The Haunting Read online

  I missed my chance to do the right thing, and then Dad was opening the door and he was grabbing Jem and shouting. I remember crying Jem’s name and trying to hold on to his arm but he pushed me back and muttered something at me, a single phrase under his breath: “Stay in the car.”

  So Dad dragged him out and then he punched him. I mean he really punched him, for the first time, not a smack or a tap or a slap but a punch with his entire fist – bam! – right above his left eye. The whole car shook as Jem crashed into it and then collapsed on the floor in the dust.

  Then the birds started. I could hear them up there on the roof of the car, pecking and hammering madly at it until the whole car shook and I feared their beaks would rip straight through the roof.

  Dad told Jem to get up, and I hated the way that he said it. Like he wasn’t sorry. Like Jem was nothing.

  “Get up,” Dad said again. “And get in the goddamned car.”

  Jem tried but that punch must have swirled his brain around because even as he tried to stand he staggered and fell back down on his knees again. Dad grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him up, shoving him into his seat and slamming the door closed.

  Jem was crying but they were silent tears – he was always telling me that I would have to learn how to do silent crying, too, with no more hiccups or gasping or whimpering, because we both knew that the sound made Dad angry. The problem was that everything make Dad angry. Sometimes it was the neighbours, or the weather, or the plastic lid on the microwave dinner, or the dog that barked down the road, or the pot holes in the drive, or the weather, or the sky, or the sea. Just the whole world, really. Just the whole entire world. And all that anger was like a fourth person there in the house with us sometimes – a dangerous person who spent most of their time asleep and who we would do almost anything to avoid waking up.

  I was crying, too, trying to be quiet and not doing a very good job of it. Jem didn’t like for me to see him cry, so he had his head turned away, staring straight out of the window, but he reached across the middle seat and wrapped his hand around mine, and the feel of his warm fingers pressing my palm made me feel just a tiny little bit better, and just a tiny bit less scared.

  As we drove away, I threw the rest of my Mr Whippy out of the window. I didn’t want it any more. In fact, I’ve never much liked ice cream since that day.

  The sound of a beak pecking at the window yanked my thoughts out of the past but when I whirled around it was only a plump seagull perched outside on the windowsill. The next second it flew away, and I sat down on the side of my bed with a sigh. My eyes fell on my hairbrush resting on the bedside table. I thought I’d left it in the bathroom…

  With a growing sense of unease, I reached out and picked up the brush.

  It was clogged full of hair.

  Only the hair wasn’t mine.

  The hair tangled up in this brush wasn’t blonde, but coarse and black and thick. Not only were the strands the wrong colour but they were stiff with salt and crusty with, God, were those actually scabs? There was blood in the hair, too, I could feel it all of a sudden, damp and sticky on my fingers. I suddenly had an image of a woman sitting at my dressing table, staring into my mirror and dragging my brush over her scalp over and over again, over and over and over, until the hair was all pulled out of her head and the bristles only dragged through bleeding flesh. And she would be laughing all the while, that sound that played and replayed in my nightmares.

  I heard it then, for real, the laughter climbing up through the floorboards on thin spider legs – a demented daddy longlegs of a laugh that skittered straight towards me on many-jointed, spindly limbs.

  And then, as if on cue, real bugs started crawling out of the hair in my brush. I shrieked and dropped it on the floor, staring appalled as lice and mites came skittering out, disappearing into the cracks in the floor, closely followed by different types of aquatic insects: soft-bodied lacewings and bloated fishflies and waxy water beetles, and others that I didn’t even recognize. A horror of compound eyes and sucking mandibles and feathery antennae, all crawling up out of my brush.

  I watched them squirm and scrabble away down through the cracks in the floorboards and I bit my tongue, bit it hard, because I was afraid that, if I didn’t, I might actually start to howl and then I would never be able to stop.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Emma

  It was lunchtime and Shell had been gone for about an hour. I decided to call her down to see if she wanted to eat together. Bailey and I left our cosy spot in front of the fire and went back through the restaurant.

  As I passed by the big painting of the Waterwitch I felt the strongest desire to look at it to see if anything had changed but I refused to give in to the temptation. I did not believe in massive oil paintings that moved around when no one was looking at them. But as I wheeled past I suddenly caught the distinctive scent of ocean. Not just salt water, but seaweed and shells and shipwrecks and the slimy, spiny things that live out of sight below the waves, feeding on the skeletons of mysteriously vanished sailors. It was a salty tang that I could almost taste on my tongue, as if I’d just eaten a plateful of fish.

  It was like Bailey could sense it, too, because he growled as he went past, although it came out kind of muffled because he had refused to leave his bear behind and still had it clamped in his mouth.

  “There’s probably a window open somewhere,” I said out loud.

  The inn wasn’t that far from the sea, after all. And yet … I couldn’t remember ever smelling the sea here before, as a kid. Wherever that ocean smell was coming from, it could not be the painting, and if the dark waves looked as if they were moving, that could only be because I was seeing them from the corner of my eye.

  I carried on past it and Bailey nosed open the door that led to the monster staircase.

  I heard the crying as soon as I went into the corridor. Quickly, I wheeled myself to the foot of the stairs.

  “Shell?” I called. “Is that you?”

  It had to be Shell. There were only the two of us here.

  “Shell?” I called again. “What’s wrong?”

  The crying stopped abruptly but she didn’t call back down to me.

  It would be so great if I could just walk up the stairs like a normal person and go and find Shell to make sure she was all right. I closed my eyes for a moment, drew in a breath to call again, opened my eyes—

  —and froze, staring.

  The monster staircase was different.

  The carvings had moved.

  It was impossible – I mean, I knew that it was completely impossible for the carvings to have changed position in any way at all – and yet, when I had sat in this exact spot the day before, there had surely been a giant squid staring back at me with its single, startled, massive eye. Now there was a mermaid, baring its teeth at me. And this was no beautiful half-woman, but a monstrous predator with row upon row of needle fangs, mouth open wide, practically hissing and spitting her hatred right out of the wood at me.

  “Emma?” a subdued voice said from above. “Did you call me?”

  I looked up and saw Shell standing in the shadows at the top of the staircase.

  “Were you … were you crying just now?” I asked.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the mermaid. Had I remembered the staircase wrong? There were so many different creatures carved into the wood that perhaps I had just muddled up their positions. That was the likeliest explanation. The alternative was … well, it was just plain mental, that was all.

  Shell sniffed loudly above me. “There were bugs,” she said, “in my hairbrush. She’s been using it.”

  “She?” I repeated, dragging my eyes away from the mermaid.

  “The woman,” Shell replied.

  “What woman?” I asked, confused. Surely there wasn’t a fourth occupant of the Waterwitch that no one had thought to mention to me?

  “The woman who haunts the Waterwitch,” Shell said. “Didn’t you hear he
r laughing just now?”

  I squinted up at her. Light from some unseen window up there sliced diagonally across her body, clearly illuminating her skirt and tights and ballet flats, but her upper body and face remained a shrouded silhouette. “Shell, come down here!” I said. “I can’t see you properly up there.”

  “You must have heard the laugh,” Shell pressed. “You must have.”

  “I didn’t hear any laughing,” I replied. “Only you crying.”

  “But you must have heard her!” Shell cried, and it really was a cry, all filled up with cracks and wobbly bits and broken, brittle edges.

  “Shell, I can’t come up there,” I said, trying to sound patient. “Please come down.”

  But then, completely unexpectedly, she threw her head right back and let out a laugh.

  If you could even call that sound a laugh. It was unlike any I had ever heard before. High-pitched and shrill and all wrapped up in some cold, cruel madness that made my skin shrivel up into tiny goose pimples. There was something inhuman about that noise, a shrieking quality that was almost bird-like.

  It stopped quite abruptly and Shell sounded shocked as she said, “There! Did you hear it?”

  I stared at her. “Are you trying to be funny?”

  I still couldn’t see her face properly but she sounded genuinely confused when she replied, “Didn’t you hear it?”

  “Come off it. You’re the one who laughed.”

  “Me?” Shell repeated, and she sounded absolutely aghast. “But that was a mad woman’s laugh!”

  Then, out of nowhere, she threw her head back once more – a strange jerky movement, almost as if someone had just yanked at her hair – and then she laughed again. That same sound that didn’t just send shivers down my spine but right into my brain as well. The wooden mermaid on the banister was still baring her teeth at me and, all of a sudden, it looked like there were even more teeth inside her mouth than there had been before.

  “There it is again!” Shell exclaimed.

  “Shell, I mean it, stop doing that!” I said. “You’re freaking me out!”

  She laughed and now it sounded more bird-like than ever – a sound that should come from a beak or a gaping maw rather than a mouth. It was an insane noise that made me feel I would do anything to avoid hearing it again, and not just normal things like clamping my hands over my ears or wheeling at speed in the opposite direction, but mad, bad things, like shooting everyone in sight or hanging myself from the first available beam.

  “SHELL!” I shouted her name at the top of my voice.

  She broke off laughing abruptly. “What?” she said, her voice very small all of a sudden.

  “Come down these stairs,” I said. “Right. Now.”

  To my relief, this time she obeyed.

  “What are you playing at?” I asked her. I felt freezing cold and had to resist the urge to rub my arms. “I don’t ever want to hear that laugh again. Jesus.”

  Shell stared at me and her eyes looked even larger than normal in her pale face. “But you can’t really think that I was the one making that awful sound?”

  “Shell, I saw you!”

  Geez, I was totally out of my depth here. Shell had always been a little strange but this was seriously nuts, proper loony-bin stuff. Maybe she really had cracked up. Maybe Jem should let them take her away.

  And yet … I was the one who thought that painted ships and wooden monsters were moving around.

  I rubbed at my eyes and said, “Let’s just forget it. I came to see if you wanted lunch. Let’s have some food. And then you can tell me about this woman who’s been using your hairbrush.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emma

  It was raining outside. Through the windows we could see that Looe was dark and drenched with sea mist, so I assumed that Shell and I would eat at the Waterwitch but, as it turned out, there wasn’t any food.

  “Jem hasn’t gone shopping yet,” Shell said.

  “All right. Let’s go out.” I hesitated, then said, “It is OK for you to leave, isn’t it? I mean, it won’t be a problem if your dad happened to see you?”

  Looe was a tiny village and it was a definite possibility that we could run into him by accident.

  Shell shook her head. “He works on the fishing boats at night so he sleeps during the day. And, even if we did see him, he wouldn’t come over to us. Jem says he’s glad we left. Fewer mouths to feed.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The words were feeble, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  Shell shrugged. “I only need Jem,” she replied.

  We went out into the drizzle. Bailey must have been happy to be out of the Waterwitch because he didn’t seem to mind the rain like he usually did. I had an umbrella thing that attached to my wheelchair, which I hated using because I was sure it made me look truly ridiculous but it was better than getting soaked so I put it up anyway. Dignity was another one of those things you couldn’t be too precious about when you were stuck in a wheelchair.

  “Don’t you have an umbrella or something?” I asked Shell. She had a light rain mac on but she hadn’t drawn the hood up and her long hair was already soaked.

  She shook her head and said, “I like the rain. Especially when it tastes like the sea. Can we stop here for a moment?” She gestured towards a little shop – one of the many touristy ones in the crooked, cobbled street. “I just want to get some more incense. Don’t tell Jem though, will you? I, um, I kind of told him that I don’t have any money. And it’s almost true – I’ve hardly got anything left – but if he knew then he’d want to spend it on food and sometimes there are more important things. Jem doesn’t understand that. I’m not very good at explaining it to him, I guess.”

  Without waiting for me to reply, she skipped off across the cobbles, her wet hair dripping down her shoulders, leaving Bailey and me no choice but to follow.

  The sign outside the shop read: Looe’s Witch and Mermaid Shop. I grimaced when I saw how tiny the store was. Every available space seemed to be crammed full of stuff. There was barely room for a wheelchair in there, let alone a German Shepherd.

  “Sorry, old boy,” I said. “We won’t be long.”

  I told Bailey to stay and then followed Shell into the store. My palms stung as I wheeled myself over the threshold. I sighed. I’d been wheeling myself around a bit more than usual so I was getting blisters on my palms again. A bell hanging above the door tinkled sharply as we entered, and the overpowering smell of incense hit me in the face.

  The shelves were crammed with little witches, shell mermaids, black candles, charm dolls, dowsing rods, tiny cast-iron cauldrons, pentacles, sticks of incense – and bottles. A whole wall of them, glinting back at me in different colours, shapes and sizes. The sign next to them said that they were a selection of witch bottles, spell bottles and wish bottles.

  There was a girl sitting behind the till, perhaps a year older than me. She was extremely pretty, with dark hair that was almost as long as Shell’s, and large blue eyes lined with dark make-up. Her hair was loose but some of it was tied back into plaits, set with mottled blue and white sodalite beads carved to look like mermaids. She wore a black dress with chunky lace-up hiking boots. It was a cool kind of look I never would have been able to pull off myself, even before the wheelchair. The dress was sleeveless, so I could clearly see the dozens of tiny bird tattoos flying all the way up her right arm to her shoulder.

  She had a book in her hand but she put it down as we came in, looked up and smiled.

  “Hi, Shell,” she said. “Do you need more incense?”

  “Yes, have you got any of the myrrh left?”

  “Over there.” The girl pointed with her book to the far end of the shop.

  “Thanks. Oh, this is my friend, Emma, by the way,” Shell said, gesturing over her shoulder at me. “Emma, this is Kara. Her mum owns the shop.”

  “Hello,” Kara said to me as I wheeled cautiously through the narrow aisle. “I like your Joan
the Wad amulet.”

  “Oh, thanks.” My hand went to it automatically. “I like your tattoo. What kind of bird are they?”

  Now that I was closer I could see that they weren’t entirely black as I had first thought but all had a small splash of white above their tail feather – just like the birds in the big oil painting back at the Waterwitch.

  “Storm petrels,” Kara replied. “They’re seabirds. During storms they seek shelter on ships at sea. That’s how they got their name.”

  “Sailors used to think that storm petrels were the spirits of drowned sailors,” Shell said, joining us at the till. “Kara is a green witch. She uses nature to work her magic.”

  “Oh. That’s cool,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Emma doesn’t believe in witches,” Shell told Kara.

  “I never said that,” I protested. “I’m trying to be open-minded.” I looked at Shell and said, “So do you think that’s what you are, too? A green witch?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m not like Kara. There are lots of different kinds of witches, you know. If Mum were alive she could probably explain it to me. But she’s not so I just have to figure it out on my own. I don’t quite know what I am yet.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Kara said. “You’re obviously not an ordinary white witch – there’s a little bit of darkness there, too, something I’ve never seen before. Maybe you’re a pellar.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It comes from the word ‘repeller’ – as in ‘repeller of evil’,” Kara said. “Pellars can lift curses, counteract black magic, reverse the effects of ill-wishing, and exorcize demons, dark witches and evil spirits. They’re one of the most powerful kinds of witches there is but their magic can be … oh, how can I explain it? Look, whenever I perform magic, I get this tingling feeling in my fingertips,” she said. “But a pellar’s magic – well, it’s a little bit raw, a little bit violent. It’s the kind of magic that makes your hands bleed.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that very much so I was glad when Shell shook her head. “I’m not a pellar. If I had magic like that then I would’ve been able to dispel the birds by now.” She pushed a bundle of incense across the counter. “I’ll take this, please.”