Barbara Erskine - Hiding From the Light

This cottage should have been Lyndsey’s by rights. That it had not belonged to anyone in her family for three hundred years made no difference to her at all. This land, this home, this place, was hers, her natural inheritance, and no one was going to steal it from her.

She shuddered. She could feel her everywhere, the stranger who was buying the house. She too had stood out here beyond the terrace. Her energies were strange. Uneasy. Afraid. She was bringing unhappiness and danger. Suddenly Lyndsey’s senses were screaming. This could not be allowed to happen. It would undo all the good she had worked for over the years; unleash everything that she had fought to contain. She was going to re-awaken the evil, allow it in, encourage that mist to drift in from the sea and engulf them all.

The spell was an easy one. First the circle drawn faintly in the grass, her whispered invocation to the guardians of the quarters, her arms raised to the goddess moon as she sailed serenely in the clear, midnight sky.

‘Let no one buy this house. Let no one live here. Let no one enter these doors who does not belong. Liza, mother of my mother’s race, listen to my prayer and help to guard your home. If anyone should move here, let their stay be short. Let the very doors and walls, ceilings and floors, the spiders, the rats and mice, let them all conspire to drive her out. Let the chimneys smoke and the mildew curl about the walls, let the rot take the boards and the worms the beams.’ She paused, pleased with the resonance of the words. Then suddenly she frowned. ‘But not so badly that it falls down, of course.’ She smiled to herself and shook her head. ‘Liza, this is still your home. Your house, your place. Keep this woman out. Haunt her! Scare her! Make her ill. Send her mad. Do not allow her to stay!’

She stared in silence at the moon, feeling its power touching her, feeling her own hatred. Then she frowned. The moon was still a fraction off the full. Perhaps she should return tomorrow when she was at her maximum power and repeat the spell. What had Will told her the woman’s name was? Emma. That was it. Emma Dickson. She raised her arms again. ‘This house will never be yours, Emma Dickson; you will not thrive here. Don’t darken its doors. Don’t cross its threshold. Don’t touch this garden, which is sacred to Liza’s memory.’ She felt in the pocket of her jeans. Yes it was still there, the short length of cord she carried with her in case she should have to make a binding spell. Holding it up in both hands, she began to knot it. ‘A knot to bind my spell. A knot to keep it well. A knot to hold at bay, the danger that comes by day.’ Three knots. The triple seal. Scrabbling with her fingers in the grass at the centre of the circle, she managed to scrape a small hole into which she tucked the cord. She covered it and rearranged the grass. It was done. If Emma Dickson ever moved into this house, she would regret it for the rest of her days.

End of September

Unable to sleep, Mike had walked out into the icy dawn and was looking across the river. He could see nothing. The previous night’s mist had settled into thick fog, blanketing a clammy, viscous tide as it licked towards him across the mud. The silence was intense, heavy and cloying, beating against his eardrums as he narrowed his eyes, trying to see the outline of the old boat lying on the saltings, her ribs bare, her keel rotted and broken.

The atmosphere was eerie and disorientating and he found himself suddenly catching his breath, overwhelmed with fear that there was something out there, hiding just off the shore out of sight. Somewhere across the water he heard the lonely whistle of a bird and he found himself turning round and round, unable now even to see the road, the grass at his feet, the water’s edge; totally lost.

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them out in front of him, grasping at the air, feeling the icy droplets of fog condensing on his skin. Whatever was out there was evil beyond measure and it was coming closer. He wanted to turn and run, but he seemed incapable of moving. His breath was growing constricted and it was only then that he realised he had been so paralysed with fear that he had been unable to pray.

‘Dear Lord, Jesus Christ, be with me.’

His words were muffled by the fog, but he felt comforted.

There was something terribly wrong in the town and others were feeling it too. He frowned. Several times now he had caught sight of Bill staring out towards the river, that look of worried preoccupation on his face as though he were expecting something awful to emerge from the quiet, muddy water. And the atmosphere had been mentioned at the PCC meeting only the night before. Someone had vandalised the church hall, breaking the windows, spraying graffiti on the walls. Telling him about it, Donald James had shaken his head mournfully. Too many things were going wrong. The crime rate in the whole area was soaring. The head teacher at the school was complaining that the children were becoming moody and uncontrollable, joking wryly about it, wondering if it was something in the water. Mike narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the mist. Was there something in the water? Not in the sense the teacher had meant, of course, but something else. Something infinitely more sinister.

It was growing lighter. And suddenly the terrible sense of impending doom seemed to have withdrawn. Suddenly he could see again. The fog was thinning and towards the east he could see a flush of red.

As the sun began to rise through the mist, it was the colour of blood.

The house was very quiet. Looking round the small, low-ceilinged living room, Emma added two items to her shopping list: extra-soft cushions for the little sofa she had bought from Peter Jones before she left London, and yet another lamp. In spite of the radiant September sunshine outside, the room was dark. The corners never reflected the light. Shadows seemed to hang there whatever she did to rearrange the lamps she had brought with her.

It was a week since she had moved in, just over six since she had first seen the cottage. In that time the sale had gone through without a hitch, her resignation had been accepted by David Spencer – if reluctantly, and only after her promise that she would continue to supply him from time to time with reports and summaries, that she would stay in Internet touch, and that if or when she changed her mind, she would ring him immediately. Last but not least, she had on that last terrible, miserable day, removed all her possessions, including Max and Min, from what was now Piers’s flat.

The cats had at first been astonished and nervous at finding themselves the owners of an entire house and a three-acre area of ground. But the fear was slowly wearing off and now they were intrigued, anxious to explore. She had only let them out for the first time yesterday, all eight paws duly buttered, and they had proceeded cautiously out onto the terrace, sitting close together, the swagger and bravado they had displayed when looking out of the windows all gone. She had watched them fondly, at first afraid they might run away and disappear. She needn’t have worried. The first sound of a car in the lane had them bolting back into the kitchen and up the stairs. But it was only minutes after that they were creeping downstairs again, their eagerness to explore and their excitement outweighing their caution.

The furnishing in the house was as yet sparse. Peggy and Dan had come up to see her only three days before, bringing with them a small antique pine table and four chairs for the dining room – soon to be linked to the kitchen by the removal of the lathe and plaster between the studwork – and the oak side-table and the pair of Victorian velvet granny chairs had come from them as well. Upstairs, the bed was new. The Victorian chest of drawers had been her grandmother’s, the oak coffer had been Peggy’s. But still it didn’t feel like home. Thankfully she had not heard the voice again.