‘No, no, they just stood there staring till I fell. They blocked my way and wouldn’t let me past. They spoke to me using their minds and not their mouths, and they told me to do things I didn’t want to do.’
‘This is an outrageous accusation!’ Mr Smith cried, and then he paused. ‘But come to think of it, where were you? You’ve been quiet all day.’
The twins pleaded with Mr Smith to try to get him to remember that he was in fact teaching them stories, with events just like this one, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember.
It was when Miss Snippings appeared from nowhere that the twins knew this was going somewhere they wouldn’t like.
‘Bring them to me!’ she screeched from the far end of the corridor, her orange hair glowing in the shadows. The crowd of children parted, making a large aisle for the Tipple twins to walk down, which they did shakily.
Miss Snippings looked at the twins and a cruel grin broke out on her face. ‘So you think you can pull a stunt like that without getting caught?’
The twins backed away, cowering from her.
‘There is only one punishment for girls like you, and that is THE HOLE OF BLACK!’ Miss Snippings cried.
There were gasps of shock from the other children. Jenna had decided to make a run for it but thought better of it when Miss Snippings seized them both by the scruffs of their necks and dragged them outside and to the rear of the playing fields.
‘Surely this is uncalled for,’ Mr Smith said to Miss Snippings, as he tried desperately to keep up.
Miss Snippings seemed not to hear anything anyone was saying. In fact, she seemed as if she was having quite a good day. And when it came to throwing the twins down the hole, she told them to mind their heads and laughed uncontrollably when she slammed the bars down.
Jenna and Jessica sat in what was nothing but a soggy hole in the ground filled with mud. They were wet, cold and scared. This was without a doubt the most degrading moment of their life. Staying in a hole… for an hour… until school had ended.
*
It was now November and the smell of the cold, smoky air outside only reminded the twins that Christmas was just around the corner. A time which made the twins think about Caitlyn more often. And a time when they realised they would be spending another Christmas without her. If only they hadn’t woken her that night. If only Caitlyn hadn’t gone outside.
It was late afternoon, and Jenna and Jessica could hear their mum downstairs. She was bickering on the phone to Aunt Maud and she sounded as if she’d had enough. Not only did she raise her voice for Jenna and Jessica to hear but she raised it for the whole of Bacton Square to hear also.
Mr Wilson knocked on the door, his fist making the most mundane knock one could make. But when Mrs Tipple opened the door and stood there with a blackbird perched on her head, Boo cradled in one arm and the phone clamped between her shoulder and ear, he knew he had no chance of complaining about the noise. He stood silently for a while, quaking and shivering with fright at the sight of Boo and the bird, until he jumped the iron railings back to his home next door.
She slammed the door shut and the twins quickly crept to the top of the stairs to listen to what she was saying to Maud down the phone, when they noticed a nose and eyes sticking out of the wallpaper. It was Beatrice. She had turned herself into the same print as the wall so she could earwig on Mr and Mrs Tipple without being seen. ‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ said Beatrice cautiously.
‘You’ll never guess what Maud has done now,’ Jenna and Jessica heard their mum say to their dad from downstairs, finishing her phone call with Aunt Maud. ‘She’s only gone and moved to America without telling anyone. Apparently… she’s got into a spot of bother there now and wants to visit for a few weeks… until the New Year. Oh, but it will be okay, according to Maud. She reckons we should have a present turn up any minute now to make up for the extra stress she has put on us.’
Jenna, Jessica and Beatrice were listening more intently, causing Beatrice to kick Jenna in the shins.
‘Ouch!’
‘I can feel you breathing on me – stop!’
There was another knock on the front door.
It looked like their gift from Aunt Maud was already waiting outside. The twins scampered off the landing and went back into their rooms. Beatrice remained standing against the wall. ‘Pssst, you two! Pssst. I’m stuck!’ Beatrice had stupidly plastered herself to the décor instead of just camouflaging herself with it.
By the time the twins went back out to help, it was too late, as their mum was already opening the front door again. She opened it aggressively, probably thinking it was Mr Wilson again, only she was very shocked to see that, instead, in walked a miniature Yorkshire terrier with a note stuck to its collar.
Jenna and Jessica excitedly rushed downstairs while their mum placed Boo in mid-air and grabbed the Yorkie before reading the note out loud.
‘My name is Oliver. I’m your new furry friend. P.S. Please forgive Aunt Maud and Uncle Patrick.’
They took Oliver into the living room and made a fuss of him.
‘Where’s Beatrice?’ asked Mrs Tipple. ‘Beatrice, come downstairs, will you!’ she shouted.
‘Oh, the thing about Beatrice is… well, she’s sort of stuck,’ Jessica said before hinting they might need a wallpaper scraper to get her out.
‘Is this true, Jenna?’ asked Mrs Tipple.
‘Yep,’ replied Jenna, before they each made their way back to the top of the staircase.
Struggling with all his might, Mr Tipple soaked Beatrice until she was soggy to the bone and carefully tried peeling her off limb by limb. Beatrice was now crying and moaning she was claustrophobic. Jenna and Jessica could see their cousin was in a sweaty state, and in return she was causing them to be the same. As they tried to concentrate on the soaking wet wallpaper, images came flooding over them. Images of feeling stuck. Images of being locked in the dark.
The hole of black, to be precise.
After tantrums, cups of tea and an exchange of nasty names, Mr Tipple finally released Beatrice from the wall. ‘The next time you pull a stunt like that you can stay there!’ he snapped as he stomped down the hall and into the kitchen. He came to a halt when he saw the kitchen table covered with delicious food. Roast beef, crispy roast potatoes, all the veg you could want, home-made bread, jugs of gravy and glasses of wine. Oliver was sitting at the kitchen table holding a knife and fork in his paws, nodding towards the food for the family to enjoy, which he had just made.
The Tipples decided to take advantage of Oliver’s peculiar ways for just one night. After that, Mrs Tipple insisted on training him to act like a dog and not like a person.
By the time Oliver had washed up and took himself for a walk, it was night-time already. The twins crept into their beds and pressed their cheeks against their pillows. Their attention turned to Miss Snippings and the mysterious ways of Chumsworth. What was the presence that followed them? What did it want from them? And why did Miss Snippings hate them so much? Also, why had the girl accused them of doing things they hadn’t done?
After an hour of dwelling over the answers, they still weren’t hopeful. They tossed and turned until eventually they fell asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
*
TO THE GALLOWS
When they awoke the next morning, Oliver was standing at the ends of their beds with breakfast already made. Eggs and bacon.
Jenna and Jessica had overslept. Their eyes were heavy and swollen, and their hair… had seen better days. When Jenna and Jessica looked in the mirror they thought they looked as if they were auditioning for a part in a zombie movie. Had this been the case they would have won the day already. But this wasn’t the case. They were going to Chumsworth. They had to sort themselves out.
Gulping down their breakfast and putting on their uniforms, they were ready in no time
and dashed out the door with neat-ish hair and their clothes looking scruffy.
They each blew a sigh of relief when they bumped into Tommy at the gates. They needed an extra body by their side. Some sort of protection. However, if Jenna and Jessica were honest with themselves, they knew that no number of people could protect them from Miss Snippings.
Tottering off into the building, they followed the crowd of pupils. But instead of parting to go to individual classes, the crowd stayed together and made for the hall.
‘I forgot to say,’ said Tommy quietly, ‘Miss Snippings wants to take another assembly. Wonder what that’s all about, eh?’
Jenna and Jessica didn’t answer. What could they say? How stomach-wrenching would it be? How they wished they could go in the opposite direction and simply leg it. In all honesty they didn’t know what to say. All they could do was hope for the best.
Moving along with the other pupils, they entered the hall and saw a petrifying image. Miss Snippings was already on the stage, perched upon her throne, but she was stonily silent as she waited for the pupils to fill the hall. There wasn’t a sound, just silence.
Miss Snippings waited for a minute or two before she rose from her chair and looked around the hall. Focusing on the children, she took a breath and began to speak.
‘Good Morning, children.’
‘Good morning, Miss Snippings,’ the children chanted back.
‘I’m going to begin this assembly today with a question. And that question is this. What is a witch?’ she asked slowly. ‘A witch…’ she stated again, before pacing the stage. ‘When you hear that word, what springs to mind?’
Nothing but gormless expressions answered her question.
‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘Is it a woman with a green face? A black cat that sits by her side? Someone who brews wicked spells over a cauldron? Or is it someone who has warts on her face? There are so many stereotypes of a witch, but what I’m going to tell you today is something not from fairy tales but something very real. Today, I’m going to tell you the story of the witches of Salem.’ She froze, waiting for some sort of reaction, yet there was none.
Jenna and Jessica thought she looked like she wanted attention. Like she thought she was the star of a show, but to the twins she was no star, more a total eclipse.
‘A real witch is actually somebody that is no different from you and me. A witch is somebody that looks the same, acts the same and dresses the same. But it’s what witches do that separates them from the rest. Witches have the ability to step away from their own bodies and travel in spirit form. They have the ability to cause disasters while standing at a distance. They also have the ability to poison a person just by one evil glance!
‘I’m going to start this story at the very beginning. The story has captured attention for many years now, and still to this day it’s not clear why it happened.
‘January 12th in 1692 was the date of the first recorded incident. It was the first day of… what can we call it? Peculiar activity?’ Miss Snippings made her fingers into a fist. ‘Yes, that’s it… peculiar activity. It was a cold snowy day and a few men were travelling from Salem village to Salem town. When they got to the town they found a woman who went by the name of Alice Parker. Alice Parker was lying outside her home as if she were dead. There was a lot of fuss from the public as they crowded around her. “Help!” they cried. “Help Alice Parker!” But the men were dubious to pick her up. It was odd to them that a woman was lying in the snow for no obvious reason.
‘One of the neighbours then told the men that Alice Parker had been unconscious many times before, so there was no need to worry, and yet the men were still jittery about touching her, until one eventually gave in and lifted her over his shoulder to take her inside.
‘Before he got to the door he dropped her once or twice on the snow by accident and yet she still remained asleep. Nothing woke her up. She didn’t even mumble or open an eye. When he finally got her inside and put her to bed, she sat up suddenly. Her back was rigid and stiff. One man claimed to have heard a snapping sound as she tried to twist in different directions. But that wasn’t all. You would think Alice Parker would thank the men for helping her, but she didn’t, for she did nothing but laugh loudly at them. She cackled and cackled and cackled so much her head looked like it was going to pop. It was as if there had never been anything wrong with Alice.
‘But suspicion has it that Alice was a witch and she had managed to separate her spirit from her body and cause trouble elsewhere while her actual body was lying in the snow.’ Miss Snippings stopped for a moment. ‘Anybody else find it strange that a woman who was possibly ill was seen as a witch? But then why would she laugh? Why didn’t she thank the men? You can see how they might have come to that conclusion.
‘Now, as I have said before, that was the very first recorded incident – this is why I’ve chosen to tell you about it. But the story I’m going to move onto next is the story of Tituba, because it only happened just three days afterwards in Salem village. It’s a wonder that two women, one from Salem village, one from Salem town, experienced these odd things within just days of each other – and they didn’t know one another either.’
Miss Snippings paced slowly with a finger on her lips, looking as if she was thinking of how to start, when her eyes lit up suddenly.
‘Tituba, who was a slave, worked for Samuel Parris in the family home, where she looked after his nine-year-old daughter Betty Parris and his niece Abigail Williams, who was eleven. It was Friday 15th January 1692, and Tituba had spent the day going about her usual business and duties, when Tituba was said to have seen a whirl of black air and dust fall all around her, which put her into a deep sleep.
‘During this sleep, Tituba had seen a tall dark man standing next to her. Although the man was so dark he could have almost been hidden in a shadow, there was one thing about him that stood out. He had a long white beard. This long white beard glowed in the darkness of the room and seemed to have had some sort of hypnotic hold over Tituba. She felt it was calling her to listen, to trust the man. The beard was enticing her. Then the man opened his mouth and told Tituba something unpleasant.
‘He said that he wanted to kill the children in the home and demanded Tituba help him or he would kill her too. He told her he was a god, somebody she should believe in. He then produced a document from beneath his beard and put it in front of her. He told her that if she served him for six years, and six years only, he would give her all the riches in the world and she would be a slave no more.
‘He illustrated this by lighting up the room as if it was awash with gold. Gems and diamonds covered the floor. But if she refused… he told her he would treat her in the way he planned to treat the children in the Parris’s home, and eventually Tituba would live no more.
‘Waking up and finding herself in the same room she had fallen asleep in, Tituba was unsure of what she had just seen. She decided to put it behind her, but the next day the man came again, though not in the form of a man, but as birds. Green birds, yellow birds and white birds. Tituba told the flock of birds, “No”, but they carried on flapping around her. “Serve us… serve us now,” said the birds, but Tituba refused. She said she wouldn’t serve him and ran out of the room. She said she would go and tell her master, Samuel Parris, what was happening, but she was stopped aggressively (although not by the flock of birds, for they had transformed back into the man) and he told her to serve him now. He then said he would be back on Wednesday.
‘It appeared that the man had already begun inflicting things on the children, for they had been acting strangely a little earlier that day. They would hide under furniture, and their postures would be twisted.
‘When it was Wednesday (20th January), the man returned when Betty and Abigail were in a room with their parents and Tituba was in another room. The man appeared before Tituba, but he wasn’t on his own. He had brought four floating
women with him. The man grabbed Tituba roughly and told her to pinch the children.
‘Tituba shook her head, for she couldn’t hurt innocent children. This made the man angry and he told the four floating women to drag Tituba to the room where the little girls were.
‘Being too scared to fight the four women off, Tituba let them take her into the room and across to the other side with the man following behind.
‘It appeared to Tituba that the man had enchanted Betty, Abigail and Mr and Mrs Parris because none of them acted as if they had seen the six walk across the room. “I won’t do it,” said Tituba, but the four women forced her to stand before the girls and made her pinch them repeatedly. Betty and Abigail screamed with pain and asked for it to stop. However, it was some time before it did.
‘Afterwards, the women left, but the man didn’t, for he had unfinished business with Tituba. He promised to return on Friday and told her he would bring his book back for her to sign, and he made clear he only needed her for six years.
‘But come Friday 22nd January, the man returned with his book but was unsuccessful in persuading Tituba to sign it. He had a pin with him that he told her to prick her finger with and sign his book in her blood, only he was interrupted when Mrs Parris called up to Tituba from downstairs and the man vanished. Relieved, Tituba went to bed that night but knew she wouldn’t be free of the man. If only she could find a way to end his wicked ways.
‘On the Saturday, Tituba was mopping the floor, when, to her displeasure, she felt she was being watched. There seemed to be something hiding in the shadows in the far corner of the room. Tituba watched closely until she could make out what it was, when a red cat jumped from the shadows and shouted “Serve me”. The cat then changed into the shape of the man.
‘The man carried a yellow bird with him and the four women were also by his side, only this time Tituba recognised two of them as people she had known. They went by the names of Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne of Salem village.
The Tipple Twins and the Gift Page 6
