Endless Winter (Guardians of The Light)

by J Armitage

  Endless Winter

  Guardians of The Light

  Book One

  J.A.Armitage

  ~

  Contact the author at:

  jarmitagetheauthor@yahoo.co.uk

  http://jarmitageauthor.blogspot.co.uk/

  Twitter: @armitageauthor

  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7752331.J_A_Armitage

  ~

  Copyright © 2014 J.A.Armitage

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1494914103

  ISBN-10: 1494914107

  ~

  For Nevin

  Whose own adventure inspired this one.

  PREFACE

  Although all the characters and most of the locations in this book are fictitious, there is one that is real. Shipley Glen Tramway is the oldest working cable tramway in England. (except cliff trams.) Built in 1895, it is a wonderful example of Victorian engineering (not to mention a lovely day out.)

  The Manor in Endless Winter does not exist in real life but once I started writing I discovered that there once had been a huge house in the approximate location that the book is set. I wonder if that house held as many secrets?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Anais had awoken after a night of such delicious dreams that she kept her eyes closed as to savour the last remnants of dream and to put off the real world for just a few seconds more. A smile played on her lips as she opened her eyes, remembering that it was Sunday, her favourite day of the week, and that she could go straight back to sleep if she wanted.

  She turned to look at her digital alarm clock, for even though she could theoretically sleep all day, she didn’t want to waste the whole day in bed and she especially didn’t want to miss Winnie’s famous Sunday Breakfast. The alarm clock was invisible through the darkness and its usually luminous orange readout was now as black as the rest of the room.

  Anais assumed that there must have been a power cut as the whole bedroom was a lot darker than it usually was. The power cut had obviously extended to the outside lights as well. The streetlamp just outside her window, which even the thickest curtains couldn’t seem to blot out, was not throwing its usual glow across the room. The light usually irritated Anais making it hard for her to fall asleep and normally woke her up in the morning with its glaring.

  Being late November meant that it was likely to be dark well in to the morning which left Anais no clues as to the correct time.

  This morning though, Anais had such a wonderful feeling, a feeling of potential and warmth in her belly that she supposed it must be quite late in the morning and she’d had her first full night’s sleep in a very long time. After a quick sniff to ascertain if breakfast was being cooked yet, Anais decided to stay in bed after all and try to get back into that wonderful dream she’d been having about a gorgeous prince with white blonde hair. Yawning, she stretched her arm out, plunging it into the total blackness of the room. Her hand brushed the wall next to her bed which was when Anais realised that something was wrong.

  Her bed was in the middle of the room and the only wall it touched was against the headboard. She had at least three feet at each side of the bed until the pink floweriness of her walls. Unease started to build as she tried to rationalise her hand touching wall.

  Perhaps she had just brushed against something on her bedside cabinet, but the angle was wrong and besides all she had on her bedside cabinet was a book and a hairbrush, nothing that could have been mistaken for a wall. She opened her eyes for a second time but it was so dark she couldn’t see anything through the blackness. She put her arm out again and what she felt was definitely wall. What’s more it wasn’t her wall. Her bedroom at Winnie’s had beautiful printed wallpaper of flowers and birds. It was old fashioned wallpaper but it was flat. This wallpaper was patterned but she could feel the pattern rather than see it, some kind of swirl.

  She briefly wondered if she had fallen back into her old ways of going to bars, getting drunk and waking up the next morning goodness knows where and with a vile hangover through it certainly didn’t feel that way. There was no hangover, no pounding alcohol induced headache or feelings of both nausea and guilt. In fact despite the rising panic, there was still the underlying wonderfulness that her dreams had brought and the smile that she realised was still on her lips.

  She dropped the smile and felt the bed next to her to confirm what she already knew. The bed was a single bed which sealed the fact that she was not in her own double divan. She thought back to the previous night to try to find reason in why she would not be in her own bed in her own room but last night had been the same as it always was.

  Leaving Winnie watching her soaps as usual, she’d taken her milk up to bed where she had read a few chapters of the novel she was currently reading before falling asleep. It had been a very normal evening, boring even as she couldn’t stand the soaps and couldn’t think of anything to do, so had taken herself to bed earlier than usual in the hope she would finish the book she had been reading.

  As her panic increased, her heart rate elevated and her breathing became sharper. The hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle uncomfortably and without thinking she raised her hand to her neck as a small gesture of comfort and to quell her rising anxiety. Any hope that she’d somehow been mistaken was lost when she got out of the bed. Her feet felt plush carpet beneath them, warm, unlike the polished floorboards she was used to. The long fibres, velvety soft between her toes, left her in no doubt of being in an unfamiliar room.

  Leaving the bed and following the wall anti-clockwise, her fingers traced the same raised swirls around the room as she took in its dimensions. The room was about 12 feet in length and breadth, and apart from the bed was devoid of furniture. She felt her way along the wall slowly until the third wall where she hit a doorframe, and then a door. She quickly felt for a handle but there wasn’t one. Moving her hands all over the door in the hope that the handle was just in a strange position either at the top or the bottom or even in the middle was to no avail. It was as empty as the rest of the room, just the flat expanse of thick wood door. The only evidence that a handle had once been there was a small hole where it had been removed. She bent down to peek out but the handle was still on at the other side and so the hole was blocked. Poking her finger through to dislodge the other side of the handle resulted in a broken fingernail but the handle itself steadfastly remained in place.

  Her breathing became more ragged as she fought the rising panic. Taking a few deep breaths she managed to slow it down to a more manageable state. Putting her ear to the door, she listened out for some kind of sound but all she could hear was the sound her own breathing was making. The darkness closed in on her as she stood by the locked door, giving her an unfamiliar feeling of claustrophobia. The walls seemed to be moving in on her, crushing her lungs, disrupting her ability to breathe. She once again steadied her breathing and tried to shake the feeling of intense fear that enveloped her.

  She tentatively raised her hand and gently knocked on the door.

  “Hello,” she whispered softly before realising how ridiculous and ineffective this was.

  She was in a strange room, with no idea how she had got there and no way out, and she was tapping on a door as if embarrassed to disturb someone on the other side. It was this stupid, totally wrong feeling inside her that was making her into an idiot. Panic was there alright but despite that, she still couldn’t shake the happiness, the total joy she had woken up with. She still had a warm feeling that something good was going to happen.

  The thought occurred to her that she had somehow been drugged. It would explain how she had been removed from her bed without her waking up. The inexplica
ble feelings of joy were a mystery to her though. She’d never heard of a drug that knocked you out and then made you feel wonderful hours later. She almost gave a giggle and then chided herself. Whatever the drugs were that had knocked her out were now making her feel giddy. The fear she was feeling, combined with the effects from the drugs produced a curious combination of emotions which swirled through Anais.

  Intellectually, she knew that she was in a desperate situation but despite that, her heart was beating like it was full of the joys of spring.

  The fear of the situation she had found herself in was fighting the warm happy feeling inside her for dominance.

  “It’s the drugs, it’s the drugs,” she breathed to herself.

  Whilst it was nice that she was feeling a lot calmer than she should, it would impede her chances of escape.

  She needed her faculties about her now more than ever. She needed to be sharp and stay focussed. A little bit of fear was not necessarily a bad thing.

  After taking a few more deep breaths she dropped the whispering and started to shout at the closed door.

  “Let me out! Can you hear me?” she let her head rule her heart and screamed and shouted for all she was worth.

  She let forth a string of expletives which, had she been at home, would have made Winnie faint.

  ‘Potty mouth’ Winnie had called anyone who had so much uttered a swear word. She abhorred anyone who was ‘too lazy to speak the Queen’s English’ and if she was ever really angry or stubbed her toe, the worst you would get out of her was ‘pish’ or ‘darn’ or ‘sugar’.

  Thinking of Winnie finally made Anais cry. Her fear dissolved into sadness as she realised that Winnie would be going into her room this morning to find an empty bed. Dear sweet old Winnie wouldn’t be able to cope with losing her. She was just a sweet old lady who knew everything there was to know about books and baking but was woefully naive about dealing with the real world. Anais didn’t think that Winnie would know what to do when she found that Anais had left. Would she think Anais had run away or would she know the truth? Surely Winnie knew her enough to know that she would never leave in the middle of the night without explanation.

  Anais finally gave in and cried until her tears ran dry. The fear for Winnie over shadowed the fear for herself. The sadness she felt for her only friend finally drove out the last remnants of happiness and the effects of the drugs at long last wore off, along with the kaleidoscope of emotions they had induced. Anais was spent, empty. She slumped on the floor and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do now.

  Winnie had taken Anais into her home about six months previously and in many ways saved her life. She’d certainly changed her life at the very least.

  Anais was born and had grown up in Los Angeles to British parents. Her father, Alistair was a world renowned expert on rare books and ancient manuscripts. Having taught History and Literature at UCLA, he shared his love of the written word with his only daughter. Sarah, Anais mother, worked on the set of a celebrity driven chat show doing the make-up of the screen gods and goddesses of the moment. All three were happy with their lives but both Alistair and Sarah missed their home.

  A year ago they had decided to move back to York with Anais and had sold everything to set up a new life in England. They hadn’t even been back six weeks when a drunk driver had driven off the road straight into the couple, killing Sarah and Alistair instantly. Anais had been at home, filling in college applications, when she got a visit from a policeman. She was three days shy of her eighteenth birthday.

  Newly orphaned in a foreign country with no money and friends who were over 5000 miles away, Anais had very quickly spiralled out of control. Despite her parents being relatively well off, their money was all tied up in various trusts. Anais was looking at being quite a wealthy young lady but various legal issues had to be addressed before she’d get a penny. The little money she did have went on six months rent on the house her parents had rented and the rest went on cheap alcohol in even cheaper bars. When the lease on the house was up she had slept on the sofas of people she barely knew. She had hit rock bottom when by chance she walked into Winnie’s Rare and Antique Book Emporium. It was down a street she had never been before and she didn’t know what it was that had made her go in. She supposed it was because it reminded her so much of her historian father who had loved old books second only to his wife and daughter. Inside she had met Winnie. Wonderful Winnie who recognised a kindred spirit in Anais and shared her love of books, a trait she had picked up from her father.

  They had chatted all afternoon and Winnie had made tea and sandwiches which they had shared. By the time the shop closed Winnie had offered Anais both a bed and a job. Winnie had told her that she had been desperate to find a shop assistant who knew enough about rare books and she really needed to rent her spare room out. It was serendipitous that Anais had come into her life at just the right time for both of them.

  Anais had first thought Winnie was crazy letting a stranger into her house (which was the second and third floor above the shop) but she soon realised she was just a lonely old lady who needed the company much more than she really needed a shop assistant. That had been six months ago. She’d been sober ever since.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Anais decided to stop feeling sorry for herself and devise a plan to get out of the room. She had to get back to Winnie who was probably out of her mind with worry by now. Thinking of Winnie made her think back to the previous night again. She couldn’t figure out how she had been drugged. She’d only eaten dinner as usual and there was no opportunity for anyone to slip in and drug her food. She pushed that particular conundrum to the back of her mind to solve later and turned her attention to the more pressing matter of escape.

  If there was a way out of the room, she would find it. Highly intelligent, she thrived on puzzles of any kind. At school she was a self-confessed ‘nerd’ spurning the cheerleading club that all her friends attended, she instead joined the chess club, much to the joy of the young men who also took part. She was actually chess champion for three of the years she was there. Her father had started her on the New York Times crossword at aged eight. By the time she was ten she could complete them all by herself.

  She’d solved many locked-room puzzles in theory. Now seemed like a good time to see if she could do it in reality.

  She quickly looked around the room again but it was impossible to see anything through the gloomy blackness. Not even a sliver of light escaped from around the door. She had hoped that once her eyes had become accustomed to the dark, she might have been able to see something but she surmised that there was nothing there to see anyway. Just the door and the bed.

  Walking back across the room, arms outstretched she checked the middle which she had previously missed on her trip around the edge of the room. As she suspected, it was empty. She made her way back to the bed to see if there was anything that might help her escape. She was not hopeful but it gave her something to do. She pulled the duvet off the bed, then the pillows, then the sheet. Underneath was just a mattress. The bed itself felt like ornately carved wood with posts at each corner. She ran her hand up one of the posts and was only slightly surprised to find that it went high enough that she had to stand on the bed to reach the top. Thick material ran from the top of the post, covering all the other posts she suspected. It was a four poster bed.

  Anais had never thought much about kidnapping but she knew that kidnappers didn’t keep girls in houses with four poster beds. They kept them in dungeons and dens and secret places with locked doors and bare floors. Places that were damp and cold and grey. Everyone knew that. She’d seen it enough in action movies where the main character spends the whole film racing around trying to find his daughter or wife, usually finding them bound, gagged and filthy in some lunatic’s cellar.

  Now that she thought about it the whole room felt opulent. The carpet was thick and soft beneath her feet and the wallpaper she had felt earlier with its raised pattern, was
not cheap woodchip. It felt expensive. Although Anais had felt no means of heating in the room, it was pleasantly warm and cosy. She picked up the duvet which she had thrown on to the floor earlier and realised it was a down duvet encased in a silk cover. The bed sheets also felt like silk and the bed was the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in. Curiouser and curiouser she thought, slipping into words from her favourite book. She wondered what kind of person would keep her locked up in a room like this and more importantly what was he planning to do to her? He might be a rich lunatic but he was a lunatic all the same.

  The comfort of the room belied the danger she was in and Anais knew it. The down duvet might have kept her warm in the night but it was useless against an attacker. She could throw it at him as he came through the door. It wouldn’t slow anyone for long but it was all she had. She hoped it would slow him long enough to run past him and then find her way out of this mess.

  She shouted again through the door, the duvet in her hand. Nobody came. Hours passed and still she stood there, the duvet becoming heavier and heavier in her hands until she no longer had the strength to hold it. She let go of it entirely. Hours of shouting had served nothing but giving her a sore throat. Plans of escape had now left her; now she just wanted a drink to ease her throat. Winnie had always made her honey and lemon when her throat was sore, but right now she’d settle for a cup of water to quench her thirst. She put her ear to the door but still heard nothing. She listened some more and then realised there was no ambient sound. No cars passing, no birds, no voices. Just an eerie silence which she had punctuated with her screams.

  She wondered if her captor was nearby at all. It seemed, judging by the room that she was in a house of some kind but she knew that appearances could be deceptive. The lack of windows meant she could easily be in a bunker somewhere underground with the opulent furnishings a ruse to make her think otherwise. It did bring up the question why though? There was no logical reason for a kidnapper to make her feel comfortable. She was locked in the room, no matter how well it was decorated.