Because of this and all her other experiences as a ‘charmer’, Ada was convinced that the men who were gathered in this witching room were not spirits, or ghosts, or phantoms, or however dead souls were usually labelled – they were all still alive. Spellbound, but alive.
In spite of that, their movements appeared to Ada to be narrowly constrained by the spell they were under. ‘Spell’ sounded like something out of a fairy story, but it was the best description of it that she could think of, since it meant both a state of enchantment and an indeterminate period of time.
She guessed that the men were visible at certain times – visible to her, at least, like they were now, and each other – even if nobody else who came into the witching room could see them. While they were visible, it seemed as if they had no choice but to stay penned up in here. At other times, though, they seemed to be able to roam invisibly around the house in some form or another, whispering, angry, frustrated, and even capable of hitting and pushing the people who were staying there.
She wondered if they were angry and frustrated not only because they were trapped in time, but because they were trapped in Allhallows Hall, too. They might be able to wander around the house, but if they couldn’t take their physical bodies with them they wouldn’t be able to leave it.
She tilted her head tiredly back against the wall. She had been friends with Francis for at least five years, and she knew how knowledgeable he was when it came to spells and necromancy, as well as physics. She prayed that he was doing everything he could to devise a way to release her from this temporal suspension, and out of this stuffy, airless, horsehair-smelling room.
Behind the stained-glass windows, the light was beginning to fade. The thought of the night approaching filled her with dread. What was it going to be like in total darkness, with all of these men? To begin with, she had counted only seven or eight, but now she could see that there were more, at least eleven, and more seemed to be appearing all the time. They seemed to rise up off the floor, as if from nowhere, and their whispered conversation grew louder and more insistent.
‘You must – we must – there must be a way—’
‘Now that he’s gone – I wish that I could go out and spit on his grave—’
‘No, they’ll cremate him – ashes to ashes – mistrust to dust—’
*
Ada closed her eyes for a few moments. When she opened them again she found Jaws crouching down close beside her, his face half in shadow now, but enough for her to see that he was smiling with that enigmatic, self-satisfied smile.
‘You trying to doze off there, love? You’ll be lucky. It’s not bedtime yet and it never will be.’
‘No. Just thinking, that’s all. What do you want?’
‘Nothing in particular. Just felt like being friendly, that’s all.’
‘Sorry, I’m not in the mood. Why don’t you crocky down somewhere else and be friendly?’
‘Hah! You’re a right local girl, aren’t you? Talk like fucking pirates, you lot. Oooh this and aaarrh that. But there’s no point in you being all shirty. You’re going to need a mate, I’ll tell you that for nothing. It’s going to be dark before you know it and some of these blokes have been shut up here since the fucking millennium.’
‘I told you to go away. I’m not interested in you being my “mate”, thank you very much, and I can take care of myself.’
‘Oh, you think so? Couldn’t stop us from chanting you, could you? Even with your friends there.’
‘What do you mean, “chanting”?’
Jaws pressed his fingertips to his forehead as if he were trying to remember something that had slipped his mind, but then she realised that he must be visualising the moment when he himself had been trapped in this room. For him, that must have happened only a split second ago, and yet it was years ago, too. The day after Derby Day, nineteen seventy-nine.
‘The chanting is the words that freeze you. Don’t ask me who made them up or what half of them mean. We all know them now because we’ve heard them so often we could Wallace and Gromit. In any case, I went down to old Russarse’s library one fulness and took a shufti through his book of mumbo-jumbo for myself.’
He didn’t explain himself any further but continued to stare at Ada as if he could see right through her eyes and into her head. It made her feel so uncomfortable, almost as if he were sliding his hand into her jeans, and so she turned away and looked towards the other end of the room, where the opening dado was – the door to reality that she was powerless to open.
‘You’re cream-crackered, aren’t you, love?’ Jaws asked her, after a while.
She kept her head turned away. ‘Leave me alone, will you? Whatever you’ve got to say to me, I’m not interested and I don’t want to hear it.’
Instead of standing up and leaving her, Jaws shuffled himself even closer. Every breath she took in was pungent with his Old Spice aftershave.
‘What you can’t work out is, how can you be cream-crackered when it’s still exactly the same time as it was when you first come in here? I saw you looking at your watch. What about Father Thomas, how can he be tired when as far as he’s concerned he’s still back in sixteen- hundred-and-whenever-it-was? Father Thomas hasn’t aged a second, let alone three and a half fucking centuries.’
‘I’m not listening to you so you might as well shut your teeth.’
Jaws ignored her, and again he cupped his hand over her knee
