Dark Winter (28 page)

“How do you know he will release you? You said he tricked you before.”

“Oh, Curie. Don’t you see? Without the Mirror in his possession, his power is diminished, and it diminishes further by every passing hour. I can now set some of the terms, not him. But you will carry out his work, nonetheless.”

“You can’t make me.”

“No, perhaps I cannot. But if you do not, he will send the Zerythra to you. They are the undead, zombie-girls. You will castrate yourself before they are through with you. Without the Mirror, you won’t be able to stop them. If only you possessed it, you could trap them.”

“So what do I need you for? I can find this Mirror, trap any of these zombie-whores, and while I’m at it,
you
as well.”

“No.”

“No?” laughed Curie, for the first time in an age. “Why ever not?”

“Because, except for him, the Mirror can only ever be used by a female entity. That rules you out.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That is irrelevant. What is relevant, however, is that you heed me anyway. Once you killed those boys, your life, if you call it that, is finished. Kill just eleven more, and I will be free. But at least in this life, with my protection, you can live out the life you want.”

Ten years had passed, and he had not seen Dana again until Beth O’Neill had summoned her to kill him.

That was how it all began. Curie went from accidental killer to a methodical, sadistic murderer. A living, breathing monster. It just opened up a side of him, that, who knows, had probably been there all along. Dana had saved his life, and now all he existed for, was to kill for her, again and again.

Taking his axe, he waited in the school and butchered four children to death who were just having an after school chess club.

Beth O’Neill was supposed to be next, but her parents were at home when he broke into the house. He doused their bed with petrol and then set it alight.

Five kills remained. He hatched a plan to get Toril Withers, Jacinta Crow, Troy Jackson, and me, into his home, and kill us. He wasn’t forgetting Beth either. He wanted to put her out of her misery.

Troy was a bonus of course. Under the guise of Diabhal, Curie had visited with Toril, Jacinta and Beth before – when the ‘stupid wiccan whore’ had messed around with a ouija board. He tried to kill her back then, and failed.

He had also targeted me, and my parents, Ronald and Daphne Winter.
Two Will Die
, he had said. But of course, thirteen had to die, in order to release Dana. Tonight was supposed to be it. Killing all five of us would have put him over his target, but he had failed.

When Toril used the Mirror, Beth and I were saved. The price? Two of Diabhals zombie –girls, the
Zerythra
, were released, and they would not stop until Curie was dead, along with the rest of us.

             
                            *                            *                            *

“What a mess,” said Troy. “There’s blood and skin, and bits of rat, everywhere.”

“Here,” said Toril, handing him a broom.

“Why me?”

“Because I have to help the girls. You can help me by -oh !!” Toril clutched her head in pain.

“Withers, what’s up?”

Toril was spinning. Or perhaps more accurately, the room was spinning. Troy grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her down. “Too much information,” she said.

“I didn’t know you were squeamish,” said Troy. “Sorry about that.”

Toril was not squeamish though. What she meant by
too much information
was that she could hear people’s thoughts, with perfect clarity. Perhaps because of her encounter with the Mirror, some new ability within her had been realised. The Mirror was more than able to trap souls and return others. Nan was right – it affected different people in different ways.

To Toril, it felt like she was having the worst headache ever. Her eyes bulged in her head, and the veins on her temple stood out like tree branches, angry that they had been awoken.

Her temperature raced upwards, and she clutched the back of her head, and murmured “It’s not a headache. Help me, Troy!”

Troy could not help Toril though. All he could do, was be there, and try to calm her down. There was too much to do, too many things to sort. He didn’t have Toril’s cool head for situations like this.

Whilst I was still getting my legs to try and move, Beth slowly stood up. She looked at me, and placed her hands on my legs. I felt a warmth spread through me as she did so.

She walked over to where Toril and Troy were sitting, and placed her hand on Toril’s forehead.

“Beth, what the f-“ said Troy.

“Shh,” said Beth. “I’m trying to fix something.”

Beth murmured to herself. She closed her eyes tight, and Toril, who had been lying on her side, started to feel something again, and sat upright.

“My head hurts so bad. Pain.”

“I know,” said Beth. “Let me find it, okay? Just relax.”

“Oh!” Toril breathed. “That’s it, right there.”

“Feel better?”

“Yes. Yes, I do! What did you do?”

“I don’t know,” said Beth. “I just wanted to help. I thought if I can put my hands where you’re hurting the most, I could help. But I feel a bit sick, a bit dizzy now.”

“You felt my pain then. But I do feel better, thanks Beth. Will you be alright?”

“I think so, it’ll pass. I shouldn’t moan. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

“Do you know what happened to you?” asked Troy.

“The details are a bit hazy, but you can fill me in later.”

Beth turned to look around. “Are we all okay? Romilly? Jay?”

I did feel alright, it was almost like the physical pain had gone, but the emotional scars…I doubted that they would ever heal.

Jacinta was still a bit doubled up on the floor. Beth went over to her and placed her hands on her stomach. “Wow,” said Jacinta. “That’s amazing. How do you do it?”

Beth shrugged her shoulders. “I really don’t know how it works. But I think I’ve got my faith back. Hey Milly, do you think I can get my cross back?”

“I’ll get you a new one,” I said.

The upside down cross that Curie had carved into Beth’s back, had begun to fade.

             
                            *                            *                            *

Spring gave way to Summer. I had hoped that the closeness that had thrust me, Beth, Toril, Jacinta and Troy together, could have survived. But there was just too much hurt, too much pain. Hard experiences gone through. Things couldn’t bring us closer together, because they reminded us constantly of the terrible things we had gone through.

I lifted right out of the group. I lived much further away than Beth, Toril and Jacinta did. Even Troy lived just three roads away from Toril, and word had it that they were seeing each other anyway.

I had no time for love in my life, and yet, this really hurt. The phone calls had all but stopped from Beth too. So much for a resurgence of our friendship.

I could hold no grudge against Jacinta. After all, she’d been through enough in her life. The strange healing ability Beth had picked up after the encounter with Curie, when he failed to release the five Zeryths, had continued. She’d even fixed Jacinta’s hair temporarily, so it went back to its original blonde. I only found out about this by being on-line and checking one of Toril’s Wiccan forums.

So Beth was realising some abilities of her own. I would have hoped she would have looked me up some time, as kindred spirit, you might say.

It seemed like fate, that I was destined to spend my sixteenth birthday alone, in Rosewinter, and it seemed that the girls and Troy had moved on. I would have to do so too.

Curie lay with the left side of his face in the snow. The extreme cold wasn’t really a bad thing, because it helped to numb the pain in his leg. This winter was going to be a bad one, and he hoped not to be around for the next one.

Still, the killing would be at an end, and compared to Gacey, Dahmer, Shipman, he was an amateur. He hadn’t killed
that
many, and it had all been under duress anyway, right? Try telling these grease-balled judges that.

If there was a God, which he had spent his entire life believing that no such entity existed, he hoped that such a being would meet him on the Other Side.

He figured that he could endure anything, anything at all except eternity with Diabhal. To think – to
know,
that there are worse things than the Devil chilled him now.

Evil does exist, but not in the way people think. It’s too easy to say Heaven is all light and Hell is fire. That’s too simple. Playground stuff for dummies.

No. There was another true evil, and would claim Curie this day.

It’s a funny thing, dying. I know, because I’ve been there. Been through the void. Because of Curie, I know exactly what dying felt like.

If he could trade a soul, however, he could save his miserable existence. It didn’t pass for what others might call a life.

Then he saw something that might just do that. A single white rose, bent over double with the weight of the snow, came into view.

He sank his teeth into the fleshy part of his hand, biting deep enough to draw blood. He didn’t know if it would be enough to summon Dana, but he had to try.

Maybe she would kill him finally. I mean, why not? He was just another pawn in the game to her. At least with Dana, it would be quick. He’d survived the last time only because he served a purpose to her. Usually, her method of killing left the unfortunate soul with their spine ripped from their back, the throat slashed open by her wand, and the point of that same wand would be used to burst the eyeballs in her victim’s head.

Finally, she would get out her skipping rope and jump up and down on the corpse, with blood and entrails and bone sloshing about everywhere.

Curie knew all about that. He’d seen her do it to Aaron Noone.

What else then? Wait for the Zeryth? Or the Erinyes? If anything, they were not as vicious as Dana, in the killing sense of things. They were efficient. They would just snap your neck like it was a twig. Separating spine from brain stem, it meant instant death.

I could live with that, he laughed to himself.

Perhaps he could, only for the fact that if the Zeryth killed you, you belonged to Diabhal, because They serviced only him.

Curie knew he was damned, any which way you called it.

Thirteen kills and Dana could be released. That was her only agenda. Diabhal – his agenda was different. He got others to do the killing for him, and he’d claim your soul whether you failed or succeeded.

Dana had said that without the Mirror, his power was diminished. Was she telling the truth?

No need to flip a coin, even if I had one,
thought Curie.

With his last fleeting bit of energy, he rolled over towards the white rose, smeared its petals in his blood, and waited for her to come.

             
              *                            *                            *

Through the haze of the snowy mist, the two Zeryths glided through Gorswood Forest. They didn’t feel the cold, as they were already dead. Human, they had been once, but by a set of unforeseen circumstances, they found themselves at the bidding of Diabhal.

Their modus operandi was simple – to kill, quickly and efficiently. Against pretty much everyone they encountered, the result was the same. Shrieks and cries, followed by pleas to let them live, quickly followed by the crunching of bone and tissue as the head was snapped to the side, separating itself from the body in most cases.

Two had been released. It was supposed to be five. It would have gotten Dana released, and Diabhal off Curie’s back. At least, for the time being.

It was all so messed up.

Still, nothing. He wondered what would happen if Dana and the Zeryth turned up at the same time? He’d love to know who would win that one.

Or maybe he wouldn’t like to know.

“Hello, Curie,” she said. “Having a bad day, are we?”

“You could say that.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“You don’t look so great yourself. Bet the wind chills you to the bones.” He laughed at the crassness of his joke, and the desperate situation he found himself in. Dana, for once, do some good. Save me from this existence, and I’ll help you.”

“Do some good? Do some
good?
” said Dana, mockingly. “I already saved you once. You belong to me now.”

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough. The Zerythra are on their way.”

“That’s a bad day for you then.”

“Or for you, perhaps.”

“Oh, I get it. You play me off against them, is that the general idea?”

“Naturally, I’m hoping you’ll win. Makes it easier for me.”

“The Zerythra. These are the axe-wielding whores, right?”

“Yes,” said Curie. “They can be corporeal when then want to be, just before they chop you up with their axe.”

“Corporeal suits me just fine, you know that,” said Dana.

“He’ll send more, even if you win.”

“Not without that Mirror of his, he won’t.”

“You can’t get to it, but I can.”

In the distance, Curie could see the two zombie-girls gliding towards them.  He suddenly lost his composure.

“Dana, for pity’s sake, it has to be now. Do it now, damn you.”

Dana waved her sparkly pink wand over him and he disappeared into thin air, just as the two Zombie girls arrived.

One of them swung their axe at Dana, who just laughed at as it passed straight through her. The other zombie, enraged, grabbed at Dana’s neck, but again, could grasp only at thin air.

Dana, on the other hand, grabbed the zombie girl by the neck. Dana could make contact.

“Do you
know
how I kill?” said Dana. “You’re no different to all the others.”

“Release her now,” said the other zombie, holding the axe to her neck.

Dana used her free hand to grab the axe.

“I too can be corporeal if and when I want to be.”

“We will kill you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We must pass. Our business is not with you. It is with the human.”

“Shouldn’t you be going after something bigger? The Mirror, for instance?”

They were at a standoff. The Zerythra knew that they
probably
could kill Dana, but they knew for sure that she could kill them. There wasn’t any amongst the Zerythra who didn’t know about Dana. She wasn’t exactly contained by Diabhal in the same way.

“Go.”

Dana smiled as one of the zombie girls glided off.

At the other remaining zombie, Dana said “Just you and me then. Don’t suppose you want to tell me where she’s going?”

The zombie backed off, just before rushing Dana. It was a delaying tactic.

Dana had some limitations. As an eleven year old girl, she was quite small, and this zombie was at least another foot or so in height.

As the zombie rushed at her, Dana, grabbed her hard by the neck, only for it to disappear into thin air.

“What-“ said Dana.

The zombie swooped down towards Curie. Dana’s magic had only made him invisible for a time, and had not transported him to Redwood as he had wished. His eyes flashed open as the girl’s axe swung towards him.

Curie cowered, and yet, the coup de grace never came. He heard an unearthly scream as the zombie girl disappeared above him. Dana had somehow penetrated the zombie through her back with her wand.

“Why?” screamed Curie.

“Because
you
belong to
me
,” said Dana. “When your feeble heart gave up in your room way back when, it was me that saved you. Your soul was mine then, is now, and it will be forever.”

“I wish you had just killed me.”

Dana swiped the blood away on her wand and put in back in a pocket on her dress.

“Now where would be the fun in that?”

“The zombie…is she dead?”

“More or less.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means, she’s not a problem for you any more.”

“What about the other one?”

“She’s not a problem for you either.”

“I need to get to Redwood, Dana. If you are not going to kill me –
again
, then let me go.” Curie spat the last three words out through gritted teeth.

Dana paused perhaps too long.

“Dana, damn you. I’m dying here!” screamed Curie. He tried to drag himself forward by his fingertips, which were turning blue in the snow.

Dana crouched down beside him. “Why do you need to get to Redwood? You’ll just go and work for
him
, there, won’t you? No no no no no. I can’t have that. He might just turn you against me.”

“You need to stop her, that zombie creature. She’s the problem.”

“She’ll be waiting for you at Redwood. No. You’re mine. You service
me
.”

“She won’t be at Redwood,” said Curie, confidently.

“Oh?”

“She’s on her way to Rosewinter, the Winter’s wood-cabin, you know it. When she gets there, she’ll get her hands on the Mirror of Souls, and we will all pay for your incompetence.”

“Now how would
you
know about that?”

“The Winter girl, she’s got the Mirror, see. You need to go get it, or save me as you’re goddamnwell supposed to, and I’ll get it.”

“I’m really quite sick of your language. I’m still eleven years old, you know.”

Dana paused for a moment. If the Mirror was in safe hands, then there was no need for her to be concerned. If Curie got it, however, legions of Zerythra would be released, and she wouldn’t be able to contend with them all.

Curie had failed in his thirteen kills. Maybe that’s what he intended all along. Either way he cut it, he knew his life was over.

“We have a problem, Curie.”

“What?”

Still, the legend of Dana was that once she was summonsed, she had to kill, much like the Samurai. Those feared Japanese swordfighters only put their weapons back in their sheaths once the blade had tasted blood.