by Tim McGregor
“So it could be anybody?” He scratched his chin at the problem. The idea that dead spirits could wander and become lost bothered him for reasons he couldn’t articulate. “And who’s this priest?”
“Reverend Joy. I don’t know what church he’s with, but he blames me for the trouble. Saying I angered it with my meddling. Hang on.”
A man at a nearby table caught her eye as he raised his glass, signalling for another round. Billie hooked a glass under the draft tap and poured.
Mockler watched her sling out two pints and a Bloody Mary, her movements efficient yet breezy. Eyeing her shape, he noted a certain sleekness to her. A simple t-shirt and jeans, all black as usual, but a little tighter than normal. A touch heavier on the eye-liner, the lipstick a change from the lip balm that she constantly applied in the winter weather.
“You look great,” he said, grateful to push the conversation somewhere else for a moment. “The lipstick is a change. Any reason?”
Billie rolled her eyes at the compliment, always baffled when he said things like that. “Just work. I make more if I put on a bit of flash.”
Flash. English slang. More of Gantry’s bad influence. He pushed it from his mind and went back to admiring the woman who wouldn’t join him in bed for another six or seven hours. At which time he would most likely be sawing logs. Damn.
“I like it,” he said, adding a wink for good measure. “You look a little dangerous.”
“You mean, like, scary?”
Now he rolled back his gaze in dismay. The woman couldn’t accept a compliment if her life depended on it. Still, he tried.
“Say,” he said, foregoing any other attempts at making her blush, “any thoughts about what you want to do next week?”
“Next week?” she asked, shaking up another jug of bar mix.
“Don’t be coy,” he smirked. “Your birthday, silly.”
“Ugh.” That was all she said.
He tilted his head at her. “You know, you’re not fooling me with this whole I-hate-my-birthday routine.”
“Never said I hated it. I just don’t like a big fuss.”
“But this is a big one,” he argued. “You only turn thirty once.”
“All the more reason not to, if you ask me.”
The difference between them was six years and a bit. He barely remembered his 30th birthday. Just another drunken blow-out with his friends, no angst, no fretting over a milestone. “Why does it bother you? It’s just a number.”
Because it’s uncharted territory, she thought. How to explain this to him? Or herself, for that matter. Her birthday meant the end of being 29, the age her mother was. Forever. Turning the big three-oh meant being a year older than her mother ever would be. Saying it out loud wouldn’t make it anymore comprehensible. It sounded crazy enough in her own head. She hadn’t seen her mother in over two decades but she thought about her all the time now. Especially after meeting Earl, and the image he painted of her mom as a little girl, nursing wounded animals back to health.
Mockler watched her shrug, an almost involuntary gesture of hers. The earlier crinkle in her eyes had gone now. “I booked that night off,” he said, letting it go. “Odin said he’d cover for me if anything came up.”
Another shrug. Either she didn’t believe him or she didn’t care, he couldn’t tell. One more try. “Dinner and a movie? Something low key?”
“Whatever you want,” she said.
“Ugh! You’re impossible, you know that?”
Brandishing the big knife used for slicing limes, she said, “And dangerous, too.”
His phone rang and Billie saw him scowl when he looked at the number. She went back to carving limes, trying not to eavesdrop but he was sitting right in front of her.
“What?” he said by way of greeting. The scowl deepened as he listened. “I dunno. It could be…No, I’m not getting it now…because I’m busy…For Christ sakes, Christina.”
Billie felt her stomach drop. Why was his ex calling him again? Why couldn’t she just move on already? She scooped the lime wedges into a tray, trying hard to look busy as he dropped the phone in disgust.
“What was that all about?”
“Christina,” he grumbled. “She can’t find some of her art materials, thinks it’s mixed up in my stuff.”
“Oh. And she wants it back?”
He shook his head. “She wants it right now. Said she’s in the middle of a piece and she needs it immediately. Fucking screaming at me over the phone.”
Billie put the knife down. “And you’re gonna go get it? Can’t she wait?”
“You don’t know what she’s like when she’s painting,” he said. “She’ll just keep calling until I get it, getting more manic each time. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look at him. “You do what you gotta do.”
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
“Like what? Your ex-girlfriend is hounding you. I can’t pretend it doesn’t bother me.”
“I know, it sucks. But when she’s in that mood, she’s just gonna keep calling.” He drained his pint and stood. “I’m just gonna do this and be done with it. I’ll see you at home later. Wake me up when you come to bed, okay?”
“Sure,” she said, leaning across the bar to kiss him goodnight. Not wanting to part on a sour note, she batted her eyes and did her best to be flirty. “Randy?”
“Lonely.”
His lips came away with a shade of her lipstick. “Come here,” she said, wiping her thumb over his mouth.
“Not my colour?”
“Clashes with your eyes, handsome.”
Crossing to the door, he called back, teasing. “Notice how I took that compliment? Just a smile, acknowledging your good taste.”
“Get outta my bar,” she mocked.
She went back to work, trying not to let it bother her but that was nigh impossible. Why couldn’t the woman just leave him alone? The ex calls with some crisis and he just runs off. Did he still have feelings for her or was she just being paranoid?
“Hi.”
Another customer had claimed the barstool that Mockler had vacated. A woman. Well-heeled and looking out of place in Billie’s divey bar. Billie did a double-take. The woman looked familiar but she couldn’t remember from where. One of Jen’s bazillion friends? God. Not yet thirty and here her memory was already turning into Swiss cheese.
“What can I get you?”
The woman removed her infinity scarf and shook the snow from her blond hair. Her coat was one of those pricey parkas, her features like something you’d see in a fashion magazine. “A Dark ‘n Stormy?” The woman hadn’t taken her eyes off Billie the whole time. She nodded at the door. “Was that Detective Mockler who just left?”
“Yep.” Mixing the rum and ginger beer, Billie looked at the woman again. Someone Mockler worked with? She looked too upmarket to be a cop. “You know him?”
“Not really. He’s a bit shy around the press, that one.”
Billie set the cocktail down, minor alarm bells ringing. “Press?”
A tiny tug of a smile pulled at the woman’s lips. She thrust out her hand to shake. “Amanda,” she said. “Do you have a minute, Billie. I’d really like to talk to you.”
The alarm bells rose to a carillon of warning. Why did this woman know her name? Another person looking for a psychic?
“I know you from somewhere.”
“I’m a reporter with HBN News. We met once. Briefly.”
Billie snatched her hand back as if stung, the memory kicking in hard. The woman had ambushed her once before.
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Billie said. It was hard to keep an even tone. “Besides, I’m working right now. You can’t just barge in here with questions.”
Amanda Troy placed a ten dollar bill on the bar. “I’m just having a drink. Thought we could chat a bit.”
Billie took a step back, feeling cornered and vulnerable. Hauling a case of beer onto the back counter, she turned her back on the re
porter and began restocking the fridge.
“Listen,” Amanda said, her voice pleading. “I’m sorry I kinda bushwhacked you last time. My bad. I really just want to talk.”
“Got nothing to say.”
Amanda sipped her drink, lips puckering at the citric bite. “I really want to hear your side of the story, Billie. All I have is hearsay and rumour. Talk to me.”
Billie slammed the bottles into the metal racks. “There’s no need to talk because there’s no story.”
“Don’t be so sure,” the woman replied. “Don’t you want a chance to tell your side of it?”
Was that a threat? Billie stopped, turned around.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know who you are,” Amanda said. Sensing a chink in the armour of this bartender-slash-psychic, she leaned in closer. “What you can do, how you do it. How long have you been dating the detective? What happened to your friend, John Gantry? I want to know about your background. Is there a long line of psychics in your family?”
An image, spiteful and wicked, flashed up fast in Billie’s mind. The Dark ‘n Stormy thrown in the woman’s face, citrus and rum burning her smug eyes. Instead, she picked up Amanda’s cocktail and poured it down the sink. Pushed her money back across the bar.
“Don’t ever come back here,” was all she said.
~
Three hours in the car, straight up the M11 in a cold sleet to the county of Norfolk. Driving was not John Gantry’s forte under the best of conditions. In a cold storm of punishing rain, he’d smoked his way through half a pack of Silk Cut just to keep his nerves steady. By the time he had cruised into the heart of the old seaport of King’s Lynn, the hideous green Fiesta had lost a side-mirror and part of the front grill. The boot bumper also, crushed into an ugly scar of puckered plastic.
Lurching the shitbox motor through the centre of town, he conceded the fact that he might need to go easy on the wretched rental car. Abused and dented as it was, he didn’t need the hassle of being pulled over because of its condition. Getting off the bleeding A10, he stuck to the speed limit as he cut through the old town, winding his way to the Tuesday Marketplace near the river.
Marketplace was a bit of a misnomer. The whole square was now a massive carpark, tarmac lain over what was once the muddy cobbles of the main market of an old medieval town. It was well past dark when he pulled the motor across three parking spaces and shut the sodding thing down. Climbing out, he stretched his back and lit another cigarette. This first stop was simply ornamental. He wanted a look at the infamous mark and a moment to have a think before proceeding.
The witch’s heart was still there, as it had been since the 16th century. A crude drawing of a heart enclosed by a diamond over the second story window of a red brick house. It marked the spot where the heart of a witch had burst from its chest cavity and left an indelible imprint on the brick where it had hit.
Gantry leaned against the revolting Fiesta and contemplated the heart on the wall, barely visible in the dim glow from the lamp lights of the carpark. Margaret Read, a questionable figure from the Elizabethan era, had been tried and convicted of being a witch. Here in the market square, Margaret had met her end, flogged, lashed to a post slathered in pitch, and burned alive. As the flames consumed her, her heart expelled from her broiling ribcage like a rocket, hit the wall where the diamond now was, and skittered away until it was lost in the river. The dark stain on the brick bore witness to the event until some unknown artist commemorated the spot with the crude diamond.
The pyre burned through the night and on into the next day. The blackened bones of Margaret Read were raked from the ashes, deposited into a small stone sarcophagus and buried in a secret location. Three weeks later, her heart washed up on the banks of the Gaywood River. Still raw and, according to legend, still beating. Shivering the balls of the local clergyman and town leaders, the bone box was dug up and the bloodied heart locked up with the rest of the witch. The sarcophagus was then reburied at a crossroads outside of the village proper. Here it remained hidden for the next four centuries until a work crew, repairing an old culvert, stumbled upon it.
Realizing they had unearthed something unusual, work was suspended and someone called in the archaeological society. The site was excavated properly and the stone receptacle carted off to the museum in King’s Lynn. A minor news item buried in the back pages of The Guardian, but Gantry’s fingers itched when he saw the article and he dashed up to Norfolk the next day. On his way out the door, Ellie had stopped him, demanding a kiss before he disappeared on another strange outing.
“What’s the bother with an old box,” she had asked.
He should have listened to her.
Locks and security systems were never a problem for Gantry. He carried a set of tools in his coat and if that didn’t work, well, a minor stroke of lesser magic would do the trick. Working his way to the lab room in the basement, he found the stone ossuary on a table where it was being gently cleaned to uncover the faded inscription on the lid. On a caster-wheeled gurney in the centre of the room lay the carbonized skeleton of Margaret Read, burned at the stake for witchcraft four centuries ago.
The skull was small and brittle-looking, the other bones laid out below it seemed tiny. Old Margaret must have been just a wee thing when she died. Some of the lore described her as a crone, but, looking over these small bones, Gantry wondered if she wasn’t just a girl at the time, maybe a teenager like Hannah. She probably glanced at a boy the wrong way and sent the puritan men into a moral panic. In Gantry’s experience, almost all witch executions could be chalked up to male fear, masked under pious righteousness. Some dark urge in men to control women and crush them if they stepped out of line. Christ, had anything really changed? One didn’t have to look far to see that those Dark Age fears were still present today. It wouldn’t have taken much for old Margaret to become the target of some sanctimonious old fart, brandishing his bible like a weapon and infuriated when his advances were rebuffed or his authority challenged.
Men were scum, Gantry concluded, especially in their treatment of the opposite sex. And this wasn’t some poncy feminist trip he’d picked up somewhere, this was experience. It was history writ large, an enduring legacy replayed through every era from the Bronze Age to the present. It was Ellie who had opened his eyes to this. The tyranny of the male gaze. Aye, men were shits, and he could say this with authority because he was one. Matter settled.
Margaret Read was a singular case. Where thousands upon thousands of women had been put to death under false accusations, old Margaret had turned out to be the real deal. Not some crone stereotype, mind, with the wart on the nose and the stooped posture. Margaret Read had been a healer, a midwife, and, more importantly, a protector of her small warren outside the city gates. When plagues and blight swept through the countryside, it was Margaret who kept the evil at bay, protecting the small farms and people within her purview. And, in the late autumn of 1589, when something evil had crawled up out of the river to lay waste to everything before it, it had been Margaret alone to stand up to it, stopping it in its loathsome tracks.
The Nordic name for a demon was Skratte. The English, fond of subsuming foreign terms and tweaking them, had renamed it Old Scratch. Crawling its way across the glen, it slaughtered livestock and blighted crops. The footprints made by its cloven hooves left the earth seared and poisoned as Old Scratch infested everything with its filth and perverted hatred, gleefully swallowing up the terrified farmers and their bedraggled families. Marching on the walls of the village, Old Scratch was stopped cold by a line of precious salt lain on the ground by Margaret Read. Enraged, the demon broke through and targeted the protector of the village in her tiny thatched cottage in a glen of oak trees. The healer and midwife tumbled with the monster, fighting it throughout the night until she forced it back to the river where it sank out of sight, its horrid antlers dipping below the waterline.
The bishop, huddled behind the stone walls of the villa
ge church, should have been grateful for the woman’s bravery but he was a man and therefore weak and fearful. Resentful of her power and cowed by her courage, the bishop set out to destroy her. When the blacksmith accused Margaret of witchcraft, the bishop wholeheartedly agreed. The baker ran to collect the kindling while the carpenter erected the pole in the market square. The mailed soldiers kicked in the door of the little cottage and took Margaret to the stockade where she was whipped before the gaping crowd. At noon, the bishop held mass and then a flickering torch was set to the kindling to burn the witch. Bound to the post, Margaret opened one swollen eye to see that the demon had slipped inside the village walls. Old Scratch hunkered on the roof of the inn, watching its enemy burn. Without her protection, the village didn’t stand a chance against the foulness of the demon. Drawing on one last incantation, she lured the demon close, ensnaring it. Together they burned, brave Margaret and Old Scratch, locked in battle for eternity.
At least, that was their fate until a meddling conjuror came along and loused it all up.
Lighting the five candles around the bones on the table, Gantry drew blood into a bowl of water and called up the soul of Margaret Read from whatever netherworld she had been condemned to. Greedy for knowledge and lusting for power, he had barged in without thinking, without forethought. Hubris, plain and simple. He had no idea that the tortured soul of the healer was bound up and tangled with the noxious demon Skratte. Summoning up one brought the other and, to be pedantic about it, all Hell broke loose, destroying the lab room in a pulse of energy that shattered every glass vial and tube on the shelves.
Hurled into the white-tiled wall by the impact, Gantry slid to the floor in a heap with the wind knocked out of him. Eyes watering and gasping for oxygen, he saw the horrid thing rise up from the scattered bones. An obscene patchwork figure, stitched together from the festering limbs of different animals, this abattoir monstrosity swung its antlered head to the fool crumpled on the floor. Steam expunged from its blowing nostrils, its eyes goat-like and abhorrent. The smell of it was beyond ghastly, somewhere between rotting fish and pungent ammonia. Then it clattered away, escaping into the night.