Kassy was silent.
The rabbit was crying into his mask again. ‘And I was scared she’d tell after … so I had to find her house and scare her, that’s all. I had to tell her the rabbit would get her if she told anybody …’ A gulping sob. ‘But I never wanted her to hurt herself. My God. Not ever.’ The sorrow fell back into fury again. These, she could tell, must have been the constant rhythms of his life. ‘But you did, didn’t you? The four of you. She told me how much you hated her.’
‘I didn’t … I didn’t hate her …’ Rachel’s face crumbled into despair.
‘Because that’s what you people love, isn’t it? That’s why you exist. To steal, kill and destroy.’ He flung his hands toward the wall.
‘You’re insane,’ Kassy said and for the first time in her life Rachel could hear tears in that voice.
‘And you’ve been there, every time,’ he went on. ‘In the shadows of my room. All four of you. Telling me to find someone. And I’ve seen you in Menham Park by your tree. You stand by the swings in the afternoons. Calling me over and showing me what you have for me …’ He snapped his words out. ‘But it’s got to stop, do you hear me? It’s got to stop right now. Because I’m not your familiar and you can’t do this to me any more. I’m getting my life back, and you can’t hurt those little angels any more because it’s just wrong. Witchcraft is a sin and the four of you … you’ve bewitched me.’
‘What if we repented?’ Rachel said. Even as the walls dropped silently away and she fell backwards through the concrete under her spine and down into the Abyss. Didn’t Joyce say that forgiveness could unlock any prison?
‘But you’ll never repent! You’ve been ruining men for centuries. So I won’t stop this until it’s over. I swear to God, I’ll kill the last of the Menham witches.’ He turned to Kassy and hissed, ‘Especially you.’
Rachel’s crying halted for a minute. She swallowed. ‘What do you mean, “especially her”?’
Silence.
‘What do you mean, “especially her”?’
‘I mean … she’s the one …’
‘What?’
Kassy’s voice. ‘Stop it.’
‘The one that told me.’
‘Told you what?’
‘Don’t listen to him, Rach. He’s mad—’
‘To wait down here. That night.’
Kassy started moaning. Yanking hard at the plastic cables. ‘He’s … he’s …’ She couldn’t get her words out.
‘She said I should wait down here.’
Rachel flicked her head to the side so fast it scraped lines in her cheek.
Kassy was staring over at her, mouth moving but nothing was coming out. Her swollen, purple eye was trying to peel open.
‘She said wait in the dark and a little girl would come.’
Kassy started flailing her hands and feet but they were locked tight to the chair at the ankles and wrist. And then suddenly her gasps turned into desperate, guilty sobs. ‘It was a joke. It was just a stupid joke. I just wanted to scare her.’
The rabbit started walking towards Kassy. He pulled something from his pocket. A pile of bright papers. Post-it notes.
‘You knew he was down here?’ Rachel said.
‘I thought he was some homeless guy. I thought it’d scare her.’
‘We left her down here and you knew?’
‘I didn’t mean …’ Kassy suddenly erupted into tears. A shattering display of someone who wasn’t Kassy and yet was. ‘It was a stupid fucking joke. I didn’t know he’d actually do anything to her, I swear to God we didn’t.’
‘We?’ Rachel said.
Kassy nodded. ‘Me and Steph. And Jo.’
She felt a tiny flutter of breath shake her chest. ‘You all knew?’
The rabbit was round the back of Kassy’s chair now. He started peeling off Post-it notes and thumbed them carefully against the chair, against her legs. Her shoulders, her hair. Lots of odd drawings that looked like flowers but were shaped like crosses. And birds feeding their young. Many of them peeled away and floated to the floor. But some of them stuck fast. ‘These might save you. Give you a chance on the other side.’
‘Please,’ Kassy said.
He peeled off the last one and stuck it to her forehead. Then he dug into his other pocket and pulled something bigger out. He flicked his hand, and shook something out. A thick, transparent, plastic bag.
He leant across to a wooden table that had an old tape recorder on it. One that she instantly recognised, because it was hers. Her Alba DR-160. This was the machine she first used to tape and log the sounds of her life, building up her first ever audio library. She’d filled C-90 tapes with the noise of doors closing, taps running, birds in the trees of the park, and of course … voices.
The recorder that went missing during the poltergeist.
He pushed his fat finger into a button and she heard that familiar, exquisite plastic click.
One of her old tapes started whirring, she heard a hiss, then Holly’s voice filled the room singing an old song from primary school. ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’.
Rachel closed her eyes. Her voice so thin, so delicate.
Happy.
My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf, so it stood ninety years on the floor.
Kassy was shaking her head from side to side, immaculate hair now grimy with sweat and tears.
It was taller by half than the old man himself, though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
The rabbit walked up behind Kassy, opening the plastic bag.
Kassy begged, ‘Stop it, please, stop it. Stop it.’
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
‘… for God’s sake …’
and was always his treasure and pride.
‘Rabbit does … what rabbit should,’ it said. Stretched the bag.
But, it stopped, short, never to go again, when the old man died.
And all Rachel could do was look away.
‘I didn’t mean it. It was a joke.’
Somehow Rachel felt nothing as it happened. Nothing as the shouts turned to screaming. And finally to a hideous begging. As Kassy called out, ‘I’m sorry, I’m
