A Witch in Love (23 page)

It wasn’t a burglar or a rapist. It was Abe. He was standing open-mouthed in the burnt-out kitchen, staring around.

‘Anna – Emmaline told me what happened. Are you OK?’ He gave me a crushing hug, so hard his belt buckle felt imprinted on to my pelvis when he released me.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, slightly out of breath. ‘I wasn’t even here.’

‘Who’s this?’ Dad said from the doorway, a slightly suspicious note in his voice. I suppose, looked at through Dad-vision, Abe wasn’t exactly the boy next door. He was – well, I wasn’t sure how old, but definitely the wrong side of twenty. He was also unshaven and dressed in bike leathers.

‘Oh, sorry, Dad. This is Abe Goldsmith, Dad. His brother is Simon – you know, Sienna’s husband? Abe, this is my dad, Tom.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Abe stuck out a hand and Dad shook it, thawing slightly. He liked and approved of Em, so Abe’s association with the Pellers was a point in his favour.

‘Likewise, Abe,’ Dad said distractedly. ‘Likewise. But listen, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got quite a bit of clearing up to do.’

‘Yeah, of course, no worries.’ Abe stood uneasily with his hands in his pockets as Dad left the shattered kitchen and then when he was gone turned to me. ‘I’m here from Em. She got your text and she’s worried about you. So am I.’

‘Well, thanks for the concern but I don’t really see what either of you can do. I don’t suppose Em’s got any ideas, has she?’

‘Maybe. She thought you might want to come over and discuss it, so I said I’d drive out here and pass on the message. Your phone’s not working.’

‘The landline’s burnt out and there’s no mobile reception out here. The hills cut out the signal. But I can’t, I’ve got something else to do.’

‘What, tidy up? Want me to help?’

‘Well, I’ll have to help Dad later, but actually no, I’m seeing Seth this afternoon.’

‘Oh.’ Abe’s face set in almost comically disapproving lines. ‘Him.’

‘Yes,
him
. He is my boyfriend.’

‘You deserve better.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Just that.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re remarkable. He’s not. You’re interesting. He’s not. You’re eminently kissable. He’s not.’ He saw my face at that and shrugged again. ‘What? I’m just saying.’

‘Well, don’t. Say it.’

We stood for a moment, glaring at each other, and then Abe raised one eyebrow and laughed.

‘You’re the only girl I’ve met who gets arsey when you pay her a compliment. Anyway, what are you doing with the outwith? Apart from getting more bored by the minute?’

‘Abe, don’t be a dick,’ I snapped. ‘If you’re going to be like this we can’t be friends – and that’d be a shame. Some of the time.’

‘OK, OK. Sorry.’ Abe held up his hands. ‘I’ll behave.’

‘OK. Well, if you must know, his grandad’s being sent home from hospital tomorrow, so we’ve got to go and sort out his cottage.’

‘What – he’s going back there?’ Abe’s face showed his surprise. Castle Spit was a tidal island, cut off from the mainland for twenty-two hours out of twenty-four. It was barren and bleak and totally unsuitable for an invalid. I shook my head.

‘No, he’s going to stay with Seth and his mum. Indefinitely, so it means someone’s got to get all his valuables and shut up the house and stuff.’

‘Oh, I see. So you’re giving Seth a hand?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Hmm.’ Abe looked dissatisfied. ‘Well, whatever. But I don’t really like you going out there.’

‘What business is it of yours?’ I was taken aback.

‘Look, Seth nearly drowned you last time you went there. And the Spit is no place for our kind – we don’t mess with Bran Fisher.’

‘Seth didn’t nearly drown me; I nearly drowned
him
,’ I said crossly. ‘And I agree the Spit is no place for our kind – it’s no place for any kind of human being if it comes to that. But I said I’d help Seth, so stop being so melodramatic about it.’

‘Hmm. Just be careful.’

I shot him a poisonous look and he raised an eyebrow.

‘What? I can’t tell you to be careful?’

‘I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Seth.’

‘Exactly,’ Abe said darkly. And that was that.

When I arrived down at the quay after lunch Seth was already there, busy working on
Charley’s Angel
. He was holding a blowtorch and doing something complicated with glass fibre, but he turned off the gas and pulled up his mask when he saw me, and leapt on to the quayside to give me a sticky hug.

‘Are you OK? How was the house?’

‘Not as bad as we thought. The bedrooms are fine. The living room needs a coat of paint and a new sofa, but it’ll do. And Dad’s got someone coming to reconnect the electrics this afternoon, so it looks like we should be able to move back in tonight.’

‘Grandad couldn’t have been kicked out of hospital at a worse time, could he?’

‘No, don’t be silly. We couldn’t camp out at yours indefinitely. And anyway, I think Dad just wants to get back in there. He’s worried about it lying empty with no way of locking up properly.’

Seth’s face grew set at that and he shook his head.

‘I know we’ve been through this, but I really, really don’t like the idea of you being there at night with no proper security.’

Damn. I
knew
I shouldn’t have mentioned that.

I sighed. ‘Dad’s reglazing all the windows. And he’s going to get a proper lockable door for the living room, just until the kitchen’s repaired. It’s not like we’ll be open to all-comers. He just doesn’t want the place looking unoccupied for too long.’

‘Did you talk to him about getting a burglar alarm?’ Seth asked. I nodded. ‘And?’

‘I think he’s going to.’

‘Good,’ Seth said shortly. I decided it was time to change the subject.

‘So, anyway. Are we going to stand here all day, or are we going to get to the Spit before night?’

‘Good point.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We should get going. Come on.’

We took Seth’s little sailing boat, not the
Angel
, and I had the familiar feeling of fear, bordering on panic, as Seth steadied the rocking little craft and beckoned me to jump on board. I wanted to shut my eyes – shut out the rolling seawater – but that would have been insanely stupid, so I jumped, eyes open, and crouched for a second in the bottom of the boat, waiting for the panic to subside. Then we were out on the waves and somehow it was easier to forget the fathoms of black water beneath us and all the horrors down there.

The landing on Castle Spit was even more impossible than last time – Seth tried half a dozen times, with me leaning out to fend off with an oar, and eventually we bumped up to the jetty with a slightly sickening crunch and Seth leapt out and whipped the painter through the rusty metal ring before the wind could veer again.

Up at Bran’s cottage a repulsive smell greeted us as Seth hammered open the door with his boot.

‘My God, what’s that reek?’ Seth covered his face with his arm and edged in, throwing open the narrow windows all around the single-room cottage.

‘It’s this bucket, I think.’ I peered into a plastic bucket full of what looked like it might once have been fishguts and bones. Luckily the weather had been cold – too cold to turn the sludge to maggots and blowflies. But the stench was still incredible. Seth carried it at arm’s length out of the cottage and chucked the whole load off the jetty, bucket and all. It bobbed away, the red plastic brave against the storm-grey waves, and then sank beneath the surf. The smell in the cottage had slightly lessened when we went back in.

‘God.’ Seth looked around him, a mixture of depression and disgust on his face. ‘How can someone live like this in the twenty-first century?’

I knew what he meant. Barring a few things – an electric kettle, a single bare lightbulb – the cottage could basically have come complete from a Robert Louis Stevenson story. The frowsty bed, piled high with crumpled blankets stiff with stains, the smoke-blackened stove, the stone sink with its pump-handle hanging idle – it was all straight out of a novel about Victorian poverty and deprivation.

‘At least he had running water,’ I said, trying for a bleak laugh. I meant the stream running sluggishly from the pump and out of the door in a little black trickle, but Seth didn’t smile. He only looked around him, his face hard with pity and anger.

‘It never looked so bad when he was here,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Somehow when Grandad was here you didn’t notice the filth and the cold. But now … now it looks like somewhere you wouldn’t let a dog go to die.’

‘Seth …’ I put a hand on his shoulder and he took it and turned it palm up, kissing the soft skin at the crease of my wrist. Then he sighed.

‘Come on. Let’s get started; I don’t want to spend any more time here than we have to.’

We began sorting through Bran’s meagre possessions. Seth picked through the clothes, salvaging wearable nightclothes, trousers and jumpers, discarding more than he packed.

Bran’s stained and tattered underwear seemed unbearably personal and I felt suddenly sure that he would hate the idea of me poking through his belongings even more than he would hate me being on the island at all, so I turned to his paperwork, trying to do something practical without intruding on his privacy.

Most of it was in a small metal box under his bed and I began to look through it, trying to make sure we had his pension book, birth certificate, all the essentials he’d need to establish his new life at the Crown.

I had a carrier bagful of useful documents when I came upon something at the very bottom of the metal box. It was a piece of black fabric and at first I wasn’t sure what it could be. I held it up, the folds fell out, and I saw.

It was a black hood, a mask, with holes cut out for eyes. Seth saw me looking and laughed.

‘What’s that? Grandad’s Halloween costume?’

He picked it from my limp hand and, still grinning, slipped it over his head. The hood covered his head and face completely, blurring and mashing his face into a featureless mask. Only his eyes glittered, black against black, and full of hate.

I screamed.

I screamed and screamed and screamed, completely unable to stop, to speak, to breathe.

‘Anna!’ The voice came grotesquely muffled from the mouthless face. ‘Anna! It’s OK! Anna what’s wrong? Stop, please stop.’

But I couldn’t speak – the hooded stranger grabbed at me and I beat him away with terrified shaking arms. He finally got the hood off with a rip of tearing fabric and grabbed at my arms, gripping me so tightly I couldn’t move, couldn’t hurt him, could only shake with fear. But something in his strong grasp anchored me to reality, the shaking began to subside and I dissolved into sobs. Seth’s warm hands stroked my hair in a comforting rhythm and I cried and cried while he held me wordlessly, as if he feared he’d lose me.

At last I raised my head from his chest and wiped my eyes and my nose and managed to choke out, ‘I’m sorry – I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m the one should be saying sorry. Oh, Anna, you silly thing.’ His voice made the words a caress. I buried my face in his chest again and felt him say, ‘But what scared you? It’s only a bit of cotton.’

I couldn’t explain. I could only shake my head and shudder all over again, feeling the horror I’d felt as I’d seen a stranger’s gaze glitter black through the stabhole-eyes.

We stood for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, my head on Seth’s chest and Seth cradling me while my breathing returned to normal. But something else had caught my eye when I lifted out the mask and I pushed Seth’s arms gently away and bent to look in the box again.

It was a small badge made out of stamped metal, with a hand-drawn design in black enamel. MM it said in irregular black letters and, beneath, the drawing of a crude hammer. It looked something like an old-fashioned Scout pin, the kind my Dad had worn.

For a long moment I stood, staring down at the small object in my hand, blind and deaf to everything else. What did it mean? Was it Bran’s? If not, whose?

‘Anna.
Anna
.’ I heard at last and became aware that Seth had been speaking. ‘What is it? Why are you looking like that?’

‘Like what?’ I said in a strange, dazed voice that didn’t sound like me.

‘Like that. Like someone turned you into a chunk of ice.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I held out my hand with the badge on my palm. Seth bent over it and, when he looked up, his face was puzzled.

‘What does it mean? I’ve seen that logo before, but I can’t think where.’

‘In red paint,’ I said flatly. ‘On the side of my house.’

His face went white and then he began shaking his head violently, as if he could shake the accusation out of his ears like water.

‘No. No, no, no. Grandad was in hospital! How could it be anything do with him?’

‘I didn’t say it was.’

‘But that’s what you thought.’

‘It’s a group,’ I said wearily, ‘called the Malleus Maleficorum. The Hammer of Witches. Created to persecute and drive out witches.’