“Whatdidhappen? In there?”
“I’ve already told Lisa and Bert this. I spent half an hour with them going over it.”
“Humor me, Mina.” He palms sweat from his forehead, voice low and conspiratorial.
“Alice went upstairs to check on Mary and found her dead. Alice was—is—traumatized. This whole thing has been awful for her and now she’s lost her best friend as well.”
“Ex-friend, remember? But here’s the thing, Mina—according to her parents, Vicky had been stung by a wasp before a few years ago and had no reaction at all. Not even a rash. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“I suppose.”
“I want to show you something. Lock the door.”
He is reaching into his pocket as I flick the lock on the door and turn to face him. I catch sight of us both in the clouded mirror. Sam’s eyes are shuttered, without light. His hair is tangled and raked through and I can tell he hasn’t been sleeping. Beside him I’m vampiric, skin sallow-looking and hung with shadows, eyes darkly hooded.What a grim sight we both are,I think.
“I meant to show you yesterday but, well, with everything that happened—”
“What is it?”
“Here.” He hands me a matchbox. “Look inside.”
I slide open the little cardboard drawer but there are no matches inside. Instead, I see the tiny wax balls that were inside the witch’s bottle. Each one has been carefully slit open to reveal the curled husks of dead wasps.
“I know you told me not to open them but once I started I couldn’t stop. There’s nine in total.”
“Yes, but that bottle was created two, maybe three hundred years ago. We’ve already established that. It has nothing to do with what happened to Vicky.”
“You know what a familiar is, Mina? Bert was telling meabout them last night when we were looking at that graffiti out there—‘Burn The Witch,’ it says—and he told me how witches kept pets that would do their bidding for them. Toads and rats and imps. It was often thought the familiars were given to the witch by the Devil. I know, I know.” He holds his hands up as if to ward off my protest. “If I’d heard myself saying this a few days ago, I would’ve wondered what was wrong with me.”
“Bert told you about familiars?” I lift out one of the small wax balls and hold it up to the light. It has been pricked so many times with a pin it looks like a pomander. “Did he mention anything about a Riddance festival at all?”
“A what?”
“Riddance. Some old custom Alice was telling me about. Something to do with bonfires, I think.”
Sam frowns.
“No, I don’t think so. I’d had a good bit of brandy by then, mind you. Heh. Bert could’ve danced a conga and I’m not sure I would have noticed.”
Something about that image, the absurdity of it, makes me snort with laughter. Sam grins as he leans his head against the cool glass of the window and peers out into the dark.
“I have to call this story in tomorrow. My editor wants it filed by Monday. What will I say?”
I nestle the fossilized wasp back into the matchbox beside the others and slide it closed. I can understand Sam’s consternation—three people are dead, and all of them are somehow tied to a girl who believes she is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead witch. To sensationalize it would be a body blow for Alice. She’d never get out from under the shadow of a story like that, even if she moved away. To downplay it would mean this has all been for nothing, and nothing would be solved.
“I don’t know, Sam. I honestly don’t.”
“The thing is, Mina, it’s not over. You can feel that, right?”
I know exactly what he means. The heavy air feels incendiary, ready to combust. Raised voices, fireworks, chanting. Alice in front of the chimney, rocking. Mary with her single bloody eye. Outside, the wind is picking up. A storm is coming.
THIRTY-ONE
I’m back to sleeping in Billy’s room. It’s a relief, really. I’m restless and paranoid. Alice won’t let me into her bedroom, won’t let anyone in, not even her mother. She pushed the chest of drawers against the door and turned up the volume on her Walkman. Tamsin and Billy are still with their grandparents. That’s a relief, too. The atmosphere is heavy tonight, barbed with suspicion. I sit on the bed, massaging face cream into my skin and looking at the photograph of Eddie propped up on the table beside the bed. I snatched it back from Alice the day before and even now I’m unsettled by how possessive I feel of it, even though all it really depicts is a blurred figure with blank eyes, half turned toward me. Somehow though, it feels like all I have left of him.
I become aware of the sound as I’m settling on top of the covers. The curtains are closed but the window is open and I can hearpeople milling around in the street outside, the occasional raised voice. The sound which grabs my attention though is just outside my closed bedroom door. It’s the one I heard the night I’d arrived, the same sound that had sent Sam running during the séance. Guttural breathing, the grunting and panting of a big animal searching for a way in. I stare at the door, suddenly dreadfully afraid as I lever myself slowly out of bed. Sweat sticks my clothes to me as I cross the room, heart sailing into my throat. My pulse is soaring like a rocket. The door shudders in the frame. Outside on the street, someone is howling and singing in a strangled, thick voice. I stand in front of the closed door with my hands pressed against the plywood. Under my fingers it creaks and groans and a wet, sucking breath huffs through the keyhole. I reach out with numb hands and twist the handle, pulling the door open and expecting to find nothing there except that long, empty hallway filled with shadows.
But this time there is something there. Alice. She is standing in her nightie, her skin a deep, painful color so dark it is almost purple. Sweat coats her like grease. As I watch, her mouth opens helplessly and black foam bubbles out, sliding down her chin and her neck, soaking the front of her nightgown. I cry out, reaching for her arm. Her skin is so hot I snap my hand away. She is making a wet, ugly sound,guck! guck!as more foam erupts from her wide mouth. Thick curds of it, a black froth. Like a rabid dog, like a rabbit addled with myxomatosis. She looks at me with round eyes and I think I hear something then, her voice or something close to it, saying,Help me, Mina. Help me.