Dark Spell

by Gill Arbuthnott

  Callie gave a smile of relief. “Mum,” she shouted, “Josh is staying.”

  ***

  It was already growing light by the time anyone tried getting back to sleep. Julia and David eventually went back to bed, and Josh and Callie curled up in their blankets on the sofas. To everyone’s surprise, they did sleep.

  “Nervous exhaustion,” said Julia, when they sat bleary-eyed over toast and coffee at breakfast time.

  “Will your mum be up by now?” Julia asked.

  Josh looked at the clock. Eight fifteen. “I expect so.”

  “I’ll give you a lift round then, and explain what’s happened.”

  “Builder’s coming at nine thirty,” said David as he came in. Both he and Julia had taken the day off work to deal with the crisis. “The insurance office is just on voicemail. I’ll try them again at nine.”

  ***

  Anna opened the cottage door.

  “Josh – what happened to your face?”

  “It’s been a long night,” said Julia. “Can I come in and explain?”

  When the explanations were over and Julia had gone, Anna sat looking at her grubby son.

  “You could have been killed.” She touched his cheek gently.

  “Mum, I’m fine. Don’t fuss.” He got up. “I’m going to have a shower.”

  “Good idea. Your face isn’t too bad but your hair looks as though you’ve just finished a shift in a coal mine.”

  If she only knew, he thought.

  ***

  At half past ten Josh and Callie met at the corner of the field by The Smithy.

  “Did you have any trouble getting away?” Josh asked.

  Callie shook her head. “No. They’re engrossed with builders and roofers and insurers.”

  Josh started for the gate. “Just a minute. I want to talk to you before we go in,” Callie said.

  They both sat on the dusty verge.

  “I haven’t told you everything,” she said. She pushed up her sleeve, so that Josh could see the dark patch on her wrist and the angry, inflamed skin that now surrounded it. “It appeared just after we went into the tunnel that day. It’s been getting bigger and itchier ever since.” She covered it again. “I’ve known all along it had something to do with things, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself, never mind anyone else. I thought if I was the only one who knew, maybe it wouldn’t be true.” She grimaced. “I know how lame that sounds.”

  “Something else happened to you in there, didn’t it? Not just claustrophobia or a panic attack?”

  “When the lights went off, I heard voices,” Callie admitted after a moment’s silence. “Someone saying my name. Telling me to stay in there in the dark. Something touched me.” She shivered at the memory. “There was something down there.”

  Josh’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I know,” he said. “I saw it, but I’ve only just realised. When you bolted, I thought I saw you crawling up the tunnel just ahead of me, and then you’d gone when the lights came back on. I thought it was you, but it wasn’t. I think it was whatever you heard down there. Maybe we brought it out with us and into your house.”

  There was silence again as they went over in their heads what had happened that day.

  “It all fits,” Callie said slowly. “But why now? Why us? Think how many tourists must go down there every year.”

  “Ah, but how many witches go down?”

  “Oh no… then it is my fault.”

  “Callie, that’s not what I meant. You know it isn’t. We need to find out more about the tunnels. What happened in there? You said there was a battle – maybe it’s something to do with that. What have we brought out? What was that thing I saw? Look, it’s time we told Rose everything. She’ll know what to do, won’t she?”

  “I hope so.”

  They got up, walked through The Smithy garden and pushed the front door open.

  “Rose?” called Callie.

  An indistinct reply came from upstairs, then, “Just coming.”

  Through the window, they could see George with his back to them, busy in the greenhouse.

  “Callie, Josh, hello,” said Rose, coming down the stairs, and then, as she saw their faces, “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  10. TRACES

  Rose listened without interrupting to their hesitant, sometimes incoherent account of what had happened over the last few days, her lips compressed in a tight line.

  Finally, Callie said, “I thought I could deal with this myself, but I was wrong. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

  Rose gathered her thoughts.

  “First things first: no one was hurt when the chimney came down?”

  “No.”

  “And what state is the house in now?”

  “Mum and Dad are there with a builder and a roofer and the insurance people. There’s a big hole in the roof where the chimney fell through. Hasn’t Mum called you?”

  Rose shook her head. “We’re not really talking at the moment.”

  Callie looked stricken, but said nothing. Rose returned to the more immediate problem.

  “I think Josh may be right about what’s at the root of all this. It’s certainly nothing that’s coming directly from you. If it was, it would have happened before you started to learn to control your power. I don’t think anyone should be staying in that house overnight just now. Callie, you’ll come here, won’t you?”

  Callie nodded.

  “And you’re all right at the cottage, Josh, aren’t you?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll phone Julia and suggest she and David come here until the roof is fixed. Maybe if David answers the phone he’ll accept my offer before Julia has a chance to refuse.” She got to her feet. “Make us all some coffee while I do that, Callie.”

  The kettle had just boiled when Rose returned from phoning.

  “Well?” Callie asked.

  “I spoke to your father. He’ll talk to your mother and call back.” She made a face. “Oh well, I’ve done what I can for now.” She sat down to drink her coffee. “The three of us need to go to the castle.”

  “You don’t want me to go down there again, do you?” said Callie, alarmed.

  “No, dear, don’t worry.” She glanced over at the washing-up bowl sitting expectantly beside the sink. “We need to talk to Bessie. I’ll treat us all to lunch.”

  ***

  “Well, Rose, this is nice,” said Bessie, settling herself in her seat and making sure she had a good view of the other diners just in case any of them did something interesting.

  Josh stared, mesmerised, at her hat. It seemed to be knitted out of crimson string, and was decorated with three rather threadbare pheasant feathers. “It’s my Thinking Cap,” she said to Josh when she noticed him gawping at it. “A bit like Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalker. It compensates for electrical fluctuations in the brain.”

  Josh nodded, speechless, as Rose shook her head and muttered something none of them could quite hear.

  “Callie, dear,” Bessie went on, “you look a bit peaky. I hope you’re not coming down with something?”

  “I’m fine, Bessie. I just haven’t been sleeping very well,” Callie replied with stupendous understatement.

  “That’s why we wanted to talk to you, Bessie,” Rose added.

  “Well, I would usually recommend a wee nip of whisky, but you’re a bit young for that.”

  Rose raised her eyes to heaven. “That’s not going to solve this problem. Let’s order, then we’ll explain.”

  ***

  It took all the pasta and half the ice cream to explain the situation to Bessie.

  “So now we need to find out what happened in those tunnels in the past, and who – or what – this figure could be.” For once, there was no trace of Bessie’s normal levity in her voice. “There have never been reports of people having uncanny experiences down there that I know of.”

  “I thought it might be because Callie’s a witch, not a normal – sorry
, I don’t know how else to say it – person,” said Josh.

  Bessie gave him a narrow-eyed look. Josh hoped she wasn’t putting a spell on him. He prepared himself to find he had grown whiskers, or something worse.

  “No,” she said firmly. “It can’t be that. I’ve been down there more times than I can count.” She saw Josh and Callie exchange glances. “When I was younger and more… athletically built, I mean. I’m not exactly the shape for shimmying through wee holes like a ferret now. But witches aren’t that rare. There must be tourists who have power in there every year.”

  So witches aren’t that rare? Josh filed that one away for further consideration.

  “No. This is something more specific, and we need to find out what.” Bessie ate her last spoonful of ice cream and pushed away the bowl. “Right. I think we should get back to the castle and have a poke around behind the scenes.”

  “But not down the tunnel?” Callie asked, just to be sure.

  “Definitely not.”

  ***

  “Hello, Margaret, that’s me back from lunch,” said Bessie brightly to the woman behind the desk at the castle. “I’ve just brought my friends along for a wee look at some books in the office.”

  Margaret looked doubtful.

  “That’ll be fine, won’t it, Margaret?” said Bessie, looking at her intently.

  “Oh yes,” said Margaret, smiling. “That’ll be fine.”

  Did she just? No – surely not… Josh remembered the way the tourists had left the castle shop so suddenly when he was last here, but there was no chance to linger as Bessie marched them past the desk and through a door, shutting it firmly behind them.

  She switched on the light. “Welcome to my kingdom,” she said. “Now, where to start?” She stared at a wall of books, tapping one foot as she thought.

  Rose had already selected a volume, and she sat down at a wooden table to look through it, once she’d moved a plate of shortbread and several mugs out of the way.

  Josh spotted a computer at the other side of the room.

  “Can I use the internet?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” said Bessie absently as Callie drifted over to the computer with him.

  An hour and a half passed in almost complete silence as Josh and Callie trawled the internet and Rose and Bessie searched book after book. It had been easy enough to get at the bare bones of the story, but beyond that they had all drawn a blank.

  “There’s not much on the internet about the castle and hardly a mention of the tunnels,” said Josh. “I can’t believe there’s not more. There’s got to be something about who dug them and what happened down there.”

  Bessie got up to switch the kettle on. “Let’s pull together what we’ve all found,” she said. “Whatever went on happened in 1546 during a siege. That much is certain at any rate.”

  “And it was religion at the bottom of everything,” added Rose. “Cardinal Beaton, who was Catholic and controlled the castle, was imprisoning Protestants there. Not just imprisoning them, either. Some were burned alive.”

  “George Wishart,” said Callie. “I remember that from history at school.”

  “It says here,” said Josh, reading from the screen, “that friends of the murdered Protestants tricked their way into the castle and murdered Beaton in revenge.”

  “And then the ruling Catholics besieged the castle with the Protestants stuck inside,” added Callie.

  Bessie handed out cups of tea and made space again on the table for the shortbread. “I know this bit,” she said. “The siege went on for five months, and the besiegers got fed up, so they started to dig a tunnel in from outside. But the people inside found out what was happening, so they dug their own tunnels to try and find the one coming in. Eventually they broke through into it and there was some sort of battle. Now, what else have we got?”

  Silence.

  Rose spoke up. “The Protestants were defeated in 1547, but that’s nothing to do with the tunnels. I couldn’t find anything more.” She looked at the others.

  Bessie shook her head.

  Callie said, “We couldn’t find anything on the net either.”

  “There must be a way to find out who was down there and what happened to them?” said Josh, exasperated by their lack of progress.

  “Would Margaret or any of the others know more, Bessie?” asked Rose.

  Bessie shook her head. “They’ll only know what’s in the books here.” She drummed her fingers on the table as she stared into space.

  Rose put her tea down and addressed herself to Bessie again. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “We need to do a reading?”

  Rose nodded.

  Josh looked at Callie, hoping for an explanation, but she just shrugged.

  “What’s a reading?” he asked Rose.

  “When anything happens, it leaves a trace in the surroundings.”

  “You mean like fingerprints, DNA, that sort of stuff?”

  “No,” said Bessie. “You’ve been watching too many crime programmes. It’s more like a recording.”

  “And the more dramatic the event, the more powerful people’s emotions at the time, the stronger the recording,” Rose went on. “Now, somewhere like a beach, or a wood, the trace wouldn’t last long, because the physical surroundings change – the tide carries things in and out, plants grow and die. But it would last longer in a house, because it would get into the walls, into the stone. And in a tunnel that’s hardly changed since it was dug…”

  “It should still be there even now?” Callie guessed.

  “Exactly,” said Rose. “So in theory, we just need someone to go down there to… access the recording.”

  “Someone who doesn’t have any power of their own that might interfere with it,” Bessie added.

  Three pairs of eyes swivelled to look at Josh.

  “Ah,” he said. “That’s me, isn’t it?”

  “But surely that’s dangerous for Josh?” Callie protested.

  “No. Nothing will happen to him. It might be a bit… unsettling… but he’ll come out again absolutely fine,” Rose said quickly.

  “It’ll be just like being a television set,” said Bessie bafflingly. “We can watch, but whatever the TV shows doesn’t affect the TV, whether it’s war, or illness, or weather, or one of those awful reality things. The TV isn’t harmed.”

  Josh hadn’t particularly enjoyed his first experience of the tunnel, and he didn’t relish the idea of going down again now, especially on his own, but if it would give them answers…

  “You don’t have to be down there alone,” said Rose, as if she’d read his thoughts. “You can wait until other people go down. Just not us.”

  That wasn’t so bad.

  “And you’re sure I won’t bring anything back out with me?”

  “Absolutely,” said Rose firmly.

  “All right. I’ll go down.”

  “Good lad,” said Bessie. “Right. Sit down here and we’ll get you ready.”

  “Get me ready? What do you mean?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. Just a wee laying on of hands. Unless you think you could do the job more effectively as a rat?”

  “Stop it, Bessie!” said Rose sharply. “Pay no attention to her, Josh.”

  Josh sat down rather reluctantly.

  “Just relax. You can close your eyes if you want. Bessie and I are just going to tune ourselves in to your mind, so we’ll know what’s happening when you’re down the tunnel.”

  “Does that mean you’ll be able to read my thoughts?” he asked, alarmed.

  “I knew you were going to say that,” said Bessie, staring owlishly at him. “Och, only kidding! No, of course not. We’re not going to be rummaging round in your mind as though we’re at a jumble sale.”

  “What about me? Can I tune in as well?” asked Callie.

  “You don’t have the skills for this yet, I’m afraid.”

  Rose and Bessie each put a hand on either side of Josh’s hea
d, while he sat there feeling like a complete idiot. After a few seconds they moved away.

  “Is that it?” He’d been expecting something more, though he wasn’t sure what. Chanting, or a tingling sensation or something. His head exploding.

  “That’s it. Now we can tune in. It’s just up to you to decide when to go down.”

  “The sooner I get it over with, the better. I’ll go when I see someone else going in. But what do I do once I’m in there?”

  “All you need to do is put your hand flat somewhere on the stone and stand still for a couple of minutes,” said Bessie.

  “Will I feel anything?”

  Bessie glanced at Rose. “Maybe nothing at all. Or you might glimpse things, hear things happening. Just remember, it’s only a recording.”

  “Where in the tunnel should I do it?”

  “That’s a good point,” said Rose. “Because, of course, it’s actually two tunnels.” She considered for a moment. “I think you should try at the foot of the stairs at the far end first, then come back up the ladder and try again in the narrow part.”

  “Okay.”

  “I suppose I’d better let Margaret back into the office now,” Bessie said.

  As they went out, Callie spoke quietly to Josh.

  “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be another way. We’ve got to find out what happened down there. I’ll be all right as long as the lights stay on this time.” He tried to sound more cheerful than he felt, but he wasn’t quite sure he’d pulled it off.

  They loitered on the sunlit lawn at the centre of the castle ruins, waiting for someone to start down the steps to the tunnel. It was only a few minutes before three American students paused to look at the information board and decided to go in.

  “Here goes,” said Josh, and he headed after them.

  ***

  Physically, the tunnel was just as Josh had remembered it – the sloping floor and the awkward bent-kneed shuffle that was necessary to avoid braining yourself – but full of American accents and laughter, any threat it had held a few minutes ago melted away.