Dark Winter: Trilogy

by Hennessy, John

  The Demon is quiet for now.

  I am awakened by one of the nurses talking to me. She explains that she has to take my blood pressure and my body temperature. I nod, and while I’m grateful for her help, I’m annoyed to be woken from a pretty decent sleep. I take a sip of the water she gives me, and swallow down whatever the pill was for.

  Then, she says the very thing I don’t want to hear, because I had already given a tonne of the red stuff earlier.

  “I need to take some of your blood, sorry.”

  “The chart should say I gave earlier. I barely have enough in my body as it is,” I protested.

  “Well I need the sample anyway. I want to drink your blood. It won’t hurt, honestly.”

  What did she say? She wants to drink my blood?

  “Drink up! You need to drink up, Romilly!”

  Oh. Thank goodness. She just wants me to drink all of the water she gave me. I misheard what she said, that’s all.

  The nurse grabbed my arm, and I felt her probing for a vein.

  “I don’t think there’s much left to take,” I said. “You read my report.”

  “Just procedure, that’s all. I have to drink your blood.”

  Again? Surely not again?

  I tried to withdraw my arm. Maybe it was the drugs causing me to hear things differently. After all, aren’t hospitals the very last place people would want to find themselves? I couldn’t have heard her wrong on two occasions, right?

  “Young lady?”

  “I’d rather let the doctor do that, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “It’s just a little drop of blood. You won’t even feel anything.”

  “Yes, but still-”

  I felt the needle push in. I wanted to look away, but found I could not, and the nurse was very focussed on her task. She’d clearly been instructed to ignore what I was saying. I mean, who pays attention to anyone as drugged up as I was?

  It was at that moment that blood splattered everywhere. The needle had broken, and jutted out of my arm. I wanted to scream, but nothing would come from my mouth. The nurse was shouting at me as she handed me a cotton pad, withdrew the needle with a pair of tweezers, and tasked me with pressing down on my arm until the flow stopped.

  Pulling the top cover off my bed, she gathered up the bloody bed clothes and walked off in a huff. I couldn’t say I blamed her, I just hate having my blood taken. I knew they had taken it earlier because Troy told me so. At least there are some good things about being unconscious.

  I started to doze off again, and I felt someone tucking me in. I doubted it was the same nurse, as this one seemed a bit more gentle. She leaned over me, and repositioned the pillow behind my head.

  “Hope you’re comfortable, Romilly.”

  I think I murmured a Thank You, but it must have been near three a.m. anyway, and I felt something push into my mouth, like a thermometer, but they checked that last time by inserting the instrument in my earlobe. What was going on?

  I felt the taste of a liquid. It must have been blood, as it has the consistency of tasting like old pennies. I spat the object out.

  I tried to sit up, but felt something pinning me down.

  “What’s the problem? Haven’t got the stomach for hospital, huh?”

  The voice belonged to that of a younger woman. She could not be the same nurse. “What?” was all I could muster in response.

  “Of course, I wouldn’t know. By the time I arrived here, my stomach had already been cut out.”

  Something dangled from her neck. It was very familiar to me. The pentacle that belonged to Toril. The pentacle that had been stolen. She placed her hands around my neck, and with her wand (for I know that is what she put in my mouth – I know that now), she lifted up the chain around my neck, reaching for my crescent moon pendant.

  It couldn’t be her, surely? It could not be Dana. It couldn’t be. She had to be summoned, She had to be! What ever could she want with my crescent moon?

  My hands went to grab hers, and I found myself groping at thin air, but Dana’s black eyes bore down on me.

  “I’m not so easy to get a hold of as the Zeryths, am I Romilly?”

  This was an older version of Dana, looking the same as myself. What the devil was she up to now?

  “Your pendant or your life.”

  “You’re not having my pendant,” I spat out at Dana.

  “Your life, then.”

  I saw her silver fangs all too late. But the sensation of them ripping through my neck was all too real. When I wake up screaming, more than one nurse and doctor attend to me. They sedate me with something that would have knocked out an elephant.

  Dana used to kill upon command. Now, she takes a witch’s pendant, one that contains real power, and tries to steal mine, a mere keepsake. She bites deep and hard into people’s necks, and has somehow managed to change her appearance to that of an eighteen-year-old. That’s why she took some of Toril’s hair. She’s created herself in her likeness, to some extent.

  I had so many questions to ask, but the ones I needed to ask those questions to, were long gone from this world. If my Nan were here, I wonder would she have tried to get through to Dana, somehow. I recall her saying that Dana was best left where she was, but it seemed that her spirit was not tied to the Mirror, nor could it be. If it could, I could banish her to that void. It was just not that simple anymore.

  Whatever rules Dana went by, they had now changed, and I could only fear for the worse.

  I ran my fingers along my neck and could find no puncture marks at all.

  ***

  The morning hours tick by, one after another. Around 8am, I’m brought some tea and breakfast. I’m too unwell to protest at hot milk being poured over the corn flakes. I decide to eat the only thing I can from the tray, a tuna sandwich, which I wolf down along with orange juice. I splutter a bit from the coldness of the juice, and the curtains, which had been unhelpfully drawn back by the nurses, show that I have no friends here.

  The disapproving sets of eyes said It was her. She was the one screaming her head off last night.

  Okay, I’m strong enough to deal with that. Unlike my tenure at school, I will only be here a matter of days. Stride through the days, walk through the nights. This is the only way to cope.

  I couldn’t wait until after 9am, when I hoped Troy would return. I found my feelings very confused. I knew that in a perfect world, Troy and I would be together. But we live in anything but a perfect world, and in any case, even if Toril was fine and healthy, and we knew that – there was already three in the relationship. The Demon was not going away any time soon.

  That’s the confusing thing about all this. I have no idea if Dana really visited me in the small hours. My mind raced to the possibility that Dana was my Demon, because there was a link, wasn’t there? Dana had been Nan’s friend before her untimely death. Did Dana blame my Nan somehow? That wasn’t fair. Then again, since when did Dana care about what was fair?

  No, it wasn’t her that bled me from inside, but I was weakened nonetheless. I did not want to know the Demon’s name, and I did all I could to shut out its words, but sometimes the most terrible curses were issued from my mouth. The doctors had been unable to detect the loss of blood, but the longer the Demon stayed, the weaker I became.

  “Rom! You look terrible!” It was Troy. He looked rather worn himself. “My parents are outside.” So that explains it. Then he says the very thing I don’t want to hear.

  “I can’t stay for long, Rom.”

  I can only imagine what he went through. His parents had given him up for dead, even though Toril told them she believed one day he would be back. The Jacksons took a different view, however, and six months after the events in Gorswood Forest, they had a memorial for Troy.

  Mr Jackson was annoyed with Toril on two counts. “She was supposed to be his girlfriend, and yet she doesn’t turn up for his memorial. Then she spins this story about how he isn’t really dead. Should be bloody locked up for
saying things like that.”

  Mrs Jackson, also annoyed with Toril, took the view that maybe she was saying Troy would come back because she was suffering from shock.

  As Don Curie had disappeared about the same time, the police – finally – concluded that he must have been responsible for his death. They had found Curie’s DNA on fibres from Troy’s clothes and put two and two together.

  I would have loved to have seen the Jacksons’ faces when Troy turned up at the door.

  “Troy! Please! Don’t go. Not just yet.” I hated the pleading sound of my voice. Through my physical pain and lack of sleep, I tried to sound less needy. “Five minutes? You can do five minutes, can’t you Troy?”

  “I do want to know what happened to you Rom. You really do look terrible.”

  “If it’s any consolation, the Demon says he’s just fine and dandy.”

  “Still troubling you huh?”

  “Oh no,” I smiled. “Eighteen months ago he was troubling me. Now he’s just being a total bastard.”

  “Romilly!”

  His exclaim suggested he wasn’t used to me swearing on occasion, but it was more that. I think he was afraid people would overhear me talking.

  “It’s okay Troy, you can go. I’m grateful you came, really. I bet your parents are – well, I don’t know what they think. Whatever did you tell them?”

  “That Curie had kidnapped me.”

  That was the truth at least, Troy had been kidnapped by him and manipulated somehow into doing the awful things he did. I had forgiven him completely, though I was crazy angry with him at the time. Whatever demons Troy possessed, he was dealing with them admirably. Of course, he doesn’t have a real demon, but I do. It never goes truly silent in my head.

  “My parents really do want me to spend some time with them Rom, but I do want to know what’s going on with you before I go, and I will come back later. Come on. Talk to me.”

  “Troy, how do you expect me to talk about my demons, when they are crushing my lungs?”

  “There’s more than one?”

  “On the inside, just the one,” I said, “but I believe another visited me last night.”

  “Well, that’s terrible, Rom.” It seemed he did not know what to say. Maybe it was better I said nothing further. Mentioning that Dana had visited me might make Troy think he was in danger.

  He leaned over towards me, squeezed my hand again, and kissed my forehead. “I’ll be back this evening, promise.”

  I waved a bye to him, only for Troy to turn back and give me that same half-smile that he gave just before stopping the Zeryths making it to the Circle where Beth, Toril and myself were.

  “I wouldn’t worry about her Rom.”

  I didn’t have to say anything in reply. Troy knew Dana as well as I did. The bloodied ghost had arrived in my ward at 3am, which meant that as 4am chimed, both she and the Demon knew all of my secrets.

  As I watched Troy leave the ward, I could do nothing but worry.

  ***

  Troy returned sometime after 12pm. I was awoken by him rubbing my shoulders.

  “Hey, Rom.”

  “Oh, hi!” I said, trying to sit up.

  “You look terrible, Rom, you really do.”

  I decide that humour was the only way to deal with this. “Have you been reading How to Chat up Your Demon again?”

  If I looked terrible, Troy didn’t look too bad. I’d say he was coping a bit too well.

  “How did it go with your folks, Troy?”

  “Okay. I guess.”

  Typical stonewalling. I could see why Toril was attracted to Troy. She loved to talk, and Troy….not so much. The strong, silent type? No, not Troy. He was virtually mute. I tried again.

  “They’re glad to have you back?”

  Oh my. I’m useless! My Nan was right – I never asked the right questions.

  “Yeah, sure. They’re wondering where Toril is though. My mum said she saw her wandering around the town centre one day, then, she kind of vanished. Her phone is not picking up either. Funny how none of us used to have mobiles, now that we do, no-one’s picking up.”

  I tried to detect any sign of concern in his voice. I’d give anything to read Troy’s thoughts right now, but even if I could, I think it’s rather invasive. I didn’t like it when Toril did it either. I wanted to ask him if he wondered where Toril was. I tried a different approach.

  “You do want to know where Toril is, don’t you? You do want to know she’s okay, right?”

  Sometimes, Troy could shoot a look at me and I could feel him see right through me. Burn right through me.

  “She’s not spent much time looking for me, Rom. Her priorities are all wrong.”

  That might just be the most accurate thing Troy has said so far. But it was a waste of time trying to convince Toril to do what any of us would want her to do.

  Troy seemed frustrated that he could not find Toril, assuming that she wished to be found at all. He seemed frustrated hanging around me, as if I wasn’t doing him any good, which I was sure I was not. For someone who liked sure and certain things, he looked anything but sure, and far from certain of what to do next.

  Our conversations were not really going anywhere, and I admitted to feeling more agitated the longer I stayed in the ward. Troy left as the nurse injected something into my stomach. The size of the needles seemed to be getting longer, but in reality they were just normal. It was just my warped perception of things. Sometimes the demon would warp the features of the nurse, so that her eyes bled blood, spiders crawled out of her mouth and the needle into my stomach was replaced by a dagger. I hate the visions. Nan, make it stop. Make it stop.

  I had plenty of time to think whilst I was in the hospital, and it occurred to me that the fight really had gone out of me. As for Toril, I didn’t believe she would stop until she had got what she wanted, whatever that happened to be. I only hoped the Mirror would stay safe at Rosewinter, under Toril’s spell.

  ***

  Even in my drowsy state, I felt I knew what was real and what was fake. It was at these moments that the Demon would seize the chance to torment me. On this occasion, the focus was on Toril, but mixed with my experiences at the house at Redwood.

  I was in that room where the two coffins lay, and on my own, not like with Beth as I was the last time. I managed to open the larger of the two caskets on my own, and in it lay the body of Toril Withers, eighteen years old, with a wand – a broken wand, in her hands.

  The make-up people had done a good job, but there was no doubting that her final moments had been unimaginable.

  It was at that moment that Toril opened her eyes and said, “Why did you let me die, Romilly? You could have helped me, helped us – all of us. But you didn’t. You just thought of your own needs, and ran off with Troy. You’ll burn in hell for this. I’ll see to it.”

  No. This wasn’t happening. This was not Toril speaking. She wouldn’t say things like this.

  No, said The Demon. This is all too real. You know it, don’t you Romilly? Toril was right. You think of yourself and your own needs, and damn everyone else.

  “No! That’s not true!” I screamed. The Demon was suddenly quiet again, but the ward was not, and several nurses appeared to sedate me. “Troy! Help me! Hel-”

  Too late. Whatever it was that they injected me, had worked. I was out cold.

  ***

  I could cope with this no longer. My priorities had to be my own salvation. I could do no more here.

  “Troy, I am leaving Gorswood. Today. Here. Now. Will you help me get my things?”

  “Sure.”

  Troy looked like he was going to say something else, then paused. I could not run with him now, if I didn’t have his complete trust in me. I had protected the Mirror, hadn’t I? I had done what my Nan had asked of me. What else was there to do? Wait until Dana killed me, either mentally, physically, or both?

  “Come on now, Troy. Don’t be coy with me.”

  “Well…it’s just
that I don’t think running away is going to help matters. We have to face our fears.”

  There was a sadness in Troy’s face that I was not accustomed to seeing. He’d been through it. Dana had tricked him into thinking she was Toril, and then drained him like the succubus that she had become. All the same, my mind was made up, even though it was the most Toril-like thing he had ever said to me.

  “Look at what facing your fears has done to you. You look terrible, Troy. In fact, it should be you in this hospital bed, not me.”