by Willow Mason
I bared my teeth at Beezley. “Because they wouldn’t hear you? I’d rather see an attack, thanks.”
The shaft narrowed, the wooden beams supporting the earthen walls appearing spindly next to the weight they had to carry. Everything seemed a hundred years old.
If it’s lasted a century, it’ll hold together another few minutes.
A great thought but not one my nerves put much stock in.
“Ugh,” I cried out as a spider’s web clung to my arm. As I did the required dance of horror to free myself, my phone came dangerously close to dropping on the hard ground.
“Stop making a fuss. It’s just a spider web,” Beezley admonished, then began to perform his own jig as one grabbed hold of him.
If I wasn’t too scared to open my mouth, I’d have laughed at the irony.
With one hand over my face, I whispered, “Perhaps it’s time we headed back. It doesn’t appear anyone’s down here.”
A corner was up ahead, and I desperately wanted to talk us out of venturing as far as that.
“Shh,” Beezley said, cocking his head to one side. “Do you hear that rustle?”
Halfway through a shake, my ears caught the sound, and it turned into a nod. “It doesn’t sound welcoming.”
The noise conjured up images of bodies, wrapped in bin bags, being dragged along a floor. Or maybe a hoard of hungry insects. The type from the jungle where they bumped into a cow and, in seconds, left behind a bare-boned skeleton.
My guts tied themselves into a fancy knot.
The corner was just a metre away, then a foot, then I was level with it. I turned my head even though I had no desire to glance that way at all.
Two bulbous eyes stared back at me, perched above eight hairy legs.
A spider taller than me blocked the tunnel.
I threw my phone at it as hard as I could, turned tail, and ran.
Chapter Nine
Beezley was right behind me and I came close to tripping. With a lurch, I stumbled around him like a drunk man avoiding a cliff edge, my shoulder bumping hard into the earthen wall.
A spider’s web clung to the fabric of my T-shirt and I screamed. And ran. Screaming and running seemed the best plan.
The light from the trapdoor seemed a mile away, then two. How could it be receding when my lungs were burning, my legs pumping as hard as they could?
“Wait,” Beezley called out but, by god, the dog must have been joking.
Every inch of my skin crawled, and I shuddered at the memory cramming out all other thoughts from my head. Ugh.
More screaming. More running. Had the trapdoor jumped through into another dimension where distance operated under a different set of physical laws?
My heart pumped and my lungs heaved but no air seemed to get where it should. My muscles were on fire, unused to strenuous activity.
I slowed, my body’s addiction to general laziness working against me. How unfair. I buckled down and tried harder. The exit crawled a tiny bit closer.
“Help! It’s got me!”
So what, buddy? Didn’t we agree on every man for himself?
My conscience acted as a brake more than my complete lack of physical fitness. I spun around to look, still jogging backwards.
Beezley was pinned by one grotesque arachnoid leg, his stumpy limbs stirring up clouds of dust as he tried to free himself. The mandibles of the giant spider glistened, an enormous drop of venom splashing down just by the dog’s head.
If I went to help, we’d both die at the hands of this absurd creature.
I screamed: at the spider, at the world and its unfairness, at Beezley for getting caught.
“Ow,” the spider cried out, jerking back. “Too loud.”
Beezley didn’t need an invitation. His howls joined mine as the spider shook its head in pain at the noise. When it lifted its hairy limbs to press against its ear holes, the dog scrabbled free.
“Just stop, will you? You’re doing my head in.” The spider shimmered, then the guise melted away to reveal a middle-aged woman standing in its place, hands jammed against her ears. “Honestly, if you were stuck down here in the dark all day long, you’d be sensitive to sounds, too.”
My head throbbed as I recognised the woman and pieced things together. The fortune teller had said I should give my possessions to the coven treasurer, a position held by Silla Gemmet.
The same witch who stood in front of us now.
A few minutes later, we were sitting back in the fortune teller’s tent, a heated pot of tea on the table between us.
“Here’s your phone back,” Silla said, handing the device across.
I winced at the myriad of cracks radiated out across the screen. I winced again as she raised her fringe to rub at a large egg, the impact point of where the phone had hit her.
“Sorry about that,” I said, tucking it back into my pocket. I could figure out later whether the dark screen was because of the loss of battery or the encounter with a spider. “You gave us quite a scare.”
“Speak for yourself,” Beezley said with a huff. “I’m not the one who took off running.”
“No, you got yourself caught, then pleaded for me to rescue you.”
Silla looked at the two of us in surprise. “For partners, you squabble a lot. Are you sure you’re not siblings?”
“I’m old enough to be her father,” Beezley said in a voice full of indignation. “And I can trace my ancestry back nineteen generations.”
“Whoop-de-doo.” I blushed at the memory of the fortune teller talking about my absent father. Those secrets were ones I preferred to keep on the inside. Exposing them felt like wandering around with nerve endings poking out of my skin.
“What do you know about Fenella Wainwright and Angus McClare?” Beezley demanded of Silla. “Each of them died shortly after visiting this booth.”
“Nothing,” Silla said, too hastily for my liking. “When did they visit?”
“Angus came through a few months ago,” I answered. “And Fenella was here just this week.”
Silla opened her mouth, then paused, tipping her head to one side. “Is she the one on the news at the moment?” After I nodded, she asked, “Didn’t she die in a car accident?”
“Yes. That’s what the news is saying.”
“I might enjoy hiding down tunnels, but I can’t even drive a car, let alone own one. If you want to pin her death on somebody, try casting your net further afield.”
Beezley put his paw over Silla’s hand. “We weren’t suggesting for a moment that a witch as advanced in her powers as you would have run that poor girl down in the street.”
The old witch simpered while I tried not to throw up in my mouth.
“What are you suggesting?”
“We thought you might have noticed something out of the ordinary about her,” the dog continued. “I’m sure you’re observant enough to have spotted if something was out of place.”
“I never saw her. We don’t run the operation like that.” Silla paused as though struggling for the right words, then flicked her hand. “Well, you saw. I stay down in the tunnel with my disguise on, in case someone ventures the wrong way.”
“Where’d you get the information from?” I pressed her, still raw from the revelations she’d passed through the microphone to the Great Fortini.
“Ah, now that’s a different story. I’m the genuine article, a foreseeing witch, just as my mother was and her mother before her.”
Wow. Quite the lineage game being paraded before me today. “What does that mean?”
It was Silla’s turn to frown. “You were only knocked out of the coven a few days ago. Have you forgotten all the knowledge passed onto you?”
I was completely baffled. “What knowledge?”
“Well, the… You know, how we… The knowledge!”
Beezley spoke up, perhaps gauging my glare and calculating it wouldn’t be too long before an explosion followed. “Is it like the London cabs? A book she should’ve studied.
”
“Not a book.” Silla sat back in her chair, rubbing the large bump on her forehead. “It’s just part of the general law that every witch learns by osmosis by belonging to the coven.” She leaned forward, pressing her palms flat on the table. “Do you really not understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t have a clue.” My lower lip wobbled, and I bit it to keep the betraying expression in check. “Nobody passed anything onto me, osmosis or otherwise.”
Silla looked upwards, her lower lip pooching out. “Glynda did always keep you on the outside, I suppose, even when you were inside. It’s probably for the best since you’re out of our clutches now. Saves us having to worry if you’ll spill our secrets.” She reached out a hand, touching the back of mine. “And it was a joke about passing all your money onto me.”
“Ha!” I hitched a smile in place. “The joke’s on you because I don’t have any money.”
“Back to the subject,” Beezley prompted.
I shifted in my seat again, out of sorts with the day. What had seemed like a fruitful escapade had turned into a nightmare. I imagined I’d be seeing Silla’s “disguise” again tonight. “When you told their fortunes, did anything strike you as odd about them?”
“Like, did I foresee they’d die?”
“That would be a good start.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “Since you have a genuine gift and all.”
“Yeah, I did.”
The answer took me by surprise, and I exchanged a glance with Beezley.
“I couldn’t tell you anything useful about their deaths—or I couldn’t tell them—but both of those customers had a blank spot where their futures should be. Whenever that happens, I feed some nonsense to Bob—”
A laugh bubbled out of my nose. “The fortune teller’s name is Bob?”
“Yeah. Why? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” I waved my hand and bit the inside of my cheek to stop chuckling. “Go on.”
“I give him something nice to say, to distract them from whatever awful thing is awaiting them. We’ll also give them a free stamp to return here.” She tapped the back of her hand. “They leave thinking something nice is happening instead of—”
Beezley jumped to his feet, over-eager. “How often do folks like that come through?”
Silla pulled her mouth down at the corners and shrugged. “Every once in a while. Maybe twice a year. I don’t keep track.”
“Would you be able to tell us the names of everyone who came in here with a blank spot?”
“I’m a witch with a gift for telling the future, not remembering everything. There are dozens of folks through this tent, every day. You can’t expect me to recall every one of them. Half the time, I don’t even bother to ransack their heads to pick up their names.”
I slapped a hand over my eyes. “You mean, you foretell intimate details of these customer’s past, present, and future but you don’t know what any of them look like or what they’re called.” I peeked at Beezley through my fingers. “She’s a policeman’s dream witness.”
“Oh, hey.” Silla held her hands up, startled. “Nobody said anything about the police.”
“Don’t worry.” I stood up and set Beezley down on the ground. “He’s not about to arrest you.”
Beezley stared at me, growling low in his throat. “Let me be the judge of that.”
“How about a re-entry stamp?” I asked, wiggling my hand at Silla. As she frowned, I rolled my eyes. “You know, just in case I want to come back and be groped by your underling again.”
Silla backed up a step, shaking her head, but her eyes flicked to a parting in the tent. I strode across and tugged open the flap, entering the other room.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“Let her have a look or I’ll call my friends down here this afternoon and you’ll have a dozen officers poking about your tent.”
The room had a spray of bean bags across the floor and an old oak table on rickety legs in the centre. Atop that, a carved mahogany box took pride of place. I could hear a faint song issuing from inside it.
“The spells,” I whispered under my breath, feeling a pull in my chest at the familiar sound. When I opened the lid, a stamp sat in the middle of the case, with a pad soaked with dark ink under it. The song appeared to issue from the ink bottle nestled on the side.
I took a quick photo of the setup, then another after stamping the back of my hand. My phone screen flickered, and I turned it off—the battery now down to five percent.
Never mind. Beezley could get some more images later, back at home.
The bottle of ink frustrated my attempts to open it. My fat fingers weren’t equal to the complicated metal latch. I held it to my ear for a second with my eyes closed, absorbing the siren song.
Beautiful.
Silla shouldn’t have something occult stored in her back room. Glynda would have a field day if she found out.
With a broadening smile, I spent the last of my battery sending a quick text to Harriet, asking her for permission to drop by the library. If I could confirm the identity of the occult spell held here, I might be able to worm my way back into the coven’s good graces.
I replaced everything and flicked through the gap in the tent before Silla grew agitated enough to follow me, the threat of police notwithstanding. I held up my hand for Beezley to see the stamp—a mirror-image of four separate police reports. “Like it?”
“Get out of my tent,” Silla shouted, crimson spots of colour high on each cheek. “You’re holding up all my real customers.”
Beezley trotted near her legs, skittering away when she kicked out at him.
“Fine, we’re going,” I said, shuffling towards the door. “Come on, Beezley.”
“Wait. I have more questions.”
“That she won’t be able to answer. You’ve got to learn when to quit, little man.”
“I only stop when I’ve got the answers I want.”
The memory of a hundred wrongful conviction documentaries sprang into my mind. “Ha. Spoken like a true policeman interviewing an underage suspect and fitting him up for a crime.”
“Boss. Respect.” Beezley craned his neck back to glare at me as he trotted alongside me on the way back to the car. “Do these words sound familiar? I’m the one calling the shots here.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I increased my pace, leaving him breathless as he tried to keep up. The silence was a brief respite.
“I’m serious. We should go back and ask her more questions.”
“Get in,” I said, holding the passenger door open. “Unless you want to walk all the way into town.”
Beezley hopped into the back seat, giving me a look so foul I half expected to find myself giving off an obnoxious stench. When I’d driven a few blocks away, I checked in the rear-view mirror then pulled over to the side of the road.
“If we’d stayed there much longer, you’d have left her in a panic of worry,” I said.
“Forgive me if I don’t much care about Silla’s state of mind. I’m trying to track a killer, remember?”
“But we don’t want her changing her routine. Not if we want to learn anything useful by keeping her under surveillance. A few more questions and she’d be on high alert for the next month.”
“What surveillance?”
“Well, for starters, me.”
Beezley frowned at the dashboard, then shook his whole body. “It wouldn’t work. You heard her. Twice a year, tops, they come by. Surveillance isn’t going to do squat.”
“There’s something else going on there.” I started the car and pulled into the road. “Did you catch a glimpse through the flap?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Why is the witch who tells fortunes hiding down the end of a long underground tunnel in an absolutely freakish disguise, when she could be lying on a beanbag in the next room?”
Beezley kept silent for a moment, cocking his head to one side. “That tunnel was old, but it was professionally built
. Probably part of the old coal mine that used to operate around here. With something like that, I’d expect the council will still have specs for the project.”
“My man! Now, that’s solid thinking.” I held up a hand for a high-five, then lowered it untouched, sighing. “I’ll google if you feed me search terms.”
“Deal.”
Chapter Ten
The internet proved a waste of time. If there were answers stored on it somewhere, they were well-hidden from search-engine bots. After an hour of trying, all I’d found was a lot of ads for blueprint advisors—a service that I didn’t even understand.
“Another place to try is the library,” Beezley said. I’d stopped by the supermarket on our way back into town and picked up a bag of doggie treats. Although he’d turned up his nose at them to start with, once he had a few he got the taste. He fished the last one out of the bag and chewed it with mournful eyes. “We could go shopping again since the grocery store is right next door.”
“Hm.” I shot him a suspicious glance. “Would the library really have this information or is this be a campaign to trick me into shopping?” I held up my hand. “Because if so, I’ve gotta tell you right now, I’m fine with either.”
“They do have a lot of the old town blueprints on file. Or microfiche, anyway. It’s part of their history mandate. To comply with funding requirements, they keep and store a lot of documents that used to be the remit of the town council.”
“The library it is, then, followed by a trip around the supermarket if you need anything.”
My recharged phone beeped as I got into the driver’s seat. A return message from Harriet. “Not a chance. Glynda found out about your last visit and gave me an earful. If she catches you within shouting distance of the library again, she’ll flay you alive.”
I popped the phone away and rubbed at my temples where a small headache was forming. It was more of a heavy pulse behind my eyes than my usual deafening thump. Still, it was bad enough to make a mental note to add paracetamol to the shopping list.
“Are you going to turn the car on anytime soon?” Beezley asked. He shoved his paw toward the wheel. “Put in key and make it go vroom-vroom?”