Dark Winter: Trilogy

by Hennessy, John

  "Two will die. What did you mean by that?"

  "What?"

  "You heard me. You said ‘Two Will Die’."

  "I did not. You’re imagining things, girl. Now answer my question before I turn you over to the police for trespassing. Now what are you doing here?"

  "Is there a boy here, somewhere?"

  "A boy? No! Are you insane? You are the only one here. The school is closed."

  Beth looked around the girl’s cubicles. There was no sign of a boy, no sign of any struggle. She wanted to ask ‘What’s with the axe, then?’ but decided against it.

  It’s possible you got it wrong, Beth. The ouija board freaked you out. There’s no conspiracy here. Curie is innocent, and you’ll just have to accept that.

  "I made a mistake, Mr Curie," said Beth, carefully enunciating each word.

  "That you did, girl, that you did." Curie rose to his feet, and gestured to Beth to do so as well.

  Her head still hurt from the blow.

  As she got up slowly, she realised her shoes were back on her feet, albeit with the straps still undone. He hadn’t bound her hands too well, either.

  He touched me, the filthy bast –

  Curie picked up the axe. But Beth had freed a hand, and struck a finger at the caretaker, right into his eye. He howled in pain and clutched his stricken socket, and Beth pushed past him, almost skidding into the splits on the fifth floor of her former school.

  She ran down the stairs, barely making contact with any of them.

  Click-a-clack, clack-a-click-a-clack.

  The sound echoed into the night.

  You were wrong Beth. There is no boy here. Just you, Curie, and an axe. His axe.

  Beth pushed the door open and flung herself into the openness of the school grounds. She would make it to the gate before Curie would, there was no doubt about that. She saw the gate up ahead and breathed a sigh of relief, before a figure holding an axe stood in front of her.

  Curie. How the hell did he get here so fast? How. How. How?

  No time to think about that. Beth about-turned and ran to the other side of the school grounds. The crescent moon cast wicked shapes on the ground, and the trees looked like their branches might sweep her off her feet and crush the life out of her body at any moment.

  Beth had few options. There was no second gate, but there was a high wall that, if she ran at it with enough speed, she might, just might be able to climb over it. The probability of failure was not worth thinking about.

  The wall ran alongside the part of the building she had just came out of. Beth was going at such a high speed, that she tripped over the bundle in the ground. She fell, but not as hard as she thought she would.

  She cursed herself for looking back, but she had to, just to see what it was that had felled her.

  There was a big black bag on the ground, and a child’s hand lay limp between the zipper.

  Two will die, Beth. Best get a move on.

  With tears streaming down her face, her heart banging out of her chest, Beth launched herself at the wall. If she missed, Curie was just a pace or two behind her.

  ***

  The wall was wet from the heavy night’s rain, but Beth had made it to the top. She dug her fingernails in, and yanked herself up. She could see a garden hedge in front of her, about six feet below.

  Curie was yelling at her to get down. He was brandishing the axe at her, and threatening the police would come for her.

  Of course, he won’t call the police. Nor will you, Beth. After all, what would you tell them?

  Giving her crucifix a kiss, Beth flung herself on the mercy of the hedge below. "Be gentle," she whispered, as her body careered downwards.

  She landed softly. Beth was free.

  ***

  Picking the leaves out of her mouth, Beth scrambled clumsily from the hedgerow. She could hear Curie cursing her name in the distance, but it didn’t matter. She was free of him. The boy, or whatever it was in that black bag, was not free, and would not wake to witness another dawn. Whilst this saddened her somewhat, she had to get away from the school, and towards the relative safety of Toril’s house.

  Relative safety.

  No, Beth knew it wasn’t safe to go back there. She decided to go to the nearest hospital, and hoped that Toril and Jacinta would be there.

  Beth took a look back towards the school, and even in the distance, the sheer size of the wall that she had somehow scaled, looked too awesome in height and scale for anyone to have achieved it.

  Thank God I was good at hurdles, thought Beth.

  Her relief was tempered by another thought.

  A pity that boy wasn’t good at climbing, but lucky for you Beth, you were always good at that.

  Good for you, Beth. You can sleep soundly tonight.

  Beth realised she was beating herself up, and slowed to a snail pace as she neared the hospital.

  The plan was insane, Beth. How could you rescue someone who was already dead? The ouija

  gave you some information, you tried, but it was already doomed to fail. Sleep soundly. You did your best.

  Unable to console herself, and unsure how she could make Curie pay, she entered the hospital foyer and pressed the buzzer for attention.

  "Yes?" said the receptionist.

  Trying to collect herself was not easy. Maybe the landing on the hedge was not as soft as she thought. Still, words started to come out.

  "Beth O’Neill. That’s my…er…name. Looking for Jacinta Crow, bust her leg earlier tonight."

  "You’re not checking into the hospital?" quizzed the receptionist.

  "No…er, no. Why would I do that?" asked Beth.

  "You look like you’ve been through hell. No offence."

  Beth realised that she probably did look like hell. Still, Jacinta’s health was all important.

  "None taken. I probably don’t look my best right now."

  "Hell of an evening, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh well, let’s see. Jacinta Crow, you say….mmm hmm, here we are. Yes. Ward Three."

  "Is she alright?"

  "Go to the ward, and you’ll see. But she’s in good hands, I’m sure."

  Beth looked for the directions to Ward Three. As she passed through Wards One and Two, the fluorescent light flickered. She had that sense of dread once again, and saw a figure crossing ahead of her in the reduced light.

  It was a young girl, maybe ten or twelve years old, dressed in a white communion dress.

  It was a white dress, adorned with bows, with an angels and unicorns print. It would look perfectly normal, only it was stained with blood, which looked like it had dried a long time ago.

  She turned to look directly at Beth, who shook with fright. As she was trying to process the image in her head, the light flickered back on, and the ghostly figure disappeared around the corner.

  Beth managed to get to Ward Three, but the girl had glided in ahead of her. The girl left bloody footprints that made a squelching sound as she walked. Beth diverted her eyes, and could see someone familiar - recognising the back of Toril’s head. Jacinta was lying down. A nurse was tending to her. The girl had disappeared, and Beth realised just how unnerved she was.

  Just as she was able to speak to Jacinta and Toril, the little ghost girl appeared behind the nurse, bringing her hand down against her back, in a stabbing motion, the blade protruding through the nurse’s chest. Beth looked on, horrified, unable to speak.

  Then the ghost girl turned to Beth. She smiled at her, showing blood between her teeth. She raised her right hand, and drew her index finger across her neck. Beth started to hear the ghost girl speaking to her.

  "Hello Beth," she said. "There’s always a plan. A design. Nothing ever just happens, and you can’t escape your fate. Two will die. Don’t forget that."

  She then picked out an apple from a pocket in her dress. She bit into it, and blood splattered onto the floor. Beth recoiled in horror as her hand was holding the same bloody apple with
bite marks in it.

  The ghost girl was nowhere to be seen.

  ***

  "Young woman? Can you hear me?"

  The nurse was shaking Beth, who stood as if she was in a trance.

  Another voice. "Her name is Beth, she’s our friend."

  Beth came out of her trance-like state.

  "Oh..Oh God…did you not see that girl? Where – where did she go? There was a knife….blood…where is she?"

  The nurse regarded Beth curtly. "Young lady, this is a hospital. Sometimes you’ll see blood and knives here. But there is no-one else here. You’re imagining things, girl."

  You’re imagining things. That’s what Curie had said. Now this nurse was saying it. Could they both be wrong?

  Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah.

  She could hear a little girl laughing. Beth spun around as she felt a finger scrape along the back of her neck.

  "Jesus! Can’t you hear that?" Beth said aloud, not really paying much attention to the nurse.

  "Hear what?" said the nurse. "Look, if you need help, I can send a doctor up to see you."

  "That’s okay," Toril interjected. "She’s with friends now. We’ll look after her."

  "Fair enough," said the nurse, non-plussed. "Here to help if you need anything."

  Jacinta was sleeping on the bed.

  "She’s out cold," said Toril, "But she’s going to be just fine. Beth – what happened to you?"

  Toril poured Beth a cup of water. Beth sat down, and recounted the night’s events to Toril as best as she could recall them, with one exception. She didn’t mention seeing the girl in the white dress that was covered in blood.

  Wouldn’t want your friend thinking you are imagining things, would we Beth?

  After she had finished talking, Toril asked "Do you think the boy is dead?"

  Beth said that she didn’t know, and felt beyond awful for leaving him there, but admitted that he ‘probably was’ dead.

  "You did your best," said Toril. "We all did Beth. The doctor said Jacinta can go home in the morning. Turns out she didn’t break her leg after all. We just imagined things."

  You did your best.

  We just imagined things.

  "It was just a stupid game, right Toril?" asked Beth.

  "It was a stupid game, Beth, you’re right." Toril said. "I won’t be messing with it again, you can be sure of that." Toril wasn’t sure she had convinced Beth of that, much less herself.

  Two friends had been put in severe danger because of the ouija board, and things had happened tonight that was more than the ‘weird’ Toril had previously been wishing for. Too much weird, thought Toril.

  Too much had happened to dismiss the events entirely, but they had been through enough for one day. Toril and Beth fell asleep, but Beth’s slumber was infected with nightmarish images.

  Curie, swinging the axe. The figure who coerced them to play ouija, until ‘two will die’ was spelt out. The stench of death from him. The boy in the bag, laying on the school grounds. The ghost girl with the pretty dress. The knife being stuck repeatedly into the nurse’s back. The bloodied apple appearing in Beth’s hand. A fingernail scratching her neck.

  Make it stop, Jesus. Dear Lord, make it stop.

  More images.

  The girl with the bloodied mouth, was skipping. As she skipped, Beth could see her feet were landing on something. It was the boy in the bag. The girl’s feet were denting the bag in the middle, and the boy’s limp hands flapped wildly, as if controlled by some deranged puppet master.

  Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah. Two will die.

  Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah. Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah.

  Outside, it had finally stopped raining.

  A Smouldering Wreck

  Ronald Winter had been driving for twenty-five of his forty-six years, and in all that time, he had never come close to having an accident. On this occasion, however, there had been no alternative but to swerve in the road to avoid the girl.

  It wasn’t a particularly dangerous stretch of road. At least, it didn’t have that reputation. What the hell was someone doing in the middle of the road?

  It was hard to deny the facts, even though he lay, his body crushed against the airbag in the car. His nose, broken. Blood was everywhere.

  Daphne. Where was Daphne?

  The airbag had hit her full on, with her body absorbing most of the impact.

  In the haze, Ronald wasn’t sure, but it seemed as the car perched dangerously on the cliff side, that a girl, a young girl, maybe ten, or twelve years old at the most, was peering into the window on Daphne’s side.

  Ronald recognised the dress. He had bought a very similar one for my tenth birthday. He recalled just how happy I was when I opened it that year. My laughing was infectious.

  The girl opened a small purse pocket, which was attached to her dress. Ronald craned his neck to see what she was doing.

  Drawing her finger from the pocket, her hands were covered in red ink.

  No, not that. Not ink.

  Blood.

  Writing in reverse on the window, she spelt out ‘Two Will Die.’

  Ronald recoiled in horror. There was nothing he could do except sit there, crushed up against the airbag, and the crumpled dashboard behind it. There was no way to tell if Daphne was alive or not, but he hoped that she was. He would give anything for that.

  In a voice that surely came from the pits of Hell itself, Daphne’s head swung round at an impossible angle to mouth the words ‘Two Will Die’, to Ronald.

  Ronald noticed something else. The girl bore a necklace, with a letter ‘D’ fashioned in gold.

  Grinning through bloodied teeth, the girl drew her finger across her neck, threw her head back and began to laugh.

  Evil can be Found

  in the Most Innocent of Things

  I had secured the door, but I also knew that Alix could burst through if he wanted to. I shuddered as a draft poked through the beams anyway. The old wood-cabin wheezed its disapproval.

  Troy…well, he was a different matter. I actually liked Troy a lot. I thought we had gotten on well in music class, as well as could be expected for someone like me. I always thought he was more grown-up than some of the other boys, and this really appealed to me. I refused to believe that Troy would let Alix attack me, but when those two got something into their heads, it was hard to stop them. It was perhaps the main reason that they were so popular at school.

  They just acted like free spirits and did whatever they wanted to do.

  I could hear the girls talking. It was deathly quiet in the woods. Of all people I hoped that

  Toril Withers could understand me. Her interest in the occult, Satanism, and white witchcraft had appealed to me to the point that I did want to talk to her about the Mirror, and the strange markings on my hands.

  Toril was saying to the group that parts of Gorswood Forest was haunted. There was supposed to be a house similar in size to Rosewinter that existed in the most eastern point of the Forest, but no-one had ever found it. Remember St Margaret’s Hospital? The ruins aren’t far from here. They say the ghosts of the Great Hall roam these woods on a regular basis.

  Haunted? This was news to me, but given the night’s events, I couldn’t discount anything. I refused to look in the fridge again, but hoped that I really had just imagined the plates of maggots and fleas. If I ever needed to lose weight, I would just use that image as my motivation.

  Jacinta Crow was saying that she thought I was weird. Funny, I thought the same thing about her, and I’m sure I was not the only one. Her blonde hair was not really blonde at all, but almost white, like an old lady’s hair. She had a monotone way of speaking, more like a boy’s voice than a girl’s, and she kept herself to herself. No-one expected that she and Toril would become very good friends. Some had even sniggered that Toril chose Jacinta because ‘she made her look good.’

  Beth O’Neill, on the other hand, seemed to hold the balance of power between the two girls. She seemed to be the voice of reason and sanity among
st the occult fantasies of Toril, and the deadness of Jacinta’s cold blue eyes, that would betray not a single emotion.

  When I asked how she had ended up becoming such a close friend with them, Beth had half-joked one time with me on how "You can’t ever know what Jacinta is thinking, and you sure don’t want to know what Toril is thinking."

  I hoped that Beth would ensure the two girls turned back, and that Troy could keep Alix at bay. I wouldn’t mind Beth and Troy coming in though, weirdly enough. Though for my own peace of mind, I’d have to make sure that whatever had been in the fridge, was no longer there.