The Last Witness

by Claire McFall

  He responded by squeezing me tighter to him, tucking my head against the warmth of his shoulder. I tried to keep my breathing even, concentrating on Darren, who was grinning wickedly, delighting in being the center of attention.

  “Hundreds of years ago, in the Dark Ages, pagans roamed over the land…”

  “No, they didn’t,” Martin interjected quietly.

  “What?” Darren snapped, dropping out of his eerie voice and breaking the spell, clearly annoyed at the interruption.

  “They were Christian in the Dark Ages,” Martin said, straightening his glasses on his nose. “Pagans were more the Iron Age.”

  “Does it matter?” Darren barked back, glaring.

  “Just saying,” Martin muttered.

  “Anyway.” Darren took a deep breath and swept his eyes around the circle to recapture his audience. “Hundreds of years ago, in the Iron Age”—he shot Martin a glowering look; Martin nodded back with twisted satisfaction—“pagans roamed over the land. Cloaked in black, they gathered in the night to worship their evil, savage gods. Minions of the devil, these spirits demanded more than just adoration. They wanted sacrifice!”

  There was a smattering of laughter around the campfire. Darren’s voice reminded me of a children’s TV presenter, being deliciously—but incredibly melodramatically—ghoulish for the Halloween special. Darren’s lips twitched, acknowledging the hammy acting, but then he frowned us all into silence before beginning again.

  “The worst of these, my friends, was a powerful wraith. It was nameless and formless, and the pagans feared this phantom monster more than any other. Not satisfied with the quick death of a martyred virgin, her throat cut upon the stones, the wraith craved pain and torture and suffering. It craved fire.”

  Beside me, I heard Dougie chuckle again, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Martin rolling his eyes. Even Emma was gazing at Darren’s muscles rather than paying attention to the story. Darren didn’t seem to care. He fixed his gaze on me, and I tried to look suitably enthralled and wide-eyed with terror. “In order to satiate the wraith, every year the pagans would erect a gigantic statue in its honor made of wood and hazel strips, fashioned in the shape of a man. In the middle of this wicker man, right at the heart, would be an empty space just big enough for a person. Now, it just so happened that a traveler was passing by the pagans’ lands at that time. He stopped, looking for supplies and passing news. The pagans were delighted: here was a ready-made sacrifice!”

  Darren paused and stared at each of us in turn, as if ramping up the tension. I swallowed my giggle.

  “One night they got the traveler drunk on the local wine. Then, once he’d passed out—for it was strong stuff—they tied his hands and feet and imprisoned him in the wicker man. And then…then, they set it on fire!”

  There was a moment’s silence. No one spoke. We just waited.

  It was clear Darren wasn’t finished.

  “That’s not the end of the story,” he said. “The traveler awoke as the flames started to take hold, as the smoke started to fill the air. He realized where he was, saw the pagans standing around the fire chanting, robed in black with hoods pulled forward to hide their faces.”

  “How’d he know they were the same pagans, then?” Martin muttered, but Darren carried on as if he hadn’t heard.

  “At first, he tried to free himself, pushing against the confines of his wicker cage, hunting for a weakness, but the pagans knew their business. The sacrificial statue was strong. Finally he had to face the truth: he was going to die.” A pause; a quick flash of Darren’s teeth as he grinned devilishly. “And this is where it gets interesting. See, the pagans weren’t the only ones to dabble in the dark arts. The traveler…was a voodoo priest!”

  Darren announced this with a flourish, and Dougie coughed derisively beside me. I knew he wanted to correct Darren’s appalling mangling of history—even I knew pagans were way before voodoo, not to mention the fact that they originated on opposite sides of the globe—but he held his tongue.

  “He cursed the pagans,” Darren went on. “Around his neck, he kept a talisman of his faith, and as his flesh melted from his body, he called to his voodoo gods, demanding that anyone who ever set a fire in the same spot would be cursed to die a horrible death. When the fire smoldered down to ashes that melted into the sand, the curse was set in place. The next year, the pagans once again made their sacrifice, stealing a girl from a nearby town, and every one of them died that night on the beach. Their bodies were swept into the sea. This sea, boys and girls, this beach. It’s cursed.”

  Darren sat back, obviously pleased with himself.

  “Of course,” Dougie chipped in, breaking the silence, “in the sequel the hero comes along and saves the day, freeing the villagers from the curse before kissing the virgin sacrifice senseless.”

  “Ah, you’ve seen it!” Darren laughed before chucking a handful of seaweed across the circle at Dougie.

  “Of course we’ve seen it! Mr. Crooks makes every sophomore watch it, remember? You took some serious liberties with the story line, though!”

  “Oh yeah.” Darren looked slightly crestfallen, to the hilarity of everyone around the circle. Except me. I hadn’t seen the film—I’d had mono in sophomore year and missed months of school. “I didn’t know there was a sequel,” Martin said, head tipped to the side. “Any good?”

  “No!” Dougie said emphatically, setting off another chorus of laughter like that of baying hyenas. “Don’t watch it, it’s absolutely awful! Anyway”—he pulled his arm away from me and shifted to his knees until he towered over us—“you want a scary story, guys? I’ve got one that will make sure you never sleep soundly again. Because every single word is true.”

  “Oh yeah?” Darren smirked across the circle.

  “Yeah,” Dougie replied softly. “Because I hate to tell you, Darren, but there weren’t any voodoo priests mincing about the hills of Dumfries and Galloway…but there were witches.”

  “Flying about on their broomsticks, were they?” Darren asked derisively, and Emma giggled.

  Dougie just smiled. And let the silence go on. And on. “Witches,” he repeated at last, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it over the soft sound of the water behind me and the low pops and hisses of the fire. “Do you know how witches get their power?”

  It was a question, but none of us answered.

  “Sacrifice.” The same word that Darren had used, but out of Dougie’s mouth, it made me shudder. As if on cue, a sinister wind whipped around the campfire, making the flames snap and jump. For a moment, the fire was almost extinguished entirely, and we were engulfed in a shocking blanket of black. I gasped, but just as suddenly, the light flared to life again, illuminating Dougie’s cheeks and jaw, leaving his eyes ghostly dark pits. The effect was frightening.

  “They practiced sacrifice. If a creature could bleed, if it could feel pain, then it had the ability to provide the witches with power. They used animals sometimes, if the spell was small. But when the enemy was great—when the witches needed to delve deep into the darkness of their souls—the sacrifice would have to be human.” Dougie smiled at us softly, but there was no warmth in his look. Despite that, I found myself leaning closer toward him, drawn by the cadence of his voice, the hypnotic gleam in his eyes. “Witchcraft began with the pagans. More specifically, the druids. They believed in the power of sacrifice, that through it they could commune with the gods, drink of their might.

  “Just across that water”—he pointed to the sea with one ghostly pale arm—“that’s where it happened. Because one year, men from the south came, armed with weapons and soldiers, intent on taking over the pagans’ lands. Romans. Outnumbered, outmatched, the druids fled to one of their holiest places, Ynys Dywyll. An island, rocky and bleak. It means ‘the Dark Isle.’ There they set up their altar, chose their victim. Her name was Ygraine, and she was the daughter
of the lord. With the Romans gathering around, with time running out, the druids slaughtered her as a gift to their gods.

  “First, they strangled her, taking her right to the brink of death. Then, calling upon their gods, asking them to strike down the cursed army that had invaded their lands like a plague, they slit her throat and watched her blood spill out upon the stone. As the life drained out of her, the leader cut open her chest and drank directly from her heart. It’s said her spirit screamed as she watched him do it.”

  Another pause. This time there were no interruptions. Dougie let the silence linger for almost a minute.

  “What happened?” Emma finally managed to whisper.

  “The Romans stormed the island and killed them. Every single one. A mass sacrifice, the blood flowing so freely it stained the rocky ground red. And at last, at last the gods were appeased. The druids had lost their lives, but the gods let them return, as spirits, to guard the land. To haunt it.”

  Dougie finished exactly as he’d started: quietly, softly. Eerily.

  Seconds passed but the silence drew on.

  Eventually there was tittering, then a confused bark of gasping and laughter as the tension that had gripped our little circle for the duration of Dougie’s story was dispelled. Martin’s face broke into a grin; Darren shook his head ruefully as he swigged from the bottle of booze. Emma was rubbing her arms, getting rid of imaginary goose bumps in such a way as to shove her cleavage higher up her chest, her side pressed against Darren’s.

  But not me. I was eyeing the inky landscape, sudden fear twisting my stomach. Not a single house light anywhere, not a single soul. Just empty blackness where, I now imagined, evil spirits lingered.

  Suddenly, our campfire seemed far too small, far too insubstantial. Its glow barely illuminated our faces, as close as we were to the flames. How near could evil get without us noticing?

  Beside me, Dougie rose and brushed the sand from his jeans, then yawned and stretched.

  “I’m burned out. I say we sleep.” His voice was back to normal, and as he looked down at me, hand outstretched to help me up, all at once he was my friend again, his mouth tugging into a smile, dimples winking in his cheeks.

  There was a murmur of agreement. Only Darren looked put out, though I wasn’t sure whether that was because his story hadn’t had the same spellbinding effect as Dougie’s, or because of the sudden end to the night. He was mulishly holding the bottle with the remains of the whiskey. No doubt he wanted to stay up till dawn drinking. This probably wasn’t his idea of a party. Still, Dougie’s actual birthday wasn’t for another two days.

  I made my way wearily to our tent, chilled now that I was away from the flames. Teeth chattering, I pulled off my clothes and yanked on my warmest pajamas before I turned on the flashlight, aware that my outline would be silhouetted against the faded red of the tent. Shoving my feet back into my sneakers, I tripped back outside, toothbrush in hand. The boys were dumping shovelfuls of sand onto the fire, trying to douse the final flames. At least, Dougie and Martin were. Darren stood to the side, his arms around Emma, lips locked against hers.

  They were still like that, glued together, when I returned from the bushes where I’d created a makeshift bathroom. I forgot, momentarily, about evil figures in the dark. I looked at them, half-amused, half-uneasy. I’d made it quite clear to Emma that the tents were single-sex. I hoped she hadn’t thought I was saying it just for the benefit of our parents. If she wanted to shack up with Darren, she’d have to sleep in his car.

  “Night,” I called to Dougie and Martin as I slithered for the final time into the tent.

  As I’d hoped, my farewell acted as a spur to Emma. She disengaged herself from Darren’s octopus grip and, after planting one final kiss on his cheek, ambled in my direction. She didn’t bother getting changed or brushing her teeth, but burrowed straight down into her sleeping bag, watching as I shoved clothes and toiletries back into my backpack, tidying up the space.

  “That story was really spooky,” she commented as I unzipped my own bag and crawled inside. “You looked totally freaked out.”

  “It was creepy,” I replied honestly. “Dougie really knows how to tell a scary story.”

  “Mmm,” Emma agreed. “Think it was really all true?”

  “Most of it,” I replied. At least, I hoped only most of it. The idea of druid spirits haunting the land freaked me out too much to contemplate.

  “You think? How does Dougie know all that?”

  “Well, he’s really interested in that stuff.”

  “What, ritual sacrifice?” Emma stared at me, her expression wide-eyed with put-on horror.

  “No,” I scowled. “History and archaeology and things. He’s got loads of books on them. It’s what he wants to do in college.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Emma purred. My ears pricked up at the change, and I turned to look at her. She was grinning slyly. “You’ve both applied, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I knew where she was going with this, and I didn’t want to talk about it. I held my hand over the flashlight, ready to douse the light. “You all set?”

  Emma nodded and I hit the switch, plunging us into darkness. Everything was immediately different. I was blind, so my ears automatically tuned in to every noise, inside the tent and out. I could hear Emma’s quiet breathing, the rustling of her covers as she shifted, trying to get comfortable on the air mattress. Farther away, I caught the quiet murmur of the boys settling down. Comforting noises, reminding me that I wasn’t alone. Below that, though, there were eerier sounds: the rhythmic whoosh of the water, hissing like a whisper; the higher pitch of the wind like a scream through the reeds high up on the sand dunes. The distant bark of a dog, snapping and jarring at my nerves.

  Stop it, I told myself. You’re surrounded by people.

  Still, the haunting tones of Dougie’s voice murmuring his tale of druids and bloody sacrifice seemed to have followed me into the tent. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. That there was something out there in the dark, something other than Emma lying beside me or Dougie, Darren, and Martin in the other tent…

  My scalp started to tingle, and the alcohol I’d consumed churned uneasily in my stomach.

  “It’s a pity Martin’s here,” Emma said, continuing what I’d hoped was our finished conversation in a voice loud enough to carry to the adjacent tent.

  “Emma!” I whispered. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Well, it is,” she repeated only a little more quietly.

  “What? Why?”

  I stared in her direction, though it was impossible to see her in the pitch black.

  “Think about it,” she said as if it was glaringly obvious. “If it were just the four of us…”

  If it were just the four of us, Emma would disappear with Darren, and Dougie and I would be left to look awkwardly at each other, trying to think of things to say. No, I was very glad Martin was here.

  “Wonder who it is Dougie likes,” Emma mused. “It sucks that he wouldn’t answer that.”

  “Mmm,” I replied half-heartedly. I wondered too. But given that I wasn’t going to get the answer I wanted, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

  “Maybe it’s you,” she suggested.

  “Doubt it,” I shot back, not even wanting to discuss the possibility. No point getting my hopes up. “Maybe it’s you.”

  I tried to infuse my voice with indifference, as if it was just a throwaway comment, but the words were bitter on my tongue. “Might be,” Emma mused, not seeming remotely disconcerted or embarrassed by the idea. “I don’t think so though. I’ve never seen him looking at me like that or anything.”

  “He was looking at you tonight,” I pointed out, scowling at the memory.

  Emma’s laugh tinkled across the space.

  “Of course he was; I was half-naked! You should be mo
re worried if he wasn’t looking.”

  “Shhh!” I growled. If we could hear the boys, they could hear us.

  “Stop worrying,” Emma replied, refusing to lower her voice. “Besides, don’t you want him to know?”

  “No.”

  “How’s anything supposed to happen, then?”

  “It’s not going to,” I snapped. “He likes someone else, remember?”

  “It might be you, Heather,” Emma reminded me.

  It might be. But I doubted it.

  “I’m tired,” I said, shutting down the conversation. “Let’s go to sleep.”

  I turned my back on her sigh of frustration. Shutting my eyes, I tried to lull myself to sleep with thoughts that Emma was right, that I was the one Dougie had his eye on, but instead my dreams were filled with formless black shadows, swooping down with glowing eyes and gaping mouths.

  Seven

  I woke much earlier than I wanted to. The sun was rising on what would be yet another glorious day, and its penetrating rays turned the tiny interior of the tent into a sauna in a matter of minutes. One moment I was snuggled tightly in my sleeping bag, covers up over my face to warm my nose; the next I was sweltering, fighting my way free of the thick cocoon, pajamas sticking to my body. I didn’t hesitate but scrambled across the space and yanked the zipper to open the door.

  At once, frigid air poured in through the gap. I gulped it gratefully, oblivious to Emma’s mewls of protest.

  “What time is it?” she muttered groggily.

  I reached for my wristwatch, abandoned in a corner, and peered at the dial. Whoops.

  “Just before six,” I admitted.

  “Heather! What the hell is wrong with you?” Emma flopped over in disgust, bashing her pillow into a more comfortable shape before burrowing back down. “Shut the door or get out,” she griped, her voice muffled by the thick padding of her covers.

  It was stupidly early, but I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. Snatching up my sweater and shoes, I stole outside. Stretching the stiffness out of my back—and trying not to grin about the fact that my disappearance had shifted the air in the half-deflated air mattress, dumping Emma onto the floor—I saw that I wasn’t the only one up early. Martin sat perched on one of the folding chairs, watching the lightening sky and sipping at a bottle of water.