Winter's Shadow Read Free Page A

tightly around her body as she crossed the threshold. She tried to convince herself that it was the sudden drop in temperature that was making her shiver, not the eerie atmosphere of the church. Her nose wrinkled in disgust as the stench of mould and mildew pricked her nostrils. It smelt
old
here. Old and stale. At least she could see. Diagonal shafts of weak sunlight stabbed through the holes in the church’s roof, lighting Winter’s way through the gloom.
    She ducked beneath a ragged curtain of spiderweb, keeping her eyes peeled for any black scuttling shapes. Hadn’t Mr Denning said something about spiders? Looking around at the scattered debris on the floor, it was easy to imagine her foot sliding into a pile of rotting wood and thousands of tiny, hairy, black bodies runningup her leg. If she saw so much as one of those eight-legged little monsters she was out of here – academic probation or not!
    It suddenly occurred to Winter that this was the first time she’d been in a church since her parents’ funeral six months ago.
    Six months
. . .
    To stop her mind from dwelling on that miserable day, Winter lifted the Nikon to her eye and began snapping images of the shadowy disarray. The process distracted her, but Winter knew the sadness still lurked on the periphery of her consciousness, waiting to drag her down. As long as she kept busy she’d be fine.
    Viewing the church through the camera lens, Winter was struck by its starkness. There was hardly anything here. No pews or confession booths, just a bare altar at the front of the church, and beside it, the splintered base of a charred pulpit. Any furniture that hadn’t been reduced to ash had been piled up and pushed to the edges of the room, presumably to make space for the vagrants who’d used Pilgrim’s Lament as a shelter over the years.
    As she looked down at her feet, Winter was interested to see what looked like red moss growing on the floor in thick patches between the empty beer bottles, cans and charcoaled wood. On closer inspection she realised it wasn’t moss at all, but the remnants of a plush carpet, which must have lined the aisle before the church had fallen to ruin.
    It was hard to imagine a religious congregation ever gathering here. Winter felt as though she was walking through the carcass of a huge, rotting leviathan – some horrible dead monster that had been left to decay on the mountain and was now nothing but bones and dust.
    The church felt more than old.
    It felt dead.
    Winter shivered at that particularly morbid thought. The darkness suddenly seemed alive around her. She could hear wind whistling through the cracks in the walls, the sound both mournful and ominous.
    The sooner she was done here the better.
    Winter quickly began snapping off shots to finish the roll of film, taking less care than she should have to frame her photographs. They didn’t all have to be masterpieces, so long as one or two were usable. She had enough confidence in her technique that she didn’t need to spend hours agonising over every angle. Just take the shots and get out!
    After a few minutes of this frenzied snapping, Winter realised, with no small sense of relief, she was down to her last frame on the roll. She glanced around for something worthwhile to photograph for her final subject. A flash of colour drew her eye to the far eastern wall. Pushing past a large pile of rubble so she could see what was creating the dappled rainbow, Winter made a surprising discovery. It was a tall stained-glass window that had been previously obscured from her view by a large column – one of the few remaining roof supports.
    The bottom portion of the window was missing, but the top half remained a stunning testament to the artistry of stained glass, standing in marked contrast to the gloom and squalor of the church. The image was an exquisite depiction of the Madonna holding her hand out in benediction, rendered in vivid blues, reds and yellows. The artist had taken