The Lights Go Out in Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  “Yeah, because I can still sense the way my powder of graphite is working, all shifting around in its jar, influenced by the occult weather. So I think I’d know if it was shifting because of this stuff we can’t feel.”

  “And of course, as always, in those terms, I take my holy water on trust.” Lizzie used some kitchen paper to wipe it away. “Okay, new approach, maybe it’s the words. What does this thing say?” Lizzie read the whole poster out loud. It was all pretty much innocuous, talking about the bands and stalls and sporting events. “Look at this, though,” she said, indicating a line of smaller print beside a Facebook logo. “‘What do you wish the Festival could do for Lychford?’ That’s a weird way to put it. The use of ‘wish’—”

  “Lizzie, you’re brilliant.” Autumn got out her phone and looked up the Festival’s Facebook event page. It didn’t shine with occult power, but by now neither of them were expecting it to. “I wonder if one of the jobs Picton did for the Festival was tech support?” She found the question from the poster as a separate post from the organisers. “And there are over one hundred comments.”

  “Oh no. We’ve had to do some extreme things to save the world—”

  “Yeah, we’re going to have to read the comments.”

  So they did. The sheer number of them had struck Lizzie as odd, but now that she read them, she could see why there were so many. The very first comment, by one Meadow Hill, whose profile photo was of three pugs, was a sarcastic comment to the effect that she wished the Festival could make the local youths actually use the skate ramp in the park rather than lounge around it. There then followed many, many more to that effect.

  “Just about all of them are making wishes,” she said, “implicitly.”

  “And I can see how a lot of them could come true in ironic ways,” said Autumn, puzzled, “but Judith said that wasn’t what the cappy was up to. Even if it was, a lot of this is trivial stuff.”

  “So is it like Judith said, are these just a bunch of wishes that Picton wanted to hear, so she could preen about making some of them come true? Are we just dealing with some . . . magical architecture she left behind? What’s all this got to do with the retirement home and us not being able to sense everything?”

  “Tonight,” said Autumn, decisively, “we take action.”

  * * *

  Autumn found herself, as they approached the Plough that evening, taking pains to explain to Lizzie how “taking action” turned out to mean going down to the pub because this was the local for some of the Festival committee. So, of course, they were doing this tactically.

  “Of course,” agreed Lizzie.

  They’d gone over to Judith’s first, but found the lights not on and nobody answering the door. Which, Autumn had said, regretting the words almost as soon as they left her mouth, was a pretty apt metaphor. Lizzie had called Shaun, and they’d been relieved to hear that, when he’d visited, she’d mentioned being tired and going to bed early.

  The Plough was the most local of locals in Lychford, and it had taken some courage on Autumn’s part to come back here, after the drunken night that had resulted in so much bad news for herself and the town and, well, reality in general. But the worst of that had happened at a different pub. There was a new barman, Robbie, understudy to Rob the landlord, and he seemed to be attracting a younger crowd. “Attracting is the word,” said Autumn to Lizzie, as she sat down at their usual table, bringing two pints of 6B.

  “Sorry?”

  “I saw you making small talk.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend, hasn’t he? And I’m still in mourning.”

  “It’s been over a year.”

  “Has it? I should have put a note in my diary. ‘Start dating again from this point.’ Also, probably not a good look for the local vicar to be chatting up the bar staff.”

  “So who are you allowed to chat up?”

  “This is a problem those in my profession have faced pretty often, you know.”

  “And what’s the solution?”

  Lizzie just smiled angrily at her for a long moment, then thankfully spotted something in the other corner. “Hey, spotlight off me, there’s your source of awkwardness.” Autumn looked over to see Luke sitting alone with his pint, staring into the first fire Rob had lit that year. “Is he still nursing a bruised—?”

  “I’d better go check.” Autumn evidently saw Lizzie’s grin and swatted her around the shoulder. “I mean on how he’s doing. You come with.”

  “Why?”

  “I kind of . . . don’t know how things are. Lizzie, please—”

  Which got Lizzie out of her seat before Autumn could finish the sentence. They went to join Luke, who looked up at them in surprise. “Oh, hi,” he said. “I was just going to text you—”

  “Sorry,” began Autumn, “I should have dropped you a line—”

  “—because I just saw that old lady who works at your shop.”

  Lizzie realised that their mission here tonight wasn’t going to work out. “You saw Judith? Where?”

  “She was hanging around at the gate by the cricket club. I wondered if she was okay, so I stopped, and she said she was. She got angry with me, told me to get on my way. I thought I should tell somebody who knew her.”

  Autumn sighed. “Thanks. We’d better get over there and see to her.”

  Lizzie looked between her and Luke as she headed for the door. “If we manage to get back, I think Autumn would very much like to sit and talk to you, because she was saying she hadn’t for ages and was missing you—”

  “Lizzie,” bellowed Autumn from the doorway, “come on!”

  * * *

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Autumn could feel the blush on her face as they marched toward the cricket club.

  “Sometimes you have to be on the nose about this stuff.”

  “You were more on the nose than a . . . moustache!”

  “I love it when you try for metaphors.”

  Autumn wanted to say that was kind of a job for her, but they’d reached the road that led past the cricket club. By the gate, under the street light, there indeed stood, stock still, a shape that looked very like Judith. “Oh my God, what’s she doing?”

  They reached her, only to find her staring into space. Staring into space upward, that was. “Were it around this time?” she said, not even looking around at them or saying hello.

  “Judith,” said Autumn, feeling so lost to see her here, “we have to get you back home.”

  “No, wait a second,” said Lizzie. Autumn saw she’d matched eyelines with Judith and was now looking up in the same direction she was. At the stars in the clear sky. “Judith, do you mean is it around this time when I encountered Maitland Picton?”

  “Well of course I do!” Autumn was cheered to hear that tone in her voice. And now she got what the old witch was saying. She squatted down to look in the right direction too. “You stand where she stood,” said Judith. “Now, where did she point?”

  Lizzie hesitantly adopted a pointing pose. Autumn could see that she was indicating what might be a constellation, three bright stars and a lesser one, that would form a triangle or a strangely geometrical part of a horse or something. “Because since this is the same time of night, those will be the same stars, won’t they?” said Lizzie, who’d obviously seen a few more Brian Cox documentaries. “Where Maitland Picton said she came from.”

  “Right,” said Judith. She looked to Autumn. “You point too. This is going to need both of you.”

  Autumn got cheek to cheek with Lizzie and raised her arm, then rather awkwardly pointed. It was so good to be working under Judith’s guidance again, annoying as she’d always found it in the past. The old hedge witch seemed to have found her mojo again. “So, what are we doing?”

  “Being reeled in and landed,” said a familiar voice from behind them.

  The blood in Autumn’s face ran cold. She tried to turn, but realised, with a rush of horror, that she couldn’t. She tried to look to Lizzie, besi
de her, but couldn’t even move her eyes. She could only make out the shape of her, as immobile as Autumn was, in her peripheral vision. This posture was already making her muscles ache. She made herself stay calm as a figure walked around them, then nimbly hopped up onto the stone of the gateway, so they could see her. It was Maitland Picton. Autumn wanted to yell something at her, but though she was still breathing, though she could move her chest slightly, she couldn’t move whatever she’d used in her throat and lips to form words.

  “I’m sure you’re discovering the exact bounds of your confinement,” said Picton. “I laid this pattern at this site immediately after my encounter with the reverend. I thought you’d come back here straight away and that at least one of you would point in the direction I pointed, toward stars I have actually nothing to do with. But in the end, it took quite a large nudge to get you here. I had to lure that young man into walking a quite unusual path from his college to that pub so he’d see Judith. Didn’t you realise that?”

  Her words were having the impact she wanted them to, but for Autumn it was the thought of how Judith was involved in this that was the worst thing. What had this bitch done to her, to make her betray them? She managed a kind of angry noise in the back of her throat.

  “You like using the terms of modern technology to describe something totally unlike it. Having said that, you understand how much magic is about story, about ‘spooky action at a distance.’ So perhaps I could use one of your metaphors back at you. Your Judith has been hacked.”

  Autumn’s mind was racing even as the cold and the ache was settling into her body. Had it been Picton that had caused Judith’s dementia? No, that had been the case long before. If only Autumn’s own actions hadn’t caused Judith to use up so much of her energy, maybe she could have fought off whatever Picton had done to her.

  “Judith set you up to adopt that position, which triggered my trap. Judith has been putting up the posters I designed for the Festival committee. Judith lulled you into thinking I was harmless,” said Picton, “that I was something called a cappy, a name she made up from her own imagination. Harmlessness and weakness was the impression I’d taken care to leave with the only organisation I’d made a scandal at, the W.I. I made that scandal to make sure you’d hear about it. When you came after me at the Bowls Club, I completed the impression and was able to hide once more, giving me time to finish off my plan. The nature of which I will not tell you. Every move I have made, I have made in order to use your own strengths and expectations against you. Even the accent and style I have adopted I chose to ease my acceptance into this town, and to make you take delight in ‘defeating’ me. That delight stopped you from checking too carefully for my continuing presence. My masters created me to be undetectable to your senses. But your current situation is because of, I feel, not just ignorance on your part, but a certain arrogance. It seems you’ve never before encountered a professional. The reverend asked me if I was some sort of spy. I’m not. I’m the invasion. I’m the bait your reality has swallowed, just as the lands of fairy are being hooked by one of my colleagues. And soon both territories will be annexed by my people, and considerably improved. Human notions of what is expected of reality and what is not will be turned completely inside out.”

  Autumn wanted to say something to Picton to encourage her to keep talking, because every detail of this was vital.

  But now Picton seemed to be tiring of it. She stretched and yawned. “I’ll allow myself a small celebration. But note that it’s only after the job is finished. A feature of what you’re probably thinking of as my ‘stealth magic’ here is that you’re not only held in place but can’t be perceived by other human beings. So nobody’s going to rescue you. Your situation will gradually become what I believe was regarded as the worst possible form of medieval torture, the ‘little ease,’ a cell which is so small that there’s no support and one’s muscles can’t relax. It’s the same sort of thing with those people hanging from manacles in cartoons. I should think your muscles are working overtime already. Waste products will build up inside them. This will keep on going, well, until you die from either exposure or lack of water. I’d show mercy by taking off your coats to hasten the process, but I really don’t feel like it, considering how your kind have treated every single one of my kind who’s ever previously ventured here. I wanted you to know that. You brought this on yourselves.”

  She hopped down from her perch and went behind them both once again. She muttered a few words to Judith that Autumn couldn’t make out. Then she heard them both retreating, at the old witch’s pace. Autumn felt her arms and legs starting to hurt from the posture already and tried not to panic.

  * * *

  Judith realised she was walking by the cricket club. She was remembering sunlight on that gorgeously green, flat surface. But now it was night. Now it was winter. She shivered and looked around. Well, there was her sister, Doreen, so that was all right. But who were this posh woman who was also walking with her?

  “Have we met?” she asked, putting on airs and graces a bit as, annoying herself, she automatically did when meeting anyone who owned a nice coat.

  “You asked for my help,” said the posh woman.

  “Oh ah? Dun’t sound like me.”

  “You were in extremis at the time.”

  Judith frowned. “I’ve never been to Greece.”

  For some reason, the woman sounded annoyed. “You were calling out to nobody in particular, asking for help. I was watching you, looking for an opening. I took that as my cue to appear and make you an offer.”

  Judith realised she did remember summat like that. She’d been standing in her kitchen, weeks ago, just after she’d got back from that business with the borders collapsing. She’d been suddenly aware, on the upward wave of the rolling sea of her self-awareness, that she was losing her mind. She’d called out to the higher powers for help. The sort of help that, in her experience, they hardly ever gave. She’d made a wish that her suffering would soon be over. And there before her, suddenly, had been standing Maitland Picton. Judith had known what sort of being she was facing, damn it. She had made deals with devils before. But she’d been such a selfish old woman, hadn’t she, that she’d given into her weakness in that moment, had asked what Picton would need of her in return. She remembered the woman’s words. “A certain amount of access. A certain amount of control.” Judith was pretty sure she would always have said no to that, except then the sea of her self-awareness must have taken her under again, and she had, perhaps, been pliable, been willing to say yes to anything.

  Now her hand spasmed, went to her coat pocket. But what was in there? Some internal warning told her not to go there. An internal warning that seemed, literally, to be situated in her guts. She burped loudly and withdrew her hand.

  “Tiresome,” said Picton.

  “Where are we going?” asked Judith, noticing again that it was night and they were walking.

  “To wait for noon tomorrow.”

  “What happens at noon?”

  “That is when everyone’s wishes will come true.”

  * * *

  Autumn’s attempts to not panic had failed. She was drawing air in through her nostrils, and a little through her mouth, at a rate that couldn’t be doing her any good. But maybe it’d help her think faster. Lizzie, right beside her, might be full of good ideas, but those couldn’t help Autumn now. Cramp had set into her limbs, and seemed to be coming and going in waves, each bigger than the last. Autumn vaguely wondered how far pain could actually go before her nerves started shorting out or something. She kind of hoped they did that.

  She watched, helplessly, as some teenagers walked past, going into the cricket club fields, playing music loudly from a phone. Suddenly there was something all around her, no, through her, what—?

  She slowed her breath again as she saw it was another kid, running to catch the others, who’d moved straight through the space she was stuck in. When Picton had said intangible, she’d meant it. It
would be too much of a risk to leave them here if someone could feel their presence, even slightly.

  It would be easier to bear this if it wasn’t for knowing that Lizzie was suffering beside her and that Judith was in that thing’s power. There was no rescue coming. She was going to have to do this herself.

  She fought down a wave of panic again. Her mind was sobbing but her body couldn’t. She was feeling a desperate animal need for help and comfort. None would be coming.

  She got control of herself again. That would come in waves too.

  What did she have to work with? She couldn’t use any spells with physical or verbal components, which left her with the sort of weak-ass stuff which was usually filed under “meditations.” Which was kind of like mindfulness, and mindfulness wasn’t known for its ability to extricate the mindful one from death traps. Picton really had wanted them to suffer, because she could presumably have set this trap to paralyse them completely, and thus stop them from breathing. Small mercies, eh? Still, she could breathe, so what could she do with that?

  She experimented with concentrating on her lips, trying to form specific sounds. No, it was like she’d been to the dentist, only this anaesthetic of her mouth and tongue was triple strength. She couldn’t even touch her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Hmm, maybe anaesthetic wasn’t the right word, because she was really feeling the blood in her face at the moment, probably some side effect of her muscles being kept at such tension. The pain was getting to that truly scary point now, the point where her body was yelling at her to do something to stop it. A point where she’d never been, at any time in her life. Autumn concentrated on anger, on her need to get out of here so she could get her hands on Picton, could save Judith from whatever Picton had planned for her beyond using her so horribly.

  Small breaths, like a spell for lighting small fires, if she could manage some really soft syllables, but no, she really did not want a small fire in front of her face right now. Passers-by might notice it, but then they’d just draw a crowd who’d still be oblivious to them dying in agony. Still, it’d save them from some of the exposure. Maybe she could try that later.