Dark Spell (6 page)

As she slept, she scratched at the mark on her wrist.

A pool of darkness seeped from the gap in the boards by Callie’s bed and oozed out across the floor, slow as oil, so black it seemed to suck the last of the dim light from the room. She muttered something and tossed in her sleep, trying to break free of the dream, of the noise of hammers and pickaxes.

The floor was covered now, the bed afloat on an oily pool of something blacker than mere darkness.

Callie woke with a gasp, tangled in the bedclothes. She was blind, nothing but the black dark around her.

Out of the silence came a sound. The sound of hammer on stone. Callie froze, breath held tight.

Crack!

And again,
Crack!

And again.

Impossible. It was the noise from her dream. She must still have been asleep.

The noise was all around her now. All around. Inside the walls of her room, under the floor, in the roof.

She wasn’t asleep.

Callie screamed. She scrabbled for the switch of her bedside lamp.

Light.

The noise stopped.

“Callie, what is it?” The door flew open and her parents hurried into the room, switching on the main light. No one noticed the last fingers of darkness slipping down between the boards again.

“Did you hear it? Did you hear it? What’s happening?” Callie gibbered.

“Hear what, love?” Julia asked, putting an arm round her shaking daughter. “We heard you scream, that’s all.”

“You’ve had a bad dream, that’s all, Callie. You’re okay now,” said David.

“No! I mean, I
was
dreaming, but then I woke up and it was dark, but really, really dark, and then the noise from my dream started up again. You
must
have heard it – hammering in the walls.”

Julia and David listened to Callie’s half-hysterical monologue, and tried to reassure her.

“You only thought you woke up. You were still asleep. The noise in the walls was part of the dream too,” Julia told her.

“No – I was awake. I’m sure of it.”

“Callie, you couldn’t have been. If there had been hammering, we’d have heard it. It’s just your imagination working overtime.”

They must be right. She must have still been asleep.

Chutney Mary chose that moment to saunter in, jump onto the bed, and present Callie with a dead mouse.

“Lovely,” observed Julia.

The cat purred proudly and head-butted Callie, and as though a switch had been flicked, everything seemed normal again.

“I’m okay now,” Callie said. “Sorry I woke you.” She picked the mouse up by its tail and dropped it out of the window.

“Sure?”

Callie nodded. “I’ll read for a bit before I go back to sleep, but I’m fine now, honestly. It was just a really vivid dream.”

“Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight.”

Callie woke to the sound of shouting. For a few seconds she thought she was dreaming again, then she made out her parents’ voices, arguing about something.

They did argue, sometimes, but she’d never heard them shouting like that. She couldn’t make out the words. Could they be arguing about her? Had her dad found out what she was?

She didn’t want to go downstairs into the middle of it. Just as she was wondering whether she ought to, she heard the front door slam and there was silence. One of them had left for work.

Callie pulled the curtains open, but she wasn’t quite quick enough to see who had gone.

It was a chilly grey morning: east coast weather. The haar had drifted in overnight, but she’d been expecting that, and she knew it wouldn’t be gone until the afternoon. The weather seldom surprised her now; there seemed to be some special new witch-sense she’d acquired that gave her a pretty good idea of what was coming in the next day or so. One useful thing, anyway.

Josh was going to Falkland Palace with his mum, so Callie was at a loose end. She would usually have thought about scrounging lunch at The Smithy, but
maybe, after the argument yesterday, she’d give that a miss for today.

She kicked off the covers. The cat had long since squirmed out of the window, a busy day of cat business ahead of her. Callie got up and took a couple of steps, then stopped and looked at the floor. The boards were covered with a thin layer of gritty grey dust. She looked more carefully, and saw that it seemed to cover the entire floor.

At once she was transported back to that awful dream. She’d been digging… Had she somehow made part of the dream real?

She pulled the curtains open and switched on the light. The floor was covered with a substance closer to grit than to dust. Something else caught Callie’s attention. On the wall opposite the window was a stain. She walked across the crunchy floor to look at it more closely, touched it and found that the wall was damp. The stain extended from waist height down to the floor, a hand span wide.

What was happening? She’d thought she was getting a grip on this treacherous power, but she’d been wrong, and here was the proof.

She had to get rid of this before her mother saw it.

In the kitchen, Julia was loading the dishwasher.

“I’ll do that,” said Callie as she came in.

“Thanks, love.” Julia straightened up, pushing her hair behind her ears.

“What were you and Dad arguing about?” Callie asked, not quite meeting her mother’s eyes.

Julia sighed. “You know, I’m not really sure. It just
blew up out of nothing. I don’t understand – you know we’re not usually like that. Don’t worry; it’ll all be forgotten by tonight.”

A few minutes later she was gone. Callie turned on the television and ate a banana, watching some programme without taking in anything about it. She gave up and switched it off, took a dustpan and brush upstairs and swept up the grit, then opened her window wide.

On most days this summer, that would have let in enough warmth to dry up the damp patch, but the air was dank and chilly, although it was ten in the morning.

“Hairdryer,” she muttered to herself.

Half an hour later, the mark was almost gone. Callie looked round her room and decided it looked like usual. She sat down on the bed with a thump. What if her mother had been right all along about being a witch? What if she was making life more difficult for herself by learning how to use her power? Maybe, in spite of what Rose and her friends said, things would go back to normal and it would fade away if she just ignored it.

After all, she didn’t really know why the old women wanted her to start using her power. It might be for their benefit, not hers. Maybe they wanted to recruit her to their coven because she was young and powerful and their abilities were fading with age.

They were using her. That was it. They wanted her fresh power for themselves. Why hadn’t she seen it sooner? She must be more careful about trusting people. There weren’t many you could completely trust.

Maybe there were none.

She glanced at her alarm clock and saw to her
astonishment that it was almost noon. That couldn’t be right, surely? She’d sat down here a few minutes ago and it had only been half past ten. She realised she’d been rubbing at the mark on her wrist again and stopped, abruptly.

When Callie checked her phone it really was almost noon. She couldn’t believe she’d been sitting there for an hour and a half: it had only felt like a few minutes.

She needed to get out of the house.

Callie dressed quickly and shut the front door behind her with a sense of relief. Right; she wanted a change of scene. She didn’t want to have to think about witchcraft or secrets or grumpy parents. There was no point going to the beach on such a grey day, so she set off to catch the bus to St Andrews. By the time it arrived she’d decided to go and see the new Pixar film at the cinema. Perfect – she’d revert to being a kid for the afternoon and go back to a time before life got so stupidly complicated.

As she sat on the bus, the mark on her wrist itched. She rubbed at it, still puzzled as to what it was. Looking at it, she thought it seemed bigger than she remembered, and peered more closely, but she was no nearer to working out why it wouldn’t come off or what it could be. Maybe Rose would know.

Callie felt a pang as she recalled the crazy things she’d been imagining about Rose and the rest of the coven that morning. She
knew
they were trying to look after her – what on earth had she been thinking? She was ashamed of herself.

Of course, the cinema was crammed with damp families escaping the haar, popcorn crunching underfoot like biodegradable gravel, but the film was bright and funny and Callie was in a good mood when she got off the bus in Pitmillie. She felt that her mind was her own again.

She had wondered briefly whether to tell Rose about what had been happening, but decided not to. Surely she ought to be able to deal with it herself? After all, this was
her
power and
her
problem. She wanted to solve it without everyone watching her.

No one was in when she got home, not even the cat. Callie checked her room and found, to her relief, that everything looked all right. In an effort to stay busy she examined the contents of the fridge, looking for clues to what supper was meant to be, and started to cook. It would be worth it just to see the look of astonishment on her mother’s face, she thought, as she chopped onions. And whatever had been intended, supper was definitely curry now.

When everything was bubbling away and the kitchen was full of the scents of spices, Callie went for a shower. The sun had broken through at last, and the upstairs of the house was flooded with light. She sensed the weather would be back to warm and sunny tomorrow.

She took her phone into the bathroom so she could listen to music and sang along happily in the shower until the moment when the water suddenly ran freezing cold. She leapt back with a scream.

“Stupid shower! Behave!” She turned the temperature control down then back up and stuck her hand cautiously into the water. Back to normal.

When it happened for a second and then a third time, she gave up. The thermostat must have gone or something.

She got dressed, went to check on the curry, and found the kitchen filled with steam and the hot tap full on.

Callie turned off the tap and stared at it. She must have turned it on without realising. At least it explained where all the hot water had disappeared to.

She knew it wasn’t quite enough of an explanation, but she was determined not to think about it too much.

“Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?”

Callie gave a gasp and spun round to find her mother looking at the bubbling pots in astonishment.

“Don’t do that! You gave me a fright.”

“It’s amazing. You look like Callie, you sound like Callie – but you can cook.”

“Oh, ha ha. Very funny. If that’s the thanks I get for trying to be helpful…”

“It’s just the shock. I
am
grateful, honestly. You should do it more often.” Julia paused. “You
should
do it more often, you know. You’re in before Dad or me quite a lot, but it’s always me who has to cook.”

“Schoolwork? Remember? I’m meant to study.”

“You usually seem to be studying Facebook or iTunes when I get in.”

Callie opened her mouth to protest, but Julia held up her hands with a grimace.

“Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know why I reacted like that. Can we start again? Thanks for cooking. It smells really good.”

“No problem,” Callie replied a bit stiffly.

“When will it be ready?”

“About twenty minutes,” said Callie, distracted by a new text on her phone.

“Perfect.”

“I’m going over to the cottages to hang out with Josh this evening,” she said once she’d read it.

“Okay.”

Josh and Callie floated on their backs in the tiny octagonal swimming pool at East Neuk Cottages, trying to move as little as possible but still stay afloat.

“How was Falkland?”

“Meh… I suppose it’s quite nice as palaces go. I liked the tennis court; you know, it’s one of those crazy old ones where you have to hit the ball off the roof or something…”

“Royal Tennis?”

“Yeah… that’s it. And Mum was raving about the gardens. I suppose they were quite pretty.”

“Mmnn… George likes them too.”

“That reminds me – how did your history tutorial go?”

“My what?” Callie lifted her head clear of the water, wondering what on earth Josh meant.

“Yesterday. With Rose and her friends.”

Callie let her feet sink to the floor of the pool and pushed herself upright.

“Oh, that,” she said, suddenly remembering the lie she had told him. “Fine.” She swam over to the side and
looked out of the window and across the field to The Smithy.
Should I tell him about what’s been happening at home? It’s so tempting
…
But he’ll think I’m more than weird if I tell him. That’ll probably be the end of our friendship, and I need a friend right now
.

“So what did you learn?”

“Just… bits and pieces. Nothing really interesting.”

There is something
, Josh thought,
that Callie isn’t telling me. She’s distracted, preoccupied. What’s going on between her and Rose’s friends?

He was sure it was something more interesting than local history. Maybe she’d be more talkative out of the water.

“Do you fancy some chocolate cake?” he asked.

Callie hadn’t realised they would have to make the chocolate cake themselves before they could eat it.

“I didn’t know you could bake,” she said as she licked cake mixture off a finger.

Josh raised his eyebrows. “What, you think guys can’t bake? That’s a bit sexist.”

“No, of course… well, I suppose I did mean that, sort of.”

Josh shook his head in mock disgust. “For that, you have to wash-up. Honestly, you country people, you’re practically prehistoric.”

Three games of pool, one DVD and half a chocolate cake later, Callie set off for home, having arranged to spend the next day at the beach with Josh and
successfully defeated his attempts to find out more about the “tutorials”.

It still wasn’t properly dark when she got home, although it was nearly eleven o’clock.

“Hello, Callie,” said her dad. “Good time?”

“Yeah. I beat Josh at pool.” She yawned. “I’m going up to bed. Still tired after last night.”

“Let’s hope there are no nightmares tonight, then,” said Julia.

“Hope not. Goodnight.”

Callie pushed her bedroom door open cautiously, unsure what to expect. It all looked normal. Chutney Mary had already come in through the window and was curled up snoozing at the foot of the bed.

Maybe whatever had happened last night had been a one-off, a sort of waking nightmare.

Callie was woken from a deep sleep by the sound of the cat hissing. Half asleep, it took her a few seconds to realise what the noise was.

“What is it, puss?” she muttered groggily.

Chutney Mary was perched at the end of the bed, staring fixedly at a point under Callie’s desk. Every muscle in her body was taut and the fur on her tail stuck out like a bottle brush.

Callie was suddenly very wide awake, adrenalin surging in her blood.
What is the cat staring at?

There was some moonlight coming in through the half-open curtains, so the room wasn’t particularly
dark, but under the desk was a pool of total blackness.

Very slowly, Callie reached out to turn on her bedside light. It gave out a wan glow, quite unlike its usual self, that barely reached the end of the bed. The pool of darkness beneath the desk remained utterly unilluminated, and the cat continued to hiss.

Fighting down fear, Callie sat up properly and moved slowly forward until she was kneeling beside the cat. From here, the darkness looked solid, three dimensional, squatting malevolently on the floor. If Callie looked straight at it, it seemed to blur and waver, as though she was seeing it through a heat haze.

Tap
.

Tap. Tap
.

The hair stood up on Callie’s neck.

Crack!

The sound of hammer on stone, coming from under the floor, from under the bed where she knelt.

Too frightened to move, she tried desperately to remember one of the spells of protection that Rose had been teaching her, but all the words had fled.

The noise was all around now, coming from the floor, the walls, the ceiling… Why could no one else hear it?

Beside her the cat gave a tremulous yowl and rose to her feet, stiff-legged. Callie followed her gaze and saw to her horror a figure uncoiling itself from the blackness under the desk, arms reaching up…