Chapter Nine
Vivienne had pushed all the furniture up against the walls of her living room and we stood awkwardly in the bare centre, like early arrivals at a school disco. A ginger tomcat stropped against my legs and Isobel had hardly taken her face out of her handkerchief since she’d arrived. Megan looked perky, bouncing from foot to foot, a supermarket bag swinging from her wrist, containing what looked like a human head. Eve had brought a stick, on which she leaned heavily.
‘Sciatica playing up this week,’ she explained. ‘It’s the weather, must be changing.’
‘Well, we’re not going anywhere yet.’ Vivienne motioned us to one side and we huddled in the kitchen doorway as she rolled back the dusty carpet to reveal bare floorboards on which someone had chalked an amateurish circle. ‘First we must prepare our ingredients.’
She made us put our bags in the centre of the circle and then fussed around drawing symbols beside them.
‘So, how was dinner with Kai last night?’ Megan asked. ‘I rang you around elevenish but you weren’t back.’
‘It was good, yes.’ I didn’t know what else to say. Kai and I had parted company chastely enough, with a shaken hand and a kissed cheek, and even now I could feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder, turning me away from him. There had been a strange weakness in the gesture, as though he knew he had to do it, but hadn’t really wanted to. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. Or not. I still didn’t even know what it was he had going on, but I wouldn’t have turned down a quick bounce on that limber-looking body.
‘Please.’ Vivienne’s voice was stern. ‘We must keep our minds on the matter in hand. Now. What did you all bring?’
I confessed to the contents of my bag. There was a moment of hushed admiration. ‘What, you got everything ?’ Isobel stared at me. ‘The thing about the demon as well?’
‘Yep.’
‘I got an owl’s eye from roadkill,’ Eve confessed. ‘Cut a picture of a frog’s head and the nail from a demon out of some old Reader’s Digests, and I printed out Edward the Eighth’s abdication speech from Wikipedia. Couldn’t think what to do about the hidden treasure thing.’
It turned out that Megan and Vivienne had also googled Edward the Eighth. Isobel had cut some pages from a Bible and was rotating with paranoia in case this affected the spell. ‘I mean, some people believe Jesus was King of the Jews, don’t they? But it won’t be, sort of, counterproductive, will it? We’re not evil, after all, are we?’ Vivienne had found an article on Tutankhamun’s tomb, and seemed a little bit put out that any of us had an alternative approach to the rich man and his hidden treasure.
‘I got pictures of owls as well,’ Megan pointed to her bag, ‘And I found a dead frog in the pond in the park, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut off the head, so it’s all in there. No treasure though, or demon’s nails.’
Vivienne rolled her eyes. ‘So only Holly found all the ingredients?’ I tried to look unassuming. ‘ Hmm . The spell will work best for her,’ Vivienne sounded disappointed that it had been me. I think she would rather have Isobel or Megan strike gold; these two appeared to be her most devoted disciples. ‘As a matter of interest, Holly, where did you collect your things?’
‘Most of it came from a friend of mine who lives on the other side of the woods,’ I said, trying not to sound smug or as though I was implying that the others had no friends. ‘In the Old Lodge.’
She hissed in a breath and the ginger cat shot from between my legs into the kitchen. Isobel lowered the handkerchief. ‘The warlock’s place?’
‘Well, he wears a lot of black, but he’s a journalist, really.’
But Vivienne had started to smile. At least, I think that’s what she was doing — her mouth went an alarming shape and previously unnoticed wrinkles began to manifest alongside her eyes. ‘Oh, Holly.’ She sounded almost orgasmic. ‘Now I know the spell will work for sure.’
‘What did you do?’ Megan whispered to me.
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered back. ‘But whatever it was, it must have been good.’ Vivienne was now groaning ecstatically, cradling my small bag to her chest.
‘Just think, these are the real thing! Oh, girls, we are going to have such results tonight!’
‘Looks like she’s getting results already. If her knickers start smoking, get ready to run.’ Only Eve smiled at that.
A bit more chanting, a few more esoteric shapes drawn in coloured chalk — which non-esoterically came from a primary-coloured bucket with kindergarten pictures on — and we were ready to hit the hill. Vivienne was carrying a Primus stove and a large saucepan; I had high hopes of mulled wine when we got there. The rest of us carried our bags and Megan also carried Vivienne’s hessian tote bag containing her offerings. Apart from King Tut, Vivienne had, apparently, a real owl’s eye (I didn’t dare ask if it had been parted from its owner pre- or post-mortem). Her ‘demon’s nail’ turned out to be one of her ex’s toenail clippings — yeah, she looked like the kind of woman who’d hang on to that sort of stuff. She hadn’t struck lucky in the frog department though; maybe she’d been too busy trying to kiss them, and had driven them all away . . .
So, carrying the results of the world’s oddest treasure hunt, we plodded up the sticky track to the open-topped hill. I carried Eve’s bag, to give her a bit of a start; she struggled quite badly with the incline, even with the stick. ‘You all right?’ I walked alongside her, giving Vivienne a chance to go on with the Suck-Up Twins. ‘It’s a bit of an odd choice for a hobby this, isn’t it?’
Eve smiled at me, as we paused for a moment for her to get her breath back. ‘It beats watching reality TV,’ she puffed. ‘Or getting cats.’ She inclined her head towards the toiling shape of Vivienne, today draped in wafty, floating tie-dye and looking like a woman who’s fallen into a vat of handkerchiefs.
‘Do you think she’s mad?’
Eve considered. ‘I think she’s very sad. But, mad? Well, as long as no one is getting hurt. And, although it’s not exactly a reading group, we’ve all met new people and we’re getting out and doing new things, so does it matter?’
‘I guess not.’ I could even manage to muster warm thoughts about Isobel now. She was shy and allergic to everything and I really wanted to introduce her to a skin care regime, but she was cutely na?ve and fun to be with in the same way as a puppy. I didn’t know if I’d ever come around to Vivienne, but the woman had organising abilities coming out of every orifice. It struck me that she was wasted on this little ‘Women’s Group’ as we’d agreed to call it. She should have been on Dragons’ Den, giving them nightmares instead of us.
By the time Eve and I reached the summit, Vivienne had got the Primus going. She placed the saucepan on the top and tipped in the contents of all our bags, plus two litre bottles of Evian water. Then, from the farthest reaches of her bag she pulled five small notepads and pens.
‘This is most important.’ We all sat cross-legged surrounding her and the Primus. ‘I want each of you to write your wish clearly and toss it into the pan.’ She led by example, scribbling words so hard that her paper actually tore. ‘Voila!’ Her page hit the now bubbling liquid and sank. The smell was evil.
‘Right.’ Megan leaned against her own knee and mouthed her words as she wrote. ‘I . . . want . . . to be . . . worshipped — Is that one P or two? — as a goddess.’ She balled the paper and tossed it in. ‘I think I spelled ‘worshipped’ wrong, will it matter?’
There was a gluggling sound from the pan. I refused to look.
‘To meet the man of my dreams.’ Eve’s page fluttered in.
‘To be the centre of the world to someone.’ Isobel’s paper missed the pan on first throw and then slid beneath the now boiling surface. ‘Your turn, Holly.’
I shrugged. ‘All right.’ I wrote the words ‘to have excitement in my life’, and was about to drop it in when I remembered my promise to Nicholas. ‘And for Nicholas to find a girlfriend. With big knockers,’ I added almost indecipherably. And then I thought of the others’ wishes, their narrow-focussed deliberate man-trap setting and I bit my lip. Something inside me wanted to make sure that, even by association, I didn’t get any of that kind of wish-granting.
‘Hurry up, Holl,’ Megan whispered. ‘My bum’s getting damp.’
‘Ssshh, I’m thinking.’ How to be completely unambiguous, to make sure that I didn’t end up being worshipped, having anyone’s world revolve around me and to make sure that the man of my dreams remained firmly in the world of the night-fantasy. However unlikely the event of Johnny Depp’s declaration of everlasting passion might actually be, I didn’t want to run the risk.
‘Well, think fast then. These pants are new.’
I smoothed my page out along my thigh and began scribbling an amendment. ‘Excitement of the right kind, not anything stupid or shallow. The kind that shows you what life is really all about.’ I was about to add something about ‘with definitely no men in it’, but Megan wrestled the paper from my hand and hurled it into the boisterously rolling water.
‘Sorry, Holl, but I don’t want to get piles, not if there’s some gorgeous man out there with my name on. I really can’t see him getting far with the whole worship thing if I have to sit on a special cushion, can you?’
My page caused the scummy brown fluid to rise several centimetres up the inside. A grey froth overflowed and hit the Primus, causing a round of steam and a smell like the inside of a tramp’s shoe. We all coughed.
‘So that’s it?’ I went to stand up. ‘Ritual over?’
‘Oh no.’ I didn’t like the way Vivienne was looking at me. ‘Now we drink it.’
The chorus of disgust almost drowned out the vague, distant sound that I’d been hearing for the last few minutes. Somewhere, out on the edge of hearing, was a humming. A vibrating, like a nest of wasps. I tipped my head on one side.
‘What’s that noise?’
But the other women were still being revolted, and didn’t hear me. Vivienne had produced a large silver tablespoon which she dipped into the water.
‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s boiled frog !’ Isobel looked horrified. ‘And owl bits. I can’t possibly drink that. I’m a vegetarian!’
It was more the thought of the toenail that bothered me. And that noise, which was beginning to sound familiar.
‘It’s been boiled. It’s sterile. And the animal bits are all roadkill, so it’s not like they died for you.’ Vivienne raised the spoon to her own lips and drank. I stopped being bothered by the noise and stared in horrified revulsion as she swallowed. ‘Tastes a bit like chicken.’
Megan went next, pulling terrible faces and only managing to lick the very tip of the spoon before she drew away. Then Isobel, who at least managed to get a mouthful, then collapsed retching on the grass. Eve and I looked at each other.
‘After you,’ she said.
‘No, I insist. You first.’
Eve’s mouth did its best to get away from the spoon, but she persisted. A drizzle of greasy-looking foam fell from her lips and her eyes went very round, then her throat worked like a python trying to digest a goat. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Go on, Holly.’
Like Vivienne had said, it was boiled. How bad could it be? I dipped the spoon under the surface to avoid the speckled film forming on the top of the pan, and put it to my lips, trying not to look at it or smell the steam rising. It was hot. I blew on it for a second, then grabbed my nose and tipped the lot down the back of my tongue. ‘ Errgh . Delicious.’
For a moment it felt as though someone had hit me on the back of the head, very hard. My thoughts fragmented and the earth shuddered underneath me, shaking itself like a wet dog before my head cleared and I opened my eyes. Isobel was still retching, Megan had her tongue stuck out and Eve was frantically draining the last of the Evian water from the bottles. ‘Wow. Did anyone else feel that?’
‘Fee’ whap?’ Megan looked down at her tongue, grimaced and left it sticking out. ‘Ah dimp fee’ anufin’.’
I looked at Vivienne, who had rather a smug expression on. ‘Did you put drugs in this? Acid? No, that would be destroyed by boiling . . . there was something, some kind of, I dunno, hallucinogen. Very quick, very short acting.’
Vivienne shrugged. ‘Not of my doing, Holly. Perhaps it was the magic you felt, the spell taking effect.’
‘No, it was more . . . what the hell is that noise?’
Isobel managed to quell her stomach for long enough to give a short scream. ‘It’s motorbikes! Men on motorbikes, riding around down there at the edge of the wood.’
‘Probably some kind of motocross rally.’
‘Vivienne, it’s dark . No one does motocross in the dark.’ I looked where Isobel was pointing. At least three figures were visible, riding high-framed dirt bikes. Every so often one of them would point our way, but it looked as though they were holding back from approaching us. Scoping us out, maybe?
‘Let’s go.’ I tipped the remains of the liquid onto the grass.
‘But we need to cool the Primus down.’ Vivienne protested.
‘Look. There’s five of us. Three, maybe four of them. They don’t look like they’re up to any good; they could be drunk, they could be high. Now, you might fancy your chances against a possibly armed crackhead, but me, I’m not so sure. Leave the bloody Primus.’ I helped Eve to her feet. ‘And they look like they’re closing in, so I’d hurry, if I were you.’
With a little yelp Vivienne snatched up her bag and pan, and with the rest of us hanging on to one another, we flew down that hill like the witches we weren’t.