The Blood Binding (5 page)

The next morning was overcast
but dry, and really cold. Belladonna bundled up, wore two pairs of socks,
sturdy boots, carefully packed the potion into her pink backpack and headed out
to the bus stop. Steve was already there, wearing a combat jacket over his
hoody, though his hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in weeks and there
were dark circles under his eyes.

“Did you get any sleep at all?”
asked Belladonna.

“Not much. There was some
zombie movie on when my dad and me got home, so we watched it. I think I got
about two hours.”

Belladonna rolled her eyes
and was about to say something about taking things seriously, when the bus
arrived. She had expected it to be full of people with the kind of miserable
expressions almost exclusive to those who have to get up on a Saturday to go to
work, but everyone seemed remarkably cheerful. They were chatting to each other
and pointing out landmarks and scenery and generally having a good time. There
were no empty seats left, though, so she and Steve had to stand.

At the next stop a man with
what seemed to be a heavy case got on. He hesitated near the front, gave
Belladonna and Steve a funny look, then inched past them and sat down.

In a seat occupied by someone
else.

Belladonna stared as the
ghost rolled its eyes and stood up. Two other ghosts made room on their seat
and the displaced phantom squeezed in.

“Are they all…,” whispered
Steve. “I mean…except that guy, obviously… but are they all…dead?”

“I…guess,” said Belladonna.

They watched in silence for
the next two stops as some ghosts got off and others got on.

“You’ve been seeing them
longer than I have,” said Steve, finally. “Have you ever seen this many in one
place?”

“Never.”

They got off at Staple Street, crossed the road and waited for the number 61 bus.

“They’re everywhere,” said
Belladonna. “Look over there.”

Staple Street was a busy
shopping street and there were plenty of people walking up and down and in and
out of shops, but for every living person, there seemed to be two or three
ghosts.

“Is this because it’s
Halloween?” said Steve.

“I suppose. But I’ve never
seen this before.”

“Well, Elsie said they didn’t
celebrate last year. How long have you been able to see them?”

“About three years.”

“Were your parents…I
mean…were they…you know…when…”

“Yes,” said Belladonna,
smiling at Steve’s efforts to avoid using the words “alive” or “dead.”

“So that would explain it,
wouldn’t it? I mean you’d be at home with them.”

“It started sort of
gradually. I couldn’t see all the ghosts at first, just a few. So I probably
wouldn’t have noticed. And sometimes it’s really hard to tell who’s alive and
who’s dead.”

“That’s the really weird
part,” said Steve, as the 61 bus pulled up. “You’d think it would be obvious.”

The second bus wasn’t as
crowded, though there was an Elizabethan lady with a Victorian gentleman
sitting together near the back.

Belladonna and Steve got off
in Grafton village, which was quite pretty and featured large helpful signs
directing them to the Roman fort. After a fifteen minute walk they arrived in
the parking lot and stopped. There were ghosts wandering all over the ruins,
some looked like Roman soldiers, visiting their old workplace, while others
were from all sorts of different periods in history and seemed to be tourists.
The whole effect was like a costume party.

“D’you think they’ll notice?”

“I don’t know,” said
Belladonna. “I don’t suppose it matters…”

“No,” said Steve. “Are you
ready?”

“I suppose so,” said
Belladonna, tucking her hair behind her ears and taking the bottle out of her
bag.

“Cool. Let’s go…hang on…who’s
that?”

Belladonna looked over toward
the parade ground. Branwyn was still sitting on the railway ties, still soaking
wet even though the day was dry, but there was someone else with her, sitting
close and talking up a storm, if the bobbing of her head was anything to go by.

“It can’t be…” said Steve, as
they walked closer.

“Hello, chaps!”

“Elsie! It’s because of
Halloween, right?”

“Yes,” said Elsie. “It’s the
one day of the year we can go anywhere we like. I thought you might need a
hand.”

“Elsie’s been telling me
everything that’s happened in history since I…came here,” whispered Branwyn,
happily.

“Well, not everything,” said
Elsie, a little sheepishly. “Just the good stuff. The best battles and the
really interesting kings and queens. Oh, and trains and cars and gramophones,
that sort of thing.”

“I bet the British Empire got
a mention, as well,” said Belladonna, smiling.

“Or three or four,” added
Steve.

“I just can’t believe the
world is so big,” said Branwyn. “So many other countries and all sorts of
different people.”

“Well, let’s get you out of
here so you can see it,” said Belladonna. “Or the version on the Other Side, at
least.”

She put her backpack down and
handed the bottle to Steve, then she closed her eyes and let the Words come.

“
Igi si gar!”
Reveal
yourself! “
Igi si gar!
”

Even with her eyes closed,
Belladonna could tell that the Spirits of the Black Water had materialized. The
intense wave of menace and hatred was almost palpable, like a punch to the
stomach.

 She opened her eyes and
looked at the black swirling clouds. The other ghosts had noticed too, and were
all standing stock still, and staring.

“What do we do?” asked Steve,
trying to ignore the audience. “Just pour it around them?”

“I had a word with a Druid
last night,” said Elsie. “Took for-bally-ever to find the chap. He was a bit
unwilling to talk because he was on his way to Stonehenge and kept going on
about being late for the sunrise.”

“I thought Stonehenge didn’t
have anything to do with druids,” said Steve.

“It doesn’t,” said Elsie.
“It’s just a really good place for a party, apparently. Anyway, he said in
order to free the blood binding, the new one has to be inside the old.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“You have to recite the
ingredients over and over until the binding is complete.”

“Please tell me you brought
the list,” said Steve.

Belladonna rummaged through
her backpack and held the list aloft, triumphantly.

“I imagine it has to be the
old names,” she said.

“I should think so,” said
Elsie, leaning over her shoulder. “And I should think the order is important,
too.”

“Right,” said Belladonna.
“Who’s going to do what?”

“I think Steve should pour
the potion,” said Elsie. “He can run the fastest. After all, he’s on the
under-15 footie team now.”

“I am?”

“They put the notice up
yesterday afternoon. We were all on the Other Side.”

“Aceballs!”

“Okay,” said Belladonna.
“That means you and I will recite the list, Elsie.”

“I’ll help,” said Elsie,
smiling. “But I think it’s the living person who counts.”

“So all that’s left is to
find out where the old binding line was.”

All eyes turned to Branwyn.

“Do you remember?” asked
Belladonna.

She had an awful feeling that
the limits of the old binding might have been connected to items on the
landscape when Hegland Moss had been a marsh, all of which would be long gone
now.

“Of course I do,” whispered
Branwyn. “How could I not? This is the western corner. It goes from here up to
that oak just beyond the parade ground, then over to the remains of the
watchtower, there, then back down to those bins and then here.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “So if I
run the perimeter of the parade ground I should be well inside the old binding,
right?”

“They’ll be very angry,” said
Branwyn.

“Um…angry?”

“Yes.”

“What do they do when they’re
angry?” asked Steve.

“They make you fear things,”
whispered Branwyn. “It’s terrible…terrible.”

“You do realize that you’re
not helping? A bit of optimism would be nice right about now.”

“Oh, there’s something else,”
announced Elsie.

“Of course there is,” said
Steve. “There’s
always
something else. Do we have to do it backward on
one foot or something?”

“No,” said Belladonna,
suddenly understanding. “We can’t stop.”

“How did you know that?”
asked Elsie.

“I don’t know…I just do. It’s
all part of the binding: the potion, the words…and the running.”

“That’ll be more Spellbinder
hoodoo,” said Steve. “Let’s get on with it. Is everyone ready?”

“Thank you for trying,”
whispered Branwyn. “I want you to know…even if it doesn’t work.”

Belladonna smiled, stood next
to Elsie and looked over at Steve, who had taken off his jacket and hoody and
stood, shivering, bottle in hand.

“On three,” he said, grimly.
“One…two…THREE!!”

He took off up the right hand
side of the parade ground, the herb mixture pouring from the nozzle of the
sauce bottle as he went.

“Mucgwyrt, attorlathe, stune,
wegbrade, maethe, stithe, wergulu, fille, finule, herrif, laserpiciferis,
mucgwyrt, attorlathe…”

“They know! They know!”
Branwyn was on her feet, terror in her eyes.

“…stune, wegbrade, stithe,
wergulu…”

The spinning, folding,
forming and reforming clouds had changed. Suddenly they seemed to have
purpose—two combined and shot across the parade ground toward Steve, who had
just rounded the first corner, while another became solid and stretched itself
into a black wall in front of Belladonna and Elsie. For a moment it just hung
there, suspended in the air like a movie screen, but then it began to throb and
started screaming and roaring at the volume a jet engine would have if you were
actually
inside
the engine.

But it wasn’t just noise, it
was fear, oozing through the air like syrup, engulfing her, creeping into all
the places in her mind where she had hidden the things that made her nervous,
or made her scared and escalating every one of those feelings to the level of
blind terror. She couldn’t hear her own voice any more, and panic was all she
could feel, but she kept going.

“…fille, finule, herrif,
laserpiciferis, mucgwyrt…”

On the other side of the
parade ground she could just make out Steve and the other Spirits of the Black
Water. They seemed to be trying to entangle him in inky tendrils. Once he
almost tripped, and then seemed to choke as shadowy fingers encircled his neck.
As he turned the corner near the remains of the old watchtower, Belladonna
could see tears on his cheeks, but a look of grim determination on his face.
She wondered what the spirits had found inside his head, the thing that he most
feared.

“…attorlathe, stune,
wegbrade, maethe…”

Branwyn staggered and sat,
her hands over her face and her body heaving with sobs. It didn’t take any leap
of imagination to know what fear the spirits had found within her, but Elsie
stood fast, repeating the words with Belladonna, attempting an encouraging
smile, but not quite managing.

“…stithe, wergulu, fille,
finule, herrif…”

Out of the corner of her eye,
Belladonna could see that the ghosts from the ruins were converging on the
parking lot. One man, with patterns dyed on his skin like Cradoe, separated
himself from the crowd and walked up to her.

“Is it a binding?”

Belladonna nodded, but didn’t
stop. The man stepped away respectfully and rejoined the other ghosts.

“…laserpiciferis, mucgwyrt…”