The Macbeth Prophecy

by Anthea Fraser

  I stared at him, coldness moving over me.

  “All of us, I mean. You and I, Eve and Anita, the Marshalls, the little Smiths. Perhaps the power we’re generating is of use to someone else – or something. The something that has been striving all these centuries to bring twins to Crowthorpe. You must have asked yourself why.”

  I glanced apprehensively at the stones which surrounded us. “The legend, you mean?” I forced a laugh. “You’re suggesting we’re being primed to overthrow the Crow goddess?”

  But Philip didn’t return my smile. He simply shrugged without replying and began to walk towards the crescent of trees.

  Then one Sunday we had an experience which completely devastated us. We had been preparing supper and came out of the kitchen to find a strange light flooding into the hall from the open sitting-room door.

  Philip said, “What the hell – ?” and went ahead of me, pushing the door wider. Then he stopped so abruptly that, hard on his heels, I went straight into him. He reached out and gripped me tightly as I edged round him to locate the source of the light. Over in the far corner, the television set was bathed in a lurid glow and superimposed on the screen was a picture of the Gemelly Circle. As we stared unbelievingly, the image began to pulsate and fade, to be replaced by a man’s face filling the whole screen. It was a strong face, elderly and lined, and the staring eyes had the mad look of a prophet. It took a moment to realize that they were staring inwards and the man was in fact blind. Then that picture also faded, the glow left the screen, and the television set merged back into the shadows of the room.

  For long minutes Philip and I stood immobile. Then he let go of my arm and said tonelessly, “The set isn’t even plugged in.”

  I reached out convulsively for the light switch and in the sudden brightness we gazed at each other’s white faces.

  “See what I mean?” Philip said.

  “But what was it all about? Who was that man?”

  “God knows, but I have a feeling we will shortly. His powers seem to be greater than ours, and it’s all connected with those stones. I’ve been trying to ignore that possibility, but this clinches it.”

  “It couldn’t just be Eve or Anita, experimenting, could it?”

  He shook his head. “There’s someone else,” he said positively, “and when he arrives, whoever he is, we’ll have at least double the power we have now.”

  It was June, and the holiday trade was beginning to build up again. In the warm evenings Philip and I occasionally walked along Lake Road to watch the boats and listen to the strains of the disco drifting from the Pavilion. One evening we met Steve Ellis, one of my colleagues from school.

  “Come and have a pint at the Crow’s Nest,” he suggested. “It’s been taken over by a new landlord and I want to make sure the beer hasn’t changed!”

  We hadn’t been to the Crow’s Nest since the night we rescued the Smith twins, but I remembered the faded nets and the stuffed salmon, still staring glassily out of its case. I was looking at it when a sudden shock jerked me round and I found myself staring across the room at the face which had filled our television screen. Yet something was different: there was undoubtedly sight in those eyes, and inexplicable recognition.

  Unaware of the rigidity which gripped Philip and me, Steve was making his way over to place his order, and woodenly we followed him. The man behind the bar, ignoring Steve, spoke directly to us.

  “Evening Mr Selby; Doctor. It takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

  I found my voice. “I – beg your pardon?”

  “Twins, sir. Takes one to know one.”

  “You’re a twin?”

  “I am that. My brother Fred lives with us. Isn’t married, you see.” He held out his hand. “Name’s Tom Hardacre, and that’s the wife, Mabel.”

  A pleasant, round-cheeked woman further down the counter nodded and smiled before placing two brimming glasses on the bar top.

  “And – your brother –”

  “Blind. Not that it bothers him. Uses my eyes, does Fred.” He tapped his forehead. “Telepathically, see.”

  “Bitter, Matthew?” Steve’s voice came from a long way off. I nodded.

  “Like to see you sometime, would Fred. And the ladies too.”

  Other customers were claiming the landlord’s attention and Steve pulled my sleeve. “Wake up, lad! Take your glass – I can’t carry all of them!”

  Obediently I moved against a wall, glad of its support at my back.

  “Did that chap say he was a twin? Good God, not more! You seem to attract each other like magnets!”

  When he arrives we’ll have at least double the power, Philip had said. And there had proved to be not one man but two.

  From that first encounter it was tacitly understood that the Hardacres should attend our meetings with Eve and Anita. Also the Marshall girls, now aged twelve, began to arrive uninvited and sit silently in a corner. Gradually we were all growing closer together, and our power grew correspondingly. We evolved a format, beginning each meeting with basic tests of willpower, on others as well as ourselves, and progressing to increasingly more difficult feats of thought control. The evenings ended with a session at which we all reported progress since the last meeting.

  “The headmaster sent for me this morning,” I told them one evening after the start of the new school year. “He wanted to congratulate me on the high standard in my class. Waxed quite poetic about the values of discipline and enthusiasm!”

  “Well done, Matthew. Who’s next?” We took turns in chairing the meetings and on this occasion it was Eve.

  “Me, please.” It was Nicola Marshall who spoke. She was abnormally pale and holding tightly to her sister’s hand. “But I hope you’ll say it wasn’t me after all.” She turned to Philip. “It’s about Mark Saunders.”

  He looked up quickly. “You know what happened?”

  Her mouth quivered. “He was fooling around,” she said unsteadily. “Kept bumping into me – that sort of thing. He’s been doing it for weeks. We get the same bus back from school.”

  She paused and I tried to remember Mark Saunders. He must have been about fourteen then; I’d taught him for one term before he went to secondary school in Barrowick.

  “Yes?” Eve prompted gently.

  “Yesterday I was by myself – Claire stayed behind for her music lesson – and when we got off the bus, he followed me up the hill. I pretended not to notice, but when there was no one else about, he pushed me into a corner and gripped hold of my arms. He was hurting me and he wouldn’t let go and – and I lost my temper. I glared at him, thinking – I don’t know – just that if he wouldn’t stop when I asked him to, I’d have to make him. And” – her voice wavered – “he suddenly cried out and fell back and I ran home. But later, I heard people talking.”

  Philip was staring at her fixedly, and after a moment’s silence I said urgently, “Well, what happened? Philip!”

  He turned towards me but his eyes hadn’t refocussed and for a sick moment he had a look of blind Fred. “I can only repeat what Dr Sampson told me,” he said unevenly. “The boy was found in a state of deep shock and rushed to hospital. There was no outward sign of injury, but X-rays showed that his brain was crushed, as though it had been repeatedly battered with a heavy instrument. The case has the whole place by the ears, it’s so utterly incomprehensible. Or it was.” He added heavily, “Only one thing’s sure. Even if he lives, he’ll never be right again.”

  Nicola put her hands over her face and began to sob dryly. It was the only sound in the still room.

  Claire said tearfully, “She didn’t mean to hurt him!”

  “I know,” Eve said gently. “It’s a lesson to us all, though. We’ve all got this power and we must be constantly on our guard as to how we use it.”

  “I think,” I said suddenly, “we should go up to the stones.” I felt Fred Hardacre’s sightless eyes on my face. I went on, feeling my way, aware of his prompting. “We can use them as a safety valve,
pour the excess power into them when it reaches danger level. I thought it was they who supplied the power, but perhaps it works both ways. At least it’s worth a try.”

  We went in procession through the village and on to the hill – Philip and I in the lead, Anita and Eve, Claire and Nicola, Tom and Fred. It was no surprise when we arrived to find the Smith twins already playing there. We each chose a stone and stood closely against it, shutting our eyes and letting the energy flow in whatever way should prove necessary. And when the simple ceremony was over, Nicola’s tears had dried and we all felt safe again. It was the first of many such expeditions.

  The months passed. From time to time I took out the profile on Jason Quinn, reading and rereading it until I felt I knew the man intimately, though why I should have felt this compulsion to understand him, I had no idea. Nor, for some reason, did I ever discuss him with Philip.

  Christmas came and went, and no-one spoke of Mark Saunders, condemned to spend his life in a mental home. I think it was about this time that the nightmares started. Philip and I, each in our own bedroom, would wake at the same instant, drenched in sweat and convinced the house was full of crows. We didn’t realize we were sharing these dreams until we met one night in the kitchen, both searching for something to help us sleep again.

  “Do you ever see Granny’s crow when you visit the Smiths?” I asked him, shivering in my bathrobe.

  “Occasionally, but it never comes near me. I’ve schooled myself to ignore it.”

  “So the repressed fear expels itself in dreams?”

  “Possibly. If so, I’m sorry to inflict them on you as well.”

  I’m not sure whether the knowledge that we both experienced the dreams lessened or added to their importance. Nothing was clear any more. At school I was now able, by glancing at any boy or girl I chose, to instil instant knowledge in the subject I was teaching. How fleeting such knowledge was I couldn’t assess, and I doubled my efforts when exams came round.

  Occasionally, too, we all inadvertently “summoned” each other, so that we’d arrive on one another’s doorsteps uncertain why we were there. Our closeness had not gone unnoticed in the village. We must have made an odd group by any standards, and certainly Geoff and Felicity Marshall did everything they could to keep their daughters away from us. Finally the girls informed us tearfully that they were to be sent away to boarding school.

  “They can’t split us up, don’t worry!” Anita assured them agitatedly. “We can still contact each other any time we choose.”

  I looked at her with some misgiving. She’d become noticeably distrait lately; her eyes had a wild glint and there was a general unfocussed air about her. She had of course always been the least stable of the group.

  But Philip and I were apparently exempt from any doubts Crowthorpe might have had about its twins. Now widely regarded as a brilliant diagnostician, his opinion was increasingly sought by eminent men in their own fields of medicine, while I basked in my reputation as an outstandingly successful teacher. Which was how things stood that September, when Madeleine came to Crowthorpe and nothing was ever the same again.

  We’d had little contact with our landlady over the four years we’d been at Rowan House and the only member of the family we saw with any frequency was her precocious daughter Deidre, whom we were continually having to avoid. But that summer the outside of the house was to be painted while Philip and I were away, and it was arranged that we should leave the key with Mrs Staveley so she could open and close windows as the decorators required.

  By this time it took a physical effort for Philip and myself to leave Crowthorpe, as though our roots had literally gone down into its soil. However, our father had suffered a heart attack earlier in the year and we had no choice but to go home. It was a dreary wet summer, and the house in Gloucester seemed dark after our airy rooms at the top of Rowan House. Nor were relations easy with our parents. We had grown apart over the years; they considered us, rightly no doubt, to be selfish and inconsiderate, while for our part their refusal to be impressed by our achievements caused us no little irritation. Tempers grew short as the weeks passed, and it was with a sense of liberation that we finally set off once more for Cumbria.

  “I’ll collect the key while you put the car away,” I told Philip, jumping out and humping my case from the back seat; and I jauntily rang three sharp notes on the doorbell. But the girl who answered it was someone I’d never seen before. I don’t know what it was about her that so completely captivated me. She wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense, but she had a stillness, a dignity, that I’d never encountered before, and I was at a loss to know how to deal with it.

  “You must be from upstairs,” she said when I didn’t speak. “My aunt said you’d be calling for your key. Will you come in for a moment while I find it?”

  Numbly I followed her through the hallway into the large kitchen. The obnoxious Deidre, sitting with a glass of milk at the table, simpered up at me. “Hello, Selby.” She’d taken to addressing us both thus, since she couldn’t tell which was Dr and which Mr. “Did you have a nice holiday?”

  I nodded absently, my entire attention focussed on the other girl as she retrieved the key from a drawer and handed it to me.

  “Are you the schoolmaster?” she enquired. “I’m starting there myself next week. My name’s Madeleine Peachey.”

  “Welcome to Crowthorpe. You say Mrs Staveley’s your aunt?”

  “Yes, she’s kindly invited me to stay here during term-time.”

  “That’s certainly good news!” With any other girl – any girl at all – the mildly flirtatious remark would have produced an answering smile, but Madeleine merely nodded and moved to the front door to show me out. We reached it at the same time as Philip, and I saw her eyes widen.

  “My goodness, you are alike, aren’t you?”

  “My brother Philip,” I introduced briefly. “Mrs Staveley’s niece, Madeleine Peachey.”

  Philip put down the case he was carrying, but if he’d hoped for any conversation he was to be as disappointed as I.

  “Good afternoon,” Madeleine said, including us both, and firmly shut the door.

  Philip glanced at me, pursed his mouth and picked up the case again. In silence we went up the newly painted staircase to our own flat. I think that by the time we reached it, I was in love with Madeleine.

  Instinctively I concealed the depth of my feelings from Philip. Though girls we had had in plenty, neither of us had even remotely considered ourselves in love before. We’d always been completely self-sufficient, and now things had changed I didn’t know how to tell him. For although I wanted Madeleine with an intensity that alarmed me, Philip had to be my first consideration.

  In this necessarily cautious approach I was helped by Madeleine herself. At first she seemed mildly surprised by my attentions, but it was natural enough that we should fall into the habit of walking to and from school together and gradually some of her reserve melted, though her attitude towards me could best be described as one of guarded friendliness.

  All I could do was school myself to patience and in the meantime forestall Philip’s awareness of my feelings by means of the mental block he had once used against me.

  Meanwhile, the exercises in psychic control continued. The Hardacre brothers were of immense help, and under their tuition our powers strengthened considerably. Apparently Fred had been blinded during the war and the trauma reverberated on Tom, who also temporarily lost his sight. When Tom’s vision returned, they discovered that Fred was able to “see” with his brother’s eyes and this had intensified the deep psychic bond which had always been between them.

  Nicola and Claire, now away at boarding school, wrote frequently to Eve, who circulated their letters, and occasionally, in an uncanny way which I could never get used to, we were aware of their “presence” with us at our meetings.

  One day that autumn I persuaded Madeleine to come up after school for a cup of tea.

  “You and Philip are
very close, aren’t you?” she said, as we sat at the kitchen table. “I think Aunt Alice is a little frightened of you!”

  Alarm bells rang in my head. We were constantly on the alert for any hint of suspicion against us, but I only said lightly, “I can’t imagine why!”

  “Because you’re twins, I think, and so friendly with all the other twins. She says you’ve both changed since you came here.”

  Silently I cursed Alice Staveley and her prattling. I couldn’t have Madeleine of all people becoming wary of us. I was having enough trouble getting through to her as it was.

  “I know it sounds silly,” she continued, “but I think she expects trouble of some kind. She says there often is when there are twins in the village, and there’ve never been so many as there are now. Did you know some were burned as witches? And during the Civil War when Crowthorpe was strongly Royalist, the current twins supported Cromwell, which caused fighting actually in the village.”

  “Your aunt doesn’t blame us for that, I hope?” She smiled very slightly. “I shouldn’t think so.”

  I said unwisely, “Is that why you’re always so careful to keep me at a distance?”

  She looked up, startled, and her face flushed. “No, Matthew, that isn’t the reason.”

  Philip’s key sounded in the door and I had never in my life been less pleased to see him. His eyes went from Madeleine’s pink cheeks to me. “Sorry to interrupt the tête-à-tête. Have you left me any tea?”

  “Of course,” I said smoothly, “bring another cup and saucer.”

  “You’re getting very pally with the little schoolteacher, aren’t you?” he remarked when she’d gone.

  “Why not? She’s a nice girl.”

  “Not your type, I’d have thought.”

  “Meaning she’s not yours?”

  “I dare say she could grow on you. She’s different, anyway.”

  “She’s unique!” I said, and feeling his quick glance, regretted the indiscretion.