The Wicca Woman Page 4

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘So what did her little daughter, Bella, say about you leaving her mother and her?’

  ‘I’m sure Bella’s pleased that I’m gone ‘cause the kid has never liked me. Why should she? I’m not her father. But then who is? See, Mary hasn’t told me who Bella’s father is. And now we’ve cleared all that up, Lulu, the question still remains; are you going to cure me of my headaches, or aren’t you?’

  ‘I can cure you temporarily. But never completely.’

  ‘Why not completely?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Do I?’ Jimmy said, mystified.

  ‘Deep down in your subconscious, you know exactly why. Now lie down on the sofa – like I asked you to.’

  ‘Sure, if that’s what you want.’ Jimmy nodded, and although he was still perplexed, obediently he sat on the sofa. Then he lay back, and asked, ‘So now what?’

  For a moment Lulu didn’t respond. Despite herself, she found she was admiring Jimmy’s torso and muscular thighs. She was always susceptible to souls in torment. Especially if the souls in question were encased in male bodies, and their owners had attractive faces and physiques – which over the years had often proved to be the case.

  From time immemorial, it’s always been like this, she thought. Oh I know I should resist it, but he says that he has left Mary. And there has to be some pleasure to compensate for all that I’ve endured over the years. Even though I know - as King Lear so appositely observed; ‘This way madness lies’.

  Still in conflict with herself, Lulu collected a chair from the corner, and she positioned it by the couch. Jimmy’s eyes caressed her every movement. As she sat down opposite him and she flicked her loosened hair enticingly close to his lips, he found that he could barely contain himself.

  ‘Why do you always smell so ravishing, Lulu?’ he whispered.

  ‘I only bathe in moonshine.’

  ‘So what is it with you and the moon, then?’

  ‘Eternity.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘True, there are days when existence is sanguinary, and Purgatorial. But then, of course, there are all those other days.’

  ‘You’re crazy, Lulu. You know that?’

  ‘That’s why more often than not; “This way madness lies”.’

  ‘You’re impossibly hard to follow,’ Jimmy muttered. ‘Y’know that, Lulu?’

  ‘Is that why you’re habitually devouring me with your eyes?’ she said, bending closer to him.

  ‘Yes. So…well, now you know that I’ve left Mary for good…can I just touch a strand of your lovely hair? Well, I’m sure that’ll prove to be a very good beginning to my cure.’

  As Jimmy extended his forefinger and thumb to stroke her hair, Lulu abruptly stood up. Shaking her head, she crossed to the open window, which was thrumming in the wind.

  ‘Oh come on, you know you want me to touch you, Lulu,’ Jimmy insisted, now propping himself on his elbow. ‘I saw it in your eyes.’

  ‘You have a great deal in common with your rival. Are you aware of that?’

  ‘What frigging rival?’ Jimmy demanded, now sitting upright on the sofa.

  ‘The morning after your Midsummer ritual, Paul Hopkins rang me,’ Lulu riposted. ‘You see, like you, Paul also needed to come over to see me because he wanted me to cure him of his terrible headaches. But as you well know, Jimmy, your rival never came to me to be cured, did he?’

  ‘Damn right, he didn’t!’ Jimmy rasped.

  Clenching his fists, the farmer leapt off the sofa, and he charged across the room until he was only a foot away from her.

  ‘Yes, and it was you, Jimmy, who made sure that Paul didn’t come to me to be cured, wasn’t it?’ Lulu countered, her eyes fixed on his whitening knuckles.

  ‘Right. There was no way you could’ve cured him, Lulu. ‘Cause Hopkins was too far gone by then. But then, of course, you didn’t see the poor bastard on Midsummer’s Night, did you? When he tripped at the top of the cliff path, and then he went helter-skelter down the path like there was no tomorrow. And at the bottom of the cove, as he was bleeding and badly-bruised, he passed out. Mind, it was hardly surprising that Hopkins was in such a state. See, over the years, he’s totally poisoned his system with his endless boozing,’ Jimmy raged. ‘And if Mary and Sue hadn’t taken him to A. and E. that night, then God knows what would’ve happened to the crazy bugger.’

  ‘But you didn’t help the women to take him to the hospital, did you, Jimmy? No, you stayed on the beach to complete your vile Ritual, sacrificing your beautiful horse.’

  ‘What we did wasn’t vile. Like I keep telling you, Lulu, we had to do it. It’s the only way that we can protect our crops. Anyway, it was still me, who saved Hopkins from ending up as a dead alci on some park bench. ‘Fact just after he phoned you, I was round at Hopkins’ place. And while I was there, I went on and on at him for over two hours until I managed to persuade him to go into Rehab in Truro, to dry himself out. So now Hopkins will be in Rehab for the next four or five months. And also I’ve got him to agree to join Alcoholics Anonymous. But I didn’t do it because he’s my “rival”, Lulu. No, I only did it to save him from himself,’ Jimmy rasped, now cradling his burning forehead with both hands. ‘Christ, my headache’s bloody killing me! Can’t you do something to help me, for God’s sake?’

  Lulu studied his anguish for a moment, then she nodded.

  ‘I will help you, Jimmy, because I believe that “every good boy deserves favour”. Yes, and, for once in your life, it seems that you have truly done a good deed, so…’

  Smiling, Lulu placed her forefinger on Jimmy’ sternum, and gently she pushed him towards the sofa. As he lay back on it, her cool hands stroked both sides of his aching skull. Then she pressed her open mouth against his surprised lips. Her tongue slipped between his teeth, jousting with his tongue, and it was as if she had opened the portals to heaven. Now fully aroused, he stiffened against her groin, and he pulled her down on top of him.

  Moments later, they disrobed one another in a sensual blur. Then he thrust himself into her Garden of Eden – because that was how her body seemed to him. Instantly his headache began to fade like retreating thunder. And now he was certain that as long as he could continue to possess her; in return, he would do absolutely anything she asked of him.

  No matter if Hell follows after, he thought. And Hell probably will.

  Then he cried out as he blossomed inside her.

  To Lulu, his plunging phallus was like a dagger, and his flooding seed like an eruption of blood. Now she knew that everything she had first intuited about Jimmy was true. And her only recourse was to blank out the Tree of Knowledge, and its attendant terrors. Defiantly she refused to face what the fateful Tree foretold for them both as she, too, joined him in the libidinous blossoming.

  Outside her cottage, the wind encouraged the branches of the beach tree to tap more urgently against her windowpane. But as Lulu had done many times before, she ignored the wind’s warning, while she gloried in the erogenous moment.

  In the depths of the wood, the risen moon was imprisoned in the branches of the oak-tree.

  As the lovers continued to explore one another, once again the plaintive voice could be heard crying out from beneath the oak-tree.

  However, the voice’s despair was only answered by the mocking night wind, and the sounds of carnal ecstasy.

  5

  During the four months that followed, seemingly life went on much as usual in Thorn.

  Then on Friday, October 29th 1999, as the rays of the setting sun emblazoned the windows of Paul Hopkins’ dilapidated Victorian house, everything that had been festering under the surface in the village began to come to fruition.

  Paul’s house was situated on the outskirts of the village, and the nearest dwelling was the much smaller house of Vince Townley, the postman.

  From the depths of Paul’s basement, there was the sound of the writer’s voice, intoning ‘The Lord’s Prayer’. Wh
en the prayer was over, there was a brief silence before Paul shouted; ‘Lord protect me, now and always!’

  This was followed by the thump of his feet, rhythmically running up and down on the spot. A moment later, his feet raced up the basement’s steps, and pounded across the hallway. Then the front door was flung open.

  The now-very-lithe and muscular figure of Paul Hopkins, in his red running-gear, whirled through the doorway, slamming the door behind him. Despite jangling his keys in his sweat-pants’ pocket, he made no effort to lock his door. Instead he gave his beard a peremptory scratch while he jogged down the front steps.

  As Paul ran past the postman’s house, he increased his speed. Since he had given up drinking alcohol, it was noticeable that his hazel eyes were no longer blood-shot. They glistened like sunlit trout-ponds. And even his beard didn’t itch as much as it used to.

  It’s wonderful, he thought as he urged his legs to run faster, Because now I have all this boundless energy. But I still get these horrendous headaches when I least expect them, and then they transform my skull into an inferno. Although in every other regard, my four months in Rehab, and my going to A.A. in Truro; they have really done the trick. And, what’s more, since I’ve been back in Thorn, I’ve had no desire to have a drink, and now I feel so much better in myself than I have for many years. Also I’ve written two more children’s stories, plus three articles for the local rag, and there are several more stories in the pipeline.

  Still congratulating himself on his new lifestyle, Paul raced towards the centre of the dusk-tinged village.

  Yes, he thought as he began to run even faster, I know the Rehab and the A.A. guys think that I should’ve stayed with them for another month or so. But being stuck in Truro for nearly sixteen weeks was more than enough. Yes, and as the A.A. guys have taught me the power of prayer, as a result, I don’t need the A.A. or Rehab anymore. And now, in every free moment I have, I devour the Bible because it is the Good Book that has dispelled my darkness. The Bible has brought me Everlasting Light, so from now on, the Lord God will be with me always. And in order to do His Bidding, I am determined to stay super-fit. It’s why my basement holds the secret to my new life, which I will never reveal to anyone.

  With the Village Hall on his right, Paul’s feeling of elation increased while he raced down the Main Street. It was only five in the evening, but as the writer turned left past Saint Peter’s Church, he noticed that the face of the church clock was already indistinct in the dusk. Then he headed further down into the village because for the first time since Midsummer’s Night, he decided that he wanted to go to his local, where he would drink some lemonade.

  He was approaching the village’s only pub, ‘Green Fingers In My Hair’, when he saw that there were three men in the pub garden, whom he knew very well. As it was a warm evening for the end of October, the men were sitting on pub-benches. Although, bizarrely, they were all ignoring their pints of beer on the table in front of them.

  As Paul was perplexed as to why the three of them were being so uncharacteristically abstinent, he pulled up short. And the reason was soon apparent. The men were talking salaciously about Lulu, and they were so engrossed that they didn’t notice the writer slipping through the pub-garden gate.

  Swiftly Paul hid himself behind a hawthorn hedge. Peering between the darkening leaves, Paul focused on his neighbour, Vince Townley, the village postman, who was shaking his balding head in disbelief at Bob White, the lithe carpenter. Then Townley turned, and he waved his dismissive finger at Dave Biggs, the florid, overweight horse-farmer.

  ‘No, no, look, I’m sorry, guys,’ asserted Vince. ‘But it couldn’t possibly be the same for either of you. I mean, how the hell could Lulu be screwing you two, in your separate bedrooms, while she was screwing me in my bedroom?’

  ‘No, Vince, you’re so wrong,’ Bob cried, flashing his incisors. ‘See, last night Lulu was screwing the life out of me in my bed! So she couldn’t possibly have been screwing you two, at the same time, in your beds, could she?’

  ‘Oh c’mon, there’s no way that Lulu’s ever screwed you, Bob!’ Dave raved, with his double chins waggling as he waved his third bag of cheese-and-onion crisps derisively under Bob’s nose. ‘And Lulu certainly didn’t screw you, Vince, ‘cause she’s been far too busy being screwed-rigid by me, to have had any time to screw either of you two!’

  To emphasise his point, Dave lurched to his feet, with his ample gut resting on the table. Then he demonstrated his sexual prowess by repeatedly punching his bulbous fist towards the ground like a phallic piston.

  ‘No, no, you weren’t doing that to her, Dave. It was only me, who was screwing her!’ chorused Bob and Vince vehemently.

  Then the three men grabbed their pints of beer, and they started to glug them down in frenetic unison.

  Behind the hedge, Paul maniacally grabbed three hawthorn branches as the substitute for the throats of the three boasters. Instantly several thorns gouged into the heels of his hands. He grimaced in pain, although he didn’t emit a sound. As a devout Christian, Paul knew that he shouldn’t be eavesdropping behind the hedge. But he was still determined to discover why the three drinkers had these perverse fantasies about the adorable Lulu. After pulling the thorns out of his hands, the writer scratched the itching underside of his beard. Then he refocused on Vince, who was the first to finish his pint in the twilight.

  Dolefully shaking his head, Vince plonked his empty tankard down on the table. After mopping his glistening skull with a handkerchief, he made a conciliatory gesture towards Bob and Dave.

  ‘Look, you guys; don’t let’s fight, OK? Well, it’s stupid us scrapping ‘cause the three of us have been friends since forever. And, anyway, I know that none of this Lulu-screwing stuff makes any sense. Especially as last night certainly wasn’t the first time that Lulu ha come to me in my bed.’ Then Vince added quickly, ‘And I’m sure it wasn’t the first time that she’s come to you two in your beds as well. Well, I am right, aren’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you are, Vince,’ nodded Dave, tearing open his fourth packet of crisps. ‘See, Lulu’s been screwing me on a regular basis for nearly ten weeks now!’

  ‘She’s been screwing me for almost eleven weeks!’ Vince cried, grabbing a handful of Dave’s crisps.

  ‘And she’s been screwing me for twelve weeks!’ Bob shouted, spitting out most of his mouthful of crisps onto his carpenter’s braces. ‘That’s why my wife hates Lulu’s guts.’

  ‘My wife hates her guts, too,’ Dave nodded, after swigging back half of his beer. ‘In fact whenever I wake up crying out Lulu’s name – which I do most nights – then Tina really rages on and on at me about Lulu. ‘Fact I’m in such a state in the morning that I’ve hardly got the strength to feed my fucking nags!’

  ‘It’s like that with me and Sue,’ Vince assented dolefully. ‘That’s why I’m often in trouble about my late delivery of the mail. And, what’s even worse, our marriage is getting rockier and rockier every day.’

  ‘You’re right, Vince,’ agreed Dave. ‘In fact my life’s now become a total nightmare. But…well, how exactly does Lulu…well, how does she…come to you at night, Vince?’

  ‘She comes to me in my sleep. That’s why in the morning, I’m totally lifeless. And I’m sure it’s the same for both of you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Although when I wake up…’ Bob murmured, breaking off to suck the salt from his crisp-stippled fingertips. ‘Well, it’s like…well, I’ve just dreamt it all. The trouble is, ever since I saw Lulu on the beach at our Midsummer-do, I dream about nothing but her.’

  ‘I endlessly dream about her, too, Bob,’ Vince whispered. ‘Yet whenever I see Lulu in the street – although I don’t see her very often – but whenever I do, I always feel so bloody guilty that I hardly dare look at her because I…well, I want her so badly.’

  ‘I’m the same, Vince. And I’ve only seen Lulu in the village a couple of times,’ Dave agreed, massaging his ample stomach. ‘So what d’you think is
happening to the three of us? Well, you see…I don’t know about you two, but my farm, and our family life, well, it’s going to total rack and ruin, God help me!’

  ‘I don’t think God has much to do with it,’ Bob asserted, after hastily making the sign of the cross. ‘Fact if there were such things as vampires, then sure as there is Hell, you can bet your life that Lulu is some kind of vampire.’

  ‘Yeah, I think you’re right, Bob, ‘cause I’ve been reading a book about vampires,’ Vince agreed sagely. ‘And in this book, there was a name for creatures like Lulu.’

  ‘What was the name for her, Vince?’

  ‘Succubus.’

  ‘Succu-what, Vince?’

  ‘Bus. Succu-bus, Bob.’

  ‘What the Devil does “succubus” mean when it’s at home, Vince?’

  ‘Well, I looked it up in my dictionary, Bob, and it said that a succubus is a female demon who is supposed to have…well, she’s supposed to have carnal intercourse with men in their sleep, and then she sucks the essence out of them.’

  ‘Fuck a duck! Well, that’s just what Lulu does to the three of us every night, ent it?’ Bob yelped. ‘So it’s little wonder our wives want to kill her.’

  ‘Yeah, and it’s why the rest of the wives in the village probably want to kill her, too,’ asserted Dave. ‘See, I’m sure all the women in Thorn know that all their men are being screwed regularly by Lulu in their sleep.’

  ‘You’re bloody right, Dave. And that explains why our wives have been going round to Gwynne Spark’s cottage practically every day this week. ‘Fact, while we’re sitting here, I’m sure our wives are plotting with that bloody witch to do something terrible to Lulu.’

  Now deeply concerned by what he’d heard, Paul was about come out from his hiding place behind the hedge, when the imposing figure of Jimmy Vaughn loomed out of the dusk to confront the three drinkers.

  ‘You three are nothing but envious, lying bastards!’ Jimmy shouted, lunging towards them. ‘What’s more, the whole bloody village must have heard what you’ve just been saying about her.’