The Haunting

by Alex Bell

Jem didn’t reply and, in the silence, I heard a hissing sound from whatever that kitchen thing was. I suddenly had a really, really bad feeling.

  “Jem?”

  “Everything’s fine, Shell,” he said, but his voice sounded wooden and stiff and not like him at all.

  I heard water splashing and realized the machine he’d turned on was the industrial water boiler, and that’s where all the steam was coming from.

  “What have you switched that on for?” I asked, taking a step closer.

  For the first time, I saw that water was running straight on to the floor at Jem’s feet. Frowning, I walked over to see what he was doing.

  It was so awful that, for a long moment, I couldn’t take it in at all.

  Jem wasn’t making tea like I’d assumed. Instead he was washing his hands in the gushing stream of boiling water. It bubbled over his skin, which was red and inflamed and bleeding, scarred with raw flesh and white, shiny blisters. He was scrubbing at his hands as if he thought they were covered in soap, and, as I watched, a huge chunk of flesh came right off, landing on the floor with a wet slap, exposing the white bone beneath the ruined red skin.

  I grabbed his arm and yanked him away, but, when I went to speak, the voice that came out wasn’t mine: “Evil blood!” I heard myself hiss. “The world needs no more men like you!”

  “Everything’s fine, Shell,” Jem whispered. “Everything’s fine.”

  I woke up then, jerking upright in my bed. It was a long, long time before I managed to get back to sleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Emma

  As soon as I wheeled myself through the front door of the Waterwitch, Shell practically threw herself at me, her unbroken arm squeezing tight around my shoulders.

  “I’m so happy to see you!” she said. “Oh, wow, is that your dog? What’s his name?”

  “Bailey,” I replied. “And it’s good to see you, too.”

  “I’ll be back at four,” Jem said. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  He closed the door and then it was just Shell, Bailey and me.

  “Is he friendly?” Shell asked, peering at him.

  “Oh, yes. Tickle his tummy and he’ll love you forever.”

  Shell smiled and reached out tentatively to stroke her fingers down Bailey’s neck. He responded by trying to flick his tongue out at her.

  “Do you want to come and see my witch balls?” Shell asked.

  “Witch balls?”

  “I collect them. Most of them are in my bedroom upstairs but I couldn’t fit them all in so I put the spare ones in Room 6 on the ground floor. They move around at night sometimes, so don’t worry if you hear them rolling up and down the corridors. I think it’s just all the magic stored up inside them.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about but I wheeled myself through the restaurant behind her. Halfway across I realized Bailey wasn’t following us but was unzipping my bag where it lay on the floor by the door.

  “Hang on a sec,” I said to Shell. “Bailey wants his bear.”

  Shell stopped. “His what?”

  “It’s his favourite cuddly toy.”

  A moment later, Bailey found his grizzly brown teddy and trotted over to us with the toy held carefully in his mouth.

  “He probably feels safer with it,” I said, feeling obliged to explain. “Even though you’re too old for teddies now, aren’t you?”

  Bailey wagged his tail at me and the three of us went out into the corridor. The cellar door, I noticed, was closed this time.

  Shell opened the door to Room 6 and snapped on the light.

  A hundred different colours winked back at me like a hundred glass eyes.

  The witch balls were piled up in bowls on the windowsill and the dressing table and even by the side of the bed. A giant basket of them stood on the floor in the corner and some tiny ones rested on one of the pillows. I saw purple, green, orange, blue, red, gold and black glass spheres. A few were as big as bowling balls, while some were no larger than an egg.

  “Here,” Shell said, picking one up and thrusting it into my hands. “See what you can do with this.”

  The witch ball was cold against my skin and heavy in my hands. At first glance it was blue but when I looked closer I could see that the glass was shot through deep within with swirls of silver and green.

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” I asked.

  “Witch balls help you see things,” Shell replied, picking up a purple one from a nearby pile. “Things that happened in the past or will happen in the future. Or things that happen just out of sight, in the moments when your back is turned or when you have to blink.”

  She ran her fingers over the cool glass surface of the purple ball in her hands. “If I stare for a really long time, sometimes I can see things in the glass.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the Waterwitch. Back when it was a ship. Drifting in the middle of the sea.”

  “I can’t see anything,” I said, handing the blue witch ball back to her. “It’s very pretty, though.”

  She was obviously encouraged by my interest because she said, “I’ll show you my poppets, too. Wait here a sec.”

  She hurried from the room and I heard her take the stairs outside two at a time, coming back a few minutes later with a pair of dolls she had obviously made herself. I could see she must have spent hours making them, even giving them hair and clothes – but there was something about them that seemed a little creepy to me. Perhaps it was the limp, lifeless way they flopped around.

  “Are these meant to be you and Jem?” I asked as she thrust them into my hands.

  “Yes!” Shell beamed at me. “They’re poppets. I put a protection charm on them to help keep us safe.”

  “They’re lovely,” I said dutifully. The Shell doll rested on my lap but I picked the Jem one up to examine it closer – and felt the weirdest sensation against my skin – a sort of wriggling feeling, as if there were maggots squirming around beneath the cloth, trying to get out. “Shell, what’s inside these dolls?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Mostly lavender and dried herbs,” Shell replied. “That’s why they smell so nice.”

  I looked back at the poppet in my hand and the button eyes stared back at me blankly. I couldn’t feel anything from the cloth body now, though, and told myself I must have imagined it. Even Shell wasn’t crazy enough to sew maggots up inside a doll.

  “You’ll sleep in one of the downstairs rooms, won’t you?” Shell asked, taking back the poppets and slipping them into her pocket.

  “I kind of have to,” I replied, tapping the arm of my wheelchair.

  “Don’t take Room 7,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “There’s something not very nice in there,” she replied. “You might not be able to see it – I’m not sure – but, I mean, the point is that it will still see you. And it’s not the only thing here. I don’t know if you were planning to look into the rooms at all but, um … don’t go into Room 7 or Room 9. They’re the haunted ones.”

  “Oh. But what makes you think—”

  “I’ll help you pick out a room,” she cut me off. “One that’s safe.”

  I followed her back out to the restaurant to collect my bag and, this time, I glanced at the big oil painting of the Waterwitch hanging over the fireplace.

  Then I did a double take.

  It sounded crazy, but I had the strangest, most insistent feeling that something in the painting had changed since the last time I’d seen it. Then it came to me all at once – the ship had been facing the other way before. Surely the prow, with its wild-eyed woman figurehead, had been facing the left side of the painting, pointing upwards towards the top corner?

  But now it was definitely, unmistakeably, facing the right-hand side.

  “It’s a horrible painting, isn’t it?” Shell said, following my gaze.

  “It’s a bit … overpowering,” I agreed. I must have remembered it wrong. Paintings didn’t
move.

  “It’s a lie, too,” Shell added.

  “Hmm? What is?”

  “The hands.”

  “What hands?”

  “In the water.” She pointed and, for the first time, I realized that there were pale hands reaching up out of the dark stormy sea.

  I peered closer. “Is that … is that supposed to be the missing crew?”

  “I guess so. The painting wants us to think that they drowned in a storm. But I don’t think that’s what happened at all. They’d have taken the lifeboats, wouldn’t they? If the storm was that bad? And the lifeboats were all still there on the Waterwitch when they found her.”

  Drifting, deserted in the mist…

  “What do you think happened to the missing sailors then?” I asked and then, hazarding a guess, I added, “Mermaids?”

  “I saw a mermaid once,” Shell said. “In the cove at Polperro. It wasn’t very nice. Its mouth was full of teeth. Just … full of them. Sharp and vicious-looking, like it would rip your throat right out if it got half the chance. I hope I never see a mermaid ever again as long as I live.”

  “Um, well, that’s…” I racked my brain, desperately trying to think of something to say.

  But Shell just smiled and said, “It’s OK. No one else believed me, either. Jem said it must have been a seal I saw. But, you know, seals don’t have that many teeth, do they? Mermaids weren’t involved with the Waterwitch, though.”

  “Well, what do you think happened to the missing crew then?” I asked again. “If you don’t think that they drowned, or were killed by mermaids, then what’s left?”

  There was mutiny, of course, or some kind of insurance-plot conspiracy but I was fairly sure Shell would go for one of the crazier answers like a kraken. Or maybe aliens.

  Instead she said, “I think the sailors are all still here. I think that they never left the ship.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Emma

  Shell decided that I should take Room 3, and helped me move my bag there.

  I noticed the smell as soon as I went in. It wasn’t unpleasant as such, it was just … odd. A smell of salt, seaweed, brine and the faintest whiff of rot. I had to force myself not to wrinkle my nose. Perhaps it was something to do with the inn having been shut up for two months with no heating on – leaving dampness to creep in everywhere. As a child I’d never stayed overnight at the inn because our house was only a ten-minute drive away.

  “This room is OK,” Shell told me. “Except for the moon.”

  “The moon?”

  “If you look out of the window from this room, you’ll always see a full moon, even if it’s really a new moon or a half moon or whatever. I think it’s because it must have been a full moon the night the Waterwitch sank.” She shivered and said, “Isn’t it cold still? I think I’ll go and light the fire in the library.”

  “Shell?” I said as she was about to leave.

  “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong with Room 7?”

  She paused in the doorway. “Don’t go in there, Emma.”

  “I just want to know what—”

  “Christian Slade is in Room 7. It’s where he hides from the witch. A priest stayed in that room a couple of months before the inn closed and he blessed it before he left.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. I remembered what Gran had said about something changing at the Waterwitch just a couple of months before it closed.

  “I read it in one of the online reviews. The witch can’t get in … that’s why Christian hides in there. It makes her fearfully angry but there’s nothing she can do. She hammers at the door, though. All night sometimes. She loves him, you see. But she hates him, too.” She glanced at me and said, “Have you ever loved someone and hated them at the same time?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m glad,” Shell said fiercely. “It’s the worst feeling in the world.”

  Before I could reply, she went off to look for the matches. I waited for her to be out of sight and then wheeled myself out into the corridor. Room 7 was just a few doors down from my room and I couldn’t resist opening the door to have a look. Of course, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary there. It looked practically identical to all the other rooms, with a neatly made bed, and a wardrobe and a dressing table.

  I pulled the door closed and that’s when I noticed the scratches. I peered closer and saw that they looked like claw marks – deep grooves worn into the wood, almost as if there really had been someone out here, desperate to get inside, tearing at the wood with their fingernails. I shook my head. It must have been a dog.

  Bailey and I made our way to the library. I couldn’t reach the light switch so Bailey jumped up against the wall and turned it on for me. I looked around, remembering how endlessly fascinating it had seemed to me as a child. There was a little bar over in the corner, and shelves lining the walls, filled with raggedy old books. There were worn leather armchairs and patched-up chesterfields tucked into corners or set before the cast-iron wood-burning stove in the corner. I remembered how guests would drink coffee here in the morning, or sip nightcaps after dinner, back when the inn was still open. Curios and knick-knacks filled the space between books on the shelves. They were all sea-themed in some way or other. I saw messages in bottles, ivory pieces of scrimshaw and glass mermaids. But the light fixture was the strangest thing of all.

  It was a massive wooden model of the Waterwitch ship, suspended from the ceiling with all its portholes lit up with a sickly yellow light. It wasn’t really enough to illuminate the small room and so there always used to be candles lit on the tables, too.

  You could tell the light fixture was meant to be the ghost-ship version because the sails were in tatters, and masses of barnacles clustered around the prow and the hull like some kind of fungus. The only person on board seemed to be the witch. I could see her little wooden figure peering over the side of the ship – a proper old hag with warts and a crooked snarl and a pointy hat.

  I wheeled myself over to the bookshelves. Normally, I loved old books – the soft feel of their frayed covers, the textured paper, the musty smell. But these had obviously all been selected to tie in with the Waterwitch myth, and as I looked at the shelves I saw nothing but volume after volume about shipwrecks, sea creatures, ghost ships and water witches.

  I picked up the nearest book and opened it to a random page. I was met with a ghastly black and white drawing of a witch being burned to death in a boiling cauldron while a crowd of villagers looked on, cheering and applauding. Some were even waving hankies over their heads in celebration. The witch’s face was terrible. She was an ugly old crone with a long beak of a nose but it was her expression that really chilled me. Her eyes were screwed up tight and her mouth was open as wide as it would go – enough to unhinge the jaw – in an agonized silent scream. I could almost hear it, echoing inside my head.

  “I’ve got the matches!” Shell called out, coming into the room behind me.

  I snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf. “Great. Let’s get this place warmed up.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Shell

  We soon got the fire roaring and it instantly made the room seem a hundred times more cheerful. Bailey lay down in front of the stove with his teddy and that made it even better. Emma and I sat there talking about nothing very much for a while, and it was nice. I’d always liked Emma. She’d never been mean to me or treated me like a freak – not like the other kids at school.

  Then Emma asked me what was wrong with Room 9, and I was trying to work out how to reply, or whether I even should, when my eyes were drawn by a movement in the wood-burning stove. At first I thought it must just have been a red flash of hot ash, a spark lit up against the black logs.

  But then my perception shifted and I saw that those black shapes in the wood-burning stove weren’t logs at all. They were birds.

  They were writhing in agony in the flames, their wi
ngs catching alight and shrivelling the feathers away into ash while their beaks rapped ferociously against the glass window, desperate to get out, even while their beady black eyes burst in their heads from the heat.

  I closed my eyes firmly shut for a moment and, when I opened them, the birds were gone.

  “Shell?” Emma said. “Are you OK?”

  “Yes!” I stood up. “I have to … go and brush my hair. I’ll see you later.”

  “Oh. OK.”

  I walked out quickly, without looking at the fire in case the birds reappeared. I ran up the stairs to my room, closed the door behind me and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  “Go away, birds,” I muttered, just like Jem had told me to. “You’re not real. Go away, go away. I can’t see you. You’re not there.”

  I remembered how the birds came again the day Jem’s eye changed colour. I was eight and Jem was eleven and Dad had taken us to the beach. As we were leaving to go back home, I asked if I could have an ice cream. Dad snapped at me for holding them up, but he gave Jem the money and said we could have one each.

  We both chose a Mr Whippy with a flake in it, then got into the back seat of the car and started the drive home. It was hot and that made the ice cream melt faster. I wasn’t eating it fast enough, and some of it ended up getting spilled on the back seat. The moment it happened, Jem’s eyes met mine and I guess we both knew what was going to happen next. Dad saw the mess in his rear-view mirror and made a short, angry, all-too-familiar sound that made me flinch.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Jem said quickly. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”

  Dad didn’t reply, just pulled the car over to the side of the road, and I felt my heart speed up as he stamped around to the passenger side. I knew I should do something, that I must say something, that I could not allow Jem to take the blame for me like this because I knew what would happen if he did, I knew, but I was so scared that I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t manage to open my mouth and say the words even though I wanted to say them more than anything. Too afraid. Too much of a coward.