The Mark of Cain

by Lindsey Barraclough

  She winces, drops the needle, presses her fingertips to her head.

  Agitated, I seek for the spirit thread but can see the scarred man no longer. There is no attachment. It is severed.

  He is dead, then.

  We stretch our lips into a smile.

  Now I will hurry her.

  Pick up the poppet.

  Find the glinting needle.

  Pinch the seam together, stop the feathers creeping out. Stitch, stitch, little tiny stitches — one, two, three. Wind the thread around the finger. Loop and tighten. Make fast. Cut. Snip.

  Take the workbox, lift the pincushion, put aside the needle case, lay out the silks — blue, sea-green, and ochre. And here, the perfect colour — deep dark brown for the girl’s prying eyes …

  For some time we seem to be held in suspension, motionless — Roger beside Mimi with a hand resting on her shoulder, Mrs. Ketch and Miss Jewel, me kneeling under the hawthorn — caught up in a moment that appears to hang shimmering in the air, as if the whole world is stilled and hushed by it.

  I struggle up towards Roger and Mimi, see their faces bleached in the gaslight almost like the snow. Miss Jewel sighs and arches her back against her open palms before wearily moving away from the tree. From under Mimi’s hat, strands of fair hair blow forward.

  Mrs. Ketch lifts her head and stands as if listening. “The wind has changed,” she says.

  As we make our way back to the kissing gate, I think at first we are being showered with drops of snow, then realize they are speckles of rain, spotting the white crusts on the crosses and arched gravestones.

  Hurrying back along the path under the spitting, wind-twisted trees, I wonder anxiously if Aphra has finished her sewing and is watching us along the spirit thread. Is she standing even now in Ange’s bedroom, a glass-headed pin pinched in her fingers? Can she see us crossing the lane beside the vicarage? Is she following us with her gaze through the back door into the Saint Lazarus Hospital?

  We are taken aback to see Mrs. Bullen standing by the gas stove, her face gaunt.

  “You said you’d come, Mrs. Ketch.” She begins to sob. “And now I’ve had to leave him with Valerie again — and she’s only ten.”

  Under the harsh kitchen light Mrs. Ketch lowers her hood and places a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bullen. Iris, would you take the mixture to Mr. Bullen? I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  Miss Jewel pours the liquid from the pan into a jug and, glancing in our direction with her night-owl eyes, leads Mrs. Bullen out of the back door.

  When they have gone, Mrs. Ketch’s gaze lingers on each of us in turn, her face tense. She grasps my hand. “Cora,” she says, “Iris and I have to go to the Bullens’ now, but they don’t live far. As soon as we’ve finished, we’ll follow you to Bryers Guerdon.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Ketch.”

  She lifts her hood back over her peaked hat and opens the back door once more. As we round the house into the wind, she says, “Oh, if only Ed Blezzard hadn’t smashed up and cleared away all those witch bottles — stupid man — maybe we could have done something with them. Iron nails never lose their magic, not even in ten thousand years.”

  At the front we walk away across the patchy snow in the opposite direction to Mrs. Ketch. I look behind and raise my hand in a wave. She stops there for a while, anxiously watching, and calls out, “Go on and we’ll catch you up!”

  We reach the corner of the church wall, and the Saint Lazarus Hospital disappears behind the vicarage. Where the road turns for Bryers Guerdon the telephone box stands starkly red against the muddy-white fields beyond. An icy dome covers its roof like a beret, but a thread of water is spiralling from a corner, twisting down onto the pavement a few feet from the glass door, turning the snow into a mess of dirty slush.

  Black clouds roll above us, turning the sky ash dark. With every step the wind rises and the rain begins to splatter heavily. We pull down our hats and tighten our scarves. Groaning trees fling drops of water onto the verges, where green tips of grass are beginning to poke out of their icy shell.

  On the long road back to Bryers Guerdon, Roger keeps Mimi close, helping her through the gathering water. The unsettled air around us is charged with worry and uncertainty. With each arduous step, as the rain beats down and the wind pummels us from every direction, the sense of dread intensifies.

  I imagine Ange waiting for us, the poppets, plump with feathers, ready in her hands.

  Ange or Aphra? I can’t seem to separate one from the other.

  If we find the poppets before she uses them against us, and if by some blessed chance we are able to bury them, what then?

  Ange would still be there, and therefore so would Aphra.

  The nasty little doll, its stone heart stitched in under a scrap of my father’s shirt, is deep among the hawthorn roots, but my mind persists in making terrible pictures: white-tiled walls, a gleaming metal trolley under a bare bulb, a thin sheet, a cold, drooping hand.

  The Thin Man comes into sight. The lantern over the door is swinging wildly on its bracket in the wind, tossing a jig-jagging light across the swirl of watery snow. We turn and strain our eyes in the half-darkness, searching back down the road for Mrs. Ketch and Miss Jewel.

  While we stand there, a massive squall sweeps across the fields from the north-west. Unable to press on for a moment, we huddle together to steady ourselves; then all at once, only a few yards away towards Hilsea, a huge ash tree overhanging a farm gate begins to sway, creaking wildly on its stretching, snapping roots before crashing across the road with a thunderous roar, crushing the timbers of the gate and sending up a swirling gust of splintered twigs and wet brown leaves.

  “How on earth are they going to get past that?” Roger cries, shielding his eyes.

  “They’ve got to,” I call. “We can’t do this on our own.”

  The road begins streaming as the drains and gutters struggle to draw off the surge of rain and meltwater, and the ditches on either side start to overflow.

  Braced, bent forward, our eyes stinging, the wind whipping up strands of soaking hair from under our hats, we turn into Old Glebe Lane.

  I’m so frightened, my thoughts whirl unchecked.

  How has she chosen to wound us — Mimi and me? Does she intend to pick one of us first, then the other? Will it hurt? Will I be able to bear it for Mimi’s sake?

  Again I wonder if she is watching us as we battle onwards, our cheeks lashed raw. Is she waiting now because she wants us there so she can see us suffer? And what could she do to Roger? He could have stayed warm at home in Fieldpath Road, but he is here with us, labouring to keep Mimi on the road, constantly looking back to make sure I am still behind them.

  The trees of Glebe Woods writhe and hiss and spray as we pause for a moment on the brow of the hill to catch our breath. While liquid mud swirls around our feet, we gaze out over the marshes stretching away before us in the gathering gloom.

  The rain is buffeted this way and that, and through it we can still see, faintly shining in a patch of dying light, the familiar channels shifting into shapeless expanses of water, rippling in the wind, running into one another to form interlinking pools, their loose margins marked only by the tips of the taller clumps of reeds, where large chunks of snow jostle one another as they dam together.

  But worryingly, farther away, where the river merges into the estuary, a blank darkness surges and spreads. Out there the snaking creeks are no longer visible. From blustering sky to river to marsh, there is nothing but a mass of heaving, swelling black water.

  Roger shouts over the wind, “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Do you know when high tide is?”

  “I can’t think,” I cry back.

  “I hope there’s not going to be a flood like there was before,” he yells. “People died… .”

  With another fruitless look back for the two women, we trudge down the hill and into the Chase through the sodden mud. Small lumps of hard snow ride o
n the water, which gushes down the sloping fields and across the road before flowing into the swollen ditch.

  Roger is straining to keep Mimi upright and moving forward, half lifting her under her arms so the water doesn’t slop over the tops of her boots. My freezing feet are so achingly heavy I can hardly drag one in front of the other.

  At last we reach Guerdon Hall, a hazy, gloomy hulk with not one single light glimmering out into the driving rain.

  Ange must be fast asleep — or waiting for us in the dark.

  My teeth begin to chatter with fear.

  Through half-screwed eyes it is just possible to see that much of the creek has already thawed, but flat pieces of ice bob on the surface of the rising water, barely a couple of inches under the bridge. If it swells much more, the planks will be covered. Even now the smallest surge sends shallow waves lapping over the edges, the ice shooting across the wood. In the deepening darkness it is difficult to see a safe place to cross.

  “We could do with a light,” Roger calls. “I should have brought a torch.”

  “Mr. Wragge had a hurricane lamp in the barn!” I shout. “Let’s go and look!”

  We struggle across the swirling mud of the old farmyard. The wind has caught the barn door and is pounding it so violently, the one remaining hinge twists and groans on its single screw.

  The shelter is welcome, though the rafters whistle and sigh, and every now and then a slate lifts off and thuds to the ground outside. In several places the water is coming through the roof, here a steady drip, drip, drip, there a thin stream.

  Squinting, I see the dim gleam of glass. “It’s here!” I call, reaching up to unhook the hurricane lamp from its peg on the wall, rocking it gently, relieved to hear the swish of paraffin. A dirty old box of Swan Vestas sits on a rickety shelf nearby. “How do you light it?”

  “I can do that,” says Roger.

  He gives his gloves to Mimi, and it takes him no time at all to lever up the glass and strike a match to the wick.

  We see each other, soaking, bedraggled, and tense, in the quavering light from the yellow flame.

  Mimi drops one of Roger’s gloves.

  I bend to pick it up, dive my hand into the straw.

  “Ouch!”

  A sharp jag of pain. A warm rush over my palm.

  I pull off my woollen glove. There is a ragged cut between my thumb and forefinger, and the blood is flowing out in a thick dark stream.

  “Crikey, what have you done?” Roger cries. “Here, hold this, Mimi.”

  Cautiously, Mimi takes the lamp from Roger and holds it at arm’s length. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a sodden handkerchief, which I press on the throbbing wound. The scarlet blood spreads into the wet cotton. I feel hollow, light-headed, lean against the wall for a moment.

  “How did it happen?”

  Roger crouches down, warily turns over the straw. “Hold the lamp a bit lower, Mimi. Ah, look at this.”

  He slowly stands and shows us an iron nail, bent at an angle, brown with rust, the point twisted over into a sharp hook. “It’s from one of those witch bottles,” he breathes.

  On its tip is a drop of my blood.

  A sudden mighty gust of wind bustles through the open doorway, lifts the top layer of straw, and sends it spinning around us in a whirl of dust. In the same moment I recall Mrs. Ketch’s words — Iron nails never lose their magic, not even in ten thousand years. I feel a rush in my head, a ripple of excitement.

  “Are — are there any more nails?” I ask urgently.

  “Why?”

  “Just see,” I say, moving some of the straw aside with my foot.

  “Mimi, lower the lamp. Look, there’s one.”

  Again Roger stoops, runs his hands over the earth floor. “Here, Mimi — now here.”

  Another nail comes to light, then one more. He finds some jagged fragments of thick greenish glass, another bent nail, more broken glass, more nails.

  While Roger is searching, I look eagerly around the barn. The shadows of the old cow stalls, wooden beams, and hanging chains dance in the nodding light of the hurricane lamp. Then, on the shelf where we found the matches, I see a few dusty, web-threaded old bottles stacked all higgledy-piggledy, some on their sides, most cracked or broken … but one of them sets my heart racing.

  I fold my cut hand tightly on the handkerchief and with the other reach for the bottle. My fingers tremble as I lift it off the shelf. Under the thick dust it is half-glazed stoneware, dull cream below and shiny brown at the top. I brush it against my coat, and some of the dirt rubs off. Through the remaining grime I read an oval of fancy black letters: Pepper and Beard’s, Lowestoft, and in its centre, Traditional Stone Ginger Beer. Miraculously, still stuck firmly in the neck is a cork and cap stopper, and when I shake it, nothing inside.

  “Roger …”

  I hold out the bottle, roll my eyes towards the glass and iron nails in his hand. At first he seems puzzled, looks down at the nails, back to the bottle, then to my bleeding hand.

  In the yellow light I see his cheeks grow pale and a frown appear.

  “You seriously think we can make one — a witch bottle?”

  I nod quickly. “See if the cork will come out.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Mrs. Ketch and Miss Jewel?” Mimi says. “They’ll know how to do it proper.”

  I picture the deep rushing water on the dark Hilsea road, the fallen tree.

  “I don’t think they’ll be able to get here, Mimi,” I say. “Not now. We’ll have to try and make one ourselves.”

  Roger puts the nails and shards of glass down on an old wooden crate, nervously takes the bottle, and pulls at the cap. He twists and tugs, and at last the cork squeaks out of the neck.

  I swallow and begin to unwrap the wet, bloody handkerchief from my hand. As the hanky loosens, the wound throbs.

  Roger’s mouth is set in a grim line. “Are — are you sure?” he whispers.

  I stretch out my hand.

  “Light, Mimi,” he says, and as she brings it close, he hesitantly takes my fingers and turns my hand thumb downwards so the gash is over the wide neck of the bottle. Then he puts his own hand over mine and squeezes the edges of the torn skin together.

  I suck in a sharp breath. The pulsing blood drips in.

  Drop by drop.

  The lamplight quivers. Mimi’s wide glistening eyes are on us, quietly watching.

  The top of the bottle smears red, and a crimson line travels slowly down the curved side. In a short while the dripping stops, and I press the cut with the handkerchief. Then Mimi sets the lamp down on the wooden crate, pulls off her gloves, and lays them down beside the lamp.

  Gazing at me all the while, she nibbles one by one at the fingernails of her right hand, spits out the little slivers into her other hand, reaches across, and drops them inside the bottle. Then she pulls off her hat and coils a lock of hair around her hand. She tugs hard, winces, gasps, and holds up the fair curl she has pulled out.

  I push back my own hat, wind a length of hair in my fingers near the scalp, shut my eyes, and yank once, swallow, try again, and, with a grimace, rip out a length. Eyes smarting, I try to persuade both locks of hair into the neck of the bottle, but they stick on the drying blood. Roger twists the hair around a couple of the long rusted nails and pokes them down with the other nails and the jagged fragments of glass, then plugs the top shut with the stopper.

  If I was expecting some feeling of enchantment in the air, as I sensed under the hawthorn tree, there is nothing. I feel only the wet chill seeping inside my boots and into my bones. Nothing has changed. The wind continues to thunder and whine through the groaning rafters, the dangling chains sway and chink, water from the leaking roof spatters into the straw, the door thuds back and forth on its loosening hinge.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” I breathe.

  Roger looks at me anxiously. “What if it does?” he says.

  His eyes are mirrors of my own fears, and all the misgivings that
beset me on the road from Hilsea come thronging back.

  Where does Angela Russell end and Aphra Rushes begin? What if one has become the other, and they are the same? And even if there were two separate people, Aphra Rushes and Angela Russell, in one body, and the bottle drew out and destroyed the witch — Aphra — what would then happen to the shell left behind — Ange?

  Can you take one out without hurting the other?

  My head aches.

  I think of Ange laughing over the fish and chips, wearing her funny crown, snuggling down with Mimi on the settee, sewing …

  … sewing the scraps of fabric to make the little man with the stone heart.

  Is Dad alive or dead? I see again the drooping grey hand under the hem of the white sheet, close my eyes for a moment, try and calm myself. But my thoughts turn to the snippets from our clothes, the hair from our hairbrush, the poppets of Mimi and me somewhere in that dark, brooding house over the creek, and Aphra waiting for us with her gleaming glass-headed pins.

  We might have stayed there a long time, nervous and uncertain, but a deafening crack and a mighty wrenching sound send all three of us spinning round. The ancient hinge shatters, the door twists, and the wind lifts and pitches it thudding into the mud outside. At the same instant a surge of water gushes inside the open doorway, pushing the straw ahead of it for a couple of feet in a foamy, curving line.

  “If we don’t go now,” Roger says urgently, “we might never get over the bridge.”

  I take the bottle and push it into one of the deep pockets of my duffel coat, then we make for the doorway and brace ourselves against the gusting, drenching wind.

  In Roger’s hand the lamp rocks wildly on its metal handle as we battle across the swirling farmyard mud, huddling together in the soaking rain.

  At the creek the icy water is washing over the wooden planks.

  “I’ll go first!” Roger cries, swinging the lamp from one edge of the bridge to the other to find the middle. “Mimi, you hold on to me. Cora, follow close!”

  I steady Mimi under her arms as she clutches Roger’s coat. We cross gingerly, one step at a time, wading through the water, pausing for a moment to brace ourselves as a huge gust threatens to blow us off the side. At last we splash one by one onto the submerged gravel on the other bank and warily approach the house.