The Wicca Woman Page 3

  When he was closer to the cliff’s edge, he realised that it was delineated by an escarpment of small rocks, which had been placed there by Jimmy Vaughn, who owned both fields. Then Paul recalled that beyond the rocks, there was a path that was cut into the side of the cliff. He knew the cliff-path would take him down to a small cove, so he broke into an unsteady run.

  The children are already in the cove, he thought. But I seem to have lost all track of time, so the kids’ve probably been down there much longer than I think.

  Finally he reached the rocks at the edge of the cliff. Despite his panting, he could hear the swish of the sea below him. He was about to make his way down the steep path to the cove, when another cloud, shaped like a giant’s hand, blotted out the moon again. As the darkness converged on him, Paul heard the sounds of twigs crackling in the heart of a large fire. Then the stygian night was illuminated by flames, which were leaping up at him from the cove below.

  Despairingly Paul shook his head. He knew the children had lit the bonfire on the beach, and now they were feeding the flames with more and more fuel.

  Jesus Christ, they’ll burn themselves to death, he thought.

  Desperate to save the children, with a shout, and flailing his arms, Paul leapt forward onto the steep cliff-track. Instantly he lost his footing. The next moment he found himself being catapulted down the precipitous path into the depths of the flame-filled cove.

  Seconds later, the village children and their parents converged on Paul’s prostrate body in the sand. They saw that his face and limbs were badly bruised, and that he was all-but-unconscious.

  Paul’s eyelids flickered as the hooded figures of the hated witch, Gwynne Spark, and her neighbours, Sue Townley and Mary Rowbottom, filled his befuddled gaze like preying shadows. Almost immediately he felt himself drifting back into the recesses of his burning cranium.

  The hooded Jimmy Vaughn, who was flanked by several jubilant children, waved his farmer’s hand in front of Paul’s fading vision. Again the writer’s dilated pupils flickered. Then Paul glanced across the beach where he could see…a thrashing body that was being roasted on the fire. Simultaneously he experienced a feeling of elation, which made him laugh hysterically. The bonfire, with its burning body, was like the purgatorial flames, which were searing the inside of his skull. In that instant, Paul knew why he had come to the cove on this night of nights. Every Midsummer Night, there was always the same aroma of burning hair and bubbling flesh.

  ‘If only it was always like this. Though, in truth, I wish it was the witch, Gwynne Spark, who was being sacrificed in those flames,’ he whispered to himself as the furnace in his head overwhelmed him, and simultaneously it blotted out the fire in the cove.

  But, thank God, he thought before sliding into unconsciousness, there is always next year. And then who knows? It could be the witch, who is being burnt on the bonfire – because that’s the death she deserves. The trouble is…by tomorrow morning…I’m certain that I won’t remember anything of what occurred here tonight…

  As if in response, the full moon re-emerged from behind the cloud, and its rays illumined the solitary figure of…Lulu, who was standing on the opposite cliff like an alabaster statue.

  Motionlessly Lulu watched the inferno in the cove, clawing at the stars. Although she was some distance away from the conflagration, her nostrils were assailed by the smell of innocent, incinerating flesh. She could still make out most of the faces of the fire-stoking villagers, the cheering children, and the contentedly-unconscious figure of Paul. Particularly she registered the ecstatic features of eight-year-old Scarlet, Sue Townley’s daughter, and her best friend, Bella Rowbottom. Instantly Lulu recalled playing games with the girls and the other children in the cave on the beach that afternoon.

  All these innocent kids are my friends, Lulu thought. But now they are in an unhealthy state of elation because of the ritualistic burning in the cove. They are being corrupted by their degenerate parents, and their parents are already preparing to do something, which could be infinitely worse.

  As the moon bathed Lulu in its cleansing light, she opened her arms to embrace its beneficence, while she gave voice to her pledge; ‘In Your Ineffable Name, Great Goddess, I will endeavour to save the parents from themselves. And, whatever befalls, I promise You, I will save the children.’

  4

  It was early evening, a week later, Monday 28th June, 1999.

  The six-foot-three figure of Jimmy Vaughn was driving his Ford Estate towards Lulu’s Jacobean cottage, which was surrounded by woodland. Jimmy’s farm was less than half a mile away, so it was a short drive for the farmer.

  As Jimmy approached Lulu’s cottage, once again he found he was thinking about his identical twin-brother, Don, whom Jimmy hadn’t heard from for over twenty years. The twins’ painful separation had occurred when their parents, who were farmers, were killed in a hit-and-run car-accident in 1978. Two days after their parents’ funeral, his brother, Don, was so distraught that he left the family farm, and he ran away to London. And as Don refused to communicate with him, Jimmy had no idea where his twin was living in London. So, seemingly, Don had disappeared off the radar. This forced had Jimmy to take over the family farm when he was only nineteen, which was the last thing he wanted to do. And as Jimmy had never fully recovered from the shock of his identical twin leaving him in the lurch - ever since, he felt angry and bereft by what his twin brother had done to him.

  What’s more, Don, mused Jimmy, Your disappearance, still continues to haunt me after all these years. In fact I’m sure it’s one of the main reasons that I’m still getting these electrifying headaches. Yes, and ever since Mum and Dad’s funeral twenty years ago, I’m always suffering with these endless headaches. Yes, Don, and these headaches first started on the very night that you went off to London. And on the same night, I was putting the horses in their stables, there was a terrible storm, and a thunderbolt ripped several slates off the stable roof. Then one of the slates hit me on the side of my skull, which gave me my first horrific headache. I’ve never known such excruciating pains in my head as I experienced that night. So, Don, you shouldn’t have left me, and gone off and disappeared in London. Especially as when we were kids in Fat Billy’s Gang, we had such fantastic times together. Our lives were so wonderfully exciting until Little Dian was found dead under that oak-tree, with a sprig of garlic in her hand. But then after that…everything went wrong…

  With a despairing nod of the head, Jimmy parked his Ford Estate on the unmown grass outside Lulu’s cottage. While he was turning off the engine, he noticed that there was a beach tree, overhanging her cottage roof. The dusk wind was urging the largest branch to tap repeatedly against Lulu’s bedroom window. As Jimmy locked the car, he became aware that the force of the wind had increased, and its blast was scattering leaves and pinecones onto the roof of his Ford Estate.

  He was about to open the gate, leading up to Lulu’s cottage, when he heard a plaintive voice calling to him from the adjacent wood.

  It’s bound to be another of those tricks that my mind keeps playing on me, he thought. Sometimes my head’s so jumbled, I think I’m going crazy. So here’s hoping Lulu can cure me of my godawful headaches.

  ‘If only I wasn’t so angry with everything and everyone,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Most of all, I hate being a farmer. And, God help me, I would never have been a bloody farmer, Don, if you hadn’t gone to London after Mum and Dad’s funeral, and left me to do everything here.’

  Mind, I’ve only got myself to blame about my three-year-affair with Mary Rowbottom, he thought as he conjured up Mary’s blue eyes and her cropped red hair in his mind’s eye. Although, in truth, most of the time it’s been good with Mary. It’s only recently that things have gone so very wrong. But now I think I’ve sorted her out, so hopefully Mary will accept that now it’s all over between us…

  His thoughts trailed off as he heard the same indistinct yet plaintive voice, calling to him from beyond the trees. The
voice seemed to be urging him to come into the wood.

  In response, he headed off into the trees in the direction of the voice. As there wasn’t a path, he was forced to trudge through overgrown ferns. Then while he was fighting his way around some tangled thistles, he stopped because he thought he recognised the timbre of the voice. But he still couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. Dismissively he shook his head, and surged on.

  Why does my imagination keep playing these tricks on me? he pondered. ‘Cause I’m sure it’s my mind that’s doing this to me.

  Then the voice became a fearful but insistent whisper, and it compelled Jimmy to move deeper into the wood in its pursuit. Soon the farmer found himself in a sunlit glade, which he seemed to recognise. And he felt sure that he’d been into this glade once before. Yet for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why he had come here. Or when. Although he was certain that it was many years ago…

  As he crossed the glade, the wind dropped. A moment later, the voice stopped summoning him, but Jimmy still couldn’t see any sign of who had been calling to him. Mystified, he paused beneath a towering, ancient oak-tree, which dominated the glade.

  God help her, he thought, gazing up at the tree. This is very like the oak, where little Dian Spark was found, with her broken neck, and she was clutching a sprig of garlic. Yes…and Don and I were both only eight at the time. It means poor Dian’s been dead now for over thirty-two-years. She died when the three of us were part of Fat Billy’s gang. Then Fat Billy was murdered, and then Gypo was murdered, too. And finally Dian’s sister, Anna, was found strangled on the beach…

  As Jimmy remembered their deaths, he shook his head dolefully. He stared up at the oak’s branches, which were stretching over his head like a moss-encrusted candelabra.

  But this is definitely not Dian’s tree, he assured himself. Because her oak is at least a mile away on the other side of the bay. So what the hell am I doing here? I’m sure it wasn’t a person, who was calling to me a moment ago. No, it could only have been my imagination, plus the wind whistling through the leaves…

  He stroked his ears uncertainly.

  So why did it sound as if the voice was in extreme pain? he pondered, coursing his fingers through his hair.

  Then he noticed that there was something untoward amongst the oak-tree’s roots. When he crouched down to examine the object, he discovered it was the badly-burnt skull of a horse. Someone had scattered a handful of crimson rose-petals over the horse’s skull, and the petals were like an apology for a funeral wreath.

  Jimmy picked up the skull tentatively. As he turned the blackened jaw over in his hands in order to examine it, the horse’s eyeless sockets seemed to glare at him, and accuse him. Then he registered the flecks of the horse’s burnt flesh embedded in the palms of his hands. Cursing his curiosity, he threw the skull at the trunk of the oak. The jawbone shattered on impact, while the eyeless sockets continued to gape back at him like two pitiless caverns. Frenziedly he ground the remains of the horse’s skull under his stamping heel.

  After he had stepped away from the trampled pieces of bone, he realised that he was standing on a patch of grass. Then, to his consternation, suddenly the earth seemed to move under his feet. It was as if the glade had acquired a malignant life of its own. Jimmy was fearful that it was the ground beneath him that had called out to him, and now the ground was accusing him. Panic-stricken, the farmer lurched away from the oak-tree, and he started running.

  As he raced to the other side of the glade, something prompted him to glance down at his right hand. The palm of his hand was speckled with blood. When he stopped to look closer, he realised that the red spots were the shreds of the rose-petal-wreath, which had stuck to his palm. Disconcerted he flicked the petals away. He was about to run on when he stared at his right hand again. Without thinking, he extended his arm as if he was proffering his palm to be read by the elements.

  Then Jimmy remembered being in Gwynne Spark’s front garden, when he was just nineteen, and it was only a few weeks after his parents were killed in their car-accident.

  And I’ll never forget standing in the witch’s garden, he mused, as he continued to scrutinise the palm of his right hand. I was so depressed with my headaches that I still remember asking the witch if I would ever be free of my headaches, and also free of the fucking farm! Then while I was in her garden, Gwynne offered to read my palm, and tell me my future. But as I showed her the palm of my right hand, a sudden blaze of mental-lightning electrified my skull. My headache was so appalling that I wrenched my hand away from hers, and I ran out of her garden, so Gwynne never had time to read my fortune. And, unfortunately, not a lot has changed since then – because I’m still running…

  Despairingly shaking his head, Jimmy charged off between the trees. He knew if he stayed in the wood any longer, he would encounter more direful things that would unremittingly-torment him.

  But, one day, I know I will have to return again to that oak-glade, in order to discover what it all means, he thought as he emerged from the trees. So perhaps Lulu can help me, like she promised – because now my headache is truly back with a vengeance.

  Feverishly massaging his forehead, he ran up Lulu’s front path, and he rapped the door-knocker. Immediately there was the sound of protesting hinges.

  A moment later, the lissom Lulu appeared, framed in the open doorway. The shortness of her light blue skirt emphasised her willowy limbs. Noting Jimmy’s enflamed gaze, Lulu’s mouth smiled while her sea-green eyes remained detached. The farmer was already so enthralled by her presence that almost instantly his disturbing experiences in the wood began to fade away like tatters of mist, and simultaneously the pains in his head receded.

  As Lulu led him along her hallway, her delectable mouth continued to smile. She ushered him into a white-walled room, with a low ceiling, punctuated by four blackened beams. Either side of the Jacobean fireplace, there were ingle-nooks, and three chairs facing the empty grate. Then Jimmy found himself staring at the long couch under the open window.

  ‘Yes, I want you to sit on the couch, Jimmy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Please sit on the couch.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Now don’t be demure, Jimmy. You see, soon you will be lying on it.’

  ‘Oh…and when I’m lying on it,’ Jimmy said, now gazing at her beckoning hips. ‘Are you going to come and join me on the couch, Lulu?’

  His eyes flickered upwards so he could savour her breasts. As Lulu moved closer to him, he could see that she was far from amused.

  ‘It was a terrible thing that you all did on the beach last week, Jimmy,’ she chided. ‘So now behave, and sit on the couch.’

  ‘We had to do it,’ he insisted as he obeyed her.

  ‘You can’t possibly justify you and your friends participating in such an appalling Midsummer Ritual,’ Lulu countered.

  ‘We’ve always done it, Lulu. And we always will. It’s the only way we can guarantee good harvests.’

  ‘But recently your harvests have been very lean. So all you achieved with that perverse ceremony, Jimmy, was to debase everyone who was involved in it. What’s worse, in your communal obscenity, you were deliberately corrupting the children.’

  Jimmy surged off the couch. His headache had returned with a vengeance. As the farmer’s six-foot-three frame loomed over her like an impending storm, quickly Lulu stepped back. Then Jimmy thrust his distraught face into hers.

  ‘Last week when we were on the beach together, Lulu – and again, today, when I called you on the phone – you said that you could get rid of my terrible headaches. That’s the only reason I’ve come over to your cottage now. And like I said on the phone, I’ll pay you whatever you ask; as long as you stop all this screeching lightning that’s inside my skull. So now all I want to know is; can you cure me, or can’t you?’

  With an exhausted sigh, Jimmy slumped back onto the couch. He was no longer a man possessed. All the anger had seeped out of him.
>
  He’s just a soul in torment, Lulu thought.

  For the first time, she noted his enticing ice-grey eyes, the fullness of his mouth, his black curls, and he possessed a nose that even a Roman patrician would be proud of.

  ‘So, Lulu,’ Jimmy ventured hesitantly, ‘Can you cure me?’

  ‘Do you believe that I can cure you, Jimmy?’

  ‘The Devil knows why…but, yes, Lulu, I do believe you can cure me.’

  ‘Speaking of the Devil – it was your horse that you sacrificed at your perverse Ritual, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Does it matter whose horse it was?’

  ‘To the horse, it would have mattered a great deal.’

  ‘Look, we had to sacrifice the most beautiful creature on four legs. You see, it’s the only way to ensure that our village will be blessed.’

  ‘Or damned.’

  Jimmy rubbed his eyes. Then he gazed ardently at her again.

  ‘When it comes to beauty, Lulu, well…well, you are certainly the most beautiful woman. Y’know that?’

  ‘The Moon does it.’

  ‘The moon?’

  ‘And, furthermore, Jimmy; it’s wrong of you to pay me such compliments, when you already have a woman who dotes on you.’

  ‘You mean Mary Rowbottom?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Mary and me are finished!’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since this morning.’

  ‘Have you told Mary that you two are “finished”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And her response?’

  ‘Mary told me to tell you to “go to Hell”. But then she is a passionate redhead, so she’s always had a tendency to be irrational. That’s why I’m glad I’ve ended it all with her now.’

  ‘But you and Mary did have good times together, didn’t you?’