Witch Hunt

by Syd Moore

  ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘But we will get it. It’s a matter of time.’ It was a simple statement of fact.

  Pompous git. ‘You’ll be lucky.’ It felt good to say that. I was back in control. Why not tell him more? See a bit of emotion on that chameleon face. ‘As we speak, it’s on the way to the British Museum. You will not be able to hush it up any longer.’

  ‘Museum?’ He jerked his head back in my direction and blinked at me. Twice. Then a haughty guffaw of laughter burst from him. He made a dismissive waving motion, as if fanning away a nasty smell. ‘Oh dear.’

  The reaction was not one I’d anticipated. For a second I felt like I’d been totally wrong-footed, and made an effort to regain myself. ‘I don’t know why you’re so bothered. Has he come down hard on you? He’s only your boss for goodness sake. You can release me from my contract and I can take it somewhere else. You’re off the hook.’

  ‘Doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. Uncle Robert doesn’t like mess.’

  ‘Cutt’s your uncle?’ I hadn’t seen that one coming.

  He didn’t answer my question, but now I was looking at his profile, remembering the glittering grey eyes, I could see the resemblance.

  ‘There’s too much invested in his appointment to chance another cock-up,’ he continued. ‘I’m afraid there are lots of interested parties who have got far too much at risk.’

  I crossed my legs and stuck my chin out, in a faux show of determination. Internally I was going nuts. ‘Well, that’s not my concern. I know who Jediah Curwen-Dunmow really is. I know about the Hopkins connection. And it’s all coming out now. It needs to …’

  Felix clapped his hands together with delight. I felt instantly as if I wanted to punch him in the face. My fists crushed in on themselves instead.

  He threw his head back and hooted like an owl. The sound cut through the clearing and echoed out over the tide. ‘You think we care about that? Witches. Witchfinders. We can make it all work for us. Robert’s ancestry can be overcome. We can make him over as a new Christian crusader if we so wish.’

  I was gobsmacked. He was here for God’s sake – sitting out with me in the middle of nowhere. Of course he cared about it, otherwise what was going on?

  I shook my head. Nothing was making sense any more. ‘Well, what’s this about? What do you want?’ For a second he let his eyes meet mine. His expression didn’t add up. There wasn’t malice or annoyance in there. No, Felix was looking at me with something akin to fascination.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. It was the first time I’d heard him swear. ‘We thought you knew. You don’t, do you?’ he said. ‘She never told you.’

  I was lost now, unable to keep my cool. ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  ‘My God. You really don’t know.’ The ice was back in his voice. ‘He thought you did. A surveillance report stated that you’d found it …’

  There was no need to ask what – bewilderment was written all over my face.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Felix said again. ‘You’re Uncle Robert’s daughter. In another life, we’d be cousins.’

  At first his words were totally unintelligible. My brain couldn’t process them. Then, as their meaning took hold, I breathed out and felt my body weaken. I steadied myself with a hand to the bench, breathed in a huge gulp of air and suddenly it was like I had entered another world. One where ideas and half-formed notions and different realities converged.

  Behind the inert gaze of my eyes synapses were sparking, sending messages from one part of my brain to another, making connections that, I was beginning to realise with a profound sense of unspeakable desperation, I had hitherto overlooked.

  In my ears there was a buzzing sound, as if I’d been whacked round the head with a baseball bat.

  Cutt’s daughter.

  It couldn’t be.

  Cutt – the ‘unexpected sperm donor’. Mum had worked in publishing once. She’d been put off by the experience … she’d been … The shock was so much even my internal monologue was faltering.

  I was hot and sticky coming back to Felix, trying hard to refocus on his words.

  ‘And we can’t have that,’ he was saying. ‘Not with the campaign as it stands.’

  Now he angled the full length of his body towards me. It was like a solid wall. ‘You’re not something he’s proud of, I can assure you. A little indiscretion at a publishing party, what – thirty-four years ago? Uncle Robert always did have an eye for the ladies. Less so these days, I’m glad to report. Runs in the family.’ He crossed his legs away from me and winked. ‘Of course, your mother protested and cried rape. So many of them do. Always with a mind on any cash that they can get.’ He gave an exasperated huff.

  An immobilising numbness was creeping over my frontal lobes and down my face. I managed to open my mouth to speak, but realised that I didn’t know what to say. My jaw slacked pointlessly as he continued.

  ‘Robert was, is, a very charismatic man. Liked to get his way. Aunt Sylvia turned a blind eye – everyone did – but Ms Walker was fifteen. And whichever way you look at it, that still isn’t legal. Statutory rape I believe they call it. Wouldn’t have been back when great great, however many greats, Granddad Hopkins walked the earth. Funny that. Anyway the parents were bought off, and everybody assumed that was that. A few months afterwards some source fed back that your mother was pregnant. Tried to keep an eye on her but she disappeared. Fell off the face of the world.’

  He paused for a moment, looking intently at my face. I had no idea what I looked like. Inside I was like a computer going into overload, flitting about without pattern, trying to assimilate everything that was going on, getting more and more battered by every sentence he spoke.

  He cleared his throat and removed an invisible piece of lint from his knee. ‘Of course, we had feelers out for years. But wherever she was, your mother had done a good job of blending in. She’d become virtually invisible. And she hadn’t squealed so we pretty much guessed she wasn’t going to.’

  I managed to move my hands and ran my fingers through my hair. I wanted to say something. To protest about the way he talked about Mum. But again, I found I couldn’t make a sound. Although I was stunned to the core, at the same time, part of me was wordlessly assimilating the information.

  ‘Over the years the threat downgraded and faded to some extent. Didn’t seem too much of a priority, other than the fact that you were a walking DNA sample.

  ‘Then one of our guys turned up a picture of you in some magazine. I mean, there was a different name on it but Robert could see you were the spit of your mother. You have the Cutt eyes. I saw the resemblance as soon as you walked in the office door.’

  Felix tossed his hair up. ‘Unfortunate profession you’re in. Journalism. Couldn’t have picked a worse occupation really. Maybe law.’ He weighed up the two for a moment as lightly as one might consider whether to buy apples or pears. ‘Nah, journalism is what got you going.’ His grey eyes glimmered with malice. ‘We monitored the situation for a good while. When your mother’s health deteriorated and Robert’s public profile was getting knocked about a bit we had to move in. And get that boyfriend of hers sorted too. Wondered if she’d told him something.’

  A flash of Dan’s beardy deranged face whizzed onto my mental screen. Was he telling me that he, that Cutt, had been responsible for Dan’s descent into mental illness? I wanted to swear but I was still too traumatised to organise my vocal cords.

  ‘But,’ Felix shook his head and tutted, ‘your obsession with the witches meant it was only a matter of time before you hit upon Robert. Or that Mummy dear blabbed. We assumed that she hadn’t told you. There had been no paternity suit – and who wants to find out they’re a rape baby? But if Rose Walker was soon to kick the bucket, she might start confessing. And the cat could simply not be let out of the bag. Too close for comfort, you see. Our hand was forced. It’s nothing personal.’

  I could hear my breathing coming fast and irregular. My body was shaking as if I was starting to
have a fit. I tried to speak again but instead a sob came out. I swallowed loudly then gagged. The action cleared out some of the confusion and I was able to force out a question. ‘But what have you been looking for? My birth certificate?’

  Felix pushed my shoulder in a foppish, almost camp, manner. ‘Don’t be silly.’ My back was so stiff it hit the bench and ricocheted off again. The movement galvanised me somewhat and I squeezed backwards along the bench, away from him. For now I was starting to sense danger in the air. A quickening of energy.

  ‘Everything’s digital now, my dear. We’ve seen your “Father Unknown”. No, it was more an inkling, so to speak. Robert wanted to make sure there was no paper trail. Apparently your mother used to keep a diary as a teenager.’

  I sniffed. ‘Never saw her write one.’

  ‘No. We concluded that she hadn’t kept it or had most likely disposed of it. Took a while but better to be safe than sorry, eh?’

  I wasn’t sure if I was crying. My cheeks were wet and my hair had fallen across my face. I wiped it back with the sleeve of my coat. ‘So what do you want?’ The words came out roughly, hurting my throat.

  Another big sigh from Felix, this time tinged with irritation. ‘We want you to go away.’

  He bent over to grab something dark underneath the bench. It was heavy. He grunted at the exertion and brought the object up onto his lap. It was a briefcase.

  ‘You’ll find a new identity and papers in here and enough cash to set you up somewhere very far away. I’m sure you’ll find that this is quite enough to compensate you for your, inconvenience. So much more than you could ever hope to earn from a book deal or eight.’ The clasps cracked open and he held up the interior for me to see.

  In the light of the moon, I saw a moth flutter up from folds of banknotes, a passport and other documents. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s completely untraceable. You’d have to be FBI to track this.’ He passed his hand over the notes. ‘The passport is convincing enough to get you out of the country and into the unknown. But from there you’re on your own.’

  A voice at the forefront of my mind was screaming at me to pick it up and get out of there as quickly as possible. Another wanted answers. ‘Does he know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Robert Cutt.’ I managed to say his name.

  ‘He knows what I’m doing. Doesn’t know how I got the passport or what your new identity is. He doesn’t want to. What you don’t know you can deny in earnest.’

  The casualness of it all, the breezy way he was able to talk about the lives of both myself and my mother suddenly hit me and a surge of anger sliced through me. ‘You want to buy me? Shut me up?’

  ‘Here we go,’ Felix moaned. ‘Yes. I thought you’d say that. I didn’t want to do this but …’

  He pushed the lid of the case shut with one hand, revealing in the other, a neat black revolver.

  It was pointed at me.

  Despite all the commotion in my head, when someone does something like that to you, your survival instinct kicks in. Mine forced me to my feet immediately.

  I took a couple of steps across the grass. ‘Jesus Christ, you can’t be serious. You’re joking, right?’ I tried to make my voice sound even.

  Felix laughed a long thin mirthless chuckle and rose. He threw the briefcase to the floor and carefully kicked it out of the way.

  ‘It all works out well enough: Mercedes Asquith, journalist, is slightly mad and paranoid by all reports. Adored your chapter, by the way. Fantastic for us that you wrote about “seeing” things. It reads well. Loved the Hopping Bridge – the sense of danger in the woods, the visions of the witches. A shrink would have no problem testifying to mental illness – delusion, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Poor Ms Asquith, depressed and unhinged by the loss of her mother, immersed in her silly world of witches, casts herself into the River Stour at Manningtree. It has a poignant symmetry to it, don’t you think? And Robert prefers a suicide. It’s cleaner. Doesn’t leave anything behind. No idea why he didn’t suggest that in the first place. Some misplaced or belated paternal impulse, no doubt. Still, he’s back in the game now. But you’re not, dear heart. Don’t worry, you’ll make it to page eight when your body washes up. So you’ll get some acknowledgement of sorts. But, darlin’,’ he mimicked my accent, ‘your book ain’t going nowhere and neither are you.’

  My brain was alert now. It had pushed out the other information that had been crowding in and was focused entirely on getting out alive. I threw my hands skywards in a gesture of surrender. ‘You can’t do this. You don’t want to do this. There’s a good person inside you, Felix. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘You’ve seen what you wanted to. I was surprised how easy it was to reel you in. You were a good-looking woman. You should have had more dignity.’

  I noted his use of past tense. ‘Please Felix. Don’t. I can’t believe you could do this.’

  ‘Deadly serious,’ he said and pulled on the safety catch and waved the gun to the edge of the bank. ‘Over there please. I’d prefer not to use this but I will if I have to. The tide is high now. There are strong currents out there. It’ll be over in minutes. You won’t suffer too much.’

  I kept my front to him and backed away two or three more steps in the direction he’d indicated. I could hear the slap of water on the bank. A quick glance either side revealed a six-foot drop to the waves. I stumbled and stopped. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘As you wish. I didn’t want to shoot you. I’m not cut out for this sort of thing but it can work for us too: you try to blackmail Robert over some ancient document relating to the family. Although I bring the requested money to the appointed place you become greedy and aggressive. There is nothing I can do but shoot in self-defence. Requires a little explanation of the firearm’s presence, but having read your chapter I am already feeling vulnerable.’

  I didn’t move.

  Felix raised the gun and took a step towards me. A couple of moths zigzagged over his head and up to the moon.

  Don’t they say that when you look death in the eye your whole life flashes before you?

  Well, that’s not true. No, at that point it wasn’t my life but the lives of others that flitted in a montage across my eyes – fragments of love, seconds of distress, moments of anguish. Elizabeth Clarke pushed up to the noose; Susan Cock, afraid, fainting; Rose Hallybread, Joyce Boones … the old ones … the poor ones … the young … Anne West silently sacrificing herself. Rebecca. Her vision swam before me, then I blinked and I saw him through her eyes. Felix took another step and it was as if some filmy projection had covered him – dressed in his tall hat, his red rheumy eyes on fire. With black, lank hair dripping off his skull, the Witchfinder stared back.

  And then the witches were not in my mind’s eye but out there, before me, swirling in the cold autumn night like wreaths of smoke, circling the Witchfinder and me, shooting in between us like ethereal comets, lighting the air with flares of brilliance, sprouting wings like moths, then melting into the atmosphere, reappearing, criss-crossing the space, repeating the pattern again and again. I could feel a churning energy about me. It was coming in through my fingertips, pulsing down my arms, filling me with incredible strength and power. Claiming me.

  It had always been there, but latent, until now, on Halloween, it pervaded my entire form, hitting the ground beneath my feet and passing through it into the earth.

  Everything that had ever been fell into place.

  I was caught in a moment between time and space – a complete and perfect being with no beginning, no end – a single point of conversion. There was no dissonance or fear, only a surge of feeling – a profound sense of strength, justice, duty.

  And knowledge.

  I gasped out as my conscious mind connected with the feeling and in response the air about me rippled and opened, like a torn veil. Voices came in from different directions. Low at first, like a bubbling stream. Women, old, young, poor, and men, too,
pleading, demanding, their words stabbing the air like needles. Then louder, more pressing, urgent, harsh until, like the thunderous trumpet of an avenging archangel, the sounds gathered and contracted into a point and a deafening roar blew out across the world.

  The man was spinning round, gripping the gun. He looked at me, pathetically, but I was not myself. One of many and yet of none. The women filled me up. Gone were their limps, their arthritic aches, their fear, loneliness, horror and frailty. Their rage was fuelling my strength and guiding me.

  The man’s expression changed as I came to him. ‘Your eyes,’ he said, stepping back from me. ‘They’re like wish lanterns.’ And briefly through the overlay I glimpsed Felix. But then he vanished and the red eyes appeared again. Hopkins.

  A blaze of power raged through me. Outside of my own pinprick of consciousness I was aware of others, thousands surrounding me, kaleidoscoping in over my soul, pushing down, concentrating my will.

  The man reached out to steady his hand and aim the gun.

  I took another step closer to him, put my hand over the barrel and pulled him so close I could smell the stink of decay on his breath.

  ‘You are not going to kill me again,’ we said.

  I think he knew what was coming. He could see it on my face. Up close I could see his hair bristling with fear. He tried weakly to pull the gun down but my grip was firm. Rock solid, and just as unyielding, I held it still with the force and will of all those waking vengeful souls.

  ‘It ends now,’ we told him.

  ‘You can’t,’ he said simply.

  But the dice had been cast. It had to be.

  He made to push me to the ground but I held firm. He looked me straight in the eye then, in a single movement, jerked his face forwards and headbutted the top of my nose. Blood exploded into my vision. I blinked, blinded, and took my hand from the gun to wipe the red viscous liquid away. He seized his opportunity and punched me in the stomach.

  It was a mistake, for none of the souls within were bound and tethered as before. In fact we were unleashed and free.