by Allyson Bird
Christy remembered a little side door in the high perimeter wall and tried the latch. Surprisingly that door opened and she ventured towards the back of the crematorium, over the lawn and through the circular garden of remembrance. She was careful not to trip over the small memorial stones, visible in the moonlight. She worried about being seen, but Christy took a chance—she had to know what was going on. It was a cold night, the temperature had dropped and the snow was lying thick enough for her to see footprints at the back of the crematorium, where members of the public were normally prohibited.
It began to snow more heavily, the kind of snow that piled up quickly and could take days to thaw. It only needed a few hours of it. The fresh footprints that led up to the back door of the crematorium would soon be covered up. There were no windows at the back of the building, for obvious reasons. She glanced up and saw black smoke belching into the night sky from a tall chimney above the snow covered roof. She shivered, more from disgust than the cold. She supposed they must do some of the disposal of bodies at night; but what of Kamile? Why had the two men brought her there?
Christy dreaded that she already knew the answer to that question.
At this point she thought it best to ring the police and try to get them to investigate. She put her hand into her pocket for her mobile phone and then swore, realising that she had left it in her bag in the car. She would have to go back.
As she turned, she slipped on a patch of ice near the door and fell against it with a heavy thud. With a stifled cry of pain she fell onto her knees and tried to get back to her feet, but too late. The door opened to the outside and knocked her down again. This time it was her hand that scraped against the ice and stone. She cried out again. Rough hands dragged her to her feet and hauled her into the building. Terrified, she struggled against two bulky figures as they pulled her further into the bright light of the crematorium.
The first thing that she noticed was the smell. A mixture of formaldehyde and an odour equally unpleasant, that must be of burnt flesh and bone.
The room was quite large, crowded with large steel tables and an old cart. On the cart was an open coffin. The two men had wasted no time, for as the taller one dragged Christy past the coffin she saw the body of Kamile—but she was raised up, too high, as if something was underneath her. The heat from the furnace became overwhelming and beside it stood a third, small stringy man in a boiler suit, who looked rather nervous.
“Look here, you didn’t say that you were bringin’ two here tonight. I can’t cope with a change of plan.”
“You’ll do as we say Bill. There isn’t going to be a choice for you.”
Christy tried to back out of the room, away from the coffin. “No, please—don’t do this. I won’t say anything.”
“Yeah, right—course you won’t,” said one of the men.
“Like you could keep quiet about this.”
“If my life depended on it, I could.”
“It isn’t up for discussion.”
“Bill. Get on with getting rid of those two in that coffin.” He pointed at the cart.
Christy stifled a sob as the crematorium attendant drew the cart closer to the furnace. She turned away in disgust as she heard the electronic conveyor start up and the sound of the coffin move into the fire. A loud bang signified that the furnace door had been closed. The cart pulled back and the process started.
Two bodies, in one coffin.
Christy struggled again and the man in a black overcoat shoved her across to the corner of the room and threw her down into an old high backed armchair. She winced when her arm banged against the wooden chair.
“Tie her feet and hands,” he said to the other man in the doorway. That fellow took a plastic cord from his pocket, wrapped it around Christy’s wrists and pulled hard, the plastic biting into her skin. He did the same thing to her feet. Just as he gave a last, painful tug a mobile phone went off in his pocket—some ridiculous frog ringtone that Christy had never found funny. He fumbled and answered.
“Yes, okay. Dave…” He thrust the phone at his mate and bent down to see if the plastic ties were tight enough.
“I’m in the middle of—” Dave looked annoyed but he deferred to the voice on the other end of the line.
“Okay. I’ll be straight over.” He threw the phone across at the other man who clumsily caught it. “Sid. You wait with her. I won’t be long.”
“But, can’t we get this over with first?”
“No.”
“Can’t I sort this out?”
“I wouldn’t leave you to sort out your own shit let alone this.”
Bill looked even more distressed as Dave left the building and stepped into the raging blizzard outside.
“Watch out for the icy roads!” called Sid after him, then he sheepishly bit his lower lip.
“Where’s the can? You watch her. I’ll pee myself if I don’t go. And you fucking watch her well.”
Bill pointed to a red door opposite the exit from the building and Sid rushed over to it.
The heat from the furnace was intense. Christy could hear the roar of the fire as it consumed its contents.
Bill shook his head, muttering away to himself in the corner. Christy looked on, her eyes open wide in terror, as she saw him take a pile of human bones from a cardboard box in the corner. He threw them into a funnel and started the bone grinding machine. It would have been the same machine that had reduced the remains of her mother to tiny bits of bone. The noise was unbearable. Something jarred and stuck and he swore under his breath as he turned the machine off.
“Fuckin’ machine. Always jammin’ and I can’t do me job properly. It’s supposed to grind into smaller stuff but it’s useless—only renders to bits of bone. Ashes—that’s a laugh. The damn council won’t buy another machine.”
Bill gave her a quizzical look, “What the fuck was you nosing around here for?”
“Some girls who worked for me disappeared.”
“So you’re scum too, just like those bastards. At least I do a real job and earn a decent wage doing what other people couldn’t do. Never broke the law until now.”
“No, you’ve got it wrong. The girls did work for me at the Mortimer Hotel.”
“Ah that place, another dump.”
Christy tried to pull her hands apart, but the plastic ties made that impossible.
“How can you do this?”
“Do what—the burnin’ and such? It’s me job.”
“No, doing the dirty work for them.” Christy nodded towards the red door.
“They’d kill me if I didn’t.”
“You could get caught.”
“There isn’t anyone that would squeal on them lads. They’d be dead within a day. Anyway, it’s not like we’re leavin’ the bodies around for the police to trip over them, are we?” Bill smiled. “When they’re done in the oven, I grind them and put a little of the extra girls in the legitimate containers. It makes them a little fuller than I’d like but I spread the rest in the remembrance garden, tidy like.”
Christy felt as if she was going to be sick. The only thing that stopped her was the determination not to be. Then Bill started up the bone grinding machine again. This time she couldn’t help herself, and threw up over the side of the armchair.
Bill stopped the machine again, collected the bits of bone in a brown container and brought it over to show Christy.
“Look. It ain’t so bad now, better than being food for worms, eh?”
The container was almost full. Bill thrust it in front of her face and she turned away, trying not to be sick again.
“Perhaps there is one of your girls in here. The bastards called her Maria, though that is not how she said it. They had a bit of fun with her in this place before they did her in. Imagine. Fuckin’ bastards. In this place. No respect those bastards have, none at all.” Bill put the container by Christy’s side and went back to the bone grinding machine.
Christy thought she heard a rustling sou
nd coming from the container, as if the bone particles were settling. It was only when Bill turned his back that the particles seemed to rise out of the container and take on some sort of shape. It drifted close by Christy and she felt the plastic ties snap and fall away from her wrists and feet. She thought she saw the outline of a woman, the form shifting with some difficulty to retain its suspension in midair, bending over Bill, forcing the stricken attendant back—back towards the furnace.
The police had no alternative but to believe most of what Christy said when they did a thorough investigation at the crematorium. Christy had pulled some heavy boxes against the toilet door so that Sid couldn’t escape and later the police found a whole gang of criminals who were involved with the exploitation and disposal of unwilling young women.
There was no trace of Bill. But as Christy went back to put flowers on her mother’s memorial some days later, she passed by the back door of the crematorium. The snow was melting and as she placed her foot on the pathway leading out of the remembrance garden, she heard the sharp crunch of bone against the grey stone and she knew that Marija had put him in the best place possible.
The Conical Witch
“Once upon a time a number of children lived together in the Valley of Childish Things, playing all manner of delightful games, and studying the same lesson-books. But one day a little girl, one of their number, decided that it was time to see something of the world about which the lesson-books had taught her; and as none of the other children cared to leave their games, she set out alone to climb the pass which led out of the valley.” The Valley of Childish Things and Other Emblems by Edith Wharton.
The bad reputation of stepmothers per se has been well documented. To bring one into the family less than a year after the death of a mother might be considered bad form. But Martin had insisted that he was doing it for the good of his young daughter, Lotte. And Lotte, considering that she was on the verge of puberty, needed a female to relate to. That the woman her father had chosen was a mail-order bride from Russia of all places (she spoke little English), and that he went to bed in the daytime with his new wife, had nothing to do with it. Daria was from Minsk, in Belarus, and had been a waitress in a café.
Within hours of Daria entering the house the new stepmother lived up to the reputation—and when her new husband’s back was turned, she would make strange gestures with hands and eyes that would root Lotte to the spot until she released her and gestured once more for Lotte to get out of her sight.
“In my country, mothers are the heart and soul of the family,” Daria said in a sharp tone that made Lotte’s hair stand up on the back of her neck.
A ten-year-old child can still believe in magic—Lotte did. She knew all about witches from all parts of the world. She believed Daria to be a red witch (simply because of the colour of her hair), and that whatever happened from now on, they would be at war. Whoever had the strongest spells would win. And in order to win you had to know your enemy. Lotte had learnt that from her father, who owned a small company that shipped ‘antiques’ into Russia, and, apparently, women out. He was quite good at his job and told Lotte that he knew how to thrash the competition. Daria, to Lotte, was the competition. But it would take more than special offers and dodgy salesmanship to get rid of her—it would take magic.
Witches from around the world, wise women (perhaps even downright evil women), were needed to help—no white witches for Lotte. If it meant using blood and stuff in spells, so be it. And for that she would need some assistance.
Against the trend of the day, which demanded that a child never wander more than three metres from the perimeter fence for fear of abduction and, God forbid, a neighbour patting you on the head and getting mistaken for a pervert, Lotte was allowed to visit Mrs. Grimshaw, who lived on the rundown farm across Tanner’s field. As Lotte lived in a small market town, there was not as much tension as there was in the city.
Mrs. Grimshaw had gone through two husbands, that most people knew about. She eventually told Lotte that she had been married five times in all, but only Lotte was entrusted with this information and sworn to secrecy. Lotte was allowed to do errands for her because Martin was so taken up with his new bargain bride he never seemed to notice that Lotte wasn’t in the house. It was to Mrs. Grimshaw that Lotte now turned to complain.
From her name you would surmise that the woman had always lived in Yorkshire, and perhaps been married to Yorkshire men. She had travelled the world in the late Sixties and Seventies, and led a bohemian lifestyle. One husband had been the cousin of a shaman doctor of Kyzyl, which proclaims to be the exact centre of Asia. Mrs. Grimshaw had seen him sacrifice lambs to gain power from spirits. Another had been a waiter in Paris, a third a sailor who had died but not been buried at sea. Those were the ones she talked about often, but she never mentioned the other two, or any children she may have had.
Lotte could see Mrs. Grimshaw’s farm from her own house. In the winter, when the cold weather wound round her like a rough shroud, Mrs. Grimshaw wore thicker skirts, always a few inches from the ground, with a black coat that ended at knee length. She had shoulder length, black hair and was quite youthful looking. Lotte said that she looked like a huge, black witch’s hat drifting along the farm track and foggy fields. Mrs. Grimshaw had laughed at that and said that she wished that she had a conical hat but Lotte didn’t quite understand that.
The inside of Mrs. Grimshaw’s farmhouse was steeped in mystery.
The lower portion of two kitchen walls was set up like an old haberdashery shop. There were dozens of tiny drawers set in large frames, in which she kept the peculiar objects she’d picked up during her travels. Although the farmhouse from the outside appeared normal enough for an old seventeenth-century house, it was more like the design of a farmhouse you would see in Northumberland near Hadrian’s Wall. The house had a small fortified tower on one corner and, along the side that faced the open moorland, the converted barn wall had three small slits. The same slits were above the old kitchen, and in the bedrooms. Mrs. Grimshaw said that part of the house was much older than seventeenth century. In Northumberland a house such as this was needed because of attacks from border reivers. But, on the South Yorkshire moors there hadn’t been that sort of problem. The house also wrapped itself around numerous secret closets and passageways that she occasionally showed to Lotte, making her swear an oath to secrecy first.
Mrs. Grimshaw wasn’t always a good person, but it didn’t stop Lotte from liking her.
“Now remember, Lotte, if Mrs. Grimshaw is unhappy she gets out her grand grimoiré and is quite capable of nasty things. Learn to toughen up a little, Lotte. It is a hard and restless world and is getting more desperate by the year.” There was always more than a hint of humour in her voice.
Lotte would ask for more clarification and sometimes it was like a classroom in the old kitchen, as Mrs. Grimshaw lectured her on how the world was going to hell in a handcart, and they might as well get a little ahead of the game. Mrs. Grimshaw was a twenty-first-century witch for a lost generation, who were all sold on technobabble. She used a computer herself, for her small advisory business and immediate gratification—in that she could instantly find out about anything she wanted. However, there were still some things that resisted the advances of technology. She wasn’t entirely into black or white magic, but the many myriad shades of unfolding grey that Lotte found hard to understand. However, she listened and learned with interest.
After Lotte’s mother died Mrs. Grimshaw gave Lotte a worry doll from Guatemala. She did a good trade in them by mail order, via the Internet.
“Here Lotte, put this under your pillow. Every night tell the doll your worries and it will worry for you.”
Lotte looked down at the little thing made of card, wood, and cotton in her small hands.
“I don’t think that its head is big enough to keep my worries in.”
Mrs. Grimshaw smiled down at her.
“My stepmother is a witch too, you know,” said Lo
tte.
“It used to be a serious accusation to be named as a witch, Lotte. These days—not so much. Just what makes you think she is one?”
“The cat is scared of her—won’t come to her at all—and when Dad’s at work, I hear strange sounds from her room.”
“Well, that could be anything. Grown-ups get up to all sorts.”
And with that Mrs. Grimshaw moved on.
“Is that all you have to go on, the cat doesn’t like her and strange noises?”
“She spends a lot of time going through this huge box that she brought with her from Russia.”
“So she’s Baba Yaga now is she?”
“Who is Baba Yaga?”
“An old Russian witch, who according to folklore, lived in a house with chicken legs and a fence around it made out of human bones and skulls on poles. The gates are fastened with human arms for bolts. She has iron teeth that make a terrible noise when she snaps them together. The chicken legs are really tree stumps—these people built their huts upon tree stumps. The roots would be the splayed chicken feet, see?”
“Oh, right.”
Lotte looked around the large farmhouse kitchen she was sitting in. It was dirty and small, dark-red splashes of something were on the lower cupboard doors and there was a strange smell that Lotte associated with animals. There were many shelves in the kitchen and jars of all shapes and sizes. Something in one of them was staring down at her but she wasn’t afraid. There were jars with pink spongy stuff inside and some contained mushrooms and other more unusual woodland things. There were jars she could not put a name to, and a container with what looked like little boys’ willies in it—they had a shrivelled look to them like old mushroom stalks.
Maybe that’s just what they were.
She was beginning to learn that perhaps Mrs. Grimshaw could be a witch of the very worst kind; downright malevolent occasionally, and also, she could be gentle when it suited her. She despised modern technology but used it to further her aims. Lotte wasn’t afraid of her.