‘You’re a witch? What? Do me a favour! Witches are butters, ain’t they, with long noses and black cats and ride around on broomsticks! They ain’t peng like you, with whopping big bristols. Besides, even if you was a witch, there’s no way that you can make our lives any more of a misery than they are already!’
The young man in the white T-shirt opened the door of the bedroom right behind him, and switched on the light, even though the heavy brocade curtains were open and the moonlight was shining in. Inside, there was a large tester bed, with dusty embroidered drapes and a damp-looking green satin quilt with brown stains scattered across it. It looked as if nobody had slept in it in years.
Stevey and Mandeep forced Ada down onto the quilt, face down, and then rolled her over. The other men crowded into the bedroom as Stevey held her pinned to the bed while Mandeep crammed all her necklaces and talismans down into the neck of her black sweater and then started to pull it off.
‘Get off me!’ she screamed at them, but as soon as Mandeep had dragged her sweater over her head, Stevey clamped his hand over her mouth. She kicked and bucked up and down as Mandeep unfastened her jeans and wrenched them off, too, inch by inch. Once he had wrestled them over her ankles, he pulled down her black lace knickers, spun them around his finger, and tossed them across the bedroom. All the men let out a soft, hissing cheer.
‘How about that, she’s shaved it in a heart shape!’ whispered Ray. ‘Must be to show us how much she loves us!’
Between them, Stevey and Mandeep lifted Ada into a sitting position, so that Mandeep could unfasten her bra. Stevey’s hand slipped from her mouth and she threw her head from side to side and was able to scream out, ‘Get off me! Let go of me!’ before he muffled her again.
‘I never could get the hang of these things!’ whispered Mandeep, still struggling with the catch of her bra. Eventually, though, he managed to open it, take off her bra and throw it across the bedroom after her knickers.
‘Now that’s what I call a great pair of melons,’ growled Charles Bronson, under his breath.
‘I’m first in the queue,’ whispered Jaws. ‘The rest of you can fight it out between you.’
Ada could only stare at him as he lifted his grey T-shirt over his head. His snake tattoo wound its way up from underneath his waistband, sliding through the dark hair on his narrow white chest until it licked with its forked tongue at his neck. When he reached down to loosen the cord of his baggy grey sweatpants, she could see that he was already aroused.
He dropped his pants to the floor and climbed up naked onto the end of the bed, his purple-headed penis so stiff that it was parallel to his stomach, and almost touching his navel. Ada closed her eyes tight so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, and she bounced even more furiously on top of the quilt.
Jaws whispered, ‘Come on, lads, give us a bit of a hand here, will you, and hold down this fucking bucking bronco for me!’
While Stevey and Mandeep kept Ada’s arms spread wide as if she were being crucified, two more men took hold of her ankles and parted her legs. Ada opened her eyes again and saw Jaws leaning over her, holding his penis in one hand as he guided it between the lips of her vulva. He looked down and saw that her eyes were open and that she was staring up at him, and he gave her that warm, mocking smile.
‘You’re going to love this, darling,’ he told her. ‘It’s getting on for forty years since I last had a shag, so believe me, this is going to blow your brains out. Phil the Firework? This is Ron the fucking Apollo Rocket.’
Ada jerked her head up and bit Stevey’s fingers, so that he whipped his hand away from her mouth, flapping it and saying, ‘Shit!’
‘I hate you,’ she spat at Jaws. ‘I’m going to put a spell on you that makes your ridiculous little dick drop off! And that goes for the rest of you – mmfff!’
Stevey had pressed his hand even harder over her mouth, digging his thumb and his fingernails into her cheekbones.
Jaws pushed himself into her, but almost as soon as he did he was whipped right out again. He jumped backwards off the end of the bed like a skydiver jumping backwards out of a plane, and he hit the wooden floor so hard that Ada heard his head banging against it. She lifted her head and saw a man standing over him, and then stamping on him.
Jaws shouted out, ‘Jesus!’ and then, ‘Jesus!’ as the man stamped on him a second time.
Ada could see that the man was tall, and well built, and it appeared that he was wearing a blazer and a loosely knotted tie. Unlike Jaws and the rest of the men in the bedroom, though, he didn’t appear to be solid. He had that fluid, wavering, semi-translucent appearance that all of the whisperers shared, herself included, when they were wandering around Allhallows Hall as nothing but energy, with their physical bodies left behind.
Jaws snatched at the end of the quilt and tried to pull himself up, but the man smacked him full in the face with the back of his hand, and he tumbled back onto the floor.
The man turned around to Stevey and Mandeep, and to Phil and Ray, who were holding Ada’s ankles.
‘You’ll be letting her go now, won’t you?’ he told them. The tone of his voice made it clear that it wasn’t a question, it was an order. They hesitated for a second, and then they released their grip on
