Hiding From the Light

by Barbara Erskine

  Mark blinked. For a moment he had believed her. He had felt the fear, but she was losing it. ‘Every woman?’ he repeated. He couldn’t keep the scepticism out of his voice.

  ‘Every woman!’ She was almost shouting again. ‘Look around you! The women of his day were a different species. Now we are all witches in his eyes! All of us. Witches in his sense of the word. Creatures to fear. To suppress!’ She grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Call it off. Stop it! Don’t let it happen.’ Whirling round, she made a dive towards the camcorder placed on the floor near a heap of flattened cardboard boxes.

  Just in time Colin saw what she was doing and caught her arm, swinging her off balance. ‘That’s enough, Lyndsey! We’ve taken your point,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll think about it, but that’s it. You don’t damage our equipment. I don’t want to have to call the police. Out now, please. I’d like you to leave.’ He was guiding her towards the stairs. ‘We’ll keep everything you’ve said in mind, I promise you.’

  ‘Fools! Stupid, stupid fools!’ Lyndsey wrenched her arm away from him. For a moment he thought she was going to come back and have another go, but with a furious sob she turned and ran down the stairs, leaving Colin and Mark staring at each other across the silent room.

  82

  The sun was coming out at last, as Alex and Emma stood on the terrace. They had searched the barns and the sheds, calling the cats every few seconds, but there was still no sign of either of them.

  Emma was getting anxious. ‘I don’t understand. They’ve never done this before. They have stayed so close to home.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Alex was trying to comfort her. ‘If it was one of them I’d worry more. If it’s both, surely they must have gone off on a spree together. They’ll turn up.’ He glanced at her. She was looking very pale, her face drawn and unhappy. ‘Emma, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go in a minute. Paula will be wondering where I am. Is there anyone I can ring to come and keep you company?’

  Emma shrugged. She had not told him about the doctor’s prescription. What was the point? ‘Alex, you’ve been so kind. Don’t worry. I’m OK on my own. And I’ll give Piers a ring. He said he might come down.’ She didn’t see Alex’s sudden grim expression as she was turning towards the kitchen door, and when the phone rang she smiled almost cheerfully ‘There you are. That will be him.’

  It wasn’t. It was Paula. ‘Is my husband there? He’s turned off his mobile again.’ Paula’s anger was palpable. ‘Put him on, please.’

  Emma grimaced. She handed Alex the receiver and went back outside, trying not to listen, judging Paula’s anger by the long silences and Alex’s ineffectual attempts to interrupt.

  At last he switched off the phone, put it down and came outside. She turned to him. ‘I’m sorry. My fault. Blame me.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not you, it’s Lyndsey. They met in the shops somewhere and had a terrible row. I’m going to have to try and calm Paula down – not so easy once she’s got herself worked up.’

  She was still standing by the gate after waving the Volvo out of sight, reluctant to go back inside the house, when a bicycle appeared round the corner of the lane. It was Lyndsey. She flung the bike down into the grass behind Emma’s car and let herself in through the gate. ‘We’ve got to talk.’

  Emma led the way round the back. ‘Alex was here and Paula rang. I gather you and she had a row?’

  ‘Stupid woman!’ Lyndsey’s lips tightened angrily. ‘But it’s not just her, it’s everything! I can’t do it on my own, Emma. You’ve got to help me.’ She walked ahead of Emma into the kitchen and stopped dead. ‘What on earth has been happening in here? The atmosphere is dreadful!’ She frowned. ‘Not just Paula on the phone, it’s more than that. Something else has happened. What is it?’ She turned accusingly.

  Emma, taken off guard by the ferocity of the question, took a step back. Embarrassingly, her eyes filled with tears and she brushed them away furiously. ‘I just had a bad night. Nightmares. I’m so tired!’ She bit her lip. ‘And now Max and Min have disappeared.’

  Lyndsey took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm herself down. ‘OK. Let’s tackle this bit by bit,’ she said more gently. ‘If I was a cat, I wouldn’t be here now. Not with all this going on. Don’t worry about them, they’ll come back. Your nightmares are linked to all the rest of it. If we sort it all out, they will go away. As for Alex and Paula …’ Her eyes hardened. ‘They’re not friends of mine any more. It’s up to you if you still think of Alex as a friend, but Paula – you do know that she hates you, don’t you? She’s jealous of you. And she hates it that you know me.’ She gave a quick smile. ‘You go and wait outside. I’m going to start by putting your kitchen right.’

  Emma frowned uncertainly. ‘Putting it right?’

  Reaching over, Lyndsey gave Emma a brief hug. ‘Call it Feng Shui if that makes you feel better. Installing good vibes. Then the cats can come home.’ She gave Emma a push towards the door.

  It was fifteen minutes by the time Lyndsey came and found her in the barn. She was smiling. ‘There. Come on back now. I’ve even made us some coffee.’ Lyndsey’s unexpected camaraderie was disconcerting.

  ‘The cats …?’

  Lyn shook her head. ‘Not yet. But they’ll come.’

  Emma followed her back and just inside the door she stopped, staring round. The room did indeed feel different. It was warm again and almost sparkling; it felt welcoming and happy and safe.

  Emma sat down. ‘Whatever you’ve done, thank you. It does feel better.’

  ‘Good. Now for the rest.’ Lyndsey sat down opposite her. ‘You’ve got to help me. I can’t do it alone.’

  ‘The rest?’ Emma eyed her uneasily.

  ‘You’ve been into Barker’s shop. Where they are filming.’

  Emma nodded. ‘It was Liza’s face on their film.’

  ‘They told me.’ Lyndsey paused. ‘But they aren’t going to leave it at that. I’ve been trying to stop them. Tonight is Halloween and they’ve got it into their heads to try and film the ghost. Their intention, their longing for it to appear, together with thousands of men and women and children dressing up as witches and ghouls and ghosts, will conjure Liza into being almost certainly, but more than that, it is Hopkins they want. Hopkins they are after. And it is Hopkins they will get. I’ve tried to stop them. They don’t understand. They think I’m mad. Our only hope is to intercept him.’

  ‘Intercept Matthew Hopkins?’ Emma’s eyes rounded.

  ‘He must not be given the chance to appear. We have to bind him.’

  ‘Oh, Lyndsey, no.’ Emma shook her head. ‘You know I don’t want to be part of this. I really don’t.’

  ‘You have to.’ Lyndsey grabbed her wrist. Her charm was gone and her eyes were hard. ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘No, Lyn. I can’t. I won’t. I don’t want to get involved.’

  ‘You are involved. You are one of us.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ She wasn’t sure what ‘one of us’ meant. She started to tremble again. ‘Please, Lyn. I want you to go.’

  ‘No chance. This is too important.’

  ‘No, Lyn. No!’ Emma was backing away from her. ‘Please. I can’t think straight. My head aches. I just want to go to sleep.’ She threw herself down in a chair.

  ‘Later. You can sleep all you want later. For now, you have to listen to me. Between us, we can do this. Sarah can do it!’

  Emma froze. ‘What do you mean?’

  Lyndsey held her gaze. ‘Oh, come on, Emma. The sooner you face what is happening here, the sooner we can do something about it.’ She stood up and walked briskly up and down the kitchen floor a couple of times. ‘Sarah Paxman is inside your head, right? You dream about her more and more. You hear her voice. She’s telling you what she wants you to do – isn’t she?’ She sat down, facing Emma across the table.

  Emma sighed heavily. She didn’t want to hear all this again.

  ‘She wants to get even with Hopkins. She has pursued him back
wards and forwards through time and space and now she’s tracked him down here, where it all started.’ She sat down. ‘This is all part of a much bigger picture, Emma. Things have happened on the other planes, other worlds, to do with ancient Anglo-Saxon evil which is helping all this to happen. Hopkins didn’t live in this part of the world by accident. He was drawn here. There are huge build-ups of supernatural energy all over East Anglia, which the Germanic invaders knew how to channel. There is a cunning man in the town – Bill Standing – and he has told me all about it, how it works, why it is so powerful.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he help you, then?’ Emma said weakly.

  ‘He is. He is doing a lot. As is …’ Lyndsey hesitated. ‘Apparently the rector is helping, though I can’t think how. In my view he’ll make it even more dangerous with Hopkins trying to possess him but Bill says this is so great it needs us all. That’s as maybe. I know I can’t do it alone, but if we work together, you and I, we don’t need them. You are strong, Emma. With your help we can do this!’

  ‘But I’m not a witch,’ Emma put in quietly.

  ‘No?’ Lyndsey smiled. ‘Not formally, perhaps. It doesn’t matter. I can teach you what to do. You’re a woman, that’s all that matters.’ She smiled. ‘The other two are men, of course. They don’t realise that this is about far more than mere techniques. This is personal. You saw what Hopkins did to those women. He may not have done it himself, but he watched and he made notes. What sort of sick bastard does that make him? This is you and me, Emma. And Sarah. No one else can do it.’

  ‘Lyn – ’

  ‘Say yes, Emma. You have to. Only you can do it.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘Say yes, Emma! This is for Liza. For Liza, Emma!’

  Emma stared up into her eyes. For a moment she couldn’t move, then slowly, almost without realising it, she nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll help.’

  83

  The shop assistant stuck her head around the corner of the stairs at half past five exactly. ‘I’m off. You know you’ve got to lock up when you go?’ She stared round the room at the network of cables, the hanging microphones, the cameras carefully positioned on their tripods.

  Mark stepped forward and took the proffered keys from her. ‘Thanks, Jackie.’ He smiled. ‘Can you slip the lock on the shop door as you go out? We don’t want any local kids coming in with witchy hats on!’

  ‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘You’re not staying here all night, are you?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘No fear. Once we’ve finished setting up we’re off. We’ll come back tomorrow and take all this stuff away.’ A thought struck him. ‘You haven’t suddenly started opening on Sundays, have you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Good, then we won’t disturb you. We’ll stick the keys through the café letterbox as arranged, OK? So on Monday you can collect them.’ He gave her a winning smile but already she was turning away, running down the stairs, her footwear of choice today the more silent trainer, he noted. He waited to hear her leave. The lights went out one by one in the shop downstairs, the door opened, then banged shut, and he listened for the click of the latch before he turned back to the others. ‘OK, gang. It’s all ours.’

  Alice was wearing a black sweater with a large cross suspended round her neck. Her father also favoured sober colours. Mark was wearing a flamboyant red shirt and ancient cords. All were dusty.

  Colin and Joe were testing camera angles near the stairs. ‘This is the place we know she’s going to appear so we want it covered from every angle.’ Colin consulted the notes. They had brought in the full ghost hunting kit: 36-ml infra-red base night shot cameras which would cover the light spectrum in which ghosts might appear. Joe had produced an oscilloscope to register any and all noises and would be measuring electro-magnetic fields and looking for extremely low frequency hits on the remote audio lab – tape-recorded onto the hard drive of the sophisticated little piece of kit he had carefully set up in one corner close to the staircase. Mark checked the position of the last two cameras and nodded. ‘Just about ready, I think.’

  Colin put down his clipboard. ‘Do we want some other stuff in shot, Mark? For contrast?’ He lifted a box of brightly coloured balloon pumps. ‘What about this? Visual irony. Bring on the clowns. That sort of thing.’ He put it down with a bang in front of camera number one.

  Mark moved back to squint through the viewfinder. ‘Too distracting. We can cut in shots of that sort of stuff if we want to, later.’ He paused, looking at the window. ‘It’s very quiet out there.’

  Colin chuckled. ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Scared, more like.’ Mark shrugged. ‘Scared something will happen. Scared it won’t.’

  ‘Our Lyndsey put the wind up you good and proper, didn’t she?’

  ‘A bit.’ Mark sat down on an empty crate. ‘She has a way with words, that woman. I just wish she would say it to camera. We can’t use that stuff you got earlier without her permission.’

  ‘I could go and interview her.’ Alice folded her arms and pursed her lips to show her disapproval as her father reached for a cigarette. ‘She might talk to me. After all, I got her to come here.’

  ‘True.’ Mark glanced at Joe. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter where the interview takes place. In fact –’ He paused to think. ‘I wonder if it’s worth you taking the small videocam. It’s down in my car. It would be fantastic if she let you film her. Go for it, Alice. See what you can do. Sound only is fine if she won’t let you film. We can cut it in over something else. A few shots of her dancing round the bonfire tonight would be even better. Or, failing all else, I suppose permission to use some of the voiceover we got this afternoon.’

  ‘Can I take the car, Dad, as you’ve all got the van?’ Alice knew exactly when she could push her luck.

  He nodded. ‘OK. Dent it and you’re dead meat. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’ She glanced round the room. ‘I’m quite glad to get out of here, actually.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Joe stood back, surveying his handiwork. ‘I’m pleased we’re not staying all night. A few hours in the pub are what my nerves tell me I need. See you, kid. Good luck.’ But she had already gone.

  Mark walked across to the window and looked out into the dark. He shivered. ‘I keep on thinking it’s getting colder in here. I wonder if Jackie turned off the heating downstairs.’

  Colin and Joe both looked at him. ‘Time to go, mate!’ Colin said darkly. ‘I do not intend to be here if something happens.’

  ‘When something happens.’ Mark raised an eyebrow. He shivered. ‘Everything ready?’

  ‘Just about.’ Colin adjusted a camera a millimetre or so to the left.

  Mark stood up. The atmosphere was thickening perceptibly. He stared round the room one last time. ‘OK. Let’s go. Cameras roll.’ He paused. ‘It’s all yours, ghosts. Now is your chance to make your mark on posterity. Appear on camera tonight and the whole world will see you.’ He looked round again. Joe had picked up his jacket and was shrugging it on. Colin had gathered up his old leather satchel, pushing in his glasses, notebook, pen and a spare length of cable, swinging it onto his shoulder. Silently the three men made their way to the stairs and started down. Mark came last. At the top he turned and surveyed the scene. By the window where he had been standing a thin wisp of mist drifted across the floor. He frowned.

  ‘Did you put out your cigarette?’ he called to Joe. He already knew the answer. Whatever he could see, it wasn’t smoke. Not yet. Nor was that tiny ball of light dancing across the wall opposite him. A reflected headlight? No.

  Suddenly he could not stand still a moment longer and turning, he raced down the stairs after the others. Whatever happened in that room tonight, he intended to be as far away as possible.

  84

  A group of children were standing at the corner of the street. All wore masks and black pointed hats. Most wore cloaks of black or green nylon. One of them held a lantern. Giggling, they turned up South Stre
et and headed for the first house with lights in the windows. Suddenly silent, the humour gone, they gathered round the door and the tallest child, a boy, beat on the wood with his fist. There was no answer. He knocked again, louder, menacingly, aware of the growing impatience in the group clustered round him. As yet, no one had answered their knock. In the house the lights went off suddenly. He hesitated, uncertain what to do.

  ‘Come on, Ray. We’ll try next door.’ The girl beside him tugged at his sleeve nervously.

  ‘I’ll try once more. We know there’s someone there.’ Ray was not to be put off. Under his mask he stuck out his chin. If they didn’t answer he was going to spray a rude word on their front door. Raising his fist, he hammered again.

  The door opened slowly beneath his fusillade of blows. Inside all was dark. For a moment nothing happened. They waited, expectant, then suddenly, from the depths of the hall, a huge yellow face appeared, floating. Disembodied.

  Ray screamed, and pushing the others out of his way he ran. In seconds the others had followed him.

  85

  Saturday evening

  One by one the women had arrived at the rectory, several in cars, two on bicycles and two on foot. By the time Paula got there, there were eleven seated in the sitting room. Judith showed Paula in and pointed her to the remaining seat on an upright chair against the wall near the window.

  ‘Ladies, I want to introduce Paula West to those of you who don’t know her, a newcomer to our prayer circle.’ She smiled at Paula, who nodded uncomfortably towards the others. She recognised several of the faces. They were all women whom she saw at weekends at the shops or on the train; some had children at the local school. There were three complete strangers, but Judith made no attempt to introduce each one. She had already taken a stance with her back to the empty fireplace, a Bible in her hand.