The Shadow House(58)

My blood went cold before my brain could process what I was looking at. A high-pitched whine started up in my ears, like the singing rim of a glass.

It was the woman in the woods.

The Pine Ridge witch.





ALEX





25


The ground under my feet felt unstable, as if I were standing on the deck of a small boat.

She’s real. The witch is real.

I took a shaky step forward. I couldn’t see the witch’s face, but I could see Amy’s. Beneath her blunt fringe, her delicate features were pinched. She was listening intently to what the woman was saying, but her whole body was rigid, her hands clenched into fists, her eyes locked on the ground. She looked so small.

Feeling like I couldn’t trust my own eyes, I blinked several times, but this time the old woman did not shimmer and disappear. I could hear her mumbling: a dry rattle, like the tumble of dead leaves.

I took another step, and another and another until I was standing close enough to hear the words.

‘They come in the night,’ the witch was saying. ‘Listen, you’ll hear them. Voices – and footsteps.’ Her hair was wet, plastered to her skull as though she’d been caught in a downpour. But her raincoat – the colour of mint ice cream – was dry. It flapped in the breeze as she spoke, the lapels parting to reveal a long nightgown: blue, with little pink flowers.

‘They follow the path that leads to the sky.’ Her voice was raspy and urgent, as though someone had her by the neck. ‘A hill of grassy green – green grass. A diamond moon, the bluest of blue skies.’

The hand clamped around Amy’s wrist was skeletal. Paper-thin skin covered in liver spots. Thick discoloured nails and knuckles as gnarled as burrs on a tree.

‘That’s where it happened.’ The witch leaned in, pressing her face right up against Amy’s cheek. ‘Where the birds fly. They’re going north, those birds. They’re going to the moon.’

My lungs, my tongue, my brain were all frozen, but somehow my body kept moving, edging closer. I reached for the woman’s elbow, convinced that my hand would pass right through it … But when I touched her, she was solid. Skinny and frail, but real beyond doubt.

Very slowly, the old woman turned around.

Her face was riddled with deep lines, the skin falling over itself in tight folds, like the leaves of a Savoy cabbage. Her eyes were a milky blue, bloodshot in the corners, yellow where they should be white. They settled on me. ‘You,’ she croaked in her half-throttled voice. ‘I know you.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ I said.

But the old woman didn’t appear to have heard me. She was staring at a point about two inches to the right of my head, her puckered mouth hanging open.

‘I said, who are you?’

The woman drew back her head and her chin disappeared into her neck. ‘A magic trick.’ Her voice was like a cheese grater against a brick wall. ‘A vanishing act. Gone, just like that.’

‘Amy?’ I said, placing a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder and looking her in the eye. ‘Are you alright?’

Amy looked stunned, like she’d just emerged from a dark tunnel into bright light. ‘Yes.’

‘You sure?’

She nodded.

‘Do you know this woman? Did she try and make you go somewhere with her?’

‘Bones,’ murmured the old woman. ‘And a doll. Or is it a doll, then bones? I can never remember.’

I stiffened.

‘Then blood.’ A conversational lilt had crept into the witch’s tone. ‘A great wash of blood. Oh, such a shame. All over the house. All over the photograph.’ She tutted and shook her head sadly. ‘Things arrive, and then they take you.’

‘Okay, who is this woman?’ I turned on Amy so sharply she flinched. ‘Does she live in the village? Do you know her?’

Amy said nothing, just backed away.

Spinning around, I jabbed my finger into the air just short of the old woman’s chest. ‘You did it, didn’t you? You sent those things to me. Why?’

The woman looked innocently up at the sky.

‘I’ve seen you,’ I said. ‘Why have you been creeping around outside my house?’

I paused to see if she’d respond, but she just carried on staring at the clouds.

‘Did you write me a note? Did you leave it for me to find in the farmhouse?’ I watched her face closely for some kind of reaction. ‘What’s your name? Is it Kellerman? Renee Kellerman?’

‘Oh, look,’ said the woman, pointing up. ‘Birds.’

A hand touched my shoulder. I turned to see Kit, talking with his phone pressed to his ear. ‘Yes,’ he was saying. ‘It’s fine, I’ve got her.’

Got who? I thought. The witch? Or me?

‘Amy, what’s going on?’ said Layla, running up behind Kit. ‘Are you alright?’

Other people were emerging from the greenhouses and wandering down from the meeting in the hall, staring with curiosity and concern – but not the shock I would’ve expected given the presence of a real-life witch. In the distance I spotted Maggie, a triumphant smirk on her face.

‘We’re on the road near the terrace gardens,’ said Kit into the phone. ‘On the corner, just opposite the food store … No, I think she must’ve come through the gate this time … Alright, no worries, I’ll see you in a sec.’ He hung up and turned to me. ‘Alex, what’s going on? We heard raised voices—’