Slow Poison

by Helen Slavin

  “It was strong in the kitchen,” Emz suggested when a trawl of the cellar, the billiard room, library, and sun parlour had revealed nothing.

  The basket of apples was in the larder.

  “First place we ought to have looked really,” Charlie suggested as the white LED torchlight shone onto the blood red skin of the apples.

  “We’re new at this,” Anna excused them. Charlie grunted.

  “What? Food storage 101?”

  Emz was feeling sick. The apples seemed to be giving off a black smoke.

  “Are they on fire?” she asked, taking one small step towards the larder door. There seemed to be nothing to breathe but apple air.

  “On fire?” Charlie asked peering at the apples, leaning as close as she could without actually touching them. “No. Why?”

  “They look like there are wisps of black smoke threading out of them.” Charlie backed away from the basket and she and Anna exchanged a look.

  “You’re the brewer, what are you getting?” Anna asked. Charlie, she had noticed, was breathing in very shallow breaths.

  “All sorts. Like a fungal smell. Layered up with…” she took a sniff “… blood I think, metallic and rotten tasting in the back of your throat. Must. Fowst. Really old smell that I don’t recognise.”

  “How do you know it’s old?” Emz asked, taking another half step towards the haven of the kitchen.

  “It tells me. Very dry.” Charlie was stepping away from the basket. “I have to get out of here.” She pushed past Emz and took in a gasping breath in the kitchen.

  Anna looked at the apples. She smelled almost nothing other than rotting, slightly sweet apple and the skins were, to her eyes, black, a dense velvet black that she did not want to look into because, she knew, it looked back.

  “What do we do?” Charlie asked.

  “She isn’t here.” Anna ought to sound relieved but she did not feel it.

  “She’s not here at the minute,” Emz said.

  “The incident with Winn, the bone thing going wrong, backfiring. That’s the signifier. We’re rid of her.” Anna made the suggestion. “I’d run if that happened, wouldn’t you?”

  “Fingers crossed,” Charlie reasoned. “She might hobble back at some point for the apples though.”

  They all looked at the larder door which seemed to creak a little wider open.

  “We could use the apples as bait then,” Emz suggested. “Trap her.” Charlie and Anna looked at their sister.

  “And do what with her?” Anna asked. Emz thought for a moment and then shrugged.

  “I hadn’t taken the plan that far,” she confessed.

  “But it is something we need to think about,” Charlie said. “In case she does come back.”

  Anna considered for a long time.

  “We can’t feel the magic any longer. Can we?” Anna looked at her sisters. They focused on their feelings and their surroundings. They took several moments about it.

  “Apart from the whiff of the apples I think it’s an All Clear.” Charlie gave a deep sigh.

  Charlie, Anna, and Emz walked back across the yard to the walled garden and, snitching themselves back through the tumbledown wall, felt better. They walked with confidence and in silence up through the walled garden and back into the edge of Leap Woods where their feet automatically turned left as they traced the edge of the trees until Leap Woods began to leak into the edge of Havoc Wood. They crossed the stream by the fallen stone, the old lion face carved in the edge of it, just nosing above the waterline so that it didn’t wear out.

  They were silent for a long time, each sister in her own thoughts. Their footsteps ranged up towards Top Ridge and walked along for some distance. Through the trees the moon glinted on the windows of the rear of Hartfield Hall making it look like a doll’s house.

  They walked without speaking, each locked on their own thoughts about events. Emz found her mind rewinding back, over and over, recalling the picture she had gained from Winn.

  “She was wearing Grandma’s coat,” Emz said. The Ways halted.

  “Who was?” Her sisters looked at her, their voices once again ringing against the wood. The sound was a good one, it bounced back at them.

  “When I touched Winn’s head… I saw the boots, the pinning, all that… but in that mental image she was wearing Grandma’s coat.”

  * * *

  They hurried back to Cob Cottage and found the old black waxed raincoat hanging on the back of the door where Emz had left it.

  “I don’t know why we’re surprised,” Charlie said. “We knew the coat was here. We knew Winn was wearing her own coat. We saw her in it.”

  “But what we were shown must mean something,” Anna insisted. Charlie nodded.

  “Probably. But what? Does it matter now?” Charlie asked.

  “We cut off Mrs Fyfe’s magic power supply.” Emz dug her hands deep into her Prickles fleece, inhaled the scent of wood and pond water that it misted up to her.

  “And she’s gone. End of.” Anna said.

  An image of Mrs Fyfe’s snapped ankle haunted all their minds.

  37

  Safe Harbour

  Mrs Fyfe felt the magic stifle her own and it was a head rush, violent, sickening, and unpleasant. She was in the garden at Hartfield when it happened, her hand just around the neck of the squirrel. She let it quiver for a moment, the tiny source of fear bolstering the drain she now felt on her main resource.

  Oh. It had been such delight, to be strong and unfettered and now, each minute that ticked away, a little of her strength sapped, first one grey hair and then another and another striping their miserable way through her lustrous black locks. Oh. It had been so easy here and now someone, she could well guess who, was robbing her of that.

  She had not come this way through Havoc Wood for many years, too many for anyone to count and even back then it was a Way who had tripped her, a Way who had barred and bound her.

  She needed enough strength for these last few steps. She would finish them. Make no mistake.

  The squirrel’s heart gave out in her hand and since it was no longer of any use she threw the furry corpse onto the grass. She didn’t have to think about what she was going to do next, this drain on her resources was simply the fanfare for battle. It was time.

  * * *

  There had been something off about this Winn woman from the very first day. Mrs Fyfe had noted an edge that she couldn’t quite fathom and it interested her greatly that the woman herself was oblivious to whatever this edge was. Apple Day had sealed the woman’s fate. She had eaten three goodly slices of the apple cake that Mrs Fyfe had baked and yet she had been unaffected by the slow poison. For anyone to withstand this magic there must be something, something powerful and talismanic inside them that was worth obtaining. Mrs Fyfe prided herself on her resourcefulness and now she was going to use that resource. Winn Hartley-Hartfield was going to be her backup generator.

  There was no magical summoning required, there was simply the request over the phone. She had dragged the woman to Hartfield on several occasions already in order to poke and prod at her edge.

  So it was very vexing this time to have her request denied.

  “It’s an interloper. An outlaw,” she insisted. Mrs Fyfe was standing in the main hall and was aware of the fact that this central part of the building held nothing for this woman. She had reached for the connection several times and found it thin but there had been two or three occasions where the lure of the place was stronger. Where had she been? Was it in the garden? That had quite a draw but no. Where else had she summoned her to?

  Mrs Fyfe took the phone into the kitchen and at once the lure worked, the intriguing and edgy Winn woman was on her way and Mrs Fyfe would triumph.

  The charm or the curse or whatever it was revealed itself in the woods after the first blow with the bough. Mrs Fyfe couldn’t recognise it, knew only that she was powerless against it and that its source was outside Winn Hartley-Hartfield. It infuriated h
er but she pressed ahead anyway; the bone magic would strip it, would deny it.

  “I pin you.” The smell of marrow was twitching at her as her boot pressed into the first wrist, the bone of holding, and then her other foot stepping down hard on the bone of cracking.

  The charm was strong, twisting her magic back on herself. The pain sapped everything out of her, her own foot twisting as surely as if a hand had reached for it, Winn lying prone but unharmed, the protection fierce, sounding the bone magic back and out so that the air was alive with it, the strength and power dissipating at once into the wind, the trees, the sky, taking everything she was with it, signalling to her enemies like a distress flare. How could she have made such a mistake? How could she have done this? Desperate, she knew there was only one way to survive her error and, holding that hope, Mrs Fyfe twisted herself up.

  * * *

  Matt Woodhill was out this evening. He had been called out for a quote on the edge of Kingham. Tilda Mitton was a rather posh lady who had over the years added little bits and buildings to her rather lovely home and regarded Matt, quite rightly, as something of a craftsperson. Roz had, in the past, harboured an idea that if Tilda ever decided to move then she and Matt would buy the house from her. She had, in point of fact, openly admitted as much to Tilda on several occasions.

  Matt had been keen for her to come with him.

  “You get on great with Tills and you could have a good nosey round,” he had suggested. “You’ve had a crap day at the gallery, why not cheer yourself up?” He had a point but there was also the matter of the financial housekeeping for the upcoming gallery committee meeting. She’d been putting it off for too long.

  “No. I’d love to. But seriously, Matt, I have to do the accounts,” and he had been reluctantly understanding.

  But now she’d finished catching up on the accounts for the gallery and was disappointed when she looked at the clock. She could have gone to Kingham after all. She opted to assuage her disappointment with a pot of her favourite tea.

  As she reached for the tea caddy she was sure she heard the letterbox go in the hall and she pushed through the kitchen door. There was no free newspaper on the mat, no flyers for the curry house in Castle Hill or the pizza delivery service from Castlebury, and although these small facts shouldn’t have bothered Roz, they did. A cold panic rose inside her and when the doorbell chimed out she walked back into the kitchen and shut the door. For good measure she put one of the chairs up against the handle and sat on it.

  At the edge of her mind a thought was telling her she should run across the lawn right now. She should clamber over the back fence and keep running until she reached the Sisters. It was a prickly thought, like panic.

  The doorbell chimed once more. Was she imagining it or did the sound lengthen strangely, as if it was in slow motion? The cold panic chilled a little more and she moved to the French doors that led into the conservatory.

  She found that she was not opening them to make her escape. Instead she locked them and then her feet, unbidden, carried her back towards the kitchen door and into the hall. It was a sensation like hands pushing at her shoulders. Roz Woodhill was too scared to cry.

  The letterbox rattled more, louder, longer, the hands pressed harder until Roz had to slump forwards. She felt as though she was being crushed. Her heart was booming in her head, a boom that began to match the rattle of the letterbox until she was joined to it, the rattle becoming her heartbeat and then her hands reached to open the door.

  The woman stood on the porch; her hair was striped unevenly black and white and her face had a white pinched look.

  “Invite me inside.”

  Roz felt her jaw creak and spasm, the ball and socket of it grinding against the unwelcome words.

  “Enter, please,” her voice cracked, and she took a step back, her arm lifting unbidden, ushering the guest inside; the woman’s ankle, Roz noted, was horribly twisted, dragged in a trail of rain. The door shut of its own volition. The woman stood in her thin black boots, her leather cape sodden and sending up a scent of old sweat.

  “By the hair on my chinny chin chin, you will let me in,” grinned the woman, and everything was dark and sweat and skin.

  38

  The Power We Have

  In the bare white palace of an apartment at the marina, Charlie made it clear that this was the last place on earth she wanted to be. Aron stood looking peeved and, to Charlie’s critical gaze, childish.

  “Why? Why can’t Anna and Emz just cope without you?”

  He wanted to go to the opening of a new club in Castlebury. The occasion meant something as the place was owned by one of his friends, but Charlie didn’t care. They had parties every week. It was just another club.

  “I want to take you out and show you off. I’ve made plans.” He had got very frustrated. “It’s Halloween for Christ’s sake.” The word Halloween was like a spell, sparking itself off the surface of Charlie but leaving Aron untouched.

  “Hey, remember last year?” His face lit, Charlie paused in her judgement of him. “We were VIP at Pandaemonium? Shit. That was mad. We should go back there. We could do that. Let’s do that.”

  Charlie said nothing, did not react, waited. She watched Aron as he stood up straighter, smoothed his hand through his hair. It was clear he did not, right at this moment, remember the tragic significance that Halloween might have to the Way sisters.

  “Remember last year,” she said.

  “Oh. Right. Bring that up.” He was angry. Charlie felt a flare of fury, took a mental step back until she realised what he was angry about.

  “You gambled away your car.” Charlie had no mercy this evening, at least not for Aron.

  “A car is just a car. Scrap metal.” He was trying to shrug it off, he was good at that. There was still no recollection of the much bigger tragedy that had occurred. Charlie felt her mouth sealing. His face stretched into his best sexy Aron smile, the one he used to get upgrades at the airport.

  “You know, Chaz, there are other girls who would kill for my attention.” The sentence, usually, would have seemed a silly Aronism, something he said to push her buttons. This time it carried threat; Charlie heard it very clearly and, in the hyper state that she’d existed within lately, she would not suffer it.

  “You don’t owe me a thing.” She heard the bleakness of her tone. Aron flinched, just a glimmer and no more, before resuming his cocky persona.

  “What?” His stance was edgy and strutting, his head shaking as if she was a question mark and a nuisance. “What are you on about? Are we going out for Halloween or not?” There, that spell again and still he did not realise. Instead he raised his eyebrows, the look he gave her when he expected her to comply. Charlie could not find that easy going, eager to please Charlie, that part of her was slumped inside like a cast-off slip dress. Flimsy. Crumpled. The idea shook her, her chest compressed, and she thought she might cry.

  “I have to work tonight. And tomorrow,” she had said and reached for her jacket. He had persuaded her to come out for ‘just one drink’ tonight and she felt sickened by the liquor. She could taste factory grease, chlorine bleach, a beer brewed without heart in an industrial laboratory.

  “Work?” Aron gave a snort. “How is hanging out with your sisters in Havoc Wood work? What are you? A fucking crack team of Girl Guides?” His face twisted into his most arrogant sneer, the one that signified he was most afraid. Charlie was shaking as she reached for the door. She had to go. Now. Aron came up behind her, slammed the door shut and leaned in close.

  “How is that crap ‘work’?”

  Charlie looked into his eyes. If she looked hard enough perhaps she could see all their memories together, all their life, and it might rescue her. Might. She thought of Ethan the first time she ever saw him, of Calum busy at the stove in Cob Cottage last year making a curry for Anna’s birthday. She knew then what she would say to Aron.

  “I’m a Gamekeeper,” she said. His face tensed for a second or two, his e
yes took their gaze from hers before he gave a snide laugh and reached to open the door for her.

  * * *

  Charlie arrived at Cob Cottage just as her sisters were stepping off the porch.

  “Hey. Wait up.” She hurried to meet them. Anna handed her a torch and they said nothing further, settling into each other’s space as they headed out towards the edge of Pike Lake.

  As on all the nights since the aftershock had hit, the Witch Ways’ evening patrol had become something more than a straightforward Gamekeeping task. They were all aware of the anniversary that was looming and, without voicing the plan, Charlie and Emz were a cordon around their sister and Havoc Wood was their safe place.

  Each evening as Halloween drew closer, they seemed to set out earlier and wander farther. They did not talk, allowing the sounds of the wood to siphon into them, the leaves rustling and beginning to fall, more each day as the autumn breezes intensified.

  “We’re making little checkpoints, have you noticed?” Charlie said as they pushed up the short rise that they knew as Hazzard’s Pass. The path here was wider and the trees thinner and more graceful, the ground beneath them a thick carpet of moss, deep and green and, to Emz Way at that moment, inviting enough to drop down and sleep upon.

  “Each night we’ve been out… there’s been a pattern to it,” she commented. “Don’t you think?”

  Anna nodded.

  “Birch Stripes, Lull’s Step, Top Hundred, Troop Edging, Hazzard’s Pass…” Emz taking a striding step over Trickle Brook.

  “… Quill’s Gate, Thinthrough…” Charlie chimed in.

  “… Thornwicket, Knoll,” they all finished together, the names reeling from their tongues in time with their footsteps.