Winter

by Raven Taylor

  "You don't need to worry," the detective was a great deal kinder than Tipton had been when he had visited me in the hospital and taken my finger prints, "You aren't in any kind of trouble. I'll need you to come with me for some questions. Miss Hunter, you can wait here, Mabel will get you a coffee or tea if you like."

  My nervousness grew as I was separated from you and led through the double doors and up a flight of stairs to a small interview room.

  "I need to record this conversation," he told me when we were sat down, gesturing to a small Dictaphone, "For the records, it's nothing to worry about."

  I nodded, still head bowed and afraid as he stated 'for the record' the date, time and people present in the room.

  "Ok, this is just a friendly chat," he said, "I'm not here to grill you or put you on the spot or anything like that, I just want you to tell me, in your own words, what you think has been going on, so we can help you."

  "What about the people who died?" this was still my greatest concern, that I would be blamed for the string of deaths I had left in my wake, "Doctor Kingston, Ransley and, of course, the girl they found in the woods?"

  "That's not why we are here today," he assured me, "The investigations around these incidents are all closed with satisfactory conclusions. What I want to talk about today is your claims that you were held captive and possibly brainwashed by some sort of cult."

  "I don't really claim anything at the moment," I said honestly, "Because I still remember very, very little. Most of it is speculation based on small fragments of half remembered things and on things I have been told."

  "Just tell me anything you think might be relevant, then you can leave the investigation to us, we will endeavour to either prove or disprove anything you think may have happened."

  "I don't really know where to begin."

  "Why, at the beginning of course."

  And so I did. I found it surprisingly easy to talk once I had started. The inspector was not judgmental and only interrupted to ask questions when it was absolutely necessary. I told him all about Cane, stating that he was the only thing I was sure of. That it was him who had been ultimately responsible for what had happened to me and that he was currently hiding in The Witchery. The rest, the possibility of a cult and such, I made clear, was speculation and I that I had no actual memory of these things. I left out the part about the dates that I saw written on peoples flesh that foretold their deaths. This man seemed genuinely interested in helping and I did not want to end up sent back to the hospital so I tried to appear as sane as possible.

  It was as though a great weight had been lifted when the interview was over and I had stopped shaking and feeling nervous. The detective assured me that my claims would be fully investigated and that the first thing they would do would be interview Dylan.

  "I bet you feel better now, don't you, now that everything is out in the open and nobody is looking for you?" You asked we drove back to your flat.

  And you were right, I did. Now I had to find Lilly and tell her everything that had happened and to apologise for suggesting she was part of this. I had no idea how she would react or if she would even talk to me. I was worried also that she might still be sick and not up for visitors at all, especially me.

  In the small courtyard I pushed the buzzer for her flat and waited for the intercom to crackle. Minutes passed. I decided to try again. She had to be in. She would not be out if the hospital had told her to rest. Finally I heard the small click as somebody picked up the receiver on the wall in the hall.

  "Hello?" the voice that answered was not Lilly.

  "I'm here to see Lilly?" I asked the voice hopefully.

  "If this is who I think it is I think you should just get lost." the voice turned suddenly hostile.

  Who was this person anyway? She told me she had no family so she must be a friend.

  "Please," I begged, "It's important, if she'll only just hear me out then if she still doesn't want to see me I'll never bother her again."

  I heard the receiver click back into place. This friend without a name had cut me off. Obviously Lilly had told her all about me and what had happened last night. Clearly she had made it clear to her friend that she did not want to talk to me. Dejected, I trudged back across the courtyard. I was almost back on the street when I heard her call my name. I stopped and turned to see her at the open window to her flat.

  "Lilly," I cried, rushing back across the courtyard, "I have to talk to you, please just listen, I have some important things to say, I think I have the answers now, if you'll only just hear me out."

  "I'll let you in." she said but she still sounded angry.

  In her flat a girl with curly brown hair watched me suspiciously from her place on the sofa but did not introduce herself. She had a round, chubby face and she stared at me intently as I babbled awkwardly to Lilly about wanting to apologise and asking how she was, my words just coming out in a senseless jumble.

  "Bernie," Lilly turned to her friend, cutting my jabbering off mid sentence, "I'll see you later ok?"

  Bernie looked irritated as she got up and put her coat on. She left without a word, casting me angry and mistrusting glances all the way to the hall.

  "This had better be good," she snapped, angry colour flaring up in her cheeks.

  I looked at her and wondered about last night. She looked ok now. There where dark shadows under her eyes but other than that she was still the beautiful, radiant creature she had always been. Hard to imagine that she would be dead soon. I pushed that thought form my mind.

  "Are you alright? After last night?"

  "After you ran off and left me passed out on the floor?"

  "I called an ambulance." I said guiltily.

  "Well give this man a medal." she said sarcastically.

  "What was wrong with you?"

  "That's irrelevant," she said, "you said you came here to explain so get on with it."

  "Alright, firstly, I've just come from the police station," I hoped that if I got that part in first it might lend some credibility to the rest, "They're investigation The Witchery, I'm going to tell you what I've told them. Lilly, I wouldn't go to the police if I thought I was the bad one in all of this."

  I then went on to relay everything I had already told the detective that morning.

  "And I know you don't like talking about this," I added when I had told her all about the suspected cult, "But that night when you were attacked. I was there but I was up in the window. I was the one who pushed the terracotta plant pot."

  That stopped the doubtful shaking of her head. She froze and looked at me curiously.

  "You?" she asked.

  "Yes, I think you may even be the reason they dumped me. I betrayed them somehow because I was trying to protect you from them."

  I tried to read her blank expression as she tried to make sense of all I had told her. She was trying to find flaws in my story, searching for some reason not to believe it because no doubt in her mind the whole thing sounded fanciful and far fetched. Yet she believed it, I could see it in her eyes that although she did not want too, something was telling her to trust me.

  "Winter, every logical, rational bone in my body has been telling me since I met you that I am an idiot for getting involved. My head is telling me that you could be anybody, that you could be dangerous and your situation is far too complicated. My heart on the other hand, well my heart seems to disagree with my head some what."

  I looked at her hopefully and waited for her to continue.

  "Something about you resonates with my heart, touches my soul like nobody every has before. Now usually, because I have common sense and I am a realist, I would side with my head and not take such stupid risks but the ways things are these days I can offer myself so much more freedom. Do you know what it is like, Winter, to live without consequence? To know that nothing you do matters any more one way or another? very few people get to live as I am now. Most can't afford to take risks. I can. No one has ever been in love with
me. Not really. So I set my self a challenge and that was to make somebody fall madly and deeply in love with me. I had this crazy notion of embarking on this whirl wind romance with someone, something brief but so intense like nothing I have ever experienced before. I thought it would be so liberating to really throw myself into something like this safe in the knowledge that it was never meant to last."

  It was all becoming painfully clear. All this talk of living without consequence. Her earlier references to money being of no importance. The carefree way she lived her life. The fact that she did not even have a job.

  "Then you come into my life, just at the right time and it's like I can't stop thinking of you. You bewitch me and if I was myself these emotion might scare me but as it is they don't. Not much scares me now."

  "You know don't you?" I asked as it all became painfully clear.

  "Know what?"

  "That you're dying."

  She let out a deep, tragic, almost theatrical sigh, "You've spoken to the hospital haven't you? They had no right to tell you anything."

  "What's wrong with you Lilly?" I could sense her attitude changing. She was not angry at me anymore. It was as she said, she no longer had the time to be angry or afraid.

  "I have a brain tumour," her hand fluttered seemingly involuntarily to her brow, "It's inoperable."

  "Oh Lilly, I'm so sorry."

  "Don't be," she said and at last she gave me what I had longed for; a smile, "I've made my peace with it. I don't want to spend what time I have left having people feel sorry for me. I want to spend it living. To hell with. We have something here. I can't deny what I felt when I first saw you. Winter, I want you to be the last and only great love of my short and tragic life. "

  I was rendered speechless but thankfully I didn't have to answer. She came across the room towards me and kissed me. The breathe caught in my throat and I felt tears in my eyes. It was as if my very soul had been lifted out of my body and was flying somewhere above us. I had no clue as to why but it seemed that throughout the whole of my forgotten existence this was all I had strived for, all I ever wanted, my holy grail. And I found I knew exactly what to say. Exactly how to react. I could feel something hidden coming forward, part of what I used to before my trauma had stolen everything from me.

  "You're so beautiful. Is it so stupid to say I fell in love with the first time I saw you, that day at the club, when you looked at me with those lost, tragic eyes?"

  “It is not stupid,” I said as I reached out and took her hands in mine, the feel of her graceful white fingers sent my spirit soaring again, “It’s modern society, it has killed all the magic of love, many years ago love at first sight was common, it was beautiful and pure, never stupid. There’s a reason all of this is happening, all the strange things, my missing past, but my soul remembers you, maybe from another time removed from this one, and my soul has always loved you.”

  Where did that come from? I couldn’t say but she was looking at me now and on her face was the most radiant smile.

  “This has been a really bad time for both of us,” she said, “We’re both going through the kind of hell no one should ever have to suffer. Maybe this is our reward.”

  She reached out and smoothed my hair back from my face so she could kiss me on my forehead. Then, taking my hands again, she rose and pulled me to my feet.

  “Come on Winter.” she said as she turned and began to walk towards the door.

  I knew where she was going as I followed her out into the hall. I knew which was her room before she even opened the door. Images were tumbling through my head. A torrent of half recalled memories. I saw her sleeping so vividly it almost blinded me and I wanted to touch her so much it hurt but I couldn’t because if I did something terrible would happen. Yet here I was now feeling her hands on my neck as she pulled me down onto the bed. I knew what she wanted. What we both wanted. But my body told me I had never done anything like this before. I knew it was not just a case of more misplaced memories. This was different. I had never done this. Had I been waiting for her all my life?

  I was lost. Half of me in the pleasure of feeling her half naked body against mine and half of me in the fragmented, senseless images in my head. We surrendered completely to our passion and as we fell into each other my desire for her, that consuming hunger, blurred with the pictures my subconscious threw at me until somehow they became one and both the same. I saw her smooth white skin and her perfect body and I saw the dark shadow that was Cane. I felt her careful hands on the sides of my face and as I kissed her I felt like something wad watching us. I didn’t care. I felt the overwhelming desire to laugh. The energy we conjured between us was like some kind of enchantment, a magic that grew and grew and filled the room. I was suddenly aware of blood. Two bright spots on the blue sheets to my left. It fascinated me as I felt warm rivers running pleasantly across my shoulders but the fact that I was bleeding just seemed to make that growing energy stronger, the images more vivid, the experience more complete.

  And as we released the last of the magic in one final, climatic burst I was left with one resounding, blinding image in my head; the image of wings.

  I fell away from her, completely drained, now fully aware that I was in pain. I sat on the edge of the bed feeling sick and exhilarated at the same time. Behind me Lilly was just sitting up.

  “Oh my God!” I heard her exclaim as she caught sight of the blood.

  “It’s my scars, I think.” I said, turning to her, she looked worried.

  I had no idea why they should be bleeding like that, hadn’t the doctors told me they were old scars, well healed?

  “It’s ok, I think it’s stopped.” she said, her fingers were tracing the line of the scars, “Weird, they’re just scars, I can’t see where the blood was coming from, there’s no wounds. I'm so sorry."

  “Sorry?” I smiled, “Don’t be sorry, I’ve haven’t felt so alive since I wandered out of the woods.”

  “Well, it was pretty good,” she confessed, “I have to say though, I felt something I’ve never felt with a guy before, almost like a spiritual connection.”

  “I know, I felt it too.”

  I put my arms around her and held her as she rested her pretty head on my chest. I did not mention the shadow to her though, nor the wings. Those things disturbed me.

  When we stepped out on the Royal Mile that afternoon we were just like any normal couple. I had even begun to tell myself that it did not matter who I was or where I had come from. What my abusers had done to me in the past seemed of little importance as I focused all of my efforts on her. All that was important was here with me now.

  That is truly the day that I began to really learn, Caroline. It was clear that I was different. There was, of course, the paranormal experiences that had hounded me from the very beginning: Visions of death, poltergeists, dark shadows and plagues of nightmares. Then there was the fact that I was also physically unusual. People where always telling me so. Strangers, when meeting me, had to look twice to be sure there eyes were not deceiving them. For I was a beautiful and divine creature and I was always so otherworldly. The backdrop of the Old Town with its ancient architecture and alleys so narrow you could barely pass another person in them only served to emphasise my unearthly qualities, to harmonise with and complement my strangeness. Perhaps in another city I would have stood even more and people may not have been so easily fooled. But Edinburgh was a city filled with ghosts, in many cases the paranormal was its life blood, and it was easy for such an eerie being to blend in. And so after that initial glance and the moment of wonder that came with it people accepted me as simply an extraordinary beauty, nothing more. I think deep down inside they all knew, myself included, that there was something not right, we just never dug deep enough to realise it.

  That afternoon, we agreed it was time that you met Lilly. She told me she had a few things she needed to do that afternoon and I decided I would go back to your flat to see if there had been any news from the detectives. It
was agreed we would meet again at 7.30pm for dinner, to which I intended to invite you. I was on my way, heading past Calton old Cemetery, when I heard someone shout my name. I was startled when I saw Dylan lurking at the gates to the old cemetery, his hands jammed in his pockets and the collar of his jacket upturned. I turned into the church yard and confronted him.

  “What do you want?”

  “You went to the police," he said accusingly, "They questioned me all afternoon. They searched every room in The Witchery. Do you have any idea what you have done?"

  "I hope they found that bastard and took him away to give him what he deserves."

  "Quite the opposite," said Dylan, "They found nothing of course and I told them nothing. But the damage is already done. I fear this will all be over for me soon one way or another so I have come to tell you the truth, about who you are and why you are here, before you can do anymore damage."

  This was a welcome development. This was something I was willing to listen to.

  “Alright,” I told him, “Tell me.”

  “Not here,” he said glancing about nervously, “You need to come back to The Witchery though who knows if its even safe there any more, they’re probably going to kill me anyway.”

  We made our way back to the exclusive hotel in silence. I was filled with apprehension. What was waiting for me inside of those ancient walls? Would I be locked away again, held prisoner? It had to be a trap, surely. This time he might even kill me, that mysterious Cane. I swallowed these fears though and allowed him to take me inside into one of the lavish suites.