The Haunting

by Alex Bell

  “You’d be better off alone,” I said, turning back to Jem. “All I ever do is cause you trouble and make your life complicated. You said it yourself last night.”

  He groaned. “Oh, God, Shell, please don’t throw that back at me now. I didn’t—”

  “Don’t say you didn’t mean it!” I cut him off. “We both know that you did!”

  “I’m not perfect, OK? But I do love you.” Sweat ran slowly down the side of his face but he didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t you know that if you died I’d die, too? For God’s sake, Shell. Please. Don’t leave me here by myself.”

  I frowned, confused. Suddenly I felt a bit less sure about the fish hook and started to lower it. The witch was getting inside my head and putting dark, desperate thoughts in there. They weren’t mine. I was supposed to be fighting them off, not embracing them. She was trying to use my own pain against me.

  The birds ruffled their feathers, staring at me expectantly. One of them knocked up against the witch bottle, causing it to roll along the floor.

  Cordelia hissed then – a dreadful, hateful sound. And then, to my horror, she lunged at me, dragged the poppet from my pocket and hurled it into the overflowing pump in the corner of the room. The doll landed with a splash and then sank to the bottom beneath the weight of all those nails. With a cold, cruel laugh, the witch turned, raised her arm, and pointed her bloodied fingertip – pointed it right at Jem.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Jem

  I couldn’t understand what was happening at first. I only knew that I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were full of water, and so was my throat, burning with the taste of salt, and then I was on my knees and choking it up on to the floor. But it wasn’t just water – there was sand in my mouth, and seaweed, pieces of coral that cut my cheek and broken shells that scratched along my tongue, sea pebbles that lodged in my throat and barnacles that chipped against my teeth. It felt as if I were heaving up the entire contents of the ocean. I tried to breathe and only swallowed more water, my lungs on fire with the effort of trying to draw in air.

  I could hear Shell shrieking. “Don’t you dare touch him!”

  I turned my head and saw her feet planted firmly in front of me. Emma was on my other side, her hand gripping my shoulder as I retched. It was only the three of us there in the room.

  So how could it be that, beyond Shell, I could suddenly see a fourth person? With my sister blocking the way I could only see their feet, bare upon the stone floor. At first they seemed diseased, ravaged by some terrible skin condition, but then I realized that they were in fact covered in a hard coating of barnacles and limpets, molluscs and zebra mussels, algae and slime. There were even sea sponges growing upon the ankles, and clusters of tube worms creeping up those pale, white legs.

  I tried to shout at Shell to get away, but I couldn’t speak a single word. An awful spasm wracked my body as I tried to breathe again and more water rushed into my lungs and filled up my windpipe. In that appalling moment I realized I’d been wrong all along, that I’d made the biggest mistake of my entire life, and that I was going to die because of it.

  No matter how much water I heaved out on to the floor, there just seemed to be more and more of it. Sand crunched between my teeth and I gagged on thick blades of seaweed that felt like fingers reaching down my throat. Salt made my eyes water and my throat burn and my chest ache. I could hear this awful wet choking sound and knew it was coming from me, and that it wouldn’t take too long to die this way.

  Shell had been right and I would never get to tell her I was sorry because my heart was beating fast enough to explode in my chest, a creeping blackness blurred the edges of my vision, and there was no room to think of anything at all beyond the pure, blinding agony of drowning.

  Chapter Fifty

  Shell

  I threw down the hook and raced over to the pump, plunging my hand into the filthy water all the way up to the elbow as I desperately felt around for the poppet. The water was too dirty to see anything in the tank but my fingers pressed against something soft and horribly mushy, then ran over something long and smooth and cold, like a tail.

  Finally, my hand closed around the poppet and I dragged it out of the water but it didn’t seem to make any difference to Jem. Cordelia was still pointing at him and he was still choking up water so I dropped the poppet and snatched up the witch bottle. Yanking out the cork, I spoke Kara’s incantation out loud. The birds spread their wings and lifted up at the exact same moment, surrounding the witch, pecking and clawing her.

  But it wasn’t enough to get her into the bottle. More and more birds burst out from the end of my fingertips until the blood ran down my wrists but it didn’t make any difference. Kara had been right – the witch was too strong. She was far, far too strong. My attempt to trap her was only making her angry, only making things worse. Her arm was raised and her hand stretched out through the dark feathers of my birds, still pointing at Jem, still killing him right in front of me.

  “NO!” I screamed at her at the top of my voice. “Stop it! It’s not him that you want. It’s not him that you hate. It’s Christian, isn’t it? Christian Slade.”

  The witch’s head jerked up at the name. She turned towards me and – finally – I could hear Jem gasping on the floor – tortured breaths that sounded painful and raw, but were breaths none the less. I looked at my birds, still flapping and shrieking around the witch. I might not be strong enough to force her spirit into the bottle, but perhaps an ordinary ghost like Christian Slade would not be quite so difficult.

  “Yes,” I said. “Christian Slade. I know where he is. I know you can’t get to him. But I can get him for you. I can give you what you want.”

  I said the incantation again but, this time, I substituted “Christian Slade” for “Cordelia Merrick”. The witch shuddered at the sound of his name, the birds lifted away from her and flew up the stairs to Room 7. I felt Christian resist them but his frightened, feeble spirit was no match for them and the birds returned seconds later in a swirl of thrumming, beating wings.

  I could see Christian in the middle of them. His dark hair was dishevelled, his eyes were wild, his shattered jaw disfigured his once-handsome face. Old bloodstains marked the white shirt he’d been wearing when the beam fell down to crush his chest on the deck of the Waterwitch.

  Cordelia flew straight into their midst and threw herself at him. It might almost have looked like a lover’s embrace if it weren’t for the way I could see her nails digging deeply into the back of his neck, like she wanted to curl her fingers around the smooth white bone of his spine and yank it right out of his body.

  I could not see either of them properly, surrounded as they were by birds but soft words seemed to fill the air out of nowhere:

  Dearest love of my soul…

  Through the black feathers I caught a sudden glimpse of Christian Slade’s terrified, pleading eyes. “Please!” he forced the word out at me through his bleeding mouth. “Don’t!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s the only way. And you brought this on yourself.”

  The voice was there again, the whisper filling the room:

  I will hate you until the end of days…

  Pecking and clawing, shrieking and flapping, the birds dragged Christian Slade’s ghost out of the witch’s arms and forced him into the bottle in my hand. Cordelia let out a howl and raced in after him, disappearing into the bottle in a rush of icy air that seemed to freeze the glass. I slammed the cork firmly into the top, put the bottle down and then scooped the limp wet poppet up from the floor. This time, the nails came sliding out easily enough and, when I looked through the torn fabric I saw that the coffin nails were gone and there were just clumps of wet herbs there instead. I shoved the poppet back in my pocket and hurried over to Jem and Emma where they were sprawled on the wet floor, surrounded by shells and coral and thick strands of dark, dripping seaweed.

  “Are you OK?” Emma was asking Jem.

  “No,” he ga
sped. He groaned and gripped his head with both hands. “God, that buzzing is … it’s going to split my head open!”

  As he spoke I saw a squirming water wasp crawl out of his ear and fly away up the chimney.

  “It’s OK!” I said. “It’s just the wasps! They’re leaving!”

  The first one was quickly followed by others – dozens of them – more than the few I had seen crawl into his ear last night. The witch had probably been sending them since the first day we moved into the Waterwitch.

  “They’ve gone,” I said, as the last one flew up the chimney.

  “I saw her,” Emma said. She’d gone completely pale. “She was really there. She—”

  “You didn’t look at her face, did you?” I asked sharply.

  She shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. There was … it was like a dark mist, hiding her from view. I only saw her feet.”

  My birds, of course. Protecting us all.

  Jem looked up at me. His clothes were soaked with sea water and there was an anguished expression in his eyes. “I am so sorry,” he said hoarsely. “You tried to tell me so many times and I wouldn’t believe you.”

  I threw my arm around him, not caring that he was soaking wet and sticky with salt.

  “I don’t blame you,” I said. “And if we hadn’t come here then I might never have realized that the birds were on my side. I might have gone on being afraid of them forever.” I drew back. “They did kill Dad, though. They did it because I wanted them to. I was afraid he was going to stab you with that knife. I’m a murderer, Jem.”

  “It was more like self-defence,” he said, and I wondered whether he was trying to convince himself or me. “It wasn’t murder. It wasn’t.”

  I wasn’t so sure. He was still dead. And white witches did not go around killing people with black magic. This was blood magic now. Killing a human being that way was a dark, dangerous thing to do, the kind of thing that got you noticed by the devil himself… And yet, I would do it again if I had to. I would do worse than that to protect my brother. And that thought frightened me, too.

  “You still can’t see the birds, can you?” I asked, looking at the bright, shining eyes that surrounded us.

  “I can’t see them.” Jem touched my arm. “But, Shell, honest to God, I believe that they’re there.”

  I’d been waiting for him to say those words for so long and it was the sweetest feeling. At long last, he wouldn’t think I was crazy. I just had to hope he didn’t now think I was dangerous instead.

  “What are we going to do about the witch bottle?” Emma asked and we all looked round at it, standing innocently on the floor behind us. “Brick it up behind the fireplace again?”

  I shook my head. “It will be found there sooner or later and then the witch might be released. There’s only one place for that bottle, and that’s at the bottom of the sea.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Emma

  We found a boat to hire that afternoon but there wasn’t room for a wheelchair so I couldn’t go with them. Shell wouldn’t let anyone else carry the witch bottle and was already on board, fidgeting around in agitated impatience.

  All of Jem’s flu symptoms had gone, just like that. My head was still reeling with everything that had happened down in the cellar. Those awful, unnatural feet. Shell speaking to someone we couldn’t see. Jem drowning on dry land right in front of me. It was too much to take in. It was too much to believe. And yet, it was impossible not to believe now, either.

  “I’ll text you when we get back,” Jem said to me.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” I asked.

  “I’ve taken boats like this out before,” he replied. “And the sea is calm enough.”

  “No,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about the sea.” I hesitated for a moment, then forced out the words, “I was talking about Shell.”

  “What do you mean?” Jem asked, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze and I was sure he already knew exactly what I meant.

  “If she’s a real witch – if she has real magic and she can actually kill a man with it, then how can you know for sure she isn’t dangerous to you?”

  Jem was silent for a long moment. Finally, he looked at me and said, “Shell would never hurt me. I trust her. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “But—”

  “Jem, come on!” Shell called from the boat. “This bottle needs to be at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “All right, I’m coming,” he called back.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Shell

  We sailed out until Looe was a blur on the horizon and there was just a vast expanse of grey ocean all around us. Jem killed the engine and the boat bobbed freely on the waves.

  “Ready?” he said.

  I nodded and leaned out over the side of the boat, holding the witch bottle above the water. I’d been gripping it so tightly that my fingers seemed glued to the glass and I had to force them open to let it go. The bottle plunged into the sea and I kept my eyes on it for as long as I could as it sank down into the cold, silent world below. Within seconds it was lost from my sight and I stepped back with a sigh.

  “It’s over,” Jem said, touching my arm.

  I glanced up at him and tried to smile. “I know.”

  The witch was gone. She couldn’t hurt us any more. My birds took up every inch of available space on the boat – lined up along the railings, perched on the covered roof, scratching around on the deck at our feet. Jem gave my arm a last squeeze and then went to switch the engine back on.

  I thought of all that had happened to us recently – recalled that sickening crack when the bone broke inside my arm, remembered all the black bruises and blood, the hauntings and curses and nightmares. As the boat turned in the direction of home, I made a vow that nothing would ever hurt us again. The world was a dark and dangerous place, but I could be dark and dangerous, too, if that’s what it took, and if anyone ever crossed me, or threatened Jem, or the life we had together – then they would regret it.

  “They’ll wish they’d never been born,” I said to one of the birds on the nearby railing. It cocked its head, looked right at me with those intelligent dark eyes, and I was sure it understood.

  “What did you say?” Jem called over the wind.

  “Nothing,” I called back. I reached out to stroke the bird’s glossy feathers with my bloodstained fingertip. “Nothing at all.”

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks, as always, to my agent, Carolyn Whitaker. Thanks also to Katie Jennings, Emma Young, Ali Ardington, Emily Hibbs, Jane Harris, Ruth Bennett, Susila Baybars, Jessie Sullivan, Jennifer Cooper and everyone at Stripes for all their hard work on this book, as well as Frozen Charlotte.

  Looe is one of my favourite places in the world and the idea for the Waterwitch Inn was partly inspired by the incredible Smugglers Cott Restaurant, which was built in 1420 using timber salvaged from the Spanish Armada.

  Whilst doing some final research for The Haunting I stayed at The Watermark Bed & Breakfast in West Looe where I enjoyed one of the best vegetarian cooked breakfasts I’ve ever had, and ate too much of the delicious Cornish cream tea. Many thanks to Ash and Debbie for the wonderful hospitality.

  Finally, thank you to my family, for their continuous support - and for putting up with all the writing madness.

  Copyright

  STRIPES PUBLISHING

  An imprint of Little Tiger Press

  1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,

  London SW6 6AW

  First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2016.

  Text copyright © Alex Bell, 2016

  Extract from Frozen Charlotte © Alex Bell, 2016

  Cover copyright © Stripes Publishing Ltd, 2016

  Photographic images courtesy of www.shutterstock.com

  eISBN: 978–1–84715–767–6

  The right of Alex Bell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1
988.

  All rights reserved.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  www.littletiger.co.uk

  An extract from Frozen Charlotte

  “Such a dreadful night I never saw,

  The reins I scarce can hold.”

  Fair Charlotte shivering faintly said,

  “I am exceedingly cold.”

  Jay tapped the phone screen to turn it off but, though the voice stopped singing, the Ouija-board app wouldn’t close. The planchette started spinning around the board manically.

  “Dude, I think that app has broken your phone,” I said.

  It was only a joke. I didn’t really think there was anything wrong with the phone that turning it off and on again wouldn’t fix, but then the screen light started to flicker, and all the lights in the café flickered with it.

  Jay and I looked at each other and I saw the first glimmer of uncertainty pass over his face.

  And then every light in the café went out, leaving us in total darkness.

  There were grumblings and mutterings from the other customers around us and, somewhere in the room, a small child started to cry. We heard the loud crash of something being dropped in the kitchen.