She tried to think back to what she had felt like before she had been chanted. What it had been like to laugh, and eat, and breathe, and walk freely over the moors wherever she wanted. She thought about going out into the garden at the back of her cottage, on a morning when all her herbs and vegetables were still wet and sparkling from the previous night’s rain, and picking bitter nightshade for a potion that would help to heal a broken heart.
Staring at the moon gave her the revelation that none of us want time to pass, and to grow older, and that time will eventually take away from us everything that we hold dear. Yet without time we would never have the chance to find love, or happiness, or excitement. Whatever fulfilment we find in life, time brings it to us, even if the day will inevitably come when it drains it all away again, like an ebbing tide sliding away across the sand.
Ada understood then that living for ever, suspended for all eternity in the same second, was a far worse punishment than death.
At that instant, she felt as if warm syrup had been poured all over her, from her head right down to her feet. With a distinctive thump, she felt her heart start to beat, and when she took in a breath she could smell not only the sweaty men around her, but the musty oak smell of Allhallows Hall. The moon had brought her forward out of the day before yesterday into the present time.
She turned around, holding up both her hands so the men could see that she was unlocked. Just then, Jaws came briskly along the corridor, smiling and rubbing his hands together.
‘Right, that’s them all banged up! Stand back, lads, and let the lovely young lady come through. Ray – your turn next. Then you, Phil.’
One by one, the men stood in front of the stained-glass window and let the moonlight shine on them. One by one, they stepped away from it, unlocked, and Ada was struck by the difference in their appearance. Even after she had been chanted, and she had been able to see the whisperers who had been roaming invisibly around the house in the form of energy, they had still appeared to be translucent. Now they were solid, and real, and she could tell that they even had weight, because the floorboards creaked as they walked along the corridor and gathered on the landing.
Jaws was the last to stand shining in the moonlight. When he came walking towards them along the corridor Ada noticed that he had a slight limp, and that his left foot turned inwards.
‘Okay, lads,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve got about four hours max before the moon goes down. Let’s hope there’s still plenty of booze left downstairs. Before that, though, we’ve got to celebrate the good Lord smiling on us, and sending us this angel.’
He gave Ada a mischievous grin, and for the first time the other men smiled at her, too, and two of them gave her the thumbs up.
‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.
‘Shh! You don’t want to wake them friends of yours up. They’ll be knocking on their bedroom doors and putting us off our stroke!’
‘Yeah – the only ones doing any knocking should be us!’ whispered the man who looked like Charles Bronson, and he gave a lewd chuckle.
Jaws took hold of Ada’s arm, but she immediately twisted herself away. ‘If you think what I think you’re thinking, then you can all go to hell!’
‘We’ve all been in hell for years, love, don’t you worry about that. That don’t bother us.’
‘Just stay away from me. I had a bad feeling about this, and I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘Depends what you mean by a bad feeling, darling,’ said the young man called Phil. ‘I can give you the best feeling you’ve ever had in your life, I can promise you that. Phil the Firework, that’s what my girl used to call me, ’cause I always made her go off with a bang, every time.’
‘I want to go back to the priest’s hide, right now,’ said Ada. ‘How do I get back?’
‘You’re not going to be a spoilsport, are you?’ asked Jaws. ‘After all, I think you owe us one, don’t you, or maybe even two or three? Waltzing in there with your friends and chucking that dust all over us, trying to flush us out. That’s what you was up to, wasn’t it? Trying to flush us out? Now Old Semtex is gone, they’ll be wanting the house to themselves, won’t they? Won’t give a shit what happens to us.’
‘Old Semtex? Who’s Old Semtex?’
‘Governor Russell. Ex-governor of Dartmoor nick. They called him Old Semtex because he was always liable to blow up without any warning.’
‘I’m going back,’ said Ada. It occurred to her that since she was real, and here in present time, she could lift up the window seat and open the dado to get back into the priest’s hide.
She tried to push her way past Jaws, but two of the men grabbed her arms from behind and held her tight. She ducked and struggled and kicked at their legs, but they were far too strong for her.
‘Let go of me, you pigs!’
‘You don’t mean them two? Stevey and Mandeep? That’s an insult to pigs, that is!’
‘I’m a witch! How do you think I managed to throw that dust on you and show you up? You lay one finger on me and
