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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Some curses grow stronger with time… People say that all Cornish inns are haunted, but the Waterwitch's history is particularly chilling. Built from the salvaged timber of a cursed ship, the guest house's dark secrets go further back than anyone can remember. Emma is permanently confined to a wheelchair after an accident at the Waterwitch which took place when she was ten. Seven years later, she decides to return to the place where the awful event occurred. But the ancient inn still has its ghosts, and one spirit is more vengeful than ever… A chilling new title in the Red Eye horror series from the author of Frozen Charlotte.
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Seitenzahl: 328
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For my aunts: Ruth Willrich and Tracy May
Contents
Chapter One
Emma
Here are the first three things I learned about being in a wheelchair:
1. You have to ask for help all the time.
2. You actually have to ask for help ALL the time.
3. After a little while, asking for help starts to feel like getting punched in the face.
After the accident, when I was ten, Mum and Dad moved us halfway across the country and refused to speak to Gran. I never blamed her for what happened, and the two of us exchanged letters a few times a year. Then, when I was seventeen, Gran wrote to say she was ill. Seriously ill, dying in fact, and living in a hospice. And she wanted to see me.
I asked Mum if we could go, but she and Gran had never been close, even before the accident. I told my parents that I wanted to see her, even if they didn’t – October half-term was about to start so I wouldn’t even miss any lessons at college.
“You can’t go by yourself, Emma,” Mum said.
“I’ve got the car,” I began. “I could—”
“Absolutely not! You passed your test five days ago!”
“Right, I passed it, I didn’t fail it!”
“You’re not doing a six-hour drive alone. You need to get used to the car first.”
“What’s the point of buying me a specially adapted car if I’m never going to be allowed to drive it?”
But it was no good. I could tell that nothing I said was going to get me anywhere. So I set my alarm for early the next morning when it was still dark outside. Bailey – my lifesaver of a German Shepherd – had been my disability assistance dog for six years, and helped me get washed and dressed like normal. Then he opened the door and carried my bag out to the car. I was terrified the entire time that my parents would hear us, or that some uncanny sixth sense of Mum’s would tip her off and she’d come running down the stairs in her pyjamas, flapping her arms and shouting. I wouldn’t put it past her to lie down on the road in front of my car like some kind of lunatic. She could be a bit deranged, sometimes, when it came to my safety.
But, with Bailey’s help, the whole thing went smoothly and, in no time at all, we were in the car. I buckled Bailey into his doggy safety belt in the passenger seat beside me, and then I was driving away with the biggest sense of achievement. We had done it, we had actually got away with it. I glanced over at Bailey and said, “Road trip time!”
He gazed back at me with his chocolate brown eyes and wagged his tail and I knew that he approved. Bailey approved of everything that I did. If I wanted to do something, he never questioned whether I could or should, he never tried to stop me or warn me – he just helped me do it. No fuss, no doubt, no problem.
Mum had tried to help me before Bailey came along and she never complained about it, not once, but you still feel guilty when you have to ask someone to help you a hundred times a day – whenever you drop something, or can’t reach a door, or need to tie your shoelaces, or can’t reach a counter in a shop, or can’t stand up without wobbling, or need something fetching from upstairs. Bailey knew the words for more than a hundred different objects and he just always seemed so happy whenever I asked him to fetch me something. He’d go running off to get it and then come bounding back to present it to me, tail wagging, brown eyes shining, as if we were playing some kind of game. As if I was the one doing him the favour.
As I drove down the slip road on to the motorway, I felt a brief flicker of doubt. I’d never even driven on a motorway before. What if Mum was right and I got lost or crashed the car? What if it was weird seeing Gran again after all these years? How could it possibly not be weird?
“Shit,” I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel.
Maybe this trip was a colossal mistake. Colossal mistakes were kind of my speciality, after all.
But then I felt the soft flick of a warm tongue on my wrist and turned my head to see Bailey looking at me again with that steady brown gaze, so full of trust and belief, as if it never occurred to him even for a moment that I was some helpless invalid who couldn’t do anything by themselves. In Bailey’s eyes, I was basically Superwoman.
I breathed out and relaxed my grip on the steering wheel. “You’re right,” I said. “We can do this.”
Chapter Two
Emma
After driving for about two hours, Bailey and I stopped for breakfast at a motorway service station.
My parents had been phoning me constantly as soon as they realized I wasn’t there. I knew they would be completely freaking out and when I finally answered the phone and told Mum what I was doing, she went mad and even threatened to follow me to Cornwall herself to drag me home.
“Mum, could you please just not make this harder than it already is? I am going to see Gran for half-term, and I’m sorry but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She sighed. “All right, Emma, if it really means that much to you. But you’re not going to stay at … at that place, are you?”
She couldn’t even bring herself to say the name.
“The Waterwitch?” I said. It occurred to me then that I hadn’t given much thought to where I was actually going to stay. “Um, I guess so. I mean, I won’t have to pay for a room there and it’s dog-friendly—”
“Stay somewhere else, Emma,” Mum said. “Anywhere else. That inn has been nothing but bad luck for our family. Don’t worry about the cost – just use that credit card we got you.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her about it. Going back to the Waterwitch wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do after what had happened there last time, and if Mum and Dad wanted to stump up the cash for me to stay somewhere else, then that was fine by me.
“OK, Mum, I will. Thanks. Listen, I have to go – we’ve got a long way to drive still.”
After hanging up, Bailey and I got out of the car and went into the services. Even though he had his green assistance dog jacket on, people would sometimes challenge me about taking him into buildings, but no one did today, and I enjoyed my breakfast in peace.
As we were leaving, a couple of people stopped and asked if they could stroke Bailey, and he looked pleased with himself as they ran their hands down his glossy coat. Bailey adored being the centre of attention. One of the best things about having him with me was that I stopped being the freak in the wheelchair and became instead the girl with the really cool dog.
We continued on our way, stopping again for lunch at another service station. Bailey gave a yelp as he jumped out of the car. It was only a small one, but still, the sound unsettled me. He’d been two years old when he’d come to us so he was eight now, which was getting on a bit for a German Shepherd. I’d noticed him moving stiffly recently and when Mum and I took him to the vet a month ago, she’d said that he was starting to get arthritic. She’d even suggested that it might be time to start thinking about retiring Bailey and getting a new assistance dog. As if we would ever consider packing him off to the organization who had provided him, like some piece of discarded luggage.
“Absolutely not,” I’d said. “I don’t want another assistance dog; I want Bailey.”
“It’s just that he might not be able to do all the things you need him to do soon,” the vet said.
“I don’t need him to do anything other than be my friend. I don’t care if he can’t help me any more. I’ll get by – I did before. Bailey is part of our family. I won’t let him be sent away. He’d think we’d abandoned him.”
There was no denying that he was getting older, though. It was just one of those cold little facts that could keep you awake in the middle of the night.
We were making good time until we got stuck in the tailback from an accident further along the motorway. We ended up sitting in it for hours and it was late by the time I turned up at the hospice where Gran was living. The receptionist got a bit snooty with me about visiting hours being almost over but I said, “Almost over isn’t over, is it? I promise I won’t stay long. I just want to let her know that I’m here. Please, I’ve come a really long way.”
She looked at Bailey and I could practically feel her trying to decide whether to kick up a fuss or not. Eventually, she said, “The dog is toilet-trained, right?”
I stared at her. “Are you kidding? He’s a qualified disability assistance dog. He probably has a larger vocabulary than you do.”
Way to go, Emma, I thought. Piss off the person in charge. That’ll really help the situation.
The woman gave me a dirty look. Nobody ever expects lip from a person in a wheelchair.
“Could you give me five minutes?” I asked. “Just to say hello?”
Finally the receptionist called someone to take me to Gran. It felt so weird following her down the sterile halls, with their horrible smell of disinfectant mixed with pee and bleach and other things I couldn’t identify and didn’t really want to think about too much. I just couldn’t imagine Gran in a place like this. In my head she was still at the Waterwitch, with its cosy log fires and creaking wooden floors and flickering candles.
We went into a communal living room, where several residents were sitting around in plastic armchairs, watching TV or reading a paper. I didn’t recognize Gran at first and, to my shame, the nurse had to point her out to me.
She wasn’t the woman I remembered. This was an old, old lady, with bony wrists and an almost skeletal frame. She was sitting at a table with a book in her hand, only she wasn’t looking at the book but just staring straight ahead in this listless kind of way that made my stomach clench up in knots.
“Visiting hours are almost over—” the nurse at my side started to say.
“Yes, yes,” I waved her into silence. “God, it’s like being in prison or something.”
Having come all this way, I now didn’t know quite what to say or do, and nerves were making me snappy. Suddenly, I felt totally and completely out of my depth. Bailey must have sensed it because he pressed his warm, wet nose into the palm of my hand.
“OK, OK,” I said. I buried my fingers in the soft fur at the ruff of his neck for a moment, took a deep breath and then wheeled myself over to where Gran was sitting, my stomach filled with butterflies.
I cleared my throat and said, “Um, hello?”
Gran looked at me with a total lack of recognition. And why shouldn’t she? I’d been ten years old the last time she’d seen me. Seven years was a long time. For a gut-wrenching moment, I actually thought I might have to explain who I was.
But then she noticed the wheelchair and I guess it was that she recognized first. She let out this noise somewhere between a shout and a sob. “Oh! Oh, Emma, you came! You came!”
All at once, there were tears in her eyes and she was struggling up out of her armchair and then awkwardly leaning down to wrap her frail arms around me. God, I hated that I couldn’t stand up to hug her back – not without running the risk of falling straight back down on my bum. I was afraid to squeeze her tight like I used to, so I just put my arms around her very gently. I tried to apologize for the number of years that had gone by, while she kept thanking me over and over again for coming, as if I had done something incredible, just by showing up.
Finally, Gran pulled back, and said, “How grown-up you are, Emma! And beautiful, too. I always knew you’d be beautiful.”
I flushed, and tried not to squirm with embarrassment. I wasn’t beautiful. My mid-length brown hair, green eyes and average size were the definition of ordinary. Gran was just trying to compensate for the wheelchair – the great big metal elephant in the room, the monster in my head, the constant reminder of all that had gone wrong and been broken in our family.
“Where’s your mother?” Gran asked. “Just parking the car?”
The hope on her face was painful as she gazed around, looking for someone who was never coming. I hadn’t got round to telling her I’d passed my driving test yet and I guess it never occurred to her that I could get here by myself.
“Gran, she … she didn’t come,” I said, hating Mum in that moment for refusing even to consider it, and hating myself for not making her come somehow. “It’s just me.”
Gran tried to seem like she didn’t mind but I knew that she did, that she minded more than she could say. “Well,” she said, sitting back down. “Well. And this must be Bailey?”
She reached out to stroke him and I couldn’t stop staring at how gnarled her hands were. The skin covering them was paper-thin.
“He can load and unload the dishwasher,” I said, grateful for the fact that Bailey was there because it was easier for us to talk about him than pretty much anything else. “Only Mum won’t let him. She says it’s unhygienic.”
“Can he really? How marvellous,” Gran said, rubbing her hand under his chin while Bailey did his best to lick her.
“I don’t think they’ll let me stay long,” I said. “But I’ll come back as soon as I can tomorrow.”
“Where are you sleeping tonight?” Gran asked.
“I don’t know yet.” I glanced at my watch. “I thought I’d have time to sort that out when I arrived, but it took me longer to get here than I thought.”
“I hope you weren’t thinking of staying at the Waterwitch,” Gran said. “Because you can’t. I closed it a couple of months ago. It’s going to be put up for sale. And I don’t want you going there, Emma.”
Something about Gran’s tone made me curious. “Why not?” I asked.
To my surprise, she reached out and wrapped her bony fingers tightly around my wrist. “The Waterwitch is not a suitable place for you,” she said. “It’s not a suitable place for any person.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.
It was an old building and I thought Gran would say that there was rot, or damp, or perhaps a particularly vicious mouse problem.
Instead, she looked right at me and said, “The Waterwitch is haunted.”
Chapter Three
Emma
My heart sank as I stared at Gran. I could see it there in her eyes: fear. Real-life, actual fear. She honestly believed what she was saying. I could feel her fingers around my wrist trembling slightly. Perhaps her mind had started to wander. She was extremely old now, after all, and ill as well. I was such an idiot for expecting her to still be the same.
“But, Gran,” I said gently, “you always used to say that Cornish innkeepers told ghost stories just to drum up business.”
“Most of them probably do,” Gran replied. “Maybe all of them. I’m not so sure any more. But I do know that the Waterwitch is different. There’s a … a presence there, some malicious presence. Oh, I know how that sounds, I know. But if you’d seen what I’ve seen over the last few months, Emma, you wouldn’t doubt it for a moment.”
“Well, what have you seen?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter now,” Gran said, waving my question away. “None of that matters any more. Just promise me you won’t set foot in the Waterwitch.”
I could see that she was getting upset so I said, “All right, Gran, fine. I promise. Look, I wasn’t planning on staying there anyway. Do you know of anywhere nearby that takes dogs?”
“The Seagull will have rooms,” Gran replied. “And it takes pets. It’s opposite the Waterwitch – do you remember? You’ll be OK there.”
Just then the nurse came over, saying that visiting time was over and we would have to go.
“Emma, would you do me a favour?” Gran said, as I was about to leave.
“Of course – what is it?”
“Would you drop the keys to the Waterwitch off at the estate agent? It’s the one in the high street. I promised I’d post them but, as you’re here, perhaps you wouldn’t mind? The spare got lost a while ago so we don’t want anything happening to this set.”
I said I’d be happy to and then waited as Gran shuffled to her room to fetch them. She returned a few minutes later and pressed a ring of keys into my hand. There was one key in particular that stood out from the rest. It was a big black iron thing, cold and heavy in my hand. There was a silver witch key ring attached to it – a proper old hag, with a pointy hat, riding a broomstick. She had warts and everything.
“Just hand the whole lot over,” Gran told me. “Some of the smaller keys open other doors inside.”
I promised to do as she’d asked and to come back and visit the next day. We said goodbye and then Bailey and I made our way back down the depressing corridor and out into the welcome relief of the cool, fresh air. I wheeled my chair across the car park, Bailey trotting along at my side, and in less than ten minutes, we were driving over the bridge that spanned the river and split the town into East and West Looe. Even in the dark I could see the little boats moored on the water, bobbing gently. There seemed to be large seagulls everywhere I looked, staring at us out of the gloom.
I drove slowly through a narrow street on the edge of the water, behind the shops, where the fish market was. There were even more seagulls there, pecking between the cobbles in search of fish guts and scraps. The shutters of the market were pulled down but that didn’t stop the entire street from reeking of fish – I could smell it even from inside the car.
By the time we reached the quayside the smell had been replaced with salted air, seaweed and fresh paint. Strings of white lights reflected off the dark water and the fishing boats moored there. They bumped against their wooden posts as we drove past, in rhythm with the lapping of the water. I saw hand-painted signs advertising boat trips and a ferry service that would take you across to the other side of the river for only a few pence. When I was a kid I used to do that all the time with my best friend, Jem Penhale. We’d go across to visit our favourite sweet shop and spend the last of our pocket money. Or, at least, I would spend my pocket money. Jem’s dad didn’t give him pocket money so I would buy sweets for both of us and he would pay me back by finding pink shells along the beach afterwards.
It was all so familiar. I had expected it to be different somehow. Even Banjo Pier looked just the same, stretching out into the dark ocean. Jem and I had spent hours there on sunny summer days, watching the sea and the ships and the swooping seagulls. I hoped that I wouldn’t see him while I was here. It would just be so awkward. We’d been best friends once, but I’d have no idea what to say to him now. After my accident, Jem had tried to visit me in hospital, but I didn’t want to see anyone then, not even Jem, so I’d told Mum to send him away. When she came back into my hospital room she’d pressed a small bronze charm into my hand and said, “Jem asked me to give you this.”
It was Joan the Wad, the Queen of the Piskies. Legend had it that she led travellers astray on the Cornish moors, but if you kept a good luck charm of her about your person then she would light your way home instead.
Good fortune will nod if you carry upon you Joan the Wad.
I recognized the charm because I had bought it myself, a couple of years before, at the Joan the Wad and Piskey Shop in Polperro, as a gift for Jem after his mother died.
“He said to say that you need her more now,” Mum said, as I stared down at the tiny bronze figure.
I put the charm on a silver chain to wear as a necklace and had worn it every day since, like some kind of talisman. I could feel the weight of it now, reassuring beneath my shirt. We moved soon after that and I never saw Jem again. I thought about writing to him when I first wrote to Gran but what would I say? And now, seven years had gone by and we didn’t know each other any more.
My stomach clenched in a familiar ache of longing for a life that could never be again so I tried to think about something else, anything else really, and, in another couple of minutes, my car was parked on the cobbles outside the Seagull. I looked across the road at the Waterwitch. The old building was all dark slate and stone, thick bottle-glass windows and leaning, crooked angles. I stared up at the façade and it seemed unnatural to see it without wood smoke curling from the chimneys and orange lights glowing in the windows. Hunched there in the gloom it looked like a dead old shell of a thing.
The sign hung out over the pavement, creaking on rusty hinges in the breeze. I’d forgotten that sign but it came back to me now. There was a picture of the Waterwitch ship after it had sunk. You could tell it was a sunken boat because of the barnacles clinging to the prow, the shredded sails, and the algae covering the portholes and coating the anchor. It was a sad, ruined sight.
I put down the ramp and wheeled out my chair. Bailey hopped out of the car and took my bag from the boot, all set to carry it like he’d been trained to, but I could still hear that yelp replaying in my head from earlier so I took the bag from him and set it on my lap instead.
“Thanks, Bailey,” I said, patting his head. “But I’ll carry it this time.”
We went into the Seagull and I checked in. Log fires made it cheerful and homely, and I was soon settled in a pleasant ground-floor room that looked out on to the street and the Waterwitch opposite. Even though it held awful memories for me as well as good ones, I was still sorry to see the Waterwitch all shut up and empty like that. I couldn’t believe Gran actually thought it was haunted. She’d always been so dismissive of that kind of thing before, and had scorned those Cornish pubs that banged on about their supposed ghosts – like the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor, or the Dolphin Tavern at Penzance, or the Crumplehorn Inn at Polperro.
I gave Bailey his dinner, ate the sandwich that had been sent to my room and then called home to let my parents know I’d arrived and had somewhere to stay. Once I hung up, Bailey helped me to change into my pyjamas, and I was in bed shortly after 9 p.m. – which was pretty early for me, but all the driving and worrying and remembering had thoroughly worn me out. I fell asleep almost at once and didn’t wake up until just gone midnight when I had to get up to go to the loo.
That’s a two-minute job for most people. Not so for me. Even with Bailey’s help it took forever. As soon as I switched on the lamp, Bailey was there in front of me, my walking stick in his mouth. I took it from him and, as I struggled to my feet, he moved around to put his large body behind me, helping to steady me. Then began the slow process of shuffling towards the bathroom.
Finally, I got there, used the loo and then began the journey back to my bed. I stopped by the window to catch my breath for a moment, and, as I stood there, preparing to take my next step, I happened to glance at the Waterwitch across the dark street. The black windows were like eyes staring back at me, and I could see the sign still swaying gently back and forth in the soft light from a nearby lamp post. And then, all of a sudden, I saw it – the smallest flicker of light from one of the first floor windows, like the glow from the flame of a candle. It wasn’t stationary, but moving, as if someone was holding the candle and walking across the room with it.
In a matter of seconds, the light passed out of sight and, although I watched for several minutes, it didn’t reappear in any of the other windows. I blinked and rubbed at my eyes. Gran had said that the Waterwitch was closed, hadn’t she? Perhaps someone had broken in and was squatting there?
I turned away from the window, told myself I’d think about it in the morning, and continued on back to bed. My back throbbed as if I’d just run a marathon – with a gigantic cow strapped to my back. I reached over for the painkillers I always kept within reach and knocked back a couple. It would be a little while before they took effect, though, and I was tense as I lay there, waiting for it to ease.
Bailey always knew when I was in pain and hopped on to the bed beside me to curl up against my back. The heat from his body helped ease the ache a little and I knew I’d have a much better chance of getting back to sleep with Bailey snuggled up beside me.
“It doesn’t hurt,” I told myself firmly. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”
Chapter Four
Emma
I got up early the next morning and went through my usual routine with Bailey. He fetched my clothes and helped me get dressed and into the wheelchair, and then we made our way to the restaurant.
Visiting hours at Gran’s hospice didn’t start till the afternoon, meaning I had a bit of time to kill after breakfast. I was very aware of the chunky weight of the Waterwitch keys in my bag. Perhaps I’d imagined that light last night, or it had just been a street lamp reflecting in the thick glass, but if there was someone squatting in the Waterwitch then Gran would have to know. I decided to go over the road and check it out, only feeling a twinge of guilt about breaking my promise to her because, really, the whole thing was daft.
I put on my coat and helped Bailey into his jacket, then we headed out and across the cobbled street to the Waterwitch. The lock clicked easily and I told Bailey to open the door as I dropped the keys back in my bag.
Only Bailey didn’t move. I turned in surprise and saw that he was standing on the pavement, his ears pricked up, just staring at the door.
“Bailey,” I said again. “Open.”
I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me the first time, but he ignored the second command, too. Bailey was such a well-trained, obedient dog. He never ignored me like this. And then, to my complete astonishment, he growled – a deep, rumbling growl right at the back of his throat. His lips pulled back, exposing his long white canines.
“Hey!” I said sharply. “Bailey, no!”
He stopped straight away and had the grace to look a little ashamed of himself. Then he decided to obey me after all and pushed the door open with his front legs. But his behaviour had made me uneasy. I’d never seen him act like that and the thought flashed across my mind that perhaps I should lock the place back up and hand the keys over to the estate agent like I’d promised. They could check for squatters themselves. Now that I was right here on the doorstep, though, I felt a strong urge to see the inn again for myself. Maybe it was nostalgia for the past, maybe it was the morbid desire to poke at an old wound but, either way, surely it couldn’t hurt to just have a quick look around?
“Good boy,” I said to Bailey, scratching him behind the ear as I wheeled myself over the threshold. The main door led straight into the restaurant and, for just a moment, I saw people sitting at the tables, all looking at me, all waiting for me to say something. Then the illusion was gone and I was looking at a dark, empty restaurant. Just an ordinary room filled with the chilly bareness of a place that had been left shut up for too long.
Behind me, Bailey whined and I twisted around to see that he was standing in the doorway, staring at me, an uncertain look in his intelligent brown eyes.
“Come on, silly.” I clicked my fingers. “We haven’t got all day.”
He hesitated a moment but then he walked through – or slunk through, anyway, with his tail between his legs – and nosed the door closed behind him. The restaurant wasn’t a sunny room, even during the day. The low ceiling and the dark wood panelling made it a dim space, but I could see that it looked just as I remembered, and everything had been left as it was with even the tables neatly covered in their white tablecloths. There was no mess or litter, no sign of any squatters.
The sloping boards creaked as I wheeled over to the cold fireplace. A huge jar of fish hooks stood on the mantelpiece – gleaming, monstrous things with sharp, cruel barbs. Looking at them was like looking at a jar full of shark’s teeth. The two Cornish luck stones were still there, set into the wall beside the hearth, and I ran my fingers over them lightly, just like I used to when I was a kid.
A model of the Waterwitch ship sat next to the fish hooks, trapped inside its dusty glass bottle, and it seemed like no time at all had passed since I’d stood here with Gran as she told me the story of the ghost ship.
There were old placards hung on the wall, explaining the history, and I scanned over them to remind myself. The Waterwitch had been built at the Royal Dockyard at Deptford in 1577 by a company owned by a wealthy Cornish gentleman from Looe named Christian Slade. When I was a kid there’d been a reproduced painting of him in the restaurant but it wasn’t there any more. It must have been taken away fairly recently, though, because I could see a slightly less faded patch on the wall, marking the place where it had been. I wondered what had happened to it.
I turned my attention back to the placards and read that the Waterwitch, once finished, had been a 140-foot long, three-masted, 400-ton-galleon. Things started to go wrong before it even left the docks, starting with Christian Slade himself. Shortly before work began on the ship, Christian had accused a village woman of witchcraft and she had been put to death. Because of this, he was fearfully paranoid about being cursed or ill-wished, and had given orders for the ship to have a witch bottle built into the prow for protection. I couldn’t help shuddering when I read this part – I already knew all about Christian Slade and his witch bottle.
“It’s a type of concealed charm,” Gran had told me when I asked about it all those years ago. “To provide protection against witches. People used to hide them under the floorboards or behind the fireplace. If the bottle was ever found or broken then they thought they’d have no protection against the witch who’d cursed them.”
She went on to tell me about how Christian Slade had visited the dockyard to inspect the work being done on the ship and was furious to discover that the witch bottle hadn’t been put on board yet. And, even worse, the ship had incorrectly been named the Waterwitch. No one would admit to having painted the name on the prow but Christian believed someone had done it to mock his fear of witches, and threatened to have all the workers flogged. He became inexplicably enraged when he saw the ship’s figurehead and was in the middle of a heated argument with the overseer about it when a huge wooden beam that was being moved fell from its ropes and landed right on top of him, crushing his chest. His lungs collapsed, his ribs were broken and one of them pierced straight through his heart. It took ten men to lift the beam off him, and, by that time, Christian had suffered an agonizing death right there on deck.
Gran told me that everyone got all worked up about the Waterwitch after that because, in the sixteenth century, it was considered really unlucky for a man to die on a ship before it had even left port. I looked at the final placard and read that, after a few years of troublesome voyages, the Waterwitchset out on its last-ever journey and promptly vanished. Everyone assumed it must have sunk, or been attacked by pirates, but, two years later, it was discovered by a fishing boat, drifting aimlessly in the mist off the south-east coast of Cornwall with not a soul on board. Every single one of the two-hundred-and-sixty-man crew had simply disappeared without a trace. There was no sign of a disturbance or fight, and the lifeboats were all accounted for.
After discovering the Waterwitch they attempted to tow it back to harbour but it sank in the storm that followed. Shortly after that, the wood was salvaged from the seabed and used to construct the Waterwitch Inn. I remembered Gran telling me that that was how the guest house had got its name – and the reason why there were so many paintings and models of the ship around.
The timber had legally belonged to one of Christian Slade’s relatives and the inn had stayed in the same family for generations, going right down to Jem’s mother. But then they fell on hard times and Jem’s parents sold the place to Gran shortly before my accident. I glanced back at the faded rectangle on the wall, where the painting of Christian Slade used to be, and remembered how Jem had always jokingly referred to it as “Grandpa’s gloomy old portrait”.
There were lots of paintings of the Waterwitch ship still displayed on the walls and it looked just like one of those galleons you saw on old-fashioned maps. The most impressive painting of all was a gigantic oil one that hung over the fireplace. When I was a kid I had always been a little afraid of it.
The ship was depicted in the middle of a stormy sea, the silvery light of the moon shining white on the black foaming water that churned all around. The figurehead was a woman with a white dress and long black hair. At first glance, she seemed beautiful, but when you looked closer there was something almost a bit mad about her expression. Her eyes were too big and vacant, and they were set just a little too far apart on her face. And her lips were drawn back in a way that made it hard to tell whether she was smiling or grimacing – almost as if she could feel the freezing foam and salted sea spray that kept slamming into her wooden body over and over again.
The ship was poised right at the crest of a monstrous wave that had just reached its zenith and looked like it was about to come crashing back down with a vengeance. You could almost hear the shattering of splintered wood, and the ripping of great sails torn from groaning masts.
I was so focused on the ship itself that I didn’t notice the birds at first but I remembered them as soon as I saw them again. They were flying all around, flitting like bats between the sails and the rigging and the water. They were entirely black – except for one white spot, just above the tail.
Even now that I was older, I still felt there was something odd about that painting. I stared up at it for quite a long time, trying to work out what it was about those glistening dark oil strokes that bothered me, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I turned away and looked at the sea of tables, remembering how I used to play hide-and-seek in the restaurant with Jem and his sister, Shell. With all its nooks and crannies, the Waterwitch had always been a great place for hide-and-seek but the thought of those games now made regret twist unbearably in my stomach.
