment.

  Nothing seemed right about this, yet I found myself unable, or subconsciously, unwilling to remove myself from the scene.

  When you find yourself wanting to look away from the evil happening in front of you, but unable to, that is when real evil, real fear, has found you.

  Whether this was really happening or not, fear had found me. I felt afraid. I could smell burning, but could do little about that. It meant only one thing – that the demon inside me was reasserting its position. Coming to Gorswood Forest, or more accurately; allowing the East of Gorswood Forest to come to us, meant that it could attack us with more ease than ever before.

  The man, of course, was Curie. It wasn’t going to be anyone else, it could not be anyone else. This time, I was seeing a v
ision not from the future, but from the past. Why was I seeing this now?

  Curie had broken into the room, closed the door behind him, and took a look at the bed. The couple were sleeping, and had no idea what was about to happen to them. He looked back at the door, checked it was locked, then poured what looked like white spirit around the frame of the door. From his coat he produced a cigarette lighter.

  Grinning, he set the door ablaze.

  I could view the nightmare as it unfolded, the one Beth was spared from viewing, but had to endure the after effects for the rest of her life. I hope my parents died quickly. The pain and terror Beth’s parents had to endure in their final moments; I cannot imagine how awful that must have been.