‘Now bugger off, the lot of you. Do you hear me? And don’t let me catch you trying to attack this young woman again, or it’ll be the worse for you.’
Even though he was at least six inches shorter, Charles Bronson went up close to the man, his chest inflated, his fists clenched and his jaw jutting out.
‘Oh, yeah?’ he whispered defiantly. ‘And how do you think you’re going to do that, exactly?’
The man looked down at him with a tired, indulgent expression. ‘I overheard you chaps talking, back in the priest’s hole. As I understand it, you’re solid so long as the full moon’s up, as solid as you were before you were trapped. That’s all well and good, I would have thought, but what happens if you’re seriously injured while you’re solid? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine you’d be stuck with that injury for ever and ever amen.’
The man jabbed Charles Bronson in the chest with his finger. ‘Maybe I’m not solid at the moment, my friend, but I’m still perfectly capable of breaking your nose, or poking your eyes out, and logic tells me that you’ll have to stay that way for all eternity. So… do you want risk it?’
Jaws climbed to his feet, holding his sweatpants. His penis was flaccid now, as if it were hanging its purple head in shame and disappointment.
‘You’ll fucking regret this, I warn you. One day, mate, when you’re having a weary…’
‘I’ll worry about that when the time comes,’ the man replied. ‘Meanwhile, off you all go.’
34
There was a moment of extreme tension. From the fierce looks on their faces, Ada thought that the men were going to jump on her saviour, beat him up, and then go back to raping her. But Jaws pulled up his baggy sweatpants, tugged on his T-shirt and said, ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers. Let’s go down and see how much of Old Semtex’s booze there is still knocking around. She’s not just a witch, anyway. She’s a slag, and we don’t want to be catching the knob rot off of her, do we?’
The men shuffled out of the bedroom, and after the last one had left, Ada climbed off the bed and picked up her jeans and her sweater. The man stood by the door with his back to her while she quickly pulled them on. She found her bra and her knickers lying in the corner and stuffed them into her pockets.
Further along the corridor, she could hear Rob rattling the handle of his bedroom door and calling out, ‘What’s going on out there? Who’s locked this door?’
She went up to the man and stood close behind him.
‘I can’t thank you enough. They were going to take it in turns to rape me. All of them.’
He turned around, looking serious. ‘You must be Ada Grey, the witch that Rob was talking about.’
‘Yes,’ she told him. ‘Well… a charmer is what I call myself, rather than a witch.’
‘I’ve overheard those men talking about you, too, but I’m afraid I haven’t been too compos mentis since they trapped me. Being chanted, that’s the word they use for it, isn’t it? I managed to leave that priest’s hole last night and talk to my wife briefly, but that’s about all. The rest of the time… it’s all been a bit of a blur, to tell you the truth. Rather like being totally sozzled.’
‘Who are you? Are you one of the family?’
‘That’s right. You wouldn’t think it, because we don’t look at all alike, but I’m Rob’s brother. His older brother, Martin.’
They heard Rob knocking at his bedroom door again, and furiously rattling the handle.
‘Who the hell has locked this door? Come and open it! Grace? Grace! Is your door locked as well? Katharine?’
‘That fellow you pulled off me,’ said Ada. ‘The one who calls himself Jaws. Before he became solid, he locked all your family into their bedrooms.’
‘Perhaps we ought to see if we can find a way to let them out.’
‘No… best not. Not yet, anyway. Not till the moon’s gone down. If your brother goes downstairs and finds them, who knows what they might do to him. They’re not what you might call happy at the moment, are they? I’m right amazed they didn’t attack you.’
‘I think I guessed right and they were afraid I might do them an injury, whereas there was nothing they could do to me. I’m not solid at the moment, am I? I’m only my energy, or my spirit, or the ghost of me, or whatever. I have the power to hurt them, but I have no physical substance, have I, so they can’t hurt me in return. It’s rather like being a gale-force wind. A gale-force wind can blow you over, can’t it, but there’s nothing that you can do to retaliate. You can punch the wind like Tyson Fury, but of course it won’t feel it.’
He paused, and then he said, ‘What are you going to do now? I don’t know how long you have left before the moon sets.’
‘There’s something I want to try, now that I’m solid. I want to see if I can get out of here. There’s an incantation I know, if I can remember all of it. I need to go down to the front door, if you don’t mind coming with me. You know – just in case they try to attack me again.’
‘Of course.’
Rob was pummelling on his bedroom door even harder, and now it sounded as if he were using both fists.
‘I feel really bad just leaving them there,’ said Martin.
Ada looked back along the corridor. Rob had switched on the lamp inside his bedroom and the light was shining under the door. She could see then that the key was lying on the floor right outside. On the other side of the corridor, the key to the master bedroom was also lying on the floor.
