The Village Witch

by Davies, Neil

  Warily, she lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Yes Steve? What do you want? I’m very busy.”

  “Guess who I bumped into Kat?” The reception was poor. His voice sounded as if he was shouting across a busy street into the phone. “Guess who’s come back to the village?”

  She sighed.

  “I don’t have time for silly games Steve. Just tell me who you’re talking about and then go.”

  There was a laugh on the other end of the phone, a laugh she found strangely disconcerting. It was a long time since Steve had found the nerve to laugh at her.

  “Tim’s back Kat. Tim Galton is back.”

  Katrina stared at the phone for several seconds after Steve Ives had hung up, not quite sure what she felt. Not quite sure how to handle the rush of memories that exploded in her head.

  Her life had suddenly become more complicated than ever. Professor Hall and his daughter, and now this. Tim back in the village.

  “Shit.” She slumped down into her chair and spun it round to face out of the office window. She was not prepared for this, and Steve knew it. That was why he had laughed. He would be revelling in the discomfort his announcement had caused. And he knew her well enough to know that it would cause her discomfort, confusion, and all kinds of conflicting emotions that she could really do without.

  Tim Galton, back in Byre after all these years.

  Just what, exactly, was she meant to do about it?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1

  William Hardcastle staggered into the cemetery, uncaring and largely unaware of the tombstones surrounding him. He was tired. He was drunk. This was a shortcut home. He didn’t need to know or think about anything more than that.

  His wife would be asleep. She had long ago given up waiting for him to come home from The Byre Social Club. His two sons were no longer children. At 19 and 23 they would be out later than he was. The only thing waiting for him at home was a bed, and even that would be cold and forbidding. He and Sally hadn’t slept in the same bed for almost six years.

  “You okay Bill?”

  The shout came from the cemetery gates. The voice sounded like Sam Whitmore’s. Sam owned the butcher’s shop in the village. They’d been drinking together just ten minutes before.

  William raised an arm in salute and mumbled something about being fine. He did not look back towards the gate, but continued weaving and stumbling his way forward along the path through the tombstones.

  Sam Whitmore watched him for a moment, then chuckled, shook his head and continued on his own weary way home.

  William forgot about him almost immediately. He began, blearily, to focus on his surroundings. It was too dark for him to read any of the inscriptions but he could see the shapes of the stones, the vases of flowers. He was not a superstitious man, nor was he inclined to believe in anything he could not touch and feel for himself, but the surroundings depressed him nonetheless.

  He trudged on, wishing he were back on the well-lit street. Back among the living. His eyes lingered on some of the more ornate shapes that rose out of the dark ground around him. He couldn’t imagine himself having anything other than the simplest of headstones. Even if his family could afford something grander, he doubted they’d be willing to do it. With the melodrama of the drunk, he thought that few would even grieve for him when he finally died. Least of all his wife.

  One of the headstones ahead was grander than all the others. Perched on top of it was a statue, a great bird of some kind, although its silhouette was unlike any bird he had ever seen.

  “Your family must have really loved you,” he slurred as he slowed to look closer.

  White-hot pain exploded inside his skull.

  He slammed his hands over his ears, holding his head, pressing as if he could squeeze the pain from it. He cried out, staggered, closed his eyes, opened them again. It made no difference.

  He tried to maintain his balance as the burning agony disoriented him, but his weakening legs and the alcohol made it impossible. He fell onto his knees, then forward onto his elbows. His hands, still clasping his head, scraped as he tumbled, flesh ripped apart by the uneven concrete. The movement and pain was more than his delicately balanced stomach could withstand.

  He vomited, an acrid, thick soup of bile, beer and the fish and chips he’d finished just before entering the cemetery splashing over the path, over his scraped and bleeding hands. Each time it would stop, another spasm would squeeze his stomach and more would be forced from his throat, out through his mouth, his nose.

  Finally, after several dry retches, he managed to roll into a sitting position. Not only his hands were scraped, but the knees of his trousers were ripped and the skin beneath them bloody and raw. His elbows hurt, but the coat had protected them from the tearing of the concrete path.

  The pain in his head was gradually lessening into a constant pounding. The taste in his mouth was worse than anything he had ever experienced. His throat burned.

  Fear took hold. Thoughts of brain tumours and haemorrhages, blood clots and all those other frightening complaints that his wife watched on Discovery Health ran through his thoughts. What else could cause that kind of pain? Was he dying?

  Something moved in the darkness to his left. A fluttering, shadowy something. Then another, and another. Birds? Bats? They seemed too large and, although he could not understand it himself, less solid than either of those creatures would be.

  He could barely move his head to look, but it didn’t matter because the movement was now all around him.

  “Who’s that?” His voice was dry and cracked, and speaking made him cough.

  He tried to focus his eyes, to see who was playing the fool in the cemetery at this time of night.

  Drink fuelled anger then began to replace the fear.

  “If someone’s there you could at least fucking help me get up!”

  He flinched as the fluttering returned, loud and close. Like hundreds of birds’ wings flapping in panic, but so much louder than any birds he had ever heard.

  Great claws grabbed his head from behind, curving round his face, serrated talons gouging into his eyes.

  He screamed as his eyeballs popped, one after the other, optical fluid and blood spurting from the sockets.

  The claws squeezed, joined by others raking his body, his arms, his legs. Pulling, tearing.

  He could feel the pressure building, could do nothing but writhe and scream at the agony.

  His skull split with a crack that echoed around the cemetery. Blood and mucus and brain spat forth from his mouth, his nose, his ears, his empty eye sockets, as his head crumpled and collapsed in on itself.

  Aello screeched the triumph of those she had called from the black depths of the underworld. They had answered her call. They darted about her now, wild with the thrill of the kill, drunk on blood. She bent back her head and screeched again, her returning strength, and the strength given to her by those she had called, breaking the sound through into the corporeal world. A terrible, deafening sound that bounced off the gravestones, shrieked through the cemetery gates and shook the shop windows in the village centre.

  2

  “That was no owl!”

  Susan stood and crossed to the small, quarter-paned window of her father’s bedroom. She pulled the curtain aside, grimacing at the accumulated dirt on the outside. This guesthouse on the road out of Byre was not exactly five-star material.

  “See anything?” The Professor, lying on the bed, pushed himself up on his elbows.

  “Nothing unusual. Any ideas what it was?”

  The Professor shook his head.

  “Worth investigating?” Susan turned away from the window, letting the curtain fall back to cover the grime.

  The Professor smiled.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  3

  The sound startled Tim as he was making a cup of tea. Boiling water splashed onto the worktop and spilled onto the floor, narrowly missing his leg.
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  “Damn. Getting clumsy in my old age.”

  He had never heard a sound like it before, but he was too tired and had too many problems of his own to give it much thought.

  Almost before the echoes of that eerie cry had died there was a knock at his front door.

  He hesitated. For one moment he imagined the two were connected. The strange noise and the person at his door.

  He shook his head, smiling at his own foolishness.

  Living alone is making you jumpy.

  He was looking around for a tea towel to mop up the spill when the knock at the door came again. Not loud or angry, but persistent.

  He could wipe up the water later.

  Sighing, he crossed from the kitchen, through the living space, into the small reception area that had, no doubt, once been where the preacher or minister would meet his flock. Without any further hesitation, he pulled open the front door.

  He looked at the woman standing outside, a slight smile beneath short cropped black hair and bright eyes. For a moment he failed to recognise her, and then he felt his heart flutter and stumble, his stomach twist and turn. His mouth had fallen open. He stared.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  The woman’s smile broadened.

  “Hello Tim.”

  “Katrina. Oh my God. You look… fantastic!”

  4

  Susan Hall stopped as the stone wall of the cemetery came into view. She waited, one hand in her pocket, fingers gently touching the solid reassurance of the Heckler & Koch P7. She found it comforting. Her father thought the weapon an unnecessary danger.

  She had slipped it into her pocket without him knowing.

  Now she waited for him to catch up. He was not so much slow as she was quick and eager to investigate the first really odd phenomena they’d encountered since arriving in Byre.

  The sound had been like no animal she had ever heard.

  “Perhaps we should have brought the car?” Her voice hovered between gentle mocking and genuine concern.

  The Professor shook his head as he drew level with her.

  “Too much chance of missing something. Better to walk.”

  She shrugged and turned to look at the wall and, a short walk further up, the open gates.

  “Are you ready to go on? Or do you need to rest?”

  The Professor had opened his mouth as if to snap a sharp reply, when he looked up and saw the grin on his daughter’s face.

  “Just get moving will you?” He couldn’t help but smile. His daughter had the same ability as her mother to find humour, however serious or dangerous the situation. They walked the last few yards uphill to the gates, Susan slowing her step to match her father’s.

  Although she would not say as much to him, she was concerned. He seemed much older this time out. It had been several months since their last investigation together, but he seemed to have aged much more than that. His steps were weary, his face drawn and haggard. He still had the same energy in his personality, but his physical strength seemed to be failing.

  And the ease with which that woman had beguiled him was worrying. The woman was strong, she had felt that herself when they shook hands, but surely not strong enough to have placed a glamour on her father of just six months ago? And yet he had succumbed without a struggle.

  “Any thoughts on where the sound came from?” She stopped by the open cemetery gates, searching the shadows and shapes of tombstones for inspiration.

  The Professor looked farther up the road towards the village, then around at the houses opposite, dark and sleeping.

  “None at all. I’m not even sure why we came towards the village rather than out into the countryside. I just followed you.”

  Susan shrugged and smiled.

  “Just seemed the right direction.” She didn’t know why herself, but every sense, every feeling in her body had told her to head this way.

  Right now they told her to look in the cemetery.

  The Professor took one more look around the street.

  “Where now…?”

  Susan had gone, walked through the cemetery gates without a word.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he sighed and followed her.

  “There’s something here, I know it.” She spoke without looking back.

  “Even if there was, we’d be lucky to find it. It’s so dark in here I can’t see…”

  Professor Hall stumbled and fell over the body of William Hardcastle.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1

  “So, how did you find me?”

  Tim handed Katrina a cup of tea and sat on the settee opposite her. He was still staring, he knew. He couldn’t help it. Katrina Bayley was the last person he expected to turn up on his doorstep.

  “Steve phoned me first, to gloat I think.” She smiled. “After that, it didn’t take much checking to find where you were staying.”

  For a moment neither of them spoke, both sipping their tea.

  “You look…” Tim hesitated, embarrassed he could think of nothing more to say.

  Katrina laughed a loud, genuine laugh.

  “Thank you. You already said.” She paused, taking another sip of tea. “You’re looking good yourself.”

  Tim smiled and flushed red.

  It felt like the years had just fallen away. He was a teenager again, smiling, embarrassed, nervous, a little unsure what to say or do next.

  He took another sip of his tea. It was the safest and most non-committal thing he could think of.

  “This is all very civilised,” said Katrina. “Sitting here, drinking tea. Chatting!”

  For a moment Tim held it inside, but then the laugh exploded and he quickly put the teacup down before he scalded himself.

  Katrina laughed too.

  Tim regained some control, the laugh subsiding to a broad smile.

  “I’ve missed you Katrina. It’s wonderful to see you again.”

  “I thought you’d forgotten all about me. For over a year after you left I wrote to your solicitors almost every week, begging them to tell me where you were. An address. Anything. So I could write to you.”

  The smile faded from his face. He frowned.

  “I’m sorry. All I thought about back then was escaping. I didn’t really care where. Ended up joining the army. They kept me moving.”

  “You never wrote.” Katrina was still smiling, but her expression had become wry, slightly sad.

  “I never wrote anyone.” Tim shook his head. “I’m sorry, that’s no excuse. Of all people I should have written to you.”

  “You never even said goodbye you know? I just woke up one morning and you were no longer there.”

  “I had to escape.”

  “I know it was a tough time for you Tim, but you could have phoned, or something.”

  “I admit I was a selfish, thoughtless idiot. Can you forgive me?”

  He smiled as he asked the question, but there was more seriousness behind it than he cared to admit.

  “I forgave you a long time ago. I’m just so glad you’ve come back.”

  There was another pause as they both smiled at each other, but it was a comfortable pause, a contented silence to allow their thoughts to swirl and tumble in their heads.

  “Do you fancy a walk?” Katrina put down her cup of tea. “Better than being stuck inside.”

  Tim laughed. “Just like the old days eh, Katrina? You always were the nature girl.”

  Her eyes sparkled as she stood.

  “Oh yes, nature is very important to me. The Old Gods of the land are very close to me.”

  For a moment Tim glanced at her, at the faraway gaze that had fallen across her eyes. Then he let it slide. If Katrina had found religion with some pagan belief, or if she just liked to throw such phrases into the conversation to surprise people, it did not concern him. And she certainly wouldn’t be the first around Byre.

  His thoughts were interrupted by sirens, Doppler-shifting past the house towards the village.


  “Sounds like there’s some excitement out there,” said Katrina, her eyes focussing once more on her immediate surroundings, her smile broadening. “Shall we follow?”

  Tim hesitated before answering. He had seen that look, that smile, that brightness in her eyes back when they were both children. It was a look that said the child Katrina had got her own way in something, had won some quiet victory in a war no one else knew about. On her more mature, adult face it was unnerving, and every sense and muscle in his body tensed.

  But this was Katrina Bayley! She could never be a threat to him. There was too much history between them and, he hoped, some future.

  He forced himself to relax.

  “Why not? It’s not often Byre gets any excitement.”

  2

  “The cemetery!” said Katrina, barely containing her desire to run ahead.

  “Are you sure?”

  Tim’s voice broke through her excitement. She had almost forgotten about him. Almost forgotten that he walked at her side as they headed, rapidly, towards the village.

  “Oh, I’m sure.” She pointed to the sky as they cleared the trees overhanging their path. “See?”

  Tim looked, saw the sky illuminated with flashing lights, and nodded.

  “Guess you were right. Certainly looks like it’s over by the cemetery. Funny, I was there just the other day. It felt… strange.”

  By the time they reached there, they had been joined by at least twenty other people, all pulled from their houses or the pub by a morbid curiosity and, for several who threw faint but meaningful smiles towards Katrina, excitement.

  Police and an ambulance were already there, their now silent signals still flashing into the dark sky. Uniformed officers formed an irregular barrier before the cemetery gates, keeping the growing crowd back. There was a low rumble of dozens of muted conversations.

  From within the cemetery walked another policeman, still uniformed but with the regalia and the stature of one superior to those facing the crowd. Following him were the two-man ambulance crew, and between them a sheet-covered stretcher.

  The senior police officer scanned the crowd. Tim felt that he smiled slightly and nodded when he saw Katrina, but he was probably mistaken.