Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Amy Rae Durreson

  Lucy had taken over briefing the new arrivals while I helped Niall at the forge (by which I mean I stood there so he had someone to talk to and occasionally helped him find the right letter stamps to drive names into each link). Nigel and Adrian inspired Lucy to demand my list of victims. She ran her finger down it, stopped three times on families she knew, and hit the phone herself. By lunchtime, we had six more locals who had been haunted last night, and I had been dragged away from the forge to help make sandwiches.

  Peter returned from Carlisle mid-afternoon with Felix, Valerie, and Kasia. Felix immediately attempted to take over organising everyone, much to Anita’s annoyance.

  Niall, coming in for a glass of water, watched them argue from the doorway and grinned at me. “He’s a right one, isn’t he?”

  I looked at Felix, here because Peter had told him I needed help, with nothing but fondness. I don’t think I realised until then that I’d still been trying to prove myself decades after he took me in.

  But I had needed him, and he had come, just like he would have done for Peter or the girls. I hadn’t needed to prove anything at all.

  “Family’s more than blood,” I said to Niall.

  He dropped a kiss on my cheek but then said, “Agreed, but I reckon there’s going to be blood if someone doesn’t split those two up.”

  “On it.”

  By the time I’d soothed Felix’s ruffled feathers and found him something to do, Niall had headed back outside.

  Anton showed up with his boyfriend just after three, and right behind them was a couple nobody recognised. The woman was tearful and her boyfriend inclined to be belligerent, and it took Valerie and Lucy several cups of tea to discover that she was the twin sister of Theo Suarez, the little boy who had died six months after I escaped. Her dead brother had been phoning her all through the night, begging her to come and take him home. They had been on the road from London all day.

  It turned out little Theo Suarez hadn’t been the only ghost using the phone. By five, we also had two sisters from Edinburgh who had been called by their mother’s long-lost brother, and a very angry father from Birmingham who nearly brought the police down on us until he heard the stories everyone else was rushing to tell him.

  On the grounds that the more was the merrier, I rang both Rob Ademola, who was sceptical but intrigued, and Summer, who agreed as long as she got picked up in the Jag. She was the last to arrive, after another couple I didn’t know but Anita greeted warmly, then introduced to me as Niall’s ex-wife and her new husband.

  Niall, coming in to use the loo, looked around at the almost thirty people filling his house and overflowing onto the patio and turned to me in bewilderment. “Who the fuck are this lot?”

  “Family and a few friends.”

  “Bloody hell. Who got the patio chairs out?”

  “Anton. He’s got the barbecue started too. Only way we’re going to feed everyone.”

  “My ex, Anton? That Anton?”

  “Your mum called him.”

  “Fuck.” He shook himself. “I don’t think I’ve got enough stuff to put on a barbie.”

  “Dan and Jake drove up to the village to buy food.”

  “I don’t even know who those people are.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Jake is Dora Suarez’s boyfriend. Dan is married to your ex-wife.”

  “Terri’s here?” He scanned the crowd with a widening grin, then swooped down on her. “Look at you, you fat cow!”

  Terri, who was not so much fat as five months pregnant, smacked him on the shoulder and yelled back, with equal cheer, “And people wonder why I divorced you!”

  Niall beamed at her and me. “See. I told you not all my exes hate me.”

  “Good thing since your mother seems to have invited them all to the party.”

  He snorted. “Party!”

  But it did feel like that, for all there was a nervous tension running under the chatter. Niall shook his head again but turned back to Terri. “Has someone explained it all to you?”

  “Your mum.” She fixed him with a stern look. “You should have called weeks ago.”

  Niall went a little sheepish, and I found myself caught in an uncomfortable clench of fondness and jealousy that anyone else got to see his softer side. These two had had a child together and a whole wealth of history I could never share, and it was hard not to feel that. But it was to both of us he said, “I’ve only got the last one to do if you wanted to bear witness.”

  Terri’s laughter faded, and I saw the same sorrow in her eyes that had weighed Niall down when we first met. She nodded, though.

  I bowed out of it. This was their burden, and it wasn’t my place to intrude. Instead, I found a quiet spot on the upstairs landing.

  Peter was already there, saying anxiously into his phone, “Really, Psalm 20? Doesn’t that imply literal burnt offerings? It’s forestry land, Jeff.”

  I ignored him and perched on the landing to text Michelle. Gang’s all here. You still good for sunset?

  She replied almost immediately. Heading to Hawick for dinner. Will time desire for a sunset walk for our trip back. Lyall being difficult.

  Good luck, I sent back.

  THE MOOD changed once we’d all eaten. Although we perched outside as if it were a normal barbecue, there was an urgency to our meal, and I wasn’t the only one who kept glancing at the shadows, watching them grow. We’d originally allowed an hour and half before sunset to walk up to the ring and set up, with Niall planning to borrow a quad bike from the farmer at the end of the track to transport himself, his portable forge, the chains, and Jeannie, who was definitely not up for a hike through the forest to the end of the tracks, whatever she claimed. But now we had three Land Rovers parked in the drive—not quite enough for everyone but certainly enough to do a couple of runs up and down the trail without having to rely on the smaller quad bike. Niall went on the first one, kissing me goodbye with a thoroughness that left me blushing and some of our guests staring. The other Land Rovers followed, and then we started loading everyone else into the smaller cars we planned to leave at the bottom of the track.

  Felix said to me, clapping his hand to his heart, “Good lord, we’re going to have to put up with socialism at the Christmas dinner table, aren’t we?”

  Anita threw him a Niallish glare. “If you think I’m socialist now, you wait until I get started on the topic of private education.”

  Felix’s face lit up with the gleeful expression of a man who thrived on a good argument.

  “Not now, Dad,” Peter said and ushered them both into the next car, where Valerie was already waiting.

  I watched them go fondly, but with a strange sense of amusement. It had never occurred to me to laugh at Felix before, but suddenly I had realised he was absurd once he got going—my dear, egotistical not-quite father.

  I took the last car load, locking up behind us. We were the last group of those who had volunteered to start walking—me, Lucy, Dora Suarez, and her boyfriend. We didn’t talk much on the way up the back road, but Dora said quietly, “I never thought I’d come back here.”

  I felt guilty. If I had died with my parents, her brother would have been safe.

  Then, with the determination of long practice, I turned that thought around. It wasn’t my fault. There was no blood on my hands. The redcap had killed them all, and now we were going to stop it from hurting anyone else.

  “It could have been me,” Dora said. “If I hadn’t been scared of the ponies. If I’d gone too instead of staying with Grandma.”

  “None of us chose this,” I said to her. “We were all victims of a monster’s choices.”

  She laughed bitterly. “That’s what my therapist says. Except she doesn’t talk about monsters and mean it.”

  “You know what’s better about actual monsters?” I asked her. “You can hunt them down.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a bad coping method,” Lucy said, but Dora laughed.

  I parked behind the two p
revious cars by the side of the track at Dinlabyre, making sure to leave enough space for the Elliots to pull in. Michelle was planning to suggest a sunset walk as a last positive experience of Scotland, but she had assured me she would get Mac to the ring by any means necessary if that didn’t work. The group before us weren’t far ahead. I could see Rob Ademola’s red jacket clearly—a reminder that I had friends here.

  It was one of those perfect clear evenings the Borders sometimes throw up, as if in apology for the rain and gloom they present the rest of the time. There was enough of a breeze to keep us cool as we made our way uphill, and the air was sweet and heavy with the scent of pines. We didn’t talk much.

  The first returning Land Rover bumped down the track to meet us before we’d gone a mile, and I could see the other two behind it, making for the groups higher up. I scrambled in the back as Lucy claimed the front seat beside an old classmate whose sister had drowned in the burn ten years ago. We had to leave the car at the edge of the forest and walk the last few hundred feet. By then, none of us were talking.

  We’d taken the chain with its name links up in five sections, so it wasn’t too heavy to carry from the cars. Niall was welding the sections of it together now, bent over his portable forge and a small anvil where he had set them up on the flat surface of the concrete information marker. A bucket of water stood beside him in case a spark escaped onto the moss, but he seemed to have everything under control. He was whistling to himself as his hammer rang against the metal, so I left him to it and went to find my family. They’d claimed a section of the moss, and I dropped down beside them, saying, “I hope no random hikers stumble upon us.”

  “I’m sure they’d just back away tactfully,” Naomi said, smiling at me. Now Peter had mentioned it, I could see the shyness in that smile.

  “Let’s hope so. How are you enjoying Whitby?”

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “I wish we’d looked inland a little more, though. The drive up was fantastic—I came along the top of the moors, then up through County Durham and Newcastle and along below the wall.”

  “The North Yorkshire Moors are meant to be lovely,” I said, making myself continue the conversation.

  “We had a lovely holiday up there before Peter was born,” Valerie said. She smiled at me. “I like your Niall, dear, even if he is a bit grumpy.”

  My cheeks went hot, and I muttered something. Kasia muffled a laugh. I kicked her shin.

  “Be nice, children,” Felix said.

  To save my dignity, I said to him, “Did you see the link I sent you—about the farm?”

  “Yes, yes. An interesting prospect. What does your gut tell you?”

  “That it isn’t as haunted as Vainguard,” I said dryly.

  “The location’s much better. Price will be a factor, of course, but if we can sell Vainguard, even for less than its actual value—”

  Valerie interrupted firmly. “I feel this may be one of those situations where the no-work-at-the-dinner-table rule applies.”

  Felix huffed indignantly but fell silent, and again I felt that weird mixture of fondness and exasperation. Was this how Peter and the girls felt about him all the time?

  Peter looked up from skimming through prayers on his phone to laugh at us again.

  I blurted out, determined to say it before things got dangerous, “Thank you for coming, all of you.”

  “What else are families for?” Valerie asked calmly. “That’s why we’re all here.”

  I looked around at the unexpected mixture of people who had arrived at the lodge today, the people I loved most mixed in with complete strangers. Not all of them were even related to one of the victims, but they all had people they loved too much to lose—or loved ones they had lost before their natural time. It was strange to think I’d ever been lonely up here. Niall had been there almost from the start, but all these other people had only been a phone call away. It hit me anew that some of them always would be, whether I was back in Sussex or running a new school here or doing something else which had no connection with any part of Eilbeck history, past or present. They were here for me, not the school.

  Then Niall, his voice cutting through the chatter, said, “I’m done.”

  I stood up and addressed everyone. “Spread the chain around the outside of the ring. There’s no signal here, so I can’t tell you exactly when the Elliots will arrive, but let’s get into place now. If you have a personal connection to a victim, go to their name, but everyone else spread out. I want someone on every name. I’m not sure what happens next, but thank you, all of you, for coming.”

  Someone clapped, probably sarcastically, and I slunk off to help move the chain into place. It was heavy, weighed down with names and, I fancied, all the stories of the children lost in Blacklynefoot. I ended up next to Niall again, on either side of the trail down from the viewpoint to the circle. I glanced at the forge perched prominently on the concrete block and the anvil on the edge of the path and said, “Those are going to be a bit obvious.”

  “Well, I could’ve set them up in the grass, but then I’d have set half the hillside on fire, which would have been even more of a giveaway.”

  “Fuck you,” I said cheerfully.

  He grinned and gave me a slow, measuring look, which brought heat to my cheeks. All he said, though, was, “Try the weight of those last ten links or so. You’ll need to get them across the path to me fast once he’s in our trap.”

  I picked them up, testing them. They were heavy, but certainly not beyond my strength. “I’m good.”

  I got another of those provocative looks and raised my eyebrow at him. Was this really the time?

  Then again, it was nice to think we might soon have a chance to act on those ideas without all this weighing on us. I winked at him in return.

  “I brought something else up for you,” he said.

  “Presents? You shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s not a happy thing, but I think a bit of cold iron on you wouldn’t be a bad idea. I still think this thing will take you down if it gets a chance.”

  And there was my usual curmudgeon. I waited, curious, and he handed me a very familiar loop of iron—Margaret Elliot’s loop.

  “Look at it before you put it on,” Niall said, watching me anxiously.

  He had added to it. The old script of Margaret’s name still marked the flattened edge of the link, but it had been carefully cleaned and polished. He had also punched two new names onto the other side.

  Jamilah Kwarteng.

  Stella Kwarteng.

  I swallowed hard.

  “They’re not part of the chain,” he said softly, “but I thought they ought to be here to protect you. Do you mind?”

  I had to swallow again, but then I slid the link around my wrist before stepping over the path and dragging him down into a long kiss. Someone wolf-whistled, but I didn’t care.

  When I pulled back, Niall said, too low for anyone else to hear, “When this is done, you’d better not be in a rush to leave.”

  As declarations went, it was both vague and inelegant, but I was pretty sure I knew what he meant. I said, just as ineptly, “You know what’s nice about being a teacher? You can get a job just about anywhere.” I had always known that, but it had never occurred to me to want a job anywhere other than Eilbeck House. Now I was finally starting to realise that Eilbeck would still be there if I left.

  Niall kissed me again and gave me a little push back to my position on the other side of the path.

  Gradually, the last of the cheery mood faded. As the light grew golden, our sense of adventure faded. Someone asked, voice too casual to be convincing, “What if it gets out? Can it hurt us?”

  I said, “All evidence suggests it’s a physical coward. If it does break free, let it run, and we’ll find another way to get it.”

  Someone said grimly, “We didn’t come all this way to let it escape,” and the mood darkened again.

  Then, in the distance, we heard the indistinct sound of
voices. We all went quiet, and several people reached for the hands of those closest to them. The voices came closer, and soon we could all pick out the distinct sound of an American accent. Unless some really unlucky tourists had stumbled across us, the Elliots were on their way.

  They weren’t the only ones. From below us, picking their way slowly up the old reiver trail over the bog, came the sound of horses.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  CLEAR AS a bell, I heard Doug call out, “Oi, Mac, you ugly retard, come and get me!”

  “Shut up,” Mac’s voice drawled.

  Doug made a chicken noise; then there was the sound of a slap.

  “Douglas Elliot!” Lyall thundered.

  But Doug was shouting again. “Come and get me! Catch me if you can!” The taunt ended on a squeak, followed by the soft thud of someone running across damp ground.

  His words might have sounded like teasing, but when he came hurtling over the ridge, his face told the truth. He was running for his life.

  There have been times in my life when people called me brave purely for living through significant misery. I never respected or believed that, and I would say to them now that true courage is a nine-year-old boy knowingly taunting a monster without being certain the trap he was baiting had even been set. He came down the slope towards us so fast, I was afraid he’d run through the ring and go sliding down the wickedly steep slope beyond.

  Mac came after him, running at full pelt. His face was twisted—angry, vicious, loathing. As Doug passed between me and Niall, Mac seemed to realise that we were waiting for him, but he was coming downhill so fast he couldn’t stop himself. He went stumbling between us, and I dragged my end of the chain over the anvil where Niall was waiting. He was already bowing to pull the last open link out of the forge, holding its glowing curve up in the tongs as I dropped the two end links onto it.