Once...

by James Herbert

  Then, last of all, the head began to appear.

  ‘Thom, look away!’

  Jennet’s voice cut through the sound of the wind that had now gentled to a breeze and the howls that had risen to a roar.

  ‘Don’tlookatit, don’tlookatit!’ came Rigwit’s screeched warning.

  But the assembling visage held a mesmeric fascination for him. As it did for Nell Quick also, for she regarded it with anticipation, her breasts still heaving, her lips open and wet, her eyes lit by some inner fire.

  The slow transfiguration continued.

  Thunder cracked overhead as if it were splitting the heavens, and in the instant flare of light he saw that the form had grown and the pale flesh had become dark and leathery. It held up its scaly arms as if to take Nell in its embrace, and all the while its features were forming. The misshapen bunch that was the hellhagges shrieked in adoration and wretchedness. The faerefolkis flooded back to the open book that lay on the floor, many of them plummeting before they made it, their lights burned out, their tiny, woeful cries lost in the jabber of their fleeing companions.

  Even the staccato lightning could not banish the darkness entirely and there were now a multitude of other vaporous creatures skulking in the shades, raw-looking things that could only be demons, cohorts of the ghastly manifestation that towered over the woman inside the pentagram. The candles at each point of the five-cornered star snuffled out, but others around the room retained their dim glow which was as nothing against the blinding whiteness of the lightning’s stammering flare. This time it did not die away, but stayed, an awful strobing glare that half-revealed beings that could only have arrived from some sinister and bizarre source.

  But then Nell screamed, a sound so full of hysteria that Thom could only wonder at the state of her mind. The thing before her had a face and – something hurled itself at Thom, knocking him over on the bed.

  Jennet smothered him with her own body as the lightning finally stopped and the thunder rolled off into the distance. Her small hands covered his eyes.

  ‘You mustn’t look! You mustn’t see its face!’ she cried. ‘To see the Diabolus is to invite him into your soul!’

  Thom tried to rise, but she pushed him back again so that he lay alongside his grandfather. Something clung to his legs, adding its weight, and he knew it was Rigwit.

  ‘But Nell . . .’ Thom’s words were lost in the wind that had returned in full force. ‘We’ve got to help her!’

  ‘It’s already too late,’ Jennet murmured close to his ear, sadness and pity for the foolish woman whose dubious ambitions had led to this confrontation in her voice. ‘She belongs to him now.’

  Jennet took her hands from Thom’s eyes and he blinked them open, pushing himself upright as he did so, unable to control the impulse, stubbornly curious to see the Diabolus for himself.

  It was gone though. He caught its final fading, a pallid blurred shape once more, a fearsome and chimerical image that dulled and was soon consumed by the shadows around it. Shadows from which the hellhagges re-emerged, for they were not yet finished with Nell Quick.

  Thom felt a stirring beside him as Jennet and Rigwit released him and he turned to see Sir Russell gazing up at him with eyes that had lost their earlier trance-like shine. A quavery hand closed over Thom’s wrist.

  The wind tore through the shattered windows and open doorway, unsettling flames and shadows alike, seeming to form a kind of vortex around Nell, whipping at her skirt and blouse and tossing her untamed hair. So strong was its force that the ankh at her breast was wrenched away, chain and all. Nell turned, twisted, raised her arms to the maelstrom, the piece of paper still gripped tightly. The witch crones taunted her and, curiously, pulled at their own robes to reveal their dried-up wrinkled bodies to her. Their ugliness caused Thom to wince – their flat drained breasts hung low over their bellies, their sallow flesh was ulcerated and blistered, tormented further by vivid unlanced boils, the lips of their hairless vaginas were distended and horribly puckered – and he wondered why they would cavort and display themselves in this way.

  Then he understood.

  They were showing Nell Quick what she was to become.

  She started to scream again, for the realization had come to her instantly. She knew this was the price to be paid for her ambitions and the corruptness she had embraced, for it was revealed to her now by those who had followed the same path. And despite their taunts, they welcomed her, for they gloried in this dark side, celebrated her summoning, because it meant that she, too, would share their eternal misery.

  Nell ran. To escape her self-constructed nightmare? To escape her tormentors? Who could say? Perhaps it was to flee from her own descending madness. But it was the terrace door she headed for, as though the night itself might offer refuge, and Thom thought she might even throw herself from the parapet in her panic. Glass shards and fragments crunched beneath her feet and shadows swirled around her as if giving chase; her mouth and eyes were wide with horror. Thom leapt from the bed to follow her, barely registering the sound of Jennet’s voice calling him back over the noise of the rushing wind.

  ‘Nell!’ he yelled uselessly. ‘Stop, Nell!’

  He passed through the doorway and the rainless gale struck him with its full force. He struggled against it, bending low, the wind carrying away his shouts.

  She turned as if she had heard him – or perhaps it was to see if the dream-hags had followed her – and looked directly at him. The horror was still there on her face and her lips moved incessantly as though she were mumbling some protective incantation.

  Something fluttered beneath the parapet behind her and Thom could just make out the flapping wings of a bird. A magpie. The same magpie? The creature, he suddenly realized, that was Nell’s familiar. It shrieked at her.

  But Nell ignored its cry. Buffeted by the wind, she stood on the rooftop terrace with legs apart, and slowly lifted a hand to examine it in the poor light thrown from the room behind Thom. He lingered in the doorway, unsure of her, scared for himself. The commotion inside seemed to have stopped and he felt other eyes watching Nell Quick, although nothing tried to get past him.

  Nell’s hand went to her face. Her fingers felt her skin. Her body sagged.

  But her head slowly lifted to the skies.

  He thought he heard her wail.

  Then lightning streaked from the troubled black clouds to strike her.

  Nell’s poor marionette body spasmed as the violent bolt of electricity seared her flesh and roasted her innards. Her meat sizzled as she jerked and smoke rose from it; smaller blue-white charges danced over her skin and her hair and clothes, and the crumpled piece of paper in her other hand flamed as her arms shot high in the air and her feet turned black.

  There had been no time for her to scream, and in that brief initial flare Thom had witnessed something more to haunt him for the rest of his days.

  The lightning had revealed a sudden change in Nell, for her body had appeared old and withered, the skin ravaged by ruts and blemishes, the once-beautiful face a hideous mask of deep-etched wrinkles and weeping sores. Her nose was crooked, her teeth blackened and stunted, her lidless eyes filled with madness. Even her breasts had become formless pouches.

  That was why Thom had observed her studying her own fingers and arm by the dim light. In the few moments preceding her death, Nell Quick had finally become a hell-hagge herself.

  The rain returned, but it did not have the same force as earlier.

  On the rooftop terrace, the charcoaled husk that had once been a beautiful, if devious, woman became spattered with raindrops.

  A solitary and bedraggled magpie flew off the roof to disappear into the night.

  THOM BROUGHT the Jeep round in front of Little Bracken without having to use the steering device on the wheel. He looked along the short path towards the cottage door where Rigwit sat on the stone step. They waved at each other.

  It was a gloriously bright day, with the clear blue skies that tend to
follow a storm. He opened the car door and stepped out, leaving the walking-stick discarded on the back seat. He paused to listen to the birds’ chatter, a small smile on his face. A bee droned by. Flowers along the path somehow seemed more vivid than he remembered.

  He had just returned from the hospital in Shrewsbury where Katy Budd lay conscious but sedated in the intensive care unit. She was going to be okay. The duty doctor explained to Thom and Katy’s parents, who had travelled up from Hampshire to be with her, that while Katy had sustained many broken bones and bruises in the accident, including a fractured pelvis and a left lower ribcage that was pressing against a lung, there were no serious head injuries, even though she had taken a hard knock that had left her concussed. Her body would heal in time (ironically, given her profession, she would require a substantial amount of physiotherapy).

  Katy’s parents had thanked Thom for his concern, telling him that they had spoken with their daughter twice during the night. She had not even complained about the pain she was in, but had seemed drowsily annoyed that she could not remember how the accident had happened. As soon as she was well enough, they informed Thom, they would take her back home to Hampshire to recuperate. They had let slip that hopefully, when Katy was fully recovered, she would stay with them, or at least find somewhere nearby to live. They missed their daughter very much.

  It had left Thom relieved, but still saddened that Katy had been caught up in something that had had nothing to do with her. He had told the physiotherapist’s parents that he would be a constant visitor while she remained in hospital and they seemed delighted to hear it.

  Thom walked up the cracked stone path, the half-smile still on his face, his limp hardly noticeable.

  Rigwit rose from the step and grinned at him. ‘Howsdegil Katty?’ he garbled.

  ‘Slower,’ Thom told him, even though he had caught the elf’s drift.

  ‘How’s the girl Katy?’

  ‘She’ll mend. It’ll take a while, but she’ll be fine.’ He sat on the step and Rigwit clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I don’t think she’ll come back to this place though. When – or if – she remembers what happened,’ Thom added.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ the elf said with a sigh. ‘Jennet is waiting for you in the woods.’

  ‘She was here?’

  ‘No, but she’s waiting for you.’

  Thom made ready to get to his feet, but Rigwit’s little hand now exerted pressure on his shoulder.

  ‘Wait,’ Rigwit said. ‘I’ve got something for you, something that will help to make you well again.’

  ‘I feel fine.’

  ‘I know. But it’s time for you to speed up your recovery. There’s a lot of work ahead of you.’

  Thom turned his head to follow Rigwit as the elf went through to the kitchen. What did Rigwit mean by that last remark? Had he read his mind? Thom was only just formulating his plans, so how could the elf know? Magic, he told himself, not for the first time over the past few days.

  Rigwit was soon back and in his hand was a small round bottle with a longish neck, a hazelnut pressed into its top as a stopper. The elf removed the nut and proffered the bottle to Thom. The thick liquid inside was a deep green.

  ‘Drink half of this now,’ Rigwit advised him, ‘the rest tonight when you go to bed. Leave the empty bottle by your bedside and it’ll be full for the morning, when you’ll drink half again, the rest at night-time. Same routine after that.’

  ‘It’ll fill itself?’ Thom asked in surprise.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’ll refill it during the night while you’re sleeping.’

  Thom held the liquid up to the light and regarded it uncertainly. There appeared to be bits floating in it.

  ‘Looks like corked chartreuse,’ he remarked.

  ‘Whatever that is, this isn’t. Come on now, one good swallow, but only drink half.’

  Thom raised the bottle to his lips and, after a moment’s hesitation, drank from it. Immediately he tasted the elf-made medicine he tried to take the bottle away, but Rigwit would not allow it. The little man pushed against the bottle’s flat bottom until half of the green liquid was gone.

  ‘Swallow,’ he ordered Thom, whose cheeks were filled with the concoction.

  Thom gulped it down and pulled a face. It tasted foul.

  ‘What’s it made from?’ he asked, staring disgustedly at the remainder of the medicine left in the bottle.

  ‘You really don’t want to know.’

  Rigwit had not used these precise words in his reply, but this was the interpretation in Thom’s mind. Sometimes, especially at the beginning, talking with the elf was like watching a badly dubbed Italian movie; the words were not quite in synch with the movement of the mouth. At least Jennet could actually speak the language of humans.

  ‘How long do I have to keep taking the stuff?’ he asked resentfully.

  ‘One month of your time. No more than that.’

  ‘Well, that’s something to look forward to.’

  Rigwit chuckled. ‘You be on your way now. Jennet will be getting impatient. There’s something important she has to tell you.’

  ‘You’re not coming along?’

  ‘It’s about time I got down to some serious housework. The place has become a pigsty with all that’s been going on. Mind you, certain goblins of my acquaintance enjoy living in real pigsties. One other thing before you go . . .’

  He popped inside again and reappeared brandishing a rusty and weathered-looking horseshoe that was half his present size.

  ‘Iron,’ he told Thom unnecessarily. ‘I want you to keep this on your doorstep from now on.’

  Thom regarded him quizzically.

  ‘Iron before the threshold prevents witches from passing through.’

  ‘I could have done with it a week ago. It would have kept Nell Quick out.’

  ‘It was too late for that – she’d already been inside Little Bracken long before you arrived home. Once a witch has gained entry, the spell doesn’t work any more.’

  ‘I guess that’s handy to know, although I don’t expect any more trouble from witches, or wiccans, whatever you call them.’

  ‘Wiccans. You never know, Thom, m’boy, you never can tell. Be prepared, has always been my motto, a saying that has been stolen by your Boy Scouts, I believe.’

  Thom chuckled. ‘I don’t think Baden-Powell knew it belonged to you.’

  Rigwit chuckled with him, then, abruptly: ‘Now shoo! Jennet’s waiting.’ His pointed face turned grave. ‘And Thom . . .’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Please. Be prepared.’

  Thom made his way across the clearing to the edge of the woods, puzzled by the elf’s concern. He paused by the first trees and looked back towards the cottage, with its walls and turret of warm red stone. Rigwit was no longer on the doorstep.

  Everything looked fresh and sparkling after the fierce storm of the night before, although small branches and leaves were strewn across the clearing, torn loose by the winds. Jewels glittered in the grass and the tree leaves, dewdrops not yet absorbed by the sun; flowers abounded, reds, yellows, blues – especially blues for, to his right and crossing the track that led to the river and Castle Bracken, the bluebells flourished, a vibrant carpet of near-impossible beauty. Soon they would be gone, for they bloomed only a few weeks at a time, and he would miss them. But there were other flora to catch his eye, wild flowers and plants that lifted the heart and made the spirit sing.

  He took one last look at the tranquil scene – the sandstone cottage with its stunted but nevertheless proud tower, the broken stone path with dazzling flowers on either side leading up to it, the verdant clearing itself and the trees behind the building, their shades of green too numerous to take account of, and the clear blue skies where birds playfully wheeled and dived above it all.

  Thom filled his lungs with fresh air, the purest anyone could wish to breathe and, for a moment, lost in the gentle splendour around him, he forgot Rigwit’s last words of advice. He f
elt satisfied, content even. Maybe it was because of the contrast between the past few days and the present, the lull after the storm (quite literally in this case), but Thom felt at peace, a feeling that had eluded him for many long years. Since Bethan’s death, in fact.

  He turned and entered the forest’s cool shade.

  Tiny faeries fluttered around her like excited butterflies as she sat on the overturned tree-trunk waiting for him, their colours dazzling as ever in their varied vibrant hues, while brown and red coated pixies darted in and out of the blades of grass, squeals of laughter and sweet singing mingling with birdsong. She wore the same sheer green dress, with its folds of mauve and purple, and her hands were clasped together in her lap. Jennet raised one and waggled her fingers at him as he approached.

  Thom increased his pace, the slight limp no impediment as his heart palpitated and his spirits rose even higher at the sight of her. His excitement grew even more when she rose and skipped towards him.

  They kissed. They kissed and the faeries whooped with glee, swooping around them, catching their hair, brushing their clothes. They kissed as if wanting it to go on for ever, each reluctant to break away, neither of them wishing to be the one to end it.

  At last, Thom needed air and their lips drew apart, although they still clung together.

  ‘I was coming to see you anyway,’ Thom finally managed to say, ‘but Rigwit said you had something important to tell me.’

  Her smile faded. ‘Let’s walk to the lake, Thom, and you can tell me all your news.’

  He frowned, but she had already turned and was leading him by the hand. It only took one step to be by her side and, still holding hands, he looked down at her. He loved her yellow ringlets that became golden when the sun struck them; he loved her petite face with its delicately pointed chin and almond eyes that shone a silvery violet; and he loved the gentle slope of her nose and he loved the pinkness of her soft lips. He squeezed her hand and she returned the pressure.