1st 5 Pages August Workshop - Shorrocks

Name: Helen Shorrocks
Genre: Young Adult Gothic/Supernatural
Title: Bram

According to the mystics, seventeen is a significant number. Depending on who you choose to believe, it is a number of luck, of retribution and fate, the number of an individual with a foothold in two worlds. 

To me it meant one more step towards adulthood. To the thing that had always watched me from the shadows it meant one more step towards his ends. And to my father, who I had loved more than anything else, it meant instant death.

Yorkshire in winter can be a savage place, the moors particularly so. There's no buffer to the wind that howls straight off the frozen rock, flinging snow and sleet at anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves outdoors. It will leave you fighting for breath in a matter of seconds. Only the adventurous or the stupid ever wandered out in it. I didn't consider myself to be either. I just needed to get lost in that whiteness, to be numbed once and for all. 

My wanderings had brought me to the local churchyard cemetery. Again. I checked the windows of the old Vicarage but the curtains were firmly pulled closed. As the new girl in town, it wouldn't do my reputation a lot of good to be found haunting the graves of long dead locals in my free time, especially with my own father so freshly in the ground back in his beloved Oxford.

The ritual was simple. Pick up a bunch of cheap flowers from one of the supermarkets, find my favourite grave, and leave them there to be utterly crushed by the weight of winter. 

The stone angel had been placed facing the wrath of the moor, enduring centuries of whatever the weather chose to throw at her. Her features had been erased over the years, as had the details of whoever she watched over. I dropped the roses onto the icy stone, next to the other withered bunches I had left and pulled my coat closer around me. It had been twenty one days since we buried my father, three days since we came to Ilkley, and less then 24 hours since the crows had started arriving.

Three of them were perched on top of the old gable above the front door when I stumbled up the drive. They watched my approach, silent, but constantly shifting, as uneasy in my company as I was in theirs. A faint light seeped out between the curtains giving the only soft touch to the heavy Victorian stone. These houses had been built to keep wild weather and superstition out, and the living safely in. For the first time since our arrival I was glad of its pure bulk. I gave the crows one last look before I went inside, the wind slamming the door behind me.

My mother was in the kitchen, the only room we had managed to stake out as our own so far. She looked up from a tangle of gourmet cooking magazines, fashion catalogues and my school timetable, frowning.

I pulled of my gloves and coat, dropping them on a nearby chair.  "Don't start, Ali."  The slight raise of an eyebrow was the only sign that my sudden use of her Christian name had the desired effect of distancing us further. 

"Lilith, you're only going to catch your death wandering around outside."

"I'm doing what I need to." I nodded to the half empty wine glass next to her, betting it wasn't the first one of the day. "Looks like we both are."  It was wrong, and cruel of me, but that was just the way life had turned out for the two of us. I left to get cleaned up and pack for school before I had to face whatever new damage I may have caused.

I ran the shower long and hot, until the bathroom was a solid mist. The muscles along my shoulders ached and I hadn't been able to shake the cold that seemed to radiate from my bones since we arrived. In the past few days the physical effort of the move had merged with a mess of grief and resentment to become a living thing that clawed at my sleep at night. When the police arrived on the afternoon of my seventeenth birthday to tell us the helicopter had crashed on the way back from dad's archaeological dig our world imploded. Ali couldn't stand the pain of being around anything that reminded her of him and I couldn't bear to let him go.

I had railed at her when she sold our old townhouse without my knowledge, begged her not to move us to this place where I didn't have a single friend close by when I needed them the most. In the end I had resorted to emotional blackmail and, finally, reason, but nothing had worked.

"Lilith! Dinner!" Ali's voice was muffled, distant. The house had an unsettling tendency to swallow and distort sound. It always seemed to come from somewhere other than where it originated, constantly sending me on fake trails.

"Alright. I'm coming. Give me a minute."

I caught a brief flash of my reflection in the bedroom dresser, wide eyed and pale, matted blonde hair hanging limply down my back. Dad's favourite jumper swamped me, nearly coming down to my knees. I didn't want to think about just how far I had fallen, or how quickly, or how I was going to cut it on the first day of school. Instead, I walked over and pulled the curtains away from the French doors leading to the Juliette balcony outside my room.

It was where the first of them had arrived, just on dusk the night before. In the silence of the fog the commotion of wings had startled me. There was enough light to make out its black form and the way it perched on the railing, one dark eye trained on my room and the other on the moor. I had gone downstairs and dug an old torch out from under the sink in the kitchen. I checked on it at regular intervals during the night, but it never moved or showed any sign that it knew it was being watched. When I woke in the morning, the sun was up and it had gone.

I breathed on the glass until I melted a small patch of frost on the outside, just enough to see through, and was met by the same black eye staring straight at me from the railing. The skin at the back of my neck crept slowly in response. The night crow was back, and it seemed to be waiting for something.