Dark Solstice, page 15
“Fuck you, you cunt!” I shout, pleased that I’d managed to take the cunt down.
“Nice one, Fergie!” Jamesy says as he runs up beside me.
“Aye, he won’t be down for too long. He’s probably up again, now. Sure, the cunt’s already dead.”
“So fuck. Least he knows now not to fuck with us—aw, fuck. Spoke too soon.”
Daddy is coming up the stairs. He pauses only to shoulder the shotgun and fire at us. When I hear Jamesy scream, I know he’s been hit. “Jamesy!”
“I’m hit!” he shouts, sounding like he’s about to cry.
Just before another shot goes off, I dive on Jamesy and the two of us hit the deck, Jamesy crying out in pain as he goes down.
“Fuck this shite!” I say as I stand up to see where Fuckface is. He’s coming up the rest of the stairs, reloading the shotgun, and the wee girl is beside him now, having seemingly appeared from fucking nowhere.
“Kill them, daddy!” the wee bitch is saying. “They killed my Buggles! Kill them!”
Fuck you, you wee cunt ye…
“Jamesy! Get the fuck up, now!”
“My arm!” he moans as he gets himself up.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” I tell him. “Now quit moaning and come on!”
Grabbing Jamesy by his good arm, I drag him down the next hallway, realising even as I do that we’re trapping ourselves. Just like the other hallway, all the doors have disappeared, which means there’s nowhere to go.
“What now?” Jamesy says as I stand looking around frantically.
“I don’t fucking know,” I say.
“Ferfrigsake…”
Daddy and his wee girl are on the landing, coming towards us. “You are trapped now,” he says, a twisted smile on his face. “There’s nowhere to run. Soon, the master will have your souls and I will be rewarded with my freedom.”
“What do you mean, Daddy?” the wee girl asks.
“Yeah, Daddy,” I say, seeing an opportunity. “What do you mean?”
“Are you leaving us, Daddy?” the wee girl says, her face darkening more by the second. “You trapped us here and now you are going to leave us?”
“Shut up, you little bitch!” Daddy says as he pushes fresh shells into the shotgun. “It’s none of your concern! Go and be with your mother and leave me to work!”
“But Daddy—”
“I said go!”
Jesus, what a cunt.
The little girl disappears, though I wish she hadn’t this time, for now it’s just us and Big Daddy, the Satanic murdering bastard.
“Why’d you kill them all in the first place?” I ask him, hoping to stall him, though fuck knows why, as I have no plan.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says, the shotgun now tucked under his arm as he points it at me.
“Know what I think? I think you’re just a fucking psycho who killed his whole family and then himself.”
“You have no idea what you are talking about!”
“Who’s your master, then?”
“You will know the Master very soon,” he says as he draws nearer. “You will look upon his face as he devours your soul.”
“Is that right? So he’s a demon or something, is he?”
“You might call him that.”
“Jesus,” I say, shaking my head. “I haven’t half got my fucking eyes opened the last two days, I tell you. Fucking ghosts and witches, and now demons as well? So you sacrificed your whole family to a demon? You are one crazy cunt, you know that?”
Daddy gives me a ghastly smile. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“No, I don’t,” I say. “But I’m sure your wife does. Isn’t that right, love?”
Daddy’s smile falters as he turns and looks behind him to see his wife standing there in a long white nightie, only the nightie is so stained with blood you can barely see any white.
“Enough of this, Gerald,” the wife says, who, if it wasn’t for the multiple stab wounds all over her, would probably be a fine-looking hen, like. “Let them both go at once!”
“Stay out of this, Susan,” Gerald says. “I’m not letting you ruin my chance at finally becoming like the Master.”
“Fuck you, and fuck your master!” Susan screams suddenly before launching herself at her husband, and I see now she has a knife in her hand, which she uses to stab the fuck out of her husband, cunt that he is, like. Aul Gerald screams as the knife goes into him as if he can actually feel pain, and he drops the shotgun on the floor. Then the two kids appear, both holding knives as well, and they get to work on stabbing their daddy in as vicious a manner as I’ve ever seen.
“Holy fuck!” Jamesy says, sickened by what’s happening.
“Let’s go!” I say urgently. “Come on!”
The two of us leg it, sprinting past the vicious scene of horror in the hallway, me wondering why there’s blood jetting out of Daddy everywhere if he’s only a ghost, deciding after a second that I don’t give a fuck. I only want out of this fucking house before Meabh gets back.
Once we reach the landing, we race down the stairs into the entrance hallway and bolt for the front door, knowing Betsy is only parked outside, waiting to take us away from all this madness.
But as I open the front door, a cry of shocked surprise leaves me, and I jump back because there’s someone standing outside on the front step.
“Hello, boys,” a woman who has to be Meabh says. “Didn’t your mothers ever teach you not to enter other people’s houses uninvited?”
16
For what seems like an age, I’m frozen to the spot, Jamesy practically clinging to me as I stare at the witch standing in the doorway. Despite the fear coursing through me, the only thing I seem to be able to focus on is the witch’s beauty. Malachy wasn’t lying when he said Meabh was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. I’ve never seen beauty like it, not in movies, not in magazines, not even in them expensively produced porn movies made by Private (and the girls in those movies are something else, let me tell you).
She’s dressed kind of how I imagined her to be dressed, all in black like a real witch, unlike Aoife’s spidey outfit. Her hair is as black as night too, with a long streak of grey running down one side, her long locks spilling down over milky white shoulders and sumptuous full breasts. As far as her face goes, she looks to be in her mid-thirties, her features well-defined but not too sharp or too soft either, just fucking perfection, especially with that sexy mouth and those turquoise eyes that remind me of the colour of the sea that time I went on holiday to Ibiza with my mates. For someone who’s four centuries old, she looks fucking amazing, and I’m wondering if she maybe uses some kind of spell to keep herself looking so young.
For all my fear, I just can’t stop looking at her.
“I see you’ve run into my security system,” Meabh says in a voice like silk, her accent mostly flat southern, but with hints of other accents mixed in, hinting at her worldly travels. “They’re a fearsome lot, aren’t they? Frankly, I’m surprised you are both still alive…Fergal.” I draw back slightly when she says my name, and then she looks at Jamesy and says, “And James.”
“We’re sorry!” Jamesy suddenly blurts out. “We didn’t mean to—”
Meabh waves her hand slightly and Jamesy shuts up immediately, and I can’t help thinking to myself, Now that’s a trick I wouldn’t mind learning. “No need to explain,” she says as she steps inside and closes the door behind her. “You are only here for the money, aren’t you? Malachy sent you, didn’t he? He seems to have some absurd notion that he will somehow kill me by using a Death Spell.” She laughs like the idea is totally ridiculous. “Foolish man.”
“How’d…how’d you—” I stammer.
“Please, darling,” Meabh says, smiling down at me now, because she’s quite tall. Taller than me, anyway. “You really think I don’t know what’s going on? I’m a witch. I see everything. Tell me, did you find any of my pubic hair?”
I shake my head as I go into full denial mode. “No.”
“Are you sure?” she says, stepping forward, coming uncomfortably close to me, her beauty and charisma overwhelming, her scent so intoxicating it makes me dizzy. “I think you lie, Fergal Thompson.”
All I can do is shake my head. “I—I—”
Meabh laughs suddenly, like she’s just playing with me. “I don’t care if you have my pubic hair or not. It won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?” I all but whisper.
“Because,” she says, stroking under my chin with one of her long fingers, “it’s not enough. Not even with Aoife’s help.”
“Aoife?”
“You think I didn’t know this is why she asked to see me, so you two could break into my house?”
“I—we—”
“It’s okay, Fergal. You don’t have to explain. I’ve already sorted things out with Aoife.”
“Sorted things out?”
Meabh smiles, and as she does, I realise we don’t stand a chance against her, no matter what we do. “Aoife has agreed to join my coven at long last. She is very powerful for one so young. She’ll be a welcome addition to the ranks, especially since her mother is already with me.”
I shake my head in confusion. “But Aoife said—”
“I know what she said. But Aoife isn’t stupid. What’s happening tonight is inevitable, and she knows she can’t stop it.”
“But—but she told us you were coming home—”
“Did she? Well, she probably just wanted to give you a chance to get out before I arrived, a chance you seem to have squandered.”
“W-what are you going to do to us?” Jamesy says like a frightened little school boy as he continues to cling to me.
“Let’s see now,” Meabh says staring at us, a wicked glint now in her eyes. “I did warn you at the hospital that night, didn’t I? I warned you to stay out of my business, and yet here you are, inside my house, stealing from me. Do you know what I’ve done to thieves in the past?”
Both Jamesy and I shake our heads.
“I remember one man a long time ago who tried to do what you two are doing now,” she says. “He tried to get his hands on strands of my hair for use in a spell that he planned on using against me. So you know what I did after I caught him? I put him in my dungeon and forced him to stay awake for nearly a month, doing all sorts of unpleasant things to him during that time, which included allowing tiny worms with barbed skin to crawl inside of him via his urethra, anus and eyeballs. By the time I was done with him, his body was crawling with these tiny barbed worms that cut him on the inside every time they moved. I can still hear his screams now.” She pauses and looks up as if remembering fondly. “And then when the screaming wouldn’t stop, I had the man crucified. Do you know what happens when you get crucified, Fergal?”
I shake my head no, terrified of this woman now.
“Well,” she says, a slight smile on her face as her eyes appear to darken. “What happens is, your hands and feet get nailed to a wooden cross, just like Jesus supposedly was. The crucified person will then try to support their weight on their injured hands and feet, but eventually their strength gives out, which in the case of our thief, didn’t take very long. When this happens, the arms are pulled from their sockets and the chest hangs down, making it impossible to fully exhale. Carbon dioxide levels in the body will increase until you eventually suffocate.” Meabh’s eyes go from me to Jamesy, who I can feel shaking beside me. “It took our thief two full days to finally die. Can you imagine that, Fergal, hanging there as you die slowly like that? I can only imagine how horrible it would be.”
“We’re sorry…” Jamesy squeaks, in tears now. “We’re sorry, so we are…”
“I hope you are sorry, James,” Meabh says. “I hope you both are. For if I see you around here again, you will be very sorry indeed. Are we clear?”
“Y-yes,” I say.
Meabh smiles, her eyes lightening up again. “That’s good. Now, before you go—” In a flash, she slices my face with her fingernail, creating a long cut down my right cheek, before doing the same to Jamesy, who screams in shock when it happens. “When you look in the mirror from now on, you’ll be reminded of this little encounter of ours, and of the warning I gave you both.” Behind her, the front door swings open by itself. “Now go. I have much to do before tonight.”
Jamesy and me both continue to stand there for another few seconds, thinking Meabh might just be fucking with us until she stands aside and allows us to leave, which we of course do, moving past her slowly before running out of the house to the car parked outside.
Inside the car, Jamesy is a quivering wreck, tears running down his bloody face as he stares out at Meabh, who’s standing in the doorway of the house in all her terrible beauty.
My hand is shaking like fuck and my head is wrecked, but I manage to start up Betsy and reverse back on the gravel. As I change gears, I look out the side window at Meabh one final time to see she is smiling at me, and her smile chills me to the bone.
Not only that, I realise right then that nothing will ever kill this woman.
Especially not us.
17
It’s dark when we pull up outside the flat. Neither me nor Jamesy have spoken a single word since leaving the witch’s house. When we get inside the flat, Jamesy walks silently into the bedroom and closes the door behind him, leaving me standing in the living room wondering what to do with myself. After pacing around the room for a few minutes as I try to get my head in order, I go into the bathroom and check out my face in the small mirror there. The cut left by Meabh is about four inches long, running down most of my right cheek. The cut isn’t deep, but it’s deep enough to still be bleeding, and deep enough to leave a scar, which was Meabh’s intention of course.
“Frigsake,” I sigh as I stare at myself in the mirror, my eyes as haunted as I’d ever seen them. “My good looks are ruined now.”
Shaking my head, I go back into the living room and sit down on the sofa where I light a feg up and take out my phone, wanting to talk to that wee bitch Aoife. So much for her being on our side, eh?
“Alright, Fergie,” Aoife says when she answers my call, acting like everything is rosy in the garden when it clearly fucking isn’t. “What about you? Yiz made it outta Meabh’s house alright then?”
“Fuck you, you wee bitch!” I shout. “We barely made it out alive!”
“Why’s that then? Sure, I told you she was coming, didn’t I?”
“Aye, you did. And Meabh also told us that you’re on her side, now. I fucking trusted you! We nearly fucking died in that house! Jamesy got fucking shot!”
“Shot? By who?”
“A fucking cunt ghost!”
“Oh. The ghosts. Sorry about that.”
“Aye, I’m sure you fucking are.”
“Look,” she says. “Whatever Meabh told you is wrong. I’m not on her side, as you put it. I only told her that. I had to, otherwise it would’ve looked suspicious me calling her out like that.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” I shake my head in disgust. “You fucking lied to us, so you did.”
“And why would I lie, Fergie, hmm? If I was really working with Meabh, I wouldn’t’ve bothered telling you to go to her house, now would I? What would be the point?”
“How the fuck do I know? I’m past caring what you witches think or get up to. I just want all of yiz to stay the fuck away from us, you hear me? Bye, Aoife.”
“Wait, Fergie! Hold on a—”
I hang up on her and put the phone on the seat beside me while I smoke the rest of my feg. A few seconds later, the phone rings and its Aoife. Shaking my head, I let the phone ring until the voicemail kicks in. And then a minute later, I get a text from her:
The situation is not what you think, Fergie. I’m still on your side. Answer your phone so I can explain. Please.
The phone rings again a moment later. Sighing, I stare down at it, letting it ring for a bit as I decide whether to answer or not. “Fucksake,” I say, as I finally pick up the phone. “Aoife.”
“Fergie. You didn’t let me explain.”
“What is there to explain, Aoife? You fucked us, so you did.”
“Actually, I didn’t.”
“And how’s that?”
“Look, I only told Meabh I’d join her coven so she wouldn’t suspect what I was really up to.”
“And what are you up to, Aoife?”
“I’m still going to kill her.”
“How? Meabh said the spell was useless. She already knows about it.”
“Aye, I know. But she thinks the spell is from the book that your man Malachy got. That’s not the spell I plan on using.”
“That’s great,” I say as I realise something. “You mean we went to all that trouble to get that foetus for nothing?”
“Yes. We won’t need it.”
“And the pubes?”
“We’ll need the pubes.”
“So what spell are you going to use then?” I ask, as if I really give a shite, which I don’t.
“A spell from a book I have in my possession. A book that belonged to my auntie, one that Meabh doesn’t know about.”
“How do you know she doesn’t know? She seemed to know every fucking thing else.”
“I’ve kept the book cloaked, which means the likes of Meabh can’t see it even if she knew to look for it.”
“Look,” I tell her. “By the sounds of things, you already have this whole thing well in hand. I don’t think you need me or Jamesy’s help anymore. I have the pubes. I’ll give you them. After that, you’re on your own.”
“I’ll still need your help,” she says. “The spell needs three people, and once it’s done, there’s sure to be some fallout.”
“Fallout?”
“From Meabh’s coven. They’ll probably come after me.”
“Your ma, you mean?”
“Her and the others, yes.”
“And what the fuck do you expect us to do against a coven of witches? Throw a Bucky bottle at them?”
