Witches of Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  “Oh, stop being so bloody kind. You know I meant it literally.”

  “I know you believe in . . . well, I don’t know what the proper name for it is, but such seriousness is fascinating. How about you tell me everything? Over dinner tomorrow night, say? Not at my restaurant.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t help teasing him. “Is it the food?”

  “Because my staff would laugh at me, being on a date.” That twinkle in his eye. Here it was, a specific invitation. He’d never previously gone that far.

  She had both hoped for and dreaded this moment. “Sunil, you’re very nice, but . . .” She didn’t want to finish the sentence, to say out loud that she just couldn’t do this.

  He sighed. “You still have your whole life ahead of you. Please, think about it.” He very gently touched her arm, and smiled supportively again, and went to his car. Judith watched him drive off and thought about what could never be and then swore at herself for doing so. She had to drive such thoughts from her mind. It was time for battle.

  The next morning, having unlocked the church, Lizzie found herself pausing at the point where she normally bowed in front of the cross on the altar. Mr. Parks had been once again surprisingly full of life at his home communion, but had said she seemed off her game. She hadn’t slept. She was still so angry at Autumn. Had she come back home hoping for the relief—a reconciliation with her best friend? She so much wanted to tell her about Joe, about his death, about her own part in it. Everyone at the time had been so quick to tell her it was an accident. She and Joe had been caught on CCTV camera, she’d been told, though she hadn’t wanted to see it. The police had—horribly quickly—cleared her of blame. Maybe what she really wanted was for unpersuadable, sceptical Autumn to listen, to ask questions, to believe her. That Autumn, though, would never have owned a business she didn’t believe in. That Autumn would never have said anything was “complicated.”

  Maybe Lizzie was stuck now. Stuck here, with no faith in her head, no relief. She’d alienated her best friend years ago, and killed the love of her life, and couldn’t bring herself to ask for help, because maybe she was committing the sin of not thinking she deserved it. “Oh, what’s the bloody point?” she said out loud. She looked from the cross to the beams in the ceiling. “Is there anybody there?”

  There was a sudden noise from behind her. Lizzie spun, to see that a man had entered the church and was looking at her apologetically. “Sorry. Only me, as they say.” He extended a hand. “Dave Cummings. You may have heard. I’m the man from Sovo.”

  “Oh. Hi.” Lizzie managed to control her breathing.

  Cummings wandered further in, looking around at the architecture. “Oh, dear no,” he said, “it’ll have to go.” He saw her startled reaction and laughed. “Joking. Sorry, I always assume that’s what people imagine I’m thinking, wherever I go in this town. I’m the Antichrist.”

  “I’m strictly agnostic about all that,” Lizzie assured him. “I have to get on with everyone.” In truth, the battle lines had been drawn before she got here, and she could see good points on both sides, and apart from caring for those involved, it wasn’t a conflict she was much invested in.

  “It’s actually a lovely church. Cotswold stone, tower in the perpendicular style, all funded by wool merchants, but built around a considerably more ancient original, am I right?” He saw that he was, and was pleased with himself. “Excellent. Could do with a rood screen, most churches round here once had them, very few left. Font and pulpit placed a bit awkwardly for everyone to see. Oh, you must have thought of that, I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. I hope we can bring more people in here.”

  “Oh? Is that something your company are into?”

  “Well, it’s part of the fabric of British life, isn’t it? A bit like we are, these days. Community, reliability, togetherness. All very pleasing. Sovo head office donates to a lot to Christian groups.”

  “I’ll take your money. We have a local charity that runs a food bank.”

  He raised a hand to urge caution. “Such donations being facilitated through organisations like Only Way and the Truth and Light Alliance.”

  “Ah.” Those names meant, to Lizzie, a very particular brand of extremity.

  He must have seen her expression. Her attentive and positive face was utterly beyond her at the moment. “Not your sort of people?”

  “It’s just they’re rather more . . . controversial . . . than—”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’d say the same about you. It’s a pity you judge them and find them wanting. I thought you might want to get some real energy in here, change things around. It’s all a bit . . . quiet.”

  Lizzie wanted to say he should see it on a Sunday morning, but she was trying to find an appropriate manner of speech. He’d caught her at exactly the wrong moment.

  “Or perhaps you like the quiet? Like it being just you? Gives you time to think, I suppose. Lots of time alone to dwell on . . . well, whatever.”

  Did he know something about her? “Why are you talking to me like . . . ?”

  “Like what?” He looked suddenly concerned.

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “Have I said something to offend you?”

  “No,” she decided. “No, I think . . . sorry, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot.”

  “No, no, it’s my fault. You mentioned your food bank . . .” He went over to the collection plate that last night’s youth service had left out on the side altar, reached into his pocket, and placed on it an enormous wad of cash. “There.”

  Lizzie was too astonished to say anything.

  “See you again soon, Reverend,” said Cummings. He headed for the door.

  Lizzie waited for a decent moment after he’d left, then went and stared at the roll of fifty-pound notes. There was enough there to keep the food bank charity going for . . . well, years. She hadn’t even said thank you. She reached out with the aim of taking the elastic band off the money, to count it, to get it into the safe as quickly as possible, but then she stopped.

  For some reason she didn’t understand, she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

  Autumn had resolved to open the shop on time, despite her lack of sleep. She’d had quite a few customers in over the last few days, ones she hadn’t met before, all of them, it seemed, seeking specifically or including in their orders ingredients that were supposed to be able to allow one to hide or vanish. It was as if the New Age community in this and the surrounding towns was bigger than she’d thought and was preparing for some sort of conflict. Their grim faces and refusal to engage with her careful counselling about the proper uses of what they were buying matched her mood. She didn’t believe they were actually capable of changing the physical world with what she sold them—that lack of belief was the bedrock of who she was—but from all the years of research she’d done into magic, she knew the rituals they were about to enter into had meaning for the customers themselves, could change who they were. She’d tried, when she couldn’t sleep, her own rituals about calmness and sanity, to no avail.

  As she unlocked the cash register, her hands fumbled angrily with the keys. Why had she bothered to go and see Lizzie? What had she expected to get out of that, exactly?

  All those years ago, her friend had announced out of the blue that she was taking up a major role in a belief system responsible for so many horrors, and when Autumn had paused, needing time to think about this sudden enormous change, Lizzie had started sending her passive-aggressive emails, demanding Autumn answer. Then . . . well, then had come the moment when everything had fallen apart.

  Maybe Autumn had gone to see her hoping she could share what had happened, hoping she’d understand, Lizzie being a professional believer. Maybe Autumn had thought she might see her story in a way that Autumn herself couldn’t. That look on Lizzie’s face, though, that had told Autumn she could never understand the atheist owning a magic shop thing, never mind the . . . the cause of that seeming contradiction. Her going to
find Lizzie had been, she decided, the result of desperation, her reaching out for old comfort that wasn’t there any more, in the face of . . . a threat which wasn’t real, which couldn’t be real.

  Autumn realised she could hear something again now. In the same instant she went through what was now a familiar process—thinking what she was hearing was just in her awful memories, but then realising that it wasn’t.

  It was music, or something like music.

  A couple of years ago, she’d made herself learn enough musical notation to attempt to write it down, but even then she’d failed. It was a high, repetitive, six-note strain, followed by a recurring three-note sound that seemed like a . . . summons, that circled, floated, repeated, pure liquid sound.

  She’d read many accounts of people who claimed to have heard the same sounds, and some of them had such good explanations of what it might be: wind blowing through gaps in stone, shifting quartz scree, even the sound of killer whales through the canvas hulls of boats. None of those could explain why this sound she associated with a horrifying period of insanity had returned, a couple of weeks ago, right outside her shop.

  Her hands started shaking uncontrollably, and she dropped the keys. She put a hand to her mouth, looking around wildly, trying to find the threat that might come from any direction. It was coming this time, she realised, from just behind the back door.

  She forced herself to walk, step by shaking step, towards the sound. Was it him? As if she was sure there had been a him. She had struggled so long with what she’d started to see as mental illness. Now she was closer to the door, she could hear it clearly: the same music that had been blaring into her ears in the chamber of his . . . his father. She shook her head, trying to push the memories, the stories she’d told herself, the symptoms of her illness, whichever, out of her mind. She was looking at the frosted window at the back door. A shape stepped forward. There was someone . . . something there.

  Then it was gone.

  Autumn had blinked, and perhaps there’d been a blur of movement, perhaps not. At least the music had stopped. Only then . . .

  . . . she slowly turned. It was coming again, this time from near the front of the shop. She closed her eyes, and could only find images from the past, or from her imaginings, crowding in on her. Her walking hand in hand with . . . him . . . no, it. The clearing in the forest to the east of here—he’d led her into it, and she’d been so amazed to see the line of flowers strung between the two enormous trees. That music had been everywhere, lighter then, inviting. In her memory, she could taste it somehow in the air. He’d raced towards the bower, gesturing happily for her to follow. She’d hesitated on the edge of the two trees, struck suddenly by what deep shadows they cast. He’d come back round behind her, put a hand on her shoulders and had suddenly . . . pushed her—

  She didn’t want to remember anything after that. It was impossible. It was all impossible. Lizzie was saying all the time with her bloody collar that she knew everything about what happened in heaven and earth, only that didn’t include what had happened to her, to Autumn. The music was getting louder, or was that just in her head? “You’re not real,” she whispered, “you’re not real.”

  After a while, the repeated words seemed to work. The music faded again. Then it was definitely gone. Autumn was left shaking. She thought of Lizzie, thought of running back to that damn church, into it . . . but no. All the learning she’d done, all the research . . . perhaps it had all been to deal with this moment when she came to question her sanity again. She had to find some way to protect herself.

  3

  Judith had decided to check on all the ancient boundaries, so that lunchtime she had her usual going-out row with Arthur, before making her way to the Market Place, then up the street that led eastwards out of it. This had traditionally been the way sheep had come from the hill farms into Lychford on market day.

  The dry stone walls along the way weren’t in a good state of repair, but as the houses gave way to the edge of the forest, they didn’t look like they were going to fall over any time soon either. These stones had been laid with care by those who knew that all the old crafts had a hidden dimension to them, that the placing of a bonder stone changed everything.

  Out this way there was the lonely last pub, the Castle, which now had an angry chalkboard sign up that said “drinkers welcome” to indicate its dissatisfaction with other establishments’ fads like pub quizzes, bands, food, and, presumably, conversation. Beyond it the road got dark, but that was where the darkness was supposed to be.

  Judith looked up at a noise and saw that an enormous Sovo lorry was approaching, cutting through Lychford when traffic was light rather than using the bypass, she presumed, on its way to deliver to a Sovo store in any of a dozen nearby towns. However, as it roared past her, she heard another noise, and watched as the stone in a section of the wall shuddered, a couple of “batter” stones from the top falling away. Furious, she grabbed one of them, turned and flung it helplessly after the lorry.

  Which it missed by a mile.

  Hopefully the driver had at least registered, in his rear-view mirror, her impotent protest. These people were such fools, they had no idea what they were risking. She raised her index and little fingers at the driver, just so he got the point. Then the lorry was gone around the corner. To Judith’s surprise, a car following it skidded to a halt and out of it sprung Mr. Parker, his face florid. “What the hell are you doing now?” His wife was getting out behind him, looking more worried than angry. “Did you really just make a . . . magic sign at that lorry? After throwing something at it? It all gets reported back to head office, you know. You should see some of the stories they’ve planted in the local media. It’s going against us now. We’re actually losing support. Thanks to you!”

  Mrs. Parker caught up with her husband. “Eric, please don’t—”

  “How dare you make a laughing stock of us? After all I’ve done!” He poked his finger into Judith’s face.

  Judith, not used to being lectured by the middle-aged, had glanced away, back to the wall, and what she’d seen there had made her afraid in a way Eric Parker never could. Standing at the edge of the woods, by the now slightly diminished wall, was an extraordinary figure. It had the shape of a man, but was almost a silhouette, a few lines of a sketch, stark white against the shadows of the trees beyond. It had no features, and yet Judith knew it was looking at her. It took a purposeful step forward.

  Eric Parker and his wife stepped forward in that moment too, as a passing car made them get out of the road. “Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

  “Eric, for God’s sake!” Sheila was getting scared for reasons unconnected to the thing only Judith could see.

  Judith looked back and called desperately to the figure. “You can’t get in. Not yet. No matter how strong you are. Go! Now!”

  Mr. Parker shoved Judith right up against the remains of the wall, sending another stone falling from it. “No, I won’t just do what you say because you’re magic, you ridiculous old cow! Have you thought about supporting the other side? How about making them look stupid too?”

  Judith looked back again to where the figure, now inches away, was regarding them all calmly, purposefully. She caught a familiar scent. This was a more physical form of the probe she’d felt from one of the worlds beyond the borders. Creatures like this were rarely seen in the world of people. Surely it should take longer for them to become this confident?

  “Oh, is there something there we can’t see? Are the voices talking to you again?” Parker grabbed the collar of her coat, making Sheila cry out for him to stop. Judith raised her stick, against which threat she wasn’t sure. She twisted and saw the figure consider for a moment. It reached out.

  Its hand slapped onto Mr. Parker’s shoulder. He spun at an impact he could obviously feel, and his expression contorted into shock as, suddenly, he could see it too. The figure let go. Mr. Parker stumbled back, his face suddenly flushed. His hand dropped from Judith
and grabbed at his own chest.

  “Eric!” shouted Mrs. Parker. “Eric, where are your pills?”

  Judith looked back again. The figure was holding something between thumb and forefinger: a bottle of pills.

  The damn demon! Judith made a grab for it, but the intruder had already stepped back. As Mr. Parker fell and Mrs. Parker started screaming, knowing that now Judith didn’t dare clamber over what remained of the wall and follow, it calmly walked off into the trees and was gone.

  Judith tried, though she had no knowledge of first aid, to help. She yelled at Mrs. Parker to call 999. Shaun, of course, was first on the scene, and he kept up heart massage on the utterly still Mr. Parker until the ambulance got there. All Judith could do was hold Mrs. Parker’s hand, which she accepted, sobbing. As the Parkers were driven away in the ambulance, Shaun looked concerned at her. “There wasn’t anything more you could have done, Mum.”

  “No,” muttered Judith, looking back to where the wounded wall still stood, a breach that would take more than a simple replacing of bricks to fix. “That’s the trouble.”

  Autumn had spent the morning checking her shop’s defences. She’d chosen which empty shop to rent on the basis of its proximity to running water. She’d salted every threshold, had buried witch bottles and the treated bones of cats in holes she’d dug in the supporting walls. As she’d done all that, she’d said the incantations that focussed all one’s consciousness on protection. Now she went back to those defences, said all those calming words again. She did not believe, she told herself, in the power of the objects, or that she was changing the physical world, but instead that she setting up the shop/fortress as a metaphor in her mind, hacking her own brain to withstand the possibility of a relapse. The music was a symbol of mental illness, and she could use her own symbols against it.