Winter's Shadow (28 page)

‘That’s unbelievable,’ Winter offered, only partially tongue in cheek. Unlike Winter, Jasmine was inexperienced with rejection. Finally, here was a matter of the heart Winter had some familiarity with. However, it didn’t look as though she was going to get a word in edgeways. Fat drops of rain began to spatter her jacket and she quickened her pace.

‘You know, I could have died when that light fell down. I was distraught! The least Sam could have done was hang around to comfort me. I mean, that’s what a
normal
person would do given the situation, don’t you think?’

Winter had to restrain herself from pointing out it was
she
, not Jasmine, who had in fact almost died. Instead, she offered the requisite sympathy, or a reasonable imitation of it.

‘I’m really sorry for you, Jas.’

Jasmine grew even more vexed. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Sam. That boy doesn’t know what he’s in for. Can you believe the coward didn’t even have the guts to show up at school today either? He thinks he can just avoid me! What a loser!’ She paused her rant to suck in a breath. ‘Seriously, I think I might actually kill him. Do you know any good criminal defence attorneys?’

‘Uh-huh . . .’ Winter said absently, stepping into the newsagency, just as a curtain of water fell behind her and the storm began in earnest. There was nobody in the store, save for the elderly clerk behind the counter. He shot one dismissive glance at Winter before turning
his attention back to his car magazine. Jasmine continued to bleat down the phone, more or less repeating the story.

‘Could I have a single to Clifton, please?’ Winter asked the clerk, fumbling for her purse.

‘Too bright for you in here, is it?’ the clerk asked sarcastically, nodding towards her sunglasses.

‘Oh, sorry!’ Winter said, feeling a little foolish. She lifted her sunglasses, tentatively sitting them on top of her head. The fluorescent lights of the store were still bright, but it was tolerable.

‘One seventy-five,’ the clerk said, ringing up the amount on the till.

Winter slid the change across the counter. He took it without a smile, evidently annoyed by the disruption to his reading time. He shuffled off to the ticket machine next to the cash register and started printing her ticket.

‘You know, I’m not feeling a lot of love from you, Win. Just because you’re sick and all doesn’t mean you can’t shoot some sympathy my way.’ Jasmine demanded, finally cluing in to Winter’s ambivalence.

Winter quickly began apologising. ‘I’m sorry, Jas. What were you —’

The words died in her throat as the clerk returned. Winter felt her mouth drop open as she stared at his face in astonishment.

‘Is that all for today, miss?’ He held the ticket out for Winter to take. She didn’t react.

‘Winnie!’ Jasmine’s voice was shifting over into
outright anger now, but Winter barely heard her. She was transfixed by the clerk in front of her – by what she saw in his eyes.

‘Win? Why are you ignoring —?’

Winter was aware of the phone slipping from her fingers but made no effort to catch it. The clerk watched with mild surprise as it fell to the floor.

‘You dropped your phone.’

When Winter made no move to pick it up, but simply stood there gawking at him, the clerk began to get irritated.

‘Can I help you with something else?’

Winter couldn’t answer him.

His eyes . . . his eyes were on fire!

Winter couldn’t believe what was happening in front of her. As the old clerk scowled at her, she could see tiny tongues of blue fire dancing in his pupils. The flames flickered and pulsed in the black depths, entrancing Winter with their light and movement.

‘Miss?’ The clerk folded his arms in irritation. When she again failed to answer him, he shook his head in exasperation. Winter was fascinated to see his eyes leaving thin blue light trails with the shaking motion of his head.

‘Your eyes . . .’ was all she could manage. She lowered her sunglasses again, curious to see if the visual effect would fade. The blue light vanished. There must be something about the polarised lenses that hid the effect from her naked eye. Mesmerised, Winter raised the
sunglasses and the strange eye-fire became visible again. What was also belatedly visible to Winter was the clerk’s annoyance.

‘Miss, if you’re not going to buy anything else I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ he said, pointing at the doorway behind Winter.

‘I’m sorry,’ Winter heard herself say distantly. Still staring at the spectral blue light in the old man’s eyes, she scooped up her phone, and backed out the door. The cloudburst had eased somewhat and through the misting rain Winter could see a dozen or so shoppers braving the miserable weather as they walked past the storefronts; their bodies little more than hazy shapes shuffling to and fro, and their eyes burning with the same spectral fire as the clerk’s.

What was going on? Was she hallucinating? Was this what it was like to see the world once your mind lost its grip on reality? Did the people around you transform into blue-eyed phantoms?

A bald man in a tan suit marched out of the hardware store in front of her, holding a newspaper over his head to shield himself from the rain. Here was something different – the man’s pupils glowed neon red instead of blue. Fascinated by this new development, Winter stopped to watch the man as he walked past her to the pedestrian crossing, trailing twin crimson lights in his wake.

As he stood on the curb waiting for the signal to change, the man’s phone began to ring. Winter watched
as he greeted the caller, and laughed at some unheard joke. Noticing a lull in the traffic, the man began to cross the street early, still laughing into the receiver. He was too distracted by his conversation to notice the bus bearing down on him from the opposite direction, too distracted to see the danger he was in.

A cry of warning rose in Winter’s throat. Even as it escaped her lips she knew it was too late. The bus driver slammed on the brakes, but the vehicle’s momentum was too great, and the man was struck before he had a chance to turn his head. Instinctively, Winter flinched away so she didn’t see the moment of impact. She heard the sickening thump as his body collided with the unyielding front of the bus, followed by a wet smacking sound. When Winter dared to look again, she saw the man lying several feet away from the bus, twitching as though an electrical current ran through him. Concerned passersby ran to his side, leaving fading blue light trails in their wake. Winter could already tell the effort was futile.

Nobody could survive such a collision.

Winter had never seen anyone dying before. Her parents had been killed while she was in class at school, and it wasn’t until she’d gone with Lucy to the hospital and seen her parents lying on the morgue slab that the unbearable reality of the situation had slammed home. Even then, Winter remembered being grateful that she was spared viewing the moment of their death. Now, here it was happening right before her eyes – the truth of mortality. The sudden, messy and violent truth.

Even from this distance, Winter could see the red glow from the man’s eyes as he lay within the circle of onlookers. It had taken on a dimmer quality, but it continued to stand out in marked contrast to the blazing blue lights of those around him. Ashamed of herself for feeling anything other than horror at the man’s fate, Winter couldn’t
help but see the beauty of the colours in the tableau – the shimmering vibrancy of the red and blues partially obscured by the falling rain. It was a moment of transcendental wonder, and over far too quickly.

A coldness suddenly stole over Winter that had nothing to do with the wet clothes clinging to her body. It was almost as though she’d stepped into the shadow of something monstrous and invisible: something that blocked out all light and warmth. Three dark shapes appeared in the corners of her vision and began to drift towards the dying man. The shapes were tall – at least seven foot – and moved in an inhumanly smooth manner, as if they were gliding. Winter wasn’t sure where they’d come from, only that the sight of them made her want to shrink inside herself and disappear.

What were they?

Despite being vaguely human in appearance, the spectres were clearly anything but. Their elongated heads were completely hairless, white and smooth – more like polished bone than skin. A strange luminescence seemed to radiate from their skin like smoke, etching the figures in a shimmering white light. The creatures might have been eerily beautiful were it not for their eyes: jet black, like polished ebony. No white, no iris, no pupil, just a terrifying, restless darkness, which even from this distance Winter found frightening. Two of the creatures were dressed in identical tight-fitting black robes, accentuating their elongated, skeletal frames and hiding their feet – these robes reminded Winter of
the cassocks worn by Jesuit missionaries, without any of the benign inference such clothing possessed. The third figure’s robe was slightly different. Strange, swirling crimson designs embroidered the hemline, sleeves and collar, marking this creature as separate from the other two. This must be the dominant entity, their master.

The Master opened its mouth, communicating with the other two not with words, but by clicking its small grey teeth together like a giant insect. The sound made Winter shudder. It sounded completely inhuman. It sounded
wrong
. With a chilling realisation she knew she’d heard this clicking before – in the woods outside the Velasco place.

Winter was clearly the only one who could see the apparitions; otherwise the people gathered around the dying man surely would have started screaming in terror once the creatures entered their midst. And yet the concerned onlookers seemed to sense their presence, instinctively moving aside to let the creatures through.

Watching in horror, Winter gasped as the first creature held the dying man down while the second reached into the folds of its cassock and withdrew something small and sharp. The Master stood over them, observing or perhaps directing their actions. Winter’s enhanced vision, which she now wished away more than ever, allowed her to see the object the creature held in its fingers: scissors! Though relatively small and innocuous, the blades gleamed with danger in the grey light.