Hiding From the Light

by Barbara Erskine

  He had two possibilities so far. The old church at Mistley; as Hopkins’s death was in fact noted in the parish registers, it seemed the most likely place, and again, the most mundane. The other was under a patch of especially green grass near the lake where he was supposed to have swum his local victims. That was a starter only because his ghost was supposed to have been seen hovering over it. When they went up there he would film at both sites.

  His eye fell on the open notebook by the phone. Mike Sinclair’s number was scribbled at the top of the page. His hotline to the church.

  He sat back in his chair. When he drove up to Manningtree the day after tomorrow, he would take all this stuff to show Mike. Somehow he had to get him in front of a camera.

  When the phone rang he nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Colin. ‘All set for another trip to darkest Essex?’ The Welsh lilt was always strongest over the phone.

  Mark grinned. ‘I was just getting my notes together. It’s been bloody frustrating having to stay in London when all I wanted to do was get back there. Is Joe lined up?’

  ‘He is. In fact he’s got all sorts of ideas for bringing in some special sound stuff. I do hope we can get it into the shop. Have you contacted them?’

  ‘Alice has.’ Mark nodded. Outside his small office he could hear the dustcart in the road alongside the canal munching its way through a heap of old cardboard boxes. ‘I don’t think we’ll have a problem. Barker says we can go in if the tenants agree. I think our presence there, with cameras, might in this case work in our favour.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘You know, I can’t help wondering if something Lyndsey Clark said might not be true: perhaps our presence there was actually feeding the thing. Giving it energy. It likes our interest. It seeks publicity. So, it will appear for us.’

  ‘Wow!’ Colin the other end of the phone picked the remains of his doughnut out of the saucer it was lying in and took a large bite. ‘It will be wanting an agent and a contract next!’ he said with his mouth full. He chuckled.

  ‘Have you got the stills I asked for?’

  ‘Sure thing. And I’m picking up the special camera equipment on Thursday.’

  ‘And Alice still wants to come with Joe?’

  ‘Try and keep her away. She’s going to clear it with her tutor, apparently. Joe’s not happy but that doesn’t cut any ice with her, of course.’

  ‘OK. Well, it seems we’re on, then. Joe, Alice and I will go down on Wednesday and you’ll join us on Friday, right?’

  ‘Right. Mark, before you go, you have realised the date on Sunday, haven’t you?’ Colin chuckled again.

  Mark frowned. ‘Why? Is it significant?’

  Colin gave a hollow laugh. ‘Might be. It’s Halloween!’

  50

  The same evening

  There was still a thin weak thread of ochre light in the sky when Emma came to. It was very cold and she shuddered uncontrollably as she found herself still sitting on the wall of her terrace. She stared round disorientated, aware that her jacket was covered in a layer of cold dew. She had fallen asleep sitting on the wall.

  ‘Oh, God!’ As she remembered the dream her intake of breath was both a cry of anguish and a prayer. She brought the back of her hand up to her mouth, pressing the cold skin against her lips as though by doing that she could stifle her thoughts. The old woman, her pitifully scrawny legs, the blood, the vile smugness of the other woman with the sharp spike in her hand and watching it all, the man at the table with his sharp intelligent eyes and the neat goatee beard beneath the small mean mouth …

  Fighting her stiffness, Emma stood up and turned back towards the house. Behind her in the distance an owl hooted. Pushing open the kitchen door she glanced at the clock. She must have been asleep for less than ten minutes and yet so much had happened in the dream. Poor Liza. Liza who had lived in this house. Lived happily in this house. There was no sense of misery here, no pain, no anguish. It was a happy house, a house which welcomed people.

  There was a thud on the table next to her as Max jumped up from the floor. He flirted his tail and narrowed his eyes in greeting. She could hear the throaty purr which meant he was thinking about his supper. The moment Min joined him she would be outnumbered and forced to reach for the cat food.

  She went to stand by the Aga, feeling its warmth working its way through to her frozen limbs, as with a cheerful prrrp Min popped through the cat flap. No time to think about poor Liza for the next five minutes as she opened the tins, reached for their biscuits and put down their plates, watching as they ate, the two ravenous animals suddenly dainty and refined.

  But feeding the cats had been no more than an interlude. The heavy cloying unhappiness of the dream still clung around her like an aura. It had been so real. Too real. There had been nothing in it to reassure her that it had been a dream; the detail, the sensations, and smell – all had been too vivid and the sequence of events too rational to have been a dream.

  So what was it?

  The cats finished their meal, licked their bowls clean, then swapped places, critically examining one another’s dish for overlooked morsels before sitting down one on each side of her in front of the Aga to wash their faces and paws. She smiled indulgently, but it was a smile of habit. Her thoughts were still in that room in Church Street with the pitiful old woman who had once lived in this house, hung her dried herbs from the very same iron hooks in the ceiling beams, stood in this very kitchen to cook up her herbal potions.

  Minutes later Emma was heading for the door. She picked up her jacket and her car keys and was on her way to Mistley Quay. There was a light on in the ground-floor room of the cottage and the bicycle was leaning into the ragged box hedge implying that Lyndsey was at home.

  The living room was very small, the only furniture a two-seater sofa covered in a scarlet throw, a small Edwardian armchair and a somewhat shabby, large floor cushion. Lyndsey pointed Emma to the chair and herself subsided gracefully onto the cushion in front of the delicate wrought-iron fireplace. Emma found herself staring down at the hearth. Three candles, some incense sticks in a small brass pot, a crystal cluster and two or three smooth pebbles from the beach grouped on the opposite side to the coal bucket were the only things in the room she could see which might reflect Lyndsey’s calling.

  ‘I had to talk to you.’ She shrugged. ‘About Liza. How much do you actually know about it all?’

  Lyndsey didn’t look at her. She was staring into the fire. ‘Why do you want to know suddenly?’

  ‘I had a dream this afternoon. Another dream.’ Emma shrugged uncomfortably. ‘It was about her.’

  ‘Describe her.’ Lyndsey still didn’t look up.

  ‘Elderly. Bad teeth; some missing.’ That gaping scream. The agony. The tears. ‘She …’ She hesitated. ‘She was being tortured by a woman with a spike who was sticking it into her … between her legs …’ Suddenly she was crying.

  Lyndsey shivered. She hugged her knees closer, dropping her head so that her chin rested on them. ‘That would be the witch pricker. Round here it was a woman called Mary Phillips. She was amongst other things the local midwife, so she knew a lot about female anatomy. She should have been on the side of kindness, healing, rationality. She herself probably used Liza’s herbs to help women with puerperal fever, to clean infected wounds, to help bring down the milk. But she changed sides. For money. She betrayed her calling and her sex!’

  There was a long silence, then at last Lyndsey raised her head. She swivelled slightly so she could see Emma’s face. ‘Shall I tell you the most appalling part of the procedure? Those witch prickers were made so that the spike could be retracted into the handle. When the Witchfinder reckoned they had all had enough fun, Mary would pretend to ram it in, retract the spike and lo and behold she had found one of the Devil’s marks, a spot where the woman felt no pain. But how many places did she prick first before deciding to do that?’

  ‘I saw pictures of them in the Castle Museum,’ Emma said slowly. ‘I went to see. I had
to find out what happened.’ Her eyes had filled with tears again.

  Lyndsey stared at her solemnly for what seemed a long time, then as though making up her mind she stood up and went to the small sideboard in the corner of the room. A bottle stood there with four glasses. She poured a dose into two and handed one to Emma. ‘Drink it.’

  Emma frowned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to worry. It’s not bat’s blood! Actually it’s Glenmorangie.’ Lyndsey gave a wry smile. ‘One of my unwitchly life-aids. Cheers!’

  She tipped the whisky down her throat without so much as a splutter and then resumed her place on the cushion. ‘OK. Now for the questions. Was he there in your dream? Hopkins?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘He was sitting at a table facing them. And me. I came upstairs straight into the room. He was not very tall. Dark hair; pointy beard. Rather baby-faced. Very dapper. Immaculate black suit, broad plain white collar and cuffs. Leather gloves on the table. I didn’t notice his shoes. He had a bad cough. He had small, glittery eyes. Dark, I think. Very cold. Distanced from what was going on. He wasn’t – at least I don’t think he was – enjoying it. It was as though all that, the torture, was beneath him. Nothing to do with him.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t beneath him. Not beneath him at all. I think you’ll find he was enjoying it enormously.’ The fire spat and crackled suddenly, a piece of salt-soaked driftwood burning blue and green amongst the lumps of sea-coal. Lyndsey turned back to watch it.

  Emma sipped her whisky. ‘She begged me to avenge her but he took no notice. They went on with the torture.’

  Lyndsey was studying her face thoughtfully. She was pursuing her own train of thought. ‘Did you speak to him in your dream?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him to let her go.’

  ‘And he spoke to you?’ Lyndsey was still staring into the fire. Emma saw her tighten her arms around her knees again, resting her chin.

  ‘Yes, he spoke to me. He threatened me. He said he had the Parliament’s commission to do what he did. Then they suggested I was a witch, too. If … I ran away and left her.’

  ‘You had no choice.’ Lyndsey swivelled round to face her at last. ‘So, who were you, Emma?’

  Emma frowned, thinking. Every detail up to now had been clear. She remembered Mary Phillips looking at her. Remembered the pale eyes, the ruddy, greasy cheeks, the huge rough hands of the woman who when her husband was alive had examined her, pressed her stomach, lifted her skirts and squinted between her legs to give a verdict as to why there was no baby. After two years, still no baby. ‘It is God’s will,’ she had announced at last. ‘God does not intend you to breed, Sarah Paxman.’ She had gloated. There had been no sympathy there. No understanding. No suggestions.

  Unlike Liza. Liza had been gentle. Liza had been sympathetic. Liza had suggestions.

  ‘Well?’ Lyndsey’s voice cut through her thoughts impatiently. ‘Do you know who you were?’

  Emma nodded at last. ‘Sarah Paxman.’ She glanced up at Lyndsey’s face and was astonished at the glee she saw there.

  ‘Yes!’ Lyndsey scrambled to her feet. ‘I knew it!’ She went to the dresser and picked up the bottle, then she came and sat on the edge of the sofa, reaching over to pour another half an inch into Emma’s glass. ‘You’ve been sent to help me! At first I didn’t realise it, but I thought about it again when you told me about being a Bennett and our being cousins. Then I knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’ Emma studied her face uneasily.

  ‘I told you. You are here to help me sort him out. Contain him. Sarah Paxman was our ancestor, Emma. She was Sarah Bennett before she married. She was born up at Overly.’ Putting down the glass, she slipped onto her knees in front of her and put her hands over Emma’s. ‘I haven’t been able to raise the power on my own. Oh, enough to hold him down when he was weak. That was no problem. I performed monthly rituals in the churchyard over his grave. It held him; kept him helpless. But he grew stronger. At first I blamed you for it because you had moved into Liza’s, but that was silly. I didn’t understand. Then I found out about all the other things. Do you know about spirits and ghosts? Do you know how they feed on energy?’ She searched Emma’s face for a moment with her intense blue gaze and then shook her head. ‘No, of course you don’t. It doesn’t matter. I will teach you everything you need to know. The balance has gone. Things have been happening here. One of them is the new priest. The man who has taken my things. He has started to stick his nose in and interfere. He came to the churchyard. At least he has noticed something is going on, which is more than his predecessor did, and I am sure he thinks he is helping but it is quite the reverse. He is adding to the energy. He doesn’t know enough about the spirit world. He doesn’t understand these things. He is open. Vulnerable. Stupid.’ She shook her head. ‘Just what we don’t need. Hopkins will have him on toast. Then there are those men making a film about Barker’s shop. Stupid again. Don’t they see what they are doing? They are conjuring him – creating him – begging him to appear. I went and spoke to them, pleaded with them not to go on with it, but no, they wouldn’t listen. We’re probably going to see that programme on national TV any day now and then he will be able to draw on the energy of millions – millions – of people!’ She was still clutching Emma’s hands. ‘We have to get to him first.’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘You’ll have to learn a few things. Quickly, before you get any more involved, but that’s all right. I’ll teach you – ’

  ‘Wait!’ Emma extricated her hands and standing up, pushed past her to go and stand in front of the fire. ‘Wait, Lyndsey. I can’t – I won’t get involved in all this!’

  Lyndsey’s face hardened. ‘You are involved.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’ve just had a few nightmares. And that’s hardly surprising, considering I’ve moved into a witch’s cottage, but that doesn’t mean I am going to be drawn into some, what … vendetta? The man has been dead for three hundred years!’

  ‘And his spirit does not rest.’

  ‘But he can’t hurt anyone. Not now. Why should he?’

  ‘Because he is consumed by hate. And because he cannot be allowed to escape punishment. While he is earthbound he can continue his campaign. He is beyond retribution. To face just punishment he has to move on.’

  ‘Move on where?’ Emma was growing more and more confused and uncomfortable.

  ‘To the next plane. The lower astral. Hell, if you prefer.’ Lyndsey smiled. ‘You’ve seen the pictures of Hieronymous Bosch? You’ve read Dante’s Inferno? You must have. Those are the torments he will face; the torments of the damned; he will face the tortures he inflicted on all those women. He is still fighting it. He is terrified. He knows what will happen to him.’

  Emma was edging towards the door. ‘Lyndsey, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I don’t even want to hear about it …’

  ‘Why did you come then?’ Lyndsey stared at her, then she took a sudden step back. ‘You’re not a Christian?’

  ‘No, I’m not. At least,’ Emma hesitated, ‘I don’t know what I am. But I know what I’m not. I’m not a witch. I don’t belong to a coven. I don’t believe in vendettas.’

  ‘I don’t belong to a coven,’ Lyndsey put in softly. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I did. If I am anything, I am what is called a hedge witch.’ She gave a brief, wry grin. ‘We have never really had covens in this country. Not in historical times, anyway. I work alone. For good.’ She turned away, her shoulders slumped. ‘Why did you come and see me, if you don’t want to help?’

  ‘I …’ Emma tried to collect her thoughts. ‘I needed to find out what was going on. I was upset by the dream. But I didn’t want to join in. I didn’t want to get involved.’

  ‘You are involved. I told you. Whether you want it or not. By blood and by choice. You gave up your poncey city life to come here. The house called you back. Liza called you back. And Sarah. Sarah who was
our ancestor; your ancestor.’ Lyndsey grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t you understand? You were brought here to help me.’

  She’s right. You were brought here to send Matthew Hopkins to hell.

  The quiet voice in Emma’s head cut suddenly through every sound in the room. She put her hands up to her ears, terrified. It was the first time she had heard the voice outside her dreams since she had moved into Liza’s.

  Lyndsey stood back. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  And you will find him in the last place on earth you think to look …

  ‘Emma? What’s wrong?’ Lyndsey put her hands on her shoulders and gripped tightly, shaking her slightly.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought I heard a voice – ’

  ‘Protect yourself, Emma. Do you know how to do that? Hold on. I’m here to help you. You’ll be safe with me …’ ‘No!’ Emma tore herself away from Lyndsey. ‘No!’ She turned and ran towards the door. Pulling it open, she ran out onto the quay. The night was cloudy, the water black and gently moving on the tide. For a second she stopped, blinded by the dark, then she turned and ran along the front of the cottages to head back up towards the fountain where she had left her car.

  With shaking hands, she forced the key into the lock and opened the door, climbed in and pulled it shut behind her.

  Lyndsey had not followed her. Standing in the doorway of her cottage she stared out into the darkness, then she lifted her hand and outlined the protective pentagram in the air. The shape hung there, glowing slightly for a moment before it dissipated into a mist and disappeared. Satisfied, Lyndsey closed the door and bolted it. Picking up her glass she resumed her seat in front of the fire and closed her eyes to meditate. Emma was not going to go very far. She would soon be back. As she sat, cross-legged, weaving her meditation, Lyndsey began to smile.

  In the car Emma rushed to get the key into the ignition. The engine didn’t respond. As she turned the key again, peering through the windscreen into the dark, the first drops of rain began to fall.