Witchcraft

by Katie M John

  She scanned through the page, taking a mental note of the various pieces of useful information. The Chase family had settled in the village in 1510 – earlier than even the Ravenhearts or the Meadowsweets. Connected to King Henry, they were a powerful and wealthy family. The house passed down from father to son throughout the fifteen and early sixteen hundreds until a serious scandal in the family meant the true heir of Coldstone House emigrated to America, settling in the small but important town of Boston, Massachusetts in 1660, where he became a minister at the Church of Mathers.

  So that’s the American link. Jeremiah must be a descendent of James Chase, the internal noted.

  Fox scanned over the rest of the document. It didn’t contain much of interest except for the devastating fire, which had razed the original house in the late 1700’s. The rest was petty political squabbles and other boring historical engagements until the estate of Coldstone House passed to Lady Asquithe in 1949. She was about to press the back button when she saw a link at the bottom of the page, “Chase Enterprises, New York City.”

  Chase Enterprises! Sounds like something out of Batman! the internal said through snorting laughter. Fox clicked on it out of idle curiosity, not really expecting to find anything of interest. When she saw Jeremiah’s flashy white smile on the front of Time Magazine with the caption “New York’s Most Eligible Bachelor Comes of Age,” Fox let out a groan.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding!” Fox flitted over the page and took in the briefest of details about the bio-technology firm that was Chase Enterprise. The biggest detail that jumped out at her was it was worth over ten billion dollars.

  Fox opened a new tab and punched in the name Jeremiah Chase. Pages and pages of links appeared. Image after image of his suited, wealthy, and eligible-self with beautiful women draped all over his arm like a Hollywood celebrity. He is a celebrity, Fox, and he’s your study partner – lucky you!

  “So, what the hell is he doing here?” Fox asked.

  As she flicked through the pages of links to newspaper articles, magazine shoots, and TV interviews, the recurring phrases, “New York’s number one party boy” and “scandal rocks…” proved hard to ignore. She clicked onto several of the links. Not all the newspaper articles were complimentary. Clearly, Mr. Jeremiah Chase had been a very naughty boy. As Fox read the lurid details of Jeremiah’s relationship with his school teacher, and numerous incidences of drunk and disorderly behaviour, Fox began to feel a deep sense of satisfaction. He’s here as punishment; they’ve banished him to his crazy old aunt in order to clip his wings. She couldn’t help but laugh when the most recent link read, “Where is NY Party Boy Jay Chase?”

  “He’s right here in Heargton Village!” she said to the screen.

  The video call application on her laptop buzzed into life and Jeremiah’s e-mail address flashed across the screen. “Great!” she said, rolling her eyes. “I can’t even escape him in the privacy of my own room.” She pressed the reject button. He could write her an e-mail like any other normal person – and besides, you look a mess!

  Perhaps if she hadn’t been so keen to chase down the gossip on Jeremiah, she would have noted the link at the end of the E-pedia article, which led to Professor Daniel Chase, the world’s leading expert in the occult and modern world witchcraft, but she didn’t.

  *

  Jeremiah watched the “Call Ended” button flash red and guessed Fox must not be home. It never occurred to him that maybe she had rejected his call. Rejection was something alien to him. He stretched out his legs on his desk and tipped back his chair, flicking through webpages on his tablet. He had resisted searching himself since his arrival in England. He’d grown tired of it all. He’d spent the last three years of his life not being able to move without a camera bulb flashing. It had been blinding. It was no surprise he had lost his way. His original anger at his parents’ decision to send him to some sleepy backwater in the middle of ‘The Green and Pleasant Land’, had waned. It had been refreshing to walk about unnoticed. Here, nobody knew how much he was worth, or who is father was having dinner with (it had been the President last night), or what designer underpants he favoured. Okay, so to be fair, he had courted it all when it had started, agreeing to every photo-shoot and interview offered, but then he had fallen in love with Rachel and he’d realised what a fickle friend the press could be.

  When every morning you wake to see the woman you love branded a, “whore” and a, “child molester”, the press becomes an inescapable horror. It didn’t matter to them that Jeremiah was seventeen (nearly eighteen) and perfectly capable of making his own choices, or that in the state of New York, seventeen was actually the legal age of consent. Rachel was only four and a half years his senior (half years were important in this ethical debate) but the fact she had been his teacher made her a monster; the kind of monster the press likes to destroy until there is nothing beautiful or good left. His father refused to understand. He reduced the whole scandal down to Jeremiah’s over-active sex drive and a general lack of respect for the family name, which really meant the business.

  Jeremiah had been told, in no uncertain terms, that should his father discover there had been any contact between Jeremiah and that “Scarlet woman!” (a pun his father had found particularly fruitful throughout the whole ordeal) then Jeremiah would be cut loose without a penny to his name. Jeremiah had then undertaken a whole series of ridiculous Romeo-style actions, believing his love for Rachel was totally worth the ten billion dollars he would inherit one day. But then, he had seen her in the arms of another man - a “grown up” who had swept in and rescued her from the misery of the press-intrusive months. A man who would show the world that Ms. Scarlet was capable of being reformed, that she was turning her back on her debauched, inappropriate sexual affair with one of her students, and was going to settle down into a perfectly respectable life. The large diamond ring on her finger was a symbol of her taming.

  That was the night that Jeremiah had “stolen” his father’s car and driven it at over a hundred miles an hour through several speed clocks and past a patrol car. The sensible thing would have been to stop, but Jeremiah had never been very good at being sensible. In the end, he rather un-dramatically fell low on fuel and was forced to pull over, where he was immediately arrested. His police mug-shots made the second page of the New York Times the very next day. As Lucia quipped, “Clearly your popularity is waning, bro – you’re becoming old news!”

  God, how he missed Lucia! Crazy Aunt Penelope was hardly a substitute. When Jeremiah had first arrived, he thought that he had been mistakenly dropped off at some historical amusement attraction. The traditionally dressed staff (all two of them in these times of fading aristocracy) had been waiting for him on the steps of Coldstone House. Then he’d been ushered through to the parlour, where his aunt was sitting on some uncomfortable looking antique sofa, a bone-china tea cup and saucer in her hands. She still wore a high-necked collar with the customary cameo broach pinned precariously near to her throat, and spoke with an accent Jeremiah thought had ended with the War. He smiled at the recollection. Pearson (the butler at the Chase’s Hamptons mansion) had sagely offered the advice,

  “There are three things you shouldn’t speak about over there, Sir; money, religion, and most importantly, don’t mention the War!”

  Jeremiah missed Pearson. He was a funny and kind man. He tried Fox on video call again. When he didn’t get a reply, he gave up the idea for the evening. He didn’t want to appear too keen. With little else to do, he flicked aimlessly through the search engine for any information on Heargton village and The Rookeries Hospital. He was surprised to find quite so many hits. He’d assumed Heargton was an innocuous little village with a boring, quiet history. What he was surprised to see was the name Heargton connected with several hundred paranormal blogs, websites, and articles. He reached out and retrieved the apple from his desk. He took a big bite and said with a stuffed mouth, “Ooh, things have got interesting!”

  Jeremiah
hopped between blogs and articles. Most of them were about the ghosts reputed to haunt The Green Man Public House, the ghost of the grieving widow in the Churchyard of St. Ursula’s, and the Ghostly Highway Man. There were several posts about paranormal investigations, which had taken place at The Rookeries, finding pretty much what he expected – nothing except for a few draughts and banging doors.

  He was just about to put it aside for the evening when he caught sight of mention of Coldstone House. Memories of Saturday came back to him. He had done a really good job of blocking the impossible things out since then; the way the little, red leather ball had rolled along the gallery hall, or the way the door of a locked room could suddenly be found open. He shook his head, trying to convince himself those events had happened in a dream and not in his rational world. He scanned over the page, learning that the Georgian manor house was built on the site of the original Tudor house. When they had pulled the burnt remains of the old house down, they had found the body of a young woman in the wall, which was apparently the way they staved off evil spirits back in the middle ages. “Shame it didn’t protect young girls against murdering aristocrats,” Jeremiah mused. A cold shiver ran up his spine and he shuddered, cursing the draughts from the old windows. All attempts by paranormal investigators to visit Coldstone House had been rejected. Jeremiah smiled at the thought of Aunt Penelope replying to them in no uncertain terms.

  Finishing his apple, he switched off the tablet, stripped off his clothes down to his boxers and stood in front of the window, the moon and the woods beyond. He closed his eyes and stretched out his arms, breathing deep from within his diaphragm. Yoga was Jeremiah’s salvation – at least there was one thing he could thank his father for: the month in the Swiss retreat, which his father had sent him to in an attempt to calm down his party-crazed son. It had had limited success.

  From the next room, the sound of a wind-up music box floated down the corridor and through the gap under his door. If Jeremiah hadn’t been lost in the throes of a violent vision of flames and smoke, he would have heard it and understood he was far from being alone.

  6

  Thalia Ravenheart had arranged to meet her sisters at the barn on the farm at dusk. She had been given a list of errands to run after college and she had completed them dutifully. At first, she had been unsure whether her sisters’ plans would work, or if they had lost their minds entirely. Of the three of them, Thalia felt she was the most streetwise, the most connected to the real world. She was the one who truly understood they no longer lived in the “glorious” days of the past, and they had to adapt for a smaller, modern world. It was increasingly difficult to do anything these days without somebody watching. The whole world seemed recorded through the lens of a CCTV camera or posted on social media.

  Abducting a girl from their own village community had been risky, but Nigella had been confident snatching a girl from their own ground would be less suspicious; nobody would search for a beast amongst their own. The police would be searching for an outsider, a faceless and unfamiliar threat. People didn’t like to think of an enemy in camp. Although the village had always kept the Ravenhearts at arms’ length, Nigella knew they were an accepted eccentricity. Their long bloodline, attached to the very stones that built the village, afforded them a certain respect – like a relative you’re not particularly keen on but you tolerate because blood is thicker than water. Much to Thalia’s surprise, this approach appeared to be working. She’d been surprised by the general sense of disinterest surrounding Martha’s disappearance. Everyone at college seemed to think she would turn up in a few days. It helped that Jack wasn’t at college either, adding to the whole Romeo and Juliet story circulating the corridors. It had been a shame about Jack; he was a nice boy, but needs must. Somebody was sure to find him soon, lying in that warehouse at the edge of Lancaster, coming down off the drug-high Lilith had skillfully administered. Physically, he would be fine but there was no telling about his mind; Lilith had a nasty little habit of lacing her concoctions with a good dose of psychotic horror, which left her victims scared in a way no medication could heal.

  Martha Paisley had been specially selected based on Thalia’s inside knowledge of the Heargton community. If there was a moment of guilt over selecting Martha over anybody else, it was fleeting. Thalia had no time for saps. Martha was the perfect archetypal virgin. Blonde, blue eyed, sweet, and innocent. She had played the Virgin Mary in St. Ursula’s church nativity for most of her childhood – of course Jack had been Joseph. It had been during the Saturday Church Youth Club that their young love had blossomed. In these promiscuous times, the selecting of virgins was a bit of a gamble, but unfortunately for Martha, her wearing of a chastity ring and her constant bleeting about how her and Jack were going to wait until they were married before having “relations,” as she quaintly used to refer to them, had been her undoing.

  At the time of her abduction, Martha had no idea who her captors were. They had come at her like shadows in the night. Masked and hooded, they had sacked both Jack and Martha and thrown Martha into the back of the four-by-four and Jack into the boot of his own car. Thalia had been surprised that abducting another human being had been so easy and was curious as to why more people didn’t do it. Lilith had dealt with Jack first, driving him out of Heargton, to the abandoned warehouse on the industrial estate. She’d applied the tourniquet and injected him with her potion swiftly and expertly. It had only taken a matter of minutes for the toxins to take root in his system. He’d have no recollection of what happened to him whilst under the influence, meaning he was never going to be in a position to honestly deny any involvement in his girlfriend’s murder. His drug misuse would come as a terrible shock to the community, but it would offer them an explanation they’d be eager to hang on to.

  Martha had shown an amazing amount of spirit once they’d actually got her back to the barn. Thalia was surprised to discover her physical strength, even if she was disgustingly emotionally weak. During the first night of Martha’s captivity, Thalia had been driven almost to violence with Martha’s cries for her beloved. It took her a whole twelve hours (and a gag) before she finally accepted the fact he had abandoned her to fate. Despite the barn being locked, and Nigella and Lilith keeping watch, Nigella had a perverse taste for suffering and had strung Martha by the arms to one of the wooden beams of the barn, ensuring that the rope was just the perfect length for making her stand on her tip-toes.

  Thalia had been sent away at the first light of day. It was important that a sense of normality continued. She was directed to go to college as usual (a challenge Thalia took a surprising amount of delight in) and then to go and retrieve some specific tools from a range of different DIY stores around the county. It would not do to buy them all from one store, as it would make them more traceable.

  The sisters were waiting for the full moon, which would be in one day’s time. Being a blood moon, it was a particularly powerful night and had been selected specifically as the night they would conduct the portal opening ritual. Thalia was still not sure what the ritual involved; Lilith and Nigella had an annoying habit of still treating her like a child and excluding her from the more “grown-up” details of things; she still had no idea why they had set about abducting Martha before they actually needed her – aside from opportunity.

  It had been quite a wild party and Thalia could understand why two frigid little bible criers would want to make an early exit, but she had been taken off guard by just how early they’d made moves to leave. Thalia had been on a mission of her own that night – the snagging of Fred. Sensing Martha and Jack were getting antsy about the way the party was turning out (fun!) it meant Thalia had had to use a surprisingly concentrated amount of power on bewitching Fred into bed. There had been little time for hearts and flowers but then again, it hadn’t been romance she was looking for; she had simply wanted to break Swan Meadowsweet’s heart. Breaking the heart of your opponent (even before the game began) was a sure-fire way of winning, especiall
y when that heart was as sweet and good as Swan Meadowsweet’s.

  This little twist on their whole endeavour had of course been Nigella’s idea. Always a merciless chess player, her idea was to break the opposition before they were even aware they were involved. Thalia had been issued with instructions to break the Meadowsweet sisters one by one. She had jumped at the chance of a little bit of old-school wickedness, but had known from the start that the real challenge was always going to be Fox. That was until Thalia had gleefully learned the unlikely fact that Fox Meadowsweet was in love – and with none other than Will Harrington, Thornvale’s very own calendar boy. He was so far out of her league that it was pathetic. She’d already made a complete laughing stock of herself when she threw herself at him in front of the whole Geography class. Mind, Thalia (and quite a few others) had been surprised to see him go off with her. “Perhaps, love really is blind,” she mused. In a way, Thalia was disappointed Fox was making it so easy for her. She’d had a little more respect for her. Now the simple “love breaks your heart” tactic was probably going to suffice for her, too. Disappointingly predictable but effective. At least seducing Will would be more pleasurable than the fumbling, virginal Fred.

  *

  It was Wednesday. Fox hated Wednesdays. She had lessons back to back and all over the school. Wednesdays always felt like she spent the whole day dashing about. It didn’t help that she’d forgotten her watch and had to assume she was running late for everything.

  Jeremiah chased after her down the corridor, weaving in and out of the other students. Totally mortified by the unmistakable American-accented shouts of, “Hey, Foxy! Foxy, wait up!” she kept her head low and hoped she might get away with pretending she couldn’t hear him. There was only one person she didn’t mind calling her Foxy and that was Will. Hearing Jeremiah use it felt uncomfortably intimate and obviously other people thought so, too. Fox could hear the whispered and pointed comments of some of the girls. She became conscious of blushing. It wasn’t because of Jeremiah’s very public attention, but because she was angry: angry they should think her unworthy of having the attention of a boy like Jeremiah and in turn, of a boy like Will.