The Lights Go Out in Lychford

by Paul Cornell

  Lizzie grabbed her scarf, wrapped it around her hand, and punched the glass. It shattered, and the pieces crashed to the ground. Quickly, she grabbed the poster from the board, crumpled it, and threw it in with the others.

  “What the hell?” A cry that was half a shriek came from the other side of the square. There stood Carrie Anne Christopher, frozen in shock, frost scraper in hand, standing by her car, which was parked outside her house on the corner. “Reverend?”

  “Run!” whispered Autumn.

  “No,” said Lizzie. A big and rather scary thought had just come to her. She had a few seconds to mull it over as Carrie Anne came marching toward them, brandishing the scraper.

  “Why did you do that?” She went to inspect the noticeboard, as if she literally hadn’t believed her eyes, then swung to confront them. “What have you done with our poster?”

  “I think you should call 999,” said Lizzie. “No, better, call the police station.” And she pointed to a phone number on the noticeboard.

  * * *

  It took ten minutes from Shaun Mawson to arrive from down the road. Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t someone from Cirencester, that what Shaun had told her about his schedule, making sure they knew where to find him at any moment of the day for news of Judith, had turned out to be accurate. That ten minutes had consisted of Carrie grilling them about why they’d done it, about why, dear God, they had dozens of her posters in their bags! Had they done something to annoy Lizzie at the meeting? Hadn’t she been far enough up the agenda? Was this anything to do with the W.I.? Lizzie had dead batted every question, willing Autumn to not fly off the handle until Shaun got here.

  When he did, with a look on his face like he’d suddenly woken up naked at the United Nations, Lizzie turned to Autumn. “Tell him the truth,” she said, “about why we did this.”

  Autumn immediately got where she was coming from. “Shaun,” she said, “we’re taking down these posters because they’re bad magic.” Carrie opened her mouth in incredulity. “They’re magic so bad that it could mean the end of the world. Today. You know what your mum was involved with all her life. This is to save her as well.”

  Shaun took a deep breath, then nodded. “All right.” He looked to Carrie. “Whatever these two need to do, let them do it.”

  Carrie stared. “Are you telling me, officially, as a police officer, that magic is real?”

  “Yep.”

  “So I can call Cirencester cop shop right now and they’ll agree with you?”

  “I really doubt it. And please don’t do that. That would get me sacked.”

  “So this is just your opinion? That it’s okay for—?” She gestured toward the posters.

  “Think about it,” said Lizzie quickly, seeing the resolute look on Shaun’s face and not wanting his bluff to get called. “Is there nothing that’s happened to you in this town that didn’t make any sense, that you’ve kind of put to one side because it doesn’t fit in with the real world?”

  “Well of course there’s not—!” And then, just at the moment when Lizzie thought their luck had run out, and that they were about to have to save the world while running from the police and any number of irate local organisations, Carrie Anne Christopher stopped. She looked slowly between them, as if making sure this wasn’t a joke. “Show me,” she said.

  “Look really closely, don’t let yourself be distracted,” said Autumn. She put the pieces of glass back together in the noticeboard frame, then shoved both her palms at the air in front of it, while making a complex sound in her throat. Lizzie saw the energy flood out of her, saw how much it drained her, left her staggering. The glass was now a single piece again.

  “I . . . don’t see how you did that.” Carrie went to the frame and put her hand on the glass.

  Lizzie lent Autumn her arm so she could keep standing. “Worth it,” Autumn whispered.

  Lizzie could only agree. “Listen,” she said to Carrie, “if you believe us, we need to know a few more things about these posters.”

  * * *

  They went back to Carrie’s house to talk, Shaun as well. Carrie called her work and took a sick day. She sat them down in her lounge without even offering them tea.

  “How many did you print?” asked Autumn.

  “Well, it was going to be two hundred, but Maitland Picton did a deal with a printer, and we got a thousand for the same price. What? We didn’t know they were . . . evil!”

  Lizzie had found herself boggling at the idea of a thousand posters in a town with half a dozen noticeboards. “Where are they?”

  “They got used up. I thought maybe they’d got out into all the villages and into Cirencester, but people keep saying they’re seeing them in odd places around Lychford. People this year really do seem to know about the Festival.”

  “That,” said Autumn, “is very much looking on the bright side. The non-bright side is that there might not be a recognisable universe left to hold the Festival in.”

  “You’re actually serious. Okay. Okay. They can’t all have been put up. Roz has a stockpile of a hundred or so at her house. So does Janet. And I think Victoria has too.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just where Maitland dropped them off.”

  Lizzie brought up a map on her phone. “Can you point out where those are?” Carrie did so. The three sites formed a neat triangle right in the middle of Lychford. “That’s a pattern,” she said to Autumn.

  “Any three sites form a triangle,” said Autumn. “It’s more that they’re right in the middle, with all the others spread out across the town.”

  “It’s like how you’d dynamite a building,” said Shaun. “Big charges in the middle. Lots of smaller ones.” They looked at him. He shrugged. “I watch the documentary channels.”

  Lizzie and Autumn looked at each other. This sounded ominously likely. This, Lizzie thought, was why Maitland Picton had chosen this particular society. The Festival committee were, on average, richer. So they lived in the middle of town. “Is there some sort of . . . deadline, involved with the Festival, before the day itself, some sort of ticking clock?” asked Lizzie.

  “Funny you should ask that,” said Carrie. “Today’s the deadline for our competition on Facebook. You know, tell us what you want to happen and win £20 worth of meat from the butcher.”

  “What time today?”

  “Noon.”

  “We need to get to those big piles of posters before noon,” said Autumn. “And take them far away from the borders.”

  “What,” said Carrie, “you mean into Oxfordshire?”

  “We probably can’t keep you up to speed on all of this,” said Lizzie. “Sorry.”

  “Our members with the posters all work in London,” said Carrie. “They’ll have left home already.”

  “So we break in,” said Autumn. “Shaun, have you got some easy police way to do that?”

  “Do I look like an anti-terrorist unit?”

  “Okay!” Autumn literally ran for the door. “We’ll improvise!”

  * * *

  Carrie called the three Festival committee members in question and found that two of them, to Autumn’s relief, had hidden keys on their property. They wanted to know what sort of emergency this might be, but Carrie, not having had several months to think about excuses for the impossible, could only blurt that she’d explain later. So they quickly acquired a pile of posters. Autumn ran for the third house while carrying them in a Tesco fibre bag. She realised that she was running weirdly, carefully. She couldn’t help it. It felt like she was carrying a real bomb.

  The third committee member could not be reached beyond voicemail. Her property, with big hedges and a little driveway, had the light of a burglar alarm blinking over the front door.

  “That’ll be connected to the main desk,” said Shaun. “I’d need to have a major flap on and some seniority on my side for them to deactivate it.”

  Autumn was considering the prospect of just picking up a rock and sma
shing the window, when a voice spoke from behind them.

  “Okay,” it said, “now I’m impressed.” They turned together. It was Maitland Picton. She looked puzzled as much as angry. “I left you for dead.”

  “Oh God,” said Carrie. “This is really real.” She pointed at Maitland. “This is a formal notification that I will be taking this to a vote of no confidence. You’re off the committee.”

  “Why did you do that?” whispered Lizzie.

  “I thought she might, you know, vanish, like a vampire?”

  “Because vampires are really worried about getting on the wrong side of Human Resources.”

  “Where’s Judith?” asked Autumn.

  “She’s being useful.”

  Autumn saw Shaun react in anger to the idea that Picton had his mother, but she didn’t have time to tell him all she knew. Hopefully Picton herself might do that. “So you’re not going to villainsplain some more to us?”

  “Of course you’d see me as a ‘villain.’ You’ve spent thousands of years occupying lands that originally belonged to my people.”

  “Have you?” asked Carrie, looking to Autumn as if this were something she might be personally responsible for.

  “All humans have,” said Picton. “From the moment this universe of yours suddenly appeared, you’ve treated the rest of us like you’re in charge. Well, no more.”

  “They’re sort of like fairies,” said Lizzie. “Only not. Fairies are nicer. Some of them. I said I couldn’t keep you up to speed and I still can’t, sorry.”

  “I’m trying to think of something I could arrest her for,” said Shaun. “Probably best I can’t.”

  “So we’re worrying you, are we?” said Autumn. “We’ve rattled your cage. What’s up? Is there something we can do to stop whatever happens at noon?”

  Picton took a step toward her. “I can feel that knife you have in your pocket. It might harm this body, but it can’t harm me.”

  Autumn decided not to look at Lizzie. “It’d be satisfying, though.” The fury inside her was keeping the fear under control, and control was what she needed most. She had honestly no idea what she could do to stop whatever Picton was. She was hoping to get some clue to back up her knowledge of the weaknesses of otherworldly beings in general.

  Picton was now right in front of her. “I can kill you with a touch. I can bring any existing medical condition within your body to its fullest expression just by putting a hand on your shoulder.”

  “Good to know. Now you won’t get the chance.”

  Picton seemed to consider it for a moment. Then she turned to Carrie. “Do you remember what you wished for?”

  “I . . . didn’t wish for anything.”

  “You did. It was at one of the meetings. I asked you what, if you had a magic wand, you’d most want for the Festival. You said you’d want it to continue after you’d gone.”

  Carrie’s face turned ashen.

  “No!” Autumn yelled, seeing what was coming. “We will stop this before noon!”

  “Noon was arbitrary,” said Picton. She raised a hand in the air. “I’ll do it now.” And she clicked her fingers.

  Carrie suddenly gasped. She staggered. Lizzie grabbed her, holding her up. She looked like she was trying to speak. She fell against Lizzie, then hit the ground.

  “Your wish is my command,” said Picton.

  Shaun ran to Carrie and swiftly began chest compressions. But the look on his face said he didn’t hold out much hope. “I am going to arrest you for something,” he whispered.

  “So it is about ironic outcomes for wishes!” said Lizzie.

  “It was always going to be,” said Picton. “What else would be satisfying? It’s about wanting to be tall. It’s about wanting the body of a Kardashian. But that’s only the start. I’m pleased you’re going to try to save her. I like the idea that she’s going to suffer for a while. Who knows, you might succeed. There’s some hope. Does that make it worse? But on top of all this you’re about to have your hands full.”

  Autumn decided she was going to go for it. Her hand closed on the hilt of the knife and in one movement she swung it hard from her pocket. But in the second it took to get from there to Picton’s throat, Picton had vanished.

  “Autumn!” yelled Lizzie, concerned not for Picton but for her.

  Autumn ignored her, and knelt beside Shaun, who was still working. “I think it’s a heart attack,” he said. “I’ve only had first aid basics. Take my radio, call it in, I’ll tell you what to say. Let’s get the paramedics over here.”

  “No,” said Autumn. “She didn’t touch her; this isn’t about an existing condition. This is something that was done to her and still is being done to her. It’s magic, not medicine. So I can stop it.” She took the knife and sliced open her palm. She’d worry about tetanus later. A line of blood added to the pain in her body and made her gasp. “A sacrifice to the east, to the lady and hope,” she called out, and threw the blood into the wind in that direction. “All I need to do is heal something tiny that Picton changed. Some blood clot or something.” She reached up, found the power she needed had been put into her hands in the air but that a lot of it was going to come from her, really a terrifyingly huge lot of it. She didn’t hesitate. She hauled the power down toward Carrie and slammed it into her heart.

  Carrie sat straight up, yelling, making Shaun fall back. She grabbed her chest as if Shaun had done something inappropriate.

  Autumn fell to the ground. Lizzie put a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with enormous concern. And she was right to. Autumn had nothing left. The world was coming to an end, and she’d used up all she had.

  “You . . . saved me!” said Carrie. “This is all really real.”

  But before Autumn could say something about how it was possible that Carrie had had any remaining incredulity, the radio on Shaun’s multi-pocketed vest sprang to life.

  “Multiple incidents reported,” the voice began.

  4

  CLARE WOODLEY WAS GASPING for air. She’d been about to go into the post office in order to pick up a parcel of what she was pretty sure was going to turn out to be ribbon that she was going to use to make bunting for the stalls at the Festival. But now, suddenly, impossibly, she was looking down at the roof of the post office, and the market square in general, and the early shoppers were . . . staring up at her in horror and had started to run.

  She took a hesitant, stumbling step away from the building, and found herself swaying on her feet. Why was she so . . . tall?

  It was ironic, she’d always wanted to be tall. But this—?! She had to call out, she had to call for help. She opened her mouth and tried to make her jumbled brain come out with the right words, but all she could manage was what her increasing, oxygen-starved rage had shoved up into her mind at that moment. “Clare . . .” she bellowed, “smash!”

  * * *

  Rachel Cobham was in the porch of her home, about to take her son out to school, when she realised that she could hear her husband yelling. No, more than yelling, screaming in fact. She dropped her son’s coat and dashed back inside, and was thankful to find him alive and well, but pointing in slack-jawed horror at their dinner table.

  Lying on the dinner table was a corpse, its mouth wide open, its eyes staring.

  It took a moment of giddy, impossible horror for Rachel to realise she recognised the body.

  “Isn’t that,” she said, not quite believing it even as she forced the words out, “one of the Kardashians?”

  * * *

  Peter Johnston had replied to that Facebook post that asked what people most wished to happen in Lychford. He never replied to posts like that, but it had been early, and he’d woken up with his back aching again, and when he’d let the dog out he’d found those little vials of laughing gas or whatever it was the youths used these days all over his doorstep. So when he’d been looking over what his friends had been saying he’d found that question and he’d felt spurred on by it, and he’d said he never a
gain wanted to see teenagers using drugs in the alley behind his house.

  Horribly, he found that was all he could think about now as he tried to desperately keep himself calm, tried to remember where he’d left his phone and find his way to it. He stumbled against the edge of something and fell. He lay on the ground for a moment, hoping against hope that this might be a momentary thing. How could this have happened, when his last eye test had been an all clear?

  How could he have suddenly been struck blind?

  * * *

  Logan Shipton and his mates were on their way to school, walking past the park. Brooklyn, who was always talking, was talking now about how he’d figured out the parental access code on his mum’s iPad. Logan found himself thinking that they went into that park most nights to hang around, but there was that skate ramp sitting there, like that was what the council or whatever wanted them to do. He owned a scooter, but he wasn’t going to take it up on that thing, wearing a helmet or whatever.

  Except then, suddenly, he decided he needed to go to it, right now. Around him, his mates were reacting, too, turning to look at the park.

  And then they were climbing over the wall, jumping to the ground, sprinting toward the skate ramp. Logan knew, and the thought scared him, that this wasn’t what he wanted, that this was what someone else wanted. What a lot of people wanted. It was now being forced on him. Though none of them had anything to skate with, he and his mates were going to go and play on the skate ramp.

  They were going to go and play there forever.

  * * *

  Julia Sturrock opened her door to find her friend Angus, who she always spoke to when they were in the queue at the post office, standing there, looking anguished. “I really have to apologise,” he said.

  “What for?” She had no idea what he could possibly have done.

  “The state of the roads. The potholes. I’m on the town council, you see. So it’s my responsibility. And it’s just not good enough.”

  “Well . . .” Julia had never even thought about potholes.

  “Do you forgive me? I’m begging you!”