Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
There is a frozen lump of meat on the kitchen table, wrapped tightly in plastic. A leg of something. A haunch. Paul brings them back with him from work, Lisa said. Hocks and cheeks and briskets, flabby pink snouts. The haunch is a livid pink color, marbled with fat. It is so tightly wrapped that I can see the blood slowly defrosting and pooling against the plastic surface. Sam moves it aside so that I can unpack the witch’s bottle carefully, spreading it out across the table. The house is quiet, the two younger children in the sitting room, Paul at work. Sam leans over me, cigarette clamped between his teeth.
“Do we tell Alice about this?”
I pick up a piece of thick, blue glass and hold it up to the light.
“Yes. That’s the reason I brought it back here. So she can see for herself it is a material object and nothing else.”
“A broken bottle of piss and wax. We sure know how to have a good time, huh?”
“Shhh,” I say, not unkindly. I’m concentrating, turning it over in my fingers. The glass is old and ridged, some raised lettering still visible on the broken neck.
“You know who else pisses in bottles? Truckers. Drunk kids.” He is grinning, eyes narrowed against the smoke as he reaches down and picks up one of the small balls of wax. It is pricked with holes like a pomander but only as big as a holly berry in his palm.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know. It was stuck to the glass on the inside. There’s a few of them, look.”
He examines it, scraping at the wax with his thumb.
“It looks like voodoo, all these holes. Maybe a curse of some sort. What’s inside it?”
My head snaps up. I hadn’t considered that the wax was concealing anything. I feel that strange sensation again, like cotton stuffed into my throat.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” he says.
“Put it down. Don’t open it.”
“Why not?”
I don’t know, I want to tell him. It’s just a feeling. A bad feeling, like the one you get in a cold spot in the sea, legs cycling over a long depth of frightening, terminal dark. It’s the same feeling I had in the house on Tanner’s Row standing beneath the chimney and seeing that small shoe in the drift of soot. Because it’s a trap.
At that moment the kitchen door opens and Lisa is standing there, hands twisting together in front of her, face strained. Her eyes pass over me and settle on Sam, her lips drawn in a quivering frown.
“There’s trouble,” she says.
I don’t recognize the two boys out there, but I know the girl with the dark curly hair and long eyelashes, her round face tilted toward the upper windows of the house. I saw her photo in Alice’s bedroom.
“That’s Vicky Matherson,” I say, peering through a gap in the curtains. “That’s her? That’s Alice’s friend?”
“That’s Alice’s friend?” Sam is leaning close to the glass, his arms folded.
“ Was Alice’s friend,” I correct him. “She’s the one who tricked Alice into going up to Tanner’s Row and getting that bottle out of the chimney. Before that they used to hang around together all the time.”
Sam looks at Lisa who is hanging back in the darkened sitting room, one arm around Tamsin, another around Billy.
“Where’s Alice?” he asks her. She points to the ceiling.
“Upstairs. She hasn’t come out of her room all day.”
There’s other people out there, too, massing outside the gate. Someone lets off a firecracker and there is a loud whooping cheer. Music is playing from a car somewhere farther down the street, muffled bass like a heartbeat, furry and distorted. I can feel a crackle of hostility. This isn’t like before. These people, they don’t think Alice is holy. Sam and I exchange a glance.
“Lisa, take the kids upstairs,” Sam tells her, as another firecracker blasts outside. One of the boys with Vicky is wearing a vest that reads TUFF SHIT and has a skinny, malnourished look about him. He might be eighteen or twenty even, older than the others. Mean-looking. The other boy has a buzz cut and flat, expressionless features. There is a scrim of fuzzy hair above his upper lip. His voice is deep and surly as he calls out, “Where’s your broomstick to, Alice?”
“I’ve got a broomstick she can ride on!” Tuff Shit yells, grabbing a handful of his crotch. There is a ripple of sneering laughter. Vicky looks around her and just before she lifts her hand, I see she has something round in it, something white. I think at first it is a stone—a hagstone, maybe—but as she launches it toward the house I realize it is an egg. It hits the window with a wet, ugly sound. More hooting. Snotty yellow yolk drips from the glass.
“What do they want?” I ask Sam, feeling the white heat of adrenaline building in the pit of my stomach.
“Mina, listen. We have to—oh shit. ” Sam jerks upright, his gaze darting beyond my shoulder and out toward the hallway. “No, Alice. Stay where you are! Don’t go out there!”
Alice has appeared at the foot of the stairs. Neither of us heard her come down. It’s as though she just materialized there, wearing that baggy T-shirt over a pair of denim shorts. Crack! Another egg hits the front door.
“Alice?”
She doesn’t turn to look at us but she smiles and it’s all teeth. Her lips slough back wetly. The top half of her face barely changes, her eyes hard and flat and utterly empty. The smile doesn’t touch them. It just stretches the skin. I feel something cold tighten around my spine. Outside they have begun chanting her name, “Ah-liss, Ah-liss, Ah-liss.” Sam moves toward her but hesitates. Perhaps he sees that vacancy and, like me, is afraid. There is a cracking sound as more eggs are pelted, knocking over the offerings that have been left outside the porch like skittles. The candle rolls over, flame winking out, glass cracked. Someone cheers, stamps their feet. I hear that deep voice again, hoarse with a barely controlled delirium. “Wrap her up in barbed wire, coming to set your hair on fire!”
Vicky is cackling, climbing up onto Buzz Cut’s shoulders, dress hitched around her waist. I turn to call out to Alice but she is already walking toward the front door, hands raised to open it.