Incantations

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  ‘But you were ill…you were dying…’

  ‘Christ, you’re pathetic! Thankfully, Raymond, I no longer have to think about you, because as I said, this is my world now, and in my world you don’t exist anymore.’

  With a cry he raised his hand and slapped Caroline across the cheek. Only there was no slap, no crack of flesh on flesh. Caroline was solid, substantial but Towner no longer was. His hand was translucent - a memory of a hand, and it passed straight through her smiling face.

  He turned then and ran. Seeking the sanctuary, of his room, of anything familiar. He ran up the horseshoe staircase, and along the corridor. Only when he was inside the hotel room did he realise he had not opened the door but simply passed straight through it.

  In the centre of the room was a table containing a bottle of whisky and hundreds of white capsules, pills. On the chair beside the table, a figure was slouched, but the figure was vague, shadowy, half-formed; just an outline, a sketch.

  Towner sank to the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chest and hugged them with his arms. This was the end she’d planned for him as she lay dying in her bed, as she’d thumbed through the travel brochures and watched the endless stream of DVD’s.

  Suicide. A coward’s death.

  Towner realised with sick dread that in this world nothing was real. This was Caroline’s world, a world she’d created in her fevered imagination, and Towner had been sucked into it.

  He looked to the table. To the whisky and the pills. The pills were moving, crawling. No longer pills but beetles, swarming all over the table; the white shells clicking and clacking as they clambered over each other. He shuddered with revulsion and turned his head away, and saw that the figure in the chair was gradually becoming more solid, more real. Whilst he… He looked down at his body, nothing more now than a misty, grey shape – he could see the chequered pattern of the carpet through the vague outline of his legs. Whilst he…was nothing. As insubstantial as the snow beetles that fell from the table and melted on the carpet around it.

  SHADOW PLAY

  If she didn’t kiss the shadows on the wall she’d die – she knew that.

  Since coming to Barley Cottage three months ago Janine’s life had been turned into a world of shadows, and what started out as a young girl’s game had become something darker, much more sinister.

  She could hear her mother calling from below. She was going to be late for school. There was just one more shadow to kiss – the small one at the side of the wardrobe she had Christened Michael, although she was sure that wasn’t his real name. Her lips glided across the wallpaper. She could feel the bumpy surface of the woodchip; taste the slightly dusty flavour of the emulsion paint.

  ‘Janine! Come on. You’ll miss the bus.’

  She pulled away from the kiss. Today the shadow let her go, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes smoky shadow arms would enwrap themselves around her neck in a flimsy embrace, reluctant to let her pull away. Luckily, so far, it was only the small shadow, the one she called Michael, which held on to her. She was afraid that if one of the larger shadows – the tall one that straddled the wall behind her bed head, or the fat one who lurked in the space behind the door – if one of them decided to hold on to her, she would never be able to pull away.

  She went downstairs to the kitchen.

  ‘About time,’ her mother said, fussing with the toast crumbs left by her husband. Janine’s father didn’t look up from his paper as his wife brushed the crumbs into a small silver pan.

  ‘Morning,’ Janine said to him, trying to attract his attention. He looked at her over the top of his glasses but there was no smile in his eyes. There hadn’t been for months now. Her parents rarely spoke to each other these days. Janine had hoped that coming here to Barley Cottage would have healed the rift that had developed between them at the old house and, for the first few weeks at least, it seemed that the move did improve things. But the cracks began to show themselves again once the excitement of the new surroundings had worn off, and gradually they widened until things were just as tense as they had been before.

  Janine was thirteen, but old enough to know that it was her father’s affair with his secretary at work that had caused the problems. She came home from school one day to find her mother crying over an empty bottle of wine, and in a voice slurred by the alcohol she told Janine everything. In the end they were both crying and holding onto each other.

  When her father came home later that day Janine was sent to her room, but she heard the furious argument. She just sat on the bed, clutching her knees to her chest listening to her father and mother shouting and saying terrible things to each other. She cried herself to sleep and the next morning, when she had gone downstairs for breakfast, neither of them mentioned what had happened the night before and, apart from the icy silence between them, it could have been any other morning.

  Janine was confused – she had been expecting them to announce a divorce, or at the very least, a separation. Her confusion deepened one evening a week or so later when her parents called her into the lounge and told her they were moving house.

  The confusion turned to shock when she realised that not only were they moving house, but also they were moving towns. Her father was changing his job; within the same company, but down to their branch in Dorchester.

  Janine realised numbly that for her it meant leaving all her friends, her school, her youth club, and starting over again two hundred miles away.

  Her protests were met with an icy response. Eventually her mother grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly into the dining room, putting her mouth to her ear and hissing at her, ‘It’s the only way, don’t you see? I’m only thirty-three years old; that’s too young to end up on the scrap heap. And that’s exactly where I’ll be if he leaves us. And you’ll be there with me, mark my words.’

  So that was that. Her father, in his usual way, said nothing to her, just slipped a five-pound note into her hand when he thought his wife wasn’t looking.

  She ate her breakfast, floating on the lake of silence that flooded the kitchen. When she heard the asthmatic engine of the school bus chugging up the lane to the cottage, her sigh of relief was audible. She hated school and hated the ritual of the bus journey to get to the place – the taunts of ‘grockle’ from some of the younger boys, the bitchy comments from most of the girls – but anything was better than the awful, antiseptic calm that inhabited the cottage.

  On the bus she sat next to Kate Kirby who, like her had moved to the area only months before. She didn’t really like the girl – she had a negative attitude about everything and was a terrible gossip – but Kate was the only other girl in the class who would have anything to do with her, so to dismiss the offer of friendship would have been foolish.

  Kate gripped Janine’s sleeve as she took her place on the bus beside her. ‘You won’t believe who I saw at Pharaoh’s on Saturday night,’ Kate whispered.

  Janine wanted to tell her that she wasn’t interested, but she knew Kate would not be denied her chance to, if not start, then at least to spread, a rumour. She listened patiently while Kate related the story of Becky and Aaron, who Janine knew vaguely, by sight only, and couldn’t care less about.

  The group of boys who always sat at the back of the bus started up their ritual chant of ‘grockle, grockle’ but their hearts didn’t seem to be in it this morning. Anyway, Janine wasn’t really listening – to them or to Kate. Her attention was taken by the dark figure sat slumped next to the driver at the front.

  When Kate paused for breath Janine nudged her. ‘Who’s that sitting next to old Roper?’

  Kate looked annoyed at having her flow of gossip interrupted but she too recognised her own vulnerability if she didn’t pair up with someone at her new school. She wouldn’t naturally have chosen this serious, perpetually worried looking girl as a friend, but everyone else seemed to be taken.

  ‘I don’t see anyone,’ she said after a cursory glance to the front of the bus.


  ‘You must do; it’s a man sitting next to the driver’s seat.’ But when Janine looked back the spot was empty; though had she looked harder she would have seen a black, sooty deposit staining the seat where the figure might have been.

  Once in school the first couple of lessons passed quickly and morning break soon intruded. As usual Kate sat with Janine as they ate their snack.

  ‘Does your chest hurt?’ Kate asked.

  Janine grimaced. ‘It’s the most painful thing I’ve known in my entire life.’ She said. She hadn’t told anyone, and certainly not this gossip, about the pain she had endured over her parents, but that beat any physical pain of budding breasts.

  Kate crunched on some crisps. ‘I’ll be glad when they’ve grown. Lucy Gentry has hers already…’ And she continued with some story or other about a girl in the next class to theirs.

  Janine was watching as a group of boys approached, elbowing and giggling their way forwards.

  ‘Hey, grockle, Ben wants to snog you.’

  The boy Ben was already red, but contrived to blush even more. ‘Do not,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Oh, please.’ Kate smiled.

  ‘Grockle, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you fancy Ben?’

  Janine was sure there were only six of the boys when they walked towards her, but now, with the glare of the sun obscuring her vision a little she could swear there were seven figures in the group. She shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to count them, screwing her eyes up against the sunlight’s blaze.

  There were only six boys milling in front of her…but there were seven elongated shadows playing out in front of them.

  She stood up, and the boys laughed, thinking they had spooked her. Kate stood as well, and brushed at Janine’s back. ‘What’s this dirt on your blouse?’

  Janine was trying to keep count of the shadows, but they kept merging into one mass.

  ‘Ugh, it’s like soot. Look at my handkerchief.’ Kate shoved her lace handkerchief in Janine’s face for her to see. It was smudged with a black deposit that was smeared and dirty.

  Janine’s form teacher was watching from the classroom. She hadn’t taken to the new girl at all. She was too serious for her own good, never opening up into laughter or innovation. Her work was good, but unspectacular. There was more to Miss Robertson’s dislike though, and it wasn’t anything she could articulate. She knew about the parent's reasons for moving house, there had been problems getting contact numbers sorted out initially, but even allowing for that, Janine seemed perpetually shrouded by a kind of unhappiness. There was often a dark side to puberty, she was only too well aware of that; hormones and social pressures built up and had to have a release. Drugs, sex, drink, bullying, all had shown their faces at the school over the recent years; all manifestations of childhood traumas, real and imagined. With Janine there was a hidden, very secret sadness that Miss Robertson feared was going to defeat both her and Janine.

  Despite herself, Miss Robertson found that for the remainder of the morning’s lessons she picked on Janine. When she asked the class a question, she would almost immediately point to Janine and ask her for a response. If Janine raised her hand voluntarily she would ignore her. A wrong answer provoked sarcasm and sniggers from the rest of the class. The more the other pupils reacted the more Miss Robertson honed in on Janine. She knew she was doing it but felt unable to stop herself. It was wrong, against all her professional ethics, but she wanted to get some reaction from this girl.

  Janine soon realised that the teacher had it in for her today. She had no idea why, but felt in some strange way that she deserved it, just as she knew, deep down, that her parents problems were her fault, so the teacher was right to pick on her. She must have been very bad for her parents to hate each other so much; so if Miss Robertson was horrible to her, it didn’t really matter.

  The rest of the class were like sharks smelling blood. As soon as the first of them realised that Janine was today’s foil, they acted up to encourage it. Each of them had at some time or another, been victim to Miss Robertson’s bully tactics, and there was a collective relief that today the new girl was the chosen one.

  Just before lunch break the class were working on percentages. Janine needed to use the bathroom. She raised her hand, and Miss Robertson deliberately ignored her. After about five minutes Janine stood from her chair and walked up to Miss Robertson’s desk.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Miss, I need to use the bathroom.’

  ‘Why don’t you raise your hand like a polite girl?’

  ‘I did but you didn’t see me.’

  Miss Robertson smiled. ‘I saw you.’

  Janine didn’t know what to say. As the silence lengthened into seconds a hush fell over the classroom. There was a murmur of anticipation. Robertson was provoking the grockle. What was going to happen?

  Imperceptive at first, then gradually more noticeable, the light in the room began to fade. The sunlight had been cascading in through the leaded windows, but now it began to dim. Anyone looking might have thought the sun had temporarily gone behind a cloud, but the effect was more gradual than that.

  Little by little pools of darkness began to gather at the corners of the room. A chill pervaded the classroom, and several of the children shivered. Then one of them noticed that even though the room was much darker now than it should have been, outside, in the fields seen through the windows, the day was bright and sunny; there were no clouds at all.

  Miss Robertson looked at Janine and for a moment was scared by what she saw in the girl’s eyes. The dark unhappiness she had seen there, and which she thought she could exploit, was glaring back at her; as if it had a will of it’s own.

  Suddenly one of the girls screamed. Another, then another took up the cry. Soon the whole class was in uproar. Miss Robertson stood and called for them to be quiet. She hadn’t seen, and wouldn’t see, what they had; what had made them scream out. Standing next to Janine they had seen a black shadow figure, leaning towards Miss Robertson, about to strike her.

  Frightened, a little panicked in case the headmaster heard the noise, Miss Robertson curtly instructed Janine to the bathroom. As she shut the door behind her she heard the class calming.

  The school bus dropped her off at the end of her lane that afternoon. She had sat on the bus alone, not even Kate wanting to associate with her.

  As she neared Barley Cottage she saw that her mother’s car wasn’t there. In its place was a small hatchback car she hadn’t seen before. Some instinct told her whose it was.

  She heard the giggling as soon as she opened the door. It was coming from upstairs. As she climbed the steep staircase she already knew what she would find up there.

  They were in her parent’s room. Half undressed; he with his shirt off, she with her skirt raised and her blouse in disarray.

  It was her father’s secretary, Grace, who noticed her first. She stopped tickling his stomach and looked at Janine. There was a small smile on her lips that Janine translated as triumph, though it may have been embarrassment. Her father rose from the bed, his face ready for anger, but then he caught his legs in the bedclothes and made a kind of half stagger. The secretary laughed.

  That was the trigger. For Janine the anger she had bottled up about her father betraying her mother poured out. The resentment she held about having to move house and the loss of the life she had known spilled over.

  She couldn’t take any more. She was filled beyond her capacity and the emotions that had layered within her for the past few months fell apart.

  She was aware only of a deep throbbing inside her head, and a pain in her stomach like an early menstrual cramp. At no time during what happened was she aware of what the others could see.

  Seeping in from Janine’s bedroom dark shapes began to form on the bedroom wall. At first they had the appearance of stains on the cream coloured wallpaper, but gradually they took the shape of figures, mostly human figures. Janine’s father didn’t notice them but his secretary did.
Grace screamed and pointed but Janine’s father told her to be quiet.

  Janine ran from the room and her father ran after her. Grace followed, hastily re-arranging her clothing. The cold dark hands that pushed her out of the way left slightly indented impressions on her skin and clothes; the indentations were faded black in colour.

  Janine was surprised at how calm she felt as her father grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shout at her. She tried not to look as the group of shadows – she had never kissed that many surely – merged into her father and gradually leeched the colour from him.

  He tried to resist but there was nothing to fight, nothing to push against. They sucked him into their mass and then they separated, a little piece of him now immersed in each of them. Janine watched, fascinated, as the shadows melted back into the wall. They stayed there far longer than she expected they would. Then she realised why.

  When Grace ran from the house, clothing disturbed, she didn’t stop to wonder why the girl was kissing the shadows on the wall.

  At the end of a long day at school Miss Robertson would usually look forward to a hot bath, a glass of wine, and some solitary company such as a book or music. Tonight she felt uneasy, and it was all that new girl’s fault.

  She was one of the last to leave that night, and she bid a curt goodnight to the caretaker as he locked up the classrooms. There had never been much time in her life for romance, and now she had simply lost the will to search. The work gave her a certain satisfaction, less so than a few years ago, but there were compensations, such as tormenting the new girl.

  Her face set into a grim demeanour as she felt in her bag for her car keys. Annoyed they weren’t immediately to hand, she deposited the bundle of marking she held in her other hand on top of the car and used both hands to open and look in her handbag. At a little after five on a summer’s evening it should have been bright and warm, but it wasn’t. She looked around her as she put the key into the lock. The school and grounds were coated in safe sunshine; but her part of the car park was shrouded in a pale darkness.