Shadowsmith

by Ross Mackenzie

***

  Kirby was running through the house. He wanted to run faster, but Charlie was much smaller and his little legs couldn’t keep up. The hallway on the first floor was different from before, longer. Lights on the walls flickered as if they’d been caught in a breeze. Then, one by one along the length of the passageway, the gas lamps blinked out until only one was lit, right beside Kirby and Charlie. The remaining lamp flickered and danced, but it did not go out. It kept the night at bay.

  Charlie gripped Kirby’s hand. “I’m scared of the dark, there’s monsters in the dark. Mummy and Daddy got me a night light so I wouldn’t be scared any more. It shines stars on my wall.”

  This made Kirby smile.

  Then the last lamp went out.

  ***

  Amelia picked herself up from the attic floor. She dusted off her yellow raincoat.

  “They were wrong,” said the witch-girl. “You’re not so big and bad. You’re old and weak. I can smell it.”

  “Who was wrong?” Amelia asked. “The people who woke you? Old I might be, but not weak…” She whispered a short burst of words, and a gale blew up, so strong that it knocked the witch backwards. She fought against it, wide-eyed, flailing.

  As Amelia moved forwards, stalking the witch-girl, she thought of Kirby. He was in darkness, frightened. Something came to her then, a picture in her mind. Blue stars on a wall… a child’s night light.

  “Follow the stars,” she said. “Follow them home, Kirby.”

  ***

  Charlie hugged Kirby tightly in the blackness. He was crying. Not screaming for show the way young children sometimes do. This was body-shaking, terrified crying.

  A star appeared in the dark. It was blue and twinkling.

  At first Kirby thought he was seeing things, but he felt Charlie shift in his arms, and the little boy turned around and saw it too. He said, “It’s my star. My night light. From home!” As he spoke another star appeared on the ceiling a little further along the hallway.

  “It’s Amelia.” Kirby smiled. “It must be her. She’s showing us the way out!” He grabbed Charlie’s hand again. “C’mon,” he said. “Follow the stars, Charlie.”

  Follow the Stars

  Outside, in a dark corner of the fairground, Brothers Swan and Swift stood in shadow, watching.

  “This is nice,” said Brother Swift, sweeping his greasy hair from his eyes. “Isn’t this nice, Brother Swan? I haven’t been to a carnival since…”

  “Munich, when we made that Ferris wheel collapse.” Brother Swan held a stick in his pale hand, and on the stick, where candyfloss might usually be, was a spider’s web filled with dead flies. He took a bite, grinding the chewy flies between his teeth. “I can still hear the screams…”

  Brother Swift smiled at the memory. He nodded at the haunted house. “You know, I think she’s getting awfully close to the boy. She’s fond of him.”

  Brother Swan wrinkled his long, crooked nose. “Disgusting,” he said. “How she can be fond of any of them I’ll never know. They’re insects to be trampled, every single one.”

  “How about we make things a bit more interesting for her little friend, eh?” Brother Swift reached into his long coat, and when he pulled out his hand a spider, blacker than black, was nestling in his palm. He held the spider to his mouth, touching it to his lips, and whispered, “You’re the last. They took away your family, all those brothers and sisters.” He put the spider down on the wet grass. “Off you go, my beauty. Get your revenge.”

  The spider scurried away through the mist towards the house. As it moved it grew in bursts, and by the time it reached the haunted house its body was the size of a large rat, with legs as thick as a man’s wrist.

  When the spider had disappeared inside the house, Brothers Swan and Swift faded back into the misty darkness, and watched.

  ***

  As Kirby and Charlie moved towards the stairs, the house began to shift and change. The wallpaper and the grain of the wood on the floor became more basic. The perspective bent and warped.

  “What’s happening?” said Charlie.

  “I think Amelia’s winning.” Kirby didn’t know this for sure, but it made sense to him; if this illusion of a house was fading, the witch’s spell must be weakening.

  They stood at the top of the staircase and stared down. Never before had climbing down a set of stairs been such a challenge. The stairs sat at different angles, twisted. One step seemed to be just a few inches high, the next a huge jump. Kirby had to climb down and drop from the edge of the last step, and then catch Charlie as he did the same.

  The front door was only a few paces away now, and Kirby’s heart filled with hope as they ran towards it.

  A movement in the shadows above stopped them.

  Something was lowering from the ceiling, something as big as a large rat, with eight long, thick legs. As it landed on the hallway carpet, blocking the way to the front door, Kirby felt a jolt of burning pain in his hand from the place the spider had burst through his skin. He knew beyond doubt that this was the same spider. His spider. Only everything about it had been magnified: the blackness of it, its fangs, its sparkling black eyes.

  Charlie grabbed at Kirby’s clothes as Kirby stepped forward. The spider reared back.

  “Well… someone’s been feeding you, haven’t they?” said Kirby.

  In a voice as dry as dead leaves, the spider spoke. “She’s not here to protect you now, boy. We said we’d come for you. We keep our promises.” Kirby reached into his coat and pulled out the hazel twig Amelia had given him.

  “She’s always with me,” he said. “Always. Don’t forget that.”

  The house rumbled and shook, throwing Kirby and Charlie to the ground. Kirby let go of the wand and saw it bouncing away across the hall. He stared after it, then at the spider.

  The monstrous creature made a move, scurrying forward, coming at him with murderous intent. But Kirby grabbed Charlie and leapt, landing on his belly, skidding across the floor towards the twig. His fingers wrapped around it and he popped up, drawing a circle on the ground just as the spider was upon them.

  It shrieked, leapt off him at once, and landed on the floor on its back a few metres away, twitching and writhing, its huge body sizzling and bubbling like melted cheese under the grill. After a few moments it was still as stone.

  Kirby held the hazel out like it was a sword. “C’mon,” he said to Charlie, and they edged towards the door, the two of them, never turning their backs on the hallway, until they were out of the house, down the porch steps…

  Free.

  ***

  In the attic, Amelia stood over the witch, looking down on her with furious eyes. The witch-girl cowered and pawed at her face madly, her eyes wide with terror.

  “You have a choice,” Amelia told her. “I could bind you with this place, this carnival; trap you forever, always awake, always aware, always screaming to get out. I’ve done it before. Lots of times. There’s another like you in the woodland not far from here. Only she took the form of a bear, not a child.” She smiled. “That didn’t work either.”

  “Do what you will,” said the witch-girl. “It won’t be as bad as facing them what brought me back.”

  Amelia stood very still. “No,” she said, “what I do won’t be as bad. It will be worse. Unless you help me.”

  The witch-girl spat on the floor, and her spit bubbled on the dry wood. “I can’t,” she said. “If they found out, they’d torture me forever. There are worse things than death. Take it from someone who knows.”

  “Tell me who brought you back.”

  “No.”

  “If you do I’ll take you back to the graveyard and let you rest. I know that’s what you want. I know you don’t want to do what they’re telling you. I can feel it.”

  The witch slumped, sliding down the wall until she was crouching, like a frog. “I was fourteen when I died,” she said. “Fourteen! They dragged me through the town, grown men and women, spitting at me. Calling me t
errible things.” She looked up pleadingly at Amelia. “I wasn’t bad. I speak the old language but I didn’t use it to hurt anyone. But they burned me anyway. You ever been burned?”

  Amelia stared at her feet. She shook her head.

  “You’re right,” said the witch. “I didn’t want to come back. But I didn’t have a choice. When those two showed up in the graveyard and woke me up I tried to fight them off. All I wanted was to stay asleep. But they were too strong. They dragged me out of the ground and said if I didn’t do what they told me, they’d make sure I burned forever. I don’t want to burn.”

  Amelia stared down at her. “There were two of them?”

  “Aye.”

  “Describe them.”

  “Can’t,” said the witch-girl. “I’d only just woke up. I was confused.”

  “If you help me find who did this, I promise you won’t ever have to worry about them again. You can rest deep. And I keep my promises.”

  The witch stared up, and she was the frightened child she’d been in life once more. “No burning?”

  “No,” said Amelia, “no burning.”

  The witch-girl nodded. “I can’t tell you how they looked, but there was definitely two. I could smell the reek of them, the death and suffering they’d brought to the world.” She stopped, and stared up at Amelia. “Your past smells a lot like theirs. There’s pain there.” Her eyes grew wide. “You’ve done bad things.”

  Amelia seemed to sway on the spot, like she was going to fall over, but she steadied herself and said, “What do they want? They must have let something slip. They must be here for a reason.”

  “Oh they are,” said the witch. “They’re here for the Shadowsmith. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  Whatever she was thinking, Amelia’s face was unreadable. She stared out of the attic window, and the silence was long and cold.

  “Like I say, I keep my promises. I’ll take you back to the graveyard.”

  The witch-girl looked up at her. “You can’t beat ’em. You should run away, as far as you can go.”

  “The thing about running,” said Amelia, “is if you do it hard enough, for long enough, you come back to where you started.” She held out a hand. “Come on. Time for you to go back to sleep.”

  Reunited

  Outside, the mist and rain swirled around Kirby and Charlie.

  “I want to go home,” said Charlie.

  “Just a minute or two more.” Kirby stared at the front door of the haunted house, willing it to open, wishing Amelia would walk through it, down the porch steps, safe and whole and well.

  “Can we go now?” said Charlie. “Please?”

  “Charlie, just one minute more! The girl we left behind is my friend. I want to make sure she’s alright.”

  “Friend?” Charlie screwed up his face. “You mean like a girlfriend? That’s disgusting.”

  “No, Charlie. Not like a girlfriend…”

  The creak of the front door interrupted them, and out walked Amelia. Her face was scratched and there was a bruise around her left eye, but she walked calmly, seemingly in no rush, along the porch and down the steps to the grass.

  Kirby was so overjoyed to see her, so relieved she was safe, that he had to stop himself grabbing her and hugging her tight. He did not want to give Charlie any more fuel for the girlfriend fire.

  “You showed us the way,” he said. “You made stars shine on the ceiling.”

  “You saved yourself,” Amelia replied. “Nice work.”

  “Are you his girlfriend?” asked Charlie.

  Amelia looked down at him. “Most definitely not.”

  “What’s that?” asked Kirby. Amelia was holding something, cradling it – a rag doll with long dark hair and white skin.

  “It’s a promise,” she said, placing the doll gently in the pocket of her raincoat. “Come on. Let’s get Charlie back to his mum and dad, eh?”

  She stopped then, dead still, and her eyes grew wide as she sniffed at the air.

  “Amelia?” Kirby waved a hand in front of her face. She didn’t notice. Then she ran, full pelt, into the mist. “Amelia! Where…”

  Kirby followed, dragging Charlie with him. They found Amelia a short distance away, on her hands and knees, scooping up globs of mud, rubbing them between her fingers, sniffing them.

  “Um… Amelia?”

  No answer. Amelia slipped one of her muddy fingers into her mouth and licked away the mud, swirling it around on her tongue.

  “Amelia. Have you lost your mind?”

  She stood up; she was shaking. “Home,” she said. “Now.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  Amelia gave Kirby a stare so powerful it almost knocked him over. She was not joking.

  So they hurried through the carnival, the three of them, back towards the town.

  ***

  Charlie’s house was a few lanes back from Kirby’s, an old fisherman’s cottage in the middle of a crooked row, with a bright blue door. There were no lights on; it was after two in the morning and Craghaven had fallen asleep to the tumbling lullaby of the North Sea.

  When they reached the house Charlie made to knock on the door, but Amelia stopped him. “Just a minute longer,” she said. She had calmed down a little, but she still seemed jumpy.

  “I’m cold,” said Charlie.

  “I’m going to help you,” Amelia told him. “What you’ve seen these past few days, where you’ve been… it’ll stay with you, haunt you.”

  “I was brave,” said Charlie.

  Amelia reached out, touched his cheek. “You were ever so brave. But you see that’s the trouble. Children are brave. Grownups are much more afraid of the world than children, Charlie.”

  The little boy screwed up his face. “Really?”

  “Really?” Kirby echoed.

  “Yup,” said Amelia. “Memories of the witch and the haunted house and being away from home all alone – they’ll all seem very different when you’re an adult. You won’t want to believe them, won’t believe yourself. And if you don’t believe yourself the world will eat you up. So I’m going to take those memories away.”

  For a moment there was only silence, and mist and rain.

  “Will it hurt?” asked Charlie.

  “No.” Amelia stroked Charlie’s hair. “It won’t hurt.”

  She leaned over and began to whisper close to Charlie’s face. Kirby watched her lips move, saw something drift out of the boy’s ear, something like a coil of dark smoke. Amelia breathed it in and straightened up, holding her breath for a second or two. Then she let it out, and the dark smoke escaped her mouth, rising up into the mist, scattering to nothing.

  “There,” she said. “Now, you’re going to knock on the door, and you’re going to live a long, happy and normal life. Understood?”

  Charlie nodded. He looked like he’d just woken up from a dream. He knocked on the door.

  “Come on.” Amelia pulled Kirby away, down the street a little, where they stopped to watch.

  “Shouldn’t we hide?” asked Kirby.

  “Nah. They can’t see us.”

  Squinting through the wet night, Kirby watched Charlie knock on the door more loudly. Seconds later the door opened and a woman stood in the doorway. When she saw little Charlie standing at the door, she stepped back and covered her mouth with her hands. Then she dropped to her knees and swept him up in her arms. “Oh Charlie!” she was saying. “My Charlie…”

  As Kirby watched, he thought of his own mum, of her hugs. How he missed those hugs. Maybe, now they’d defeated two witches, she was waking up this very moment. He felt a warm glimmer of hope in his stomach.

  Charlie’s dad was at the door now, scooping Charlie up and kissing him, kissing his hair.

  “You did that,” Amelia told Kirby. Then, as Charlie’s front door closed, she said, “We should go. We’ve one more job to do tonight.”

  Back to Sleep

  “We’re back in the graveyard,” said Kirby.
<
br />   “Nothing gets past you, does it?” Amelia replied. “You really have honed your sense of observation into a finely tuned instrument.”

  “But why are we back? And how come you haven’t conked out like you did last time you fought a witch?”

  “I promised you, didn’t I? We’ll get you home first.” Amelia had the rag doll in her hands. “Plus, this witch didn’t fight as hard as the first one. The first witch wanted to wake up, wanted to inflict her anger on the world. But all this one wanted to do was sleep. You don’t like getting up for school on a Monday morning, right? Well, imagine how much worse it’d be if you’d been asleep for four hundred years.”

  They had cut through the main part of the cemetery, past grand tombstones and paupers’ graves to the overgrown patch of unconsecrated ground beyond the far gate. It was almost three in the morning, and the sky was lightening in the east. Behind them, the dark blade of the church spire rose up into the mist.

  The three black candles were still in the ground. Amelia walked to the middle one, placed the doll on the long grass beside it, and stepped back. The candle burst into dazzling flame, piercing Kirby’s eyes.

  Then, standing before them, was the witch-girl from the haunted house.

  Kirby fumbled backwards, almost tripping on overgrown weeds.

  “It’s fine,” said Amelia. “She won’t harm you. We’re helping her.”

  “Helping?” said Kirby. “She kidnapped Charlie! She took my memories!”

  “I gave them back,” said the witch a little sheepishly. “All of them. You can check ’em if you want.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Amelia said to the witch, then to Kirby, “She helped me. I promised to bring her back. She won’t bother anyone else.”

  The witch-girl smiled and began to hum ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ slowly, slightly off-key. “Before I go,” she said, “a warning.”

  “Go on,” said Amelia.

  “The witch trials in my time were terrible. Lots of innocent people suffered. But sometimes they found someone who deserved what they got. Sometimes they got it right. Watch out for the last witch.”