The Wicca Woman

by David Pinner

  As the remains of Lulu’s aromatic body were consumed by the furnace inside Paul’s cranium, with a startled cry, the writer woke up to the sound of…detonating thunder!

  Rubbing his eyes feverishly, Paul realised that while he was hiding behind the waist-high ferns, he must have passed out, although he had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. But as his coat and trousers were sodden with night-dew, he surmised that it must have been much longer than just a few minutes.

  When the writer pulled himself to his feet, he couldn’t stop shivering, although he still tried to focus on his mist-clouded watch. After he had rubbed the glass clean with his coat sleeve, he could just make out the time under the night sky. It was sixteen–minutes-past-nine. Now he realised that he’d been in his induced dream-world for over an hour. As he pulled his coat sleeves down over his wrists, the bone-chilling cold continued to course through his limbs. In an urgent attempt to warm his hands, he rubbed them together vigorously.

  In my dream, he thought, I was almost on fire with the conflagration inside my skull. Yes, and I believe that it was Lulu, who put me into that trance. The pale fingers, which covered my eyes, were very like her fingers. So where the devil is she now? Perhaps she has been burnt to death, like she was in my dream…

  As he contemplated Lulu’s fate, Paul looked behind him into the nocturnal wood. There was no sign of anyone. He shivered as his limbs still felt chilled from lying on the dank ground for so long. Although he was very relieved that at least his headache had gone.

  Then he turned round to view the glade where he’d last seen Jimmy, with his spade, under the oak-tree.

  But that was over an hour ago, Paul mused, So it’s hardly surprising that Vaughn is no longer there.And also he must have taken his stepladder, and his long ‘snake’, back to his farm with him. And yet…for some unknown reason, he has left his empty sack, and his spade, beside the hole under the oak-tree…

  While Paul was deliberating about what he should do next, in the middle distance, he heard the sound of something, or someone, moving through the undergrowth beyond the ancient oak. Then he glimpsed a spectral figure, flitting between the falling leaves.

  ‘Lulu!’ he shouted as the figure hurried off into the depths of the wood.

  Cursing Paul clambered over the fallen branches, and he ran towards the oak glade. Now he was certain that Lulu had ‘entranced’ him into the dream-world. And although he was relieved to see that she was still alive, he was still determined to catch her, and confront her.

  But by the time he reached the oak, Lulu had disappeared into the dark trees, and he acknowledged that she had eluded him again. Feeling thwarted, he kicked some soil into the hole, which Jimmy had been digging. In so doing, Paul realised that the hole was much larger than he had originally imagined as it was at least six-feet-long and three-feet-across, and the hole was over four-feet-deep.

  So it means that I must have been asleep, or unconscious, for most of the time, while Vaughn was digging here, Paul thought as he surveyed the mounds of earth. Yet the question still remains; what the hell was he looking for?

  In order to discover why the farmer had been digging so frenetically, Paul crouched down beside the hole. But after peering into its shadowy-darkness, he still couldn’t see any reason for the hole’s existence. Then Paul recalled that when Jimmy had pulled what appeared to be ‘a chalk-coloured talon’ from the freshly-exposed soil, the farmer had emitted a withering cry.

  At that moment, there was a lightning-streak that lit up the huge gash in the ground at Paul’s feet. Then the writer gasped as the flash illuminated the ‘talon’, which was protruding from a pile of earth close by him.

  Edging forward, he picked up the talon tentatively. After he had brushed off some flecks of soil, he placed it on the palm of his right hand. And in the fading flicker of the lightning-flash, he discovered that it wasn’t a talon. It was a fleshless, human forefinger.

  Horrified, he threw the skeletal finger into the gaping hole at his feet because now he knew that the hole was someone’s grave.

  Suddenly Paul felt nauseous. With a concentrated effort, he fought back his urge to vomit. He was lurching past the grave, when another bolt of electricity ripped across the night sky. While he was edging around the oak-tree, the blazing heavens continued to dazzle him. Yet nothing prepared him for what the lightning was revealing, on the other side of the tree.

  As its luminescence faded, Paul was able to refocus on the oak’s over-hanging, gigantic branches. Then he saw that there was a noose around Jimmy’s throat, and the farmer’s lifeless body was dangling on the end of a rope, which was tied to a branch of the ancient tree. Instantly Paul realised that he’d already seen the rope much earlier - although, at the time, he thought that the rope was ‘a long, lifeless snake’.

  Dumbfounded, he gazed up at the farmer’s contorted features. Although Jimmy was dead, his blood was still seeping from his badly-bitten tongue, while his eyes stared sightlessly into a purgatorial void. Then Paul looked down beneath the corpse’s feet at the small stepladder, which was lying on its side.

  ‘He must have brought the ladder and the rope in the sack, so that the poor bugger could top himself!’ Paul exclaimed. ‘But why? In God’s name, why did he do it?’

  Shaking his head in consternation, Paul ducked away from the hanged man. Then, once again, he peered at the distant trees, into which Lulu’s wraith-like-figure had vanished.

  ‘Or did Lulu help to hang him?’ he whispered as he stumbled back against Jimmy’s discarded spade.

  He was about to pick up the shovel, when there was another screech of lightning. As its electrical bolt detonated in the chest of Jimmy’s corpse, there was a shattering bang. Seconds later, the farmer’s hanging body was enveloped in flames, and his fire-envenomed flesh began to crackle like duck’s fat.

  Then the supporting rope snapped, and Jimmy’s flaming body crashed down onto the oak’s roots. Within moments, the cadaver was transformed into a human bonfire, while from the oak-tree, more falling leaves winnowed down into the rising flames created by the lightning. Momentarily the leaves glowed like tigers’ eyes as the smoke from the farmer’s burning body drifted upwards, ever upwards, towards…the full moon, which had re-emerged from behind the retreating thunderclouds.

  Devastated, and now terrified by the direful vision, which he was witnessing, Paul swayed in a trance-like state. The stench of Jimmy’s burning flesh reminded him of his recent nightmare. Then Paul recalled how – only a few moments ago – he had gloried in seeing Lulu, burning at the stake, in the bonfire inside his head.

  Jesus defend me, Paul thought. In my dream, I wanted Lulu to be burnt to death. And now a terrible burning has happened in reality. And it’s my rival. Although, I swear to God, I never wanted to find Jimmy dead like this. No, I didn’t want him dead at all!

  With his eyes still half-closed, Paul staggered away from the farmer’s burning body. Dazed he almost tripped over the spade. He had barely recovered, when he lost his footing again. As he lurched forward, he grabbed hold of the spade, to stop himself from falling into the open grave, which the moon was silvering with its lustre.

  When, finally, he had steadied himself, Paul peered down into the bottom of the grave, where he was confronted by a clay-coated human-skull.

  God help him, but this must be the reason that Jimmy hanged himself, Paul thought as he prepared to climb into the grave, sho he could examine the beckoning skull.

  Then he shook his head, and hurriedly he backed away from the grave.

  No, I mustn’t touch anything. Or when the police come and find Jimmy’s body, I will be incriminated in his hanging.

  Paul noted that the spade, which he had used to prevent him from falling into the grave, was still close by him. After a moment’s consideration, he picked up the spade, and he moved away from the glade with the spade in his hand.

  As my fingerprints are all over this spade, the best thing I can do is to throw it into the sea, he t
hought. But I just pray to God that no one has seen me here. Other than Lulu, of course. And she won’t say anything about me to the Police because it will incriminate her if she does. Besides…when someone finds Jimmy’s body tomorrow, Lulu’s cottage is the first place that the Police will go to – as everyone knows that Lulu and Jimmy were lovers. So she’ll need to use all her considerable skills to avoid being arrested. Mind, with her gift of the gab, she’s bound to talk her way out of everything. Then after the Police have finished with her, I will find a way of seeing her, and I’ll force the bitch to tell me the truth about everything that’s happened here tonight.

  As his vindictive thoughts blazed through his head, for a moment he looked back at the spitting and crackling torso and limbs, which once belonged to Jimmy Vaughn. Momentarily, Paul found that he was savouring the sweet smell of the farmer’s burning flesh.

  Although I’d much prefer it to be a woman’s flesh that’s burning here, he thought. Like that old witch, Gwynne Spark. Yes, she would certainly snap, crackle and pop. Or better still; Lulu’s breasts would smell so invitingly…as they burn…

  The next moment, Paul’s headache returned with a vengeance, and its blazing fury wiped away the seductively-alluring scents of female burning-flesh, from the writer’s thoughts.

  Clutching his throbbing head with one hand, and the spade with the other, Paul plunged off into the moonlit wood in the direction of the sea.

  However, the writer failed to see that there was two other pieces of telling-evidence. Under the ancient oak, there was a biro pen, partially covered with fallen leaves. And next to the half-hidden biro, there was a small, black plastic bag, which was peeping out from under the crumpled sack.

  Unaware of this, and with the spade on his shoulder, Paul headed off through the wood towards the sea. Furthermore, he didn’t realise that from the moment he discovered the farmer’s hanging body, all his actions had been observed. And they had all been diligently noted.

  12

  It was ten o’clock, the following morning; Monday, 1st November 1999.

  There was little to show that Halloween had been in full swing on the previous evening, save for a solitary witch’s mask that was lying on the verge, close to Lulu’s cottage.

  As the dazed figure of Mary Rowbottom coursed her fingers through her cropped red hair, she failed to notice Scarlet’s witch’s mask in the misty grass, while she continued walking towards Lulu’s wood.

  Mary was too preoccupied with remembering her Halloween premonition, which had jolted her awake soon after she had retired to bed the previous evening. The premonition ensured that she had an almost-sleepless night. Then when Mary got up that morning, she found that she had barely the energy to make breakfast for Bella, let alone see her daughter onto her school bus.

  In her effort to force her feet forward, Mary was also oblivious that the sun was breaking through the morning mist, and now it was bathing the landscape in vaporous gold. She was too apprehensive to appreciate the natural beauty around her. To counter her weariness, Mary thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat. Then she urged her legs onwards, in the direction of Lulu’s wood, because she knew that the wood would reveal to her whether her Halloween premonition had turned into a fearful reality.

  When she passed Lulu’s cottage, Mary glanced up at the front bedroom window. Although it was past ten o’clock in the morning, she didn’t read any significance into the bizarre fact that Lulu’s bedroom curtains were still drawn. She was too intent in making her way towards the beckoning trees.

  Minutes later, and wielding a stick, Mary thrashed her way through thistles and brambles, while she tramped deeper and deeper into the wood with its winnowing leaves. Normally she wouldn’t have considered walking alone in a wood, but she knew her premonition had to be addressed, and she always prided herself on her tenacity.

  As she scythed her way through the impeding undergrowth with her stick, she remembered being the same age as her daughter, Bella. But in Mary’s memory, when she was an eight-years-old child herself, she was not fighting her way into this wood.

  No, she thought, I was running away from that other wood, on the opposite side of the bay. And I was running because I’d seen little Dian Spark, who was lying dead under the oak-tree, clutching a sprig of garlic. Yes…and God help me, but I’ve never run as hard in all my life as I did that Sunday morning because, Dian, you were my very best friend. So when you tumbled out of the tree, and broke your neck, I had to run and tell your mother the dreadful news as quickly as I could. And it’s why Gwynne has always been such a vindictive witch. You see, Dian, twenty years ago, in that dreadful summer, your mother not only lost you, but then that monster strangled your lovely sister, Anna. And within weeks, Gwynne was grieving for both of her dead daughters, so naturally she was consumed with hatred and venom…

  As the tragic memories swirled inside her head like portentous fireflies in a graveyard, Mary hurled her stick into the bushes. Then she rubbed her eyes, when she realised that she was standing fifty feet away from a grove, which was dominated by an ancient oak-tree. And, ominously, from where she was standing, the grove and the oak seemed to her, to be almost identical to the grove and the oak that she’d seen in her Halloween premonition. Although there was one major difference. The branches of the oak in this real grove were touched with sun-kissed mist. Whereas in her premonition, the oak’s branches were belching flames because they had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  ‘But you’re not here, Jimmy! You can’t be,’ she cried out, her voice echoing amongst the trees. ‘God knows, you’ve hurt me more than enough, but now I forgive you. I really do. So last night, what I saw in my nightmare, well, it just can’t possibly be true.’

  Shaking her head at the enormity of her inherent fear, hesitantly Mary walked towards the grove. While she was approaching it, the final tatters of mist began to retreat.

  As she stepped into the grove, she saw that there was a large, oblong hole in the ground in front of the ancient oak’s roots, and the hole was flanked by mounds of recently-dug earth. This reminded her of the grave that she’d seen in her premonition. Furthermore, the hole in the ground seemed to be beckoning to her – like it did in her nightmare.

  Trembling, Mary edged towards what she now sensed was a genuine grave. After taking three tentative steps, she stopped. She wanted to delay discovering what was awaiting her inside the grave. Then her eyes were drawn beyond the largest mound of soil, where she focused on a half-open, hessian sack that was lying amongst the oak’s roots. And before she examined the grave and its contents, she felt that she had to find out what was in the sack. So without looking down into the gaping grave, she skirted around it.

  When she was barely a yard away from the oak-tree, a solitary sunbeam flickered through the now-almost-leafless branches, and the light glowed on the crumpled sack. As she crossed to the sack, she glimpsed something that was half-hidden under the fallen leaves, and it was glinting in the sun. She stooped to examine the object, and she saw that it was the metal clasp of a biro, shimmering in the sunbeam. Impulsively she slipped the biro into her coat pocket. Then she noticed a small, black plastic bag, peeping out from under the sack. Cautiously she picked up the bag, which was wet from the recent dew.

  Decisively she rummaged inside the plastic bag. She was about to pull out – what felt like a notepad – when she decided that she wanted to examine the grave first. While she was negotiating her way between the various earth-mounds, she thrust the plastic bag into her other pocket.

  Then she peered down into the grave. Instantly her gaze zeroed-in on a mouldering, human skull. The sight of the skull made her realise that the rest of her terrifying premonition was about to come true, and now she knew what was awaiting her on the other side of the ancient oak.

  Gnawing her lower lip, she forced her reluctant feet away from the grave. After steeling herself, she moved around the tree’s immense trunk, where she was confronted by a burnt rope, which was dangling from
a blackened branch. Directly below the rope, there was an ash-covered stepladder, lying on its side. And next to the ladder were the incinerated remains of her dead lover.

  Now only inches away from Jimmy’s charred skull, the distraught Mary fell to her knees. As she gazed into her lover’s sightless sockets, where his ice-grey eyes used to gleam, she began to weep uncontrollably.

  ‘But why? In God’s name, my love, why did you have to do this to yourself?’ she cried to the gaping skull of her once-beloved.

  The only answer she received was from the sun as the radiance of its rays transformed the rest of the glade into a heavenly treasury. Mary’s body convulsed with sobbing. In desperation, she thrust her quivering hand into her coat pocket. She fastened her fingers around her dead lover’s notebook inside the plastic bag because she knew that the notebook would reveal the truth.

  *

  ‘So why did you come to me, Mary, instead of going to the Police?’

  ‘Like I told you, Gwynne, yours is the nearest cottage, and I’ve just read what Jimmy wrote in his notebook!’ Gill sobbed, dabbing her tear-puffed eyes with her handkerchief.

  ‘Yes,’ Gwynne said, taking the poker from the coal bucket, and prodding the reluctant fire in her grate. ‘But you will still have to call the Police, and tell them everything you know. And sooner rather than later.’

  ‘I can’t! Someone else can go to the Police when they discover what’s…well, what’s left of him,’ Mary whispered, while beseechingly she gazed at the witch’s hunched shoulders. ‘You see, the other reason I came to you, Gwynne, is because I knew that if anyone would understand what I’m going through, then surely it would be you!’

  ‘Yes, of course, when you were a little girl, Mary, it was you, who brought me the terrible news about what happened to my darling Dian, wasn’t it?’ Gwynne nodded. Then she discarded the poker, and she flexed her rheumatic joints as she revisited her grief. ‘So it is tragically ironic that my faithful Dian, and your faith-less Jimmy, were both discovered under similar, ancient oak-trees, isn’t it?’