by Helen Slavin
Charlie moved a step or two closer, glanced down at the deck. They were beautifully drawn, black and white ink, elegant and elaborate images, the woman’s long thin fingers graceful as they gathered them up. She looked up at Charlie.
“You have a question for the cards?” she asked.
“Yes.” Charlie said. “Where’s the loo?”
* * *
The Tarot woman had said clearly that the loo was “up the stairs and third on the left”, but Charlie was doubting her clairvoyant talents, because the third room on the left was not a bathroom at all. It was an elegant living space with a red velvet chaise and black walls. The rug that spread itself across the old floorboards was rich and elaborate in design and colour. Charlie had an urge to take off her boots and walk barefoot across it. Through the tall windows she could see out towards the other swanky townhouses, people in a restaurant across the way, and then out into the sweep of The Square and beyond that to the Old Dock. There were fireworks going off and being upstaged by small crackles of lightning that blistered across the darkness towards Woodcastle. In the distance, Charlie heard thunder rumble. All very Halloweeny, she thought, and stepped back into the hallway.
There were other doors, all locked, and then a smaller spiralling stairway onto the third floor. Perhaps that’s what the Tarot woman had meant, third floor on the left? Charlie cast a quick glance up the stairs. There were lights on and more music, a fiddle and a fife and drum playing something cheery and intricate. She headed up the stairs.
The fiddle and fife music wiled along the thin hallway. There was an open door, and a woman could be glimpsed in a mirror, but as Charlie approached the door slammed shut and there was laughter. In the room at the far end of the hall there was candlelight, and she could see the fiddler now, slight with a wiry ginger hipster beard, and a woman beside him in a long velvet dress playing the fife with dancing energy. The drum was one of those Celtic bodhrán things being pattered and thumped at by a long-haired man, head bowed in concentration. She took a few steps along the hallway and then the narrow door caught her eye, a glimpse of mirror and a sink.
The bathroom was tiny and poky. Charlie popped into the cubicle and slid the lock. The fiddle music was very loud, as if they might be playing in the same room. She used some of the lush smelling soap at the sink, and as the water washed over her hands it caught the light. Bright, silver. She thought of the stream at Havoc Wood, of squatting on her haunches beside it with Grandma and her sisters and washing their hands after they’d been helping in the garden, or picking blackberries, the way they would all join hands, making a circle of themselves in the water. For a single moment she felt as if her heart was tearing with loss. Her breath caught like a knife, and she stepped back from the sink with a start. It took her several more moments to gather herself.
Back in the hallway there was some cheering and clapping, and Charlie, loath to head back downstairs to boredom, stepped into the large rear room. The fiddle and fife were resting for a moment, and drinks were being poured. Charlie was offered a glass of red wine and took up a small corner of the room as the music began once again. A space had been cleared and people were dancing.
“Care to step out?” The young man was about Charlie’s height, dark-haired and dressed in what looked like a bespoke suit. The fabric, shot through with nubbles of colour — as if he was dressed in vertical moorland, made Charlie want to touch it. His boots, Charlie noted, were well worn and well kept.
“Oh… no… I’m not…”
“They call the steps. Come on, join in.” He offered his hand, his eyes bright and winking. Charlie thought for a few seconds then put down her wine.
The dancing was wild and exhilarating, the couples circling and twining. Charlie moved up and down the lines, hands clasping, feet tripping, and no one here cared that she had two left feet. The fiddle, the fife, the bodhran drum beat into her ribs, sang into her blood. Either that, or the wine was the best wine she’d ever tasted. There was a vast sky-tearing rumble of thunder, the windows rattled, and outside lightning flashed. Again. Again. The thunder a hammer of sound now, and the power flashed out. The dancers gave a roar, the candles making the room glow gold, and the music and the storm were fighting it out.
It was well after two when Charlie stumbled her way back down the stairs in the half darkness. Everywhere torches were lit, and in the gambling room there were elaborate candelabra glittering with flame.
* * *
“Where the fuck did you go?” was the first thing Aron said as they headed down the stone steps of Pandemonium into the street. His cold tone told her how much he had lost. “What the fuck happened to the lights?”
“It was the storm.”
“Storm? It’s fucking dark out here. What the actual fuck?”
The power was out across the whole of Castlebury, the streets in darkness. Aron fumbled with his phone, his battery dead.
“The car’s this way,” Charlie offered, her hand reaching for his. He put his hands into his pockets.
“We’re going this way.” He did not wait for her answer to this. There was none. He strode off into the darkness, Charlie following behind. In the harshness of his silence, Charlie’s head was suddenly filled with the music of the fiddle and fife and the bodhran drum, their last tune, a lament.
* * *
At Prickles they had had a busy afternoon. Emz had come in after school and they had been full-on ever since. There had been a young fox brought in, and Winn had had to go and collect a buzzard that had caught in some fruit caging, and, of course, there were always hedgehogs. Then, last of all, came the cat alert.
The woman had called it in, very distressed, and Winn had taken the call.
“What? Where? What did you say? I can’t hear you unless you stop crying…” Winn barked in frustration.
They had got the information in the end. It was all kicking off at Cordwainer Street where the mad cat-woman lived with her army of felines.
Winn parked up at the end of the street, and she and Emz headed to the small terrace of houses. Their caller was waiting in the back lane, shrugged into her waterproof as the rain began a steady mizzle.
“Oh thank god, thank god… you have to do something… up at number 9… she’s killing the cats.” As if to highlight this fact, there was, at that moment, a searing flash of lightning accompanied by a furious death yowl.
“What the…?” Winn was already running up the lane, Emz swift to follow.
The rain began to fall in heavier drops, and there was a sudden chill. Winn skidded on the unmade road, her arm windmilling out to balance herself and finding purchase on the tall wooden gate. More yowling from the cat, clearly fighting against the angel of death within. Other cats mewling and screeching. Emz felt panicked. Winn tried the gate. It was locked.
“Wait.” Emz reached out; the rain was beginning to thicken, the drops becoming runnels of water down Emz’s face. At the next crack of thunder, dozens of cats leapt up onto the fencing, the furred scrum peeling off and dropping down into the lane, one landing almost on Winn’s head as she kicked at the gate. The wood was splintering and raw. More cats, more cats than seemed possible, were leaping and clawing over the wall, coming through gaps in the hedging at the side, a big ginger tom using Emz’s shoulder as an intermediate landing pad before springing away. The cats poured and roiled on every side, so that it looked, as the thunder cracked overhead, as if they were coming down as rain. The gate splintered at last and Winn burst through; Emz was quick behind her.
The man within was sodden with rain, his long jacket shiny with wet, his hair stringy, obscuring his face. In his hand he held the corpse of a cat, the neck broken cleanly. Around him other bodies were laid out in a circle, all dead, each skull crumpled, thin ribbons of blood from each mouth, the blood on his fingers where he’d made marks on the ground, angles and curves like writing.
A loud roar escaped from Winn as she rushed the man. There was a flurry of black coat and of green waxed jacket, a
nd Emz watched through the rain as the two seemed to carry on a vicious dance together until the man in black broke free with a screech, sending Winn thudding to the ground. Emz stood her ground, blocking the way, but the man shoved her aside, his hands, ruddy with cat’s blood, like hammers as they punched her chest. Emz, winded, folded over. As she did so, the air chilled like ice, and hailstones pelted like gunfire for a moment and were gone.
“Emz… are you alright?” Winn wheezed, her arm reaching around Emz’s shoulders, holding tight. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“Just winded,” Emz wheezed back. They looked back at the circle of dead cats, and the thunder battered overhead. With a jolt Winn and Emz ran out of the garden with its horrid landscape. The rain was a sheet of water, blinding, blurring. Winn’s hand was tight on Emz’s coat sleeve. The ground was slithering beneath them as they ran back towards the Land Rover.
They drove a few yards, and then the lightning struck, the car fizzing and hissing, the sound ear-piercing, the engine cutting out. Emz was shaking and afraid, but Winn did not let go of her sleeve. Above them the thunder tumbled, the sound clattering around them. Winn pulled Emz nearer, her fingers cramping, the knuckles gnarled and white. The rain was like a river in spate, nothing visible on any side, the sound wild and drumming. Lightning slashed the sky in front of them, then behind almost immediately. Winn tried the ignition. Once. Twice. Third time it caught, and Winn gunned the engine and drove into the watery mayhem.
Minutes found them pulling up at Prickles, making a dash for the reception shed as the lightning seared into the trees on the opposite side of Cooper’s Pond. Winn, her hands shaking, fumbled the keys, so Emz took them.
“Here.” She opened the padlock, and they fell inside the kitchen. The lights were out, power gone. Winn shut the door behind them. Locked it.
“No power. So no tea.” Winn’s voice was panting and tired. She reached for the two deck chairs and pulled them into the centre of the room. “We can sit this out.” She pushed Emz into the chair beside her. Emz did not protest. She noticed that Winn had not let go of her sleeve, and now, to feel better, she too reached for Winn’s sleeve, the cracked and ancient waxed jacket where the tartan lining showed through. Emz held on tight as thunder bellowed and lightning tore open the sky above them.
* * *
Vanessa did not often bother with high days and holidays, but tonight, for Halloween, she had given her team the night off and opted to head home early. The new kitchen was not quite fitted yet, but she had running water and could make some coffee in the machine Calum had given her. From the kitchen, she had sweeping views of the town and watched the storm build as she ate the sandwich she had brought back from the lab canteen. It tasted old, so she abandoned it. She thought suddenly of the bread her mother made and was sorry she’d not taken her up on the offer of a basket of cob rolls yesterday. Her mouth was watering at the thought.
The thunder ripped through the sky, and Vanessa jumped. It seemed very loud indeed, and she waited for the next bolt of lightning. Two came at once, spearing down into the trees at Havoc Wood. Vanessa’s heart lurched. She took in a couple of breaths to try to calm the feeling, but it would not be calmed. She found she wasn’t blinking as she watched Havoc Wood. Lightning streaked horizontally across the sky, lit up the whole of Woodcastle, as the lights went out. Looking out Vanessa could see the town was also in darkness, that the landscape right across to Castlebury was blacked out.
Vanessa toyed with the idea of heading up to Havoc Wood. It could be lonely up there sometimes. Where had she left her jacket? In the hall? No, there on the back of the chair. As she reached for it and the car keys within her pocket, lightning flashed in three quick beats, illuminating the timber frame of the doorway. It was green oak, and she could see, very clearly, the charcoal marks made on the wood.
In the hallway the marks were over the lintel of the front door, too, and Vanessa did not have to check the back door, but she did, the marks made strong with the charcoal of Havoc Wood. She sat, in the kitchen once more, not looking up at the long line of marks that had been made on the raw plaster above the new fold-out windows.
Her mother had made those marks a thousand times in different places and at different times. Dangerous times. Always. It must be bad for her mother to use the charcoal of Havoc Wood rather than the chalk of Yarl Hill. Vanessa understood the message and, pulling her jacket on, sat back from the window and waited out the storm.
9
Taking the Toll
Hettie Way thought that while there was breath in your body it was never too late. The rain came down so hard now that the surface of Pike Lake looked like spears, the blades of water spiking and leaping as she strode beside it.
Something was afoot. Bone magic cracked through the air with the thunder, short bursts, so Hettie surmised the victims were animal. Hettie thought of the little house on Cordwainer Street and then didn’t think about it. She had no time to let her mind wander. There was no help for them now.
She cut down along the side of Pike Lake and off towards the Rade itself. The ground was soaked from the pounding rain, and Hettie’s feet picked out the stones protruding here, there. She had lived a long time in this wood, and before she saw the water she could hear that it was, tonight of all nights, running the other way.
She moved with considerable strength and agility along the banking. Stinging nettles caught at her, but she didn’t care, the fizzing burn of her skin just adding into the small and intense fire of fear and fury that was stoking inside her. Yes. Fear. You weren’t brave if you weren’t afraid.
This was what Hettie told herself as she stumbled and slid, as she tripped and twisted, each misstep taking her closer to the Knightstone bridge as the water raged beside her. At last the river curved, and she could see the bridge ahead, the wind singing through the suspension wires, plaintive.
She scrabbled up the banking at the foot of the tower and found her handholds and footholds in the apparently neat brickwork. She looked, for all the world, like a spider as she reached and stepped, stepped and reached, lifting herself onto the platform of the bridge. As she stepped up she could see darkness curling at the far end where the road wound off towards Kingham. As Hettie straightened herself and reached for her breath, she saw Thinne step out of the darkness and onto the bridge.
The shock pulsed through her. There was only one reason for Thinne’s presence: it was time for the toll to be taken. Nuala must pay her debts. Hettie’s mind whirred. That could account for all the magical activity, for the boundaries that had been pushed. It might already be too late for Nuala. Tonight Thinne would take her. It seemed clear to Hettie. Nuala had been cornered, forced to borrow and steal magic, working however she could beneath the binding of the Red Wrangle, to save herself. Hettie breathed a little easier. There was, at least, an ending in sight. She gathered herself.
A white flash caught in the periphery of her vision. Not lightning. Nuala’s hair, almost glowing in the grey tumult of the storm. Hettie was on alert. She would not allow Nuala to use her to save herself. She had to push hard now, to make this ending right. She stared at Nuala. Nuala smiled back. Hettie’s heart tripped, her breath snatched at. Smiled? Why was Nuala smiling?
It was then that Calum Atwood’s car splashed by, windscreen wipers slashing at the rain, Ethan in the baby seat in back, and Hettie Way understood what was planned. Thunder rattled into her ribs and shook at her. Thinne was a shadow streaked through the rain, his arm raised, drawing down lightning.
The car swerved to avoid Thinne, the lightning catching at it, the offside tyre exploding. The vehicle veered and yawed, smashing into the barrier. The bridge groaned as the car slithered and tumbled.
Hettie stamped her foot, hard, the vibrations shuddering through the bridge.
“I ask,” her voice cracked, desperate.
Again.
“I ask.” Her breath caught, strangling the words. Wrong word. She reached for the right one. Her foot stamping ag
ain. Harder.
“I beg.” Her voice pushed out into the wind. “I beg, I beg a boon of thee.” The plea ringing through the rain, reaching Thinne so that he vanished, smirched into the sky with an angry gasp. Nuala on the opposite side was coming for her, but Hettie was ready: the hot coal of her fear blew white heat into her fury, and she threw it at Nuala with a roar.
Calum felt the wind tug at the car, pushing it sideways as they cleared the first tower of the bridge. The wipers sloshed the water around so that it was like being in a submarine. He cast a glance backwards. Ethan had not stopped crying. Calum opened the window to let the harsh sound out, taking his eye from the road. When he looked back, the thin man loomed out of the rain. Calum swerved as the lightning crackled into the car, hot and alive, his hands numbing on the wheel. He felt the car skid away from him, his body seemed to drift sideways, the world skewed into water.
When he woke Ethan was not in the car. There were three women at the side of the river, one of whom was carrying Ethan wrapped in a blanket that she seemed to have pulled from her knitting bag. They all had knitting bags with them. The oldest of the three, her hair dyed preternaturally black, leaned into the car to help him.
“This way. Come along with us, quick.” She smiled, her face sad. Calum protested a little.
“No, I…” There were no more words. His jumper was caught on the car. As they walked away along the shoreline, the fabric of it was unravelling, leaving a trail of grey wool. Behind him the youngest of the three women stepped in, tugged the yarn free, and began to wind it around her fingers. Calum looked back.
“No… Wait… there’s someone in the car.” He took a few hurried steps back to where the car jutted out of the water, the metal of it creaking as the Rade pushed and shoved at it. The water was high and rising higher, and, he could see, tonight it was flowing the wrong way. He reached the door, the bent metal, the splash of blood on the window. Who was that inside in the driving seat? Calum turned. Why didn’t he have any more words?