by Tim ORourke
Page 9
He held out his hand and Winnie took hold of it. She swayed slightly and Thaddeus steadied her. The wine had clouded her mind, and Winnie failed to notice that there wasn't any cut on Thaddeus's hand. If she had noticed this, Winnie might have wondered where the blood had come from, the blood which had stained her top on the train as she ran away with Thaddeus to his home in Cornwall.
Chapter Nine
The rain had started to ease a little, but it was cold, and Winnie pulled her coat tight about herself. With the hood pulled over her head, she peered beneath it and up at the night sky, which was heavy with clouds. The cold night air did little to clear the fog in her mind and she wished now that she had drunk just a little less wine. Thaddeus walked beside her, and every time she stumbled or lost her footing on the uneven dirt road which led up the hill, he would gently take her arm.
Cold and wet, Winnie glanced at him and said, “Don’t you have a car, Thaddeus?”
“Why, can you drive?” he asked her.
“No,” she mumbled.
“Neither can I,” he smiled back. “I’ve never had the need for a car. ”
“Oh,” she said thoughtfully, but her head felt too woozy to think about it very much.
They walked in silence until they reached the gate in the wall that surrounded Thaddeus’s huge home. They cut through the crop of trees, the sound of rain drumming against the leaves overhead. Stepping out from amongst the trees, a single shaft of bluey-white moonlight had broken through the clouds and made a pool of light on the ground before the house. Winnie looked up and could see a half moon peering around the edge of a bank of clouds.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she heard Thaddeus whisper.
“Yes,” she breathed, the rain spattering her upturned face.
“The moonlight makes you look very beautiful,” Thaddeus suddenly said.
“Aw, you’re just saying that,” Winnie giggled, looking at him. There was a part of her that so much wanted what he said to be true. She had never been told that before by anyone. Although it made her feel slightly uneasy coming from a man she hardly knew, she liked hearing those words. She liked the way he was looking at her.
Reaching out with his hand, Thaddeus brushed the damp lengths of hair from her cheeks, as if wanting to see more of her face. In the moonlight she truly did look beautiful, he thought, and he tried to push those feelings away. The moonlight made her look like china, fragile and breakable.
“What’s wrong?” Winnie asked, slowly pulling his hand away from her face. Even through the fogginess of her mind, she could see that his look of wonder at her had changed to one of sadness - remorse.
“Wait here,” he said, turning and heading towards the house.
“Where are you going?” she called out, now standing alone in the shaft of blue moonlight.
“I’m going to get my camera,” he called out as he fumbled for his door keys in his coat pocket. “I want to take a photo of you. ”
“But it’s raining!” she gasped, not knowing whether she should be flattered by his behaviour or not. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ever wanted to take a picture of her. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
But Thaddeus had gone, disappearing inside the house.
Winnie stood alone in the moonlight and rain. Although she was kind of pleased that Thaddeus wanted to take a picture of her, she hoped he would hurry up. She felt cold and wet through. Not only that, she felt ridiculous standing alone, with her hood up, her hair all bedraggled and plastered to the sides of her face. Winnie doubted that she looked very beautiful at all. With her self-esteem at its usual low, she wondered if perhaps he wasn’t taking the piss - having a laugh at her expense.
So wanting to make sure that she looked her best, she positioned herself so she could see her reflection in one of the tall bay windows set into the front of the house.
With her fingers almost numb with cold, she combed them through the wispy lengths of hair that hung limply against her cheeks. She turned quickly sideways, then front again, checking out her profile. The wind suddenly picked up, blowing a flurry of leaves from beneath the trees behind her. There was a snapping noise, like feet treading over fallen twigs. Winnie spun around and peered into the slices of darkness between the black and knotted tree trunks. The sound came again.
“Hello?” she gasped. “Is there anyone there?”
The noise stopped, or was it drowned out by another sudden gust of wind? A shower of sodden leaves scattered into the air again, and then settled as the wind dropped. Winnie peered into the darkness once more, then turned back to face the window, and then screamed.
Reflected back in the window, she could see three pale faces looming out of the darkness behind her. With her heart in her throat, she turned again, but the faces were now gone. Her heart raced so fast and loud, she could hear it beating in her ears. The wind suddenly howled all around her, blowing her hair out from beneath her hood and covering her face. She closed her eyes against the wind, her hair, and the driving rain, and in that moment of darkness, she heard voices.
Snapping open her eyes again, and clawing her hair from her face, the wind wrapped itself around Winnie like a cold, wet blanket and almost seemed to whisper in her ears.
Come home. . . the wind cried as it circled her.
Come home. . . he will kill you. . . just like the others. . . the wind whispered.
Winnie threw her hands over her ears, closing her eyes against the leaves that now whipped violently around her as if she were trapped in a raging storm. Then, she felt her hands being pulled free from over her ears.
“Winnie!” a voice shouted.
This time it wasn’t a voice carried on the wind that she heard. Opening her eyes, Winnie stared into Thaddeus’s pale face.
“Winnie!” he shouted, taking her by the shoulders and gently shaking her as if waking her from a dream.
“There were faces,” she breathed, then glanced back over her shoulder at the treeline.
“Faces?” Thaddeus asked. “What faces? Where?”
“They were staring out of the woods at me,” she murmured, feeling confused and disorientated. “There were voices, too. ”
“Voices?” Thaddeus said, sounding evermore confused.
“It was like they were talking to me,” she said, and her lower lip trembled as she stared into the darkness that separated the trees.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Thaddeus said, and seeing that she was trembling, he pulled her close.
“You were inside,” she tried to explain. “You wouldn’t have heard them because of the wind. ”
“Where were these faces?” Thaddeus quizzed her.
“I’m not sure,” she said, a deep frown forming across her brow. “I saw them reflected in the window. ”
“Reflected in the window,” he frowned back at her. Then a half-smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Are you sure it wasn’t just the moonlight distorting your own reflection back at you?”
“No, I’m sure,” Winnie whispered, now starting to feel confused, a sense of self-doubt taking hold of her. “What about the voices?”
“The wind perhaps?” he said, looking at her. “We’re high up here. The wind can sound like a million different things as it cuts across the fields and rages against the cliff faces. ”
“Really?” Winnie asked him, a part of her hoping that what he said was true.
“Sure it does,” he said. “Sometimes, when the wind blows really hard, you couldn’t be blamed for mistaking it for a giant pack of wolves racing up the hillside. ”
“But they sounded so real,” she mumbled.
Then, leading her gently out of the shaft of moonlight, the wind and the rain, they headed towards the house. “I think you had a little too much to drink tonight,” he told her. “You’ll laugh about this in the morning. ”
They reached the open front do
or, and looking back at the pool of moonlight, Winnie whispered, “You never took that picture. ”
“I couldn’t find my camera,” he smiled back at her, and closed the door.
Chapter Ten
Thaddeus took their wet coats and hung them up to dry in the kitchen. He made them both a cup of sweet black coffee and Winnie sat at the kitchen table. Her head still felt a little groggy as she tried to make sense of what she had really seen outside in the storm. Her cheeks glowed scarlet from where she had been left waiting outside in the cold. Winnie sat and shivered before him, as Thaddeus pushed a mug of coffee towards her.
"Here, drink this. It’ll warm you up. "
Thaddeus knew that Winnie was still a little tipsy from the wine, but he wanted to give her a list of instructions for tomorrow so that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes and embarrassments.
He sat opposite her and said, "Winnie, tomorrow morning, a bundle of foreign newspapers will be delivered. They arrive once a week on a Thursday morning. "
She took a sip of her coffee, and then said, "Why do you have foreign newspapers delivered? What's wrong with the English ones?"
Thaddeus smiled. “I have English newspapers delivered as well, but I like to keep abreast of what's happening all over the world. "
Winnie started to relax a little now that she was in the warmth beneath the glow of the kitchen lighting, the feelings of fear she had felt outside were now slowly ebbing away, like the broken pieces of a nightmare at dawn. With the mug of coffee warming her hands, Winnie looked with surprise across the table at Thaddeus and said, "You mean you can read and understand loads of different languages? What countries do these newspapers come from?"
Thaddeus found her disbelief and wonderment a little amusing. "Yes, I can speak many different languages. The papers I have delivered are mainly European, but I also have papers from America, Australia, Japan, China, and a few more besides. "
Winnie sat up in her seat, eyes wide with interest. "You can speak and read in Japanese?"
“Yes,” he smiled.
"I don't believe it!”
