Incantations

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  She was seated at a small table in a corner, a plate of salad and a tomato juice all but untouched in front of her. He knelt to kiss her and was astonished at the stab of pain he felt when she pulled her face away.

  ‘We hardly know each other,’ she said.

  He thought she was joking, making fun of him as so many others did, had done, but her eyes didn’t seem amused.

  ‘But we made love last night.’

  ‘Oh, was that you? How are you feeling?’

  In truth he felt ill. His head was spinning and the fingers of the left hand were now blackening, the middle one beginning to shrivel and die.

  ‘Do you want to see where I live?’

  They took his car, although he found it difficult to concentrate on the driving, to even grip the steering wheel. It wasn’t a long journey. They went less than a mile before she asked him to stop. They had parked outside a churchyard near a wood.

  ‘Is your house behind the church?’ Unwelcome or not he was not going to risk losing her. He plucked at her arm with his hand, and winced as the second finger fell to the ground.

  She allowed him to hold her arm, and he was grateful for the sign of affection, but also because he felt unsteady on his feet.

  When he fell to the ground he expected her to help him but she carried on walking as if she had forgotten he was there at all. He struggled to his feet and called her name. The sky had darkened as if a portent of a brewing storm. Trees lining the edge of the woods strained forwards like an audience at an event, pressing to gain a better view. The grey stone of the headstones were tainted with an eerie paleness in the deepening gloom; their age, and testaments to dead loved ones, a mockery to Reid who was failing in his quest for passion and life.

  He found her around the back of the church. For an instant, as the clouds obscured almost all the light, it seemed as if her legs were moulded together and were formed of the earth, as her body appeared to be sinking into the ground.

  ‘Bryony,’ he shouted.

  She turned to look at him, a hint of a smile on the lips. Lips that were now cracked and broken, as they crumpled like dry twigs on a face of grey devastation. The hair was thin and sparse upon a head that was mottled with red blotches, marred by purple veins. Her eyes were yellow, bulging and unblinking; the nose long, warted and scarred, on a face that was so pale it was all but translucent.

  Like a pool of blood the body floated on the ground for a moment until it seeped away, leaving only a patch of withered grass behind.

  Reid knelt at the place and wept.

  He went back to London the same day, a route involving train and taxi, not bothering to tell his friends, none of whom, he well knew, would have much cared. He abandoned his car.

  By the time he reached his home all his fingers had gone, and the stumps of his hands were starting to ooze a black liquid.

  He never found a specific reference to one named Bryony but he learned, in his last few days, his body disintegrating slowly as the creeping illness took total control, that at certain times of the year witches would impregnate themselves by using humans to enable the seeds to be borne through the summer months and so keep the line intact.

  UNREASONABLE BEHAVIOUR

  A firm wind chastised the windows, but they remained resolute, allowing only a feeble draught to insinuate inside the cottage.

  It was a holiday let I had taken for a month. Situated in Suffolk, it was neither remote enough for loneliness, nor sufficiently crowded by neighbours to induce claustrophobia. It was also near enough to home should Veronica wish to visit, though I admitted reluctantly that was unlikely.

  I considered it an appropriate venue in which to mourn my marriage.

  Already, after just a few days, it felt comfortable. There was a pub nearby which served decent food, woods and fields for a walk afterwards. Both pursuits left me with little time to dwell on what had gone wrong.

  The cottage may have felt comfortable, and the new, albeit temporary, lifestyle sufficiently therapeutic to give me time and space to try to forget, but doubts were crowding in.

  The suspected storm flowing outside was a reminder of my predicament, a nudge to ensure I knew my fate. Up to tonight the weather had been fine, for November glorious. The draught that dribbled over the window ledge was not just an irritant to my physical comfort, but also a persistent whisper that I had failed. Divorce beckoned.

  I poured the hot water from the kettle into the coffeepot and surrendered to memory.

  When we met there had been so much hope, so much potential. To marry eventually was a logical part of our journey together. We did all the usual things at first, talked, loved, and planned, all to excess. The test is always if you still like each other when the initial excitement calms. For us we found, to our mutual surprise and relief, we did like one another, and more. We told ourselves we had a deep bond that compensated for any hint of dullness that might have crept in. A wedding to plan and organise gave a welcome impetus, and devoured months of shared time. Children seemed a natural extension, perhaps even a lifeline.

  Rain tapped on the window, joining the wind in an attempt to gain entry. I could hear the glass rattling in the frames, but still the room, a comfortable sitting room, remained warm and secure. My cigar was drawing nicely, the coffee and Armagnac soothing. Then I heard the noise from upstairs for the first time.

  I was pouring a second drink when I heard it. At first I thought it was the clink of my glass against the bottle. I even waited, with glass and bottle suspended in the air, while I listened. I heard it again, it was a sound, independent of the sitting room, and it was from upstairs. It was a light sound, very faint, the sound of feet tapping on the bare wooden floorboards of the second, small, bedroom above.

  When I reached the bedroom it was empty. The bed undisturbed, I was using the larger bedroom, and no indication that anyone had been there. I looked around the rest of the upstairs, but there was not much to check, and unsatisfactorily put what I had heard down to the gathering storm outside.

  Rain was now lashing against the windows, and the fire in the grate was flaring up from time to time, as wind invaded down the chimney.

  When the first cracks in the marriage appeared we were able to paper over them quite easily, if not properly. With a baby growing up around us it was relatively easy to submerge our differences in the daily routines of domesticity. Time was precious, with friends in a similar new baby position counselling us about the importance to keep time back for each other. One look into Veronica's eyes when we heard this advice for the thousandth time told me there was little desire there to make extra time for me, for us. It was clear what time we did spend together was more than enough.

  As Eleanor grew so her demands multiplied. By the time she was seven there were numerous activities she was involved in, usually at our insistence, using these interests to keep us from having to converse as a married couple. The latest had become ballet classes, which for some perverse reason led, almost directly, to the marital separation.

  My thoughts were again interrupted by a sound from above me. I listened, quite consciously straining to hear above the storm that was closing in on me. It was definitely not the wind I could hear, not a window rattling, not slates being buffeted, not doors creaking. It was feet I could hear, lightly dancing above my head, tiny footfalls scampering about as if in patterns.

  I had taken on new responsibilities at work, sub-consciously giving me less time at home, and the announcement, by Veronica in front of Eleanor, that daddy would be taking his darling daughter to ballet classes twice a week, in the evenings, and once again at the weekends, proved the last straw. We had an awful row, with Eleanor crying, and seven or eight years of spite being vented. The conclusion was that I left the house with suitcase hastily packed. Veronica's parting shot, alongside the divorce threats, was a wicked comment aimed for Eleanor's ears that I might as well break my daughters legs if I wouldn't let her go to the dancing classes because it would surely break her heart
. That kind of emotional blackmail was unforgivable, but sadly typical of the level to which we had sunk.

  The sound from the small bedroom intensified. It was a pattern of dancing feet, running briskly across the floorboards, sliding, jumping. I began to imagine my daughter, dressed in her new ballet costume, her short legs trying for all they were worth to master the movements; the pirouettes, the leaps, the turns. Was it repressed guilt that made me imagine the sounds? Was I under more strain than I had realised?

  Then the sounds changed, quite dramatically. From the faint tapping of dainty feet it became a dull dragging sound, which was preceded by a louder noise, like a small body falling to the floor. The dragging sound intensified, as though a weight, not large, was pulling across the floor above me, pulling itself towards the bedroom door.

  I heard a window smash in the kitchen, a victim of the fierce wind that was now relentlessly forcing entry into the cottage.

  I dashed from the sitting room and with just a brief hesitation at the foot of the stairs, I ran up to the small bedroom. My imagination was working on overload; I believed I would see all manner of things when I opened the bedroom door. I was frightened but fascinated, in equal measure.

  What my mind told me I would see, if only in fevered impression, was Eleanor lying on the floor, her ballet costume bloodied, her legs broken and useless, trying pathetically to crawl across the floor.

  It was much worse.

  As I pushed open the bedroom door I heard a loud crash from downstairs as another window splintered, the front door tore from its hinges, and the wind and rain rushed inside with gloating passion. The storm pursued me up the stairs, ready to engulf me absolutely.

  Before it reached me I opened the bedroom door and saw what was inside. A pair of brand new ballet shoes, encasing two small, severed feet, neatly cut off just above the ankles.

  THE HUMIDOR

  The attic was large and dusty, dirty from the accumulated stale air of many years. It was awash with shifting shadows scuttling away from the hungry beam of the torch, which swung in an arc, dripping milky light over an assortment of boxes, packing cases and old furniture. The shadows skulked away from the fresh clean light, needing the darkness and the cold corners to breed their peculiar dominance.

  ‘There's more than enough up here to furnish the house.’ Adam Masters said to his wife, who had poked her head and her shoulders into the opening of the attic.

  ‘Do you think we can just take what we want though?’ Lauren Masters asked, unsure there was anything in the unfriendly blackness of the attic with which she would feel comfortable. Unsure yet if the newly rented house was something in which she could feel comfortable, uncertain of so much in her life in these recent months.

  The torch beam fell with relief onto a light switch on the far wall. Adam picked his way across the rafters and boards and flicked the switch down. A spider-webbed bulb hanging from one of the crossbeam joists flickered into life, grew brighter for a moment then popped and went out.

  Lauren instinctively ducked her head away from the sudden enveloping shroud of darkness, and moved down the stepladders into the welcome embrace of the daylight on the landing. ‘Are you all right?’ she called, rather guiltily, as an afterthought. She was very conscious that her husband had been relegated on many occasions to a postscript just lately.

  ‘Just fine. Anyway that's what the estate agent told me, use anything you want.’

  Lost for a moment, as if the conversation was going on around and about her but without her conscious involvement, Lauren had a mental picture of the middle aged estate agent pulling into the drive of the house in his maroon Rover, and squashing the few forlorn marigolds that had been brightening up a little flower bed by the front door. The action seemed to sum up her initial feelings about the house.

  ‘Are you there? It's awfully dark up here with just the torch for company.’

  ‘Sorry.’ The man hadn't even noticed the destruction of the flowers, and Lauren wished now she had mentioned it to him. She found herself wishing she had the courage to actually voice her thoughts about so many things these days.

  ‘There's plenty of stuff here we can use until we decide what to do with our furniture in storage.’

  ‘You are sure we can use it?’ She realised that she was trying to throw doubt into the conversation in the hope that the answer would come back that no, they couldn't use the furniture, and in fact they couldn't have the house. They would have to move back; back to the bland safety they had just left. Back to the city where her circle of friends shielded her from the necessity to spend as much time with her husband as she feared would now be imposed upon her.

  ‘He said we can bring anything down from the attic we want, so long as we keep it in the house or the garden. Let's face it; we're going to need quite a lot of it in a house this size. The bits and pieces we've got will soon be swallowed up.’

  Lauren had a sudden feeling that it was she who was being swallowed by this house. Not the furniture, not her confident, loveable, unimaginative husband, but her, Lauren Masters. Swallowed by this huge dark old house, where the last owner had killed himself.

  Adam Masters was still exploring, but as he shone the torch at a far dark corner of the attic, he failed to notice how the light faded and misted away at the edges. The shadows in the darkness seemed frightened of themselves, scuttling away as soon as the torchlight threatened to bring them into focus.

  ‘Lauren, you couldn't get another light bulb for me could you? And perhaps a duster and some cleanser.’

  Lauren made a rare joke about what his last servant died of, but in truth she was glad to get away from the oppressive attic. The opening, with its square of blackness, was like a mouth gaping open in anticipation of its next meal.

  She left Adam and ran down the stairs to the ground floor. The house was large, too large for the two of them alone. The early marriage thoughts, hopes even, of children had come to nothing. Now the subject, like so many others between them, was avoided. They had long ago ceased to converse in any close way, it seeming sufficient to pass the time of day, like train carriage strangers. She knew, perhaps he did as well, that it couldn’t last like this, but to raise the subject was to indulge in too intimate a discussion than they involved themselves in any more.

  Reluctant to hurry back to the beckoning maw of the attic she stopped in the dining room and looked at the work she had started on her easel. A freelance illustrator of children’s books she was independent enough in her own right to have resisted the move of house because of Adam’s job re-location. Yet she had put up only a token resistance, as if to do any more was to offer more of her than she wanted to share with him.

  The charcoal sketch was supposed to be the outline of a family of rabbits, highly stylised but rabbits nonetheless. What she found herself looking at on the board was a muddle of shadows; a sneering countenance of a shadowy figure predominant amongst a host of indistinct shadows surrounding it. Where had that come from? she asked herself. She knew she had been tired when she started the sketch, but surely she would have remembered drawing something like this. Something that was so sinister.

  Leaving the drawing without wishing to touch it she went into the kitchen where she knew the odds and ends like spare light bulbs were located. She gathered her resolve around her to rejoin Adam.

  Adam was waiting at the top of the ladders, tapping the torch against his teeth. Lauren climbed up and handed him the bulb. The darkness was closing in on her again, making Lauren feel uneasy, unwelcome.

  Adam fitted the bulb, and switched it on. The black attic became grey with the light, shadows and shapes formed behind the various contents. Old furniture threw distorted images away into the corners; packing cases and boxes held onto the darkness with their mass, like sponges soaking up water. Adam pulled himself up into the attic and Lauren rested her elbows on the chipped wood of the opening. With the attic properly lit she could see the extent of the clutter up there.

  ‘What�
��s this?’ Adam said.

  As Lauren glanced in his direction she thought she saw his shadow move back into position. It was as it had been moving independently of him and now, with the attention and glare of the light, it shifted back where it should have been. Then, as if that hadn’t spooked her enough, Adam seemed to darken. His body became a transfer, as if she was staring at his shadow rather than his body. Then he knelt down to look at something, and the illusion disappeared.

  In an attempt to break the tension that was threatening to envelop her she struggled to engage in interested conversation about what Adam was doing. ‘What have you got?’ He was holding what seemed to be a dirty wooden box.

  ‘It’s a humidor. A box for storing cigars.’ Adam surprised himself with his answer. He had no idea what he had found and yet the answer popped into his head as though he was familiar with the heavy object. It was heavy as well. The box was made of solid wood and resisted his initial attempts to open it.

  Lauren shrugged. ‘Not a lot of use to you then.’ Her husband had never smoked in his life so far as she knew.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to try a really good cigar. I’ll take this down and clean it up.’

  Lauren was almost relieved that they might be able to shut the attic and go back down stairs. She couldn’t prevent a note of disagreement though. ‘What about some furniture? That’s what we came up here for.’

  Adam seemed distracted when he replied. ‘Plenty of time for that.’

  Next morning Adam was up early, washed and dressed in his business suit. He hadn’t been keen to leave the area they had both been born in either, but once they found the house and paid the advance rent, he was happier. Adam kissed Lauren goodbye and got into his car for the ten-mile drive to the new office building. Lauren wanted to spend the day drawing.

  The shadows she had consigned to the bin and had managed three rabbit scenes before midday when she became aware of the smell. Her father had smoked cigars, as well as a pipe, so she knew what the aroma was but what she didn’t know was why it should be in this house.