29. Charlie #2
Father Ashworth’s prayers rose to a desperate wail, Latin words tumbling over each other in incomprehensible panic.
Evelyn had stopped screaming. She huddled against the wall, arms wrapped around herself, rocking.
Bat flickered beside me, barely there. “Charlie—”
The final entry in the Handbook flashed through my mind. Rule #666: When All Else Fails, Wail. Gerald’s last piece of advice if you were about to die was to scream your fucking lungs out.
Right, then.
I thrust the finger bone skyward like a talisman.
And screamed.
“HELP!”
The word tore from my throat, raw and ragged and soaked in pure terror.
“HELP! HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE FUCKING HELP ME!”
I sucked in another breath and kept going, bellowing into the darkness, finger bone raised high like the world’s most pathetic weapon.
The basement exploded.
Light erupted from beneath the floor—white-hot and blinding. The stone cracked. Split open. Bones burst upward through the fissure, reforming mid-air with impossible speed.
Margery Darke’s skeleton assembled itself in seconds.
Then her ghost materialised around the frame. Solid. Furious. Her tattered dress billowed though no wind stirred the stagnant air. Her face once again twisted with anger.
She filled the basement with her presence—rage made manifest, injustice given form.
My jaw went slack.
Bat’s translucent form solidified slightly. “What—”
Margery’s head swivelled. Her burning gaze locked onto the shadow that had killed Harrison and Brad.
She opened her mouth and shrieked.
The sound shattered glass that wasn’t there. It clawed at my eardrums, my skull, my very bones. Ancient fury distilled into pure sonic violence.
“WOULDST THOU ALL DENY ME PEACE?” Her voice shook the foundation. “I ASKED BUT ONE THING—TO REST ETERNAL IN THE EARTH! YET STILL THOU DOST DISTURB ME! AGAIN!”
The shadow writhed. Drew back between the pillars, darkness condensing, pulling itself tight. For the first time since I’d entered this nightmare, it looked uncertain.
Then it laughed.
Low. Deep. Dripping from the void like poison.
“Margery! You won’t—” My strangled voice began. I scrambled to my feet, legs shaking. “But you won’t get peace! Not while he’s still—while your murderer walks free, continuing his reign of terror!”
Margery’s dark eyes fixed on me. For one terrible moment, I thought she’d turn that rage on me.
Father Ashworth surged upright.
His metal cross gleamed in his trembling hand. He thrust it toward Margery, face pale but determined.
“Begone, vile spirit!”
Margery’s head snapped toward Father Ashworth. Her lips peeled back in something that might have been a smile on a living face. On her, it looked like a wound opening. “A man of God.” Her voice dripped contempt. “How quaint. How familiar.”
Father Ashworth’s cross wavered. His hand shook so violently the metal caught the torchlight, throwing dancing shadows across the stone walls.
“The power of Christ compels—”
“SILENCE!”
The word cracked like thunder. Father Ashworth flinched, but held his ground, jaw tight.
Margery drifted closer. Her tattered skirts swept across the floor without touching it. Her eyes—dark pits in her translucent face—fixed on the priest with an intensity that made my stomach drop.
“Thy holy men,” she said softly. Dangerously. “Thou dost speak of God’s mercy whilst condemning women to flame and noose. Whilst taking coin for absolution.”
She circled him. A predator assessing prey.
“I knew many of thy kind, priest. They came to my cottage in the dark of night, seeking herbs for their ailments. Their sins. Their bastards growing in unmarried wombs.” Her laugh cut like glass. “Such pious men. Such devoted servants of the Lord.”
Father Ashworth’s face turned the colour of old parchment. The cross trembled in his grip.
“I am a servant of—”
“Thou art a fool.”
Her expression shifted. Something calculating entered those hollow eyes.
“Yet holy men do have one use.”
The temperature plummeted. My breath misted before my face.
“Their blood.”
The finger bone wrenched itself from my grip.
I yelped, hand stinging. The bone shot through the air—a pale blur.
It struck Father Ashworth’s throat.
The sound it made—wet and terrible. Like a blade through fresh meat.
Blood erupted from the wound. Dark. Hot. Pulsing.
Father Ashworth’s mouth opened. A gurgling sound emerged, wet and desperate. His hands flew to his neck, scrabbling at the gushing wound. Blood poured between his fingers, soaking his clerical collar, running down his chest in rivulets.
He tried to speak. Tried to pray to his god, maybe. But the words drowned in blood and air escaping his severed windpipe.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed onto the stone, cross clattering from his grip. His body convulsed. His mouth worked soundlessly, lips forming shapes as crimson pooled beneath him.
Evelyn screamed once again. Animalistic, terrified.
Bat solidified beside me, horror etched across his pale face. “Margery, please—”
The shadow surged forward—a desperate lunge toward the blood.
Margery’s hand shot out. The air itself solidified between them. An invisible barrier that made the darkness recoil, hissing.
“Thou shalt not have it,” she said simply. “This holy blood is mine.”
Cornelius’s voice rose to a roar—fury and frustration made sound. The basement shook. Stone dust rained from above.
But he couldn’t break through.
The blood responded to Margery’s will. It lifted from the spreading pool, defying gravity, flowing upward in thin streams. Crimson tendrils snaked through the air, twisting and coiling like living things.
She guided them with her hands. Conducting. Shaping.
The blood formed symbols in mid-air. Complex patterns I didn’t recognise. They glowed faintly, dark red light pulsing with each design completed.
The shadow roared.
The darkness exploded outward. It slammed against the pillars, the walls, the ceiling. The entire basement shook. Stone cracked. Dust cascaded from overhead.
A face emerged from the void.
Pale. Gaunt. Distinguished in a cruel sort of way. High cheekbones. Thin lips pulled back in a snarl. Eyes that burned with malice and fury and something that might have been fear.
Cornelius Grimthorne.
“YOU DARE?” His voice split the air. Furious. “I AM BISHOP OF—”
“Thou art nothing.” Margery’s voice cut through his. “Nothing but a coward who preyed upon the weak. A monster who hid behind God’s name whilst committing the devil’s work.”
The blood symbols pulsed brighter.
Cornelius lunged toward her—a wave of shadow and rage. His form rippled, stretching, reaching for Margery with clawed hands made of darkness.
She thrust her hands forward.
The blood symbols shot toward him. They wrapped around the shadow-form, binding him, holding him in place. He writhed against them, howling.
“NO! I AM ETERNAL! I CANNOT BE—”
Margery clenched her fists.
The symbols contracted.
Cornelius shrieked. The sound scraped against my eardrums, inhuman and agonised. His shadow-form compressed, crushed inward by the glowing bindings.
Smaller. Smaller still.
His face twisted in agony. In disbelief. In rage.
“I WILL NOT—YOU CANNOT—”
The blood-symbols squeezed tighter.
His form shattered.
The darkness exploded outward in a final, desperate surge.
It struck me.
The force lifted me off my feet. My body flew backwards, airborne for a split second before gravity claimed me. I hit the floor hard, sliding across stone until my back slammed against the wall.
Pain detonated through my spine. My ribs. My skull bouncing off the unforgiving surface.
“Charlie!”
Bat appeared above me. His hands reached for my face but passed through—translucent again, flickering.
I tried to speak. My lungs wouldn’t work. Just a wheeze escaping my lips.
Bat’s face twisted in anguish. “No, no, no—Charlie, please—”
The shadow lashed out again.
Bat’s form shredded.
Like paper caught in wind. His body tore apart, scattering in wisps of pale smoke. His scream cut off mid-sound.
“BAT!”
My voice returned in a ragged shout.
The wisps swirled through the basement. Formless. Scattered. Lost.
Then Margery moved.
She swept between the dispersed fragments of Bat’s essence, her hands weaving patterns in the air. The blood-symbols pulsed brighter, drawing together, forming a new shape.
A cage.
The glowing bindings contracted around what remained of Cornelius’s form—now barely a wisp of shadow himself, weakened and diminished.
Margery’s eyes blazed. Her voice resonated through the stone, through my bones, through the very fabric of the basement itself.
“THY REIGN ENDS. THY POWER brEAKS. THY SOUL SCATTERS TO THE WINDS.”
She closed her fists.
The blood-cage imploded.
Cornelius Grimthorne screamed one final time—a sound of absolute fury and terror and defeat—before the darkness collapsed in on itself.
The shadows vanished.
The blood-symbols flared brilliant crimson, then faded.
Silence crashed over the basement.
Father Ashworth’s body lay still in its pool of blood. Harrison and Brad sprawled where they’d fallen. Evelyn huddled against the wall, face buried in her hands.
The wisps of Bat’s scattered essence hung in the air. Motionless.
I dragged myself upright, every muscle screaming. My hand found the wall. Used it to leverage myself to my feet.
“Bat?” I choked out. “Bat, please—”
The wisps began to drift together.
Slowly. So slowly.
They coalesced. Reformed. A vaguely human shape taking form in the centre of the basement.
Bat appeared. Translucent. Barely there. But there.
He swayed. His eyes found mine.
Relief flooded through me. “Oh, thank fuck—”
Margery turned. She regarded me with those dark, hollow eyes. Her expression unreadable.
I swallowed hard. “Okay, but… I thought… I thought you weren’t actually a witch?!”
The corner of her mouth twitched.
She winked.
Then she began to fade, the edges of her dissolving into mist.
“Wait!” I stumbled forward.
But she was gone.
The basement fell quiet.
Not peaceful. Just empty. Like the silence after a bomb drops and your ears are still ringing and you’re not sure if you’re alive or dead but at least the screaming has stopped.