The Craftsman

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘What gave me that idea? How about any number of phone calls the last couple of days about getting the gang together and meeting up at moonrise?’ I said. ‘And there is a blue velvet cloak hanging by the front door. Don’t ever apply for a job at MI5, either of you.’

  Another shared look.

  ‘So given that I’m a trainee witch these days, can I come?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re quite mistaken, dear,’ said Daphne. ‘We’re rehearsing tonight. The velvet cloak is for Lady Macbeth. And we’d love to take you, but the director has a strict rule about no audiences until the opening night.’

  I didn’t see any point arguing, so I helped with the washing-up and then it was time for them to go. I finished my wine and thought I might be getting a taste for it.

  ‘Enjoy the peace and quiet,’ Daphne said, as the two of them left. ‘I think Z Cars is on at eight. We’ll be back before ten.’

  She patted my shoulder, and then the two of them went out into the evening. I waited a couple of minutes before going upstairs. In a bedroom that I honestly couldn’t decide whose influence had decorated – it was such an odd mix of Eastern luxury and spartan minimalism – I found the lunar calendar. Moonrise was at 9.30 p.m.

  They wouldn’t be back for ten. Why had they said that when I’d so easily catch them out in a lie?

  I stumbled on the way downstairs, a sharp reminder that I’d drunk more wine than I was used to. In the kitchen, I swallowed a tumbler of water and felt better. I found some aspirin, because the beginning of a headache was creeping up on me, and felt good to go. At a minute before eight o’clock, I set off down the road on my bike.

  It was a wonderful evening, warm and scented, with a light breeze. I rode quickly down towards the town centre. Brakes? Who needed them?

  Avril and Daphne couldn’t be going straight to the Hill. In Avril’s car, they’d be there in a little over fifteen minutes. They were going to collect other members of the coven. I had time to get ahead of them.

  The wind cooled my neck, lifting my hair so that it trailed behind me like a flag. I went faster still.

  Yes, I knew that spying on people who’d befriended me was a pretty mean thing to do, and I didn’t feel good about it. On the other hand, I was a police officer and children were dying. Avril and Daphne knew more than they’d told me. They might believe the information they were holding back wasn’t relevant, but they were hardly the best judges. Also, I wanted to see who else was in the coven. And I wanted to see what they did, damn it! To make sure that the magic they were performing really was as benign as they pretended.

  A car horn sounded, loud and angry. I swayed and nearly fell, just managing to get my foot off the pedal in time to steady the bike.

  Woah! I was in the town centre, in the middle of a junction. A Ford Cortina had braked hard to avoid me and the man in the driver’s seat was shaking his head. A bus went past; several heads turned my way. I held up a hand to apologise and pushed the bike to the side of the road.

  I had no memory, none at all, of getting from the end of Avril and Daphne’s road to the middle of town. And yet here I was, at the main shopping stretch, within sight of the outdoor market and the bus terminal.

  The world made an odd swooping motion, almost knocking me off balance.

  I got back on the bike, felt my head spin and pushed off, telling myself a bit of light exercise and fresh air were just the thing. I’d be fine in a few minutes.

  Superintendent Rushton was standing at the side of the road, smoking a pipe and wearing blue-and-grey-striped pyjamas. He tapped the road sign by his side. Pendle Road, it said. I’d been about to go the wrong way. I turned into Pendle Road, and as I peddled away, I was thinking that Superintendent Rushton really shouldn’t be smoking in bed. It was dangerous.

  I was never drinking alcohol again. My headache came back, making it almost impossible to pedal up even the gentlest of hills. I got off and pushed most of the way out of town; only when I reached Well Head Road did I mount the bike again.

  A car went past. Not Avril’s Triumph but a car from a circus, bright yellow, with blue bumpers, driven by a clown who held a striped umbrella over his head. I watched him speed away down the road and thought, He’s a fool: it isn’t raining.

  I rode on. The golden light faded. The sun sank below the horizon and the sky became the deep purple of pansies mottled with lavender clouds. When I looked at my watch, I saw that it was gone nine. It had taken nearly forty-five minutes to do a journey I’d estimated would last thirty at most.

  I was losing time. No sooner did I realise it than a small nugget of panic burst inside me. Something was happening. Something out of my control.

  Then my insides turned upside down. I leaped off the bike and almost before I knew it was going to happen, I threw up. My dinner came pouring out, burning my throat.

  When I eventually stopped vomiting, I set off walking. Around me, colour faded quickly as the daylight gate opened and beckoned me in. The Hill was casting its shadow over the surrounding moor, increasing its resemblance to a crouching beast. Rocks took on strange forms: curled creatures ready to spring, winged sprites with wild grass hair.

  A dawning sense told me that I wasn’t alone. Tiny stones tumbled from the wall at my side, as though something small and invisible were scampering along it to keep pace with me. The grasses beyond the wall whistled, as though light footsteps were running through them.

  At the point where the Lych Way path left the road, I stopped to rest. The witches would drive this track. I wasn’t safe yet. The pale face of a rotting corpse watched me from behind the slender trunk of a sycamore, but he was only trying to get my attention and so I ignored him and started to climb.

  The Hill soared, dark and massive, above me.

  I would never make it. Each step up threatened to send me spinning back down again. I turned on the spot to find the moon and saw it was high in the sky.

  And then I heard the car. It stopped directly below, followed by another and then a third. They were coming. They were less than two hundred yards away, and every step I took drained me.

  I left the path and began climbing the Hill, on hands and knees because I could no longer stand upright. I heard voices again, and the low, experimental tapping on a drum as car doors slammed. When I looked back, I could see tiny lights and vague shadows making their way towards me.

  I could go no further. I sank down onto cold earth, hoping the darkness and the heather and the bumps and ridges of the Hill would conceal me. I heard Avril’s deep contralto voice and Marlene’s low-pitched tones. I heard a laugh that I thought was Daphne, and then they were yards away, directly below me on the path.

  A man led the way. Roy Greenwood, Larry’s undertaker partner, was one of the moon coven. He was dressed in loose, casual clothes, and beneath one arm he carried wood for the fire. Daphne came next, wearing the blue cloak and carrying the drum, then Avril, then two women I didn’t know, one of them similarly draped in a long, dark cloak. Marlene Labaddee walked alongside David Milner, the geography teacher from the secondary school. Another two women, then Brenda, who operated the switchboard at the station. I knew the woman behind Brenda, although for a moment I couldn’t quite place her. Of course – she was Mrs Ogilvy, Dwane’s mother, who worked in the police canteen. Another man and woman who struck me, although I had no idea why, as a married couple. Thirteen. The number of the coven.

  They passed me and went on up the Hill. I could not follow them. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get up again. I had two thoughts as their lights dwindled in the distance. The first, that maybe Daphne and Avril hadn’t been indiscreet after all. Maybe they’d intended me to overhear them planning this meeting, in the full knowledge that I’d follow.

  The second, that I wasn’t drunk. The lost time? The hallucinations? Alcohol alone wouldn’t have this effect. This sense of the world slipping away had been caused by something else entirely. Alcohol and drugs. It was how the victims were subdued.

  I’m
sure I tried to get to my feet, to flee down the Hill if I could. I don’t remember doing so. I don’t remember anything else.

  53

  I woke in complete darkness, face down, my hands tied tight behind my back, my feet strapped together, unable to move.

  Coffin! I was in a coffin!

  My scream went nowhere. I wasn’t just bound but gagged too, with something dry and foul-tasting in my mouth. Instantly terrified, I rolled and kicked out. I had movement. Space. I could feel cold stone beneath me. I was not in a coffin. Not yet.

  Panting, sweating, I pushed and struggled to a sitting position, but just the effort of doing so seemed to suck all the breath out of me. There was no air in this place. I was going to suffocate.

  I screamed and screamed into the gag, and the darkness wrapped itself around me.

  When I came round a second time, my right arm felt like I’d broken it and my head as though something was striking it repeatedly. This time, though, I was ready and could catch the terror before it ran away with me. Breathe in, breathe out. Think about nothing but breathing. Eyes tight shut so the darkness couldn’t win. Count the breaths. I counted fifty. Then a hundred. I could breathe. I was ready to try moving. I pushed up and opened my eyes.

  The darkness around me was solid, like a black wall that I could almost touch. I had never before understood how bewilderingly terrifying it is to be blind. There could be anything, absolutely anything, inches away and I wouldn’t even see it coming.

  This was all wrong. Why had he picked me? I wasn’t a teenager. I was twenty-two. It wasn’t fair.

  My breathing was quickening again. I closed my eyes, resumed counting breaths. After ten, I was steady enough to try again. I blinked twice, just to check my eyes really were open.

  Turning my head, I couldn’t see the faintest chink of light. I leaned forward, to either side, expecting to come up against something solid, but there was nothing there. The space I was in was sizable.

  Not beneath the earth. Not yet.

  I had to stay calm. I had to keep breathing. I had to think. Whatever had drugged me hours earlier had worn off. They’d taken away my power to think for a while, very successfully, but I was myself again. Frightened out of my wits, but myself.

  Think.

  I was indoors. The darkest of nights wouldn’t produce blackness like this. I was sitting on something cold and hard, a stone floor. At the same time, the heavy, damp air suggested somewhere underground. A cellar.

  Keep breathing. Take stock.

  My head was hurting. I was thirsty. The pain in my arms and shoulders was fading, being replaced by a nasty attack of pins and needles. I told myself that was a good sign. My arms and legs would still work. I wasn’t badly injured.

  Keep breathing. Make plans.

  My hands and feet were bound tight, but if I could get the gag off, I could breathe properly, even yell for help. I began twisting my head, rubbing my chin against both shoulders, stretching and flexing my jaw. I kept going, even when I felt like I might choke, focusing only on getting my mouth free, shutting my mind to where I was, and what might be in here with me. It took a while, and almost made me throw up, but I got the gag off in the end. I spat out the rag and gulped in several deep breaths to steady myself.

  The difference that being able to breathe properly makes. I’d never properly understood that before.

  I could breathe. I could scream. Already an improvement. Next up—

  Something close to me moved. I froze, waiting to hear it again, praying I wouldn’t.

  Scratching. Followed by a small sound like that of something being rolled. Rodents. I pictured tiny, bright eyes somewhere close. A twitching tail. Whiskers on alert. That was OK. I was not afraid of rats.

  Without realising it, I’d curled into a tight ball to get away from the rat I wasn’t afraid of. I took more deep breaths and told myself, several times, that I was not afraid of rats.

  It was time to move. Time to find out where I was, to get a feel for the space I was in. How big it was. What might be in here with me.

  As I inched my way along the damp floor, I tried to get a sense of time. The last thing I could remember was the coven making its way past me at moonrise, nine-thirty in the evening. I was vaguely hungry, which could mean several hours had passed. I was thirsty, but didn’t have the raging thirst that might suggest I’d been here more than a day.

  I’d been missing hours, I thought, rather than days. It was still Tuesday night, or early Wednesday morning. This was better. I was making progress. Working things out.

  And then the sound came again, and it was louder this time, and very close. It no longer sounded like a rat but something bigger. In my head, I could see claws scraping over stone, the thin, twisted body of something that never saw the light of day. A creature that lived in this subterranean place would be able to see in the dark. It could see me. It was coming for me.

  I’m not sure how long I screamed before I realised it wasn’t.

  Just a rat, then, that I’d scared away. Or something that was biding its time. Something that enjoyed my terror.

  Stop it! Keep breathing. Think.

  There was no getting away from it. I was in a great deal of trouble. Daphne and Avril had drugged me. Using Marlene’s knowledge of herbal medicines, they’d put something in the wine I’d drunk. I hadn’t lost my mind when I’d seen Rushton in pyjamas on the main road, or the clown driving along Well Head Road. The drug they’d given me had had hallucinogenic properties.

  I inched my way across the floor, feeling it cold and sometimes wet beneath me, and I began to wonder if I was in a cave, and whether I was simply shuffling deeper and deeper underground.

  Keep breathing. Keep going. Keep thinking.

  I’d been a gullible idiot. Daphne and Avril had been the obvious culprits from the beginning. The case was about witchcraft and they were self-confessed witches. We’d been fooled by their self-assurance, by their alibis and also – in my case, anyway – by the fact that I’d genuinely liked them.

  Avril and Daphne. How could I have got it so wrong?

  Avril and Daphne would not report me missing. When the constable who came to collect me from their house in the morning didn’t find me, my colleagues would assume I’d fled. Avril and Daphne would tell them I’d left with my things to catch a train home. They’d send officers to my parents’ house, but the police would assume I’d gone on the run, afraid my guilt was about to be proved.

  They wouldn’t look for me in Sabden. They wouldn’t be checking newly interred caskets for me.

  As the cold, hard wall struck me so did the thought that Tom could be in on it. He wasn’t one of the coven, but did that prove anything really? Maybe his job had been to seduce me, to get close, find out what I knew, what I was thinking.

  Telling me what she is thinking.

  Tom hadn’t needed a love spell where I was concerned.

  Tears are an irritant when your hands are tied and you can’t brush them away. They sting the eyes, make the cheeks itch.

  I resumed shuffling, edging my way round the wall, feeling for anything sharp. When I reached a corner, I heard someone coming.

  Heavy doors being closed. Footsteps. Someone descending a stairway? Moving closer, crossing the next room. A bolt being drawn back on the door. We are eternal optimists, I discovered, as the thought of rescue flashed through my head. I fixed my eyes on where the sound had come from. The faintest line of grey against the black. A pinprick of light, dancing about, illuminating nothing. The sound of a door being opened and footsteps on the stone.

  Not rescue, then. Someone looking for me would call my name.

  A thin line of light was searching the room, showing me dark walls, gleaming with damp and thick iron chains, hanging down from high on the wall. I pressed tighter into my corner, as though hiding were possible. I kept my eyes open, though, because if there was anything to see, I wanted to see it.

  Nothing. A vague shape outlined against charcoal grey
in the doorway. The room beyond this one was equally dark.

  The light found me, hit the centre of my chest, then rose to my face, effectively blinding me.

  ‘I am an officer of the law and imprisoning me is a very serious offence,’ I began. ‘Avril? Daphne? If that’s you, the police know about you, and they know where I went last night. If you harm me, you will spend the rest of your lives in prison.’

  The shape came at me, keeping the torch fixed on my face. My feet were grabbed and I was pulled roughly out of the corner, my head banging the wall as I went down. Then he was on top of me. This wasn’t a woman. This was someone big and muscled. He turned me over so that my face was pressed against the stone again and I began to yell. My head was pulled up by my hair and my face banged down hard. I stopped screaming.

  He was sitting on my chest. I could hardly breathe. I lay there, trying not to suffocate, and felt him shift round. My hands were grasped and held tight.

  Something sharp and cold closed round the stem of my third finger and dread washed through me like a cold flood. I knew what he was going to do a second before he did it. Even so, the pain was extraordinary.

  I didn’t hear the sound of the metal clipping together, or of my bone splintering. My scream drowned out everything else.

  54

  There followed a period of darkness and hurting. Each time I came round, it was to a sense that I was still in the same place. It felt the same – cold, damp and hard. It had the same earthy, dank smell. And it still looked as black and empty as the soul that had put me in there.

  The pain in my hand was like fire. Had he taken more than one finger? I tried tapping them in turn, but after several attempts, I gave it up. It was too confusing. I had some fingers left, I knew that much.

  The creatures that shared my prison had become bolder, no longer scrabbling away every time I moved, and their scurrying and scratching became the soundtrack for my incarceration. More than once I felt something touch me.

  As I drifted in and out of the world, I had visions of the rats lapping at my bleeding finger, then getting bolder, nibbling at my flesh. My hand was hurting so much it could be happening and I wouldn’t know. And then those bloodsucking creatures were no longer rats but something else, something that wasn’t natural. My dreams were bad, but the worst moment of all came when I woke up after a good dream, a dream of being rescued, of waking up in a hospital bed to see Tom smiling down at me.