Dark Winter: Last Rites

by Hennessy, John

  Update. She was fuck-I-am-going-to-die-tonight scared.

  The phone at the other end started to ring, and it kept on ringing.

  “Damien, answer you fucker. Fucking answer-”

  Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Damien Lawlor. Please leave a message, and I promise to return your call.

  “Fucking fat bastard,” spat Annelise. “Stop fucking playing with yourself and answer the phone.”

  That’s what she wanted to say. Instead, she said this:-

  “Damien? It’s Annelise. I know it’s early in the morning and it’s probably nothing, but could you come over here? Right now. I think there’s someone in the house, and I’m alone. This is not a come on, okay? Be quick!”

  She instantly regretted adding the information about the come on, but he had ran his hand over her legs a few times when they had been sat talking about a client. She wanted to sue him – in fact, she wanted to kill him on more than one occasion.

  Right now, she needed her fat bastard of a boss more than anything in the world.

  Sitting up in her bed, Annelise swung her legs outside, dangling them towards the floor, taking great care to keep her toes from the carving in the wood. It was possible she was imagining things, but unlikely. The window in front of her reflected her outline, but also a shadow behind her.

  With her heart belting out of her chest, she turned slowly around to see a black, human-like shape in the bed next to her, sitting upright in the bed. She screamed so hard that the next thing she heard was her name being called.

  “Annelise! Annelise!”

  The sound was coming from outside of the window. Damien was walking towards the house.

  She was unable to answer him, hoarse as she was from screaming.

  “Dame…Dami-en….” Annelise’s voice simply did not match her own.

  Damien was smiling. Actually it was the kind of smile a clown would wear, only Damien was not covered in makeup, or wearing oversized boots. But he looked deranged and disturbed.

  “He’s going to make me go away,” he said.

  Annelise’s look of confusion changed to one of horror.

  “What? What?”

  In the next moment, Damien pressed the barrel of a gun to his grinning mouth, and fired. The shot rang out so loud that Annelise believed that the sound would carry for miles, and that the local police would have heard it, decided to investigate, and help her.

  As she stood looking down from her window at Damien’s lifeless body, she began to shake as the skin on her arms became covered in goosebumps. She didn’t want to turn around. Whatever had made Damien kill himself, might just be the same apparition that was in her room.

  Under her nightclothes, she felt for the small golden cross that she was wearing. To Annelise, it was just a pretty trinket, but on that night, it became something else. Whatever faith the teachers had beaten out of her at school was making a very welcome return.

  “Please God, make it go away.”

  She repeated the simple request several times. As she spoke, her chest began to settle, and she could breathe normally once more. She closed the curtains, and as she did so, the wail of a woman, somewhere in the distance, rang out for several moments.

  A banshee, or as I would come to know it, one of the Ze-ryth-ra. Damien had breathed his last.

  ***

  As Annelise had told Curie, she did not scare easily. In the light of the day’s events, not to mention the night’s occurrences, she would have to review that position.

  As she sank back into her bed, her initial thought was to call the police. But with recent cuts to the service, police weren’t necessarily tracking break-ins and muggings. What was she supposed to tell them? That she felt under attack from something or someone? That wouldn’t be enough. Police generally didn’t come to the door unless something had actually happened, which was fair enough.

  But Annelise wished there was something she could say to them to make them come. She clasped her mobile in her hand, wondering whether or not to make the call. Her hands were shaking, and the big button mobile she had purchased for her mother seemed to be a better bet now. An SOS button was integrated into the device. All you had to do was press it, and it would ring the designated number.

  Trembling figures hovered over the 9. She didn’t want to waste police time, but she really had no idea how to explain that the body lying outside on the ground was her boss, and that she was the last person who contacted him.

  She did not know that for sure, but who else would he have had contact with?

  Curie.

  Just before blowing his head off, he had said that he will make it all go away.

  It sounded just like something Curie would say.

  With a renewed confidence that came out of nowhere, she stood up and looked out of the window.

  She was not at all surprised to see the body was no longer there.

  Finally, she made the call.

  ***

  The reception at St Margaret’s Hospital answered within two rings. Impressive, for that time in the morning. Annelise blurted something out about Damien and being very scared, but she wasn’t going to call the police.

  “So what can I help you with, Miss Lister?” asked the receptionist.

  “You can get someone from Section D to tell me what is happening with Donald Curie.”

  “He’s in his room, Miss.”

  Annelise held the phone for a moment before speaking again.

  “What is he doing?”

  “At this time in the morning? Sleeping, I would expect. Which is what you should be doing, if I may say so Miss.”

  It seemed a reasonable enough statement to make. But people were dying whilst Curie was getting away with it, so no, it wasn’t okay.

  “I want you to check on him. See what he’s up to. Check if he is talking to anyone, or muttering to himself.”

  The receptionist held the phone away from her mouth and yawned. To Annelise’s ears, it sounded like she was bitch-sighing.

  “We’ll run a check on him, okay?”

  “Okay,” replied Annelise, but it was hardly a courteous reply. “I will come up as soon as your doors are open.”

  “Miss, we-”

  But Annelise had already cut her off, something she didn’t like doing but had learned the trick from her mother. The conversation had reach a point where it wasn’t working for either one or both of them, hence the dead tone.

  She pulled the pillow towards her face, trying to induce herself to sleep for a few hours before the dawn chorus rose her once again, as it did every single day.

  She then let the pillow fall, recalling that the smothering object was the last thing that Malcolm Curie remembered. Donald Curie had been very exact about how the act had been carried out.

  ‘I had to force my elbow into the pillow. I probably bust my brother’s nose doing it, but I couldn’t hold it down – hold him down, with my small hands. My upper body strength was good, even back then. I did him a favour, even though he didn’t know it.’

  She decided that morning was going to be her second and final session with him.

  ***

  On arrival at St Margaret’s, no-one was at reception. Laughing at the ridiculous positioning of a bell on the desk, she hit it with the palm of her hand three times in quick succession, even though the sign on the wall said If no-one is on reception when you arrive, sound the bell only once. Someone will attend to you soon. Please do not abuse this service.

  Some service this is, thought Annelise.

  Eventually, someone did come through, but it was a police officer.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “That depends,” she replied. “Where’s the receptionist I was speaking to? I called this place about five hours ago. It’s nine o’clock now.”

  “I know what time it is,” he replied bluntly. “What business have you got with the receptionist?”

  “I don’t have any business with her.”

  �
�So why did you call at such an early hour?”

  Annelise took a step back. It sounded like he was interrogating her.

  “I needed to know what Donald J Curie was doing. I conducted a therapy session with him yesterday.”

  “I see,” said the cop. He nodded to someone in the corner of the room, who had been sitting near a vending machine. Probably another cop. His clothes didn’t mark him out as one. “Donald J Curie. Well. He is a one. After you called reception this morning, Curie contacted reception, saying he was having chest pains. Reception went to see him, with two guards of course.

  He attacked them, breaking the woman’s jaw first. The two guards beat him back, but he just kept on coming. In the end, they hit him so many times, he’s had to go to another kind of hospital. So you won’t be running any therapy session for him today.”

  “I see,” replied Annelise. “Well, I best be going home then.”

  It was important for Annelise to retain the upper hand in these kind of discussions.

  Her stomach quivered as she felt a hand on her arm.

  “I think you’ll be coming with us,” said the man in plain clothes.

  “What? What for?”

  “You’re being arrested on suspicion of the murder of Damien Lawlor.”

  He said some other words about rights, and a court of law, but she wasn’t able to hear him. She had collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  When someone came out to take over at reception, they asked the police where they were taking Annelise.

  “They’re just taking her away,” replied the police officer cryptically. “He always makes them go away.”

  He smiled strangely, so much so that the new receptionist had to inquire further.

  “Who does?”

  “Oh, nothing. We’ll be off now.”

  With that, the police took Annelise away. With Curie’s voice in his head, telling him what to do, they left them in close proximity to the area that would in later years, be the site of Rosewinter.

  When they arrived, the sky was already darkening, even though it was just 9:30 in the morning. Shadows and ghouls took the temperature far below zero, and they laid Annelise’s body on the ground. When she come to, she was covered in bite marks, and part of her right breast had been cut away.

  She was muttering to herself, and was unable to return to her work as a therapist.

  In a cruel twist of fate, she was committed to St Margaret’s Hospital herself, and though no-one would believe her, except for the corrupt police officer who had arrested her in the first place, she died whilst in care at Section A, a belt from her dressing gown providing her with a means of escape from this world.

  When they found her body, they fully expected the note beside her to put the blame on Curie.

  Instead, it simply read:-

  Diabhal made me do it.

  The Last Will and Testament

  of Jacinta Eleanor Crow

  3 years ago.

  Toril Withers had received the notice just a few days before she had taken that journey to the Circle. She had told no-one, not her mother, not Beth, and especially not me. After all, why would she?

  Toril tolerated me, accepted Beth, and circumvented her mother. The one person who could reach her was gone. She was dismissive of the phone call at first.

  “Why would I go? Jacinta was so young. She wouldn’t have anything left to leave to the world. I would be wasting your time.”

  “Not at all, Miss Withers,” came the matter-of-fact reply. “I am - that is, my partners and I, are the executors of wills. Specifically, the last will and testament of Miss Jacinta Eleanor Crow. There is only one main beneficiary on the document in front of me. You are Toril Anne Withers, are you not?"

  Toril ran the words through her head. It was still so hard to contemplate that her best friend was gone. It was a love that ran deeper than friendship, deeper than her feelings for Troy Jackson. Toril felt so lost without her.

  “We looked for you at the funeral. She had no-one to see her off. The priest suggested we might find you if we looked hard enough.”

  He sounded official and above board, but he would have to do better than that to convince Toril. She didn’t go out of her way to be difficult, it was just in her nature to analyse things. One of her fictional heroes, Sherlock Holmes, would demand no less of her.

  “This number is private, so looking hard would have only gotten you so far. Just how did you find me?”

  She expected him to worm his way out of it, perhaps offering a sheepish answer. He was refreshingly direct.

  “I wouldn’t be any good at my job if I couldn’t find you. The settling of a will is most important to my firm. We cannot have any loose ends. You will attend the reading, yes?”

  The notable rise in his voice at the end of his question suggested he was used to getting his way. Toril had grieved for Jacinta in her own quiet way, patting her hand on her photo every night before sleep, occasionally placing a kiss on the frame. She had even asked Beth what else could be done, and Beth had a mass said for her. Throwing off the unreliability of her younger years, I began to feel that Beth really was the most kind and most selfless person I had ever known.

  Jacinta had only wanted one person to attend her funeral. She almost certainly wanted a long life, but seemed to know that her future was going to turn out to be rather different to that which she envisaged and desired.

  For her own part, Toril often had dark thoughts, possessed no inhibitions about displaying them, and disregarded people’s unease at her easily discarded words as their problem and not hers.

  Toril regretted that it wasn’t possible to be aware of anything at one’s own funeral. It amused her to see other people’s reactions to her macabre words, but when Jacinta raised the subject, Toril found herself in the unusual position of being unsettled.

  Toril made her way to the address, a Victorian building dead in the centre of town, surrounded by a modern complex comprising several eateries and clothes shops. Ignoring the rumbling in her stomach, in her ongoing battle to keep her figure just as she liked it, she pressed a button on the intercom.

  When she didn’t receive a reply, Toril pressed it again. She hated tardiness, and especially when it was someone else making her late. She pressed a third time, and on this occasion chose to speak into the intercom.

  “This is Toril Withers. I have an appointment. It’s already two minutes into that appointment. Can somebody – anybody let me in?”

  She heard the words come out. It sounded far too abrupt. Toril added a please.

  The door swung open into a long hallway. Toril fully expected to see a reception desk, but there was none. When the door closed behind her, she coughed as some dust blew down from the frame. The place did not appear to have a regular to-ing and fro-ing of clients.

  Her attention was drawn to the wall, which had a number of Law Society luminaries lighting up the dull, insipid décor. One particular face was familiar. Toril, who only wore glasses for reading – though they were considered by other girls as a weapon for attracting boys – a charge that Toril would flatly deny, had to put them on to get a clearer picture of the man in the photo.

  Even before she put the glasses on, she was sure she could make out the name.

  D. Curie.

  A hand on her shoulder made her spin around on her considerable high heels, which she needed to enhance her diminutive frame.

  She was now looking into the eyes of the man in that picture.

  “Perhaps a little swish of your wand, and the door would have opened, Toril Anne Withers,” he said, extending his cold hand. “I am-”

  Toril stood back. She took one step backwards, then another, before she was happy with the distance.

  “I know who you are. You’re the one the school can’t see through, but I can. You’re the one the parents trust with the after school parties where you dress as a clown, but I don’t. You’re the one that tried to take my wand, but I didn’t let you.”

 
; The man looked genuinely stunned.

  “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Then I will quit while I’m ahead,” snapped Toril, who made for the door.

  “We have business to conclude. When we have done so, you will be free to leave.”

  Toril spun around to face the man.

  “What’s the problem, Curie? School children aren’t enough for you, that you’ve got to terrorise adults as well?”

  “Ah. I begin to understand. You don’t like lawyers, do you Miss Withers?”