The Haunting of Violet Gray

by Emily Sadovna

  Singing ceased, and an eerie sense of anticipation spread through the witches who had shed their earthly hides to become a collective force ready for the fight of their lives.

  Granville held his ceremonial dagger to the sky. He beckoned the goddess and asked to be blessed. He summoned the goddess of the east, the west, the south and the north to bless and protect the circle. “I conjure thee, o circle of power, meeting place of men and the realms of the mighty ones. We shall preserve and contain the power which shall rise within thee.”

  Granville held the dagger high, and the still night awoke. The goddess showed herself as a gentle breeze which threaded between chains of witches who clasped hands. The wind escalated. Joe gripped Violet’s hand to his right and Anne’s to the left when it became difficult to contain the energy that was flowing through them.

  Archie stood in the centre of the circle, supported by Granville, his white, gaunt face tilted and focused on the sky beyond, ready to shed his diseased body and join the goddess. Granville swiftly dragged the shining blade through Archie’s exposed neck. His white gown blackened with spilt blood then he crumpled to the floor, lifeless. Sacrificed and free.

  Granville announced, “The goddess is here. Focus all your energy on the mind of Hitler.”

  A flash of light came from the edge of forest in the distance beyond the tent, and there were concealed shadowy figures of five or six men. Joab assumed they were Erubus bearing witness.

  “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot come. You cannot cross the sea. You cannot come,” Granville shouted.

  Violet joined his chant, then Anne and then Tom. Joe joined next. The chant rippled around one circle then the next until hundreds of voices joined the chant. “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot come.”

  Joe imagined the twisted black mass of Hitler’s brain. He pictured himself sinking to the depths of it, whispering his command, “You cannot cross the sea. You cannot come.”

  The chanting grew louder. The circles rotated like cogs manipulating the brain of a madman. The cogs turned faster and faster.

  He felt the heat of immense energy pushing on his back.

  “Don’t let go!” Violet shouted through the chanting.

  The pressure of the energy radiating from the momentum of the magic circles was becoming impossible to contain, and then when he felt he couldn’t hold on any longer, a great shard of blue and white light soared into the night sky from the apex of the circle, creating a spinning, whirling cone of light. The sight ascended higher and higher; it was breathtaking. Black billowing clouds formed, darkening the night. Lightning sliced through swirling clouds as rain beat down on the earth.

  The wind raged, whipping the naked bodies with icy water, goading them to fight as if Hitler himself were answering back. Violet shook with cold. Her lips turned blue, and her wet hair was pasted to her skin. Anne grimaced, determined not to be beaten by the elements. Tom was defiant and stood firm as the soldier he had become.

  Then as suddenly as the cone of light had shot into the night sky, it descended into the circle then seemed to flow through Joe’s body, thawing it and filling it with an exhilarating heat. He could feel every cell in his body fizzing with energy. During that moment of ecstasy he thought he was invincible.

  Anne threw her head back, her mouth was wide, and her eyes flashed with joy. Tom was laughing, thrilled by the power that was cascading through his flesh. Violet glowed like a blazing phoenix.

  They continued to grip each other’s hands clinging to the euphoria they shared. Their hysterical laughter was met with something unexpected—screams, agonised screams. Desperate cries resonated between the trees. Despairing sobs became whimpers. Then silence.

  Granville’s triumphant countenance fell, and his skin paled to a deathly pallor. His expression was filled with horror. “Stop. Stop now. Break the circle.” Granville pulled our hands apart and pushed Joe away from the circle. “It has gone wrong. The Nazis have reversed the spell. They are stealing our energy. They are killing us. Someone has betrayed us.”

  Still shaking, Joe, Tom, Violet and Anne released hands and staggered back.

  Granville surveyed the aftermath of the ritual. The four souls at the centre of the cone turned to share the horrendous landscape of death before them. Anne shrieked and raced to a tangled mass of bodies. She pulled a cold white lump of flesh into her arms and howled; he recognised the gray speckled black hair of her mother.

  Joe stumbled over corpses of dead witches until he found the row marked two hundred. The sturdy, broad body of his pop lay rigid with lifeless eyes staring into another world, and his mother lay next to him. Her wrinkled face, which was eternally screwed into determined defiance, finally relaxed, and her skin shone white and smooth and hinted of the beauty it once held. Her cheeks still glistened with the first tears he saw her shed.

  Joe glanced back to see Tom shaking with uncontrollable grief as he held the thirteen-year-old body of his little brother Henry, expelled from life. Then he watched with utter disgust, as those cowardly voyeurs, Erubus emerged from the shelter of the forest. Faceless shadows were advancing towards the lonely figure of Violet who stared with disbelief at the slaughtered soldiers on their battlefield.

  Joe gently placed his mother in the arms of his pop and stood and ran towards Violet. He shouted to Violet. He begged her to run, but the shock controlled her senses. She was oblivious to his shouts. Swiftly, men pulled her into the woods. She looked at Joe seconds before she was taken. Light flashed on her tears, before she was swathed in the velvet of night.

  CHAPTER 25

  The night became silent. Joe saw the vacant staring eyes of Dorothy,Aunt Emily and everyone he believed were invincible. Tom and Anne were the only living souls left out of the hundreds of witches gathered to fight Hitler. Joe assumed Granville had vanished with Violet. He looked at the tent, ready for celebration, with disgust. Joe walked past it to his pile of clothes stacked next to his mother’s. He pulled on his shirt and then his trousers mechanically.

  He crouched to gaze at the folded brown dress, girdle, brown shoes, hat and handbag. Joe smiled fondly at his mother’s rationale for wearing her Sunday best clothes for a naked ceremony. Inside her bag were identity papers, her ration book and her wedding ring.

  Joe was surprised to see an old, crumpled photo of his much younger mum with a happy, shining face looking adoringly at her newborn baby cradled in her arms. His pop was smiling with pride as he stood protectively behind his new family. Joe suddenly realised that in his pursuit of escape from the dull, hard life they provided him, he never thought to imagine them as young and optimistic people. Maybe they had dreams too?

  He slipped his pop’s old watch, along with his pipe, into his pocket and turned for a final time to look at the gruesome slaughter that scattered the forest floor. He had a duty to tell the world the sacrifice these good people made for their country.

  Suddenly twenty or more troop transporters powered through the forest. Hundreds of soldiers leapt off the back and set to work, piling the bodies into the centre of the circle. Anne was still clinging to the corpse of her mother when they pushed her away. They threw the body onto the pile with the others. Tom raced towards her, pulled her into his arms and carried her away through the clearing. Joe followed numbly. Tom carefully lowered Anne into his sidecar, Joe climbed onto the back, and no one spoke.

  The bike spluttered to life and sped towards their new empty lives without the people who made them. Joe could see a plume of black smoke spiralling into the sky behind them.

  The attack from Hitler didn’t come the next day as predicted; it appeared the ritual worked. Did the witches achieve what they set out to do? Was it their spell that stopped the anticipated attack? Or was it a simple act of nature that sent a storm into the skies of Europe?

  Granville told the coven of the Nazi obsession with occult. He didn’t expect retaliation with darker, more powerful magic. The ritual would go down in history as a moment the witches of England j
oined forces and sacrificed their lives to prevent Hitler from invading Great Britain. But at what cost? Only three witches survived. So who was the actual victor? Hitler destroyed the English pagan people without setting one foot on British soil.

  Joe knew he had to emerge from crippling grief and horrible feelings of loss. The country was still at war. He was determined to attend training and fight Hitler with everything he had left. Perhaps when he was working in the field in Europe he would get some answers about who betrayed his people and take his revenge.

  Joe changed that night. His optimism and dreams went up in smoke, with the bodies of his family and friends after Operation Cone of Power.

  CHAPTER 26

  Present

  I awoke, tears cascading down my face. I felt the pain Joe experienced as if I was there, and I wondered what became of Violet that awful night. What horrors did she endure after she was captured and dragged through the woodland before she was imprisoned?

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Joab appeared in his boxers and T-shirt holding a cup of tea.

  “How did you sleep? You look like you have had a round with Rocky Balboa.” He laughed.

  “Who is Rocky Balboa?”

  “Who? Rocky? He was a boxer in the film. We need to schedule a lot of movie nights.” Joab’s expression changed when he noticed my tear-stained face. He placed the tea on the drawers next to me and reached his arms around me.

  “Joab, I dreamt last night. I travelled to August 1, 1940. I watched the Cone of Power ritual. It was horrible, Joab; I don’t know what to say.” I sank into his arms and pulled him close to me. “All those people, died. Your parents. Tom’s little brother.”

  Joab’s body stiffened, and he pulled away from me. “It is ancient history, forgotten. All those people sacrificed their lives for the good of the country. They were never even acknowledged. The War Office hid their involvement and dumbed down the story. If you scour the internet, you will find very little information on Operation Cone of Power, except accounts of an eccentric group of old men and women, leaping around the woods with nothing on, playing at magic. I didn’t discover it until later, but watching from a hide in the woods was Churchill himself with the two-headed snake Crawley. He allegedly masterminded the whole thing while slithering his way in with the Nazis in case they won the war. The Duke of York, Prince George, was also there along with a few senior members of Erubus. They took Violet. I thought they killed her, but they must have imprisoned her in the prison dimension that night. Granville pretty much lost his mind, racked with guilt, spending an eternity on the edge of insanity. He managed to publish several books on his version of modern witchcraft. Tom, Anne and I went our separate ways during the war. Tom continued to be a pilot. I joined up and worked in the field in Europe in espionage and code breaking for a secret occultist unit of M16.

  “Anne was involved with a man, an American who she married. It turned out the American was, in fact, a German working as a spy. Anne thrived on flattery, adoration and beautiful things. Dick showered her with all of that, and she fell for him and her new envied place in society. She told him about the plans for Operation Cone of Power. The Nazis learnt about the ritual. They knew the time, how many people were involved and the exact grid reference of the meeting place. That information, combined with the coven of eastern European witches Crawley handpicked and trained to gain favour with the Nazi party, enabled them to turn the magic back on us.

  “The witches created a magic circle to draw the apex of the Cone of Power. They placed a large black tourmaline crystal doused in a phial of Hitler’s blood at the centre. This tricked us to think we were seeing into the darkness of his mind. Instead, it sucked every ounce of energy out of our witches like a giant magnet until they had nothing left. Over five hundred witches died of organ failure, hyperthermia or exhaustion.

  “Granville broke our spell when he realised what was happening to our people and severed the connection between the opposing covens before they could take the energy from the five of us at the centre of the circle. The Nazi’s witches who carried out the spell in exchange for their lives immediately destroyed the crystal to prevent that immense power from being used for more evil. Breaking the crystal released the energy into the sky, and a storm broke out over Europe, which prevented airborne attack on England. Breaking their agreement, the SS shot the witches on sight. The storm, however, bought Churchill and the RAF enough time to prepare for the battle of Britain, which we won.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I was a spy in Europe during the war. I made enquiries.”

  “What happened to Anne? Did she know it was her information she shared with her boyfriend that betrayed the English witches?”

  “She never speaks of it. She would never admit to anyone she was fooled in to loving and trusting a Nazi spy posing as a perfect American GI. Anne ran away and hid with some distant relatives in Canada. The last I heard of her she was singing on a cruise ship then she vanished. I assumed she died until five years ago she popped up on Facebook and returned to rebuild the coven.”

  I was bursting with questions. I had viewed Joe’s life as a movie; I had to remind myself it was real and evidently still raw for Joab.

  “Annie is ambitious and ruthless. Now she is deeply involved in the politics of Erubus. Her girlfriend is on the board of directors and is a wealthy and dangerous woman with powerful connections. Annie is convinced that our country is under significant threat, and we need to raise the Cone of Power once more. I think she has other motives for raising it. That is something we need to find out. She has been working hard to rebuild our strength in numbers. She has teams of techies and social media nerds working for her. This year’s gathering of Mabon was the biggest ever. Witchcraft is fast becoming the new ‘cool’ religion amongst celebrities, rock stars, and she has all the elements reunited so she could pull it off.”

  Joab lay down on the bed next to me. “You know what? Maybe it is the right time to do it again. At least now people are more accepting of us. Perhaps we might get the credit. We need to know what we are fighting. You need to become Annie’s best friend, so you can learn everything she knows and what she is planning.”

  I turned to face Joab. “What about Violet?” I dared to ask.

  “Honestly, Cat, you are her now. It is up to you what you want to do about her. She no longer has power over you but beware of her. She went mad in that prison. It will make her more unpredictable than when I knew her all those years ago. Tom will keep her safe and balanced for now, but as she regains her strength and becomes used to the world as it is now, she could still be dangerous.”

  I rose to get out of bed and was suddenly reminded of my reality when the throbbing pain returned to my cheek and my lacerated legs. My head pounded with the headache of all headaches.

  “Do you have any painkillers? Everything hurts,” I begged Joab.

  “You want me to drug you? I seem to remember you weren’t keen on that a while ago!”

  Joab left the room to brew some concoction. He returned with a tea which smelled repellent, but I gulped it down, eager to numb the pain. I crawled back into my bed, relaxed in the knowledge there would be no hammering on mirrors from imprisoned ghosts and nobody plotting my death, for a while at least.

  CHAPTER 27

  “I forgot to give you this.” Joab tossed a parcel into my lap. I opened it cautiously. There was a brand-new expensive-looking smartphone and a credit card, and I laughed to see a gold membership card with Violet’s name on it for the New Forest Coven of Witches and some car keys with a Jaguar key fob. There was a card with it.

  “Welcome back to the New Forest Coven, my dear sister Violet. Please accept my gift as an introduction to the twenty-first century. You will find you will be quickly immersed in our world which you will find very different from your old world. You will be privy to our secrets and will be expected to attend regular meetings with the coven. The membership card is a new addition to our coven
, but it will open many doors for you as we are very well connected. You will find all the benefits listed on our social media. You will see all the numbers, emails and addresses you need on the phone, and the pin will be familiar. It is your birthday. The credit card has a generous limit and will be paid off monthly by my organisation. My partner insisted you must have a decent car too, so the car is a gift from her. Your exploits are legendary among the coven, so she felt a Jaguar was the only choice for you. I very much look forward to working with you and getting to know the real Violet Gray. From your friend, Annie x.”

  I got out of bed. I hurt, but the pain receded a little. I limped to the mirror. My face was swollen with a purple bruise, and the burnt chunk of hair hung oddly. I need a haircut, I thought to myself. I managed to disguise the bruise with makeup and added a sweep of black eyeliner and smudged some lipstick on. I tied my hair back into a ponytail then pulled on some jeans and a loose sweatshirt. I switched on the new phone, delighted to have a signal and texted a thank-you to Annie and copied Dinah’s number from my old phone onto the new one. I headed to the kitchen for a coffee and grabbed an apple from a bowl on the table.

  The sun was positioned just above the rooftops, and that yellow light that bathed the kitchen during my first visit flooded past the trees and through the windows. I grabbed my new car keys, opened the front door and almost fell into a girl with her hair piled on her head in a messy bun. She was wearing an ill-fitting shirt and black skirt. She was clutching a plastic wallet.

  “Hello, hi, I am here for the cleaning job?” The girl spoke nervously.