The Wicca Woman Page 5

  In consternation, the drinkers pushed their chairs back, and they lurched away from the table.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, I’m not going to hit you little shits this time round,’ Jimmy rasped. ‘But if I ever hear any more of this made-up filth about Lulu from the three of you, then God help you all! ‘Cause as sure as there is Hell, I won’t. See, next time I’ll bloody kill you three fuckers!’

  Before any of them could respond, Jimmy surged past them. Then he half ran through the open pub gate, and headed towards his car, which was parked several yards away down the High Street.

  Unsure what to do next, the three friends stared in silence after the retreating Jimmy.

  As Jimmy climbed into his Ford Estate and turned on the engine, Paul emerged from behind the hawthorn hedge, and he berated the watchers.

  ‘Jimmy’s right. The three of you should shut your libellous mouths,’ he ordered, fixing them with his eyes. ‘Now you’d better go home pronto, and control your wives before that godforsaken witch, Gwynne Spark, goads your women into doing something that you will all permanently regret.’

  Dave opened his mouth to reply, but dismissively Paul brushed past him. Then Paul started running after Jimmy’s Ford, which was already passing Gwynne Spark’s cottage. As the Ford accelerated away from the village, Paul knew Jimmy was driving to Lulu’s cottage, and her cottage was barely a third-of-a-mile away.

  So if I run at full tilt, Paul thought, I’ll get to her cottage not too long after Jimmy does. But I still hope to God that I’ll be in time!

  6

  As Paul ran past Gwynne Spark’s cottage on the edge of the village, the smell of melting tallow permeated the witch’s living room, and the candle flames flickered like jaundiced tongues close to the damp walls of her cottage.

  Beside the fire in Gwynne’s hearth, four children from the village were sitting together on a faded strip of carpet. Together they were working busily on a life-size-effigy of a woman, which the children were making out of straw.

  Gwynne, who was dressed in black, nodded approvingly at their endeavours, while her arthritic hands continued to knit the crimson scarf in her lap. Standing opposite her were Mary Rowbottom, Rachel White, Tina Biggs and Sue Townley. In silence the women gazed at their eight-year-olds; Bella Rowbottom, Tom White, Alfie Biggs and Scarlet Townley as their children patted down more wisps of straw into the torso of the woman’s effigy.

  Then Scarlet looked up from her work, and she waved at her mother.

  ‘Ent she beautiful, Mummy?’ Scarlet said, weaving another corn-stalk into the effigy’s flowing straw hair.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ replied Sue. But when she turned back to Gwynne, the worry lines on Sue’s forehead were even more pronounced as she whispered, ‘Do you really think we should be doing this, Gwynne?’

  ‘You’ve no choice in the matter, Sue. Especially as Lulu Crescent has got her talons into your men, so now your men will do anything the whore wants them to do,’ Gwynne asserted, with her knitting needles glittering in the candlelight. ‘So now it’s imperative that you stop the bitch once and for all. Or she’ll continue to sexually enslave all your men every night that she remains in our village, and your lives will continue to be unmitigated hell.’

  Derisively Gwynne waved her crimson knitting at the other women, who looked far from convinced.

  ‘Listen, there’s no point in you all shaking your heads. In your hearts, you know I’m right,’ Gwynne insisted. ‘You see, even as we speak, your husbands are down at the pub, and they’re only discussing Lulu Crescent. What’s more, they’re boasting and vying with each other about what the succubus-slut does to them every night in their sleep.’

  Mary Rowbottom flicked her fingers through her red hair. She gestured at her daughter, Bella, who was also a redhead, and at the other children, with their almost-completed straw-effigy.

  Then Mary whispered to Gwynne, ‘It’s true, ‘cause I really do hate Lulu’s guts for stealing Jimmy from me. But I still don’t think that we should be involving my little Bella and the other kids in any of this.’

  Although eight-year-old Bella didn’t hear what her mother had said to Gwynne, she still caught her mother’s attention by waving her hand.

  ‘Mum, we’re having a cool time here. See, putting this dolly together is such good fun,’ Bella laughed, pointing at the straw-woman’s face. ‘But we still dunno know how to… Well, how do we make our straw-dolly some proper, red lips?’

  ‘Easy-peasy, Bella dear,’ chimed in the amused Gwynne, laying her knitting down on a side table, and picking up a vase from the Welsh dresser. Still grinning she stooped down beside Bella and Scarlet. Then from the vase, the witch pulled out two branches covered in rowan-berries. ‘These berries will make the most fantastic lips for your straw-lady.’

  ‘What about her boobies?’ chorused Alfie Biggs and Tom White, who always prided themselves on their innate ability to stir up the grownups.

  ‘Yeah, our straw-dolly is supposed to be a woman, ent she? So she’s got to have big boobies!’ trumpeted Tom, his grey eyes brimming with laughter.

  ‘No problem,’ Gwynne said, with a wink, plonking the vase back on the dresser.

  Laughing she grabbed two grapefruit from a fruit bowl, and she threw them at the impudent young wags, who expertly caught one apiece.

  ‘Oooh, you’re right, Mrs Spark. Them grapefruit’ll make the most whopping, great boobies!’ Alfie laughed, with his double chins jiggling. ‘’Fact they’ll be just like Mum’s whopping, great boobies.’

  To which Alfie’s mother, Tina Biggs, who was also endowed with double chins, chided him; ‘Now, Alfie, that’s more’n enough about my boobs.’

  ‘Yeah, Mrs Spark, but there’s still somethin’ else missin, ent there?’ Tom asserted, waving his grapefruit at Gwynne. ‘Well, don’t boobies have somethin’ stickin’ out, on the end of ‘em? Y’know, to make the boobies look real-like.’

  ‘Absolutely, Tom,’ Gwynne agreed, with her best wolverine smile. ‘What you need to do, boys, is to stick a rowan-berry-nipple on the end of each of your grapefruit. And then I think you’ll find that it’s “Bob’s your uncle”. Or – should I say? – “Booby’s your aunt”.’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, Gwynne,’ Rachael interrupted, pointing at her guffawing son. ‘Tom’s cheeky enough as it is, without you encouraging him to be even worse.’

  ‘Yeah, Rachel’s got a point, Gwynne,’ agreed Tina Biggs, thrusting her large bosom under Gwynne’s nose. ‘See, Alfie’ll give me no peace about my boobs if you keep winding him up like that.’

  This made Tom laugh even louder,and he turned back to his chin-jiggling friend, Alfie, who was also laughing and panting as he shoved his grapefruit deeper into the effigy-woman’s straw-chest. But before Alfie could finish his mammary-sculpture, Tom pushed his friend to one side, and he stuck a rowan-berry-nipple in the centre of Alfie’s protruding grapefruit. Then Tom winked as he squeezed the grapefruit suggestively.

  ‘Yeah, now this is what I call a real bonking, great booby, Mrs Spark!’

  ‘Indeed it is, Tom. So it’s very well done, indeed, boys,’ Gwynne agreed, picking up her discarded knitting again, and clicking the needles. ‘And the good news is, my darlings, as soon as you’ve finished making your straw dolly, then the fun really begins,’ she said, displaying her incisors. ‘But first we have to find a nose and some teeth for your straw-dolly. And, of course, there is also the question of her eyes.’

  *

  As the moon rose behind Lulu’s cottage, it tinged the yellow leaves of the maple trees in her back garden with tarnished silver.

  Inside her cottage, Jimmy’ apoplectic figure was silhouetted against the standard lamp in the corner of her living room. The farmer continued waving his arms like a drowning man, while he thundered on at Lulu, who stood opposite him, with her arms crossed impassively beneath her breasts.

  ‘How the hell can you just stand there, Lulu, and keep denying that you’ve done nothing wrong?’

&nbs
p; ‘I’m denying it, Jimmy, because I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘That’s lying garbage! It was only a few minutes ago that I heard Biggs, White and Townley boasting how you’ve been screwing the life out of all three of ‘em. What’s even worse, they say that you’ve been fucking ‘em every fucking night for the last two-and-a-half-fucking-months,’ he shouted, ducking under one of the blackened beams in her low ceiling.

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake, Jimmy, just grow up, will you?’ Lulu countered as she moved to the drinks’ table in the alcove.

  ‘Me grow up? This is totally un-fucking-believable!’ Jimmy shouted, with spittle on his lower lip.

  ‘Then don’t believe it, Jimmy, and, instead, wipe that unbecoming saliva off your mouth.’

  ‘What?’ Jimmy hollered as he pummelled his lips with his knuckles.

  ‘That’s better. Now stop shouting because everything your so-called pub-friends boasted about doing to me - and with me – is, of course, palpably untrue,’ Lulu riposted as she pulled a bottle of chilled Muscadet from an ice-bucket, and poured some wine into her glass.

  ‘If it’s “all palpably untrue”, Lulu, then why did the three of ‘em go on bragging to each other about how you keep screwing them all rigid night-after-fucking-night?’ Jimmy roared, his eyes like molten meteors.

  ‘If you cease shouting, Jimmy, there is a chance that you will start to think clearly. Then you will see why your friends’ bragging is nothing but sexually-frustrated, wishful-thinking on their parts.’

  ‘You can’t get out of it like that!’ Jimmy rasped, watching her as she sipped her wine serenely. Then he surged forward and loomed over her like a human guillotine. ‘And the reason I’m sure that you’re a lying whore, Lulu, is because I was well-hidden behind a bush in the pub-garden tonight, so Biggs, White and Townley had no idea that I was listening to them as they vied with each other about how many times you’ve screwed ‘em all.’

  ‘But as I keep telling you, Jimmy, they were merely burbling crazy, carnal tosh. Now stop hyperventilating before you have a heart-attack. And just sit down calmly, and join me in a glass of wine.’

  ‘It’s bloody brandy I need!’

  ‘Then pour yourself a ‘bloody’ brandy.’

  ‘How can you be so bloody calm?’ Jimmy raged, grabbing the decanter from the drinks’ table, and sloshing some brandy into a balloon glass. ‘When you know damn well that every night for the last three months, you’ve been screwing the entire male population of Thorn!’

  In disbelief, Lulu seated herself on the Jacobean chair by the window. Sighing she gazed up at the crescent moon, which seemed to be imprisoned in the branches of a maple tree. As Jimmy finished glugging down most of his brandy, she faced him again.

  ‘Look, you purport to be an intelligent farmer, Jimmy,’ she said, ‘So how can possibly believe your friends and all their libidinous fantasies?’

  ‘They’re not libidinous fantasies. What’s more, Vince Townley said he’d looked up a word in the dictionary that described you, Lulu. And it described what you’ve been doing to them, too.’

  ‘And the word was a “succubus”, right?’

  ‘Right. So if you know the sodding word, Lulu, how can you possibly deny that…?’

  ‘Because a succubus is what they imagine I am,’ Lulu interrupted as she moved away from the window. ‘You see, a succubus is what they want me to be. As a result, they have these sexual dreams about me, and their dreams are a perverse combination of auto-suggestion and mass-hysteria.’

  Jimmy lurched towards her, waving his brandy glass.

  ‘No, no, no, Lulu. You fucked the life out of them all. And you know you fucking-well did.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, but you’re not thinking any of this through logically. No, seriously. Well, your friends claim that I have sex with the three of them, right?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘And, furthermore, they say that I have sex with them all simultaneously, and while each of them are in their own separate beds. Whereas, of course, none of this could possibly have happened, could it? So now surely you must see that their stories are just blatantly-absurd, erotic fantasies,’ Lulu insisted as Jimmy lurched towards her again like a blind revenant.

  She warded him off with her raised forefinger, while transfixing him with her sea-green eyes.

  ‘As for “succubi”, Jimmy; they are merely carnal myths that have been invented by envious, sex-starved men. And in the case of this particular village, the men around here are obviously envious of you, Jimmy because of what they imagine we do together. It’s why your friends have these nightly dreams that I am making love to them all bcause they want me to lasciviously possess them while they are asleep. And those are the facts, my dear. So stop rampaging around like a demented bull, and sit down and accept the truth.’

  Still shaking his head, Jimmy unclenched and clenched his fists. Then he swigged back his brandy, and immediately he refilled his glass.

  Wearily shaking her head, Lulu returned to the latticed window, and she opened it half way. The October night wind fluttered an amber-coloured leaf over the sill. Lulu watched the leaf winnow its way downwards until it rested on her right foot, which was never the best of omens. Still leaving the window ajar, Lulu turned back to Jimmy, who was gulping down two-thirds of his second brandy.

  At that moment, Paul’s ghostly face materialised in the half-open window behind her. Without turning round, Lulu was aware of Paul’s presence, yet consciously she ignored him. Whereas the choleric Jimmy didn’t notice anything. The farmer was too preoccupied with lifting his glass to his lips again. But instead of finishing his brandy, he plonked the glass down on the Welsh dresser. Then with both of his trembling hands, Jimmy clutched his forehead feverishly. Still cradling his skull, he turned towards the window.

  This induced Paul to duck down below the window ledge, to avoid being discovered. In so doing, the writer bumped his head against the brickwork, although he still managed to almost stifle his involuntarily yelp.

  ‘What was that?’ demanded Jimmy as he stared at the open window, with his fingers grasping his hairline.

  ‘It was just the October wind making her presence felt,’ Lulu murmured, cradling the stem of her glass.

  ‘There was a different noise before that,’ Jimmy insisted, crossing the room and peering out through the window. ‘And you must’ve heard that second noise, too, Lulu,’ he shouted over his shoulder.

  Crouching in the shrubbery, Paul sensed that Jimmy was peering in the direction of the moonlit wood. In intuitive response, the writer flattened himself against the base of the cottage.

  ‘Oh come on, Lulu. Admit it. You did hear that noise!’ Jimmy insisted as he closed the window. Then he massaged his knotted forehead again. ‘Although it wasn’t exactly a noise. It was more like a…well, like a voice that was calling from your wood.’

  ‘No, I didn’t hear the voice, Jimmy. But I’m sure you did.’

  ‘Yes, and despite all the thunder and lightning that’s now crashing around in my brain,’ Jimmy nodded, clasping his brow, and moving away from the window. ‘And that’s the only way I can describe my mind-blowing headache. But despite this storm in my skull – and even though I’ve closed the window – strangely I can still hear that voice coming from the wood. And the voice seems to be calling out…to me.’

  ‘Yes, Jimmy…and it’s the very same voice that called out to you from my wood, when you first came round to my cottage in July, isn’t it?’

  ‘How the hell d’you know that I heard the voice then?’ Jimmy demanded.

  ‘You often mutter about that voice in your sleep. And also, of course, when you’re sleeping, you murmur about the time that you were in Gwynne Spark’s garden – and while you were there, the witch offered to read your future in the palm of your hand, but you bottled out, and you ran for it.’

  ‘I don’t believe in all that fortune-telling rubbish!’

  ‘No, but you will very soon, my dear. What’s more –
until you do believe it -you will go on rambling painfully in your sleep. And also you will continue to hear that voice in the wood; until finally you come face to face with its source, and your ultimate destiny,’ Lulu whispered, now gazing at him intently.

  ‘That’s just more of your witch’s prophetic shit!’

  ‘On the contrary, Jimmy. You see, in two days’ time, before October is done and dusted; your excruciating headaches will get worse and worse – until you feel that you are as insane as poor, demented King Lear on the heath.’

  ‘Are you saying that I’m going to be like King-Fucking Lear?’ the farmer yelped incredulously.

  ‘Yes, Jimmy. And there is only one way that you can prevent this from happening to you.’

  ‘And what way is that?’

  ‘You must confront the horrendous cause of your brain-storms.’

  ‘I already know what the cause is, Lulu,’ Jimmy snapped back.

  ‘So tell me what you think it is.’

  ‘The night my twin-brother went off to London and disappeared, there was a bloody great storm. And while the storm was raging, I was taking the horses to their stables, when a thunderbolt ripped some tiles off the stable roof. Then one of these bastard tiles crashed down - onto my skull - and it gave me the most terrible headache of my life. Yes, and ever since that happened, I constantly get these wall-to-wall headaches. ‘Fact I’ve still got this dent on my head as a permanent reminder,’ he muttered, massing the back of his skull. ‘So the cause of my headaches was that fucking-falling-tile!’

  ‘Yes, Jimmy, but still I prophesy that until you embrace your ultimate destiny, and face the real cause of your headaches, then, ad infinitum, the voice in the wood will go on telling you that; “This way madness lies”.’

  ‘How can you prophesy all that, when you know fuck-nothing about fuck-anything, you whoring-witch? See, Vince was right. You are just a sick, shitty slut-of-a-succubus!’ Jimmy screeched as he snatched up his brandy glass from the dresser.

  Then he charged across the room, and he hurled the swirling contents full into Lulu’s face. As the alcohol seared her eyes, she shrieked. She felt as if her eyeballs had been doused in acid. Lurching backwards, she staggered blindly towards the door. Before she could reach the door, imperviously Jimmy brushed past her, and he charged out through the open doorway.