Dark Winter: Trilogy

by Hennessy, John

  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 feel nauseous, 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.

  A blood-like liquid that was too dark to be red, closer to black in colour, continued to seep out of her body. In particular, she carried a gaping eight-ball head wound, where it looked like she had been shot at point blank range by the kind of twelve bore rifle my father owned.

  Another problem. If it was just normal blood, why was I feeling pain? The blood was burning my skin right off, like it was some kind of acid. I was feeling dizzy with pain.

  Not yet sixteen years old and it was all going to end here.

  I had to get it together. I couldn’t focus on what might happen, because my future hasn’t been written off just yet. I knew it would take only one well-placed swing of that axe to take my head off. So I did the only thing I could do in that situation. You might have called it a kamikaze moment, but still, sane reactions would have no profit here. I decided I was going to take the axe from her.

  There simply wasn’t the time to get the object, the one thing that might just help me trap this demon. The object my Nan had bequeathed to me for my own protection. Would I ever find out if what Nan told me about the Mirror was true?

  My hands were the only things I could use, so I grabbed at the axe handle in the dark, the moonlight casting a light on that God awful face of my nemesis.

  She kept a fierce grip on the axe too, only some energy emanated from my hands which caused the axe handle to get really hot, but for me, stayed cool. It clearly had an affect on her, because she shrieked in pain, and although her breath was disgusting and the sight of the blood she spat at my face made me feel nauseous, I held on for dear life, because while she was in pain, I knew that she couldn’t swing the axe in my direction.

  Amongst all the madness, I felt a calmness come over me, and somehow, I was able to pull the axe from her grip. I was surprised even more so when instead of trying to get the axe back, she cowered in front of me and put her hands over her head. She dug her wizened, blackened fingers into the back of her skull.

  "Do it quick," she hissed. "But this is not the end. Know that more of us will come. You can’t defeat us all."

  I held the axe above her neck. Where her hair parted, little mouths began to form on the back of her neck. I could not help that curiosity got the better of me, and I couldn’t help but look a bit closer, and as I did so, her acidic blood spat out and into my cheek.

  I recoiled backwards, and clamped a hand on the side of my face.

  She took her chance to recover and launched herself at me, knocking the axe out of my hand. One hand gripped tightly around the handle wasn’t enough, you needed two. I found myself trying to stop the bleeding and burning on my cheek, wishing I had three hands.

  In the first place, I’d never killed anything in my life, regardless of whether it was alive, dead, or undead.

  When I touched her, she lost the ability to be non-corporeal. Even so, the fact she had no feet was lost on me in that particular moment.

  The axe fell to the floor. It landed with a real clatter, and then, disintegrated right before my eyes.

  The Zeryth continued her relentless pursuit of me, and soon had her hands around my throat.

  With force unbecoming of something that stood just four feet in height, she slammed my head towards the floor. I was barely conscious as I pushed one hand towards her jaw, which was still flapping wildly, and the bottom row of her teeth gave way.

  She hocked back and spat into my face, which by now was covered in her blood.

  I was losing. This – was it.

  Unless.

  Unless I used my hands. I had to wear my gloves to hide the markings on my hands at school. My parents and Nan had been most insistent about that.

  Moment of truth then. Through my hands, I either wielded a weapon of death, or I did not.

  I reached out towards her chest, right where I would expect her heart to be. She maintained her grip on my throat, but soon let go as I made contact. She shrieked one last time. My ungloved hand started to pass through her, just like my tea had done so moments earlier, only this time she was being affected, because I wanted her to die. She screamed in the most unearthly, horrifying way before disappearing into the night mist. My ears burnt from the screams.

  My hands were shaking uncontrollably, and I ran to the bathroom to wash my hands of the blood and tear my now very bloody nightdress off.

  As I washed my hands, the blood wouldn’t come off, so I washed them even more vigorously.

  The blood cleared, but there was something left. I had seen it in the past, but this encounter made it more prominent than ever before. I held my hands up to the light shade to see it clearly. My hands now bore the exact same markings of the creature I had just vanquished. I seemed to have her markings superimposed on my skin.

  It was the second time in a week that I had hit my head hard. So I had beaten one Zeryth, but the whole experience had affected me. I had won, for now, but what if her prophecy came true, and more of these creatures would attack me? The thought of it made my fast beating heart pound even harder. Do you know about those Kodo drummers in Japan? Well, the palpitations in my chest sounded just like that. As the drummers in my head banged ever louder, the noise in my chest rose to a crescendo. The aneurysm-like pains in my head caused me to pass out.

  ***

  The Zeryth must have gone, because if she was still here, I would be dead for sure. My body was racked with pain, so I surmised that I was not dead. I was also not yet insane, but I was getting there.

  Fainting is a strange sensation. I just hate the aftermath of the fizzing sound that comes with it.

  Surely, I was losing my mind. This wasn’t the first time I had been on my own, and in my view the world would be just fine, if it wasn’t for people. I just didn’t get on with them. My parents were different, they didn’t count. After all, they’re not people, just my parents.

  But…I had done something a bit silly a few nights back, and I suppose it shook me up.

  Mum would alw
ays hide the alcohol she would drink at night, so that I wouldn’t see it or be corrupted by ‘the demon drink’, as Dad would call it.

  I knew, of course, where they hid the alcohol. I didn’t even think I would like the taste of it. I just wanted to try it, simply because it was forbidden for me to do so. That, in itself, made it very attractive to me. It was about five years ago, when I was just ten years old.

  There was a bottle of Cinzano in the cabinet. It looked just like lemonade to me. I hurriedly opened the bottle, and while I couldn’t really say what the scent was, I downed the bottle as quick as I could.

  The warm, fuzzy feeling that followed my bingeing made me feel very light-headed, so I went to bed. Although my head felt fine, for the most part, I found my legs were not behaving as they should.

  I scrambled up the stairs, into my bedroom, where the pink and white striped walls looked like colours that were merging into one, or many, like a kaleidoscope. If this was the affect of drinking, I didn’t want to do it. I’m out cold on the bed, wearing my day clothes. There just wasn’t time to change.

  Back to the present, and a few nights ago I did a similar thing, though I thought at the time it was much more measured.

  I was watching some scary movies, one after another, and I did so for three nights in a row. I guess you could say I was unnerved. Usually, it’s fun to be scared, right?

  I had a bottle of wine and I drank two large glasses, the night before last. I felt fine, relaxed. But after I went to bed, I woke up in the night, with an irresistible urge to go to the bathroom. Perhaps I had drank too much, too late.

  Anyway, I got the eeriest feeling. I could see my reflection, but it didn’t feel like me.

  The figure in the mirror reached out to me, and grabbed me by the throat.

  When I came to, I was not standing anymore. I was on my side in the bedroom. Somehow I had gotten from the bathroom to the bedroom, though if I had gone in the other direction, I would have fallen down the stairs, and maybe broken my neck, back, or both.

  My head really hurt. The pain was insufferable. My neck too, something really had happened there. How I hated that fainting feeling.

  Still, I couldn’t stay fixed to the floor all night, so I raised myself up from the floor, and, crawling on all fours, made my way into bed.

  I got to sleep almost straight away, but my heart was pounding. I hate it when that happens, because I keep fit and well, I hardly notice it when I’m exercising.

  But here, in the dark of night, alone, miles from anywhere, I am feeling it. My heart feels bigger than the rest of me at this moment, and is acting like it is going to burst out of my chest.

  The incessant pounding of my heart keeps me awake. Oh, how I want to sleep.

  I have to stay calm, I tell myself, but it’s not easy.

  Maybe an hour passes, and I am asleep again.

  On waking the next day, it feels like I have slammed my head against an iron door repeatedly, like doing it just the once wasn’t enough for me.

  I hadn’t of course. I was still very much on edge, and still trying to deal with the drummers from Sepultura in my head.

  I realise my bad mood isn’t entirely down to my encounter last night. I’m extremely grumpy when hungry, so I went to the kitchen and decided to make myself the biggest breakfast ever.

  I opened the pantry door and surveyed my food with horror. There were maggots, flies, and perhaps every representative of the insect family here. That’s the result of having a creature of the undead visit unannounced. Such demons left a trail, a scent, in some ways unnoticeable to humans, but to flies? It was like some demonic homing device.

  It seemed that undead zombie-gals I could handle, but creepy crawlies sent me super fast in the opposite direction.

  I screamed, to no-one in particular, and ran out of the wood-cabin. I was barely dressed, but far too scared to go back to the wood-cabin, not right now, anyway. I hadn’t given myself the opportunity to consider that what I had seen in the pantry was a trick of the mind. I likened it to the noodles in The Lost Boys, that turned out to be worms, that turned out to be just plain noodles. Mind tricks, just messing with your head.

  I must have been going at some speed, because I tripped over myself and landed right in front of one of the things that has scared me the most as a little girl.

  A tarantula was making its way towards me. I lay on the ground, paralysed with fear. But it was much more than that, I had sprained, perhaps even broken my ankle. I wanted to look at my ankle, see if any bone was poking out, but that spider’s eyes were locked onto me. Oh my

  God. The eyes.

  Cursing myself for leaving the wood-cabin, and knowing I should get a move on, I felt frozen, and waited, helplessly, for the spider to come and bite me. Even if I could have incinerated it with my hands, I would have to touch it. I could not do that.

  Sorry Nan, you bet on the wrong girl.

  The pain was bad. The fear factor was high. But some rationale kicked in. I knew enough to know that the spider’s bite itself wouldn’t be the problem. It was the fear of it, and also, the look of it. I could make out claws on the end of its legs. Jesus Christ.

  The pipettes of blood that the Zeryth spat on me had dried, my skin felt scabby, I felt mildly disgusted with myself, but was fine otherwise. I just didn’t like the initial sensation. I recalled being stung by a wasp when I was six years old and it had sent me into anaphylactic shock. I spent the last ten years swiping at them whenever they attacked me. This would be no different, except I recalled that back then, the wasp sting was quick, painful, violent.

  This would be slow and torturous, and the fact that tarantulas had an undeserved reputation as predators, was lost on me in that moment. I did all I could to stay awake, but fear overtook me, my low blood pressure kicked in, and I limply, pathetically fainted into nothingness, whilst the hairy arachnid, continued its slow but certain journey towards me. His eyes seemed to enlarge as mine got smaller.

  ***

  I was having a dream, nightmare, an out of body experience, I didn’t really know for sure.

  Sometimes it was better not to see the horrors approaching you, so I should be glad I was laying down in the woods with my eyes closed tightly, with old bug eyes and the eight legs that carried him on his way towards me. I tried to pray to the God I had held so much disdain for, and asked – pleaded with him to take that horror away.

  Voices in the Dark

  The winter season seemed to come earlier each year, and so my parents would set off earlier for their holiday if my father’s company allowed him to do so.

  Where they were going, they would be safe from the harsh cold and the biting needles of snow that stabbed at my face. On those days, I didn’t venture outside of Rosewinter at all.

  The cabin was stocked with pretty much anything and everything you could eat, so there was no need to.

  Although very cold and dark outside, it was very cosy inside and I loved it. I could forget that I was actually on my own, and enjoy the silence.

  I could light a fire, read a book, and drink a cup of tea, though my Mum thinks I drink far too much of the stuff. No sooner had I finished one cup when I would be reaching for another.

  Things had run smoothly for the last two years. I had done as my Nan had asked me. I had kept my kung fu skills up, and stayed at Rosewinter on my own, just a few days at a time. I had even enjoyed the experience. My parents had seen me grow up and mature. Part of it, I admit, was an act. I just had to convince them.

  Putting on a front was vital as a teen.

  "Hi Romilly."

  "Hi Mum."

  "Everything alright?"

  "Sure."

  "Want some tea?"

  "Sure. Thanks Mum."

  Repeat.

  Nan often led the conversations with me through her stories, and was rarely, if ever wrong.

  I had kept the Mirror safe. But I became increasingly worried that it would not return the favour. Whatever was going to happen, w
as simply going to happen. I had no say in that.

  It would have been great to have a friend, just anyone at all, on the night the Zee-girl paid me a visit. I was so shook up that I couldn’t think straight. In the cold light of day, I knew that she was looking to claim the Mirror, and kill me if necessary. Nan had said so. I just hadn’t truly believed it then. Actually try to kill me. What kind of gift was this?

  "A gift. A curse. Can often be much the same thing Romilly," she had said one time.

  But the strange marks on my hand were just one of the reasons people stayed away from me. Even if I liked certain people, I would mess it up.

  There was Troy Jackson, of course. He was captain of the football team, captain of the basketball team, and in the last year at school, head boy as well. Everyone liked him.

  Girls loved him and though they probably wouldn’t admit it, the boys wanted to be like him.