“Just like that?” I said, lifting my head a little.
“Just like that. So really, the cure is very simple. We get this spirit to cross over. We get rid of the energy field, and Bella goes back to normal.”
It was simple. Almost too simple. I bit my lip. “But I don’t know anything about this spirit. Like I said, she thinks she was a witch. She thinks somebody that loved her, as she put it, might have burned her alive. But that’s all I know.”
Aaron nodded. “Some of it fits, though. They did used to burn witches.”
I admitted, “There’s a site nearby, too. Devil’s Lake. They burned witches there.”
“Great, that might be something to look into. We need to start by researching local witches, burned at the stake. There must be some sort of recorded history on it.”
“The lake is only fifteen minutes from here. We could drive over?”
“Could do. Let’s have a little Google first, though. Sometimes, little places like this where, let’s admit it, the majority of folk are pretty old, they have local history societies and what not.”
Aaron pulled out his phone and placed it on the table, beside the ring of salt. He opened it, tapped a few details into Google.
“Perfect,” he said after scrolling through the results. “There’s a guy just down the road from here. Peter Abbott. Claims he’s a local historian, and that he knows a lot about Peene’s past.”
“Sounds like a good place to start.”
“Indeed. Hopefully he can point us in the right direction, at the very least. Because the quicker we solve this, the better. Before Bella does herself some real damage.”
10
Pulling up outside Peter Abbott’s cottage, the sun had decided to make an appearance for once and, it being nearly midday, it was turning Peene into a radiator. Warm and sweaty. Peter lived in the outskirts of Peene, down a side road encircled by a cluster of cottages, all of which were narrow and old. Peter’s was no different. His cottage even slanted a little. It must have moved in the mud over time.
Aaron knocked on the front door. Admittedly, we hadn’t tried to contact Peter, we’d just hoped that he would be in. Thankfully, after knocking, we heard a muffled “Just coming!” from inside. We waited, expecting a greying, withered historian to open the door. But, when a looming, thirty-something man appeared, the top of his head nearly brushing the low ceiling, we were both a little taken aback.
“Peter Abbott?” said Aaron. If I’d have been Peter, I probably would have been a little shocked to see a man dressed like Aaron on my front doorstep. However, he merely smiled behind his wide-rimmed spectacles.
“Yes. Can I help you?”
“Yes. Sorry to bother you like this. I’m Aaron, and this is my son, Jonny. We’re doing some research on witches in the area, and we saw on Google that you’re a local historian. We were wondering if it’s something that you might know about, and could help us with?”
He smiled, without showing any of his teeth. His lips were also exceptionally thin, so it looked as if he’d sucked his lips into his mouth. “Yes. I know a lot about the witches, Matthew Hopkins and so forth. In fact, I might even call it my expertise. They were very prominent around here, and I have more than a couple of books on it.”
“Fantastic. Do you reckon it’s something we could pick your brains about?”
“Of course. If you come in and write down what you need to know, I can get back to you within a few days.”
Aaron bit his lip. “Ah, okay. It’s just ‒ it’s sort of urgent. We need to know for my son’s summer history project, and he’s a bit of a last-minute merchant. The project is due in tomorrow.” He glared at me as he said this. It wasn’t the first time we’d tried this routine, and somehow it still made me feel guilty.
“Oh, I see. I suppose we could have a look through the books together. Why don’t you come in? I can make us all a cup of tea.”
“Thank you so much,” said Aaron. I spoke a quiet thank you, too.
We followed him through the narrow doorway, into a dimly lit hall. The cottage was nothing like Dad’s. The ceilings were low, the ancient beams still in-tact. I had to duck a couple of times on the way to the kitchen. The walls were old and crumbling in places. But still, it was a cosy little home.
“Sorry about the ducking and diving,” said Peter, as we entered the tiny kitchen. Peter, being the tallest, had practically become a hunchback. He went to the kettle, while Aaron and I unfolded ourselves into chairs at the kitchen table.
“Nice place you’ve got here, though.” Aaron was cradling his cowboy hat in his lap, the ceilings in the cottage too low for his style. “How long have you lived here for?”
Peter smiled. “My whole life. My parents brought me up in this cottage. They passed away when I was young, and left it to me.”
After continuing the small talk for a few minutes, Peter placed a steaming tea pot on the table, accompanied by three matching cups and saucers. I inwardly grinned when he put them in front of me. Even the cups were tiny, barely big enough for a thimble-full of tea. In fact, everything about this house was small. Apart from Peter, that was.
As Peter poured us the tea from the miniature tea pot, he asked, “So, what exactly do you need to know about the witches?”
“Well, we were researching witches in Peene, and we came across one in an online article. She’d been turned in to the witchfinder by her lover, and was burnt at the stake. But, the article didn’t note either of their names. And we were really interested to find out more about them, or to see if anything had been documented.”
Peter frowned. “It’s quite rare to find stories about individual witches. You’ve given me a little bit to go on, but not much. Some research on this witch must exist though, for the writer to know about it. Is that the brief for the project then, to research an individual witch?”
“Yes,” Aaron lied. “Can you help us?”
“I’ll try. My library is upstairs. Let me bring down some of my books, and we can take a look.”
“Thanks,” said Aaron. Peter stood up, and walked off into the house.
“He seems a bit odd,” I said to Aaron, as soon as Peter was out of hearing.
“Just seems like a normal historian to me. I hope he has some information. If not, we need to go to that lake you told me about. Perhaps they might have something there.”
“Maybe.”
Peter returned to the kitchen with two tomes on witches, perhaps the first two objects in his house that weren’t miniature. He put them onto the table with a muffled thump.
“These might have what we’re looking for. If not, I don’t think there’s much I can do to help,” he admitted. “If you both scoot round, we can look together.”
We scraped our chairs across the floor, as Peter refilled our mugs with another thimble-full of tea. He opened one of the books. “Let’s see here . . .”
Peter started by telling us all about the witches in Peene, as well as Matthew Hopkins. Admittedly, most of what he said was rehashing what the tour guide told me at Devil’s Lake, but there were a few extra titbits of information.
Only after this did he start looking through the book for some individual cases, some of which were fascinating. He talked to us about one woman, Charlotte Smith, whom it was claimed had been birthed and raised in a cave. However, Peter said this was untrue. She’d actually been raised in Northern England, as modern historians had proved, and she’d travelled south after her husband had left her. Not divorced, Peter said. Divorce didn’t exist in medieval England. She had unfortunate looks, as I could see from a fairly primitive drawing of her. I wondered if they might have overemphasised her hooked nose, thin lips and grey curls. It was claimed that because she was so ugly, and single, that she had to be a witch. In fact, she was the first witch that Matthew Hopkins killed on his hunt in Peene. He burned her at the stake, along with two other women, who were unnamed in the book.
He talked us through a few more witches. One who was burne
d because she had a lot of pets, believed to be her familiars, which were demons appearing in animal form. Another woman whose husband went missing, which she was tortured and drowned for, in the belief that she’d bewitched him to death. A fourth witch who was accused for being ugly, and after being weighed against a stack of bibles – and weighing in heavier – was burned at the stake.
“Some of these are awful,” I said, as Peter finished telling us about the final witch.
“I know.” Peter leant back in his chair. “This was an awful time, where people did unspeakable things to each other, not least to those thought to be witches. Anyway, I don’t suppose any of the witches match the general description of the one you’re hunting for?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately not, no.”
“Okay. Well, there are lots of fascinating cases to study in this book. Why don’t you just pick one of the other witches? I could even lend this to you, and you can bring it back to me when you’re done?”
I glanced to Aaron, who was chewing his lip. Any other teenage boy would say yes please, take the book from Peter, and copy down the notes on any of the witches described in the book. Anything to get the project done quickly.
My voice catching a little, I said, “Thanks. But the witch I was researching earlier sounded so interesting. I’d really like to learn more about her.”
I hoped that I would convince him. But, as soon as Peter closed the book, sighing deeply, I knew the game was up.
“There is no history project, is there?” he said, staring into me. My tongue seemed to stick to the back of my throat. I looked to Aaron, who gave a tiny laugh. Grinned guiltily.
“Alright, you’ve caught us. No, there’s no history project. How did you guess?”
Peter smiled now, another one of those toothless smiles where his lips seemed to stick together. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when a man who looks like you comes into your home and asks you about witches, you normally assume that it’s nothing to do with a school history project.”
I looked to Aaron: the silver star hanging from his neck; the crystal bracelet hugging his wrist; the dark tattoo on the back of his hand, written in runes. Not to mention his cowboy hat, Slipknot t-shirt, goth boots, and black leather trench coat.
“Alright,” I said. “We’ll be honest with you. We’re actually here because, well – we’re mediums. We can speak to the dead.”
Crazy that I hadn’t told anyone about my ability for nearly a year, but had now told two people in two days. It was close to becoming easy.
“You can speak to the dead? Ghosts, you mean?” Peter asked.
“Yes. You can believe us or not believe us.”
“Oh, I believe you. I’ve seen a ghost myself, in fact, when I was a kid.”
“Oh. Right. Okay.” I shook my head a little, wondered that if it was going to be this straightforward, why we didn’t tell Peter our true intentions in the first place. “Anyway, over the past few days I’ve been communicating with a ghost, and she can remember three things. One, that she was accused of being a witch. Two, that she was burned alive. Three, that it was her lover who did it to her. Or at least, so she thinks. Apart from that, she can’t even remember her own name.”
Peter nodded. “So what you told me earlier by the door, minus the part about the ghost?”
“Pretty much, yeah. We were hoping that you’d give us some information so that we could jog our spirit’s memory, and help her to cross over. That’s what we do, you see.” I looked to Aaron, who was still smiling. “We reach out to those in need, and we help them to get to the after-life.”
“Very well,” said Peter. “I think it’s a brave thing that you do. But let me ask you, because this could help us pin-point your ghost. Am I right in thinking that ghosts normally lurk in places that they inhabited during life? Worked in? Visited often?”
“Absolutely,” said Aaron, leaning closer to Peter. “Why do you ask?”
“I ask because I may be able to track the location of the haunting, and match it with a witch.”
Aaron looked to me. “Jonny?”
“My dad’s house is called Greenacres. That’s where the ghost is. It’s across the other side of Peene.”
I expected Peter to nod, to give another of his toothless smiles. What I didn’t expect him to do was freeze. For his breath to stop completely. For his skin to turn pale.
“Greenacres, you say?”
I felt the back of my neck shiver as I said, “Yes. Greenacres.”
Peter blinked. Some of the colour returned to his face. “Greenacres . . . It can’t be—”
He stood up, walked from the room. I looked to Aaron once he’d disappeared, and mouthed ‘what the hell’. Aaron merely shrugged.
Peter reappeared a few moments later with two sheets of paper in his hand. He slapped them onto the table before us.
“That’s your witch. Right there.”
I looked to the article. The first thing I absorbed was the headline. ‘Seventeen-year-old girl burned alive; body found in lake.’ The next was the photo of the girl beneath, what looked like a holiday photo.
I blinked. Her eyes were pools of blue. She had two rows of perfectly white teeth, glinting in the sunlight. Blonde hair that wrapped around her shoulders, bronzed skin. She was beautiful.
Lastly, I checked the date. 12th November, 2000. But this didn’t make any sense.
“How can this be our witch?” I asked. “This girl was killed twenty years ago.”
“Just read the article,” said Peter. “Then you’ll understand.”
Seventeen-year-old girl burned alive; body found in lake
Yesterday evening, the body of Samantha Lowry, 17, was found in Devil’s Lake, near the village of Peene, Hertfordshire. Police say she had been burned alive before her body was dumped in the lake. The incident is being treated as murder.
Samantha had initially been pronounced missing three weeks ago, along with her boyfriend, Jacob Tanner, 18. At the time, Samantha’s father, Ben Lowry, had said, “My wife and I had been out to dinner, and we came home to find her gone. We didn’t think much of it: Jacob and her were always going off together, to parties or to friends’ houses. But when she didn’t come home the following morning, when she didn’t reply to any of our calls, we started to panic.”
The following evening, when neither Samantha or Jacob had returned to their homes, Samantha and Jacob’s parents contacted the police. The following day, the search began. There is still no sign of Jacob. But, last night, Samantha’s body was finally found by Devil’s Lake tour guide, Ralph Hayward.
Mr Hayward said, “I was just finishing my shift, when I saw a strange mass out on the water. Not knowing what it was, I fetched some colleagues, and we used one of the boats to pull it from the lake. Little did I know what that mass would turn out to be.”
Police said that the body was charcoal black, and had been burned with the aid of an accelerant, most likely petroleum. DNA tests were needed to clarify whether the body was indeed Samantha’s.
Police are now seeking the help of anybody who was around Devil’s Lake on the night of the disappearance, or who has seen anything suspicious in the Peene area over the past three weeks. Meanwhile, the search for Jacob Tanner continues.
Mr Lowry and his wife, Jessica Lowry, are cooperating with police investigations, though say they are too devastated by the loss of their beautiful daughter to respond to media questioning at this time. Mr John Tanner and Mrs Caroline Tanner are similarly devastated, and just pray that their son is okay.
I blinked. Again, I had that churning feeling in my gut, picturing this poor girl, Samantha, just a year older than me, burning alive. But at the same time, that churning feeling was matched with the buzz of excitement. Because the story fit in some ways. The burning, the boyfriend.
“But what about Greenacres? How does all this link to my dad’s cottage?” I asked Peter.
Peter’s mouth sunk, as if remembering the event was painful f
or him. “It’s in the other article. A picture of the house. Take a look.”
I moved the first article, and observed the second. It wasn’t a news article, but seemed to be from a website obsessed with cold case murders. Emblazoned across the top of the article was ‘Burned Alive: Ten Years On’. And, sure enough, in the bottom right-hand-corner was unmistakably a picture of Dad’s cottage, beneath it a caption reading ‘the Lowry family home: Greenacres Cottage in Peene.’
“Something about the name jogged my memory. You see, I deal with all sorts of local history. Important people, property, crimes. And this must have been buried at the back of my mind.”
“Wow. So she lived in Dad’s cottage, and burned alive ‒ but, what about the witch bit? That’s the only thing that doesn’t add up?”
Aaron cleared his throat. “Forgive me, but wasn’t Devil’s Lake the site of multiple drownings, burnings, of witches?”
“Yes,” Peter and I said in unison.
Aaron creased his brow. Ran his fingers through his beard. “You see, there is one other possibility. When people die suddenly, unexpectedly, it’s not unusual for them to be confused when they reach Limbo.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. “What’s Limbo?”
“Limbo. It’s the realm that spirits inhabit before they travel to the after-life. The gateway between life and death. Often spirits spend minutes there, crossing over immediately. But, if a spirit struggles to come to terms with how they died, or misses somebody in our world, or maybe feels some sense of injustice as to their death, then they may struggle to cross over. Hence our current spirit, and why she’s trapped.”
Peter nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.”
“Absolutely. Anyway, as I was saying, it’s not unusual for spirits to be confused when they reach Limbo. Admittedly, it’s not often that this confusion leads to a spirit forgetting their name, or the names of their loved ones. But I have seen it before. And, if this girl Samantha died suddenly, confusingly, in a place where many other spirits had also died suddenly, experiencing similar confusion, well, there could be some spiritual integration taking place.”
The Witch Hunt (Jonny Roberts Series Book 3) Page 8