The Village Witch

by Davies, Neil

  “I wasn’t suggesting…” Mark was flustered, unsure, now, of the very same feelings and convictions he had been so certain of just a few minutes earlier. “I was worried a stranger might compromise our plans.”

  She reached the living room and turned on him, a sudden blaze of anger on fire in her eyes.

  “My plans! Don’t ever forget who holds the power here Mark. You are nothing more than a servant.”

  Mark took a step backwards, physically threatened by her anger. He knew full well what she was capable of, and he had no wish to see that power turned on himself. Still, he was confused and hurt, and that gave him the courage to once more speak up.

  “Surely I’m more than that to you? I thought we…”

  “You thought wrong.” Katrina’s voice was sharp, cutting across his words like the sharpest knife across the most slender throat.

  She slumped down into an armchair and crossed her legs, smiling up at him, that sparkle of cruel humour he knew so well returning to her eyes.

  “You are my servant Mark, a truly faithful and useful one, but a servant nonetheless. One who I allow, occasionally, to fuck me. But you’re certainly not the only one.” She laughed, turning the knife in the already open wound. “You’re not even the best.”

  Mark felt a heavy emptiness in his stomach at her words. He had always known, somewhere deep inside, that their relationship was little more than a convenience to her as and when she desired it, but he had hoped, after so many years, that she may have begun to feel something… anything. To stand here and listen to her trivialise their time together, time he held so precious, was as soul destroying as it was painful and embarrassing.

  He began to step backwards out of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I shouldn’t have come. I was just worried.”

  “He’s an old friend from my childhood.” Katrina’s face softened slightly. She had made her point. Now she could massage his ego a little, allow him to feel he was in her confidence. She had felt it necessary to remind him of his true position, but she did not want to risk losing his faithful service. “He’s just got back into the village. He has no connection and no importance to our work here.”

  Mark stopped his retreat, still confused, still hurt, but pleased that she was telling him what he had wanted to know. “You were right about the jealousy, I’m sorry,” he said. “But I was also genuinely concerned about the arrival of a stranger when your plans are so close to fruition.”

  “Well now you know there’s nothing to worry about,” said Katrina. “So, forget about my old friend and let’s talk about the real event of last night. She’s almost ready Mark. Almost among us in flesh and blood. I knew it, as soon as I heard the sirens, I knew. Last night was just the first.”

  Mark cleared his throat nervously, aware of Katrina’s mood swings and not wishing to face her anger a second time.

  “It was William…”

  “I don’t care who it was,” snapped Katrina, waving a hand dismissively in the air. “It’s not important. All that matters is that Aello has begun taking offerings for herself. She has grown strong enough call on others for help. I could feel their presence at the cemetery gates last night.”

  She gazed into the middle distance, her eyes and her thoughts on a different world.

  “Very soon everything will be as it should. The village will be ours. And that’s only the beginning.”

  2

  “I knew he was involved. I knew there was something wrong about him from the moment I met him,” said Susan, angrily staring out of the guesthouse window.

  “You mean the moment he saved our lives? That moment?” The Professor’s voice was deliberately slow and quiet, attempting to calm the emotion in his daughter.

  “It was a set-up. Had to be.”

  Susan turned to face her father where he sat on the edge of the bed.

  “He was with that Bayley woman. Surely even you can’t deny she’s involved?”

  “We don’t have any proof, but…” he held up a hand to stop the argument that was about to be spat his way, “I agree that she is most likely involved. She’s certainly not your normal college Principal. But none of that proves that Mr. Galton is anything other than a friend of hers.”

  “Oh come on!” Susan laughed cynically. “They’re in this together. I bet those kids that attacked us are from her school, and he just happened to be walking by? I don’t think so.”

  “You seem to have convinced yourself of his guilt.” The Professor’s tone was one of resignation. There was too much of her mother in Susan for him to think he could change her mind through words alone.

  “There were four of them. They were armed. And he just waded through them like they weren’t there? I mean, come on! These are street tough kids. The four of them could have taken him apart without any problem. It was a set-up.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To meet us? To get on our good side?”

  “I really don’t think we’re that important Susan.”

  “I don’t know what the purpose was, but someone put those kids up to attacking us, and mister I’m a hero was too conveniently there when he needed to be.”

  “None of this can be proved Susan. For whatever reason, you took an instant dislike to Mr. Galton, and you’ve been looking for something to back that up ever since. Seeing him with Miss Bayley from the college, someone else you instantly disliked, by the way, gave it to you.”

  “Whatever you might think Dad, there’s nothing personal in this. The connection is too obvious to miss. I really don’t see why you can’t accept it.”

  She paused, became thoughtful.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “You want proof? I’ll get proof. Starting with those kids and that college. I’ll get you all the proof you need.”

  AELLO

  She rested.

  The events of the night before had left Aello drained of all psychic energy. Exhausted but exhilarated. Her human followers had been faithful and diligent in their provision of sacrifices, but it was slow and inefficient. Each blood offering only increased her strength by the smallest of amounts. But last night…

  Last night, the elemental forces she had called forth had fed the strength, the glory, the ecstasy of the kill straight to her, undiluted, raw and powerful.

  She had bathed in the blood of this sacrifice. She had feasted. She had gorged herself.

  For centuries she had waited, fed by little more than the occasional offering from a peasant who remembered the old ways. She had watched the village grow, from a scattering of farms to the gathering of buildings that stretched along the roads radiating out from its centre. For a long time she had thought no one would come, that the ways of the Old Gods were lost forever. There had been those that tried but they were unsuited to the task, too weak. They had died trying. She had almost given up hope. Until the ascendancy of the new Village Witch.

  Even now, Aello was unsure where she came from, but less than twenty years ago she had felt someone calling, seeking the Old Gods. She had answered, with what little strength she had. She had invaded the dreams of this untrained but questing mind, teaching through visions, explaining night after night with a patience that had been forced on her through the centuries of her starvation.

  She had taught the rituals, and the girl had learned well.

  She had encouraged the latent power in the girl’s mind, and the girl had grown strong.

  She had explained the need for sacrifices, and the girl had been eager to supply them.

  Those sacrifices had helped her grow stronger, strong enough to call forth her Keres. And soon, with those elementals released into the world, she would grow strong enough to regain flesh, to become corporeal.

  To kill for herself once again, and to rule the village.

  And more…

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  1

  Tim woke from a confused dream, frightened, excited, and with every sense telling him there was danger
approaching, an elusive danger that he could find no physical evidence of.

  He had dreamed of Katrina, perhaps not surprisingly, but in a way that was not so much erotic as hardcore! Meeting her last night had re-awoken all his fantasies about her, all those darkest, deepest feelings he had held inside for so many years.

  But they had not been alone.

  Monstrous, half seen creatures filled the air around them, swirling and twisting, diving in towards his naked back, his buttocks, his legs. He knew they were biting him, could feel their razor teeth slicing open his flesh, tearing chunks of meat from his body, and yet he felt no pain. Each thrust of his hips was accompanied by a sickening squelch as blood ran between his legs, pooling where he and Katrina were joined. But still he kept thrusting, approaching climax as the creatures continued to bite.

  In his dream he looked up, saw they were in Byre cemetery. Katrina was still beneath him, although as he looked at the bloody remains of his arms, he realised there was not that much of him left to be beneath. White bones jutted through torn strips of flesh. Deep red and purple slices of meat trailed from sinews and blood vessels like grotesque bunting. As his body collapsed, no longer able to support itself, Katrina laughed and the creatures converged on his remains in a feeding frenzy.

  That was when he had woken, frightened by the creatures and the manner of his death, excited by Katrina. As to the sense of danger? He had felt something similar ever since returning to Byre. An atmosphere of death. A sense of something dangerous approaching.

  And that was it. The danger was not here and now, but it was on its way. In the same way that some animals could sense an approaching storm, he was sensing the approaching danger.

  He needed to talk to somebody. Someone whose knowledge of local history might help him understand what he was feeling.

  2

  Susan Hall sat in her car within sight of the college gates. She had been careful to park where there were other cars, so as not to be too obvious. She wore a baseball cap because the peak put much of her face in shadow. She waited.

  This was a stakeout. She smiled. Not her first stakeout and almost certainly not her last, but she still got a small thrill out of it. She had met policemen, during investigations with her father, who complained of long stakeouts, of the boredom, the often fruitless waiting and watching, but she still found the whole thing exciting.

  When she was on a stakeout, either alone or with her father, she finally felt like she was doing some real investigation. Real police work.

  Needless to say, her father disagreed.

  “The greatest excitement is in the research, Susan,” he would say. “Digging through the old records, the history, and finding clues to the current phenomena.”

  She could hear her father’s voice as if he sat next to her, although she had left him sleeping at the guesthouse. He would happily spend days at the library, turning the pages on dusty old books, reading texts written in a language she, at times, barely recognised as English. Boring. She preferred to be out in the field. That was how she had cracked their last two cases. You got out there on the streets and you found the real, human culprit, not some fictitious legend or ghost.

  Byre was no different. Whoever was behind the disappearances of the priests, even behind that horribly mutilated body in the cemetery, was very real and very human. There was nothing supernatural about murder.

  As soon as she had the evidence, the proof that the Principal and that Galton man were behind this, they could turn it over to the police. Not the Byre police obviously, too much chance of their involvement. But higher up the chain of command there would be those who took action.

  That was why she sat in her car, watching the college, on a stakeout.

  The woman had arrived over half-an-hour ago in a surprisingly non-descript Vauxhall Astra. Susan had felt mildly disappointed. She had expected her to drive something bigger, flashier, more in tune with the annoying superiority she exuded in person. Other staff members had been arriving in ones and twos ever since. Before long she expected to see the first students turning up. There had been no sign of Galton. She wasn’t sure whether that disappointed or pleased her.

  She checked the clock inlaid in the dashboard, glanced at her wristwatch to confirm the accuracy. 8:15 am. She sighed with annoyance. It wouldn’t have been difficult to check the time college started, but she had not thought about it in her haste to get out and confirm her suspicions, both to herself and her father. Even so, she thought the earliest students, those eager to get to college, would be arriving soon. It would have been much worse to arrive late and find some already inside. The nature of a stakeout was to be there long before and, often, long past the time necessary, just to be certain.

  She shuffled further down in her seat, making herself as comfortable as possible. She was prepared to wait all day if necessary.

  3

  Tim saw few people on his walk through the village, and those he did see were quiet and subdued. He had expected the events of last night to have stirred the place into some kind of activity, but there was none. It made him feel uneasy.

  There was a touch of rain in the air and an edge to the slight breeze that suggested even colder weather was on the way.

  Stopping only to buy a bottle of water from the newsagent, he headed towards the quayside, smiling as he saw the old Ford Cortina still rusting in the car park. The breeze had quickened into a wind coming in off the bay, and he hurried, head down, to the Angling Emporium, already looking forward to a hot cup of tea and a long chat with Mr. Crosby.

  4

  The Professor walked the two miles into Byre Village, a trail of dissipating pipe smoke billowing behind him. He walked slowly, at his own pace, comfortable without Susan hurrying him along.

  Susan. He hadn’t been surprised to find her gone when he awoke. Her note had been short and typical of her impatience.

  Gone to do some real investigating.

  It was not the first investigation on which she had grown impatient with his slow, studious ways. She would be out there, playing detective. It caused him some concern.

  “She’ll be fine,” he reassured himself as he walked. She has her mother’s impetuosity but she has common sense too.

  He checked his watch. Almost noon. He had slept late and not bothered with breakfast. Now he was growing hungry. He had not really taken notice of the shops in the village, but he guessed that there would be somewhere to eat down on the quayside. It was usual for cafes and the like to open where people arrived and departed. It made good business sense.

  As he crossed the head of the village he looked down, past the doctor’s surgery, through the shops towards the car park where he and his daughter had been attacked. Although neither had really spoken of it, he knew the assault had shaken them both. It had made him even more cautious than usual, but in Susan it seemed to have reshaped itself into anger. Anger at those who attacked them. Anger at herself for not being able to fight them off. Anger at the man who had saved them. Particularly that last.

  He could not agree with her evaluation of Tim Galton, although he wasn’t sure why. There had been something about the man that struck him as honest, trustworthy even. He believed he had developed some intuition about people over the years of lecturing and investigation and he had learned to trust it. Susan had her own intuition, however, and it too had proved reliable in the past. Their differing opinions of Mr. Galton confused him.

  They did not differ in their opinion of Miss Bayley however. The Principal was dangerous and, as he could testify through personal experience, powerful. It was a power that spoke to him of witchcraft. Not the pagan religion, harmless and, in many ways, attractive to him intellectually, but an old, evil offshoot of the Wiccan ways. This was the ancient witchcraft of fear and death, a witchcraft that Devon was not unfamiliar with. The last executions for witchcraft in England were in 1682 at Bideford, a short car journey from Byre.

  He smiled to himself. Susan would castigate him if he told he
r such thoughts. She would accuse him of falling into lecture mode and, in a way, she was right. Even with no one to talk to he still found himself lecturing in his head. Facts and figures. It was the way his mind worked.

  He passed the library and, for a moment, considered going in and researching his thoughts. But his hunger for food was, for once, greater than his hunger for knowledge and he continued on his way towards the quayside.

  5

  Susan slouched in her car seat. She sipped occasionally at a bottle of water and picked at a sandwich she had bought earlier that morning. It was lunchtime, and the students from the college were out in the grounds, a few wandering the streets to the nearby shops.

  So far she had seen no one she recognised, not since the arrival of the Principal earlier. But she would not give in. Experience told her that stakeouts could last for days, and she had only been here hours. She had hoped for quick results but she was prepared to come back day after day until she found what she wanted.

  The crutches drew her attention. Two crutches of the metallic, grey-handled kind handed out by hospitals across the country. His legs swung between them, one plastered up over the knee, as he ploughed through the crowd of his peers with callous disregard.

  She shivered as she noted the bald head, the thin, cruel mouth, the eyes with no apparent humanity in them. She recognised him as one of their attackers.

  She threw her sandwich onto the passenger seat. She took deep breaths, consciously, deliberately. She needed to stay calm, ignore the turmoil in her stomach. How difficult could it be to follow a bald headed teenager on crutches?

  Give him a little time to get ahead, she told herself. Don’t make it too obvious.

  She watched him swing on his crutches away from the college, first in her wing mirror and then in the rear-view. When he had almost reached the corner by the shops, she opened the car door and stepped out, finally deciding it was a safe distance to follow without being seen.

  She pulled the baseball cap peak down over her eyes and began walking at a slow but steady pace, keeping him in sight. She quickened as he turned the corner, frightened she would lose him, but there was no turn off on the road and he was still making his way speedily up a small hill as she once more brought him into view.