Once again, Bee Yourself, thanks for reading and your lovely reviews. :)
***chapter 7**
****A Deal***
"Dani!" Kirsty's initial delight when she opened the door to see her older sister quickly turned to fear and impulsively she threw her arms round her. "Dani, what's wrong? What's happened?"
"Sorry," Dani managed to find her voice. Briefly. "I..."
It was hard to know where to begin. Dani tried to make sense of the night. She had driven to Kirsty's on auto pilot, never once looking back. Terrified that some of the beings that had come from the ocean might somehow have attached themselves to her car...the shadow people, ghosts, whatever they were. Meanspirits. That was what Angie called the beings that emerged from the deep waters in her tales. It was only then it occurred to Dani. Where had Angie got the idea from? Unless...she'd seen them herself...?
"Hey, Kirst, where's...?" Kane didn't finish his question. "Hi," he added uncertainly.
"Hey," Dani returned.
He didn't look the way she remembered him. Even during Kane and Kirsty's wedding, even while she was behaving like she was fine with everything, it was all she saw. Nobody knew she had turned away the moment Kirsty and Kane had looked into each other's eyes and made their vows, recalling the day those same eyes had looked into her own. He was the reason she had visited her nephew only once before. Out of duty.
The day he was born she had called at the hospital, brought flowers, offered congratulations, leaned close to Kirsty holding her newborn son, smiled for the family photo as Kane, his face wreathed in smiles, clicked the digital camera. They had asked her to hold Jamie for another picture and she had refused, made some excuse about being afraid of dropping someone so small, wondered how Kirsty and Jade could bear to touch the child of a monster. Because Dani knew with overwhelming certainty it was all a sham and he didn't care for anyone. But now, carrying his sleepy son, a teddy bear and an almost empty bottle of milk, he looked every inch the proud husband and father. And, as he entered the room without knowing Dani was there, she had caught an unguarded moment. The look of tenderness he had for his wife and son.
"Found it!"
Kane answered his own question, swinging round momentarily to pick up a musical toy, while Jamie watched his aunt sleepily, his chin resting contentedly on the teddy bear on his father's shoulder. Despite herself, Dani couldn't help smiling. Jamie's eyes flickered back wide open and he smiled back as though they shared a secret.
"Can I hold him?" Dani already had her arms oustretched and Kirsty exchanged glances as Dani held her little nephew for the very first time, talking baby language to him while he jabbered and laughed. Kane squeezed Kirsty's hand. It had hurt so much that Dani had always been cool towards them. Kirsty pretended not to mind that she never visited but Kane knew how his wife often broke her heart crying and how often he cried with her, knowing he was the reason she never came to the strange little isolated house that they rented situated on the lonely beach road.
A cuckoo clock struck somewhere in the house - out of time, out of step, being one of their friend Robbie's many crazy inventions - and the noise suddenly woke Dani to the reason she was here. In the midst of all this normality, it was hard to believe that she had lately fled in terror. The moment Kirsty had hugged her, she had stopped shaking. Reassured.
She held Jamie tight and closed her eyes, opening them slowly, afraid that this was just a dream and she would open them again to the terrors of the night. But instead her gaze fell on a photo taken at the hospital the day Jamie was born. Kirsty, her face shining with happiness, sat up in bed, cradling her newborn son. Dani and Jade sat at each side, their faces pressed against hers. There was something, Dani thought, about this eccentric little house with its uneven doors and sloping windows and cuckoo clocks that couldn't tell anyone the time. Something warm and comforting. Something invisible and yet everywhere. And then it came to her. There was nothing but love here.
*****
October 31st 1979.
Sixteen-year-old Angie Russell ran breathlessly up to her room, switched the radio on LOUD as always, flung down her school bag and grinned at her reflection. This was it. The date she'd been waiting for. The witch's pentacle had already been drawn, the sand-dusted tome she'd found on the beach was at her feet and open at the correct page, incense burned at either side of the mirror, as the spell decreed it should. Soon Angie would know beauty, fame and riches beyond her wildest dreams - and all that she had to do was summon up a witch inside the mirror!
Angie hummed along to the music. The station was playing a mixture of old songs, back to back. The Beatles' Strawberry Fields faded and Helen Reddy's clear voice filled the vacant air.
You live your life in the songs you hear
on the rock and roll radio
and when a young girl doesn't have any friends
that's a really nice place to go...
Angie Baby, you're a special lady
living in a world of make-believe...
Angie stopped humming as she stepped inside the witch's pentacle. Concentration was everything now. Her heart thudded in eager anticipation.
"Beauty, riches, fame, be mine, I summon thee, beauty, riches, fame, be mine, I summon thee, beauty, riches, fame, be mine, I summon thee..."
Recited three times as instructed. Almost like a magic spell from a fairytale. She looked down at the sand-dusted tome and carefully intoned the next part of the spell. Words she had never seen before, could barely pronounce, seeming to jumble together. An icy breeze rippled the corners of the pages. An eerie wailing seeped through walls that had began to run profusely with a deep red liquid. The putrid smell of rotting flesh overwhelmed the scent of incense. And then...She was inside the mirror. She was inside the mirror!
In a room where all was darkness, save for in the old-fashioned hearth where the red and yellow flames of a fire danced and crackled and sent golden sparks flying up the chimney. There was little furniture and what little there was had long ago become covered in tangled, grey cobwebs. A rickety chair or two, one with a soaking wet greatcoat thrown across its back; an old wooden table on which sat a cauldron of steaming soup and an uneven pile of books, yellowed with age and thickened with dust; a Welsh dresser with old, cracked plates and half an unlit candle still in its holder and still with the drips of wax staining its once shiny surface.
She crept across to the table and picked up the top book, blowing off the dust to squint at the title in the firelight and starting as she read the words running across the jacket: Fairytales for Today by Angie Russell.
Without remembering when or how, she had dipped the ladle into the soup and brought it to her lips. Warm and salty as it hit her tongue. The smell of dust and soot and candlewax was making her dizzy. There was an icy breeze here too. The icy blast from a door flung suddenly open. Wind-blown night rain followed a strange creature inside.
The creature was the size and build of a man yet it was no more than an eerie thin, grey shadow, with hollow eyes, no nose and just a thin line for a mouth. It picked up the greatcoat and paused.
"One year!" it hissed. "You will have one year, far in the future, of beauty, fame and riches and after that year, your soul will join us. We have a deal?"
"A deal," Angie agreed, mesmerised.
They were suddenly on the beach. The wailing came from the black angry waters. From the misty shadows that lived there. Calling her name from the depths of the ocean. Rising. Surrounding her. Dragging her towards the sea...
