“Stop showing off!” Tanya snarled, dumping her other burdens sullenly onto the bed. “I knows why, too right I does!” He only chuckled smugly.
“You obnoxious man!” Mary’s temper was giving her strength. “All this nonsense about curses, just because you didn’t get what you wanted - I couldn’t believe anyone could be so egotistical, so petty and selfcentred.”
He stiffened. “Let me assure you, madam, that the curse is by no means nonsense. Nobody, but nobody, will stay in your guesthouse for more than one night from now on. Everyone will feel the chill, the fear -”
“Fear? You say you’ve filled my house with fear?”
“Indeed.”
She could feel it herself, the aura of evil that had spread through the room the instant he came in. At last she began to believe the incredible story Beth had told her. But still she fought back. “You sound like an old Hammer horror film.” His eyes flashed in annoyance. “And even if it was true, I’m delighted!”
“What?” He rose in angry astonishment.
She pushed herself up off her pillows to face him. Automatically, Beth caught the grapes and the bottle of squash before they fell off the bed, and turned to put them on the locker. Wincing with the pain of her arm, Mary smiled tightly. “There are more than sixty hotels and guesthouses in Nairn, Mr Mandrake. Until now, mine was just one among many. But now it’s special! I’ll have ghost-hunters and thrill-seekers queuing up at the door!”
Tanya’s face lit up in cheeky glee. “Good on yer, Aunt Mary!”
“Let’s call the nurse,” Beth agreed, “and have you put out!”
Mr Mandrake raised an eyebrow. The temperature of the room suddenly fell about ten degrees. “You underestimate me. Do you think that you have seen all my powers? Oh, no. You suspected that I had caused your aunt’s accident, Tanya. You were quite correct.” His face and voice were charming, but they drew back from him as if he had the plague. “And though she has made a miraculous recovery from her relapse - with which, as it happens, I had nothing to do she is still unwell. I can - influence, shall we say? - her future health.”
Casually he picked up the bunch of roses on the bed by his hand, and slowly twisted the petals off, flower after flower. “Unless I get the stone, now, it will be a cold day in hell before you are well again, sweet lady. You feel tired now? That’s nothing to what you will feel. Weariness too great to let you stand, sit up, hold a book to read, lift a hand to feed yourself.” Crushed white petals floated like funereal confetti onto the bedcover. Dismayed by the creamy venom in his voice, the blue flash of his gaze, the drip and drift of the petals, Mary sank back. “And nothing will show up on the tests. Nothing at all. They’ll call it ME or something, I expect. But you’ll know. Won’t you?” He laid the empty stems gently down on the dying petals.
Satisfied by their appalled silence that he had made his point, he relaxed, shrugged, smiled genially round. “But it doesn’t have to happen. Just the opposite, in fact. You could recover incredibly fast. And I’ll even throw in a sweetener. I don’t honestly believe your joy at the spell on your home, so I’ll go back and remove it. Return the house to its previous happy state. After I get the stone. There, now. Health and prosperity, in exchange for stone with a hole in it. A mere pebble. A more than fair offer, I’d say. Well?” A surge of force radiated from him, holding them still and afraid, pressing them all to agree, to submit, to surrender the stone...
Mary was scared. She couldn’t believe it. But she had to... Inside, she quailed in terror. Stuck in a hospital bed, helpless, until she died... Oh, no! But she forced herself into frail defiance. “No, I’ll not have it! Give you what you want, make you even stronger, encourage you to hurt more people to get your own way next time - no!”
Beth was too scared to speak up. Her mother was far braver than she was, opposing Mr Mandrake like that. She didn’t want him to get the stone - but what could they do? Any of them? If he did what he threatened, mum would be a cripple... until she died... Oh, no!
Rigid beside the bed, Tanya felt as if she was going to burst with rage. Her ribs ached with the seething pressure of her fury, but she couldn’t let it out - not here. He had described his powers before and although she hadn’t believed it before, she did now, utterly, now that she knew what she felt inside herself. But she mustn’t let it loose, not here in a hospital, not until she could really control it. She was helpless, held by her own power.
Mr Mandrake was quite confident. “You have no chance. One way or another, I’ll have that stone. You can’t get it away. Give it to me. Now.” His tone commanded instant obedience.
At last, Beth found her voice. “It’s not -it’s not true.” She sounded hoarse. “If you were so confident, you’d not be making these threats to frighten us into giving it to you.”
“Oh? Are you absolutely sure?”
No, she wasn’t.
Sullenly, hating her defeat, she reached into her pocket and took out the stone. Mr Mandrake purred in satisfaction.
Beth looked at the stone for a long moment. She drew a deep breath - but could find no words to say what she felt. Her face bleak, her heart raging, she held out the stone.
Tanya reached out and took it from her hand.
Everyone looked at her as if a statue had come to life. For so long she had been quiet and still, they’d almost forgotten she was there. What would she do?
She didn’t know. She felt like a volcano in the Antarctic; roaring hot inside, against the chill of this man and the cold of the stone in her hand. If she lost control and let her rage blast free at him, she might blast off the roof too.
She stared across the foot of the bed at Mr Mandrake. “You said as I had power. You willing to risk a curse?” Her tongue felt swollen and dry.
He chuckled, watching her carefully. There was something about her - an aura careful, now... “My dear, your puny curses couldn’t harm me. Against an unwary or unskilled person, yes. But don’t try any tricks on me. The stone, if you please!” He held out his hand.
She ignored it. If she didn’t release the pressure just a little bit, she’d explode. “You wanted me to work for yer. Okay. I’ll scry for yer.”
“Don’t try to fool me, Tanya,” he warned her. “It won’t work.”
She shook her head, grave and stern with the strain of holding herself in. “No trick. Just the truth.” Raising the stone to her eye, quivering with tension, she looked through the stone straight at him. Her voice was stiff, distant and cold as a polar wind, and in spite of all his armour of power and confidence, the hair on the back of his neck prickled. “You thinks as yer all-powerful. But it’ll come for yer, same’s for anybody, in the end. Soon. I can see it. Can see yer, in the stone here. Lying dead in a grave at crossroads, wi’ a stake through yer heart.”
The chill in the room was broken by Mr Mandrake’s sudden yell of laughter. “Oh, Tanya, Tanya! What a let-down! Who do you think you are - Peter Cushing? Oh, dear! Trying it on, my dear child! You’ve been watching too many Dracula films. Stakes through the heart, indeed! I am many things, Tanya, but a vampire is not one of them. I fear you’ll have to do your homework better than that if you plan to scare me!”
The others looked embarrassed.
Tanya didn’t move, except to lower the hand holding the stone. She gazed at him, remote and untouched by his jeering. The pressure inside her was just about manageable now.
At length his laughter faded, and he held out his hand and snapped his fingers for the stone. Rather to his surprise, she laid it in his palm with no further argument. Sitting still on the bed, he weighed it in his hand.
“So this is it. Kenneth Odhar’s scrying stone. So small, and yet so powerful.” He lifted it and looked through it. They tensed, but he shrugged and shook his head. “No. Apparently I need to work through a medium with it, as I do for dowsing. You wouldn’t care to help, Beth? Ah, well.” He stowed it in his breast pocket and stood up. “Goodbye, then, and thank you for a most interesting and profita
ble time. Straight down the A9, stop over in - York, perhaps, a delightful city - and I’ll be home in London tomorrow.”
“What about the spell?” Beth demanded. “You’ve to go back to Nairn first, to lift the spell off the house.”
Mr Mandrake smiled across at her, that charming smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You really are far too credulous, Beth,” he murmured. “Why should I bother? I already have what I wanted.”
Mary gasped. Tanya seemed to swell in rage. “You rotten so and so!” She would have gone on, but Mr Mandrake lifted a hand and she froze.
“You will mind your tongue.” The warlock’s voice was venomous again. “I’ve had just about enough of you. You’ve given me so much trouble, you and your family here. And you struck me. I really can’t let you get away with it, my dear. I believe I’ll leave you with a little token of my regard. Blindness would be suitable, maybe. Or - no. You have a foolish tendency to speak out of turn, young lady. From now on, you’ll be dumb! Dumb as your own stone!”
In a whisper, Mary screamed, “No! Stop it!”
Concentrating fiercely on Tanya, Mr Mandrake raised his right hand to point at her - and fell forwards across Mary’s knees as the bottle of orange squash thudded against the back of his head.
Beth dropped the bottle on top of him, shuddering. “Is he dead? Have I killed him?”
Mandrake’s body slipped slowly backwards off the bed, almost dragging down the drip-feed tube with him, and thumped onto the polished, vinyl floor. A few displaced white petals drifted onto his hair.
Gulping in shock, Tanya stiffly bent down to check. “Neh. Stunned, is all.” She stood up unsteadily. “Ta, Beth.” She took Beth in her arms, rocked and patted her for comfort. “‘It’s okay, Beth. Okay. Wow, that was a near one!”
After a moment, Beth managed to control herself, and gave a weak smile. “I’m okay.” She looked down at the unconscious man at her feet. “Oh, dear!”
Mary took Beth’s hand. It was trembling. So was her own. She made herself stay calm. “Well done, Beth. You had to stop him.
You did the right thing. I’m proud of you!” Oh, she was so tired! “But I don’t know what we’ll tell the police.”
“Can’t hang about for them, Aunt Mary.”
Beth pulled herself together. “No. We’ve got to get rid of the stone.”
“Then he’ll go away, maybe, and not bother us any more,” Mary said hopefully.
Tanya sniffed. “We should be so lucky!”
Beth shrugged. “Yes, I know. But even if he does, we must get rid of it.”
“Where?” Mary demanded wearily. “Where, that he can’t find it?”
Tanya knew. “In the quarry.”
“The Lochloy quarry?” Mary asked.
“Yeah.” Tanya nodded to them. “It come to me last night. Perfect. Iron, to stop the spells, see, an’ -”
“Well, now, Mary, here you are at last! It’s taken me absolutely ages to find you!” Mr Craig was talking even as the door opened. “How are you, dear? Tanya just waltzed off -Good gracious!” Chocolates in one hand and melon in the other, he stared at the polished shoes poking past the end of the bed. “Beth, dear - Mary - there’s a man down there! What’s wrong with him?” He set down his gifts, fussed round the bed and bent to look more closely. “Deary me, it’s Mr Mandrake!” He looked round them all in astonishment. “It’s Mr Mandrake!”
Mary’s lips suddenly twitched. “Yes, we know.”
“But - but what’s he doing on the floor?”
“Lying on it.” Tanya exchanged a faint smile with her aunt.
Mr Craig stared. “But - what happened? Look at these poor flowers! Did he slip?”
“Yeah.” Tanya smiled, more definitely. “Slipped up bad.”
He was shocked at her callousness. “I must get a nurse!”
Beth and Tanya grabbed his sleeves. “Hang on a tick!” “No, Mr Craig, please wait!”
Unwillingly, he paused. Mary reached out her good hand to him. “Mr Craig, you drove the children here, didn’t you? Please, take them back again. Right away.”
“Yes, of course, Mary dear, if that’s what you want!” He sounded puzzled but agreeable. Beth and Tanya let him go. “I’ll just get a nurse first.” He had scurried out before they could stop him again.
“Oh, no!” Mary lay back, white as her own pillows. “Look, you’ve got to get the stone away from Mandrake. And the police. Somehow. Whatever else we do.”
“Yeah,” Tanya agreed. She was on her knees, rummaging in Mr Mandrake’s pocket for the stone. “Got it!”
“But what about you, mum?”
Tanya stood up. “Ey, look, if we’re away when he wakes, he’ll chase us, an’ not wait to cast any spells here. Right? Godzilla’ll be a babe in arms compared to him. But I been knocked out, I know what it’s like. He’ll be shaky, see? So it’s the best thing us can do. Draw him off, an’ get rid o’ the stone.”
“But how?” Beth cried. “Mr Craig’ll waffle on for ages -”
“Get a taxi,” Tanya said calmly. “Bound to be some downstairs, delivering visitors.”
Mary, fighting off a faint, forced herself to be encouraging. “Yes... Best chance, anyway. Go on, love! Beth!”
“Yeah! Move yerself!” Tanya hissed, grabbing her cousin and shoving her towards the door as a nurse came hurrying in. “Go on, down to the car. I’m right behind yer!”
Beth looked back at her mother. White and exhausted, Mary made herself nod, smile, gesture her daughter away. “Go on, Beth!” she whispered. “I’m fine!”
She didn’t look fine, Tanya thought. And when the Mandrake man came round... But she had to go; Beth hadn’t the sense to cross the road without her! The nurse was bent over Mr Mandrake, checking his pulse, Mr Craig fussing behind her. Tanya patted Mary’s hand. “We’ll cope, Aunt Mary!” she whispered, and ran, catching Beth just as a lift door opened.
Beth felt all wobbly as they hurried along the corridors to the exit. Tanya’s arrival, the fight with her, Mr Mandrake, the dowsing, the accident, the responsibility of looking after the house, her mother’s relapse, the magic of the stone, the threats, and finally, to top it all, her own breakdown into violence. She couldn’t believe she’d done it. Hitting somebody on the head! Even if it was to save Tanya. She couldn’t stop trembling.
Tanya shook her head as she helped Beth along. Shock. Conscience. Gentle, Beth was. “Ey, there’s that Mandrake’s car. Right in the road o’ the ambulances, just like them doctors said!” She stared round. “Just our luck, not a taxi in sight! Oh, what do we do now?”
They gazed at each other in frustration for a moment. Then Tanya yelped. “Beth! Beth! Didn’t yer say as you could drive a tractor?”
Beth gaped, scarcely understanding.
“Oh wake up, dozy! You can drive, right? So drive yer mam’s car! A tractor ain’t that different! Or I can try.”
That woke Beth up. “You? No way! If anybody’s going to drive mum’s car, it’ll be me!”
“Right! There it is. Come on, then!”
The car doors were locked.
“Oh, no! The keys! Mr Craig’s got them!” Beth moaned.
The hatchback door swung open. “Yeah! Thought he might have forgotten this one.” Tanya reached over the rear seats to unlock the doors.
“What’s the good?” Beth protested. “We haven’t got the keys!”
“Keys? Who needs keys?” Tanya pulled off one of her silver earrings, straightened out the wire loop, dived down under the dashboard and fiddled about with the wires there. “Gotcha! That should about do it. In neutral? Right, put yer foot on the gas a bit, Beth!”
Her jaw dropping, Beth pressed down on the accelerator. To her mixed dismay and delight the engine started.
Tanya struggled up from her crouch, grinning widely. “Right, let’s get off before Mandrake wakes up. Oh - hang on a tick!” Leaping back out of the car, she picked something out of a waste bin and raced off towards the hospital again.
Beth bit her lip. Keep the rules - usually. This was an emergency, she knew that. But... She was scared stiff.
Tough.
She practised going through the gears until Tanya reappeared, grinning. “Stuck broken bottles under his wheels. Hold him up a bit, if he can’t magic up a couple o’ new tyres! Give us more time, eh? Right, I’m set!”
Beth looked round at her. “You realise this is illegal? And dangerous? I’ve never driven on the road, I’ve no licence, I’m underage and I’m not insured. Are you positive you want to risk it?” Tanya didn’t bother answering. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Fasten your seat belt. Here we go!”
By the time they jerked to a halt at the traffic lights at the hospital entrance, fifty yards away, Tanya was already clutching the seat. “Take it easy!” she gasped. “Kangaroo petrol, is it?”
Beth wiped her forehead. She was sweating already. “Look, this wasn’t my idea! You want to walk?”
Tanya opened her mouth to say yes; but the lights changed to green, and the jolt as the car started again clacked her teeth shut. She swallowed, and hung on.
Chapter 9
Slowly, with grim determination, Beth fought the car into submission down the road. It was not the same as a tractor, lighter on the wheel and far heavier on the brakes, and there was other traffic to terrify her. She didn’t even notice the small first roundabout. Luckily nothing was coming at the second; she didn’t manage to stop in time. At the third, she misjudged the speed of an oncoming lorry. Brakes and horn screeching, the driver swearing, whitefaced, it swerved round her.
“Took ten year off me life, that did!” Tanya whispered.
“What?” Beth was too busy inching the car round onto the Nairn road to pay much attention.
“Oh, nothing.” Don’t distract the driver... They bumped off the pavement. “Look, d’yer want me to drive?”
Beth almost ran the car into an oncoming van as she turned to stare at Tanya. “Bad enough me driving it. Don’t be daft!”
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