The Wicca Woman

by David Pinner

  ‘So you’d bloody better get up smartish, you lazy git. And after you’ve had your breakfast, you said you’d go straight over to Gwynne’s cottage ‘cause there’s something important that Gwynne needs to talk to you about.’

  ‘I’m not going round there,’ Vince retorted, pulling the duvet over his nose.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Gwynne Spark is a fucking witch, and she’ll try to poison me again with her disgusting home-made wine.’

  ‘Not on a Sunday morning, she won’t.’

  ‘Anyway…it’s a total waste of time,’ Vince moaned despairingly, with his fingers coursing through the sparse hairs on his balding skull. Then he slumped back on his pillow, with his eyes semi-focused on the orange shade of his bedside-lamp as he muttered, ‘Look, Sue, it’s all totally pointless. Since Wednesday night, she’s just gone off, and she’s deserted me.’

  ‘And a bloody good thing, too! Well, ever since your whore came to Thorn, Vince, she’s made our lives a total misery!’ Sue said, gnawing her lower lip.

  ‘True, it was a kind of hell, with her coming to me every night,’ he nodded, throwing back the duvet, and levering himself off the bed. ‘But now everything is a helluva lot worse without her!’

  ‘God in Heavens, Vince. How can you be such a bastard? And why d’you keep saying all these shitty things to me?’

  In his own deluded world, the postman gazed sightlessly past his wife.

  Fighting back her tears, Sue continued to glare at him, while he slumped forward on the edge of the bed, and tugged on his dilapidated slippers.

  ‘But the more I think about it,’ he said, flexing his toes. ‘It’s that witch of yours, who’s responsible for Lulu not coming to me for the last three nights.’

  ‘Jesus, you’re so utterly gross!’ Sue raged.

  ‘I can’t help myself,’ he whispered, unaware that she was close to pummelling him.

  While he was rubbing his overnight-stubble with the back of his hand, he registered the anger in her eyes. Contritely he acknowledged that she had every reason to hate him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sue dear. But these days, well, I’m just not myself, am I?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Sue retorted as she tried to stop her body from shaking.

  In response, Vince pushed himself away from the bed. For a moment he contemplated taking his wife in his arms, in the hope that he could make things up with her. But the contemptuous fury in her tearful eyes deterred him. Resignedly he sighed, and he tried a different tack.

  ‘Anyway, Sue darling…you still haven’t told me why the witch wants to see me?’ he asked contritely.

  ‘Gwynne says she’s got a solution to our awful problem. ‘Fact she says she’s got the solution to everyone’s problems,’ Sue snapped. Then she softened her tone. ‘And… well, you never know, Vince, but by the time Gwynne’s finished talking to you, she might even be able to help you to…well, to become your old self again.’

  ‘So what the witch really wants to see me about is Lulu, right?’ Vince said, surprised but unable to disguise his delight.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and see the witch right away,’ he said, heading toward the open door.

  ‘What the hell kind of man am I married to?’ Sue cried, desolately subsiding onto the bed, and hugging her arms around her breasts.

  ‘You’re married to a postman, who loathes his job. And for the last three nights, I’ve hated my lousy life, too,’ Vince rasped, snatching his dressing-gown off the hook on the door, and wrestling his way into it.

  Then he turned back to his despairing wife, who had her head in her hands, while she rocked backwards and forwards on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Look, Sue, I know you’re crazy about tidiness, and so it’s why you’ve cleaned up my nail-clippings,’ he said, pointing at the bedside table. ‘But I do hope you haven’t chucked out my nail-scissors along with the clippings.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re asking me this,’ Sue responded abjectly.

  ‘No, I’m being serious, Sue,’ he nodded, unaware of her desolate irony. ‘See, if I’m to cycle over to the witch’s coven, I need to clip my broken thumbnail, ‘cause it keeps catching on my handle-bars. So where the hell are my sodding clippers?’

  ‘You’ll find your “sodding clippers” where you sodding left ‘em. On the sodding shelf under the bathroom-sodding-sink,’ she shouted after him as he whirled out onto the landing. ‘And when you’ve finished bathing your shitty body, you’ll find your bacon-and-eggs congealing on the kitchen-shitting-table. And then if Gwen can’t sort you out – all I can say is – I hope you sodding rot in sodding Hell!’

  *

  ‘You see, Gwynne, my trouble is…well, for the last three days, I’ve just felt so bloody tired.’

  ‘Have another drink, Vince.’

  ‘It’s barely eleven in the morning, Gwynne!’

  ‘You’re cycling home. So where’s the harm in a drop more?’

  ‘Look, I’ve only had a couple of glasses of your home-made wine, and yet, strangely, I suddenly feel…well, very sleepy. So why is that?’

  ‘The reason’s obvious. You’ve had three horrible, sleepless nights.’

  ‘Yeah, and, what’s worse, Gwynne, the flames…flickering in your…fire…well, them flames aren’t helping me, either. They’re making me feel so…bloody drowsy, too.’

  ‘But the question is; who can you see in those flames, Vince?’

  ‘Her…’

  ‘And what is she wearing?’

  ‘Noth…ing.’

  ‘And whenever Lulu used to come to you in your sleep, she was always naked, right?’

  ‘Yes…until three nights ago…whenever Lulu came to me, she was as naked…as the day she was born.’

  ‘And now, when you fall asleep – as you will very soon, Vincent – you will desperately ache for Lulu to return to you in your dreams, won’t you?

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘And you’ll want her to be as naked as Eve, when Eve came to Adam, right?’

  ‘Abs…so…fucking…lutely.’

  ‘So when Lulu comes to you once again – as she most assuredly will – then you will pluck, and eat, from her succubus’ Tree of Knowledge.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I want to do. But, Gwynne, what are you…holding between your finger…and thumb?’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Hairs from…someone’s head.’

  ‘That’s exactly what they are.’

  ‘Whose head…did the hairs…come from, then?’

  ‘Adam’s, of course. Now finish your wine.’

  ‘I will, I will,’ Vince said, giggling inanely. ‘And because you’ve got strands of hair…in your hand, and I’ve got very little hair…on my head; then you’re right, Gwynne, I might as well have another hair…of the dog.’

  ‘Then drink deeply.’

  ‘God, your wine tastes disgusting! What the hell did you… put in it?’

  ‘Henbane.’

  ‘Hen-what?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.

  ‘No, Gwynne, you’re right. It doesn’t…matter. ‘Cause though this wine tastes…well, pretty naff…it still makes me feel…great.’

  ‘I told you it would. Now swig it all down. That’s a good boy. And to the very last drop.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s a good thing that I’m sitting…by your fire. ‘Cause if I stood up…this hair of the dog of yours…well, I’m sure it would make me…fall over,’ Vince chuckled drowsily as he finished his drink.

  ‘And now you’re feeling extraordinarily tired, Vincent, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes…I am…so…so extra…ordinarily...tired,’ he whispered.

  Absently Vince rolled his empty tumbler like a huge marble across the ash-stained carpet in front of the fire. The witch ignored the rolling glass, and she sat forward on the edge of her chair. Then she extended the palm of her left hand towards him.

  ‘I know you’re so tired, Vincent, but you must still
gaze into the heart of the flames in my hearth.’

  ‘I’m trying…to, Gwynne,’ he sighed as drowsily he leant closer to her. Then he pointed his quavering finger at her extended palm. ‘But what’s that…in the palm of your hand?’

  ‘The hairs from Adam’s head.’

  ‘Oh yeah, I can see the hairs, alright. But there is… something else…next to Adam’s hairs.’

  ‘It’s a nail-clipping.’

  ‘Mmm…and the nail-clipping is…well, it’s shaped like a…a…’ he trailed off, rubbing his tired eyes.

  With a controlling smile, the witch extended the nail-clipping in front of the postman’s wavering gaze while she whispered, ‘This nail-clipping is shaped like the Crescent Moon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘And that’s why the hairs of this mad dog, Vincent…’ she whispered, pointing at the hairs in her hand, and then at the nail-clipping. ‘It’s why the hairs are howling at Lulu…Crescent’s moon.’

  ‘That’s very funny,’ he chortled drunkenly. ‘Well, it’s…nearly funny.’

  Then he stared at her in sudden fear, and he waved his trembling hands at the fire.

  ‘But now what are…you doing, you witch?’ he cried.

  ‘I’m throwing the hairs, and the nail-clipping onto the fire. You see, that’s where they belong.’

  ‘No, don’t throw them onto the fire! For God’s sakes, don’t throw them onto the fire!’

  As the nail-clipping and the hairs shrivelled up amid the glowing coals, the witch laughed, displaying her incisors.

  Then, to Vince’s horror, the flames seemed to leap out of the grate, and envelop him. And as he no longer had any control over his mental faculties, he didn’t realise that he was in the grip of an occult illusion. To him, it was an incinerating reality, so when the imaginary flames continued to course over his burning flesh, he screeched like a demented soul in torment.

  A moment later, with his tongue protruding from his mouth like a boiled plum, the postman slumped back against his armchair, and his limbs started twitching frenetically. It was as if an enormous electrical charge was surging through his body. Then his spine went into spasms, and his chattering teeth bit into his tongue. Now he was entombed in a nightmare world, and he wasn’t conscious that the blood from his bitten tongue was dribbling down his chin.

  With a virulent smile, the witch watched him bleed as she said, ‘And this is what is coming your way, too, Lulu Crescent. And very, very soon.’

  While the blood from Vince’s tongue continued to drip onto his spasming thighs, Gwynne clicked her fingers. Instantly his entire body went limp. Then as she surveyed the now-totally-inert postman, the witch’s smile broadened. To her, Vince was like a man made of straw, and the spots of blood on his trousers were merely poppy-petals.

  Still beaming, the witch made her way around her victim’s supine feet. After forcing her rheumatic joints to cross in front of the spitting fire, she took two tissues from a box of Kleenex on a side table. When she returned to Vince, she bent over his seemingly-lifeless body.

  Using the tissues, eventually she managed to stanch his bleeding tongue, although she couldn’t prevent another bubble of blood discolouring her fingernail. Fiercely she jabbed her thumb hard down onto his tongue, while she murmured something inaudible under her breath. Almost immediately the blood on his tongue began to coagulate. After peering down at her victim, with his blood-speckled trouser-legs, the witch focused her eyes on a black cupboard in the far corner.

  Rhythmically nodding to herself, she went over to the cupboard. When she had turned the rust-encrusted key in the lock, she tugged the cupboard-lid open. She peered into the cupboard, where she focused on her straw-woman, which was propped up in a standing position, inside a large, cardboard ‘coffin’. Between the effigy’s legs, there were the four knitting-needles that had been rammed up into the straw-woman’s groin. For a moment, Gwynne contemplated ripping the needles out of her groin, and sticking them into the eyeless-sockets of the effigy’s skull. But the witch shook her head. She knew that she needed to do something more violently-permanent than merely skewering the straw-woman with needles.

  Scowling, Gwynne closed the cupboard, with its coffined secret. Then she crossed over to the snoring figure of Vince, and she smiled at his sanguinary lips, and at the drying blood on his trousers. Once she had reassured herself that she had the postman completely under her control, she left the room.

  Two minutes later, she returned with a damp washing-up-pad. She used the pad to wipe as many of the bloodstains off his trousers as she could. With the Kleenex tissues, she removed the crimson spots from his sleeping lips. When she was satisfied that the blood had fully-congealed on his bitten tongue, she threw the discoloured pad and the tissues into the fire. Finally she poured the remains of her drugged, home-made wine onto the sputtering coals. Still chuckling to herself, she watched the alcohol-fuelled flames whoosh up the chimney.

  Gwynne headed back to the table in the alcove, and she opened another bottle of wine, which she hadn’t contaminated with an enslaving opiate. As she poured herself a large glass, the witch’s eyes glittered with growing amusement. After she had taken a self-congratulatory gulp of alcohol, she returned to her victim, and she whispered something into the postman’s left ear.

  For a moment Vince was motionless. Then he passed his swollen tongue over his lips as he opened his left eye blearily.

  He swallowed more saliva as he nodded, ‘Yes, Gwynne, you’re right…it is the only way.’

  ‘Indeed. So now it is time for you to set out on your mission, Vincent, so you can reclaim what is rightfully yours.’

  ‘When I fell asleep just then,’ he muttered huskily. ‘I must’ve…bitten my tongue.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else?’

  ‘No. Except now I’m absolutely certain that I must fulfil my mission. Whatever the cost to me. Or to anyone else.’

  Groaning, the postman pushed himself to his feet.

  ‘But I wish I didn’t feel so strange,’ he said.

  He looked down at the damp, red smudges on his trousers, and he asked, ‘When I bit my tongue, did I bleed a lot?’

  ‘Enough,’ she said, with an accompanying smile as she opened the parlour door. ‘Now go, Vincent, and do what must be done.’

  ‘Yes, but where the hell will I find Lulu?’ he said, following the witch down her shadowy hallway.

  ‘If she is not in her cottage, you will more than likely find her on the beach,’ she said, while Vince snatched his coat from a peg, and thrust his arms into the sleeves.

  ‘Whatever does Lulu do all day?’ he asked, zipping up his coat. ‘Well, I often wonder what the devil she does. Don’t you?’

  ‘No, because it’s more than obvious “what the devil” she does,’ the witch retorted. Then she opened the door, and she ushered him out onto the front step. ‘Crescent spends her time planning her next succubus-haunting.’

  ‘Then I can only hope that mine is not a mission impossible,’ Vince countered as he noted a crow on her garden wall, with a shorn worm in its beak.

  ‘Don’t worry, Vincent. You will succeed. However, it is still imperative that you find Lulu this morning. Then once you have found her, you must rapaciously “know” her. Because that is the only way that you will ever be free of her. Now go, and do your very worst!’

  As if in agreement, the crow on the garden wall made a krarking noise before it flew off towards the cliff, with the remains of the worm in its beak.

  While Vince was wheeling his bicycle away from the hedge, he noticed it was drizzling. Then when he turned back to say goodbye to the witch, he was only greeted by her closed front door.

  Muttering disconsolately, Vince pushed his bike along the path, and under the branches of the overhanging trees that were dripping drops of rainwater on his head. This induced him to look back in the direction of the witch’s cottage, where the preponderance of ivy-covered trees obscured his view of her front door and her d
ownstairs windows.

  After shaking the raindrops off his face, he looked up at her bedroom window. He was greeted by Gwynne’s wizened, smiling face, which was pressed against the windowpane.

  Imperiously she gestured at him as she mouthed the words, ‘Go forth, and fulfil your pillaging mission.’

  He nodded. Then he noted how isolated and hidden her cottage was from the rest of the village.

  So if anyone ever wanted to harm the old witch, he thought, No one in the village would know anything about it…

  He pushed his bike into the deserted street where the drizzle was rapidly turning into genuine rain.

  There’s no way that Lulu will go out walking in this weather, he mused, pulling his cycle-clips out of his coat-pocket, and slipping them around his trouser bottoms.

  ‘So I’ll have to go round to her cottage, where I will surprise her,’ he muttered to himself as he climbed onto his bike. ‘And then…God help us all!’

  16

  Ten minutes later, with the rain dripping off his eyelashes, and seeping through his trouser-legs, laboriously Vince was pedalling up the incline, towards Lulu’s cottage.

  When he reached her front gate, he discarded his bike by the wall, and he strode up the garden path. As he was in his own turbulent world, he didn’t think that it was strange to be pounding her doorknocker against its metal base like a war drum. Yet despite his strenuous efforts, there was no answer. After sucking on his swollen tongue, he was reminded again of his demonic mission. Ferociously he banged the knocker again and again. There was still no answer.

  Then he pressed his face hard against Lulu’s rain-streaked windowpane, but he couldn’t see anyone in the front room. Fuming, he retrieved his bike from the grass verge. With conflicting thoughts whirling through his head, he climbed back onto the saddle.

  Perhaps Lulu has left Thorn, and now she’s gone to bring chaos to another village, he fumed, pedalling away from her cottage.

  As he headed towards the village, although the rain had lessened, there was still no one about. Other than a feral cat, which streaked in front of him, and skittered into the churchyard.

  Soon Vince found himself cycling back towards Gwynne’s cottage. Then while he was riding past her cottage, he felt as if someone had suddenly turned on an searing light inside his skull. In his mind’s eye, he saw Lulu’s glowing image, and she was walking on the beach in the rain. And although Vince realised that it was the witch, who was manipulating him, he was still determined to go and fulfil his mission.