Hello and welcome to the last part of this series of Witch's Bile. This serves as an epilogue really, so if you haven't read any of the others please go here to give them a look. Please enjoy.
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It was you. Of course it was you. How could I not have seen
it was you?
Jo wasn’t the punishment, was she? The monster following her
was. An empty vessel with one single purpose but not completely brainless?
Well, technically brainless I suppose. He’d been scooped clean at some point
before he’d developed his obsession with poor Jo. Anyway, that’s some serious
fucking magic and would require someone very bloody-minded to arrange. Well
done, Mum. You made life difficult for me for a little bit, and made life
miserable for Jo for nearly a year. Impressive, even by your standards of
colossal bitchiness.
I suppose this might have been a test, rather than a
punishment. Maybe you were seeing if I was capable of dealing with it, rather
than just pissing me off for the hell of it. Maybe you wanted to see if I could
teach somebody something. Maybe Jo’s more important than you let on. But that
thought makes me uneasy because it would imply that you were preparing me for
something. And I’d hate to think what that would be.
Because I know that something’s going on. Even out here in
the fucking sticks I can tell that something is stirring, which makes me more
determined than ever to disappear again. I told the Sheriff what we did the
monster you sent us. Well, I kept most of the magic out of it. I just told him
that we burned it up and that when the fire goes out it’s very important that
they salt the bloody earth. I don’t know if makes any difference, the old
salting the earth trick, but as a symbolic gesture it’s pretty cathartic.
Anyway,
Sheriff Larch nodded, stroked that beard of his and told me he would very much
appreciate it we never darkened his doorway again. Those were his words; I
assume he meant “stay outta town.”
I told Jo that she could either go back to Paris or stick
with me for a bit. I know. I surprised myself. I don’t know how much longer I’d
want her around for but I feel like somebody owes her something and I can’t
very well blame her for being a bit pissed off with you. Yes, I told her my
theory. She’s fuming. If we hadn’t already set fire to the house I’d have been
worried.
So, this is my final tape, at least until you find me again.
I’m off to show Jo a bit of America before something else decides to murder
every man between it and her. Obviously I’m not going to tell you where we’re
going but I want you to know that we’re both fine and we both hate you. Take
care, Émilie. And please feel free to leave me alone.
Your hateful daughter,
Eliza Belmont.
-----------------------------
So that's that for Eliza and Jo. I hope you enjoyed this series. They might be back at some point but not for a long while. I enjoyed writing them but I'm not really sure how successful they were. I hope you had fun reading them anyway. Thank you very much for doing so.
Hello and welcome to the ninth and penultimate instalment of Witch's Bile. Just a quick reminder that parts 1-8 are here if you haven't read them yet and you want to understand what's going on. Otherwise, the monster is on his way. Please enjoy
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I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Well, actually,
scared’s a bit of an exaggeration. Concerned. I was concerned that arranging
for a murderous monster to be directed towards my house might be a bit
reckless. I mean, he might kill Jo, who I was supposed to be looking after, and
more importantly, he might kill me. And Jo wouldn’t have been my problem if you
hadn’t sent her to me, Émilie, so technically anything bad that happens to her
while in this country is your fault. She could have been safe in Paris, or
London. Anywhere, really. But instead she’s in a small town in Illinois, USA,
with me. Because you sent her. And because you sent her, he came too.
I was aware that my plan had problems. These beasts that
have one single, unalterable goal can seem easy to direct but there are annoying
little variables. Monsters in a trap will always react violently, lashing out
in any bloody direction. Bloodily. And no matter how stupid you think they are
there’s never any guarantee that they won’t suddenly figure out what’s going
on. So yes, I had my concerns. I thought it would work, don’t get me wrong. But
it’s a very stupid idiot who thinks that their plan will go off without a
hitch.
Jo wasn’t stupid enough to make this mistake but she went
along with it. She took some convincing and grumbled enough, but she went along
with it.
“If this goes wrong, we’ll die,” she told me after I’d told
her that there was no other way. It was stating the obvious but I can only
assume stating it made her feel better. I nodded and told her that I was sure
that it wouldn’t go wrong. If it went right, we would be free from this un-killable
psychopath within an hour or so.
I got the call twenty minutes after Sheriff Larch and his
terrified deputy left. Apparently once I’d told him that there was a fair
chance that the man he’d captured could decide to kill his entire police force,
he was keen to get the monster out of his custody and into mine. I assumed that
the monster couldn’t drive, so assuming Larch had called as soon as he’d freed
him, we’d have our visitor knocking on our door in about forty minutes.
I got things ready as best I could. You know as well as I do
that you can check and double check that you’ve prepared spells properly but
there’s no guarantee that they’ll go off without a hitch. I got Jo to help me
with the magic. As we sat mixing up the necessaries the books said were
required, she looked up at me with this weird sort of smile.
“This is the first time you’ve taught me anything,” she
said.
Cheeky little bitch.
So forty minutes later we stood in the front hall, staring
at the front door, waiting. Jo looked nervously at me. I looked back at her,
only slightly less nervously. We could both sense that he was close. When forty
five minutes had passed I got worried. Then I heard the back door open.
I span around and saw the man standing in my kitchen. Larch
hadn’t been lying. A cracked rib stuck through his black shirt and odd lumps
down his right side hinted at more than that. When he opened his mouth to speak
I saw he’d lost several of his teeth, which will happen if I run you over with
my car.
“I heard she had someone here,” he said, speech slightly
slurred. “Where is she?”
I wasn’t thrown by the question. Jo had done exactly as I’d
asked and slipped out of sight. I shook my head and he stepped towards me. I
took a step to my right, towards the basement.
“Don’t lie to me,” he told me. “I know she’s here. I know
she’s here with someone. Where is she? I need to talk to her.”
As he moved closer I saw his scruffy beard was caked with
blood. I assumed it was his own but there was no way to be sure. He reached
down towards his belt and took out a long kitchen knife, which I recognised as
one of mine. He must have taken it when he had been here before leaving
presents for us. His stumbling stopped and he stared at me for a moment as if
trying to tell whether I was lying or not. Obviously he convinced himself that
I was as he moved forward with alarming speed and grabbed me by the throat.
“Where is she, bitch?” he growled. Clearly the last part of that
sentence was really supposed to put the fear of god into me and I thought I had
probably given Jo enough time.
“The basement,” I gasped, “she’s in the basement. With him.”
He grunted and transferred his grip to the back of my neck,
pushing me towards the basement door.
“Open it,” he said. “No tricks.”
Clever boy. I opened the door for him and what he saw made
him release his grip on me. It also made him go charging down the basement
steps.
An illusion is simple enough to create but it’s pretty fucking
useless once the person you’re trying to fool tries to get his hands on it. The
monster saw a handsome young man who was moving towards Jo in suggestive
fashion. To put it bluntly, he was naked. But when the fruitcake with the knife
tried to cut him, it would go straight through, which is why Jo was running up
the stairs as soon he finished going down them.
Had there been time and a third witch, we could easily have
come with an imaginary Jo as well but as it was we had to make to with the real
one. She wasn’t happy about it but I told her that there was nothing else we
could do.
The other person who wasn’t happy was the monster in the
basement. As Jo cleared the top step he turned and looked up at us. He’d swung
for the phantom’s gullet and had hit the brick wall in front of him instead. He
was furious. I could feel Jo trembling beside me.
“You tricked me,” he spat.
“Burn,” I answered. He laughed and held his arms wide.
“That won’t work on this body.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” I told him and pointed at the
unfortunate nest of spiders in the corner that were just catching light on top
of the cans of gasoline. Not all animals are receptive to spoken magic but when I'd moved them earlier I'd managed to get on their wavelength. I felt sorry for them but there was no time to dwell
on it as we slammed the door shut.
We had cast a spell on the door which took effect as soon as
both of us were on the same side. I thought that this was rather selfless of me
given that I could have simply locked him, her, and the imaginary nude Adonis
down there to burn. Not that I told her that. We went through the living room
and grabbed the bags we’d packed while waiting for the Sheriff to call as the
screams began.
You never really get used to the smell of human flesh
cooking but this wasn’t exactly that. There was a whiff of formaldehyde and, as
the smoke poured out from under the door, another scent that I recognised but
couldn’t quite place. Whoever had done this had left their mark on his body. It
was familiar but I didn’t have time to really savour it. We left before the
fire got out of hand, and then watched from the street as it did.
I hadn’t lived in that house for long but I had liked it. I
wasn’t entirely emotionless watching it all go up in smoke. But Jo was safe for
now. And so was I.
I’m sorry if this seems a bit underwhelming but it’s
something that I don’t understand when witches tell each other that something
can’t be killed. This thing bled. Its ribs broke. It must have been able to
heal itself over time, given what Jo said about it being run over by a London
bus, but very few things can survive prolonged exposure to fucking fire. There's an argument to be made for lack of subtlety or finesse but, given the
noises it was making, it wasn’t surviving down there. And if it comes back,
then we’ll burn the fucker again.
Anyway, I have to make a statement to Sheriff Larch. Well, I
don’t have to. But I want to see the look on his face when I try to explain
what happened. I’ll record another message from the road.
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Hope you enjoyed this. The final part will be up very shortly and then the blog will focus on other things for a while. There's a general blog housekeeping update in the offing but for now, please enjoy Jarvis singing Leonard Cohen. As always, thank you for reading.
Welcome to the part 8 of my Witch's Bile series which is building towards the last two instalments, so if you haven't read any yet I'd advise you to head here and go back to the beginning! Previously, Eliza and Jo met the monster with the penchant for cutting men's faces off their heads and made the sensible choice of running away as he began work right in front of them.
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I don’t have a lot of dealings with the police, as you can
imagine. Actually, you might be surprised to hear that I get away with what I
do, but I think they’re scared of me. They would never admit it but I’ve packed
up and left countless towns leaving a bloody mess behind me and I’ve not been
pulled over once. But this was different. The teenagers killed last night hadn’t
died by my hand, and there was a witness who had hopefully told the police
that. Because they knew I hadn’t been in a bloodthirsty rage, I had a feeling
that the police would be round sooner or later. I went to bed knowing that I
might be woken up by cautious knocking on the front door.
Instead I woke up of my own accord around ten. Jo was still
in her room so I made coffee and went down to the basement to get my old books
and notes out. I disturbed a few spiders that were starting to build a home on
the box marked “witch shit”, dragged the box up to the living room, and had a
look through my records and the old books to see if anything matched the
description of what I saw last night. It would probably surprise you, Émilie,
to learn that I’ve still got all my things, all my notes, everything a proper
witch should have. But you never know when you might need them. Especially when
you can’t consult with anyone. The only witch I know in the whole country is Jo
and she’s essentially still a student, so useless. I’ve kept away from American
ones. I’m sure they’re fine but I’ve got no interest in being sociable.
Anyway, I didn’t find anything. Not a sausage. There were
plenty of monsters that had some similar attributes. Obviously we’re familiar
with many difficult-to-kill ones, as this fucker had proved to be by being run
over twice, including once with a bus if Jo is to be believed. So that was too
vague to help much. I thought the ritualistic removal of the victim’s face
might prove to be a goer but it turns out that there are three species of
monsters that regularly do that in America alone, not including Canada, and all
those freaks have a full set of internal organs. Which was what stumped me.
This psychotic Romeo who’s got his eye on Jo had no heart. I
told you I tried to make it explode, which is normally not that difficult as
long as there is a heart to make explode, and in this case there wasn’t. I
don’t think there was anything. The thing was just an empty shell. He was, or
had been, a man, that was obvious. The basic energy he was giving off was
human. There was none of the frazzled, haywire brainwaves of Patchworks. He
clearly wasn’t a zombie as he was forming coherent sentences and didn’t smell like he was rotting. He was simply hollow.
While I wasn’t too surprised that I had never come across
this, I was shocked to find that there was nothing in my books about it. Obviously
we witches like to know as much as possible about the monsters of the world so
we can either defend ourselves against them or, preferably, use them to our
advantage. Something like this clearly had value, as anything that’s tough to
kill does. Monsters like that are usually working for somebody. Too useful not
to be. But it’s difficult to imagine who he would have been working for, going
specifically after Jo like that. Or rather, going after people he thinks are
after her, in a romantic way.
But as I was working it through I heard the doorbell ring.
There was the sound of Jo stirring upstairs as I got up to answer it. I walked
past the clock on the wall and saw it was nearly two in the afternoon. It had
taken the police all night and more than half the day to get round to seeing
me.
Two men in uniform stood on my front porch. They both had
their cold weather police coats on, the ones with the slightly fluffy collars,
and the standard issue cold weather police hats. I’ve always found this get-up
quite adorable, despite feeling somewhat differently about the people inside
it. One was younger and was anxiously alternating his stare between two inches
over my shoulder and the floor in front of him. The other was older and had
greying brown hair tufting out from under his hat to match the greying brown
beard. He was the one with the Sheriff’s badge.
“Afternoon, Miss,” he said after a short pause. “I’m
Sheriff Larch, this is Deputy Brigley. Would it be alright if we came in?”
“By all means, Sheriff,” I told him, and ushered them
inside. I didn’t want to waste any time. Apparently neither did he. I’d barely
sat them down in the kitchen before he put his hands on the table and looked me
in the eye.
“So, we know you were there last night, Miss Belmont. And
everyone in town knows what you are. You asked us to leave you alone and I
decided that it was the best course of action. But the problem is that people
in town aren’t just scared of you now. They’re scared of whoever did this. And
we can’t very well leave him alone.”
I nodded. I appreciated that he had to make his position
clear. He was doing well, all things considered.
“Do you know who did this?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” I told him. “But I can assure you I’m doing my best to
find out.”
“This guy…I’ve never seen anything like him. When I tried to
talk to him…”
“Wait.” I was surprised. “Sorry, you tried to talk to him?
So you…did you have him in custody?”
Larch ran his finger around the brim of his hat and looked
at the table. “We found him in the parking lot. He looked like he’d been beat
to hell.”
“I ran him over,” I interrupted, but he didn’t seem to hear
me.
“He was…he was taking the face of the second boy when we got there. The first
one, he’d already finished him. We told him to stop what he was doing, put his
hands up. He didn’t seem to hear us at first but then he yanked his left hand
up and just tore the skin straight off that boy’s head. Then he turned to look
at us and…Miss, I’m scared of you but there was an emptiness behind that man’s
eyes that just terrified me.”
He paused. I took this opportunity to look at his deputy,
who was apparently examining the floral pattern of my tablecloth like it might
yield some clue.
“He did what we asked,” Larch continued. “He got in the car.
I told my boys to drive him to the station, take his prints, get him in a cell
while we cleaned up the victims. Now, the rest is only what I’ve been told, I
wasn’t there. But they got him to the station and someone thought they should
have him checked out, apparently they saw one of his ribs was starting to stick
out of his shirt. Anyway, the doc got there and…she couldn’t find a pulse. He
was dead. But…he wasn’t, I don’t know if I’m explaining this well…”
With this final sentence he looked up at me, like he was
begging for an explanation, or at least some kind of reaction. I nodded. I
mean, of course he didn’t have a pulse. He had no fucking heart. But this was
clearly a big shock to the Sheriff so I let him have his little meltdown.
“Miss, we’ve got a man sitting in our cell who is clinically
dead. I was hoping…you could tell me just what he is.”
I took a deep breath. Jo coughed from the doorway and I
turned to look at her. She’d clearly just woken up and was still in her
pyjamas. I don’t know how long she’d been standing there but she looked as
anxious for my answer as the Sheriff did. To me, the course of action was
clear.
“Well, Sheriff, the first thing you should do is let him
go.”
Larch looked as though I’d reached under the table
and grabbed his privates. “Let him go?” he repeated. Before he had the chance
to reel off all the reasons why it was a bad idea I butted in.
“I’m not exactly sure why he agreed to come quietly. But I
do think that at some point he’s going to get bored and he’ll wonder what Jo’s
doing and then he will want to leave. And I say this with all due respect but I
don’t think that you’ll be able to stop him. So, in my opinion, what you should
do is save yourself a lot of bloodshed. Let him go, point him in the direction
of this house, and let Jo and myself deal with him.”
He had let me talk, to his credit. It was more than I
thought he might do. “And you think you’ll be able to deal with him?” he asked.
“Again, with all due respect, we’ll be able to deal with him
a lot better than you could.”
Larch took a moment or two to think about it then gave me a
little nod and stood up, followed by his deputy. We agreed that he would
discuss a handsome young man looking after Jo at the house in front of the
monster in the cells, then turn him loose. Obviously, he would call ahead to
let us know exactly when he was being set free.
Once they had left Jo grabbed my arm.
“How exactly are we going to deal with him?” she hissed.
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I have a plan.
And that’s what I’m saying to you, Émilie. I have a plan. If
you hear from me again, you’ll know it worked. Here’s hoping, eh?
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Hello there, I hope you enjoyed this. It's a bit longer than usual but I'm trying to get things set up for the final two parts. I know I said that the blog would be updated more frequently but I'm currently quite busy with London Film Festival press screenings, which I'm covering for Cinetalk. However, the final two parts should be up soon so keep an eye out for them. Will update soon! Thanks for reading,
Welcome to part 7 of the Witch's Bile series. You can find the previous parts here, I recommend that you read them first as there's not really a lot of explanation as to what's been going on otherwise. I hope you enjoy this instalment!
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Well, Émilie, I told you in the last report I sent that Jo was
going to have to make some friends, with the admittedly risky aim of getting
her murderous admirer out in the open. If she’s seen speaking to friends of the
victim, I reasoned, then we might be able to draw him out. Get him jealous, get
him visible. Charlie Kitson had been kind enough to give us the name of the bar
his murdered underage son used to go to, so I made sure Jo had put some nice
clothes on and a bit of slap and we drove over there.
Jo was a bit nervous in the car, I could tell. She was
scratching at her nails and tugging at her bangs. I told her that she looked
fine and she glared at me. OK, I thought. We hadn’t talked much before leaving
the house. That was OK too. I assumed she knew what she had to do.
It was the first time I’d been around town at night, really.
I only moved here a few weeks ago and since then I’ve made a point of leaving
the house as little as possible. The last time I’d been out at night was the
town meeting I organised at which I told everyone that I was a witch and that
they should leave me alone. That didn’t really work out. It never does. Anyway,
they all look the same to me, these small towns. There are the nice quiet
streets with the big houses, big cars, big front porches, and the big back
gardens and then you take a left and you’re sharing the road with people with
completely different circumstances. But people are all the same to me. Wherever
you go and wherever they come from. Everyone’s the same no matter how much
money you have or how big your house is. Which is why I want them to leave me
alone.
I took a right and saw the petrol station Kitson had told me
about and the bar just behind it. We were close to the edge of town here, I
suppose the kids thought the chances of law enforcement or their parents
bothering to come and find them was pretty slim. A fluorescent red sign above
the door told customers where they were: The Alhambra. There didn’t seem to be
anything particularly Spanish from the outside. Still, I wouldn’t see the
inside for myself.
“So what’s the plan then?” asked Jo, like she didn’t already
know. I turned to face her.
“You go in, you ask around for the names on that list, and
then you talk to them. Use your English accent to charm them. Well, that and
your face. Offer them a cigarette and get them outside. Then we’ll see if the
mystery man shows up.”
“How do you know they smoke?” she asked, and I sniffed.
“They’re underage. Of course they smoke.”
She took my pack of Gitanes and got out in a huff. I watched
her cross the car park, her heels clattering on the tarmac. I’d nearly
forgotten that she’d only been in America for a couple of days. I hadn’t even
asked about jetlag or anything. Which probably meant she was fine, I mean, if I
hadn’t noticed it. Probably. I found a new pack of cigarettes in the glove compartment
and waited for Jo to make friends.
It was about five minutes before she emerged with three
teenage boys and one girl. Even from across the car park I could tell that
they’d all made an effort to look older than they were. All the boys were
wearing shirts and long coats while the girl’s make up was visible from the
car. Only one of them took a cigarette from her. There you go, I thought. I can
be wrong sometimes. I let them talk for a little while, about ten minutes.
There was still no sign of anyone suspicious. Frankly, I was getting bored.
Finally I struck on a way to find out if anyone was paying
attention. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and ran over to where Jo was
standing. She looked up as I approached, as did the teens, a little slower,
admittedly.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted. Jo looked
shocked and unsure of herself. “What do you think you’re doing here? I leave
the house for five minutes and you go straight to a bloody pub and start
drinking! I thought we had agreed that you wouldn’t do this anymore!”
Jo stared, trying to understand what I was doing. I threw
her a bone, as they say.
“I am your mother and you will do what I say! Is one of
these that boy you’ve been seeing?” I practically screamed.
“Whoa, calm down, lady!” exclaimed one of the boys. His
right eye was covered by a lank fringe of brown hair that he shifted with a
movement that I couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or some sort of twitch.
“Yeah, you don’t need to shout at her like that!” said the
tallest of the boys. He was wearing a blazer that actually fit him and you
could tell he was the confident one of the group because he wasn’t attempting
to hide any part of his face. Instead his black hair was greased back and there
was a single ring in his right ear. The shorter, rounder boy behind him nodded
in agreement but didn’t seem brave enough to say anything. Only the girl, a skinny little redhead in a leather jacket and short black skirt, seemed
frozen stiff. Until she opened her mouth.
“I know who you are,” she told me. I stopped huffing and
puffing and turned to face her.
“Do you now?” I asked, putting as much ice in my voice as
possible.
“You’re the witch. You’re Eliza Belmont.”
The boys didn’t know my face but they certainly knew my
name. They all took a small step back and stared a little harder. The tall one
jutted his chin at me. “That true? You a witch?” I nodded at him. He turned to
Jo, who looked like she wasn’t sure where she was supposed to go at this point.
“And, what, she’s your mom?”
Jo took a step over to me and turned to face them. “She’s
not my mother but you’ll answer any questions she has.” I was impressed and
didn’t bother trying to hide a smile. So she hadn’t asked them anything. Not
exactly according to plan, but at least she got out of the house.
“Where did your accent go?” asked the short one before
figuring it out for himself and looking at the floor.
“Now,” I said, ignoring the little man’s question. “Last
night, did you see Clyde talk to anyone?”
“We already told the police that we didn’t,” said the girl. “Clyde
left early last night. He said he needed to go home and study.”
“Well it’s nice to see you’re honouring his memory,” I
prodded. Her face dropped and the tall one spoke up again.
“We’re honouring his memory,” he said with all the sincerity
he could muster. I grinned.
“So you didn’t see him talking to a guy you didn’t know,
with straggly dark hair, beard, long coat? No?”
The short one cleared his throat and pointed.
“There’s a guy like that behind you.”
Jo turned first and grabbed my sleeve. I saw a man who fit
the description I’d just given. He stared at us, looking us over one by one.
There was a moment of silence. Even the tall kid couldn’t think of anything to
say.
“Did you get my present, Josephine?” asked the man finally.
Jo whimpered. “I left it where you could find it. Who are these people?”
I tried something risky at this point. Obviously you’re not
supposed to attack without gauging your enemy. But I thought I could get the
drop on him and I didn’t want to hang around in the open any longer than
necessary. So I tried to make his heart explode. It’s a nice trick if you get
it right, there’s relatively little mess, at least that you can see. So I
focused hard. Tried to find his heartbeat.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. He just stared at me,
unblinking. I knew what to do. I grabbed Jo and ran. You don’t get to my age
without learning how to run away from things. Well, not really running, if you
look very closely you can see our feet weren’t touching the ground and we were
going faster than a fifty year old woman and a young lady in high heels really
should have been but we made it to the car and bundled ourselves in.
As I turned the key in the ignition the headlights came on.
The man was walking over to us. In his right hand he held the tall boy by his
skinny neck. Behind him I could see the two other boys crumpled on top of each
other in a heap. The girl ran screaming back to the bar and slammed the door
behind her.
The man stopped about six feet from us. As I was about to
put my foot down he took out a knife and pointed it at Jo.
“I know you understand,” he said, and plunged the knife into
the boy’s face, just under the hairline. He twisted the blade and began to move
it downward, peeling the skin from the boy’s head as he went.
I put my foot down and drove straight at him. He didn’t try
to move out of the way. He just fell under the car and I felt the bump as we
ran him over. I didn’t bother looking behind us. I knew he wouldn’t stay down.
“It won’t have made any difference,” muttered Jo.
“It made me feel better,” I said.
We got home without any further incidents. Jo’s up in her
room and the lights are flickering so I can tell she’s upset. I know we’re
going to have a lot to deal with tomorrow when the police realise we were there
and work up the nerve to ask us why, so I’m going to sign off now and get some
sleep. And try to think about what kind of a monster actually doesn’t have a
heart.
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I hope you enjoyed part 7. We're getting towards the end of the Witch's Bile series now and I'm going to try and post the final few parts a bit more frequently than I have been. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the series so far.
I'm still planning to update the blog with more non-fiction posts so keep your eyes peeled for that. I'm also going to a post asking for title suggestions for short stories as I will be starting that up again soon!
Hello there. So, after last week's short story (Mindquack) we're back to Eliza the misanthropic witch with part six of the Witch's Bile series. Parts 1-5 are here and I do recommend reading them first. Each part is only about 1000 words so it won't take long to get up to speed. So, let's get to it.
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Where were we, Émilie? Oh that’s right. I’d just told you to
go fuck yourself. You’ll have to forgive me for that little outburst. But I was
quite upset. Because it seemed like you’d knowingly sent me a protégé who is
being stalked by a murderous psychopath who is apparently very difficult to
kill. Still, at least I now have some idea of who the person who left a dead
boy’s face in my kitchen is. Well, not a name. Or a face. But Jo will recognise
him when she sees him, and it’s my intention to flush this bastard out as soon
as possible. I didn’t move to America to bring serial killers over. There are
plenty of them here already.
I gave Jo a bit of time to calm down after she’d told me
about this lunatic and how he seems to target boys she likes, or boys he thinks
she likes. She went up to her room and I thought I heard her crying before a
couple of our light bulbs blew. I may have to get used to these temper tantrums
if she continues living with me for much longer. Stock up on bulbs. Anyway, I
made a cup of tea and had a think and after about an hour or so she was back
downstairs and ready to talk again.
“So, what’s the plan?” she asked.
It was a fair question. “Well,” I said, “given that you
don’t know anything about this person except what he looks like and the fact
that he survived a double decker bus rolling over him, we don’t really have a
lot to go on. So the obvious thing to do is go and talk to the dead boy’s dad.”
“Is he going to want
to talk to us? When he came to ask for help this morning you weren’t exactly
helpful.”
In case you’ve forgotten, the dead boy’s father came round
first thing to ask if I could help him find his son’s killer. You know my rules
about helping people. I don’t. Which is what I told him. He didn’t leave in the
best mood.
I smiled at her. Sometimes I forget what it’s like when
people don’t know who you are, don’t know what you can do. You’re scared of
people finding out, of what would happen if they knew. When you open up to
everybody and you make sure they’re scared of you, then you realise that people
are very easy to deal with indeed. “Trust me.” I said. “He’s going to be dying for
our help.”
So I was a little bit surprised when, after we wrapped up
and hurried down the street to the Kitson residence, we had the door slammed in
our face shortly after it was opened by the tall, grieving man who had asked
for my assistance only a couple of hours ago. He didn’t say anything. He just
slammed it. But I knew better than to take it personally. Jo and I waited on
their doorstep for a moment or two, listening to raised voices inside, before
his wife opened the door.
“Please, come in.” she stammered. “I’m very sorry about
Charlie, he’s…we’re both very…”
“I understand perfectly, Mrs Kitson,” I told her. “If we
could just take a few minutes of your time we’d be very grateful.” She ushered
us through her hallway and into her living room. The white carpet was covered
in dirty boot prints, a clear sign that the police had been and gone. Charles
was sat in the armchair and stared at us as we came in. I gave him my best
smile.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just to talk about your son, Mr Kitson. We want to help.”
“Oh yeah?” he sneered. “What’s changed? I came to ask for
your help, I practically begged you, and you told me to go fuck myself.”
I took a seat in the chair opposite him and was aware of Jo
drifting to stand behind me. She’s got good instincts, that one. I thought
about telling him I didn’t use those words but decided against it.
“The thing is, Mr Kitson, the thing is that my position
hasn’t changed. We can’t just help everyone who asks. And I believe you and
your wife both attended the town meeting I organised specifically to tell you
all that I must be left alone or you would face the consequences, and I think
you’ll agree that I allowed you to speak your piece, consequence-free.” I could
see this last part upset him; it was probably a mistake to bring it up but too
bad. He was raising his enormous hand to make a point I continued before he
could interrupt me. “But while my position hasn’t changed, the situation has. I
was too hasty in telling you I couldn’t help you. Obviously I can’t give you
your boy back, but I can find whoever killed him and make sure that he is
punished in ways that the police can only have nightmares about.”
There was a sound rather like a small bird clearing its
throat and I looked over to wear Mrs Kitson nervously hovered by the kitchen
door. “How has the situation changed?” she asked. I was impressed. This Mrs
clearly had more backbone than I thought.
“The situation has changed because it affects me. And my
friend here.”
“I thought you said she was your niece,” said Kitson. Ah. Caught
on a lie. Still, a relatively minor one. No real damage. Safe to admit to.
“I lied. You know what I am. My friend is one too. What
happened to your boy affects us. We would like him to stop.”
Charles Kitson got to his feet. He nearly filled the space
from floor to ceiling and he had the anger of a grieving man. “Are you saying
that whoever did this has an axe to grind with you? Was Clyde some sort of
message?”
Clearly it was best to lie at this point. So I made
something up.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that
whoever did this will do it again and he has certainly done it before. One of
his previous victims was someone we cared about a great deal.”
“Did he kill a witch?” asked Mrs Kitson. I laughed loudly to
make sure she knew how ridiculous her question was.
“No, the chances of a witch being killed by someone like
we’re dealing with her are miniscule. No, it was Jo’s…brother. Which is why we
couldn’t talk to you earlier. We had to be sure it was the same person before
we got involved. And now we can.”
The last lie seemed like it might have been a stretch to far
but you should never underestimate the gullibility of the grieving. Especially
when they think that someone might be able to castrate the ones responsible.
Charles looked at his wife and they seemed to reach some kind of agreement as
they stared at each other.
“What do you want to know?” he asked. I smiled like a happy
saint.
“Well, it would help if you told me where he…hung out. And,
more importantly, who he hung out with.”
Twenty minutes later we were back in my kitchen with a list
of names and the address of a local bar that didn’t look at ID’s too closely.
Jo hovered over my shoulder as I went through the list and tried to remember if
I’d seen any of these boys before.
“What are we going to do with this?” she asked.
“Well, clearly he thinks you’re attracted to boys your age,”
I told her. “So you’re going to go and make some friends and we’ll see what
happens.”
I don’t know if you were with Jo long enough to see this,
Émilie, but there’s this look she gives that’s about half-judgmental and half
trying to understand whether she should be judgmental or not. It’s quite
special. So that’s the plan, Émilie. We’re going to have a nap and then Jo’s
going out to make some friends. And I’ll be there to see if her man shows up.
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Thanks for reading. I'm interested to hear feedback on the Witch's Bile series. The instalments are intentionally a lot shorter than my short stories but I do worry that they're less fun. Anyway, I'm aiming for about 10 instalments in total for this round. Eliza and Jo will probably be back at some point anyway.
I hope you enjoyed part 6. I'm trying to update the blog more often so there may well be another non-fiction post of me rambling soon so, you know, get excited for that. Here's Distracted, a song from Sean Spillane's soundtrack to Lucky McKee's excellent The Woman
This is the third instalment of my Witch's Bile series. If you need to catch up, here's part one and part two. Eliza the misanthropic witch has been given a live-in protégé by the witch queen Émilie Étienne. She's not happy about it. Please enjoy
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Are you in some sort of trouble, Émilie? Would you tell me
if you were? Something seems to have scared your girl. We’ve had an incident
and it seems to have set Jo rather on edge. If I didn’t know any better, I’d
say that it’s almost like something’s followed her here. But you would have
told me if that was the case, wouldn’t you? Course you fucking would. And I don’t
know any better, do I?
Can’t be more specific than “something” at the moment, I’m
afraid. Just, you should know that there’s been an incident. And while I’m fairly
confident that I can take on anything, as I’m sure you are too, there’s
something about the way it put the wind up Jo that’s put the wind up me as well.
Things had been fairly quiet. It had taken a few days for Jo
to come out of her sulk after that comment I made about her killing her parents
not being particularly special. When I got up the next morning she was already
dressed and making coffee. She turned to look at me, glorious hung-over mess
that I was, and said: “I killed my parents when they said they were divorcing.
I didn’t want them to split up.”
“And they didn’t have to, thanks to you,” I said and made a
bee-line for the coffee.
I could hear her making a little repulsed noise behind
me. They’re great, those noises, I don’t know if she would have dared to make
them in your presence, Madame Étienne. They’re sort of halfway between a cluck
and a cough, there’s something going on with the tongue. Brilliant. Anyway,
given that she didn’t have a full-fledged tantrum at my quip I guessed that
she’d heard it before.
I knew that she was definitely waiting for me to show her
something. Some aspect of witchcraft that she hadn’t seen before. After I spent
the morning reading my book I got up to take a piss and saw her watching me
leave the room. I swept my dressing gown around me ceremoniously and asked her
what she’d learned.
“I’m learning that you don’t do anything,” she replied.
I was disappointed. She was still far too diplomatic. I
wanted her to lose her temper, call me a fat layabout, swear or something. But
no. I made the curtains open with a twitch of my finger just to spite her. She
gave me a tiny little sneer that disappeared before I could point it out.
I tell you this because I’m trying to paint a picture of the
sort of domestic situation that we’ve been sharing. This one example is typical
of the things that have happened over the past few days. I’ve seen her writing
things in what looks like a diary so I know she’s taking something down. Maybe
it’s just a list of the things I’ve done to upset her. Or maybe it’s something
to send to you. Is she in contact with you as well? I’ll ask her. I wonder if
she’d tell me.
Anyway, the incident. So last night I woke up at about three
in the morning. I heard a rattle, the noise that I’ve come to know as coming
from a lock being convinced to open. As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m very
familiar with people trying to break into my house to prove that they’re not
scared of witches, and then having to kill them horribly to teach the neighbourhood
a lesson. Naturally, I assumed that tonight was no different, and got up with
the intention of removing the skeleton of whomever the intruder through their
mouth piece by piece.
But as I left my room and made my way downstairs it became
clear that nobody was there. I couldn’t hear the terrified whispers of young
people going outside their comfort zone, nor could I smell that unmistakable
scent of young fear. Whoever had broken into my house had made their way back
out again. They had also left the back door open. I tried hard to get a read on
whoever it was but there was nobody in the vicinity. Whoever it was hadn’t just
left, they’d left quickly. Quicker than a gang of children could have.
A gasp from the kitchen doorway alerted me to the fact that
Jo was in the room with me. While her reaction time might have been slower than
mine, I was quite impressed that she’d manage to hear the sound of somebody
breaking in from the attic. That hearing might come in handy at some point. She
was standing in her fluffy blue dressing gown and bare feet, staring open-mouthed
at the open door. I could see that she was pretty shaken up so I decided to do
the decent thing and not make her more scared.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s just kids. I always tell people
I’m a witch when I first move in and someone always has to prove that they’re
not scared of me. It normally means that I have a mess to clear up. But whoever
it has run off. So don’t worry about it.”
But she didn’t look at all comforted. She barely looked as
though she’d heard me at all. She walked over to me and pointed to the kitchen
counter. I turned to where she was looking and saw…
And this is the bit that spooked me a little bit, Émilie. I’ve
seen a lot. But there’s nothing that really prepares you for the sight of a
teenaged boy’s face on a side-plate on your kitchen counter at 3am. There was
no blood. Just a neatly peeled face sitting there on the plate. The boy was
clearly in his teens from the acne and the attempt at a goatee. It was all very
cleanly done; the cuts around the eyes and hairline were exceptional. I picked
it up, wrapped it in a dirty tea towel and threw it into the living room
fireplace. It didn’t take long to burn up. Jo watched me do this without saying
a word. When it was gone she went back upstairs. Her light didn’t go off all
night.
I’ve had a bit of a think and I realised that there was something
strange about this, you know, beyond the face. Jo didn’t say anything. She didn’t
say “What the fuck is that?” She didn’t say “Why is there a boy’s face in our
kitchen?” She just pointed it out to me. So I think she knows something about
this. When she comes out of her room we’re going to have a good little talk
about it but for now I just wanted to let you know.
So if you do decide that there’s something I need to know, I’d
be grateful if you could tell me exactly what. Before whatever it is decides to
bring us any more pubescent body parts.
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I hope that you enjoyed this, and are enjoying this series so far. Please let me know what you think and keep your eyes open for part four!
