by Alex Bell
I stopped mid-sentence.
There was blood on the floor.
Dark little droplets of it, scattered on the ground at Kara’s feet.
“Kara?” I said, moving towards her.
She was still muttering something, oblivious to the fact that I was there.
I crossed the room in a few strides, walked around in front of her—
—and all the breath was sucked right out of my body.
Kara had both arms raised but it wasn’t to wave her hands around in some magic-spell ritual like I’d imagined. Instead she was scratching her face, over and over and over again. The skin was peeling away and her long painted nails were gouging into angry flesh, red and raw like meat on a butcher’s block. The grooves were ragged and deep, sure to leave dreadful scars that would mark her skin for the rest of her life.
In that split-second moment of horror while I stared at her, appalled, one of her acrylic nails ripped away from her finger and remained embedded in her cheek like a claw.
“Oh my God, Kara, stop!” I grabbed both her wrists and pulled them away from her face. “Stop! What the hell are you doing?”
She kept on muttering and I heard, at last, what she was saying – the same words over and over again: “It burns, it burns, it burns, it burns, it burns, it burns…”
I felt my heart sink like a stone in my chest.
“Kara!” I shook her gently.
To my relief, she stopped muttering, her eyes focused on me and she said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper, “Jem?”
And then she promptly burst into tears that mixed with the blood running down her face.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Shell
When Kara came up from the cellar, she looked like she’d been attacked by a deranged wild animal. Jem tried hard to persuade her to stay. He wanted to call an ambulance for her, but she was determined to leave. She wouldn’t even stay at the Waterwitch long enough to wash the blood from her face. She just wanted to go home.
“But what about the witch bottle?” I said, desperate to find out. “Where is it? Did it work? Did you see the witch?”
“For God’s sake, Shell, shut up about the witch!” Jem snapped.
As she refused to stay, Jem fetched his coat and said that he would walk Kara to her home above the shop, a couple of streets away. When he came back we went into the library and ate dinner around the stove in subdued silence.
“Now do you believe that there is something wrong with the cellar?” I finally asked.
“Perhaps there’s just something wrong with Kara,” Jem replied. “She’s obviously unstable, Shell. No sane person would do something like that. And how much do you really know about her anyway? The two of you chat in her shop but you don’t hang out outside it, do you?”
“Poor Kara,” Emma said with a shudder. “She seemed fine when we saw her the other day. It’s hard to believe she could have had such a breakdown in such a small amount of time.”
“Sometimes people just crack,” Jem replied. “And you don’t get any warning.”
“Well, what did the council say?” Emma asked. “Are they going to find you somewhere else to live?”
“I couldn’t get through,” Jem said. “There’s something wrong with the landline.”
“Why didn’t you use your mobile?” I asked.
Jem frowned. “What?”
“Your mobile. Why didn’t you use your mobile?”
“I … I don’t know.” He looked confused. “It didn’t even occur to me.”
“Do it now,” I begged.
“It’s too late,” Jem replied. “They won’t be open. I’ll do it first thing in the morning, OK?”
I pointed at him and said, “She’s influencing you somehow. She stopped you from making that phone call. She’s getting inside your head.”
“No one is getting inside my head,” Jem said irritably. “I said I’ll call tomorrow – I can’t do any better than that.”
He rubbed at his temples with his fingertips.
“You’ve got a headache again, haven’t you?” I asked. “You’ve had loads of them since you came to the Waterwitch. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Not particularly. There’s been a lot going on—”
“It’s because of the witch. She shoved an iron nail through a poppet I made of you. I made it for protection but she turned it into dark magic. I think she’s cursing you.”
“Oh, Shell, could we please not do this right now?” Jem said, dropping his hand with a sigh. “It’s been a really long day and I don’t even understand half of what you just said. Everyone gets headaches sometimes. It doesn’t mean that you’re cursed.”
“What about the ship that crashed down on you this morning?” I pressed, leaning forward in my chair. “Was that just a coincidence, too? We should never have taken that witch bottle out of the fireplace. It’s our fault she got out. And I think she hates Christian Slade so much that it spills over into hating us, too.”
“Gran said something like that to me at the hospice,” Emma said. “She said that was why she didn’t want you to come back – that you were the last people who should be here.”
“But didn’t you find out just today that we might also be related to the woman Christian Slade accused of witchcraft?” Jem asked. “So if we’re related to her, she wouldn’t want to hurt us, would she?”
I thought of Dad and said, “Parents don’t always love their children, though. We both know that.”
Jem shook his head and looked away.
“She thinks Christian Slade had evil blood.” I pressed on. “And she doesn’t want there to be any more men like him.”
Jem looked back at me. “Evil blood?” he said. “Well, that makes sense, at least. We come from a rotten family, Shell, and we probably do have more than our fair share of bad blood.” Suddenly he leaned forward and grabbed my hand. “But we got out of there, didn’t we? This is our fresh start, this is our chance to finally be normal. And the only thing standing in the way of that is the fact that you can’t let go of all this witchcraft stuff.”
I snatched my hand away from his. “I don’t know how to make you understand,” I said, feeling hurt and frustrated in equal measures. “But you’re wrong this time, Jem. You’re wrong. Think about it. Ever since we came here, something’s been different. You don’t look right. You’re tired all the time, you burned your hand and now you’re getting these headaches.”
“She’s right,” Emma said. “I noticed something was off about you the day I arrived. And that day at the Seagull you—”
“Stop.” Jem held up his hand and Emma fell silent. He turned back to me and said, “I’ve been trying to keep us safe. Do you think that’s easy? It’s tough, Shell, and you’ve only made it even harder. Of course I’m tired. Of course I feel like crap. But it’s just stress. I am not cursed. And I’m not listening to this any more.” He stood up. “I’m going to bed.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Shell
I went to bed soon after Jem but the image of Kara’s ruined face kept replaying in my mind and I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I got up, left the room and walked down the corridor past the row of closed doors. When I paused outside Room 19 I distinctly heard the sharp scratch of a match flaring to life. If I was to open the door I knew I would see a sailor leaning against the wall, looking out of the window and smoking a cigarette. I could even smell the smoke, just faintly, out in the corridor.
I hadn’t been too afraid of him the first time – but then he turned to look at me and I saw that the side of his head was gone. Just gone. In its place there was a mess of blood and bone and matted hair, blobs of brain matter and jelly steadily leaking out on to his collar as he gazed at me, quite calmly, slowly exhaling smoke that swirled in the air between us. He must have been one of the sailors who’d been shot on deck by his mad crewmate. The one who saw the witch’s face. Once you see her face it’s over. That’s what they said. It wasn’t her fac
e that bothered me, though, it was the laugh.
Outside Room 21 I could hear the soft creaking of a rope and knew that the dockhand who had been sent to change the Waterwitch’s name was in there, hanging by his neck from the rafters, slowly swinging round and round, his face purple and bloated. They were all here with us. All of them.
I briefly considered going and waking Jem up and dragging him into one of the other rooms but there was no guarantee they’d still be there by then, and there was no guarantee that he would see them even if they were smoking and bleeding and dying right in front of him.
At the staircase I paused and thought about going downstairs to Room 7 where the blood dripped from the beams and Christian Slade’s tortured ghost languished in utter misery. But I’d told Emma the truth when I’d said that Christian didn’t talk. He couldn’t. When the beam fell on him it must have shattered part of his lower jaw. He tried to speak to me once and bits of tooth and bone and gum started falling out of his mouth.
As I stood there, thinking about it, I suddenly heard the scratch of nails on wood – a fearsome, frantic, scraping, clawing sound – and I knew that Cordelia was down there again, trying to find some way into the room. I knew that if I were to kneel down and peer through the banisters I’d see her, pressed up against the door, deepening the grooves in the wood as she dragged her nails down the door over and over and over again, until the blood ran freely down her wrists. I shuddered and turned away from the staircase.
I went back to my room and lay down in bed, staring up at the wooden beams above my head, trying to work out what I should do. I had to do something. Jem had looked after me all my life and now there was a danger here that he couldn’t see and didn’t believe in that I had to protect him from.
I made up my mind. First thing in the morning, I was going to see Kara. I would make her tell me how to finish the witch-bottle spell. Perhaps I could perform it even though she wasn’t able to – after all, I wanted it a lot more than she did. I needed it. I was willing to die doing it if it meant I could save my brother. And I had the birds to help me.
I was up with the grey light of dawn, tiptoed downstairs and let myself out into the biting morning air. The cobbles were damp with tiny diamonds of sea mist and the air was cold and crisp and clear. There was a grey and gloomy feeling but I couldn’t tell if it was in the air or just in my own head.
I headed towards Buller Quay where one or two of the cafes were bound to be open to serve the fishermen coming in with their catch. They were unloading crates from the boats as I walked past – lemon sole, cuttlefish and cod, brown crabs and squid. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the wide-eyed, open-mouthed fish lying in their beds of ice in their blue crates. Their open eyes were all staring and surprised and why not? They couldn’t have known last night, as they swam about in their dark, peaceful, underwater world, that these were to be their last hours alive. You always thought there would be more nights, more days, more chances…
I hurried past the market and into one of the cafes where I bought two bacon sandwiches and two coffees in paper cups with the last of my money. Then I walked around the corner to the next street where Kara’s shop was. Her mum’s flat was just above it and had its own separate entrance and bell. I rang it and stood waiting, hoping that Kara would answer the door instead of her mum.
In fact, Kara must already have been up and dressed – or perhaps it was just that she never got undressed last night – because she quickly came downstairs wearing the same jeans and black top from yesterday. She looked different, and not just because of her clawed face. There were no beads or plaits in her hair – it hung loose and lifeless over her shoulders. And her usual dark eye make-up was gone. Perhaps that was what made her look so washed out and pale.
In the grey morning light the deep cuts down her face looked even worse, despite the fact that she’d washed the blood away. It was hard to believe she’d really done that with her own nails. The cut beneath her right eye had gone a sort of yellowish colour and I thought it was bound to become infected.
I held up the paper bag. “I brought you some breakfast,” I said quietly.
Kara looked from me to the bag for a moment, then she sighed and said, “Let me fetch my jacket.”
We walked around to Banjo Pier. They’d put a sign out to say it was closed, meaning they must be expecting bad weather, but we just stepped over it and made our way down the stone walkway. They closed the pier in bad weather because there were no railings to hold on to if a high wave tried to drag you away but locals knew when it was safe to go down there and when it wasn’t.
Kara and I sat on the curved seat that ran around the circular section right at the end of the pier. From there we could watch the trawlers, netters and mackerel boats returning to the harbour. I opened the bag and handed Kara the bacon sandwich and coffee and, for a few minutes, we sat eating in silence.
The bacon sandwich was greasy and the coffee was cold and tasted like the plastic cup it was contained in. Kara didn’t seem too impressed, either, or perhaps she just wasn’t hungry, because she started ripping off pieces of the sandwich and throwing it out to the seagulls who flapped and shrieked and pecked at each other as they fought to get to the scraps first. I wondered if seagulls should really be eating bacon – wasn’t it kind of unnatural for them to be eating pig? – but I didn’t say anything.
“I was here on the pier one time and someone was feeding the seagulls and then this fat pigeon wandered in out of nowhere,” Kara said. “And the seagulls killed it.” She didn’t look at me, but stared out at the returning fishing boats instead. As the waves battered against the side of the pier, sea spray blew into our faces and I was sure the salt must be stinging her cuts like anything but she didn’t flinch or turn her face away. “They tore it apart right in front of us,” she went on. “There was blood and feathers smeared all around the place.” She glanced at me. “That’s why they tell you not to feed them, isn’t it? It makes them go a bit mad. It was high tide, too, the fishing boats were coming back and there was blood in the water. Perhaps that made it worse, perhaps they could smell it and that’s why they went berserk like that.”
“Kara, what happened in the cellar?” I asked, tossing the remains of my sandwich in the bin. I hadn’t come here to talk about seagulls. My hair was wet with spray now and sticky with salt on the back of my neck. “Why didn’t it work? What went wrong?”
“I couldn’t say the incantation,” Kara said. “It was like there were spikes pressing into my tongue, preventing me.”
She put a hand to her mouth and lapsed into silence.
Spikes pressing into her tongue. Of course. The witch’s bridle.
I took a piece of paper and a pen from my pocket and handed them over to her. “Could you write the incantation down for me?”
Kara took them from me reluctantly and scribbled down the words before passing the pen and paper back. “It won’t do you any good,” she said quietly. “Don’t go down to the cellar, Shell. Leave the Waterwitch as soon as you can and don’t ever think of the place again.”
Suddenly, I caught a snatch of the witch’s laughter, faint at first – you could almost mistake it for the wind – but I could hear it clear as anything, shrieking over the thundering waves slamming relentlessly into the pier and spraying us with salt. The weather was getting worse. Maybe we shouldn’t be here after all.
“Can you hear that laugh?” I asked. Kara was a witch, too, so there was no reason to think she wouldn’t be able to hear Cordelia now, not when the laugh was shrill and loud enough to slice through the top of your head.
I glanced at Kara only to find her staring back at me with the strangest expression on her face.
“Shell,” she said, “you’re the one who’s laughing.”
I stared back at her, incredulous, remembering how Emma had said the exact same thing to me back at the Waterwitch.
“Don’t say that!” I glared at her. “It’s not me laughing, it’s her! There it was
again! You must have heard it that time, you must have!”
Kara stood up. The wind had picked up and plucked the sandwich wrapper from her hands, carrying it over the side to the water below. The gulls must have thought it was food because they went screaming after it in a frenzy of feathers. “I heard you laugh,” Kara said. “And no one else.”
I stood up, too.
To my surprise, Kara took a step backwards, and her legs bumped up against the stone wall.
That laugh came again, carried in on the south-westerly gale that drove the trawlers racing back into the shelter and safety of the harbour. The sound crawled over my skin and I shuddered from head to toe. Kara went even paler than before and I didn’t blame her. There was no amusement in that sound – only madness. It was all twisted up and wrong, like seagulls eating pigs, and boats trapped inside bottles, and dads that broke your bones and weren’t sorry afterwards, weren’t sorry at all. It was like looking at the world from the other side of a mirror and finding everything was upside down and the wrong way round.
“You’re already cursed,” Kara said, staring at me. “There’s nothing you can do. Leaving the Waterwich won’t help. The witch’s curse will follow you to the ends of the earth. Once you’re cursed there’s no hope.”
The wind made tangled birds’ nests of our hair as it whipped around our faces, and I think I knew what Kara was going to do even before she did. Her eyes slid away from me and out towards the sea – perhaps she heard the witch laughing out on the water after all – and then the monstrous grey wave was rolling towards us, rising up out of the ocean like a hand with outstretched fingers.
Too late, I remembered the sailor on the Waterwitch all those years ago. I saw Kara turn towards the wall, and I reached my hand out towards her and my fingers even came into contact with the butter-soft leather of her jacket but I was too late to stop her. In one movement she was over the side and the wave closed around her like a fist, leaving my hand grasping at air.
