“Mina, we can save Alice. If you’re right, and this is all a scheme to get some money or a new house, then she’s being manipulated just as much as we are. We can’t leave without exposing that. But ifI’mright, then she has a gift, and we can’t ignore it.”
“What are you saying?”
My voice is trembling. I have a bad feeling then, a sensation as though my insides are melting like rubber. Slippery and slick. I know what Sam’s saying. He’s saying we can try to reach Eddie, and even though I’ve waited so long, even though I’ve come all this way cradling hope like a flame in cupped hands, I feel sick at the thought of it, because what if Alicecanreach out to my brother and he comes through the way Maggie did, his corporeal form shed, his bones light and hollow and filled with ice? That would be bad enough but what if he told them what I’d done? What, then?
TWENTY-FOUR
Sitting around the table in the kitchen downstairs, all of us crammed together shoulder to shoulder like stuck pigs. There’s Oscar with a poinsettia in his lap, and Bert and his wife, Mary, who is wearing an oxygen mask over the lower half of her face, misted with condensation. Alice is opposite me and, when no one else is looking, she slowly and deliberately pokes her tongue out. It is blackened and bifurcated like a lizard’s. Here’s Paul, bringing a dish to the table, saying,Here’s your chicken, just how you like it, only when he puts the plate down the chicken is still alive, struggling. Everyone’s smiling and acting normal and Paul is sharpening the carving knife and Oscar squeezes my hand and when he smiles at me he says,I love you, Mina, so much,and the chicken’s claws are feebly scratching as Paul says,Leg or breast?and no one can hear me as I scream,It’s alive, look at it, it’s alive!
I wake with my legs twisted in the covers, choked with a soft, frightened whimper. I lie there for what feels like a long time but is probably only a few minutes, dry-mouthed and flushed with fright, the sweat cooling on my skin. By the time I’m heading downstairs, the dream is fading and I’m thinking about Mary next door again. Sam assured me last night that both Bert and Mary were fine, but the noises were so precise, so deliberate. Save Our Souls. Or not, as Oscar would remind me.
When I check the sitting room I’m surprised to find the sofa is empty, with Sam’s blankets rolled up neatly at one end. The room is foggy with smoke and the empty brandy bottle lists on its side next to a full, choking ashtray. The video camera, the one withPROPERTY OF THE WESTERN HERALDstamped on it, is sat in a nest of wires and cables, hooked up to the television. I wonder if Sam has slept at all or simply sat smoking and finishing the bottle until daylight slipped quietly between the curtains. In the kitchen there is only Alice, eating toast and listening to the radio with the volume up so loud the windows are rattling. I join her, and by the time I’ve washed the dishes I’ve persuaded her to join me in visiting Bert and Mary. I can’t help but notice that she’s lost that haggard, sleepless look and seems to be in better spirits. I even manage to convince her to leave her Walkman at home. We’re laughing at something as we walk out of the door into the humid, soupy air and it’s only as we’re opening the gate leading onto Bert’s pathway that Alice sees the writing there, the looping scrawl along the fence that had once readbE Not afrAIdbut now readsBurn The Witch.She stares at it a long time.
“Do they mean me?” she asks. She turns to me, her eyes wide and guileless. “Mina, are they talking about me? Am I the witch?”
“Don’t be silly.” I give her a big smile, but it’s empty. “It’s just graffiti. It’s meaningless.”
In one of her interviews Lisa told Sam that when the graffiti had first appeared she’d tried washing it away, but more would always appear the next morning. After a while she’d given up altogether. I remember Stevie’s hands again, dusted with chalk, but dismiss it almost immediately. Fern likes the Webbers. She said so herself. Still though, I wish Alice hadn’t seen this particular message. Her face looks pained as she steps cautiously around it.
“Bert says they never burned witches anyway. Not in real life. They tortured and hanged them or drowned them in the pond.”
I frown.
“That sounds gruesome. I’m not sure Bert should be talking about those things with you.”
“Nah. He says historyshouldbe taught by telling stories. When me and Tamsin were little, he told us all about his ancestors in the seventeenth century. He’d traced them all the way back to the Puritans in Suffolk. That’s why we have the Riddance with the costume and the bonfires. We have to keep all these old customs alive, he reckons.”
“Does he?” I say, thinking of the hagstones and Paul saying“They were left to bleed out like cattle.”“I’m afraid I disagree. Some old customs should be better left to die in obscurity.”
“Aw, don’t say that to Bert, Mina. He’d be gutted.”
Alice knocks on the door of Bert’s house, grinning. It strikes me in the moment before Bert opens the door and welcomes us inside that she looks bright and happy, almost beautiful. It’s the first time since I arrived that her face hasn’t been clouded inmisery and suspicion. It makes me hopeful, in a way, that underneath it all there is still a normal girl.
Bert’s house is cooland clean and quiet. The hallway smells of polish and detergent and potpourri. I can hear the softtick, tickof the clock on the mantelpiece, the gentle bubbling of a fish tank on a shelf near the television. It’s no wonder Alice liked coming here when she was younger. Compared with the chaos of her own home, this must have felt like a safe harbor. Alice sinks into the overstuffed floral armchair, kicking off her sandals. I study the framed newspaper clippings fromThe West BritonandThe Morning Newsthat hang over the sofa, all crediting Bert Roscow in the byline. I can hear him whistling in the kitchen. He seemed delighted to see us both and was insisting on making a jug of iced tea.
“I’m so pleased you decided to drop by,” he tells us, putting coasters onto the coffee table. “And look what I found hiding behind the biscuit barrel!”
He holds out his hand to reveal tiny paper cocktail umbrellas. Alice accepts a tall glass choked with ice and amber liquid, grinning when Bert opens the paper umbrella and puts it behind his ear. The other he puts in her drink, beside the straw.
“No Bertinis?” she asks.
“I’m afraid not. If I’d known you were coming I could have had some prepared but we’re all out of tinned pineapple. This curfew is playing havoc with my shopping habits, I tell you.”
“I was just admiring your work, Bert,” I tell him, pointing to the framed clippings behind me. “I notice you wrote a piece on genealogy.”
“On what?” Alice asks.
“Lineage.” Bert smiles. “I spent a lot of time tracing my family tree. I even managed to do one for Mary. We discovered her ancestor had sailed on theLady Penrhynto the penal colonies in Australia. She’d been charged with assault and theft. It’s fascinating stuff.”
“Is Mary not around?” Alice asks hopefully. “I feel like I haven’t seen her in forever.”
“Ah, no. I’m afraid she’s still asleep.”
“Did she have a rough night?” I ask, putting my glass back on the table. The cold drink has made my teeth hurt but, God, it tasted good.
Bert frowns. His shirt is freshly pressed and his hair combed so neatly you can see the furrows in it.
“Not that I know of. On the contrary, this new pain medication is putting her to sleep more hours than she’s awake. Come eight o’clock she’s out like a light.”