Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  She wove her way through the trees to come out at the rear of the hide at Cooper’s Pond. As she stepped out onto the path a fox crawled out from beneath the hide. Emz saw the umbrous red of its coat and her uneasiness shifted. It was a wonderful autumn afternoon; the chill of winter was hinted at in the bright gold of the light.

  The fox stood sniffing for a moment or so and then turned to look at her. Emz stood very still and with almost a shrug, the fox trotted off into the trees. He kept up an easy pace so that Emz did not have to run or chase him, in and out of the trees he wove on his particular path. She only half realised when they had strayed into the edges of Havoc Wood because the territory was so familiar. She was lost in no thoughts, just the burnished red of the fox’s pelt like a beacon lighting ahead of her, the black edging to his fur, the stark white of his underbelly, she was focusing on matching her steps to the rhythm of his. Sky. Earth. Bark. Leaf.

  She took a step forward. It was like grabbing an electric fence, the zap went straight through her making her fingers ache. She stepped back, looked at the ground as if she might have stepped on some gadget or gizmo that some idiot had dropped. The zap became a low-level buzz as if, in the near distance, she could hear someone using a power tool, an insistent electrical whine.

  She looked out across the trees to where a few rooftops of town could be seen. Maybe there was a power surge or an outage or something. She could hear noises, offkey and jolting. Was that smoke? It was a thin snake of black and now it was thickening. Something was on fire in town. Emz turned and ran.

  Back at reception Winn had returned and was loading the shotgun.

  “What’s happening?” Emz asked. Winn looked up at her.

  “It’s all kicked off in town. Some loon set fire to the Castle Inn marquee… there’s been a bit of a punch up and Mrs Bentley’s been forced to shut up the castle.” Winn’s hands were not shaking but the fingers were white with clinging to the barrel of the gun.

  “What are you doing?” Emz felt shaken. Winn broke the gun over her arm.

  “Well, after all this Apple Day malarkey I thought we’d shut the gates. Just as a precaution.”

  They wandered down the lane. Loud music could be heard drifting up from town; it might have been a festival except for the thick black smoke. The gates had not been closed in forever and so it took a moment for Emz and Winn to scrabble the weeds from its path. There was a sharp scent to the air from the smoke in town.

  “Right. Done. You need to get yourself home, Emz.” Winn waved her back towards the kitchen. “Don’t go via town. There’s traffic mayhem according to Barbara. Go through the wood.” Winn set off along the thin track to her bungalow.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she called out with a weary wave.

  23

  Downhill Fast

  To Charlie, Apple Day was Apple Disaster Day. When Michael at last arrived with the final keg and they were set up not one person walked by their pop-up. Not. One. The only creatures they saw all morning were a succession of cats from the mad cat woman’s house on Cordwainer Street.

  Now she could see Michael coming back down Laundry Lane scrunching a napkin and wiping his mouth. He waved at her.

  “Long lunch?” Charlie asked. She was feeling hot and out of sorts because today she’d had to sit under a stupid umbrella in some godforsaken corner of Woodcastle instead of brewing beer.

  “I am the boss,” Michael responded, his voice slightly harsh. “I own Drawbridge Brewery.” He tipped his head in a childish manner and leaned in too close. “You, Charlie Way, are just my humble employeeeeeeeeee.”

  Despite the fact that they worked in the brewing industry Charlie had never seen Michael Chance drunk. Not once. She stared at him.

  “You’ve been doing some market research then? Checking out the competition?” she asked, keeping the anger out of her voice. She was very hot and her eyes felt tired. Michael looked at her; his eyes looked odd, had an unpleasant tinny shine to them. She was worried. “Michael, what have you been drinking?”

  “Tea,” he said licking his fingers.

  “Tea. Not cider or beer or wine?”

  “Tea. Lovely apple tea.”

  Charlie struggled to register this.

  “You hate herbal teas.”

  “Ha. This was different… this was a delicious Tisane,” he over pronounced the silly word.

  “So, you didn’t check out what the alcoholic Apple Day competition is?” she asked, with a quick glance towards the far end of Laundry Lane where there seemed to be some sort of commotion beginning: voices were being raised.

  “Nope,” he wiped his sticky fingers on his jeans and looked at her. “It’s the usual cider and apple cake and same boring old Apple Day apple shit.”

  Charlie didn’t speak for a few seconds. She watched her boss mooch about their stall, flinging a few plastic glasses back into a cardboard box.

  “We should just fucking bin this lot, I tell you, what a fucking washout.”

  She had never heard Michael swear before and it surprised her how the words were like little razor blades. She watched him opening and closing his mouth, sticking his tongue out like a cat about to cough up a furball.

  “Yuk. That cake… bleugh… there’s a reason they give this bollocks away fucking free.”

  “Okay. Stop talking now. Sit down,” she pushed him into the deck chair and turned away from him. She wanted him to stop talking because the more he said the more edgy and raw she felt. As he sat, burping to himself, she began to pack up. With the glasses stacked in their cardboard box she moved to the trolley to roll the first keg towards the van.

  “What are you doing?” Michael asked, watching from the chair.

  “Loading up. We can’t leave the kegs here…” As she rolled the keg Michael got up and headed to the back of the van. She thought he was going to help her lift them inside; instead he reached for the tyre iron. With a strong lashing movement, he broke the taps off the kegs and the beer made a small fast flowing river down into the nearest drain. When the first was empty Michael rolled it a little to get the dregs out and then threw it, with ease, into the back of the van.

  “What did you do that for?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “Fucking felt like it. I’m the boss. Remember?”

  Charlie finished loading the van. It was clear that Michael could not drive; he was, probably, possibly, drunk. He seemed drunk, if only in a quiet and rather hostile manner. Charlie got into the driving seat.

  “Fuck that. Get out.” Michael stood at the door gesturing for her to leave the driving seat.

  “Will you stop swearing please and get in.” Charlie’s voice was very quiet. She was struggling with several emotions, but she understood that chief amongst them was fear, intense and scorching. She started the engine, it roared inside her. What was wrong? The air seemed metallic. At once Charlie understood she was thinking too much and she stopped, took a deep breath.

  As she did so the windscreen shattered outwards like a silver constellation. Charlie let out a scream, her arms raising. She could not work out this terrible feeling of dread. She looked out at Michael, looking at the tyre iron in his hand as if he had just woken from a trance before sitting down on the kerb’s edge, his head lolling forward like a rag doll.

  The air was charged, like standing under a pylon. Charlie got out of the van. Michael was snivelling a little now, his nose running.

  “Oh… I can’t do this… I can’t…”

  Charlie heaved at Michael’s limp body, flung his arm around her shoulder.

  “Yes, you can. One, two…” Charlie tugged at him, he was heavy as a sandbag and crying.

  “It’s all passed me by. Love. Life. All too late.”

  Charlie felt a jolt of fear and fury combine. She kicked Michael. He yowled like a child and folded over.

  “Get up,” she pulled at him. “Get. Up.”

  Michael wiped his snotty nose and stood up, his head bowed, meek.

  “Get in the van,
” Charlie shepherded him to the van and as he lolled back in the seat sobbing a little, she fastened his seatbelt.

  Charlie gunned the van’s engine, punched out the windscreen and drove off.

  At the end of Laundry Lane Charlie saw her mistake. Where there had been an access route for Apple Day Traders there was now a fire engine. Smoke billowed away towards Ridge Hill and the nearby stalls were partially burnt with stall holders clearing up the blackened bits. A woman with black marks swiped onto her face was coming towards them waving a half-singed flag from Woodcastle Castle and singing in an operatic voice.

  “Is that from Les Mis?” Charlie asked Michael. Other people massed behind her, stacking the broken and battered stalls into a barricade and singing along.

  More music clashed against them, a tinny beat. On a flatbed truck several men were fighting over the wiring for a set of vast black speakers. There was a rush of bodies and sound, a sudden hail of brown and rotting apples rained down through the smashed windscreen, landing hard on Michael and making him cry more. Charlie attempted to reverse the van, the gears protesting but finally grinding into place, the van squealing backwards.

  It took half an hour to drive the long way around by Old Castle Road and back to Drawbridge via the Woodhill side of town. By the time they pulled in at the car park Michael was calmer, his eyes red, but he was capable of being helped out of the van.

  “Where are your keys?” Charlie asked. Michael’s hands wandered in and out of his jeans pockets and he shrugged. There was a gnome by the door to Michael’s small cottage and Charlie looked under it. As she did so Michael seemed to fail, his body sagging against hers, his face, snotty and tearstained, nuzzling into her neck. He inhaled the scent of her very deeply.

  “Oh, Charlie is my darling…” he sing-songed into her ear, his lips brushing at her skin, his hands at her waist as if he might dance her away somewhere. There was no escaping his hands, sliding round her waist now, pulling her closer. “Charlie is my… darling,” he whispered as he leaned in to kiss her. The charge ran through her hips, snatched her breath as his mouth moved soft and tender and meant, on hers. Then Charlie breathed in: the metallic feel of the air was in Michael’s kiss, like a taint. She pushed him away, wiped at her mouth and, with a burst of energy, twisted round, lifting him, in a martial arts style move, across her shoulders. He gave a weary groan but did not fight her. Stumbling like this, she half dragged Michael through the door and tipped him onto the sofa where he began to snore.

  There was only one place she needed to be right now but her car was still parked at Laundry Lane. She looked down towards town; the noise had risen and the flames from the fire could be seen, the smoke thick and black and choking. Charlie shrugged deeper into her jacket and cutting across the road began to walk across the darkening field to the edge of Havoc Wood.

  24

  The Best Laid Plans

  It had been a long walk back to Cob Cottage, but Charlie did not care. Each footstep had lent a rhythm to her thoughts, clearing her head. Leaving the cover of trees at the far end of the lake, Charlie saw one of their boats slithering back and forth against the shore with the lap of the water. She climbed in and rowed herself quickly across the lake’s surface to Cob Cottage, tying up on the jetty.

  The situation was eating at Charlie and as Emz opened the door and stepped onto the porch she spoke up.

  “Where’s Ailith?” Charlie felt suspicion rise through her like bile. Emz shrugged and shook her head.

  “I don’t know. She would have been down in town with Anna. She was helping out at the pop-up remember?”

  Charlie remembered, and the two facts seemed to weld themselves together into a nut and bolt of certainty.

  “Helping out isn’t what I would call this,” Charlie had decided. Nothing had been quite right since the door to Cob Cottage had blown open and allowed in Ailith and the severed head.

  “You feel it too?” Emz asked, the prickling electrical sensation she had picked up in Leap Woods starting to make her neck tense and give her a headache, a dull singing pain starting just over her left eye.

  “Feel it? Town is mayhem. They’re all bladdered or something.”

  Emz looked at her hands, flexed her fingers stiffly.

  “What?” Charlie watched her sister as she reached up to her neck and massaged at the tensed muscles, rolled her head around.

  “I’ve had this feeling… like electricity, really horrible. Painful almost.” Charlie noticed how pale Emz looked. She knew that if she looked in the mirror she’d look exactly the same.

  “There’s a tinny feel to the air,” Charlie said.

  “Is it like the sound you heard at the castle?” Emz asked. “Can you hear that?”

  Charlie shook her head.

  “No. But something is up.” The words squatted in her head and Emz picked them out.

  “It’s magic.”

  Charlie tensed at the word.

  “You can’t not say it, Charlie. Something is going on. Something bad.”

  “Power then.” Charlie wrestled with herself. “Strength.” She was beginning to understand why their Grandmother had always named it Strength.

  “Something’s gone wrong. We’ve done something wrong,” Emz said.

  “Or Someone is wrong. It’s got to be Ailith.” Charlie was decisive.

  “Got to be? But she hasn’t done anything. Why has it got to be?” Emz reasoned. Charlie was positive in her pessimism.

  “Because she came OUT of Havoc Wood. We should have taken better care.”

  “It’s something we’ve not done right… or even not done at all? For Ailith, for the warrior?” Emz suggested. “Something that we missed—”

  “Or maybe we did exactly what she needed.” Charlie felt better sharing the theory. “Maybe we weaponised that head.”

  She watched the idea of it sink through Emz like a stone.

  “No. It… Oh.” Emz began but her thoughts jammed. She looked up at Charlie, stricken. “Because we don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “So, neither of them are here then?” Charlie cast a cursory glance through the window. Emz shook her head.

  “I’ve been waiting here an hour, maybe longer. No sign.”

  “We need to find them both.”

  Charlie felt the panic subside as a plan pushed forward. Do something, yes, make a move.

  “Where will we find them?” Emz asked. It was a sensible but annoying question and as Charlie looked across Pike Lake towards town where there was a thin tower of flame burning beneath a smoked black sky, she dreaded the answer.

  25

  Double Twisting Pike

  Seren Lake’s head was filled with seams and darts and she was, she realised, humming a tune to herself, something she’d heard on the radio this morning. The late afternoon was autumnal and golden, and she was a little afraid of how happy she felt.

  She’d spent the day at Kingham Gardens with a small theatre company who wanted to commission some costumes for their upcoming Christmas Shakespeare season. It was exciting. So exciting that for part of her day Seren had struggled to breathe or to stop smiling, or indeed to stop drawing her ideas for the company. Possibly she was still asleep in bed and just dreaming.

  The Knightstone Bridge hove into view. The newly renovated towers poked up through the trees, guiding her onwards. There were gilded weathervanes glinting in the afternoon sunlight which, Seren thought, gave no hint of the sad history of last Halloween.

  The sweep of the suspension cables made a graceful cobweb across the wide expanse of river. Everything had to paddle hard along that river, cormorants glided across the surface, not daring to land in the fast-flowing current. Seren was brought sharply out of her daydreams as the cars ahead pipped wildly, a woman darting across the roadway, almost being hit.

  The traffic flowed onwards, and no one noticed the woman lift herself up onto the handrail.

  Seren gaped. What? Where was she going? What was she doing? Wait. Wait. Seren knew
her. Oh my God.

  She pulled the car up onto the kerb and began to hurry towards Anna Way. What was she doing? Taking her shoes off. Oh my god. Oh my god. Seren’s heart pounded with her feet as she watched Anna begin to scramble with some agility onto the handrail.

  “HEY!” Seren shouted, the word cannoning from her mouth. “HEY!” She was closing the distance, there had to be time.

  “Anna.” Seren, breathless and afraid, looked up. The wind blew at Anna’s hair and she leaned into the brief gust, her hand still gripping the cable support so that she looked like a figurehead, sailing the bridge.

  “ANNA.” Seren made her voice boom. Anna glanced sideways at her. Her eyes, Seren noticed, had a bleak tinny sheen to them. Seren’s heart was a stone inside her. She reached for Anna’s ankle, managed a high, sharp laugh. “Hey there.” Words would not come to her mind, just the sense of the empty air and the rushing river waiting beneath. Seren reached up a hand.

  “Take my hand.” Anna did not respond. Seren stepped up onto the base of the railing, straining to reach Anna. “Take my hand, Anna.”

  “Down.” Anna said and looked down into the water. Seren flinched grasping for words. “Anna. Anna.” If she could say it often enough she could hold her there. Anna’s ankle felt cold. Seren gripped it tighter, strained further upwards, her fingers snatching at the hem of Anna’s top.

  “Take my hand. Take it.” Seren felt Anna’s body weight shift. If she jumped there was nothing Seren could do other than follow her. She let go of her ankle, panic washing over her as she began to lift herself up higher onto the rail. Her left hand’s knuckles were white, gripping the wire beside her, and she reached with her right hand and gripped Anna’s waistband. It might not be scientific, but it felt strong. Yes. A plan formed for Seren. Crazy plan.