The Devil’s Paintbox

by Robin Jarvis

  With his assistance it was hardly any obstacle at all and they were soon sliding into the courtyard beyond.

  The bedroom windows of the cottages there were not wholly submerged. They hurried to the one with pink and yellow frames and knocked on the glass. The upper sash was yanked down and a familiar face leaned out.

  ‘Where’ve you been, Rustbreath? Get your tin tushy in here. I’m gaggin’ for a steamin’ cup of green tea.’

  ‘Cherry!’ Lil cried.

  Cherry Cerise was huddled in the blankets Lil had made for her. Both were now bleached of colour. She looked tired and frail, but the indomitable fire was burning inside her once again.

  ‘When you knit, sister,’ she said, with pride in her voice and a sparkle in her eyes, ‘you really knock it outta the park.’

  A little while later they were all in her parlour, which was illuminated by paraffin lamps. Jack Potts was heating a kettle between his hands and everyone was talking across one another. Cherry had only regained consciousness half an hour ago and Verne hadn’t had a chance to fill her in on everything that had happened since she collapsed. It was then that Noreen found out about the paintbox.

  ‘And you’ve been dealing with this on your own?’ she asked her son, appalled. ‘You’re only eleven!’

  ‘There was Cherry and Lil too! And I’m almost twelve.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me and your father? We could have helped and supported you. That’s what families are for. We don’t understand the whole magic thing, but we’re always here for you. You have to trust us. Please, no more secrets.’

  ‘That’s what I told the kid,’ Cherry put in.

  Verne chewed his lip. Should he mention the Nimius or would that be one revelation too many?

  ‘And you think all this will be over when the last watercolour is used up, the day after tomorrow?’ Noreen asked.

  ‘That’s what we’re hoping,’ Lil said. ‘We’ve got no real proof though, just the rhyme under the lid.’

  ‘And what are the other colours? What is this . . . this devil’s paintbox going to inflict on us next?’

  Lil passed it over.

  Noreen stared at it in sheer disbelief. That something so ordinary could be responsible for so much death and horror was outside the reach of her comprehension.

  She ran her fingers along the empty compartments. Lifting out the last two pigment blocks, she read what was inscribed on their backs.

  ‘China White and Warrior Blue. I don’t like the sound of the last one.’

  ‘Yeah, that kinda freaks me out as well,’ Cherry said.

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Hot water is ready,’ Jack Potts interrupted.

  ‘Those are not my tea bags,’ Cherry observed as he poured the boiling water.

  ‘I took the liberty of using some of my own. I have been experimenting in the Wilsons’ kitchen. I trust you find the flavours to your liking.’

  ‘Is this that radical idea you’ve been raving on about?’ Lil asked, rolling her eyes.

  ‘It is indeed. These are only the fruit teas; the others would require milk, but we have none.’

  ‘Mmm . . . orange and cinnamon?’ asked Noreen. ‘This is delicious.’

  ‘I’ve got apple and blackberry,’ said Verne.

  ‘Baked apple and blackberry,’ Jack Potts corrected.

  ‘Raspberry and ginger here,’ said Lil.

  ‘Pear and honey,’ said Cherry, cupping the mug in her hands and sinking back into the chaise longue. ‘This reaches so many places I thought had raisined up years ago! Who needs witchcraft when you’ve got a wizard in the kitchen?’

  ‘You really blended these different teas with what you found at our place?’ Lil asked, impressed.

  ‘I blended no tea leaves. This is just the ordinary Camellia sinensis variety.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s the bags!’ Verne said. ‘You put all the flavour in the bags themselves! Clever!’

  ‘So you only ever have to keep one lot of bog-standard tea and a packet of fancy-flavoured empty bags,’ said Noreen. ‘I like that. It’d free up a lot of cupboard space.’

  ‘You crazy Brits,’ Cherry chuckled. ‘Here we are on the brink of what could be the end of everything and you take time out to gab about tea. I love it.’

  ‘Do you think my innovation is a good idea, Mistress Lil?’ Jack Potts asked.

  ‘It’s nice, but it’s not really important, is it?’

  ‘I disagree. It is so much more. You see, the specially prepared bags . . .’

  He twitched and his left eye flashed erratically.

  ‘You OK, Jack?’ Noreen asked.

  ‘May I sponge down your walls, Miss Cerise?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Those beetles left such a mess.’

  ‘Me and Verne had better get going,’ Noreen declared. ‘It must be dark outside by now and Dennis will be wondering where we are.’

  ‘Allow me to accompany you,’ Jack Potts offered.

  ‘Hey, Lil,’ Cherry said, ‘you go home to your own bed. I’ll be OK. I’m just gonna snore the night away. We need clear heads and every ounce of strength we can muster tomorrow. We might nearly be at the end, but I don’t think the danger’s goin’ to ease off – just the opposite.’

  Giving everyone a lamp, she saw them upstairs and watched them leave out of the window. Then she sat on her bed and put her head in her hands.

  ‘Boy, I feel old as Noah’s great-grandma,’ she told herself. ‘I hope I got enough zing in me to last this out.’

  Lil and the others reached Henrietta Street without incident. Outside the upstairs windows of the Wilsons’ cottage, Jack Potts forced the lock and she climbed inside.

  ‘See you tomorrow, as close to seven as I can guess at,’ Verne said.

  ‘No need to guess,’ Noreen told him. ‘There’s wind-up watches at the hotel. You’ll be here at seven sharp and so shall I. You can’t keep doing all this on your own.’

  Waving them off, Lil saw them cut across the wide stretch of sand that had replaced the harbour, then closed the window.

  This room was where her parents slept. Holding the lamp high, she smiled when she saw one of her father’s waistcoats on a hanger. She missed him deeply and wished her mother would let her see him.

  Thinking of Cassandra, Lil gazed at the gowns and bodices that had been pulled from the wardrobes. She was never usually this messy. Then she noticed something in the lamplight that made her grimace. The bottom edge of her mother’s pillow was streaked with blood.

  Backing away from the empty bed, Lil carried the lamp out on to the landing and into her own room. She had brought the paintbox with her and she placed it on the dresser. A reckless idea had come to her while at Cherry’s. The colour witch had looked so delicate and weak that Lil knew there was no way she’d be able to face whatever perils the next paint block had in store for them. So she determined that, tomorrow, she would go it alone.

  In the comfort of her own bed sleep came to her swiftly. She did not hear the noises of the night that scratched over the roof and outside her window, nor sense the long insect limbs that felt their way round the frame, seeking entry.

  At the end of the bed, an invisible presence sat on the furry blanket that Sally had once slept on and a low growl sounded from the loyal dog’s phantom throat.

  The creature outside the window retreated back into the sand.

  Up in the abbey grounds, the number of revellers had doubled since the previous night. The frenzied music was louder and Cassandra told them that tomorrow they would appease the gods and beg deliverance from the catastrophes that blighted Whitby. The cheering could be heard all the way to the barricade and the soldiers on duty wondered what on earth was going on.

  An hour before dawn, Lil awoke. The night was turning pale and the sand outside her window almost looked like snow. When she had washed and dressed, she sat with the paintbox on her lap, trying to find the courage to carry out her intention.

&nb
sp; ‘Got to do this,’ she urged herself. ‘Cherry isn’t up to it and Verne is safer where he is.’

  Her mind made up, she took the box downstairs to the kitchen and filled a glass with water.

  She was disappointed that Jack Potts was not around. She would have liked his company.

  Lil wondered if the sand outside would act as insulation against the box’s power. Might it contain whatever frightening magic burst out of it today?

  Taking deep breaths and keeping one set of fingers crossed, she dipped the brush in the water.

  ‘China White,’ she said, staring at the pigment which had an image of a teapot stamped on it. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of. Pity Potts isn’t here, sounds right up his street.’

  She splashed the water over the paint block and waited.

  The box began to tremble.

  In the Royal Hotel, the candles that had burned through the night were almost spent. The only ventilation on the ground floor was via the wedged-open doors leading to the stairwell. It had become a sweltering underground bunker. Cassandra Wilson had extended her control to the bar and restaurant area, and no one from the games room was permitted to enter. Cassandra had also decreed that Lil must not be allowed back into the hotel. If her daughter was healing the sick, it could only be through evil means.

  The patients slept fitfully, but their coughs and diseased murmurings did not disturb Verne. He was dreaming of the joyous time the Nimius had flown him over the town and he smiled in his slumber.

  Lying next to him, his mother was wide awake. She was going over everything she had learned at Cherry’s. He and Lil were as close as any brother and sister and that girl’s life was never going to be safe and ordinary. Where she went, he would follow.

  Gazing at him in the guttering candlelight she felt a tremendous surge of pride for everything he had done. She knew that at school some of the kids called him ‘Flimsy’. His slight frame and introspective, nervy nature had caused her anxiety in the past and yet he had shown more courage than anyone she had ever known.

  She put her hand out to sweep the fringe from his eyes, but her fingertips never reached him.

  Outside, the dying night was ruptured by a searing flash of white light from the direction of Henrietta Street. It was so intense it shone through the deep sand, radiating out in a dazzling pulse. When it hit the hotel the submerged windows dazzled like arc lights and the panes exploded inward.

  Blasted awake, people screamed as the sand flooded in and the candles blew out, but their voices were drowned by the sound wave that chased the energy burst.

  It was like the noise of a finger rubbing the rim of a wine glass amplified to an ear-blistering level.

  ‘Mum?’ Verne yelled, when it was over and someone had relit the candles. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Noreen?’ Dennis called frantically.

  She was nowhere to be found. Then they realised that others were missing. With sickening dread they looked at the tons of sand that had gushed through the shattered window. Noreen and the rest had to be buried under there.

  Verne and his father rushed to begin a hectic rescue, digging through the sand with bare hands. After many frantic minutes they gave up in consternation. There was no one under it.

  ‘Where’d she go?’ Verne asked, holding on to his father desperately.

  ‘Dad!’ Clarke’s panicked voice called from his place on the floor. ‘Over here!’

  Dennis and Verne approached and gasped with disbelief when they saw what he was holding.

  ‘It was just lying here!’ Clarke cried. ‘I almost broke it when I turned over. My God – I almost smashed her!’

  Dennis knelt down and took the delicate piece of porcelain from him. It was a finely modelled figurine, beautifully glazed with pale colours – a perfect likeness of his wife.

  ‘What does it mean?’ he spluttered. ‘Verne, what’s happened?’

  The boy gazed at it with rising horror, feeling as though he had plunged into ice water. Around them, others were discovering that their loved ones had also been exchanged for statuettes.

  A woman screeched. She was holding up the fragments of a figure that looked like her husband, which she had accidentally crunched underfoot. The damaged pieces were hollow and miniature ceramic replicas of bones and internal organs tumbled out.

  ‘Oh, Lil,’ Verne breathed. ‘You didn’t wait. What have you done?’

  ‘Tell me this isn’t actually your mother!’ his father implored.

  The expression on Verne’s face was all the answer he needed.

  ‘Is she dead? Or is she still in there? Is she aware?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Verne said.

  There was uproar in the other parts of the hotel. A number of the figurines had been destroyed by accident and their relatives were overcome with grief and fury.

  The Thistlewoods could hear Cassandra Wilson’s raised voice.

  ‘More black magic!’ she yelled. ‘This supernatural terrorism has to stop. We must end this bedevilment! Burn it out from our midst!’

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ Dennis told his sons. ‘I don’t trust that mob. She’s preaching hate and violence and it’s going to erupt any time now. Clarke, are you up to walking?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘How about running?’

  To leave the hotel, they had to cut through one corner of the ballroom. The crowd in there was braying for vengeance and justice and their High Priestess was promising both.

  Keeping their heads down, the Thistlewoods squeezed round the back of Cassandra’s followers. Dennis cradled the porcelain effigy of his wife in his arms, shielding it from jostling elbows. His boys followed him closely. They were almost at the door to the stairs when a man caught Dennis by the shoulder. It was Rory Morgan, the councillor. There was a manic intensity in his eyes.

  ‘The Lady Cassandra has not finished speaking,’ he said. ‘We must all listen. Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s no air in here,’ Mr Thistlewood said, attempting to bluff his way out. ‘My lads are going to faint. We’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Rory snarled, recognising Verne. ‘I’ve seen that kid with our Lady’s daughter. She betrayed us all to that filthy Cherry woman. I was there when that foul witch made the town turn yellow and called this plague on us. You lot aren’t going nowhere.’

  There was a scuffle as Dennis shoved Rory in the chest to get free. More hands seized him and Rory snatched the figurine from his arms.

  ‘Give her back!’ Dennis bawled. ‘Give my wife back!’

  ‘Ask nicely!’ came the answering taunt as he passed it from one hand to the other. ‘Or I might drop her.’

  ‘Don’t! Please don’t!’

  The man laughed in his face then doubled over in pain as Clarke ripped a fire extinguisher from the wall and rammed it into his groin. Noreen went flying from his grasp and somersaulted high over Dennis’s head. She spun towards the floor and her husband yelled in fear. Clarke leaped to catch her, but a fist punched him in the stomach and he was knocked further into the crowd. Dennis heaved against his captors, but they held him firm. He was about to let out an anguished howl when he saw Verne sprawled on the carpet, right arm raised, the figurine in his hand.

  ‘Run!’ his father shouted. ‘Get out of here!’

  There was nothing Verne could do for his father or brother. They were already being dragged through the hostile mob towards Cassandra. Hands came lunging for him too, but he dodged, kicked three shins and somehow wove his way out, with his mother tucked securely under his arm. Moments later he was pelting up the stairs to the first floor guest room.

  Out of breath, he scrambled through the window and half rolled, half skidded down the scree of sand outside. Reaching the bottom, he examined the statuette and was beside himself with relief to find it undamaged. Lurching to his feet, he raced over the dunes.

  The trampling of the previous night’s drunken excursion to the abbey by Cassandra and her f
ollowers had marred the smooth expanse of desert between the two halves of the town. As Verne traversed that wide, churned-up route, he saw a motionless figure in the distance. The sunlight was glinting off its tin head.

  When Verne reached Jack Potts he found that the mechanical had run out of coins again. He was annoyed to see that Jack’s hockey-mask face had been vandalised with lipstick scribbles, and odd socks were hanging off his brass ears. The boy wiped the worst off with his sleeve, then searched his own pockets and those of the leather tailcoat, but couldn’t find any ten pences.

  ‘Lil will have coins,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ Hurrying to the Wilsons’, he climbed through the upstairs window and called for Lil.

  The house was deathly quiet.

  Verne went in every room, finishing in the kitchen, but there was no sign of her. The downstairs was encased in darkness and he had to fumble blindly to find the gas lighter that was kept near the stove. Lighting some of the candles that were everywhere in the Wilsons’ house, he saw the paintbox lying open on the table. The white pigment block had been used up and he found the paintbrush on the floor by a glint of the gold around the handle. The windows were all shattered and the sand had engulfed the sink and the back door.

  Thinking Lil must have gone to Cherry’s, he was soon outside again and running in the long hollow beneath which Church Street lay buried.

  Cherry Cerise was tying ribbons and tinsel to the gutters of her cottage and had spread a colourful rag rug on the sand in front of it. That morning her wig was a rainbow Afro, complemented by a jazzy pink and purple poncho.

  ‘White’s a tricky one,’ she said, hearing Verne slide down a rooftop to drop into the courtyard. ‘Personally, I never cared for it. But it’s the colour of blossom and all that hey nonny May stuff. Denotes purity, grace and chastity – I guess that’s why I’m not a fan. It’s also a very acceptable colour for sacrifice, white bulls being a classic favourite, and is of course the colour of the moon and the Goddess.’

  Attaching the final ribbon, she stood back to admire her handiwork.

  ‘Couldn’t stand being cooped up inside any longer,’ she said. ‘So thought I’d brighten up my new front yard a bit. Hmmm, looks kinda like Santa’s grotto, if he was a bum. Anyhoo, thought you’d have brought the paintbox here today to do the biz. I may not be firin’ on all Crayolas, but I’m better than I was. So what did this one do, apart from crack all my windows?’