A Spell in the Country

by Heide Goody

  “Oi!”

  Dee looked back. The policeman had discarded his shoes and was now running after them barefoot. The truck driver, less enthusiastic, was jogging along behind him.

  “Did you see that?” said Kay.

  “He’s – taken – his – shoes – off,” panted Dee.

  “No,” said Kay. “The monkey.”

  “What?”

  “The monkey. It just ran across there.”

  Dee saw nothing and, frankly, felt that the appearance of a monkey, however bizarre, was not a priority right now. “Up there!” she gasped, pointing.

  Where the pier building ran out of solid land and became a wooden promenade on iron pillars running down to the sea, there was an access ramp. The two witches dodged left, round the last car in the car park, and up it.

  “And we ran out of there as fast as we could,” said Jenny.

  “You must have been terrified,” said Shazam.

  “Shocked,” Jenny agreed. “But not as shocked as I was when he turned up at my house the next morning with a bunch of coppers.”

  “He’s not a cop anymore,” said Caroline. “He was fired… We were fired.”

  “You?” said Shazam, giving her a curiously wounded look, like a child who’s been told that the toilet isn’t the expressway to goldfish heaven. “What for?”

  “Bowman is a shifty character. I was … weak.”

  “You are anything but weak,” said Jenny.

  “I’m a good actress. Point is, he’s not on the force but he’s still got friends. And, whatever dodgy work he’s up to, he’s still got some clout when he needs it.”

  “And the Ouija board told us that Kay’s with him now,” said Shazam.

  “Well, he can’t be here,” said Caroline. “There’s no reason for him to be here.”

  There were a number of temporary stalls and toddler rides along the pier boardwalk. Dee and Kay skulked behind a waffle stall near the very end of the pier and tried to look inconspicuous. Kay peered cautiously around the edge of the stall.

  “What you doing?” said the woman on the stall.

  “Hiding,” said Kay.

  “Well, go bleeding hide somewhere else.”

  “He’s coming this way!”

  Dee did her best to look without being seen. The policeman was indeed making his way along, searching in and around every conceivable hiding place.

  “He’s going to find us,” said Kay.

  Dee tried to envisage their capture or arrest. Determined souls though they were, witches or not, it didn’t bode well.

  “Didn’t I tell you to piss off,” said the stallholder.

  “We really are hiding,” said Dee.

  Kay was no longer beside her. She looked round and saw Kay, still in the shadow of the stall, standing by the railings, eyes closed and arms stretched.

  “What are you doing?” Dee whispered. She looked over the rails. The brown sea chopped and rippled below them. “It can’t be more than four feet deep. You can’t jump.”

  “I’m not,” said Kay. Without opening her eyes, she pointed up the beach to where a certain youth was still trying and failing to recapture his lost donkeys. “I’m calling for help.”

  As Dee watched, a faint haze of rainbow light reached out from Kay’s hands towards the donkeys.

  If Jizzimus has known that being visible would be so much fun – and a visible monkey at that – he would have done it long ago. His appearance along the seafront and inside the pier amusements brought shrieks, gasps, shouts and laughs. Those who weren’t horrified by an ambulatory toy monkey could be heard exchanging knowledgeable theories.

  “It’s just a hologram.”

  “It’s animatronics.”

  “It’s got that mini-me bloke in it.”

  Not one person even thought to suggest the obvious: that a witch’s familiar was wearing the monkey’s skin like some plush toy serial killer. But people were stupid; the obvious never occurred to them.

  Jizzimus ran on through the pier’s bingo hall and café, wondering if he could pull a similar stunt with the badger roadkill they’d found earlier on the side of the road.

  “I can see you! Come out. Now!”

  Dee looked round the stall. The policeman was there, a fat metal bar held casually in one hand.

  “Are you playing silly buggers with these two?” asked the waffle stall woman.

  The policeman flashed some ID at her. “Police.” He looked at Dee. “And you’re under arrest.”

  “What for?” said Dee.

  “Let’s start with assault.” He wiggled bare toes. “Beatriz, come out here.”

  Slowly, fearfully, Kay stepped out beside Dee.

  “You’ve been very naughty,” said the policeman. “Given us all quite a headache. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  Dee turned. The policeman gripped her wrists and bound them. The cable-tie squeaked as he tightened it.

  “Aren’t you meant to do that caution thing?” said the woman on the stall.

  “What?”

  “That ‘anything you do say will be taken down in evidence’ thing.”

  The policeman laughed. “All right. Beatriz Santos, I am arresting you for assault. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  “We’re not going to court, are we?” said Kay.

  He leaned in so only Dee and Kay could hear. “No.”

  Kay stamped back. By luck and good judgement she found his toes.

  The policeman howled in pain and anger. Kay stamped again.

  “We look for them now,” said Caroline, decisively. “Whether it is Doug Bowman or not; whether they’re in real danger, we find them. What are you doing, Jenny?”

  Jenny was looking under the table as though she had lost something. Under the table was a pile of foam stuffing, although the monkey toy seemed to have disappeared. Jenny stood and walked to the door leading to the car park and picked up a rough cube of foam that had found its way over there.

  “Do you know where they are?” said Shazam. Jenny wasn’t listening. Caroline and Shazam followed her out into the car park.

  “Kay saw something in that dead badger,” said Jenny. “A cat and a monkey and—”

  “Donkeys,” said Shazam.

  “That’s right,” said Caroline.

  “No. Donkeys. There.”

  Caroline followed Shazam’s gaze to where a pack or herd or a … whatever the collective noun of donkeys was trundled up the beach and onto a walkway leading onto the pier. There was no one driving them and they moved with an unnatural sense of purpose.

  “You don’t suppose…?” said Caroline.

  The witches ran after them.

  There were screams and shouts as Jizzimus burst out of the pier building and onto the boardwalk. “Tha’s right,” he roared. “Look a’ me! Jizzimus Monkeyflesh O’Crackerjack!”

  Then he realised the screams and shouts weren’t for him. A drove of donkeys was trotting onto the boardwalk and towards the end of the pier. Jizzimus felt very conflicted and put out.

  Rampaging donkeys were something he very much approved of; normally he would take great delight in a scene like this. But he was dressed up and ready to cause mischief and these donkeys were stealing his thunder. It was like being a pyromaniac out to cause a night of arsonist mischief, only to find that everywhere was already on fire.

  However, Jizzimus was always ready to improvise. If someone had stolen his thunder, the only thing to do was to claim it back.

  With a short sprint, he dashed towards the trampling donkeys, leapt, back-flipped off the knee of one and landed on the back of another. “Onward!” he yelled.

  His donkey army – possession being nine tenths of the law – rumbled on. Deck chairs were crushed. Stalls were knocked astray. Children were snatched from the hoofs of death by terrified parents.

&n
bsp; He saw three figures at the end of the pier. The fat and stupid witch, Dee, was lying on the ground by the railings where she had been shoved. The stinky child-witch, Kay, was bent over as though she had just been gut-punched. Both had their hands tied behind their backs. Jizzimus recognised the third figure too: the man with an iron bar that he’d clubbed Jenny with, and the burned face Jenny’s witchfire had given him in return.

  “Oi! Fuzz!” yelled the imp-monkey in fury. “My name is Maximus Jizzimus Meridius. Commander of the armies of the north! Father to a murdered son! ’Usband to a murdered wife! And I will ’ave my vengeance in this life or the next!”

  Too late, the policeman saw the donkeys charging at him. They filled the boardwalk side to side and were not slowing. Eyes were wide with alarm, the copper dodged this way and that, looking for an exit. There was none and, as Jizzimus bore down on him, he backed up against the railings.

  Jizzimus gripped his donkey’s fuzzy mane and ran up onto its head.

  The donkeys bashed into the last stall. As it crumpled, a woman inside cried, “Oh, me waffles!”

  Within his costume, Jizzimus thrust out his tiny claws to savage the man.

  On the floor, Kay raised her hands behind her back. Rainbow light filled the air. The donkeys braked abruptly, hoofs skidding to a halt inches from her. Jizzimus flew forward, wrapped himself like a facehugger around the bastard copper’s head and pitched over the railing with him.

  With a triumphant cry of “This! Is! Sparta!” Jizzimus rode him down into the sea before it got all soggy and salty, and considerably less fun.

  Jenny barged her way through the donkeys milling about the boardwalk, indifferent to the danger of getting physical with a dozen large, confused beasts. She pushed past the last and went to her knees beside Kay. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Kay. “It was him, the policeman.”

  “Bowman,” said Jenny.

  A pinpoint of imperceptible witchfire was enough to melt through the plastic ties around Kay’s wrist. Jenny rolled Kay over and hugged her fiercely. “Did you call these donkeys?”

  “Yep.”

  “That was amazing!”

  “Did you see the monkey?” said Kay.

  “What monkey?” said Shazam.

  Dee rubbed her wrists once Caroline had freed them. “I didn’t see a monkey.”

  “There was definitely a monkey,” said Kay.

  Jenny looked over the railings. Doug Bowman spluttered and flailed unhappily in the shallow sea. Jenny considered the huge satisfaction she would get from pouring witchfire down on the man. She would happily boil away the oceans to put him out of her misery but a public display of wicked witch powers would have been unwise. There was no sign of the monkey toy, but Jenny thought she could make out the tiniest of figures doing a concerted doggy paddle by the shore.

  Jizzimus caught up with them as they exited the pier, shivering and wiggling his finger in his droopy cow ear to get the seawater out. “Did you see me, boss? I took that fucker down to Chinatown. Boom!”

  Pretending to bend and scratch her knee, Jenny picked him up and placed him on her shoulder. She gave him a loving squeeze.

  “Where’s Norma?” said Dee.

  “We left her arguing with Zoffner the Astute,” said Caroline.

  “It did get a bit heated in there,” admitted Shazam.

  They stopped by the entrance to Zoffner’s monastic ‘cave’ in the funfair and looked around. Caroline knocked on the door. “Mr Astute! Norma! Are you still in there?”

  “Wait a moment!” Norma yelled in tremulous reply.

  “Norma?”

  “I said wait!”

  Several minutes later, Norma emerged, fiddling with the cuffs of her tweedy jacket.

  “You look a little red-faced there, Norma,” noted Shazam.

  “It’s a warm day, Miss Jaye,” Norma replied.

  “Perhaps you and Zoffner the Astute were having a lively … debate,” suggested Caroline.

  “Indeed,” said Norma stiffly. “Now, are we heading back to the minibus?”

  “I think we ought to,” agreed Jenny.

  As they walked out of the funfair and up towards the clock tower roundabout, Jizzimus whispered in Jenny’s ear. She grinned. “So – Norma…?”

  “Yes, Miss Knott?”

  “How good was he then? You know, marks out of ten?”

  “Pardon?” said Norma, alarmed.

  “Zoffner. The world’s greatest fortune-teller.”

  “Oh,” said Norma, much relieved. “No, that man is a mere paddler in the sea of magic.”

  “Well, I thought he was amazing,” said Shazam. “He knew everything we asked him.”

  “Yes,” said Norma with restored condescension. “I think that any questions you might have can be adequately answered by true professionals such as myself.”

  “Is that so?” said Jenny. “Then I have a question.”

  “Yes?” said Norma.

  “Weren’t you wearing a woollen vest when we came out this morning, not a tie-dye one?”

  Chapter 6 – Bewitched

  Dee unfolded the map onto the table in front of them. The map immediately fell apart along its fold lines, so she shuffled the pieces into position. Caroline, Jenny, Shazam and Kay pored over it. They had convened in Jenny’s hut. It was one of the few huts that hadn’t exploded, burned down, or been destroyed by a bewitched rat-woman.

  “If ever Little Chef opens a museum you should send them this.” Caroline indicated the aged map.

  Dee shrugged. “It was in my car when I bought it. Does the job.”

  “Long as the job is to find places that used to be Little Chefs on roads that were bypassed thirty years ago, yeah.”

  Jenny traced a finger across a couple of faded sections. “So we know that Doug Bowman took Kay to Birmingham. Wait—” She lifted her gaze and looked at Kay. “Or would you prefer Beatriz now?”

  Kay shrugged. “I don’t miss my old name. I mostly used to hear it when I’d done something wrong.”

  “Same here,” said Caroline.

  “I don’t think it matters what name you’re born with,” said Shazam. “Sometimes we have to find our own true name.”

  “And you’re sticking with Shazam?” said Caroline.

  “Why? Don’t you like it?”

  “No, no, it’s fine, Cobwebs. Gotta say, it does sound like a drain cleaner. Shazam! And the clog is gone!”

  “S’true,” said Jizzimus who was, for reasons, known only to himself, fashioning a wig out of cobwebs he’d gathered off the floor.

  Jenny gave Jizzimus a gentle kick and Caroline a fierce nudge.

  “It’s a lovely name,” Caroline insisted.

  “You hate it,” said Shazam.

  Caroline sighed and gave a magical flick of her wrist. “Shazam is the loveliest name in the world,” she said.

  “Shazam is the loveliest name in the world,” agreed Shazam.

  “And Kay is a lovely name too,” said Dee, just in case she was feeling left out.

  “I didn’t even pick it,” said Kay. “Jenny did.”

  “No,” said Jenny. “I asked you what your name was and—”

  “You asked who had done this to me,” said Kay. She held her palms an inch apart and put her eye to the gap. “All I could see out of that crate was a letter K and a number one, printed on the side of some packing.”

  “Kay Wun,” said Jenny. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Also, true,” said Jizzimus, who had given up on the cobweb wig and was now eating it like candyfloss.

  “I didn’t know what it was or where I was,” said Kay, “apart from being in some sort of lorry. But I looked at it – K1 – and concentrated on it for hours and hours while I was shut away. It was like a mantra of freedom. I think I’ll stick with Kay.”

  “Do you think you came here via Skegness?” asked Shazam.

  Kay shrugged.

  “Is there some sort of harbour there?” said Jenny.
/>   “No. There’s a port in Boston to the south, but I don’t think it’s big enough for lorries and containers and things.”

  “What about this road here?” said Dee, carefully sliding a wayward section of map back into place. “The A16. It comes straight down from Grimsby and Hull. Those are definitely places where boats go.”

  “So why go to Skegness?” said Caroline. “There must be faster ways of getting to Birmingham.”

  “Maybe it’s a stopping off point, or a place where they swap vehicles,” said Jenny. “I mean, who would go to Skegness for people trafficking, or whatever this is?”

  “Doug Bowman is a sleazeball who’d sell his own granny for a fast buck,” said Caroline. “People trafficking would be right up his alley.”

  “I thought you said he was your friend,” said Jenny.

  “I make bad personal choices. It’s my thing.”

  “Are they taking girls for sex?” said Dee. “Do those crates get all wrapped up like Christmas presents and delivered to pervy old men?”

  Caroline couldn’t help smiling. “You even make sex trafficking sound twee and cosy.”

  Dee made a noise like an angry tomcat and sent the map fluttering across the table as she slammed her hand down. “They’d soon regret it if they tried it with a witch! Filthy buggers!”

  “Yes, they obviously didn’t realise they’d taken someone who might unleash a donkey army upon them,” said Jenny with a wink.

  “Seriously though, we need to stop them,” said Kay. “Other girls might not be as lucky as me.”

  “We should call the police,” said Shazam.

  “And tell them what?” said Jenny. “We have no hard evidence.”

  “And they’d have a lot of questions for Kay that can’t be answered without revealing we’re witches,” said Caroline. “Besides, Bowman might have enough contacts to kill any investigation.”

  “Then what do we do?” said Shazam.