Witches of Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  “I know.”

  “To human beings it won’t look or feel like a war, it’ll be more like . . . one of those modernist paintings you lot do, if it melted. Inside all your brains. Forever. That’s the message I came to deliver: you have to get your people to vote the right way or, failing that, find some other way to stop this happening. If you don’t sort this, we will.”

  It boggled Autumn to think cosmic powers from other worlds paid more attention to local news than she did. “I can’t deliver some mad message to the whole town. They won’t . . . believe me.” Again. He was trying to put her through her ordeal again.

  He looked disappointed in her. “I don’t mind if my father goes to war,” he said. “I get to take heads. I haven’t had that pleasure in a while. I came back here because I was worried about you. About all of you.” He sighed. “Look at you. Shaking. Furious. But if I asked you to come with me—”

  “No. I can resist you now.”

  “I said ‘ask.’ And I won’t ask. But you would.” He switched his radio back on, and Autumn flinched, but now instead of the unearthly sounds of his home, it was playing smooth jazz. “Nice,” he said. “We don’t have that at home.” He took a sudden, deliberate stride and once again, without her seeing where he went, he was gone.

  Autumn slumped against the wall, breathing hard. It was all true. It was all true, and she had completely failed to deal. She needed help. No. No. They all needed help. Who was going to believe her? Could she even make herself try to convince . . . ? No. It didn’t matter what happened to her, for everyone’s sake she had to try. First she had to find Judith and tell her they were now on the same side. Because they’d make a great PR team: the mad woman and the old lady everyone hated. But where else could she start? Clasping her unicorn ornament to her, she rushed back into the shop and locked the door behind her.

  4

  Judith ran a line of silver paint, with several of the ingredients she’d bought from the magic shop in it, around the edge of her window sill. This was the last one. It was getting dark outside. She’d spent a couple of hours covering every entrance to the house, making sure she at least had a redoubt, somewhere to run back to if things tonight went pear-shaped. She had been thinking about possible allies, and had realised there was only one possibility, and that was going to be a bloody awkward conversation, but if she was going to go on the attack, she needed all the help she could get. She looked up at the sound of a knock on the door.

  “That’ll be your boyfriend,” Arthur called from upstairs.

  “If only!” Judith yelled back. She went to open the door, checking as she did so that the line she’d painted around it earlier was still intact. She opened the door to find nobody there. A meaningful absence of person. A sharp smell made her sneeze, a different scent to that of the figure who’d come from the woods, but just as troubling. She saw what she was smelling: in the middle of her front door had been painted, in red, the three lines of a downwards-facing triangle. She realised immediately what the shape signified. All you needed were white letters in a reassuring font across it and you had the Sovo brand logo. She grabbed her coat, called out to Arthur that she was just popping out for five minutes, and was out the door before he could say anything scathing in reply.

  Autumn had marched around the town in the late afternoon dark, trying to find Judith, having realised that she had no idea where she lived. She’d hoped to find someone who knew her. She was about to look in on the Plough and ask Terry, who worked behind the bar there, when she saw, across the Market Place, Lizzie. She was standing beside the post box under the streetlight, a letter in her hand, and visibly hesitating. She was crying. Perhaps yesterday—earlier that day even—Autumn would have made sure Lizzie didn’t see her and gone on her way. Now, feeling as vulnerable as she did, she didn’t seem to have room for resentment. She knew now that the impossible things she’d studied were real. It didn’t matter what Lizzie thought was true. As Lizzie seemed to be making herself raise the letter towards the slit in the box, Autumn found herself running across to her. “Hey,” she shouted, “Lizzie, wait!”

  Lizzie turned, startled. “I was just going to post this letter,” she said, quickly wiping her eyes.

  “Well . . . don’t!”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “No,” and as she said it, Autumn found huge relief in still understanding her old friend, “but I know you don’t want to post it.”

  Lizzie let herself be led into the Plough. They found the snug was empty and they could talk in private there, the only sound being the quiz machine. Autumn got them two pints of Arkell’s 3B, the first sip of which was very welcome. “A lot’s happened to me today,” she said, sitting down facing Lizzie.

  Lizzie found herself actually laughing. That Autumn could have dragged her in here having found her in that state and then led with what she’d been doing . . . that was very her. Very her was good right now. “Me too,” she said, “I’ve come to a big decision I’m sure will please you—”

  “No, listen. This is what I wanted to tell you before, only . . . has anything impossible ever happened to you?”

  Lizzie had to take another drink and consider this change of pace for a moment. “I suppose the moments when I’ve . . . thought . . . I was having some sort of communication with God—”

  Autumn waved aside the religious stuff. “I mean something that made you feel bad?”

  Lizzie opened her mouth in exasperation at having her subtext run over yet again. Then she closed it again as she realised there was something. “Once I’d posted my letter—” Autumn gestured at her to get past that. “I was about to go back to the church and try to force myself to touch a large sum of money given to me as a donation for the poor.”

  Autumn’s eyes narrowed, as if this wasn’t quite what she was after, but she was too interested to let it go. “Why can’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve started to feel . . . that perhaps the world is just . . . chairs and tables and physical objects and that’s all.”

  Again, Autumn didn’t follow through on the implications of that. “So that means it’s just money.”

  “Yes. I know. That’s what I don’t get about my own brain. Well done on putting your finger on that. Cheers.” Lizzie took another deep gulp of her pint.

  “Listen, this psychologist once asked a group of people if they’d sit in a chair that had belonged to a serial killer, that had been in his house—”

  Lizzie shook her head. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d want it cleaned.”

  “It’s been cleaned.”

  “Steam cleaned?”

  “It’s clean, okay?”

  “Still, no.”

  “Because?”

  “Because: euw.”

  “And almost everyone says that. When it’s just a chair. I think that reaction is hardwired into peoples’ brains, like they know there’s something more to the world. I used to think that was just a sign that symbols were important.”

  Lizzie found herself astonished. “‘Used to?’ I thought you didn’t believe in—?”

  “That’s the impossible thing that’s happened to me today. Okay, listen . . .” Autumn started to tell her story, and Lizzie found she was going to need another pint.

  Judith strode quickly through the twilight streets of Lychford, seeing the Sovo symbol painted, at uneven intervals, on roughly half the doors. One of the marked doors opened as Judith approached, and she realised the figure emerging was someone she vaguely new from the quiz nights, a woman called . . . was it Lydia something? In Judith’s head she was labelled as “annoying woman who talks only about false teeth.”

  “Have you seen the state of your door?” Judith called.

  “What?” said Lydia, turning to look. “Paint’s peeling a bit . . .”

  Judith realised she couldn’t see the mark. “You’re against Sovo, aren’t you?”

  Lydia confirmed that she was. Before she
could ask any questions or find a way to mention her dentures, Judith continued on her way, matching marks on doors to “Stop the Superstore” posters in the windows. These were surely the addresses of everyone planning to vote against. She turned into Ford Street, heading south out of the Market Place, and stopped, then stepped back into the shadows when she saw what was up ahead.

  A young woman in a business suit, who Judith vaguely remembered from the meeting, had a paint pot in her hand, and was checking something, presumably addresses, on her phone. She confirmed her latest target, then walked up to the door and marked it with a well-practiced three slashes. Judith wondered if anyone else but her could see this job being carried out. Then she became aware that she was not alone, that someone stood at the corner with her. She didn’t give the new presence the satisfaction of a reaction. “What are you really?” she asked.

  David Cummings stepped from the shadows. “I’ve been very clear about my job title.”

  She couldn’t see anything extraordinary about this man, any more than she had when he’d been on stage at the meeting, but, ah, there, now he wasn’t concealing how big he really was. She could suddenly feel the gravity of him. He was holding himself back, even, letting only a little of himself extrude into the world. His true scale would cause panic in the streets. Judith had only twice in the past been anywhere near one of the great powers. She now had a primal urge to get down on her knees and beg for mercy. Well, sod that. “So it’s not just foolishness on your part. You’re doing this deliberately. Is Sovo some sort of front for—?”

  “We’re exactly who we say we are, doing exactly what we’ve told everyone we’re planning to do.”

  “Apart from the bit about painting on opponents’ doors.”

  He chuckled, entertained by her. “If they can’t see it, what’s the difference?”

  “What are the symbols on the doors for?”

  “You know, I’ve got tons of money to throw around. How would you fancy a Saga tour of the Caribbean for yourself and a friend, whoever that might be? Chance to get away? Start a new life? Before it’s too late?”

  She was pleased that he hadn’t felt able to tell her what the symbols were for. “It would be too late, though. The world would have a bloody hole in it. Why do you want the barriers around the town to fall?”

  “There’s a word people in business use a lot: disruptive. The market can never be stable, the best it can be is falling apart in useful ways. Like the universe in general, really. To disrupt the market in your favour is now seen as being the ultimate achievement. Create a climate of absolute uncertainty, continual fear about enormous change, and you’ll see people’s . . . well, I was about to say ‘true selves,’ but they don’t really have true selves, they’re continually falling apart too . . . you’ll see people concentrate on looking after themselves and their own, grabbing for familiar symbols. The right . . . brands, shall we say, can prosper hugely then, in the ultimate disruption.”

  “Oh, you’d enjoy that.”

  He looked genuinely hurt. “I’m not sure enjoy is the right word. I’m just doing my job. Looking forward to some time off, honestly, after the end of the universe. Now, are you sure we can’t interest you in coming onside?”

  Judith knew he could kill her with a glance. He was limited, though, by the role he’d taken on, by the rules of the game he’d decided to take part in. “Sorry, love,” she said. “I’m too old for shop work.” She marched off before he could tempt her with anything else. She didn’t want him to see how much he’d scared her. She had to find her only ally, but before that, she had to have a go at getting rid of that symbol on her door.

  “After I came back to the . . . the real world,” Autumn was saying to Lizzie, “I was in a psychiatric hospital for a while. I made the mistake of trying to tell people about the impossible beings I’d met.”

  “That’s why you never got back in touch,” whispered Lizzie. She didn’t know what to make of what she was hearing. It was clear that, from what Autumn had told her about her “visit” from some sort of supernatural being today, and the dire, if vague, warning he’d delivered, her friend now believed utterly in the story she’d just told about where she’d been all that time. Was the bit about the psychiatric hospital the only thing that was true? Were their roles now going to be reversed, with Autumn the believer and her the sceptic? Her training had given her insight into how to deal with mental illness, but she didn’t like the idea of having to apply that training to Autumn.

  Autumn smiled the wry and somewhat bitter smile that Lizzie had seen when she’d come to see her, earlier—when she’d failed, she realised, to tell her about all this. “When you told people about the impossible beings you’d met, they gave you a job.”

  “Is this why you didn’t want to step inside my church? Oh. You’re not going to tell me you’ve become a . . .” She’d started to say the word and realised she had to finish, making sure she did so with every ounce of her attentiveness and positivity. “A vampire?”

  “What? Of course not!”

  “Of course not. Right.”

  “You’re the one who thinks wine turns into blood!”

  “Well, I don’t, didn’t, actually, in my brand of . . . and now—”

  “It’s just there’s something about your church. When I walked up to that threshold, I . . . felt something. In those moments when I let myself believe in it, I’ve sometimes felt my time in that other world changed me, tainted me—”

  “Oh no, oh no, that’s so the opposite of what we . . . I . . . stood . . . stand for. You felt welcome when you stepped in, didn’t you? Please tell me you did.”

  “I felt . . . like that building is . . . connected to something, and I can feel it. I sometimes feel it at other places in Lychford.”

  Lizzie blew out a long breath. She didn’t know what to believe. “Perhaps I should show you this money.”

  “Was it maybe something to do with Cummings himself?”

  “Well, he is a being of tremendous power and evil,” said Judith, sitting down beside Lizzie and placing her pint on the table in one movement. “You get on your way, shopkeeper, I need to talk to the grown-up.” By which she meant Lizzie.

  “Sorry,” said Lizzie, “we’re in the middle of—”

  “No time for that. My name, Reverend, is Judith Mawson. Did your predecessor tell you much about this town? Did he mention my name?”

  “No.” Lizzie had heard of the old woman, from a number of terrified parishioners. She was, she assumed, someone whom Autumn would have had as a customer, but the look on her friend’s face was desperate, thankful.

  “Listen,” said Autumn, “I’ve been trying to find you—”

  “You’re talking over her thinking more seriously about my question.”

  Actually, Lizzie was thinking about it. Her predecessor, Frank, had left a very terse note, giving her the bare minimum of information. She’d asked the churchwardens about everything from the organist to the accounts, until she was sure no surprises awaited her. They had always had, though, she realised, a look on their faces as if they were waiting for someone else to tell her something awkward. “No, but—”

  “I know it’s all true,” said Autumn. “A prince of the blood came to warn me. He says something terrible is going to happen.”

  Judith looked to Autumn with new interest. Lizzie was sure she was about to see the start of a beautiful folie à deux, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that inflicted on her friend. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist—”

  “Sorry about this,” said Judith, “but we need to get past all that time-wasting incredulity.” She grabbed Lizzie’s nose between her fingers and viciously twisted before letting go. Lizzie yelled, blinded by tears of pain, furious.

  Judith was looking at the blood on her fingers. She put them in her mouth, tasting it. “You never thought,” she said, as if reading from a book she didn’t understand, “that Joe was playing guitar with Jimi Hendrix.”

  Lizzie found t
he anger draining from her, replaced by sheer vertigo and rising fear. She looked to Autumn, who nodded, willing her to believe it. Lizzie found blood was running from her nose and fumbled for a tissue.

  “No floundering,” said Judith, “no arguing. Good. That’s how a vicar of Lychford should be. Some of your predecessors found a packet of Oat So Simple an intellectual challenge. Now, come on, you too I suppose.” She nodded a little reluctantly to Autumn. “It’s time you knew everything.” She threw back her pint in one long swallow, slammed it back onto the table, got up and headed out of the pub without looking over her shoulder.

  “I’m going with her,” said Autumn. “Lizzie, I have to know.”

  “Yeb,” said Lizzie through the tissue. “I hab do doo.”

  Judith led them through the darkness to the church, which surprised Lizzie, because she couldn’t imagine being taught anything about a space she’d already explored. On the way, she listened to Autumn’s story, asking at intervals for more detail. Autumn only hesitated at the threshold of the building for a moment this time. Lizzie switched on the lights and Judith took them over to one of the enormous displays of blooms that the flower ladies provided to decorate the nave. “I should have come to see you when you first got here. I’d sort of guessed Frank hadn’t done his duty in explaining the extra responsibilities of someone officiating here. It didn’t seem urgent.”

  “You could have pinched her nose,” said Autumn. “How does that work, anyway? Is there information in the blood, in the DNA maybe—?”

  Judith stopped and visibly winced. “‘DNA’ my arse. If you’re coming along, I don’t want you coming out with bloody science all the time. You’ll be looking at everything through the smallest window.”

  “The smallest window,” said Autumn, “might have the clearest glass.”

  “It doesn’t. It’s muddy.”

  “But the other windows will stay as they are, but this window could be replaced by . . . a big set of French windows, when science catches up with magic.”