The Seer's Stone

by Frances Mary Hendry

  Tanya concentrated, moulding the pressure of energy inside her chest, inside her mind. She started to mutter. “Curse him. Oh, curse him dead, before he can hurt Aunt Mary.” No; blank out everything, except her target. Him. Nothing else in her mind. Just him. “Curse him. Mandrake. Curse him.” This time, it meant something.

  The car swept up a hill, flew over the crest. There, ahead, the warning signs for the roadworks at the crossroads. Single lane traffic - eight hundred yards, four hundred. Traffic lights. Green, about to change to red.

  Mandrake reached out with his mind to hold the lights at green for his convenience.

  “Curse him...” Tanya released a touch of the pressure.

  He winced at the sudden surge of pain in his head. The lights turned red. Irritating. They must be put back. Only a few seconds, traffic at the other end of the lane wouldn’t have started to move yet. He concentrated on the man working the lights. The man’s hand moved to change the lights back.

  “...now!” Tanya let loose all her fury and frustration, all her fear, all her loathing, all her protective love of her aunt, projecting a great thrust of raging power.

  The warlock’s sight blurred for five seconds. He was under attack! Who - Tanya! He struck back. Tanya screamed in agony. Mandrake’s vision cleared sharply ­

  A tractor and trailer, moving out from a side road, blocked the road ahead.

  Mandrake slammed on the powerful brakes. Plenty of time ­

  A shred of glass, tiny and unnoticed, tucked into the tread of the left front tyre, pierced through. The tyre exploded.

  The car hurtled, screeching down the road, swinging from side to side as Mandrake fought to control it. Its front wing clipped the trailer, sending hay bales toppling. It was past, spinning helplessly now, skidding onto the single lane, the ruin of its front wheel sliding over the edge of the four-foot ditch. The bonnet dropped, plunged into the gravel bank on the far side. Engine howling like a wounded tiger, the car somersaulted high, tossing the driver out of the open top.

  Tanya and Beth watched in cold determination as Mr Mandrake’s body fell onto one of the surveying posts, dragged it from its place, and slowly, in a little avalanche of sand and pebbles, slid down the side of the ditch to crumple mercifully half-hidden in the shadows at the bottom; the blue plastic tag on the wooden post through his heart glinting falsely bright and cheerful red in the sunshine.

  The girls sat back, collapsing onto the grass, silent, exhausted.

  At last, Tanya raised her head from staring into the pool, to find Beth watching her. “Is that it, all past?”

  Tanya nodded. “He’s dead.” She shuddered.

  Beth hugged her awkwardly. “It wasn’t for yourself, Tanya. It was for mum. And...”

  “Yeah. Like yer said. Everything dies sometime. It’s still...” She started to shake, sobbing tears in Beth’s arms.

  “I know. I know. It’s all right, it’s all right...”

  Eventually, Beth pushed herself to her feet. “Come on. Home.” As she helped Tanya up, she started to count. “You came on Tuesday. And - him. You found the stone yesterday, and mum was hurt. And today’s just three days.” She shook her head wearily. “I feel a hundred years older.”

  “Are a hundred years older. Twelve going on a hundred an’ twelve, that’s us. We seen things as most people never imagines is real. An’ done ’em, too. Makes a difference. Only natural.”

  “Natural?” Beth tried to make a face of exaggerated surprise.

  “Ey, come on. Don’t joke about it.”

  They stood up and moved towards the fence. Tanya turned to look back. Pity...

  She stopped.

  Where Beth had tossed the stone, something just under the surface was making a tiny flaw in the ripples.

  While Beth watched her, she went back, knelt down and reached as far as she could. Yes, she could just reach it. Lying on top of an old car, just below the surface, waiting for her, calling her back to find it and give it a meaning again...the scrying stone.

  She sat back, with it in her hand. With this, she could - she could channel her power. Get rid of the spell on the house. Make Aunt Beth happy and well again...anything.

  Although it hurt, she held it out to Beth. “It’s yours as much as mine.”

  “No way!” Beth drew back in alarm. “I don’t ever want to touch it again.”

  ‘“S’okay. Not evil, not itself. Helped us wi’ Aunt Mary, didn’t it? An’ we’ll need it, to find the curse he left. Just a - a control. Like a machine yer turn on an’ off.”

  But it had called her...

  “Come on, Tanya. Home.”

  The car was still there, its near wheels run half up the grassy verge, the engine running quietly. Beth smiled a little. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

  Tanya nodded.

  “Yes,” Beth sighed. “Can you turn it off, Tanya?”

  “The engine? Yeah, but -” Tanya blinked. “Ain’t yer gonna drive us home, then?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t an emergency any more.” At Tanya’s stare, she shrugged. “Well, is it? We’ve broken enough rules for today, don’t you think?”

  Puffing in bewilderment, Tanya reached into the car and tugged the wires apart. Yeah, she supposed Beth was right. Get back to the real world. She ran to catch up with her cousin. Her blistered feet hurt. That was all right. She had to pay somehow...

  After a while, Beth put her arm round her cousin’s shoulders. Tanya stiffened, and then relaxed and slipped an arm round Beth’s waist. In a companionable silence, supporting each other like Siamese twins, they walked home.

  Chapter 11

  On the threshold, the chill swept over them again. Shivering, gritting their teeth, they marched in. Mrs Craig wasn’t about. “Where’s she gone?”

  “Out. Don’t blame her none, neither. Feel like leavin’ meself. But I ain’t gonna let him beat us now!” Neither of them would be first to mention Mr Mandrake’s name.

  They looked at each other, sagging in depression. “Mum said it would be a tourist attraction,” Beth ventured, trying to fight it off. “Haunted house, and so on.”

  “Neh.” Tanya shook her head. “Don’t believe it. No ghosts here. Just nasty an’ cold an’ hostile.” She braced her shoulders. “Gotta do something about it!”

  “What?”

  Tanya reached into her pocket. “Could we - you know - use it?” In her fingers, the stone lay heavy and cold.

  Beth’s face showed her agitation. “How?” she demanded.

  “Look, I knows just a bit about it,” Tanya said. “From Cat, see? He must’ve made a charm, a real thing, like, as a focus for the curse, an’ hid it someplace. To work when he weren’t here, see? Get rid of it, an’ that’ll be it done wi’.”

  “Really? Really over, for good and all?” Beth brightened instantly. “Can you find it with the stone?”

  “Can try.” Reluctantly, Tanya raised the stone to her eye and peered through. “Neh. It’s no good. Just shows dark.” Beth sighed. “But it might work as a dowsing pendulum. An’ if I can’t make it work, I think you can.”

  “Oh, no! I can’t! Not again!”

  “Okay.” Calmly, Tanya accepted her cousin’s distress. “If yer can’t, yer can’t. Don’t blame yer, not after - an hour ago.” She sat, turning the stone over and over in her fingers, and finally shrugged. “Give it a whirl. Come on, then.”

  Together they went up the stairs to Mr Mandrake’s room. The bed where they had sat so excitedly to try dowsing for the first time stood stripped, its duvet and pillows dumped aside on one of the single beds. With a resigned grimace, Tanya took off her cross and slipped the chain through the hole in the stone. She held out the improvised pendulum. “Where’s the charm, eh? Mandrake’s curse. Where is it?”

  She was disappointed when the tingle in her hand didn’t come. She tried again and again, but finally shrugged. “Just have to look. Cupboards, loose boards an’ that. We’ll find it
.”

  As before, it was perhaps the lack of pressure that encouraged Beth. “Silly, to be afraid of a pebble! And even mum didn’t think dowsing was so bad.” Biting her lip, she held out a hand. “I’ll try.”

  She held the chain at first as if it had a scorpion on the end. “What do I say? ‘Where’s the curse?’ Will that do?”

  “Why not?” Tanya shivered. “Get a move on, before we perish.”

  “Right.” Beth braced herself. “Where is the curse? Is it in here?”

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again. Still nothing. “Maybe it was him made it move before?” she suggested hopefully.

  “He said yer a scryer. Could be yer needs somebody else. An’ he said we went together.” Tanya laid her hand on Beth’s arm. “Try now.”

  Beth jumped. The touch of Tanya’s hand had given her a slight shock, like a brush from a faint electric current, scary but exciting. “Right. Where is the curse?”

  “Look!”

  The stone was starting to swing. Not in a circle. Swaying to and fro, between the door to the back stairs and the back wall of the room. Towards the door, the swing increased. It led them out onto the landing, into the small bathroom, and finally circled when Beth held it above the middle of the floor, about two feet from the side of the bath.

  “Under here. Feel the chittering cold? Trying to drive us off.”

  “Yes. Under the floor? But -” Suddenly Beth’s voice rose in discovery. “I know! The builders! They had the side of the bath off! Just a couple of screws each end. I’ll get a screwdriver!” She paused on her way out. “You were right, what you saw in the stone. It will be all black in there!”

  Two minutes later they lifted the bath panel aside. A gush of cold, foul air made them cough and choke, but a triumphant certainty pushed them on.

  Tanya lay down to reach her skinny arm deep into a break in the floorboards below the bath, and started groping about. “Ey what a stink o’ mushrooms! Must be the dry rot. Oh, I’m all mucky, I wish this stuff’d dry up an’ blow away...” She scrabbled about, her thin face smeared black. “Filthy in here, an’ rubble, an’ - can’t get in much further... Ey, what’s this? Yegh! It’d make yer sick!” She pushed herself up, holding the thing she had found as far away from herself as possible. “What is it?”

  Screwing up her face in distaste, Beth peered at the horrid little bundle. “That’s a seagull’s claw. And a dead crab. And damp seaweed, and a bit of net. And a fancy stick, shoved through the net to hold it all together -”

  “Ain’t just a stick, it’s a magic marker. See them leather thongs an’ the bit of lead, an’ the marks painted on it? It’s a message, a kind o’ control, like, tied to them things to tell ’em what to do. Them dead things an’ the net an’ that, he must’ve gone down to the shore an’ hunted ’em up last night ­ey, it were just last night! When I said the stone were gone. Cold an’ wet an’ stinkin’ an’ binding - that’s what it means.

  Just like them nightmares.” She nodded in satisfaction. “This is it, all right.”

  “So what do we do with it? Put it in the bin?”

  “Neh, get rid of it proper. Pull it apart an’ burn it. That’ll sort it.”

  They turned to put the side of the bath back on, and Beth suddenly clutched Tanya’s arm. “Look!”

  “What?” Tanya couldn’t see anything.

  “Look in the hole!”

  Tanya peered in. “Don’t see nowt - oh.” The hole was dirty, certainly; but the black fungus had vanished. The wood was grey, old, but sound. The stink of mushrooms had gone.

  “You did it, Tanya!” Beth whispered, her face breaking into a wide grin. “You remember? You said you hoped it’d go away. Dry up and blow away, you said. And it’s gone!”

  Tanya grinned. “Ey steady job that, I could eradicate dry rot for a living!” They started to laugh, hysterically happy, collapsing over the bathroom floor.

  At last, Beth sobered. “Come on - let’s get rid of this curse as well!”

  They made a small fire out in the garden, with newspaper and sticks, and laid the sickening little package on it. The flames almost died away under it. But as the wooden stick burned, the seaweed and shell and bones charred and shrivelled, blackened and fell away to ash, and the fire, the whole day, and their spirits, blazed up bright and high at last.

  Warm and comfortable again, the house was busy all weekend, with at least fourteen people for breakfast every day. The girls were kept busy, with no time nor energy to brood. Beth worried about the dark melancholy that showed when Tanya wasn’t smiling. But with time and hard work to take her mind off it, she’d get over it.

  Tanya was glad to see Beth recovering fast, back in her normal, bright world.

  Mr and Mrs Craig left on Saturday. “See you again next year, dears - though really, after the way you behaved at Raigmore, but then we were all in a state about Mary, poor dear, weren’t we? Miraculous, wasn’t it? And dreadful, that accident, just terrible? But what could he expect, with a big, powerful car like that, and the state he was in? Give our love to Mary, dears, I always say -”

  “Harold!”

  “Yes, dear, coming!”

  The girls waved them off cheerfully. Tanya was grinning. “Ey, isn’t it quiet?” They laughed together.

  Mary came home on Monday, hobbling, bandaged and slung, constantly smiling in delight as they boasted of how well they’d coped. She sobered when they finally got round to talking about Mr Mandrake. “I can’t be sorry,” she said, settling into her big armchair with a mug of tea, her bad ankle up on a stool. “It was unbelievably horrible. And such a tremendous relief, though I shouldn’t say so, when you phoned to say what had happened.”

  She patted Tanya’s hand. “Try to - I can’t say forget it, because you won’t. Never.” The child looked quite hollow, somehow. “But you acted to help somebody else, not yourself. That makes a big difference.”

  Beth nodded. “Same as I had to hit him, right, mum?”

  Mary snorted. “We were lucky there. I said he’d slipped, and when he woke up he was in such a hurry to get out that he didn’t explain, or we could have been in real trouble.”

  “Real trouble? Compared to him?” Beth looked incredulous.

  “An’ I didn’t just thump him, Aunt Mary.” Tanya’s tone was flat, her eyes dark.

  “I know, pet.” Mary shook her head. “Well, I don’t know. It’s so incredible. Oh, I know you believe your curse worked. But did it?”

  “What?” Tanya’s eyes lifted to her aunt’s face in surprise.

  “Maybe the accident would have, happened anyway. And you just - saw it, somehow, without actually causing it.”

  Tanya sighed, rather disappointed. Aunt Mary was trying to help, but had slid into the old, patronising, adult-to-child style. Kids don’t, can’t, mustn’t do anything seriously important. Tone it down, make it ordinary. Pass anything mystic off as imagination, forget it, it didn’t really happen.

  But that was muddled thinking. Tanya knew what she knew.

  So did Beth, exchanging a long look with her.

  So did Mary. But she didn’t know what else to say... She smiled at them. “At least you can relax now, Tanya. It’s all over.”

  Tanya shrugged. “Ain’t all over, Aunt Mary. Not for me.” She crossed to the window and stood looking out.

  Beth wasn’t surprised. “You mean, you’re going on? You’ll use your power again? I won’t. Never. You keep the stone. I’m scared of it.”

  “Huh!” Tanya snorted. “Think I ain’t?” She took it from her pocket, to stand holding it, cold and heavy in her hand. Just a stone ­until it was touched with power... She turned round, dark against the light behind her. “But I got it. An’ I got this power. An’ so I gotta learn how to control it, ‘cause it won’t go away.” She smiled at Mary’s astonishment. “I’m scared. Ain’t fun, real magic.”

  Beth wanted to be properly sympathetic.

  Tanya’s lips twitched. Typical Beth. “Yeah, Au
nt Mary, it’s true. Don’t know what I’ll do -”

  “You’ll stay with us, of course! You’ll stay, my dear, as long as you want to. You’re family, Tanya. After what you did for me.” Mary frowned. “Oh, come here, pet!” She held out her good arm.

  Tanya came over to her chair, to sit awkwardly on the arm and be hugged by both of them. But she returned to her main point.

  “Can’t stay for ever, Aunt Mary. Got to get Cat to put us onto somebody as can teach us proper. Not like - him.” She laughed again, rather wistfully. “Used to want to be a witch. Kid’s stuff. Now I knows I can, it ain’t that easy. Cursing works both ways. Yer pays for what yer does. Every time.”

  Beth nodded. She knew.

  Mary sighed with relief. As long as the child knew that, there was hope for her.

  “Can’t go through life like that, not thinking o’ nothing but yerself all the time. Pure waste. Gotta be a use for this, not just for me, but for everybody. I gotta learn how to control it, so’s if I slip on a stair an’ say, ‘Oh, hellfire!’ the whole place don’t go up in flames.”

  She sniffed as Mary and Beth laughed.

  Beth nodded again. She pitied Tanya. “Twelve going on a hundred and twelve,” she murmured.

  Her mother’s eyes rose quickly to her face, and returned to Tanya’s. “Remember, love, you’ve got us, family. You’re not alone.” Must get her back to real life... “But right now, we’ve got a whole pile of laundry to finish. Come on, get a move on! Switch on the iron and magic some of those pillowcases flat for me!”

  Tanya laughed, stuffed the scrying stone into her pocket, and turned with relief to ordinary things.

  For the meantime...