Last Rites Read online

  Laura flashed a guilty look to the table, where Bobby's ghost mask sat next to the carved-out pumpkin.

  ‘You said that Sarah will die tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Would Sarah really kill herself on one of the sabbats, if they are so special?’

  Olwen shook his head slowly. ‘I didn't say anything about suicide.’ When I flashed a look at Laura, he said, ‘You told me earlier that members of our coven had died, and that it seemed like we were unlucky.’

  ‘No, I didn't,’ I said, correcting him. ‘I said that descendants of Anne Whittle had died or disappeared. I don't know who is in your coven.’

  He looked at me, and I could tell that he was nervous. I glanced over at Laura. She tried to look relaxed, but I could tell from the sharpness in her eyes that she was listening intently.

  ‘We are the Family Coven,’ he said solemnly. When I nodded at him to continue, he added, ‘We all practise the Craft, and we all come from a special blood line.’

  I thought back to the family tree in Sarah's house, then to the ceremony I had witnessed earlier. ‘The Pendle witches?’ I asked, faking my surprise.

  ‘We call them the Elders,’ he replied, nodding. ‘They died for their beliefs, but,’ and he looked confused at this, ‘I am curious to know how you worked this out.’

  I sensed Laura fidget. I knew that I couldn't mention the letters from Sarah.

  ‘I was looking into Sarah's disappearance,’ I said, ‘and I was shown her family tree by her mother. She told me how it seemed cursed, that so many of the people at the bottom of the tree, today's generation, had died so young.’

  He looked uncomfortable, swallowing and wiping sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Smith?’ asked Laura.

  He nodded quickly, and then leaned forward as he said, ‘What I am about to say is something of the utmost importance to me.’

  ‘Don't ask me to stay silent on it,’ I said, warning him. ‘I'm a reporter, and if it's a good story, I'll write it.’

  ‘What about identities? Sources?’

  I thought about that. ‘Names can be worked around,’ I said. ‘Sources I never reveal.’

  I could see his mind working as he wondered how much he should say – but then he sighed, as if he knew he had already made his choice when he came to the house.

  ‘We all took a vow when we joined our church,’ he said, his voice steady now, as if he was comfortable with his decision to talk. ‘It was one of kinship, of secrecy. The Elders died from saying too much, all those years ago. We will take our secrets with us.’

  ‘But did you promise to protect each other?’

  ‘That is why I am here,’ he said, and his eyes flickered with sadness for a moment. ‘We can't allow someone else to die. We've talked about it, tried to work out how to stay safe, but we all knew this time would come, when I would have to break the rule of secrecy.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I am the priest, and so I will have to live with the consequences.’

  ‘How many people have died in your coven?’

  ‘Through the years?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don't know. The coven has existed since the time of the Elders, made up of the ones who survived. Secrecy was life or death then. Most of those who went to Lancaster Castle admitted witchcraft, and they died for their confessions, and so those that were left behind stayed silent. Sometimes the coven stayed small, when sensibilities weren't in our favour, but society is different now. We have moved on, and people are prepared to accept our Craft.’

  ‘So that ceremony I saw tonight is four hundred years old?’ I asked, fascinated.

  ‘No, it isn't. It is our ceremony, decided by ourselves. Sometimes there were so few people to carry on the coven that the old traditions were lost. And the Craft isn't about re-enacting old traditions. It is a modern faith, so we adopted our own ceremonies. There are no rules in the Craft.’

  ‘How can it be a faith if there are no rules?’ I queried.

  He smiled, but it was patronising, like a father to a child. ‘Your faith rules,’ he said. ‘Our faith liberates. We have guiding principles, that's all.’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘You tell me something first,’ he said. ‘What do you think witchcraft involves?’

  I thought quickly, but I couldn't get beyond myths and legend, pointed hats and broomsticks. Then I thought of the ceremony I had witnessed earlier.

  ‘It seems like it provides a spiritual outlet for those people who want to have something to believe in, but who want to do something outside of convention,’ I said.

  ‘Like a bunch of misguided hippies?’

  I smiled. ‘I didn't say that, but I think that if witchcraft was the norm, you would all be Christians. The important thing for you is that you live outside of the norm.’

  ‘Do I look like I live outside of convention?’

  I looked down at his clothes, at the battered suede shoes and grubby jeans.

  ‘Maybe you're in disguise,’ I responded.

  Olwen smiled. ‘There might be more truth to that than you think. And maybe there is something of the hippie in all of us, because peace, love and nature are what we are all about. We have one guiding principle, our “rede”, and that is “an' it harm none, do what thou wilt”.’ When I looked confused, he translated it for me. ‘Do what you want to do, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.’

  ‘It seems a strange sort of spirituality, where you can do what you want,’ I said. ‘How can any of you be sure that you are following the same spiritual path?’

  ‘There are some tenets to our faith,’ he replied. ‘We all celebrate the same sabbats, and we all apply the threefold rule.’ He guessed my question before I asked it, because he added, ‘That whatever we do, it will come back to us threefold. So if we use our spells for good, we will be rewarded three times over. If we do them for evil then it will come back at us three times as badly.’

  ‘Sort of insurance against the bad guys,’ I said.

  ‘Something like that,’ he agreed.

  ‘So you do spells?’ asked Laura, sounding sceptical. I knew that Laura's religious views were stronger than mine, that for Laura there was only one God.

  ‘Yes, we do. I know that most people laugh at that, but it is part of our spiritual path, part of my faith, and so I am not ashamed of it. It is no different to saying prayers in church, or taking the wafer and wine.’

  ‘I thought the Pendle witches were just wrongly accused old women,’ I said. ‘If they are, then your coven has no basis.’

  ‘The bookshelves are full of theories,’ Olwen said, shaking his head, ‘but what runs through all of them is that the Elders confessed to their witchcraft. If they had been in your church, you would call them saints, dying for their cause. Your church and history prefer to paint them as deluded old women admitting to things they didn't understand. Your church did what it always does to other faiths: it defamed them, and those parts that it couldn't get rid of, it took for itself.’

  ‘But what makes you so right?’ I asked. ‘You aren't exactly neutral on the issue.’

  ‘Is that different to any other faith?’ he replied.

  ‘So how did you get involved with the coven?’ asked Laura. ‘If it is all about secrecy, I suppose you don't advertise.’

  ‘Someone I had known for a long time sounded me out. It was an uncle. I knew I was a descendant, but I hadn't realised that the uncle had been testing me, trying to gauge my interest. I'm from a different line to Sarah, from Alice Nutter, but we all maintain the family tree.’

  ‘And that's why you use that symbol?’ I asked. ‘The one on the Nutter grave.’

  Olwen paused and looked at me, and I saw him realise that I knew more than I was letting on. ‘You've done your research,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And how did you recruit Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah came to us,’ he said. ‘We met her at a pagan festival, and when she realised we were from Lancashire, she stayed with us, said she was looking for answers. I showed h
er the way, and when I looked into her background I found out that she too was a descendant, and so I taught her the Craft, introduced her to the coven.’

  ‘How old was she then?’

  ‘Eighteen. I think it was her way of becoming her own person. The more she looked into the Craft, the more she realised that our ideals were the same as hers.’

  ‘So you're not a witch because you are a descendant?’

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I follow the Craft because those are my beliefs. But our coven is limited to descendants, because we have a bond, a common link. There are thousands of practising witches in this country, we are nothing unique, but we all have different rules of entry for our covens.’

  ‘So why do you think tomorrow will be the day?’

  At that, Olwen sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. He looked down when he spoke. He seemed suddenly tired, and he ran his hand over his hair, just a quick stroke of his ponytail. ‘Because members of our coven who have been killed over the years have always been killed on one of the sabbats. Tomorrow is our main sabbat, and so that is why I think tomorrow she will be most in danger.’

  I went to the table, where I had put the family tree.

  ‘So the ones I have pointed out,’ I said, ‘the ones on the family tree who have died, were members of your coven?’

  He nodded, and then sighed heavily. ‘That is why I have come to you. If you have got this far, then you are going to continue, and you would find out all about us. Our vow is secrecy, but if we are going to lose that anyway, then it is time to come out to try to save Sarah. If we can find her, then we might find whoever has been killing our members.’

  ‘Why is secrecy still such a big deal?’ I asked.

  ‘In the past, people died because of the Craft,’ he said solemnly. ‘Now, people won't kill us, but they might ruin us. Some in our coven have good jobs, positions of respectability. We've got a police officer, a Magistrate, an accountant. Sarah is a teacher. People are not always comfortable with the thought of witchcraft. They think it is all about human sacrifice, or stealing babies. We are ridiculed, you know: hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.’

  I glanced at Laura, remembering her saying the same thing earlier, but she looked away.

  ‘So have you come here to tell me about Sarah because you think she will die tomorrow?’ I asked.

  He nodded, and then pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

  ‘This is a list of all the people who have died or gone missing from the coven in the last ten years. The ones who have died often did so on one of our sabbats. Tomorrow is our biggest of the year. If Sarah is in danger, then she will die tomorrow.’

  I reached out for the list, and I saw six names. Some of them were familiar from my own research. Some were new.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

  He looked at me, and he seemed lost, unsure. ‘Help us,’ he said. ‘You are a journalist, so you have a voice.’

  ‘Why don't you go to the police?’

  He snorted a laugh. ‘Can you imagine how the police would react if I went to them with this? I would be laughed out of the station.’

  I noticed Laura look down.

  ‘You can help us,’ he continued, pleading. ‘Maybe it will be too late for Sarah, we all know that, but you can write about the link and still not reveal the living members. And if you do, the police might take notice and find whoever has been killing us.’

  ‘How do you know that Sarah isn't what the police think she is?’ I asked. ‘A murderer on the run?’

  ‘Because I know Sarah,’ he answered. ‘I know how gentle she is, how kind she is, of the promises she has made to us, her brothers and sisters in her coven. The Sarah I know wouldn't do what the police think she might have done.’

  He stood up and started to move towards the door.

  ‘What are you going to do for Sarah?’ I asked.

  ‘We are going to have our ceremony tomorrow. It is Samhain and we are going to celebrate. But we will worship for Sarah. If we have faith, it might turn out justly.’

  I shook Olwen's hand as he went, and as the door closed I turned to Laura. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don't know,’ Laura replied, ‘except for one thing: that if Olwen is right, and Sarah isn't a murderer, then we don't have long to check it out.’

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Sarah opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Her body felt weak, worn down by the lack of food, and her fatigue was making her see things, like the walls moving, just pulsing in time with the heartbeats. But she had gained some strength from thinking of those things she was trying to get back to: her parents, the children she taught, her friends. She tried to listen past the noise coming from the speakers, but it was too loud. All she could do was hope that she wasn't interrupted.

  She slipped the blanket from her shoulders and stood up, her knees creaking. She stepped over the line of the circle and went to the door. She pressed her ear against it, but the heartbeats were still too loud.

  Sarah looked down at the floor. It was dirt, just the same as it was in the rest of the room, but it was compacted hard from footfall. She took one of the springs in her hand and scraped at the floor. It made a groove. She scraped again, this time harder, and the groove turned into a small furrow. She knew her plan: if she could dig a hole deep enough, she might be able to get under the door. She had no idea what was on the other side, but at least it gave her a chance, some hope.

  She threw herself to the floor and tried to peer under the door. The gap was tight, but she thought she could get through. Sarah started to dig at the floor harder, and then as the compacted soil began to break up, she used her hands and tried to scoop the dirt from around the door. But it was still tightly packed, and she felt her jagged, broken nails bend back painfully when she scraped.

  But still she dug, scraping quickly, loosening the soil until she could pile it up next to her feet. And the hole was getting deeper all the time.

  She mopped her brow. It was hard work and she hadn't eaten or drunk much over the previous few days, but she knew she had to keep going. She couldn't think about what would happen to her if she was caught, so she knew that this was her only chance.

  An hour passed, maybe more, and Sarah had a hole. It looked deep, and she threw her head and shoulders into it, but it still wasn't wide enough. She had to scrape into the other side so that she had an exit. She could see under though. Steps went upwards. What happened when she got up there was something she wouldn't have long to work out.

  She resumed her digging, made the hole creep further into the room as her fingers turned bloody, when the spring caught on something.

  Sarah stopped and looked into the hole. There was something white, like a twig, snagged in the hook on the bedspring. She scraped around it so that she could see whether it was an obstacle. The twig got longer, its texture like smooth ivory.

  Sarah yelped and scuttled backwards. She sat against the wall, looking into the hole, her hand over her mouth. It was a bone, she could tell that now, clean white in contrast to the dark soil around it.

  She returned to the hole, nervous now, and dug around the bone, smoothed the soil away from it, treated it with respect. It wasn't an animal bone, she could tell that, some long-forgotten memory of school biology creeping back. It looked like a forearm. She brushed it clean, and when she saw the elbow joint she knew it was human.

  Sarah was crying now, her panic rising. People had been buried here. She wasn't the first.

  She began to dig further along the arm, to get the hand free, firstly freeing the soil around the wrist, and then the hand itself. She was careful as the fingers were exposed, long white spindles.

  Then she saw something on one of the fingers, like a black metal band. She swallowed, felt her stomach lurch. She guessed what it was, but she had to be sure. Her hands were shaking as she cleaned off the dirt with her spit, but when she had finished she went down on her haunches and began to sob.r />
  She looked at the ceiling, wailing, ‘No, no, no, no.’ And then, through her tears, she looked at her own hand. There, on the third finger of her right hand, was the same black band, the same emblem. A screaming face, silver on black.

  Sarah couldn't dig any more. She couldn't crawl over the grave of the ones who had been before. Instead, she started to scrape at the soil around the body.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  My fingers drummed nervously against my knee. I had spent most of the night thinking about what Olwen had said, how Sarah was a victim, not a murderer, and how she wasn't the only victim, and I had ended up being convinced. The internet had thrown up old newspaper reports and tribute websites set up by friends of the other victims, keeping my printer busy, and a visit to the archives in the library had filled in some of the gaps. Now it was time to see what the police thought.

  I didn't expect a good reaction, but I was doing what I thought was right. What happened after that was in someone else's hands.

  I was in the reception area of Blackley police station, alone, nothing for company but hard plastic seats and dog-eared posters on the wall, some of them hanging loose from a corner or two. I had a bag of news clippings by my feet.

  I rubbed my eyes. I wondered whether I was doing too much, if I had crossed the line from chasing the story to chasing the girl. But then I thought of the letters, and Olwen, and the Facebook entry. Sarah could die today, and that would always be on my mind if I didn't do what I could.

  I patted my bag, filled with pieces of forgotten history and the family trees. I chewed on the skin around my nails, so that my fingers were feathered by the time Karl Carson appeared in front of me. There was someone else with him. A quieter man, more measured than the ones who had taken me to the moors.

  ‘Ah, it's the Witchfinder General,’ said Carson sarcastically.

  ‘Isn't that your job?’ I replied, and I saw a flicker of a smile on the other man's face.