Winter's Shadow

by M. J. Hearle

  ‘I could always send it back to the manufacturer – maybe they could do something?’ Mitch offered tentatively, reacting to Winter’s crestfallen expression.

  She dropped the camera back onto the counter. ‘Thanks anyway, Mitch, but it’d just be a waste of time. It’s past saving.’

  Mitch’s face brightened. ‘Hey, I nearly forgot.’ He bent down again to rummage underneath the counter, this time coming up with a packet of photographs. He handed them to her proudly. ‘The camera might be a goner, but I was able to salvage the film and develop the pictures. You got some nice shots here, Winter.’

  Winter felt a glimmer of relief – at least there was a silver lining to this dark, dark cloud. She opened the packet and started rifling through the photographs and was delighted to discover Mitch was right. She had taken some nice shots of Pilgrim’s Lament. Nice was actually a bit of an understatement; her shots were interesting, well composed, and – dare she think it – artistic. It seemed the Nikon hadn’t died in vain.

  Winter frowned as she held up the last photograph for closer scrutiny. It was the shot she’d taken of Blake standing by the graves – the shot that had nearly cost Winter her life. Something was wrong with it, though.

  The background was fine, albeit a little blurry. There were the tombstones poking their mossy heads up out of the weeds and grass, there were the dark woods behind the cemetery – but the subject of the picture, Blake, was obscured by what looked like a strange black smudge. Winter showed the photograph to Mitch. ‘What happened with this one?’

  Mitch looked at the picture and nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I saw that . . . beats me. I figured the film must have been damaged when the camera got killed.’

  Winter stared at the image with a puckered brow. ‘But why only this picture? The others turned out fine.’

  Mitch shrugged. ‘Sometimes weird things happen when you work with film. Maybe it’s time to go digital?’

  Not satisfied with that explanation, Winter slid the image back in with the others. After querying the price – it seemed awfully low and she hated feeling like a charity case – she paid Mitch for the prints and left the store.

  During the early days of her photography experiments, she’d caused all manner of strange effects in the developing process, either on purpose or accidentally. Not one of those looked like the odd effect that now marred Blake’s image. For some reason Winter thought about that weird optical illusion she’d glimpsed in her side mirror when she pulled over after the near-miss. Those three dark figures standing on the road, watching her.

  Still feeling oddly troubled, Winter nearly missed the poster in Howl’s Music Jamboree as she wandered from Mitch’s towards her scooter. The garish artwork dominated the window and featured three men dressed in Japanese kimonos, wearing heavy black eye makeup and carrying swords. Below them inscribed in flowing script was the legend: ‘The Urban Ninjas: The Warrior’s Way.’ There was a sticker at the bottom of the window advertising ‘Tickets On Sale Now’.

  Tickets. All her thoughts of the photograph, her ruined camera, the near-accident, were pushed aside as Winter remembered what she had to do. In fifteen minutes or so she’d be at the old Velasco place, knocking on Blake’s front door to return his jacket. She hadn’t been looking for any omens to help make her decision about following Jasmine’s plan, but there it was, right in front of her. The Urban Ninjas concert. Thursday night. It seemed fate was conspiring with Jasmine, urging her to take a chance. Swallowing nervously, Winter continued past Howl’s towards where she’d parked Jessie. She could feel the tickets lying at the bottom of her bag weighing her down, growing heavier with every step.

  Chapter 15

  Approaching Holloway Road, the persistent click of Jessie’s odometer sounded to Winter’s anxious ears like the ticking of a time bomb. She tried to rationalise that what she was doing was perfectly acceptable – he’d left his jacket with her when he dropped her off, she was doing him a favour by riding out here to return it – but it was almost as though she’d contracted some kind of virus. The idea of seeing Blake again made her feel hot and sick and worried. Surely once she was actually standing in front of him, these symptoms would abate. She’d see Blake wasn’t the fantasy figure she was building up in her mind. He was just another guy.

  The sign pointing to her turn-off loomed and Winter fought the urge to keep driving right past it. She barely won the battle, forcing herself to turn Jessie onto the thickly sheltered woodland passage. Though still a few hours off nightfall, the sun had sunk behind Owl Mountain and brought an early twilight to this section of the woods. The shadows of tree branches, thrown by the eerie half-light, stretched across the road like clawed hands. The only sound Winter could hear was Jessie’s engine as it reverberated through the blue-green stillness.

  Nervously she scanned the tree line for the infamous home’s driveway. Where was it? Surely she should have come across the house by now? She was about to turn Jessie around, thinking she must have missed the turn-off, when she saw a break in the trees ahead: a dirt driveway leading down into the deeper woods.

  The Velasco place.

  Nervously, Winter braked and turned in to the driveway. She rolled Jessie slowly towards the house, dead leaves crunching beneath the tyres.

  It had been two Halloweens ago that she had last come here, but the house at the end of the track looked just as foreboding as she remembered. On that dark night, creeping towards the front door with Jasmine to test their nerves with the knocking game, Winter had involuntarily recalled Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. Something about the way the narrator had felt an ‘insufferable gloom’ descend upon his soul as he approached the titular house seemed particularly apt in relation to the Velasco place. Just as she had on that night, Winter wondered absently if old Edgar Allan had ever visited Hagan’s Bluff, and ventured down this particular muddy track. The similarities were startling.

  The two-storey mansion might have been beautiful once, but it had long ago fallen into disrepair. Ropes of ivy clung to it like diseased veins, and most of its white paint had peeled off, exposing grey boards. Three of the ground-floor windows were cracked, the rest caked in grime and dust. Even more eerie than the house itself was the hulking magnolia tree lurking on the edge of the front yard. Twisted and dark, the tree was infected by the same corrupted atmosphere marring the house, and looked like it might uproot itself at any moment and come shambling towards her.

  Winter slowed Jessie to a standstill and hopped off, eyeing the house with apprehension. There was no sign of Blake’s truck in the front yard, giving her the faint hope that he might not be home. She wouldn’t know for sure until she marched up to the front door and knocked. Slinging her bag over one shoulder, Winter started towards the house.

  The steps creaked beneath her as she gingerly ascended to the shadowy porch. She had to duck beneath the ivy spilling from the eaves before she could reach the door. The smell of rising damp making her cough, Winter tried to understand why Blake, the very embodiment of aesthetic beauty, would choose to live in a place utterly bereft of it. Why not buy one of the bungalows down on Lighthouse Beach? They couldn’t have been much more expensive. Asking a guy out on a date was one thing, but having to brave a haunted house to do it was more than a girl should have to deal with.

  Winter raised her hand to knock on the bare wood of the door. Her fist hovered there for a moment, as she mentally ran through the script she’d prepared.

  ‘Hi, Blake, hope I’m not interrupting. You left your jacket with me yesterday, so I thought I’d bring it back. How are you settling in?’ Then she would have to find a way to artfully slot in some sort of reference to the concert ticket, something along the lines of, ‘You’ll never guess what happened but I won two tickets in a raffle to see the Urban Ninjas on Thursday night, and thought you might like one. It’s the least I can do after you saved my life.’ In Winter’s head it sounded a little dorky; she really hoped it wouldn’t sound so bad coming out of her mouth.
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  Winter rapped her knuckles on the door quickly, matching the staccato rhythm of her thudding heartbeat. She waited for a few seconds and knocked again. Nobody answered the door and she couldn’t hear any footsteps on the other side. Feeling guiltily relieved, Winter unzipped her bag and pulled out Blake’s jacket. Should she just leave it here and squander the only opportunity she had for seeing him again? Weighing up her options, Winter was suddenly distracted by the loud snapping of a branch in the woods next to the house.

  Somebody was moving out there.

  Frowning, she stepped down off the porch and looked in the direction of the noise. It was too dark now to see very clearly, but Winter thought she could just make out a tall black shape moving between the trees bordering the front yard. She followed its progress for a moment before it vanished into the deeper shadows.

  ‘Hello?’ she called, her voice betraying a trace of her steadily mounting fear. If it was Blake out there, why didn’t he respond?

  There was a rustling noise in the woods right behind her. Winter whirled around, fearfully squinting through the purple half-light. She couldn’t see anyone, but it sounded as if people were stalking through the undergrowth on both sides of the yard, circling her. Watching her. A cool wind began to blow, hurling the dead leaves beneath the magnolia tree towards Winter.

  When she was a child, Winter had experienced night terrors, often leaving her room in the early hours of the morning to climb into her parents’ bed. She always ran the short distance between her room and her parents’ with her eyes closed, convinced there was something horrible chasing her through the darkness. That same irrational fear gripped her now. There was something in those woods, something that wanted to hurt her! Winter turned and ran back up the steps to the porch. She knocked on the front door again, more frantically this time.

  ‘Blake? Please let me in!’ There was no answer.

  Behind her, she now heard another sound: a low but distinct clicking, like a giant insect gnashing its mandibles together. The noise was more terrifying than the branches being trodden on, because of how alien, how inhuman, it sounded. Panicking now, Winter gave up on knocking and tried the doorknob.

  Locked!

  With no other option, Winter tried it again, this time desperately willing it to open beneath her touch. Though she had no visual reference to support it, an image of the inner workings of the lock, specifically the tumbler sliding back to release the bolt, materialised in her mind. At the same time, miraculously, she felt the handle turn. She pushed the door open, ran inside and slammed it shut behind her.

  Chapter 16

  Braced with her back against the door, heart pounding, Winter waited to see what would happen next. As the seconds passed without incident, she began to feel foolish. What had come over her? There was nothing out there in the woods – no malevolent presence coming to get her. The cracking sounds had probably just been a possum or some other harmless woodland creature moving around in the undergrowth. That blind panic which gripped her must have been some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress from the near-accident this afternoon, or perhaps from the church escape yesterday. Just her body processing leftover adrenaline, manufacturing the illusion of danger. There had been no dark figures stalking her. There was no reason to be afraid.

  ‘You’re such a loser,’ Winter told herself, letting out a long, shuddering breath. The door opening beneath her grasp was odd, especially how it coincided with that scarily detailed mental image of the tumbler sliding free – an image she had no idea was stored somewhere in the archives of her imagination. It was almost like her mind’s eye had zoomed in through the keyhole and witnessed the parts of the lock moving about, motivated by her will alone. However, it was easy to rationalise this peculiar sensation. The vivid image had simply been the byproduct of all that adrenaline flooding her system. Her frantic jiggling of the door handle simply must have worked the old lock free. There was nothing unusual about that.

  Satisfied she’d solved the mystery, Winter stepped away from the door. ‘Hello? Blake?’

  The only sound she could hear was the ticking of a clock somewhere in the depths of the house. Though the light outside had almost disappeared, it was still much brighter than the interior of the house. Night had fallen early within these walls. It looked as though Blake had drawn every curtain in the house, sealing the darkness in, or the light out. As her eyes adjusted, Winter could see a staircase directly in front of her.

  Looking at the shadows at the top of the stairs made her feel uneasy. She imagined the spectre of Velasco emerging from that space, floating down the stairs towards her, his eyes bloodshot and face black, the hanging rope dangling from his pale hands.

  Shivering, Winter put down her bag and withdrew Blake’s jacket. Now what was she going to do? Blake would probably be a little concerned if he came home to find his jacket sitting folded on the floor with no explanation of how it appeared. She had to at least leave a note. Unfortunately she’d left her exercise book in her school locker, so she had nothing to write on. There were several battered cardboard boxes stacked against the wall next to her, some still sealed with packing tape. Blake mustn’t have had time to finish unpacking. Maybe she’d find a scrap of blank paper among his things. Winter peeked inside the nearest open box.

  Instead of paper, or pots and pans, or anything else she had imagined it might contain, Winter was intrigued to see that the box was full of books. Not just any books – she couldn’t see any paperbacks or textbooks. Instead, the box contained several dozen leather-bound journals. Her curiosity overpowering any guilty reservations, Winter took out the topmost journal and opened it. Its pages were yellowed with age and rustled softly as she turned them.

  The date above the first entry read ‘11th novembre, 1891’. The book was more than old – it was an antique! Unfortunately, the flowing calligraphic handwriting beneath the date, while beautiful to look at, was completely incomprehensible to her. Winter had taken French one semester four years ago and recognised a word here and there, but there was no way she could translate what she was reading.

  Winter closed the journal, in the process dislodging a loose leaf of folded paper tucked into the back cover. It fluttered to the ground, and when she knelt to pick it up, she was surprised to see it was written in English.

  15th August, 1892

  Dearest Elisabetta,

  I write under the pretence that I am practising my English, but I pray these words will somehow wing their way to your heart, that they will find passage through the night and imprint themselves in a dream, and you will wake with a changed perception of me. It is a foolish wish. You will never hold this cold parchment, never see these clumsy candlelit scratchings, never know the torment I endure every moment. I am a coward, Elisabetta, though surely you suspect this by the way I pale whenever you enter the room, how I can barely muster speech when you greet me. My greatest fear is that you mistake my reticence for apathy, or worse – hostility. The truth is that you leave me powerless and sick, like a poison I cannot resist imbibing. I crave you, Elisabetta, and have done so ever since our first conversation during Professor Ovarecz’s tutorial. I often replay it in my mind, shamed by my own stuttering clumsiness. Your words were cruel, Elisabetta, all the more hurtful as they fell from such exquisite lips. Mother says you hide your true feelings, that you care for me as strongly as I do you, but I daren’t believe this. It would be as much to believe an angel could grow enamoured of an ass, such is our disparity. Should I confess how I stare at you across the room, watching the light etch your hair in brilliant golds and reds? I can see radiance in the deep blue of your eyes as though you carry the sun within you. The light calls to me, awakening desires that startle with their intensity. Time is meaningless in these moments. I imagine stroking your face, feeling the softness of your skin, seeing its pallor next to my own dark complexion. Like a shadow falling across snow . . .

  Winter paused reading, when she heard a muffled sound deep within the house. She
held her breath for a moment, listening. When there was no further noise, she called out nervously, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

  It must have just been her imagination. After her mad dash from the invisible phantoms in the woods, it was obvious that she was in a highly suggestible state of mind. Despite wanting to read the rest of the letter, Winter slipped it back into the journal and replaced it in the box. It wouldn’t do for Blake to find her going through his personal belongings. She wondered briefly if the author had ever confessed his true feelings for Elisabetta or if the love had gone unrequited. If she ever got to know Blake better, she might ask him about the journals and what happened to the romantic who wrote them.

  Right now, she didn’t want to linger in the Velasco place any longer. Winter felt like a trespasser, an uncomfortable feeling compounded by her dread of this infamous house. There had to be a scrap of paper somewhere for her to write a note for Blake.

  The hallway branched off to either side. A white-tiled kitchen was visible to her right and to her left what looked like a large living room —

  Winter started as something grey rippled in the half-light. It was just a sheet covering a piece of furniture. There must be a window open somewhere, allowing a breeze to ruffle the fabric in such a disquieting manner. What had she thought it was? A ghost? Ridiculous. There was no such thing as —

  A shape came scuttling out of the living room towards her.

  Winter jumped back a step. But she wasn’t being attacked by the spectre of Velasco – just an overweight ginger tabby. She really was a bundle of nerves this afternoon. The cat eyed her curiously for a moment before padding over to rub itself against her jeans.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked, kneeling to stroke the cat. It stretched beneath Winter’s touch, clearly enjoying the attention. There was something familiar about the cat. It reminded her of a cat she’d seen on television . . . or in a dream.