Winter

by Raven Taylor

  I did not go back to the Underworld there and then, I was too unsettled and confused by these strange new feelings. I went to Grey Friar’s instead where I could sit on someone’s grave and think things over. I was now past the time for tour groups and the cemetery was deserted, the gates where securely locked for the night. I lay down on the damp ground and stared up the stars. I couldn’t stop thinking of her.

  Soon I became aware of a familiar presence close by and I heard him singing softly to himself, a German rock song he had obviously picked up somewhere on his travels. I sat up and backed up against the gravestone of William Phillips, 1855- 1910, beloved husband and father but I did not turn around. I didn’t need to.

  “Winter,” Cane was standing behind the stone and he tapped me on head, “I knew I’d find you here, mooching around as always.”

  He walked a large arc around the stone and came to sit opposite me. I didn’t look at him, I was trying to hide my expression.

  “Now, now,” he said and he hooked an index finger under my jaw so he tilt my head, “Let me see your beautiful face.”

  He studied me as if I were a painting for a few moments and I tried to disguise my emotions. I could smell whisky on him.

  “Still the same mournful, morbid Winter then,” he sighed in disappointment.

  “Hello cane,” I managed to say at last.

  “And hello to you too, look what I have,” he took a bottle of the usual from his coat, “I thought we might enjoy it out here tonight sayings how you enjoy graveyards so much. We might see the Mackenzie Poltergeist, hmm?”

  He broke the seal on the bottle, unscrewed the cap and handed it to me. I took a long drink.

  “I’ve had a difficult night Cane.” I said.

  “More difficult than usual? Poor Winter. Time to drown your sorrows then I expect.” he took a gulp of the bourbon and sprang to his feet.

  I watched with mile amusement as he leapt on top of one of the monuments and spread his arms and wings.

  “Gott weiss ich will kein engel sein!” he cried and then he burst out laughing, “I picked that up in one of the pubs tonight. Its from a song by a German band. It means ‘God knows I wont be an Angel when I die’. Delightful isn’t it?”

  I smiled vaguely, not something I did often, and he jumped down from the monument, evidently pleased by my reaction.

  “You see, I can bring a smile to your sombre face and you are so pretty when you smile.”

  I took the bottle from him and as I drank he lit a cigarette.

  “But this is a wonderful place I have to agree,” he said, “It’s a monument to all our work, our kind, we did this, all of this.”

  Cane gestured at the tombs and the monuments that surrounded us. I didn’t want to tell him that wasn’t exactly why I liked it.

  We finished off the rest of the bottle there in the graveyard and finally I agreed to accompany him back to the Underworld. The first signs of dawn where beginning to show on the horizon. I went back changed, altered so that I would never be the same again. I wondered what would become of me now that I had taken the first steps down a very dangerous road.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  The cold stiffness of the frosty night had crept up my curled spine and spread slowly across my shoulders. It woke close to midnight and every muscle in my body screamed in protest as I tried to move. But it wasn't the discomfort of my sleeping arrangement that had caused me to wake, it was the sensation that I was being observed, the feeling of some unpleasant presence near by. My efforts to coax my rigid muscles back to life temporarily abandoned I forced my heavy eyes open and looked around. There he was standing over me. From my bed in the corner of the covenanters jail the figure seemed to tower above me, though he was no more than a young child, the angle of my vision leant him height and his intense gaze bore into me as I squinted against the rays of moonlight that crept over the tall tower of the Kirk. Trying to ignore the curious boy I managed, with an effort to get to my feet. He stood there still, not moving, his dark eyes staring out of the deep set sockets in his pale face. I side stepped around him and out onto the path .I was just about to start walking when I felt a sharp tug on the back of my coat. With a shudder I slowly turned around to see the boy looking up at me. There was something distinctly wrong about him. The tiny but perfect black suit and tie he wore lead to the illusion that he was not really a boy at all but a man shrunk down to the size of a child. His expressionless eyes seemed far too old. The bruise on his left temple appeared so out of place. I looked down at him, my unease mounting with every passing second, and his small red lips moved slowly as he spoke.

  “Can you help me?”

  I stared at him. I knew what he was, I had seen ghosts from time to time and I never did have much time for them. I ignored him and began to walk towards the gates that connected this shut off corner to the main cemetery. Spirits were troublesome. They were lost people who had not moved on and for some reason were so attached to their previous life that they refused to be reincarnated. As I said, spirits and Angels often could not see each other unless they actively went to seek out one another and when this happened it was always trouble. Cane had been known to deliberately seek out spirits with the soul intention of annoying them for his own twisted amusement.

  I walked through the gate. I was thinking of the night before, of how I had given Lilly the kiss of death, and I still ached at the thought of it. I had not been to see her that evening, not yet, because the pain and guilt were too much. I had wanted to be alone and so I had wandered away from my chamber in the Underworld to spend the evening sleeping in the frosty tomb of some long dead human in the Covenanters jail.

  The Prison was actually just a walled of section at the rear of the Kirk where some of the richer people’s tombs were. It had gotten its name when in the 17th centaury, ‘Bloody’ George Mckenzie, in charge of the jail under King Charles II, used this area to hold hundreds of condemned Presbyterians. They were left there, crowded in the bitter winter cold without food or a roof over their heads while they waited to go to the gallows and many died before they even got there. The man himself was buried nearby in the Kirk yard and it is he who is supposed to cause the disturbances in the prison. I had never met him and in my opinion any strange occurrences were just caused by human hysteria.

  The boy ghost was still following me as I wound my way through the headstones. I was in no mood for childish games.

  “What do you want?” I snapped, glaring over my shoulder at him.

  “I died during the plague, but I cannot be reborn. I was looking for my bear in the nursery. They walled us all up, all the little children so the disease would not spread and I didn’t find my bear before I died. I know where he is now. He is in the nursery still, but somebody forgot him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I was tiring of him already. I could not understand why human souls could end up trapped and unable to move on because of such stupid, meaningless things.

  “My bear is still in the nursery, but not with the other bears. I cannot touch physical things and I was told that Dark Angels dealing in death could help because they are a step closer to the physical world.”

  Why did I have the feeling this was all Cane’s doing? I silently cursed him.

  “I want my bear to be with the others bears in the glass box, it’s safe in their and the little children will come to see him.”

  Glass box? Was this ghost deranged? What did he mean?

  “Ah…” it had suddenly clicked.

  The nursery that had been on the Royal Mile had been walled up with the children inside during the black death. It was a museum now. The museum of childhood filled with old toys, dolls and games.

  “Right, I’ll get the bear and I’ll leave it somewhere where the staff will find it when they open up tomorrow, if you answer some questions for me: Was the one who told you to seek the help of a Dark Angel an Angel too?”

  He nodded sombrely.

  “And did
he have a top hat and purple hair?”

  Again a small nod.

  “Did he tell you where to find me?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I see. Well, where exactly is this bear and what does it look like?”

  “In the basement. In the far left hand corner. Behind some boxes.”

  I set off still not understanding how a bear could be so important but knowing that Cane had sent this boy and that he might be angry if I did not do as he asked I headed for the Royal Mile.

  It was busy, being a Friday night, but I passed unnoticed through the crowds spilling out of the bars and soon reached the museum. I drifted through the locked doors undetected into the small, dark gift shop. Shelves and shelves of glassy eyes gazed at me from the stuffed toys and wooden puppets rattled on their strings as I passed. In the corner a red light of a security camera blinked intermittently but the tape in the morning would show no sign on my presence.

  I glided weightlessly out into the stairwell and began to descend into the basement. It was dark and damp in the old storage vault and I supposed if I had have been human it would have been quite unnerving. But I was a bringer of death, what did I have to fear from these shadows and dusty children’s playthings?

  I saw dismembered dolls arms poking grotesquely from a crate and the head of a wooden rocking horse stared at me from a shelf. It was a sad place. All these material things that had been so well loved now pushed away to rot and moulder in the dark.

  How Cane would have mocked if he could hear my sentimental thoughts.

  There was a stack of boxes five high in the far left hand corner and I carefully moved their sagging cardboard shells one by one. I shifted the last one and there it was, just as he had said it would be, a worn out old teddy bear. It sat sorrowfully in the corner, it had matted fur and a missing ear, just waiting to be found. I bent down and picked it up and was just about to leave when something else caught my eye.

  There was a square cut into the concrete floor covered with a stone slab and this intrigued me. I set the bear down and crouched again. I pushed at the slab and found it to be loose and I was able to work it free and lift it with ease. It was as I had suspected: a secret store, a small hole hollowed out into the ground. There was something in it too, a stack of yellowing documents. I lifted them out and began to smile as my eyes scanned the ancient, smudged print.

  “So there was more too it than a bear, he was just too young to realise that this was what was really holding him back.” I said to myself.

  I was holding in my hands records of all the children who had attended the nursery during the time it was decided it should be sealed off. The list was long. This what I was really supposed to find. The child wanted people to know his name and the names of his friends so they could be remembered.

  I took the documents and the bear, went back upstairs and left them on the counter next to the till in the gift shop where they were sure to be found. How they got there would be a mystery. I smiled a little. Another strange story to add to Edinburgh’s ever growing list of supernatural events.

  When I got outside I was not surprised to find Cane waiting for me, leaning on a lamp post, smoking, with the collars of his long jacket turned up and his wings neatly folded. He straightened and turned his white face to me with a crooked grin and reached up to straighten his hat.

  “Cane, did…”

  “Hush Winter,“ he cut me short, “Come with me and let me explain.”

  There were two things unusual about Cane that night: Firstly he seemed completely sober, calm and sane (he was usually so manic and unpredictable) and secondly he took my hand and pulled me up into the air with strong beats of his powerful wings (Angels rarely fly; it takes a lot of effort and walking is generally so much easier and less tiring).

  I followed in haste, rousing my own wings into action, as he glided low over the gothic architecture. It was so long since I had flown and, despite the strain my body weight put on my flimsy wings, it was exhilarating to watch the roof tiles flash by, to arc around the spires at great speed and feel the cool night air all around us.

  He led me to the castle high on the volcanic mound to settle on the giddy heights of the ramparts that rose right out of the sheer rock face itself. I was glad it had been a short flight, I was already beginning to tire. He stood on the wall high above the city, his jacket blowing about him and his wings spread for balance and I stood too admiring the spread of lights below us and savouring the dizzy sensation I got from looking down.

  “That’s the first real smile I have seen on your face in a long time.” Cane observed.

  In truth I knew exactly how long. It was the first one since the night I formed my attraction to Lilly.

  “It was you who sent that spirit to me tonight wasn’t it?”

  “Yes Winter, it was me.”

  “But why?”

  “I hate seeing you so unhappy, so filled with guilt and self hatred. I thought having you mark the girl would make you understand and that you would come back to me but you did not come to me tonight and I found your chamber empty and only then did I realise just how much the whole affair has affected you.”

  He paused and sat down cross legged on the wall. I remained standing, gazing at the city.

  “I care for you Winter. It may not seem that way but I do. I’ve watched how much you’ve suffered over the past months, how you suffer still, and though I do not show it inside I cry for you. I think I know now how different you are, that you aren’t as cruel as I hoped you would be and I love you all the more for it. I think I understand now that you will never be happy just to mark people, that you’ll always want to know you’re doing something good. That’s part of the reason I sent that miserable child to you for help. Tomorrow I will show you something truly miraculous that might help you be able to live with yourself.”

  “Miraculous? Tell me what it is.”

  “No dear Winter. Be patient.”

  “I am sorry Cane.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “That I am such a mournful unhappy creature. It bewilders me why you picked such a weak, pitiful companion when there are so many others who would be glad of your company and would share your love of killing and your eccentric ways.”

  “The answer to that is simple: Because they are not beautiful like you and they do not need me like you. Besides,” he sprung lightly to his feet, “They would steal my lime light!”

  He pulled off his hat and skipped comically along the wall.

  “And why bring me up here?”

  “Oh just for the hell of it, you enjoy flying and we don’t do it very often so why not? Are you rested enough to make it back down to the ground without falling out of the sky?”

  “I think so.”

  “Come along then.”

  I watched as Cane jumped off the wall. It was a long way down to the ground. I put my arms by my sides but kept my wings folded as I made my body go rigid and took a swan dive off the ramparts. I let myself free fall for a minute or two, watching as the cliff face rushed passed me, then I spread my wings just before I collided with the street below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Cane came for me while I slept in my chamber. As the black claws of an Angel’s sleep consumed my troubled mind I felt his hands on my shoulders, shaking me awake, and the clutches of dark oblivion retreated at his touch. I groaned and turned over on the hard slab where I rested and opened my eyes to my small room. He was standing over me and he held a glowing candle in his gloved hand. He was not wearing his hat and the shadows from the flame made his scarred and tarnished features appear grotesque and ghoulish. He was grinning at me, the tips of his fangs resting on his bottom lip.

  “Good evening beautiful one.” he addressed me as I sat up.

  He stepped back, holding the candle at his chest like a demonic choir boy and eyeing me with his good eye like a hungry predator. I stood up stiffly, my wings were crumpled and my clothes a mess, I was unnerved by seeing Cane stan
ding there the way he was. I stretched and rubbed my eyes. There were faint voices coming from the passage way outside. Other Angles were stirring.

  I flexed my wings and they screamed in protests, still tired from their efforts the previous night.

  “I hate them.” I cursed, reaching round and trying to straighten the ruffled feathers that had been disturbed during sleep but not quite able to reach.

  “Be still.” said Cane and he set the candle down and turned me around then proceeded to fix the feathers himself.

  I rubbed my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair as Cane finished with my wings.