Dark Spell

by Gill Arbuthnott

  Callie’s heart was thumping. She was baffled and very worried. She’d never seen her father like this. “Did you decide if you’re going to stay with Rose until the house is sorted out?” she asked, desperate for some sort of normal response.

  “No,” he said. “There’s no point trying to run away.”

  “I’m going to talk to Mum,” Callie said.

  ***

  Her mother was in the kitchen, a half-drunk bottle of wine and an empty glass on the table in front of her.

  “Where have you been?” she snapped as soon as Callie put her nose round the door. “You’ve been with that boy again, haven’t you?”

  “Mum, you know I have. I told you this morning. You said it was fine. You wanted me out of the way when all the workmen were here.”

  “I don’t remember saying that.” Julia obviously didn’t believe her.

  “Mum, what’s wrong with Dad? He’s just sitting there. He says everything’s falling apart. I’m worried about him.”

  “Worried about him?” There was acid in Julia’s voice. “This is all his fault.”

  “No, it’s not! How can it be his fault that the chimney came down?” Callie leapt to her father’s defence.

  “Do you really think that’s all that’s wrong with this family? A chimney? A hole in the roof? You’re more stupid than I thought.”

  Callie felt sick. She didn’t understand. She wanted to run away. “What’s wrong with you?” she yelled. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Julia poured a glass of wine. “There’s nothing to tell you. You know it all, don’t you? That old woman’s filled your brain up till there’s no room left for your own parents. You love her more than you love me.”

  “That’s not true!” Callie shouted. “You know it’s not.”

  The familiar, ominous tingling spread out from the back of her neck all the way to her fingertips. Without warning, the bottle and glass shattered.

  The silence that followed was broken by the sound of wine dripping from the table.

  “Hah!” scoffed Julia. “I was right. You still can’t cope with it.”

  Callie fled before she did something worse, running out of the house and down the road all the way to the beach until she ran out of breath and dropped to the sand among the dunes.

  She tried to keep her mind a blank, to let it fill up with the sounds of the sea and the gulls, the smell of seaweed, the sight of small clouds drifting across the sky. Anything was better than thinking about what had just happened.

  After a while, she sat up. Now that she was out of the house she could think more clearly and her parents’ behaviour seemed even more bizarre.

  Now that she was out of the house…

  “Idiot,” she chided herself.

  How could it have taken her so long to realise? What was going on with her parents was part of this… haunting, or whatever it was. She had to get either her parents or Duncan Corphat out of the house.

  With the idea clear in her head now, a lot of recent odd exchanges between her parents were explained, as were some of her own crazier thoughts.

  Callie got to her feet. It was time to do something.

  While she walked away from the beach, Callie planned her next moves. First she had to get her parents out of the house, preferably to stay at Rose and George’s. Once they were safely out of the way, she was going to talk to Duncan Corphat. She’d explain to him as best she could what had happened, tell him he had descendents, and that she was one of them. She’d show him what he’d done to the house and tell him to leave. He wasn’t evil, he was just trapped, maybe hadn’t realised he was dead. Once he knew, surely he would go? He had no reason to want to harm anyone here.

  Simple.

  ***

  “I’m not going there. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  In a wild change of mood Julia had begun to spring clean the kitchen, turning out cupboards to scrub them. “I don’t know what plan you and she have thought up, but forget it. This is my home. She can’t have it.”

  Callie’s plan already seemed less straightforward than it had fifteen minutes ago. Her mother sounded completely intransigent, so she turned her attention to her father.

  He was sitting where she’d left him, but he’d been busy too. He was surrounded by shiny scraps and held a pair of scissors. Callie realised with a jolt that he was cutting up the photos from the family albums one by one.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped. “Stop it. Stop it!” She pulled the scissors from his unresisting grasp and chucked them through the window into the garden. He’d have to go outside if he wanted to get them back.

  She took his arm. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go to Rose’s. You’ll feel better there, I promise.”

  David shook her hand off. “I’m not leaving. If I leave now, Julia will never let me back in.” He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Are you part of this too?”

  Callie gave a groan. She was never going to get them out of the house by herself. She went into the bathroom for some privacy and tried to call Rose, but her phone had no signal for some reason, and when she tried the landline, instead of a dial tone there was just a series of clicks and whistles.

  How dare Duncan Corphat do this to her? She would show him power; she would make him regret his interference in her life.

  Callie ran upstairs and threw open her bedroom door, and a gust of cold, damp air hit her in the face. She paused on the threshold, taking in the scene before her. The light in the room was tinted a sickly green by the tarpaulin over the roof. The floor was several centimetres deep in water. Why hadn’t it seeped through to the rooms below? It lapped up to the doorway and stopped dead, as though held back by some invisible barrier. Rocks lay everywhere, from pieces of gravel to a head-sized boulder that had smashed her bed. Water oozed from the walls in a reddish trickle.

  In one corner of the room lay a void of utter darkness, waiting for her.

  Callie stepped into the remains of her room and closed the door, so angry that there was no space left inside her for fear.

  “Duncan Corphat,” she said, “show yourself.”

  The blackness wavered like a flame caught in a draught, and from it, Duncan Corphat began to emerge.

  He had probably been a good-looking boy once. Callie could see he had black hair, and the eye that he still had was blue. His left hand was gone, his chest smashed, his body mangled by the explosion and the cave-in that had followed it.

  He stared at her, oblivious of his physical state.

  “Are you Duncan Corphat?”

  Yes. The answer seemed to come from the whole room, not just from the broken figure in front of her.

  “Get out of my house. Leave my family alone. We’ve done nothing to you. I don’t know why you’re doing this, but you must stop. You’re dead. You shouldn’t be here.”

  We had done nothing to those that killed us. But that didn’t matter to them, the room breathed.

  “It was you who killed yourself. You didn’t understand the power you had. You still don’t.”

  The dreadful figure’s eye blazed with anger. “Get away, girl, while you still can. You do not know what you speak of.” This time the voice came more directly from him.

  “Oh, but I do. I understand the power you felt in you. I’m your descendant. You had a child, and you passed on your power. I have it too. Look.” Callie scooped a handful of the icy water from the floor and set it aflame.

  “Witch!” His voice was like falling rocks. How was it possible for her parents to hear nothing?

  “Yes,” she said. “Like you. That was the power in you, but you let it destroy you.”

  “I am no witch!” the figure screamed. She could feel the power crackling between them like static now.

  “Get out of my house!”

  No. The voice came from all around her as the water that seeped from the walls turned, before her eyes, into flame, and the whole room was ablaze around her.

  She yelled the words that shoul
d kill fire, but while it shrank back from her a little it did not go out.

  Water. How to conjure water? What were the words? What had she been thinking, to face this alone? It was as though Callie had suddenly been slapped awake, aware of the awful danger she was in.

  The flames blazed brighter again. Callie thrust her arms above her head and desperately stammered the words of the water spell, heard the flames sizzle in the downpour she had somehow called, saw them crumple and die.

  Run girl. Run while you can.

  Breathless, Callie pulled the door open, sprang through and slammed it shut. No sound came from the room behind her. She sealed the door with a spell so that her parents couldn’t wander in by accident.

  Rose. She needed Rose. Now. She pulled her phone from her pocket, then remembered it was useless. She stumbled into the bathroom, half-filled the basin with water and breathed on it.

  “Rose, help me. He’s too strong for me. Come quickly.”

  13. THE SPELL OF COMPULSION

  Callie waited anxiously in the road until Rose appeared and started talking as soon as she got out of the car.

  “What were you thinking to challenge him like that, Callie? You weren’t prepared.”

  “You’re right about that. And I don’t think it’s just him. He talked about ‘We’. ‘We were killed.’ I think he’s brought out the memories of the others who died with him, but he’s much the strongest.”

  “We’ll think about that later,” Rose said, checking in her handbag for a number of things. “We have to get David and Julia out of here first.”

  “I told you: I tried. They won’t leave.”

  “They’ll leave for me,” said Rose grimly. “Now, Callie, I’m going to have to put a spell of compulsion on them. I’ll deal with Julia first – she’ll put up the most resistance. Ignore anything she says; it isn’t really her talking. Your job is to stop her from interfering with what I have to do to set the spell. Do you understand? You’ll have to physically keep her away from me if necessary. If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to build the spell before she realises I’m in the house.”

  As quietly as she could, Callie opened the front door again and they crept in. As they went past the sitting room she glimpsed her father still rooted to the armchair, his back to the door, destroying more photographs. Deprived of the scissors, he had simply begun to tear them up.

  They ducked quickly into the dining room and pushed the door almost shut. Rose put her bag on the far end of the table and began to bring things out. Three candles. A bunch of herbs. Callie recognised feverfew and sage and goosegrass, but not the others. A salt cellar.

  “I need a hair from each of them.”

  Callie pictured herself creeping up on her parents and trying to yank out hair without them noticing.

  “Not like that!” Rose’s whisper was uncharacteristically sharp. “Hairbrush. Comb. Clothes.”

  “I’ll have to go upstairs.”

  “Go.”

  Callie tiptoed upstairs and into her parents’ bedroom. It was a shambles. It looked as though someone had emptied every drawer and cupboard onto the floor. A half-packed suitcase lay open on the bed.

  She picked her way round the debris and found Julia’s hairbrush, plenty of dark hairs caught in the bristles, but she couldn’t see her father’s comb anywhere, despite poking around under the heaps of discarded clothing.

  Just as she was starting to think she might have to pull a hair out of his head, she saw a woollen hat he sometimes wore in the winter. When she looked closely, she could see a couple of short, brown hairs caught in the wool.

  Clutching the hairbrush and the hat as if they were treasure, she crept back to the dining room.

  Rose looked up from her preparations and saw what Callie was carrying.

  “Good girl,” she said.

  The candles were lit now, their flames twined into a little basket in which the herbs lay, not burning, but floating as though they rested on water.

  “What else?”

  “Salt,” said Rose, sprinkling it over the herbs. “Then the hairs, then the words of the spell. It’ll only take a couple of minutes now.” She peered at the hat and pulled a hair loose, dropped it into the basket.

  Intent on their preparations, Rose and Callie failed to notice the door opening until a shriek of anger made them jump.

  “Get out of here you old crone, and take her with you!” Julia stood in the doorway, hair awry, a can of polish and a duster in one hand.

  “Good evening, Julia,” said Rose calmly. “George and I were hoping you would stay with us while the house is put to rights.”

  “I’d sooner sleep on the streets,” Julia spat back. “Take your filthy magic and your little… familiar… and get out of my house.”

  She advanced into the room and Callie moved to block her path.

  “Really, dear, there’s no need to be unpleasant about this. Why don’t you polish something and let me get on here?” Rose went on placidly.

  Callie glanced round to see her pulling some hairs from the brush and adding them to the basket. Rose waved a finger and the basket closed round its contents like a glass bubble, and floated, a clear globe, above the table.

  “Callie, dear, I need to concentrate for the next couple of minutes. Perhaps you would talk to your mother?”

  Callie nodded.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” said Julia with a brittle laugh. “I’ve been talking to you for years and it’s made no difference. Do you know how hard it is to love you?” Callie felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. “Always different. Always awkward. Why couldn’t you be normal like everyone else’s children? Why did I have to give birth to a freak?”

  Dimly, Callie heard Rose’s voice speaking the words of the spell behind her. Her mother was right, of course: she was a freak. She’d tried to convince herself it wasn’t true, but of course it was.

  “You’re right,” she heard herself say, though she hardly recognised her own voice. “I am a freak. What do you want me to do?”

  “What do I want? When have you ever taken notice of that?” Julia leaned forward so their faces were only a few centimetres apart. “I. Don’t. Care,” she said in a poisonous whisper. “Go off with that deadbeat boy. Go and live in filth with the other witch. Go and die. I don’t care.” Julia took a step back and smiled at her.

  She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Callie.”

  “Callie!” Rose’s voice. Callie took a breath. “It’s not her. It’s not your mother talking, it’s Duncan. It’s part of the haunting. She doesn’t mean any of it. Now stand aside. The spell’s ready.”

  A hand on her shoulder moved her out of the way, and Rose faced her daughter, the clear globe and its contents floating between them.

  “Get that thing away from me!” Julia batted at the globe, but her hand passed straight through as if it was an illusion.

  “I’m sorry, my dear, but we have to get you out of here.”

  “No! I’ll never let you have my house,” screamed Julia, and spat in Rose’s face.

  Rose wiped her face on her sleeve and pointed a finger at Julia.

  “I compel you,” she said steadily. “You will do what I ask.”

  “No I won’t!” Julia launched herself at Rose just as Rose clapped her hands with the globe between them. It disappeared into a faint yellow haze which enveloped Julia.

  Julia stopped dead.

  “That’s better,” said Rose. “Now, Julia, go and fetch what you need for a few days at The Smithy, then get into the car and wait for me. You and David are coming to stay for a while.”

  Without another word, Julia turned and left the room. Rose came forward and put an arm round Callie’s shoulders.

  “That was terrible, I know, but your mother didn’t mean any of it. It’s the effect of this house, of what Duncan Corphat is doing. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Callie didn’t trust herself to sp
eak. She nodded, but she didn’t really believe what Rose was telling her. Since she found out she was a witch, she’d been afraid this was exactly the way her mother thought of her.

  “You should go outside. Being in here isn’t doing you any good either. I won’t have any problems with your father now the spell’s built.”

  “Okay.”

  She walked to the front door with Rose, the globe, which had rematerialised from somewhere, floating about Rose’s shoulder like an eccentric balloon.

  “Off you go,” said Rose, and went into the sitting room.

  Callie walked outside and sat on the wall, shaken to the core by the confrontation with her mother.

  Rose is right, she told herself. This is all part of the haunting. But she couldn’t rid herself of the fear that Duncan Corphat’s influence had unlocked what her mother really thought, deep down.

  Ten minutes later, Rose emerged from the house with Callie’s parents, each of whom carried an overnight bag. They looked slightly distracted, but otherwise acted normally as they got into Rose’s car, Julia smiling at Callie as though nothing had happened.

  No one spoke during the short drive to The Smithy, but when they got there Rose said to David and Julia, “You’ve had an awful time. Why don’t you go upstairs and unpack, then lie down for a rest before supper? I’ll call you when it’s time to come down.”

  “All right, Mother,” said Julia.

  “Thank you, Rose,” said David.

  George passed them on the stairs as he came down to the kitchen.

  “I thought you might have been longer,” he said. “So I haven’t put the lasagne in the oven.”

  “That’s all right,” said Rose, moving to do just that. “Callie, do you want a rest?”

  Callie shook her head. “My brain’s in too much of a whirl. Can I put the TV on and find some rubbish to take my mind off things?”

  “Of course.”

  “The cat’s already on the sofa waiting for you,” added George.

  Callie felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t given Chutney Mary a thought all day.

  “Did you go and fetch her?”

  “No. She turned up of her own accord, just after lunchtime. Clever cat, that one.”