Katharine Corr - The Witch’s Kiss

‘Rescue me?’ Merry guessed.

‘Yeah. That.’

‘Fabulous. That makes me feel so much better.’

Leo shrugged his shoulders, went into his bedroom and promptly collapsed on to his bed. He almost instantly started snoring – loudly. Merry stood and watched him for a moment. Leo was probably right. The banging noise she’d heard was most likely to do with the central heating. And as for that feeling she’d had, that horrible, sickening fear – it was probably just stress, or too many late nights. She sighed and went back into her own room. But she left the landing light switched on.

‘What the—’

Leo sat bolt upright, pushing the cats off the bed. They yowled and jumped straight back on to it, tails fluffed up like feather dusters.

‘What is wrong with you two?’ He checked his phone: just after five in the morning. Still dark outside. Collapsing back on to the pillows, he closed his eyes against the pain in his head. It was stupid, to have drunk so much. But being with Simon and Dan and the rest of his old friends, and having to keep pretending … He could understand how Merry felt. He was starting to hate himself, the way he was around them.

Knock, knock, knock.

The sound was coming from the attic. Just the plumbing, or some woodworm in the old timbers. Probably. He glanced at the cats. Both were bristling, their ears twitching back and forth. Leo sighed and got out of bed. This was all Merry’s fault, putting ideas in his head. The whole thing was ridiculous. Still, he was awake now. He lifted his cricket bat down from the top of the wardrobe and padded across the landing to his sister’s room. She was muttering faintly, frowning in her sleep, her hands clenched into fists.

‘Merry? Merry, wake up.’

He shook her shoulder and switched on the bedside lamp, causing her to screw up her eyes against the light.

‘Leo – oh, thank God.’ She covered her face with her hands for a moment. ‘I was having another—’

‘Shh.’ Leo put one finger on his lips.

‘Huh? Why are we whispering? And what’s with the bat?’

‘Listen.’

Knock, knock, knock.

The knocking was more frequent now.

‘That’s the noise I heard earlier,’ she murmured. ‘What is it?’

‘No idea. But it’s coming from …’ He pointed upwards. The noise stopped for a minute. Then it started again, slightly louder. ‘I’m sure it’s just a squirrel, or a rat, or something. A burglar wouldn’t be, you know, tap-dancing on the floor.’ He patted the cricket bat. ‘But I like to be prepared.’

‘Tap-dancing?’ Merry yawned and squinted up at him. ‘What the hell are you on about, Leo?’

Leo straightened up, running a hand through his hair.

‘Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve had less than three hours sleep and I’m tired, OK?’

‘Hungover, more like.’ She stared up at him for a minute. ‘Damn. I suppose you want me to come up there with you?’

‘Well, you’re the one who’s making me paranoid. What do you think?’

Three minutes later, Leo was switching on the light in the attic. Merry was standing, shivering, on the bottom rung of the metal pull-down ladder.

‘Well, I think we can rule out an intruder,’ Leo shouted down at her. ‘Unless he’s really, really tiny.’

‘Huh?’

He poked his head back though the hatch.

‘Come on up and I’ll show you.’

Merry muttered under her breath, but she climbed the rest of the ladder and came to stand next to him, hastily brushing a cobweb off her pyjamas. It was years since either of them had been up here. The attic – really a whole bunch of attics connected by odd steps up and down – was huge, and just as well. Mum was a chronic hoarder; she never threw anything away, on the basis that ‘it might come in handy someday.’ Or alternatively, ‘this is bound to be worth something eventually.’ After sixteen years the attic was crammed with cardboard boxes of various sizes, old pieces of furniture and artwork, unidentifiable things draped in sheets. It would be a tight squeeze for even the smallest burglar. Leo and Merry manoeuvred their way through the dust and detritus. The knocking was getting more frequent, more insistent.

‘What the hell is it?’ Merry asked.

‘I don’t know, but it’s coming from over there.’ He waved a hand towards the corner, where a dark oak chest had been wedged between a broken armchair and an old-fashioned sewing machine table.

The two of them went over to the chest and carefully lifted Merry’s old doll’s house and a stack of commemorative issues of the Radio Times off the top of it. Something inside was banging noisily against the wooden frame.

‘Right,’ said Leo. ‘You open it.’

‘How about you open it and I stand over there at a safe distance and watch you?’

Leo sighed.

‘No, you need to open it. Then, if anything jumps out, I’ll hit it with the bat.’ He waved the bat around a bit, to demonstrate.

Merry shuddered and stepped away from the chest.

‘But what’s going to jump out?’

‘Oh, for – something less annoying than you, hopefully. How on earth should I know? Just open it.’

‘Ugh, fine. After three, OK?’ Merry counted; she got to three, lifted the lid and leapt back quickly.

Nothing jumped out at them. Merry gave a little ‘oh’ of relief and surprise and went to peer inside. Leo came and craned over her shoulder. The chest was empty, apart from a pile of children’s picture books and a seven-sided wooden box, tucked away in the corner.

The box was twitching.

As they stared at it, the twitching got worse. The box started slamming against the side of the chest again.

‘What is it?’ Leo asked.

‘Er, it’s a jewellery box?’

‘Yes, so I can see. But why is it doing that ?’

‘How on earth should I know?’ Merry scowled, then turned away and started fiddling with the dials on an old record player sitting nearby, shaking her hair forwards so Leo couldn’t see her face.

Leo rolled his eyes.

‘Come on, Merry. This has got to have something to do with your lot.’

‘My lot?’ Merry swung round. ‘You know I’ve never been allowed to practise. You know I’m completely untrained.’

‘Seriously?’ Leo pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Look, I also know you do stuff on the quiet. Or you used to, at any rate. You know I know. But I’m not going to tell on you to Mum. Just make it stop – jumping, will you? The noise is really starting to get on my nerves.’

‘I still don’t know what you expect me to do about it.’

‘Merry!’

‘OK, OK,’ Merry huffed. She reached down slowly, carefully, and picked up the jumping trinket box. It stilled immediately.

Merry looked up at Leo and smiled.

And then she fainted.

Merry must have been unconscious for all of about thirty seconds. But it was a really intense thirty seconds.

Something had come out of the trinket box. Not a physical something; more a sudden swell of energy, running like electricity up her arms and into her chest. Then everything had gone dark.

And out of the darkness came images. A pair of large oak doors set into the middle of a stone wall that seemed to reach up to the sky and beyond. An endless, winding corridor dimly lit with candles. A chair – no, a throne of some sort – near to a wall lined with shelves, shelves crammed with hundreds of faintly glowing glass jars. And a boy chained to the throne, a blood-red crown upon his head. It was the boy from her nightmares. Merry could hear him struggling for breath, and she thought for a moment he was unconscious. But his eyes focused, and she saw his lips move:

‘Help me …’

Merry opened her eyes.