Authors: Gill Arbuthnott
Callie waited. The cat was sitting up, staring into the opposite corner of the room, but there was nothing there that Callie could see. She licked her dry lips, wishing Josh was awake.
Five minutes passed and still nothing had happened. Callie began to relax a little. Maybe she’d imagined Chutney Mary hissing. Or maybe it was just coincidence. She looked at her clock. Ten past three.
“There’s nothing there, cat,” she whispered. Her voice sounded wrong. The sounds came out of her mouth and seemed to stop without travelling anywhere,
not even as far as the cat, poised alert at her feet.
Chutney Mary suddenly gave another long hiss, jumped to her feet, and backed away from the foot of the bed, stiff-legged.
“Josh! Josh, wake up,” Callie whispered urgently. “Wake up!”
Surely he wasn’t going to sleep through whatever was about to happen?
Tap
.
Tap. Tap.
“Josh, wake up!”
“Josh, wake up!”
He woke at last, with a gasp, and sat up. “What is it, Callie?”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Getting louder…
“Can you hear it?” she asked in a strangled whisper.
Josh nodded. “Yes.”
The cat had backed herself all the way to the headboard and stood perfectly still and silent, tail bristling, the hair all along her spine sticking up.
Callie reached for her bedside lamp, but once again, instead of a reassuring flood of light there was only a wan flickering glow that shook the shadows but didn’t banish them.
Hammering in the walls. All around them. Under them. Above them.
Josh flailed out of the sleeping bag, Callie stumbled out of bed and they stood, pressed together, listening as the crash of hammer and pick on stone grew louder.
“Do something, Callie,” Josh gasped. “Some spell. Something.”
He’s right. I have to do something.
She searched her memory for a spell that would help, but what was left? She’d used two spells of protection and they’d made no difference at all. She felt the familiar
prickling in her palms as she desperately tried to think of something. For once, she didn’t try to push the power down. Could she focus it without using a spell at all, shield herself and Josh, blast whatever it was out of her room? Callie felt power flowing into her, though she had no idea where it was coming from. She started to organise it, so she could use it against the unknown threat they faced, and began to build it into a shield.
And then a hand came up over the foot of the bed and gripped the mattress and a black figure began to pull itself out of the floor, and her mind went blank. All the power she’d been so carefully marshalling escaped her control and roared through the room like a whirlwind, smashing the window as it did so.
Josh and Callie clung together in horror as the dark figure emerged fully and crouched on the floor at the end of the bed. They could hear its rasping breath, but it seemed to cast its own pall of darkness and they could make out little apart from its human shape.
And still the noise battered at them, the noise of picks and hammers striking rock, over and over…
The figure stood up slowly, and at last Josh and Callie saw clearly what it was: a man, pushing dripping dark hair back from a battered face, patched red and black. Blood trickled from wounds all over his body; under a gaping flap of skin hanging from his chest, shattered ribs showed as white fragments. His left hand was missing, the arm ending in a bloody stump. A single, baleful eye stared at them.
“What are you? What do you want?” gasped Callie.
The figure opened its mouth to speak, but the sound seemed to come from the whole room.
We want what was taken from us. We want our lives. We want air. We want light. We were trapped for centuries. Now we want your lives.
Without warning, there was an explosion of sound and light and the air was full of fragments of stone and flying water.
Josh and Callie yelled in terror and crouched, hands over their heads, convinced they were about to die.
All the noise died away until there was nothing but their own gasping breaths in the darkness.
The door crashed open, the light went on and both Callie’s parents burst in and stopped dead, mouths gaping.
Josh and Callie were huddled together against the far wall. The room was strewn with chunks of masonry and there was a gaping hole in the ceiling. A tiny functional part of Callie’s mind realised that, looking up, she could sees stars: part of the roof was gone too.
“Oh my God. Callie, Josh, are you all right, are you hurt?” Julia stumbled towards them, closely followed by David. “What happened?”
David looked around. “It’s the chimney. The chimney’s come down. You could have been killed!”
Josh and Callie looked around them in silent bewilderment as David and Julia pulled them to their feet.
“Let’s get out of here in case anything else goes.”
As she was helped from the room, Callie stopped. “The cat! Where is she?”
“It’s all right, love. She shot out as soon as we opened the bedroom door.”
As they made their way downstairs, Callie felt her legs begin to quiver. They only carried her as far as the sofa before they gave way.
Josh was next to her, still silent, but she could see that his hands had begun to shake. They looked at each other, faces white with plaster dust as well as fear, hair clogged with grit and wood and paint, each thinking how awful the other looked.
“Your face is bleeding,” said Callie, and reached out to touch Josh’s cheek, her fingers coming away red.
“It’s all right, Josh, it’s nothing much, we’ll get it cleaned up in a minute.” Both Julia and David had switched automatically to doctor mode. “Here.” David handed them each a bowl of hot water and a towel. “Wash that muck off your faces before it gets into your eyes.”
Julia brought blankets through; both Callie and Josh were shivering with shock now.
“Right, Josh, let’s see that cut.” David peered at the wound as he cleaned it. “It should heal okay. I don’t think it’ll leave a scar.” He put a couple of Steri-Strips on to close it. “Should be good as new in a few days. Keep these on and try not to get them wet. I’ll check it in 48 hours.” He stopped. “I sound like a doctor, don’t I? Not your friend’s dad. Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” said Josh. It was the first time he’d spoken since the events upstairs. “It’s quite reassuring.”
“Right. You two stay there and take it easy. You’ve had quite some fright. Julia, let’s go and have a proper look at the damage.”
“Dad, no! It might be dangerous.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful.”
Callie and Josh were left alone to contemplate what had just happened.
This is it
, thought Callie.
This is where Josh tells me he doesn’t want anything to do with me any more. I don’t really blame him
. She searched in vain for something to say. At her side, Josh was equally silent.
He’s trying to think of a way to tell me he never wants to see me again. I should say something, make it easy for him. I don’t know why I ever told him anyway. It’s not as if there’s anything someone like him could do to help. It’s just made things more complicated.
She still couldn’t think of anything to say, so they sat on in silence until Julia and David reappeared a few minutes later.
“There’s nothing we can do until morning,” said David. “Then we’ll have to get a builder – or maybe a roofer – to look at the damage.”
“Josh, I’ll take you back to East Neuk Cottages in a few minutes. Do you want to phone your mum first?” asked Julia.
“Do I have to go? I mean, I will of course, if I’m in the way, but it doesn’t seem worth waking Mum in the middle of the night when I’m okay.”
Callie stared at him in astonishment. He’d just turned down a chance to escape. Why?
“You should go,” she heard herself say.
“Do you want me to?” Josh looked puzzled.
“No, but after what happened…”
“You can stay if you want, Josh. Let us know one
way or another in the next ten minutes,” said Julia, and followed David out of the room.
As soon as they were alone, Josh turned to Callie.
“What was that… thing… that came out of the floor? Did you see the state it was in?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got no idea. Could you hear it when it spoke?”
Josh nodded. “No air, no light, trapped for centuries… You know what this is about, don’t you? That noise beforehand… I knew I’d heard it somewhere else, but I couldn’t think where until just now.”
“It’s the tunnel under the castle,” said Callie. “I should have worked it out before. I’ve been hearing the tunnellers. That’s why all this started when it did.”
“Callie, you have to tell Rose what’s been happening. You can’t possibly sort this out; even I can tell it’s much too strong. Sorry.”
She sighed. “You’re right. I’ll go and see her in the morning.”
“Do you want me to come, or would you rather I didn’t?”
“Come, if you’re sure you don’t want to bail on me.”
“How often do you have to be told, you idiot? I’m not bailing on you.”
Callie gave a smile of relief. “Mum,” she shouted, “Josh is staying.”
***
It was already growing light by the time anyone tried getting back to sleep. Julia and David eventually went
back to bed, and Josh and Callie curled up in their blankets on the sofas. To everyone’s surprise, they did sleep.
“Nervous exhaustion,” said Julia, when they sat bleary-eyed over toast and coffee at breakfast time.
“Will your mum be up by now?” Julia asked.
Josh looked at the clock. Eight fifteen. “I expect so.”
“I’ll give you a lift round then, and explain what’s happened.”
“Builder’s coming at nine thirty,” said David as he came in. Both he and Julia had taken the day off work to deal with the crisis. “The insurance office is just on voicemail. I’ll try them again at nine.”
***
Anna opened the cottage door.
“Josh – what happened to your face?”
“It’s been a long night,” said Julia. “Can I come in and explain?”
When the explanations were over and Julia had gone, Anna sat looking at her grubby son.
“You could have been killed.” She touched his cheek gently.
“Mum, I’m fine. Don’t fuss.” He got up. “I’m going to have a shower.”
“Good idea. Your face isn’t too bad but your hair looks as though you’ve just finished a shift in a coal mine.”
If she only knew
, he thought.
***
At half past ten Josh and Callie met at the corner of the field by The Smithy.
“Did you have any trouble getting away?” Josh asked.
Callie shook her head. “No. They’re engrossed with builders and roofers and insurers.”
Josh started for the gate. “Just a minute. I want to talk to you before we go in,” Callie said.
They both sat on the dusty verge.
“I haven’t told you everything,” she said. She pushed up her sleeve, so that Josh could see the dark patch on her wrist and the angry, inflamed skin that now surrounded it. “It appeared just after we went into the tunnel that day. It’s been getting bigger and itchier ever since.” She covered it again. “I’ve known all along it had something to do with things, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself, never mind anyone else. I thought if I was the only one who knew, maybe it wouldn’t be true.” She grimaced. “I know how lame that sounds.”
“Something else happened to you in there, didn’t it? Not just claustrophobia or a panic attack?”
“When the lights went off, I heard voices,” Callie admitted after a moment’s silence. “Someone saying my name. Telling me to stay in there in the dark. Something touched me.” She shivered at the memory. “There was something down there.”
Josh’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I know,” he said. “I saw it, but I’ve only just realised. When you bolted, I thought I saw you crawling up the tunnel just ahead of me, and then you’d gone when the lights came back
on. I thought it was you, but it wasn’t. I think it was whatever you heard down there. Maybe we brought it out with us and into your house.”
There was silence again as they went over in their heads what had happened that day.
“It all fits,” Callie said slowly. “But why now? Why us? Think how many tourists must go down there every year.”
“Ah, but how many witches go down?”
“Oh no… then it
is
my fault.”
“Callie, that’s not what I meant. You know it isn’t. We need to find out more about the tunnels. What happened in there? You said there was a battle – maybe it’s something to do with that. What have we brought out? What was that thing I saw? Look, it’s time we told Rose everything. She’ll know what to do, won’t she?”
“I hope so.”
They got up, walked through The Smithy garden and pushed the front door open.
“Rose?” called Callie.
An indistinct reply came from upstairs, then, “Just coming.”
Through the window, they could see George with his back to them, busy in the greenhouse.
“Callie, Josh, hello,” said Rose, coming down the stairs, and then, as she saw their faces, “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Rose listened without interrupting to their hesitant, sometimes incoherent account of what had happened over the last few days, her lips compressed in a tight line.
Finally, Callie said, “I thought I could deal with this myself, but I was wrong. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
Rose gathered her thoughts.
“First things first: no one was hurt when the chimney came down?”
“No.”
“And what state is the house in now?”
“Mum and Dad are there with a builder and a roofer and the insurance people. There’s a big hole in the roof where the chimney fell through. Hasn’t Mum called you?”
Rose shook her head. “We’re not really talking at the moment.”
Callie looked stricken, but said nothing. Rose returned to the more immediate problem.
“I think Josh may be right about what’s at the root of all this. It’s certainly nothing that’s coming directly from you. If it was, it would have happened before you started to learn to control your power. I don’t think
anyone should be staying in that house overnight just now. Callie, you’ll come here, won’t you?”
Callie nodded.
“And you’re all right at the cottage, Josh, aren’t you?”
“Fine.”
“I’ll phone Julia and suggest she and David come here until the roof is fixed. Maybe if David answers the phone he’ll accept my offer before Julia has a chance to refuse.” She got to her feet. “Make us all some coffee while I do that, Callie.”
The kettle had just boiled when Rose returned from phoning.
“Well?” Callie asked.
“I spoke to your father. He’ll talk to your mother and call back.” She made a face. “Oh well, I’ve done what I can for now.” She sat down to drink her coffee. “The three of us need to go to the castle.”
“You don’t want me to go down there again, do you?” said Callie, alarmed.
“No, dear, don’t worry.” She glanced over at the washing-up bowl sitting expectantly beside the sink. “We need to talk to Bessie. I’ll treat us all to lunch.”
***
“Well, Rose, this
is
nice,” said Bessie, settling herself in her seat and making sure she had a good view of the other diners just in case any of them did something interesting.
Josh stared, mesmerised, at her hat. It seemed to be knitted out of crimson string, and was decorated
with three rather threadbare pheasant feathers. “It’s my Thinking Cap,” she said to Josh when she noticed him gawping at it. “A bit like Sherlock Holmes and his deerstalker. It compensates for electrical fluctuations in the brain.”
Josh nodded, speechless, as Rose shook her head and muttered something none of them could quite hear.
“Callie, dear,” Bessie went on, “you look a bit peaky. I hope you’re not coming down with something?”
“I’m fine, Bessie. I just haven’t been sleeping very well,” Callie replied with stupendous understatement.
“That’s why we wanted to talk to you, Bessie,” Rose added.
“Well, I would usually recommend a wee nip of whisky, but you’re a bit young for that.”
Rose raised her eyes to heaven. “That’s not going to solve this problem. Let’s order, then we’ll explain.”
***
It took all the pasta and half the ice cream to explain the situation to Bessie.
“So now we need to find out what happened in those tunnels in the past, and who – or what – this figure could be.” For once, there was no trace of Bessie’s normal levity in her voice. “There have never been reports of people having uncanny experiences down there that I know of.”
“I thought it might be because Callie’s a witch, not a normal – sorry, I don’t know how else to say it – person,” said Josh.
Bessie gave him a narrow-eyed look. Josh hoped she wasn’t putting a spell on him. He prepared himself to find he had grown whiskers, or something worse.
“No,” she said firmly. “It can’t be that. I’ve been down there more times than I can count.” She saw Josh and Callie exchange glances. “When I was younger and more… athletically built, I mean. I’m not exactly the shape for shimmying through wee holes like a ferret now. But witches aren’t
that
rare. There must be tourists who have power in there every year.”
So witches aren’t that rare
? Josh filed that one away for further consideration.
“No. This is something more specific, and we need to find out what.” Bessie ate her last spoonful of ice cream and pushed away the bowl. “Right. I think we should get back to the castle and have a poke around behind the scenes.”
“But not down the tunnel?” Callie asked, just to be sure.
“Definitely not.”
***
“Hello, Margaret, that’s me back from lunch,” said Bessie brightly to the woman behind the desk at the castle. “I’ve just brought my friends along for a wee look at some books in the office.”
Margaret looked doubtful.
“That’ll be fine, won’t it, Margaret?” said Bessie, looking at her intently.
“Oh yes,” said Margaret, smiling. “That’ll be fine.”
Did she just? No – surely not
… Josh remembered the way the tourists had left the castle shop so suddenly when he was last here, but there was no chance to linger as Bessie marched them past the desk and through a door, shutting it firmly behind them.
She switched on the light. “Welcome to my kingdom,” she said. “Now, where to start?” She stared at a wall of books, tapping one foot as she thought.
Rose had already selected a volume, and she sat down at a wooden table to look through it, once she’d moved a plate of shortbread and several mugs out of the way.
Josh spotted a computer at the other side of the room.
“Can I use the internet?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” said Bessie absently as Callie drifted over to the computer with him.
An hour and a half passed in almost complete silence as Josh and Callie trawled the internet and Rose and Bessie searched book after book. It had been easy enough to get at the bare bones of the story, but beyond that they had all drawn a blank.
“There’s not much on the internet about the castle and hardly a mention of the tunnels,” said Josh. “I can’t believe there’s not more. There’s got to be
something
about who dug them and what happened down there.”
Bessie got up to switch the kettle on. “Let’s pull together what we’ve all found,” she said. “Whatever went on happened in 1546 during a siege. That much is certain at any rate.”
“And it was religion at the bottom of everything,” added Rose. “Cardinal Beaton, who was Catholic and
controlled the castle, was imprisoning Protestants there. Not just imprisoning them, either. Some were burned alive.”
“George Wishart,” said Callie. “I remember that from history at school.”
“It says here,” said Josh, reading from the screen, “that friends of the murdered Protestants tricked their way into the castle and murdered Beaton in revenge.”
“And then the ruling Catholics besieged the castle with the Protestants stuck inside,” added Callie.
Bessie handed out cups of tea and made space again on the table for the shortbread. “I know this bit,” she said. “The siege went on for five months, and the besiegers got fed up, so they started to dig a tunnel in from outside. But the people
inside
found out what was happening, so they dug their own tunnels to try and find the one coming in. Eventually they broke through into it and there was some sort of battle. Now, what else have we got?”
Silence.
Rose spoke up. “The Protestants were defeated in 1547, but that’s nothing to do with the tunnels. I couldn’t find anything more.” She looked at the others.
Bessie shook her head.
Callie said, “We couldn’t find anything on the net either.”
“There must be a way to find out who was down there and what happened to them?” said Josh, exasperated by their lack of progress.
“Would Margaret or any of the others know more, Bessie?” asked Rose.
Bessie shook her head. “They’ll only know what’s in the books here.” She drummed her fingers on the table as she stared into space.
Rose put her tea down and addressed herself to Bessie again. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“We need to do a reading?”
Rose nodded.
Josh looked at Callie, hoping for an explanation, but she just shrugged.
“What’s a reading?” he asked Rose.
“When anything happens, it leaves a trace in the surroundings.”
“You mean like fingerprints, DNA, that sort of stuff?”
“No,” said Bessie. “You’ve been watching too many crime programmes. It’s more like a recording.”
“And the more dramatic the event, the more powerful people’s emotions at the time, the stronger the recording,” Rose went on. “Now, somewhere like a beach, or a wood, the trace wouldn’t last long, because the physical surroundings change – the tide carries things in and out, plants grow and die. But it would last longer in a house, because it would get into the walls, into the stone. And in a tunnel that’s hardly changed since it was dug…”
“It should still be there even now?” Callie guessed.
“Exactly,” said Rose. “So in theory, we just need someone to go down there to… access the recording.”
“Someone who doesn’t have any power of their own that might interfere with it,” Bessie added.
Three pairs of eyes swivelled to look at Josh.
“Ah,” he said. “That’s me, isn’t it?”
“But surely that’s dangerous for Josh?” Callie protested.
“No. Nothing will happen to him. It might be a bit… unsettling… but he’ll come out again absolutely fine,” Rose said quickly.
“It’ll be just like being a television set,” said Bessie bafflingly. “We can watch, but whatever the TV shows doesn’t affect the TV, whether it’s war, or illness, or weather, or one of those awful reality things. The TV isn’t harmed.”
Josh hadn’t particularly enjoyed his first experience of the tunnel, and he didn’t relish the idea of going down again now, especially on his own, but if it would give them answers…
“You don’t have to be down there alone,” said Rose, as if she’d read his thoughts. “You can wait until other people go down. Just not us.”
That wasn’t so bad.
“And you’re sure I won’t bring anything back out with me?”
“Absolutely,” said Rose firmly.
“All right. I’ll go down.”
“Good lad,” said Bessie. “Right. Sit down here and we’ll get you ready.”
“Get me ready? What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a wee laying on of hands. Unless you think you could do the job more effectively as a rat?”
“Stop it, Bessie!” said Rose sharply. “Pay no attention to her, Josh.”
Josh sat down rather reluctantly.
“Just relax. You can close your eyes if you want. Bessie and I are just going to tune ourselves in to your mind, so we’ll know what’s happening when you’re down the tunnel.”
“Does that mean you’ll be able to read my thoughts?” he asked, alarmed.
“I knew you were going to say that,” said Bessie, staring owlishly at him. “Och, only kidding! No, of course not. We’re not going to be rummaging round in your mind as though we’re at a jumble sale.”
“What about me? Can I tune in as well?” asked Callie.
“You don’t have the skills for this yet, I’m afraid.”
Rose and Bessie each put a hand on either side of Josh’s head, while he sat there feeling like a complete idiot. After a few seconds they moved away.
“Is that it?” He’d been expecting something more, though he wasn’t sure what. Chanting, or a tingling sensation or something. His head exploding.
“That’s it. Now we can tune in. It’s just up to you to decide when to go down.”
“The sooner I get it over with, the better. I’ll go when I see someone else going in. But what do I do once I’m in there?”
“All you need to do is put your hand flat somewhere on the stone and stand still for a couple of minutes,” said Bessie.
“Will I feel anything?”
Bessie glanced at Rose. “Maybe nothing at all. Or you might glimpse things, hear things happening. Just remember, it’s only a recording.”
“Where in the tunnel should I do it?”
“That’s a good point,” said Rose. “Because, of course, it’s actually
two
tunnels.” She considered for a moment. “I think you should try at the foot of the stairs at the far end first, then come back up the ladder and try again in the narrow part.”
“Okay.”
“I suppose I’d better let Margaret back into the office now,” Bessie said.
As they went out, Callie spoke quietly to Josh.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“There doesn’t seem to be another way. We’ve got to find out what happened down there. I’ll be all right as long as the lights stay on this time.” He tried to sound more cheerful than he felt, but he wasn’t quite sure he’d pulled it off.
They loitered on the sunlit lawn at the centre of the castle ruins, waiting for someone to start down the steps to the tunnel. It was only a few minutes before three American students paused to look at the information board and decided to go in.
“Here goes,” said Josh, and he headed after them.
***
Physically, the tunnel was just as Josh had remembered it – the sloping floor and the awkward bent-kneed shuffle that was necessary to avoid braining yourself – but full of American accents and laughter, any threat it had held a few minutes ago melted away.
Piece of cake.
He waited his turn to descend the ladder and
cautiously stood up straight again. The Americans were taking photos. Lots of photos. Josh edged past them with a smile and leaned against the wall at the foot of the steps as though he was looking at the light drizzling down through the manhole cover. He put one palm flat on the wall, spread his fingers and waited for something to happen.
He could still see the Americans, but either they had stopped talking, or he couldn’t hear them any more. Instead, there were fleeting snatches of conversation buzzing through the air around him.
How much further?
About twenty feet or so.
And how much longer?
That conversation faded out to be replaced by another.