He looked distraught. His furrow was deep, and he didn’t look like someone not near twenty years old. He was sweating profusely, something I never witnessed when seeing him play rugby for the school team, and his eyes were all bloodshot.
“Alix. Stop what you’re doing, otherwise I will have to stop you.”
I tried to sound more commanding, but that was the remit of someone like Toril, who was saying something Wiccan outside.
It was too late though. Alix broke the drawer open, and the Mirror teased a bright gleam from inside.
With the lightest of touches, I placed my hand on Alix’s back, and just about got out of the way as he flew backwards, his body making a sickening thud as it smacked against the opposite wall.
* * *
“Toril, for God’s sake, leave it!”
Troy was pulling Toril back from Rosewinter.
“Damn you, Troy,” Toril said as she scratched skin from the side of his face. “I’m trying to help Romilly, and trying to save Alix.”
“Jesus.” Troy cupped his hand against his face. “Withers, you’ve cut me. What’s wrong with you?”
“She has a Mirror in there. The Mirror. I don’t understand how Alix could cross the thresh-hold though. Unless Curie or some dark force is helping him,” said Beth. “He’d be capable of that.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Jacinta dismissively.
“Is it?” said Beth. “You were there, the night he came to the house. You remember the ouijia game, don’t you Jacinta? He’s working for HIM.”
Jacinta looked at Toril. “Are you still going to chant, or shall we go in after Alix?”
“We can’t go in,” said Toril. “I’ve cast a Surrounding Spell. We can’t enter, but neither can anyone else.”
Not believing a word of it, Troy said, “Toril, I’ve had enough of this nonsense. Alix, get your ass out here.” He darted towards the thresh-hold.
Toril wanted to scream No at the top of her voice, but Troy was too fast. He didn’t make it to the door before some unseen force blew him some twenty feet away from the front of Rosewinter.
Beth and Jacinta wore ‘what the hell’ expressions on their faces.
“Is he-” they both said in unison.
“Dead?” said Toril. “Oh no, just stunned. Do the big galoot some good."
“Yeah, but still-“ said Jacinta.
“Shh now!” said Toril, and started chanting a new spell.
Toril could see Alix through one of the windows, he had also been knocked cold.
“Romilly! Romilly!” cried Toril. “Come on out, and bring the Mirror with you. We have to get away from here.”
She broke off shouting orders at me to go back to her chanting.
I grabbed the Mirror from the drawer, and hid around the corner, out of Toril’s view. After all, this was the girl who had stolen Troy’s heart.
My father needn’t have worried about me bringing boys to Rosewinter. Yeah, like I would have that chance. Troy was all I wanted, and he belonged to Toril. I had no chance.
I had wickedly hoped that the Mirror would have shown me some way to make someone fall in love with me, but I hoped to no avail. My teenage years carried on regardless whilst I stayed loveless and single.
The cynic in me wondered if Toril had cast some kind of spell on Troy, but in the cold light of day I knew she didn’t have to do that. She had bewitched – no pun intended – all the boys at school, with her rather amazing looks.
Perhaps it was inevitable she would end up with Troy. I was too much of an outcast.
Toril was chanting some strange words. At the moment I realised this, Alix started to stir.
Oh my God, Toril, why? Why are you doing this? She was helping him. She might have been made fun of at school, but since her experience with the Mirror, her skills as a witch had improved.
Considerably.
It was then that I realised Toril was looking to claim the Mirror for herself.
* * *
I ran to the main room and flicked the master switch to kill all the lighting in the house. I had one crazed guy in the next room, four people outside who I could not trust even after all the crap I'd been through with them, and God knows what else was coming for me within the forest.
I threw myself on the floor, forgetting for a moment that I was clutching the Mirror in my hands. The veins on my arms throbbed painfully, and my fingers were swollen too. My hair was damp with perspiration, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the Mirror.
The reflection I cast terrified me. I looked like the zombie-girl herself.
Resisting the temptation to smash the Mirror, I ran to where the cabinet had been knocked out earlier in the night. There was no blood on the floor there, and I felt safe.
I cowered on the floor, and brought my knees together. I hugged myself to stay warm. My teeth were chattering, and tears flowed from my eyes.
I wondered why Nan thought it was so important I stay at Rosewinter, and then I realised a massacre was at hand. If I had been at home, the Zerythra would have found the Mirror, and killed me for certain, along with anyone else who lived in the town of Gorswood. There would have been too many to fight.
The spell Toril cast was meant to keep me inside the wood-cabin. I would be unable to leave with the Mirror intact, but that wasn’t all. By casting a spell like this, she had alerted all the minions of Diabhal to bear down on the place.
As I looked over at my father’s bust up CD player on the floor, a blue light illuminated on top of it.
“Play Me,” it said.
As the machine whirred into life, I already knew what it was going to say. At least, I knew the first part of what it was going to say. I didn’t bet on the second part. Still, in a voice I recognised as being my Nan’s, the CD player said:-
“Two Have Died, and She is Coming.”
There was a sadness in her voice. As she spoke, the Mirror illuminated in my hands. Images misted in, then out, and I could see both of my parents had perished in some kind of car accident.
My father’s head lay at an awkward angle to the side, my mother’s neck snapped and a bloody gaping hole peeked out from where her heart should be. As the image misted out, I could make out a ‘D’ smeared in blood on the passenger window.
Another image. It was me, but an elderly version. I was still at Rosewinter, and I was still in possesion of the Mirror. I couldn’t see anything beyond the Forest.
A final image misted in, then out. Gorswood Forest was in flames, Dana encircled the sky like some kind of ubder-demon. Legions of Diabhal’s zombies were everywhere, killing everyone in sight.
Bodies were dumped unceremoniously on top of one another, and I could recognise certain things formed from my memories.
A charred and bloody hand, wearing a Celtic ring made from tungsten. A Wiccan pentacle, bleeding the blackest of blood onto its wearer. White hair turned black through burnt ash.
A red haired girl’s body lay twisted, seemingly every body in her body broken, her eyes gauged out, and her face slashed from ear to ear. She was impaled into the ground by a bloodied crucifix.
Was this the future my Nan spoke of? If so, the future rolled like this:-
My friends and my parents were dead.
Everyone else from the town were going to be executed in a similar bloody manner.
The Mirror and Rosewinter would somehow stay safe with me.
All I know is, the final battle would be drawn here. I don’t know if I could change anything of what was to come. I set about to change it nonetheless.
The Darkest Side of Me
I would have no time to mourn the loss of my parents. I would want to know how they died, of course, but that would have to wait.
Toril continued her chanting until my head went dizzy. I was having another premonition, and in this one, our old adversary Curie was alive and well.
More than that, he was at the fabled house of Diabhal, at the most eastern point of Gorswood Forest.
�
�Redwood,” I said feebly, clutching my forehead.
Curie, now fully recovered thanks to the effects of the evil house, was doing a chant of his own, and was determined to outdo Toril.
Alix was a pawn in the game. He was being controlled by Curie, himself a puppet of Diabhal. That’s why Alix tried to steal the Mirror from me. He’d been under the influence of Diabhal this whole time.
Yet I seemingly hadn’t killed him with my touch. Perhaps that’s another thing I’ve realised this night. I could kill that zombie because I meant to do it. When I pushed her jaw and it came away, I hadn’t meant in my heart to kill her, just get her away from me.
However, this time, with Alix, I didn’t want to kill him, so my lightest touch must have been sufficient to render him unconscious.
The vision cleared from my head, but the searing pain remained.
Amidst the haze, I felt compelled to press ‘play’ on the machine again. I couldn’t accept a future where everyone I know dies, and yet I live somehow?
The shadow that had knocked me down the stairs three years ago had returned, and this time, it passed through my back, and into my body.
* * *
From outside of the house, Toril could see Alix stagger to his feet. He was unsteady, and perhaps a bit unsure of himself, but he looked ready to resume his mission.
Toril screamed again in my direction.
“Damn it, Romilly, you’ve got to come out of there now!”
Boy, does she love giving the commands. While I was inside, and I had the Mirror, I could trap zombies, and keep Alix at bay. I did not need Toril barking orders in my ears.
Outside, Toril looked exasperated. “What’s going on?” said Beth.
“What’s going on is, that I’m trying to keep Romilly and the Mirror out of Diabhal’s hands.”
“Why don’t you just go in there?” said Jacinta.
“I can’t. I cast a Surround Spell,” said Toril.
“Un-cast it then!” said Jacinta.
“If I do that, the Zerythra, Dana and any evil spirit out here will be able to claim the Mirror. Romilly can’t trap them all, not all at once anyway. It needs to be done out here, in the open.” Toril’s shrill calmed as she spoke. It seemed a relief to get it off her chest.
Beth had seem this confused look on Toril’s face before, and it amazed her that Jacinta didn’t seem to get it.
“You’re not telling us everything, are you Toril?” said Beth.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you are leaving Romilly to deal with Alix on her own. That’s not fair.”
Toril grabbed Beth by her shoulders.
“Not fair? Not fair?” The shrill in Toril’s voice had returned. “I’ve just struck down my boyfriend to protect Romilly. It’s better she deals with Alix than the legions of zombies, believe me.”
“They are coming, aren’t they?” said Jacinta. “The zombies. Right?”
“Yeah,” said Toril. “It’s pretty hopeless, to be honest.”
“She can kill them for us,” said Jacinta confidently.
“Who?” Toril and Beth said together, but not in the cute way you would expect.
“Dana,” said Jacinta. “She can do it. Let her. Let her do it. We can get Romilly, get all of us, away from here safely.”
Without saying a further word, Jacinta plucked a white rose from a nearby bush, and used a thorn to draw blood from her finger.
“No, Jacinta. I would not summon Dana,” said Toril. “That’s not a good idea,” but it was too late. Jacinta’s blood had already began to turn the white rose a sickly shade of crimson.
The ghost of Dana was being summoned to kill once again.
* * *
Toril was furious with Jacinta for summoning Dana. She was furious with me for not coming out of the house. But most of all she was furious with herself. She knew that there was a way to keep the Surround Spell in place, but also do a Freeze Spell on Alix.
The problem was she just didn’t know what the best way was. She had been doing well with her learning, at least until Troy Jackson had came on the scene. Why she had gotten involved with him, only she knew. Boys and solitary Wiccans do not usually go together.
For as long as I knew her, she maintained that she didn’t want to complicate her life, and boys would only add to doing just that.
I can’t say I sympathised with her. At least she had some method of learning, a coven – isn’t that what they call it in Wiccan circles?
Me? I had to learn all this Mirror stuff on my own, mainly because I had to. I couldn’t trust anyone else. Yet, of all people, I should trust Toril, because she used the Mirror to set myself and Beth free.
At least, I would like to think it’s like that. The romantic in me says it was Nan who sent us back from the brink of whatever we were on.
For all intents and purposes, Beth and I had died in Curie’s house, and now we were back, fighting the devils again. When would it ever end?
At that moment, the CD player jarred into life. It should have scared me, but whatever was possessing me, was keeping me calm. Through the shadow’s eyes, I started to see things differently. I could see the ghosts from the mental hospital walking around the wood-cabin.
All this time I thought I was safe. They never left the Forest, because they could not leave. Ever.
Through the speakers, and in my Nan’s voice, the CD player said calmly, “It ends when you break free of the Circle.”
Just as quickly as it came, the voice died out. I was alone in the dark once more. What Circle was Nan on about anyway?
No time to work that out. Whatever was possessing my body threw my against the wall, and knocked my false tooth out. I tasted blood in my mouth once again.
I could hear scratching on the other side of the door. Alix, or whatever it was that was driving him to attack me, was trying to come through. My earlier thought came back into my head, that I would perhaps have no alternative but to use the Mirror on him.
Nan’s voice was no longer on the CD player, but loud, inside my head.
“You know what the consequences of that will be, Milly,” she said. “You will release more of Them. Some are already on their way. You cannot fight them all, and your parents aren’t there to save you. Get rid of it.”
The demon inside me through me against the wall again, and its screams were terrible inside my head.
Nan had come through at my lowest ebb. She was right. I shouldn’t be a host for this demon. It would have to go.
Those last words about my parents affected me more than anything else. I know it shouldn’t, and that dealing with the threat of zombies over running the place should be the priority, but I found myself in the same position as Beth and Jacinta. We were orphans, and alone in fighting the horrors about to lay siege to us.
Sentimentality was going to be the death of me.
* * *
Alix burst through the door, a deranged look on his face.
“The Mirror, Romilly. Give it to me.”
I stood up slowly, very slowly. “You’re not yourself, Alix. Right now, neither am I. We’re friends, acquaintances, remember?”
“The Mirror.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Alix. It’s not mine to give to you. It’s a family heirloom. My Nan gave it to me.”
“All she gave you is some dumb-ass Mirror? Poor inheritance, pumpkin.”
I would not have him – anybody – say bad things about my Nan. Although the demon was hurting me inside, I had to face off Alix. As I grabbed the Mirror, the demon made slashing cuts on my arms.
Keeping my nerve, I held the Mirror up in front of him.
“Atta girl.”
“Come closer Alix, and you’ll get what you deserve.”
I didn’t mean a word of it. I just hoped he would just not get any closer to me.
“Oh! You wanna trap me, do you? Bad news, pumpkin, that thing only works on the dead, which you’re soon going to be.”
“Stay back
!”
“Or what?” sneered Alix. “Frightened I’ll touch you?”
“You should be frightened if I touch you. Pumpkin.”
“Oh yeah,” said Alix, rubbing one hand on his lower back. “You did do that, didn’t you? Well, I forgive you. Now give me the bleeding mirror.”
Dark Winter Page 24
