by Alex Bell
I couldn’t hear any fly and was about to say so when Jem said, “I lost my job at the Seagull yesterday.”
“What do you mean you lost it? I thought they just had no more work?”
“No, I was fired.”
“Fired? But, what—”
“Dad turned up,” Jem said. “There was a scene. Word gets around. And work is finishing for the season now anyway. We’ve got enough money to buy food for one week, maybe two. After that, there’s nothing.” He rubbed his hand over his face and said, “I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t just leave Shell living with Dad but now I can’t look after her, either. I don’t want us to be split up but, winter’s coming and we can’t live on the street. What am I supposed to do? What would you do?”
I looked back at him across the table, my mind searching desperately for some magical answer. I didn’t know what he should do either.
“Honestly, Jem, I really don’t think I’m qualified to dish out life advice. To anyone.”
A sudden movement caught my eye and my gaze fastened on the kettle on the table between us. It was one of those old-fashioned metal ones and I could see my distorted reflection in the surface, although it was smeared with fingerprints. We’d left the door open and the doorway to the restaurant was a dark rectangle in the reflection. For a strange moment, I thought I saw something move across it, like someone running past the door.
There’s no one in the restaurant, I told myself. Concentrate on Jem or he’ll think you don’t give a toss about what he’s trying to tell you.
I looked back at him and saw that he was massaging his temples with his fingers.
“Headache?” I asked sympathetically.
“Yeah. Killer.”
“You should take something for it.”
“I have but I can’t seem to shake it.” He dropped his hand and looked up. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“It sounded like a door slamming.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Shell
It must have been twenty-five centimetres wide, as big as a dinner plate. One bright orange leg slipped out from underneath the crack in the doorway, impossibly long for any normal spider – but this was no normal spider, was it? This was a sea spider – a giant, wretched sea spider that lived in the darkest, deepest place on earth. It didn’t seem to have a body, it didn’t even have eyes because things that lived at the bottom of the sea didn’t need eyes.
Instead it was just legs, masses of jointed legs that skittered across the floor towards me, and even though it couldn’t see me it must have known I was there because its long tubular mouth was stretched out towards me eagerly…
I threw out my uninjured hand, raising it up in front of me, trying to protect myself, and the flurry of glossy wings seemed to appear out of the end of my fingertips, like magic. The black bird was there all of a sudden and, quick as a flash, it had landed on the floor in front of me, snatched up the spider, tipped back its head and swallowed the thing whole.
Pain stabbed through my nail and I looked down in time to see the tip of another bird’s beak trying to force its way out from underneath. Just when I was sure it was going to rip the nail off altogether, the bird burst free and became full size, landing on the floor beside the first one in an untidy heap of feathers. A second spider came out from under the door and the second bird pounced on it instantly.
But more spiders appeared then, more than I could count, pouring out under the door, rushing towards me, intent on keeping me away from the cellar. The air filled with wings as more birds burst from the ends of my fingers, and I had never been more glad to see them in my life as they dived in, snatching spiders straight off the floor, like seagulls plucking bony fish from the freezing sea.
I staggered back, my hand found the door handle to the restaurant and I practically fell through it before slamming it closed behind me, leaning my whole body weight against it. For a few moments I could hear them out there, the flapping of wings, the snapping of beaks, the skittering of jointed legs on wooden floorboards. And then, abruptly, there was silence, and I knew, even before I opened the door, that they had gone. Like they’d never been there at all.
I opened it just a crack at first, but there was only an empty corridor in front of me. My eyes drifted to the wooden staircase, with all its carved sea creatures, and it seemed to me that there were a few more giant sea spiders there than I’d ever noticed before.
I closed the door, hurried through the restaurant and into the kitchen to join Jem and Emma.
“I made a mistake,” I said, as soon as I walked in. “About the witch in the cellar.”
Jem groaned. “Not this again!” He squinted at me and said, “Why is your hair all dusty?”
“We need to leave,” I said. “We need to leave the Waterwitch.”
“And go where?” Jem asked. “We’re lucky to have somewhere to sleep at all. We can’t leave just because you’ve worked yourself up about ghost stories and shadows.”
“There is a woman here in this inn with us,” I said, doing my very best to sound calm. “I have seen her. She exists. She wears yellow flowers in her hair, and she makes her hands bleed trying to get into Room 9, and she—”
“What did you say?” Jem interrupted.
The expression on his face made me feel suddenly unsure.
“I said … I said she makes her hands bleed trying to get into Room—”
“No,” Jem said. “Before that.”
I frowned. “She wears yellow flowers in her hair?”
For a long moment he just stared at me. Finally, he said, “Are they bird’s-foot trefoil flowers?”
“Yes! So you have seen her!”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“Then how did you know about the bird’s-foot trefoil?”
“They were Mum’s favourite flower.”
“Well, what’s that got to do with—”
“You do remember that, don’t you?” Jem pressed. He stood up and stepped towards me. “You do remember that they were Mum’s favourite flower?”
“I guess.”
“They came loose whenever Dad grabbed her by her hair. And you’d get all upset and crawl around picking them up and then you’d try to give the flowers back to Mum later but she always told you to just throw them into the sea.”
“Yes, I remember. But what’s that got to do with the witch?”
“Oh, Shell, for God’s sake, can’t you see that there is no witch? Don’t you think it’s strange that she wears the exact same flowers in her hair that Mum used to? You’ll be saying she has a burnt face next.”
I stared at him. “But she does have a burnt face,” I said. “They forced her to wear a witch’s bridle and she—”
“Mum had a burnt face!” Jem shouted, making me jump. “Have you forgotten what happened the morning she killed herself? Is that what’s been happening here – have you repressed it somehow and now it’s all coming back?”
“I haven’t repressed anything, and I know exactly what happened!” I replied hotly. “We were having breakfast and Dad threw a mug of scalding tea in her face. She … she screamed and I cried and you—”
“I did nothing, just like always!” Jem practically snarled out the words. “Mum was completely alone, she had no one to help her, she—Oh, what does it matter now anyway? It happened. There’s no changing it. There’s no making up for it. You just … you’re not well, Shell, and you’re getting things all muddled up in your mind.”
I turned away from him angrily. My eyes filled with tears. And for a moment – for this one terrible, treacherous moment – I wondered whether he could possibly be right. Perhaps I was wrong and there was no witch haunting the inn at all. Perhaps it was just my own mind that was haunted.
“Let it hurt,” Jem said quietly behind me, “and then let it go. That’s the only way to get through it. You can’t keep holding on to all of this, Shell, it’s not good for you.”
A sharp stin
g of pain made me look down at my hand. One of my fingers was bleeding – just a thin line of blood trickling out from my nail. I remembered the tip of a bird’s beak forcing its way out and then I remembered what Kara had said to me back at her shop about a pellar’s magic: It’s the kind that makes your hands bleed…
I took a deep breath and turned back round to Jem. I wasn’t wrong. I knew in my bones that the Waterwitch was haunted, not just by Cordelia Merrick but by Christian Slade and the missing sailors as well.
“The bird’s-foot trefoil is just a coincidence,” I said. “And it’s not such a strange one, either. The sea slope gets covered in that flower during the springtime, it’s everywhere. I know you don’t believe me but there is a woman here in the inn with us and she hates us but she hates you most of all. I think she’s been cursing you from the moment we arrived. Maybe she was the one who sent us the keys in the first place. Maybe she wanted us to come here all along.”
Jem made an impatient noise and turned away from me.
“Maybe you should think about going somewhere else,” Emma said. I was so grateful I could have hugged her. “Look, whether or not the Waterwitch is really haunted, if it makes Shell feel the way that she does then it’s just not a good place to be. Why don’t you phone the council and register for homelessness assistance? They’ll have to find somewhere for you to live then.”
Jem sighed and rubbed his eyes. For a long moment he didn’t speak at all. “All right,” he said, at last. “Fine. I give up. I’ll phone the council this afternoon.”
I ran over to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Jem replied. “These things take time. I doubt they’ll be able to find us somewhere else straight away. We might have to stay here for another couple of days.”
“Then I’ll call Kara and ask her to come and bless the inn.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, then why not? Just make it clear to her that we can’t pay anything. We need all our money for food, OK? I mean it, Shell, we don’t have enough to spare for an exorcism fund right now.”
“It’s not an exorcism, it’s a blessing,” I said. “Only a pellar could perform a proper exorcism.”
It was all the same to Jem and I knew there was no point trying to explain the difference to him. He went upstairs to phone the council and I used my mobile to call Kara. She agreed readily enough – I think she always kind of wanted to add the Waterwitch to her collection.
She came less than an hour later. Her long black hair was tied up into a high ponytail that swished around when she moved. A few slim plaits fell amongst her loose hair, fastened at the ends with purple amethyst beads. She’d swapped her dress for jeans and a black tank top underneath a black leather jacket.
“Don’t worry,” she said, holding up her hand before I could say a word. “I performed an extra protection spell on myself before I came out. Whatever’s down there in that cellar can scream and curse at me all it wants but it won’t be able to hurt me. I promise.”
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked, even though the very last thing I wanted to do was go down to that cellar.
“Nope,” Kara said. “Just wait up here for me. I should only be a few minutes.”
“What are you going to do?” I pressed.
“Put the witch back in the bottle, of course,” Kara replied. She rummaged in her bag and drew out a glass bottle. It was a mixture of blues and greens and whites, all blended together as if many different kinds of glass had melted into each other. “It’s made from sea glass,” Kara said. “Perfect for a sea witch.”
She handed it over to me so I could take a better look. It was a beautiful, lovely thing – far nicer than the grotty old green one that Jem and Emma had found in the fireplace all those years ago.
It rattled as I took it from her and I realized there were objects inside.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
Kara counted the items off on her fingers. “Sea salt, iron nails, bird bones – don’t ask me how I got those – shells, a little blood and some sand. All I have to do is say the incantation and her spirit will be drawn into the bottle.”
“And what should I do with it then?”
“My suggestion? Take a boat, row out a little way and drop it into the sea. She won’t be able to do any more damage there.”
“Listen,” I said. “Something happened here earlier.”
I started to tell her about the giant sea spiders that had come swarming up from underneath the door. Kara ought to know what she was dealing with. But she hardly seemed concerned at all.
“Smoke and mirrors,” she said. “They wouldn’t have been able to hurt you.”
I felt another flare of alarm. “No, but Kara, I really think that they could have—”
“Shell, really, I’ve got this!” Kara said.
I could sense that I was starting to irritate her, and that’s why I didn’t try to say anything more and I just let her open the cellar door and walk down those steps.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jem
I’d meant it when I told Shell we would leave the Waterwitch. I went upstairs to my room fully intending to phone the council. I found the number online, walked over to the phone by the side of the bed and picked up the receiver, but then I paused. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a good idea any more, and I couldn’t remember why I had agreed to it in the first place. There was nothing wrong with the Waterwitch. Why had I let Shell persuade me into giving in to all her craziness? If I contacted the council and told them about our situation then they might split us up. This wasn’t a decision I wanted to be rushing into.
I spent the next hour going over it in my mind, trying to work out what was best. Finally, I remembered what Emma had said about the Waterwitch not being a good place for Shell. I knew she was right so, once again, I picked up the phone and, this time, raised the receiver to my ear. But the dialling tone didn’t sound right. It wasn’t the normal electronic drone but almost more like the buzz of an insect.
I tried calling the number anyway but the buzzing didn’t go away, in fact it got worse. By the time the phone was answered it was so bad that I couldn’t understand the person on the other end of the line and was forced to hang up. I tried again and, this time, it didn’t sound even vaguely like a dialling tone. The sound of an insect buzzing was unmistakeable. Having that noise pressed right up against my ear was unbearable and made my head throb worse than ever. I hung up and stared at the phone, wondering whether a fly could possibly have got trapped inside it.
Suddenly something landed on my arm and crawled over the skin. I was sure I’d see a fly there when I looked down, but there was nothing. I could still hear it, though – this frantic, furious buzzing that, actually, sounded more like a wasp than a fly. And it didn’t seem to be coming from the phone any more but somewhere in the room instead. I frowned. Perhaps there was a nest of them. Perhaps they were in the walls. That would explain why I kept on hearing them but never saw any…
I stood up, trying to work out where the sound was coming from, but then Shell called my name from downstairs. I walked over and opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Would you come down here?”
I crossed over to the staircase and saw her standing at the bottom, staring up at me, her face pale.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s Kara. When she went down to the cellar she said she’d only be a few minutes, but she’s been there for half an hour now. I’ve tried calling her but she doesn’t reply. Will you go and check on her? I’m too scared to go.”
“All right.”
I walked down the stairs and reached the bottom as Emma came in through the restaurant with Bailey.
“I’m just going to fetch Shell’s friend up out of the cellar,” I said before turning back to Shell. “You did tell her that we’re not paying for this mumbo-jumbo, didn’t you?
She’s not stringing this out to earn more?”
“Don’t be cynical.” She frowned at me. “It’s not like that. Kara just wants to help.”
I held up my hands. “Whatever you say.”
I turned away, stepped through the open doorway, and the cold hit me like a solid wall. It was almost as if the old stones down here soaked up the chill and blasted it back out towards you. The whole place smelled musty and damp and salty somehow, like the inside of a sunken ship.
“Be careful!” Shell called out behind me.
I waved my hand at her without looking back, while silently cursing Kara for getting Shell all worked up in the first place. This was exactly the kind of thing she didn’t need.
There wasn’t much light on the staircase so I put my hand out against the stone to guide my way. When I got to the bottom, light from the single bulb in the cellar spilled out of the open doorway. I stepped through it and instantly saw the reason for the damp smell. The sump pump had broken and was full to the brim with dirty water that trickled over the sides and formed a large puddle on the ground around it.
There were still shelves fixed to the walls from when the room had been used as storage but, other than that, there was nothing down here except for the big fireplace where we had found the witch bottle. It had been repaired and took up almost the entire wall opposite the door.
Kara stood facing it with her back to me, muttering something. Magic words, probably. No doubt she thought she was performing some kind of spell. I’d met Kara a couple of times when Shell had dragged me into her shop and she seemed nice enough. Despite what I’d said before, Kara didn’t strike me as a fraud and I thought she probably really did believe all that nonsense about broomsticks and pentacles, or whatever.
“Shell sent me down here to check on you,” I said.
Kara didn’t turn around. Her shoulders were moving slightly and I realized that she must be doing something with her hands.
“Do you want a cup of tea before you go?” I asked, taking a step closer. “We’re about to light the stove in the library if you—”
