by Peter Spokes
But you,” she looked directly at him, “have always been the ‘rational’ one.” She paused again and he could sense a struggle going on inside her.
By now he was seriously wondering where this was leading and after a pause of several moments she finally continued, “We are in trouble, Ash…”
Ash knelt down before her and – smiling – gently took hold of her wrinkled hands.
“What is it…?”
“Well… it was Willow who murdered your Uncle Stefan… and I helped… and he deserved it.”
Ash had not seen that one coming and returned to his seat. It was clearly absurd and indicative of the mental trauma his aunt must have suffered.
It was ludicrous, though not easy to argue without revealing his presence on the night of the murder and he did not want to admit to his being there that night; but Ash was certain it had been a man he had seen that night running from the barn.
Also, surely poor Uncle Stefan wasn’t guilty of anything; after all, he had saved their lives pulling them from the burning barn.
So, he remained silent.
Then after a while his aunt continued, “Willow doesn’t know that I know.”
Ash stood up and walked over to the window. He could see his sisters sitting together on their mother’s seat to the right of the yard. It was probably best that this wasn’t overheard.
“Start from the beginning,” Ash suggested still looking outside.
“Well,” she began, “about two weeks before he was murdered, Stefan and I were visited by your Uncle Johnne. He wanted to speak to Stefan alone and so I left with every intention to check on the chickens – a pointless exercise I know as with two wolves around it would be a very brave fox indeed to come into the farm.
Anyway, from the look on Stefan’s face before I left I decided… to listen in.”
She stopped and then looked at Ash horrified, “I heard Johnne say ‘Besnik’s offspring must die’.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and was waiting for some kind of angry retort from Stefan, but for a while I heard nothing and then he said, ‘… I know’.”
Aunt Magda looked down. “I think it was more horrifying listening to Stefan’s quiet answer than Johnne’s demand.
Johnne had continued, ‘… due to your cowardice, I had to kill Besnik myself but the brood escaped the burning. For a long time, I was watched and waited but I’m sure the law is on my tail again. No, it is you that must do it this time and not shy from your duty as you did the last time. You owe us this, Stefan. Besnik’s abominations still survive.’
‘Why did you kill Violca?’ I had heard Stefan say.
‘That was not meant to happen; she was not supposed to be there,’ Johnne had answered angrily and continued, ‘But no! Do not try to explain yourself, Stefan. This is your last chance.’”
Magda paused, “Johnne then lowered his voice and much I couldn’t hear but caught something about ‘the time being right to get the job finished’, and, ‘from now on we’ll only communicate through the messages I leave in the usual place.’
Johnne then left and as I watched him go, I heard the sound of an upstairs door closing.
It was too much: Your parents… my sister had not died in an accidental fire and Johnne and my husband were responsible. I always felt there was more to it.
I decided that I would have to kill them,” she said quietly.
“Your husband!” Ash said amazed.
She looked away. “In recent years, I would say I didn’t know Stefan; he became surly and guarded as if he were hiding something.
Anyway, the following night, at supper, I put a very small pinch of arsenic in Stefan’s evening tea. I hoped to offer Johnne a similar refreshment if he were to return. The intention was that Stefan would die in his sleep, but that evening he said he had to go out as he had left something in the barn.”
“Poison doesn’t generally cause the back of a skull to be crushed,” Ash said quietly staring with some disbelief at his aunt’s almost blasé narration.
“I know and that’s where Willow comes in. It was Willow’s bedroom door I had heard closing. If Willow had heard what I had heard… well, you know Willow.”
Ash thought for a while. Maybe it was possible that it had been a tall woman running that night from the barn, he thought.
He would need to speak to Willow privately about this.
Chapter 6: Cursed or Blessed?
Scene 1: Cursed or Blessed?
Ash found Willow still talking to Juniper on their mother’s seat in the yard. Dawn was still some time away, it had been a long day and he needed to sleep, but he couldn’t let this wait. They both looked up.
Ash smiled at Juniper.
“Okay, I’m just going,” Juniper said rising, and walked away.
Ash sat down silently beside Willow and tried to think how to speak in such a way as not to start another confrontation. It wasn’t necessary as Willow spoke first. “Where were you on the evening of Wednesday 2nd September?”
It wasn’t what he expected but answered “… That was when Uncle Stefan was murdered. I would have been at the college; I work there late most weekday evenings.”
Willow continued to stare at Ash, her strange yellow eyes staring for several seconds before continuing; “So you were nowhere near Mortown?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Ash lied.
Willow continued to stare at him and then changed her direction. “You’ve always been against our ways and hated what we are.” It was more of an accusation than a comment.
“I’ve always loved you and Juniper,” Ash replied sincerely, “but our secret is something that must be kept hidden. If we are open we will be hunted down and killed,” Ash replied.
Willow looked at him quickly, “I have no wish to die but I would rather go down as a beast than a weak ineffectual human.”
“But there is no need to ‘go down’ at all,” he said quietly still looking straight ahead.
Then, in an attempt to change the direction of the conversation, Ash asked her how the investigation was going.
“The constable is going to speak to that pagan community, the Athame Brotherhood over at the commune.”
“Have you eaten anyone recently?” he asked suddenly.
Willow looked at him a little shocked, “Of course, but we have stuck to the solitary traveller. I’m certain none of the Brotherhood was eaten.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She looked away clearly hiding something, “I just know.”
Ash waited.
“There is a man; ‘Moon’ and I’ve been… seeing him for a while now.”
Ash mentally acknowledged hearing that name before. “He’s the fellow who visits occasionally for chickens and old clothes according to Aunt Magda. What kind of name is ‘Moon’?”
“They all have names like that; his sister’s name is Starlight.”
“Does he know your… nature?”
“Of course not.”
Ash remained silent hoping she would recognise the irony considering for the last few minutes they had been discussing the need to acknowledge identities.
“If Juniper or you had been spotted…”
“They would just see a wolf,” she said.
“Willow; you know as well as I, the last wild wolf was killed 150 years ago and none of us looks that much like a real wolf anyway.”
“I doubt they would know that; anyway they would see some kind of animal on all fours and little else. Besides, I’m surprised you even remember what you looked like – when did you last run under Isis?”
“Eleven years ago,” Ash said immediately. “Something I will never forget. I left home the following morning.”
“It was not your fault…” she said with some frustration. “You were simply being what you w
ere born to be. You were following your nature,” she said with some pride.
Ash had always found it quite ironic that her respect for him was always at antithesis to his own. He was devastated when he killed the boy but Willow practically celebrated the event. When he felt good in restraining the beast, she was disgusted.
“He was just a boy with a full life ahead of him cut short by the lust and savagery of a beast,” Ash said.
After another pause, Willow continued, “Anyway, they are not violent – the brotherhood – they worship nature… the elements… and beasts.”
“But come on, Willow, don’t they have witches and druids? They’re a group of disillusioned humans who try to believe they’re something they’re not…”
Ash stopped himself too late suddenly seeing the irony in his own words.
“Why do you want to get involved with all that witchcraft stuff?”
“It is not witchcraft,” she said vehemently but then stopped before continuing in an uncharacteristically subdued manner.
She took a deep breath, “You have always been able to ignore things; be blind to them like they don’t exist. I cannot. Some of the people I have met in the brotherhood are open to earthly and unearthly things and I don’t feel alone when I’m with them. Their minds are not closed like the rest of the world.”
Ash had never heard Willow be so open before and so remained quiet.
She turned to look at Ash but didn’t speak for several moments before finally; “When you sit in your college surrounded by your students or walk to and from work with humanity bustling around you, don’t try to tell me, or yourself, that you don’t feel alone.”
Her words hung there for a while; almost as if she had seen right into Ash’s heart.
He was silent, suddenly feeling very close to Willow, and Juniper. He had always tried to fit in with the human world but had never really realised that without his sisters he really would be alone. People are strangers, but family are part of you, and you a part of them, however strange or different they are.
Ash felt as if a final mental restraint or manacle was close to breaking.
After this brief epiphany, he couldn’t think of anything to say so he simply reached out his hand and rested it on Willow’s and though his peripheral vision indicated her suddenly glance at him – he did not see her expression for he was looking down at the ground – she didn’t remove her hand.
Ash felt speechless for a few moments.
Ash had always tried to do the logical, the rational. But he realised at that moment that sometimes feelings from the heart are perhaps truer, and certainly as powerful, as believed or presumed rationality from the head even though they may not be so easily understood.
Ash had never believed that he might feel this way when reacquainted with memories of his old life, but oddly, like a song or a fragrance once believed forgotten, Willow, Juniper and the farm had re-ignited the old feelings he’d tried so hard to replace – and they didn’t seem so bad. But curiously, as sleep is welcomed after a tiring day, he found himself embracing the memories and the feelings. One can hold on to the idea that the foundation of one’s being can be irrevocably changed but it is a misconception as all one can ever do is cover it up, adding layers, superimposing one onto another, but those layers are fragile while the initial one remains and never goes away, ready to resurface with the right stimulus, provocation or subtle persuasion.
“If the brotherhood is not involved in the death, what do you think?” Ash said finally and looking at Willow closely.
“I think the constable’s assumption of a disturbed thief seems plausible.”
“Juniper said the scent in the barn was from the two of you, Aunt Magda, Uncle Stefan and another. Any thoughts on this ‘other’?”
“No,” Willow said too quickly.
“And, if the thief was disturbed he would hardly spend time removing all traces of his being there – and to remove scent from the scene…”
Willow didn’t answer.
“Willow; where were you on the night of the murder?”
“Hunting,” Willow responded abruptly.
“Did anyone see you – Juniper or Aunt Magda, for instance?”
“No, Juniper always hunts south while I hunt north and Aunt Magda was reading one of her books when I left her.
Ash,” Willow said, not very subtly changing the subject, “Isis will be full again tonight. Run with me… it would be good for you.”
Ash felt tempted. His heart was yearning to say yes but his brain won out. “No… I can’t,” he answered impotently.
Willow removed her hand. “You will always be a fraud, Ash,” she said though the fire had now gone from her voice. “Why can’t you be what you are? You are a wolf in body and mind. Do not be embarrassed by it; do not seek forgiveness for it. You cannot sit on the fence; we are creatures of fairy tale…”
“Or nightmare?” Ash cut in quietly.
“You have never understood, Ash, we are not cursed, we are blessed.”
She sighed, stood up and walked towards the house. Like any younger brother admonished by an older sibling – especially one silently worshipped – he felt miserable. After a while he followed and went to his room wondering how to broach the subject of her suspected complicity in their uncle’s murder.
He also wondered about the letter that Stefan had sent: why the warning if he was involved with Johnne?
He opened the door to his room and lay on his bed.
Within moments he was fast asleep.
Chapter 7: The Constable
Scene 1: A Dream
Ash thrust his head down again and again pulling the viscera from the body, hot entrails escaping from his jaws. Blood now covered the hair on his face and his shoulders. So much blood and he couldn’t drink it fast enough. He raised his head and howled again and again with happiness. Then he looked down at the head situated several feet away from what had once been a torso but was now a mass of bloody flesh and protruding ribs. Ash’s ecstatic countenance dissolved to be replaced with one of unbearable sadness and self-loathing. It was a young face; not an old man’s but that of someone little more than an adolescent. Ash stood up on two legs; he had changed without realising it and looked down at the carnage. Blood still dripped from the nearby bushes, and lower branches of trees – indicative of his frenetic attack. He watched in horror as the drip became a stream and then large gouts fell from the foliage – the blood would not stop… it poured as a river…
Ash woke.
Even now, after so many years analysing it from every angle, he had never understood how it had happened. He had seen a bent over and aged old man, perhaps a vagrant or traveller with few years left, walking into the forest, and Ash had followed.
Before the farm had been properly established they would never eat anyone other than those who would see few more winters and were unlikely to be missed. By the time he realised his mistake the boy’s life had gone from his mutilated body. But that was the problem; once you gave in to the beast, you had no control. Emotions are simplified to the most primitive levels; warmth, cold… and a hunger; an insatiable hunger of unquenchable need.
Ash left that life, and beast, the following morning – or so he had promised himself.
Scene 2: Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Ash pulled on his clothes and went downstairs for breakfast which generally consisted of meat – uncooked – and coffee.
Juniper and Willow looked up; only Juniper smiled.
Ash sat down and filled his plate and looked at his sisters. They both still liked the white woolly dressing gowns that they were so fond of when they were younger. A smile played on his lips as he remembered the old adage that always went through his mind all those years ago; ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’.
He was close to tasting his first morsel when Aunt Magda appeared and silently
sat down but made no move to join them in breakfast.
“There is something that I need to say about your Uncle Stefan’s death,” she started.
They looked at each other for a moment; even Juniper’s fork positioned halfway to her mouth paused.
But then there was a loud knock at the front door.
They jumped at the same time amid apprehension as to the possible announcement from the aunt.
Ash opened the door. “Hello, sir,” started the constable, “… and you must be the nephew…” He looked down at his notepad, “… Master Ash Ficowski?”
Ash nodded. “Come inside,” he said and turned.
Ash led him into the kitchen where his sisters and aunt looked on.
“Well, I have some good news. We have made an arrest and the young man is currently awaiting carriage to our police station to await the King’s pleasure.”
“That is indeed excellent news, Constable – who is he?” Ash said smiling with an expectation that things were finally finding some elucidation.
While he spoke, Ash looked over at his sisters expecting a look of relief on their faces, but although Juniper smiled, Willow looked absolutely horrified. A moment later he understood why.
“The fellow calls himself ‘Moon’ and lives with a couple of dozen or so equally crazy people a couple of miles through the forest – I can tell you, I had a hard time finding them.”
Willow was mortified.
“Constable, I know him! …” she started, “and… he would never do such a thing!”
The constable studied her for a moment. “Well, I beg your pardon, Miss Ficowski… but he has already confessed.”
“What!” she shouted. “That’s crazy!”
“We’ve also found evidence of him being there,” the constable answered.