Witch (10 page)

I pictured a bottle floating in water, bobbing and listing from side to side. The water was black, just like the waves which had crashed against the shore earlier that day. The water made a sploshing sound as the bottle came towards me. There was something tucked inside it.
A message, perhaps? A cry for help? My feet felt suddenly cold and wet. I looked down to see that I was standing ankle-deep in a pool of dirty, black water. There was music playing in the background from far off, as if coming down a tunnel. I vaguely recognised the song but couldn’t quite place it. I looked left and right expecting to see the sandy shoreline stretching away from me in both directions. I threw my hands to my face in fear. There was no sea, no sand – just thick, slimy, stone grey walls. I looked up, the funnel of the well stretching high above me, its opening looking like a pinprick of white light.

With my heart racing and mouth turning dust dry, I knew I was trapped at the bottom of the well again. Something brushed against my ankle, and I screamed. It was the bottle and there was something inside, a folded piece of paper. I reached for it,
then stopped, my fingertips brushing the cold, black water. The music had suddenly grown louder. But it wasn’t music – not quite. It was the sound of somebody humming behind me. Slowly, I straightened, leaving the bottle to bob about my feet. I recognised the song being hummed –
Every Breath You Take
by
The Police
. The humming was soft, and it floated around the bottom of the well like a hymn, spiralling upwards and echoing back off the moss-covered walls. My hands were covering my face, and peering through my fingers, I turned around. I wasn’t alone. There was somebody standing, hidden in shadow just a few feet from me.

“Every breath you take...Every move you make...I’ll be
watching
you...” the figure sang softly.

“Who are you?” I whispered, shaking with fear.

Out of the shadows stepped a young woman. I didn’t recognise her. She looked about eighteen years old. She had a pretty face, which was paper white. Long, straight, black hair hung against the sides of her face like curtains, and onto her shoulders. The girl wore a thin, long black dress, the hem brushing over the surface of the water at the bottom of the well. Her eyes were like dark pools as she stared at me.

“Who are you?” I whispered again.

“Every vow you break...Every smile you fake...Every claim you stake...I’ll be
watching
you,” she sang as if in answer to my question.

“Watching me,” I breathed, my teeth starting to chatter. Was I that scared or had it grown so suddenly cold? “Why would you be
watching
me?”

Opening her arms as if to embrace me, the girl took a step forwards and sung just above a whisper, “How my poor heart aches with every step you take...”

I flinched away, her long, white fingers looking skeletal in the darkness of the well.

“I feel so cold and I long for your embrace...” the girl sang softly, her arms still open, as if inviting me to hold her. She stopped singing, her lower lip trembling, tears rolling down her ashen face as she started to sob. Somehow the music continued to echo softly about the well, even though she had stopped singing and humming. And even though my mind was screaming at me to run – climb out of the well and escape – I couldn’t leave her alone. The girl looked too sad.
Heartbroken. 

With the water lapping against my ankles, I stepped forward and took her in my arms. I held her and she hugged me back gently. No, she didn’t hug me – she clung to me. Her hair felt soft against my face, her body frail and delicate in my arms.

“Why are you crying?” I whispered in her ear, my heart suddenly aching as if I could feel her sadness. It was more than sadness – it felt like utter despair.

The girl sobbed against me, like a younger sister needing comfort.

“How did you end up in this well?” I whispered.

“I was pushed,” she cried against me.

“Who pushed you?” I asked.

“
Witch
...” she said.

But it didn’t sound like the girl anymore...her voice had changed. It had grown hoarse, rough, as if she were gargling on a throat full of broken glass. I pulled away from her and screamed. It wasn’t the girl I was holding in my arms, but the old man who had died on the road. Tiny bubbles of blood popped around his flaky lips. He jerked and twitched as he came towards me, his milky white eyes rolled back in their sunken sockets.

“Witch,” he croaked.

“I’m not a
witch!
” I screamed at him, my heart racing. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill you.”

“No accident...” the old man gargled. “
Witch!”

“Leave me alone!”
I screamed, covering my ears with my hands, and screwing my eyes shut. “I don’t want to see you no more! Please just leave me alone.”

Then, in time with the music, and just like the girl had, the old man started to hum, then sing that song.
“Every move you make...I’ll be watching you...”

“Please,” I cried, turning and beginning to claw my way up the walls of the well. My fingernails dug and scratched at the stone surface, but I couldn’t get a hold. The walls were damp, covered in hundreds of years’ worth of moss and mildew. I glanced back over my shoulder. The old man was standing in the water, humming that song. The flap of skin which had been torn free during the car crash hung against the side of his face, making a wet, slapping sound.

“Please stop,” I cried, my heart beating so fast I thought it might just break. 

Despite my pleas, the old man continued to sing. That same line going around and around in my head...
I’ll be watching you... I’ll be watching you... I’ll be watching you...

...I’ll be watching you! I pulled the earphones out, just wanting that song to stop, and sat up in my bed. Sweat dripped from my brow, plastering my hair to the sides of my face. A splinter of grey dawn light cut through a gap in the curtains and gave my room a dim, smoky-like quality. I looked down at my iPod; that song by
The Police
was stuck on repeat. With a set of trembling fingers, I turned it off.

Chapter Fourteen

I threw on my bathrobe
and padded to the bathroom. Feeling sick and with my heart still racing, I started to run a bath. While it filled with water, I sat on the toilet and had a pee. Why had I dreamt about that girl in the well? My mind raced. Had the girl in the well been hiding away in my subconscious because Vincent had mentioned her? How had she ended up in that well? The girl in my nightmare had told me she’d been pushed. By accident or on purpose?

I turned off the taps, slipped out of my robe, and climbed into the bath. The warm water lapped over me and I leant my head back. Staring up at the white ceiling, I thought of how the girl had been humming and singing. To picture her standing at the bottom of the well, her dark eyes staring at me, made me shiver and I sunk deeper beneath the warm bath water. Why had she been singing that song – why did she say that she would be watching me?
Because you fell asleep listening to that song, dummy
, my mind tried to reason. That’s all it was.
You were listening to that Police track and the words and music filtered through your subconscious and into your dream
. I splashed some of the bath water onto my face in an attempt to clear my mind.

Vincent had said that a girl had died by falling into a well ten years ago. What if it is the same girl – the same well – I had seen in my nightmare?
And if it was, why? The old man was still haunting my sleep. He had been in the well, too. Was there a connection between him and the girl? Had he been involved in the girl’s death in some way? Michael had told me he hadn’t really known the old man, other than he was odd and spoke kinda strange. He definitely did that – calling me
witch
. But he only kept making a guest appearance in my dreams because of what happened out on the road, I reasoned. The old guy was my guilty conscience, come alive to haunt me. That’s why he wanted to talk to me. Would he ever be silenced unless I told the truth? I feared he would always be there – lurking in the shadows of my dreams – whispering the word
Witch
.   

Who was the girl, though? I would only find that out if Vincent found more of the missing paperwork from the file he had mentioned. I didn’t have a contact number for him and I couldn’t risk telephoning the police station. I couldn’t let my father know that I’d been in contact with anyone from work. As my mind tried to reason out the dream and try and conjure ways of how I might find out who the girl was and why she came to be in that well, the telephone suddenly rang. With water dripping from me, I climbed out of the bath, wrapped a clean towel around me, and went into the living room.

“Hello,” I said into the phone.

“Sydney, it’s your father,” he said.

My heart leapt into my throat. Had he discovered that it hadn’t been Mac who’d returned my iPod, and that I had spoken with the new recruit, Vincent? “Hey, dad,” I said casually.

“I just called to see how you were doing?” he said.

I swallowed hard with relief. “Okay, I guess.”

“You guess?” my father came back. “Are you okay, or not?”

“I’m not sleeping too good,” I confessed, wanting to share my burden. I wondered how his sleep had been. Had his conscience been pricking him too as he lay alone at night? Somehow I doubted it. “I keep having nightmares.”

“They’ll soon pass,” he said, more like a doctor giving medical advice than a father offering comfort.

“I’m not so sure,” I said softly, looking out of the living room window at the grey day. “I don’t think they will ever go away unless I tell the truth about what really happened. How those people really died.”

I heard my father breathe deeply on the other end of the line. “
Sydney, that time has passed. We can’t go back on our story now.”

“But...” I started.

“Listen to me, Sydney,” he cut in, “there isn’t going to be a problem here unless you create one. The paperwork has been sent over to the coroner’s office. As far as everyone thinks, it was a regrettable accident caused by the old guy, who was half blind, steering his horse and cart out into the road in front of your patrol car.”

“But that’s a lie, dad,” I breathed. “That’s not what happened and you know it –
I
know it.”

“Look, if you start to wobble now, girl, the whole thing will go belly-up,” he warned. “But it won’t just be you who will be in the dock; it will
be Mac, Woody, and me.  Both of them are good men, with wives and children. Do you want to see them lose their jobs? Or worse, go to prison for perverting the course of justice? Because that’s what will happen, Sydney – that’s what will happen to all of us.”

“But...” I tried to start again.

“I understand how you feel,” my father said down the line, his voice taking on a calmer tone as if trying to reason with me. “However you want to look at it, Sydney, you didn’t mean to kill those people. It was a mistake, right?”

“Right,” I whispered, closing my eyes and picturing that little boy with the red sticky hair.

“A mistake you would have to pay for with the rest of your life if the truth ever came out that you had been drinking on duty, which resulted in the death of those people,” he reasoned with me.

“I get the feeling I’m going to pay for it anyway,” I whispered into the phone.

“Maybe,” he said. “But it will be a darn-sight more comfortable dealing with your guilt from the comfort of your apartment than a prison cell. Think about that, Sydney. You wouldn’t cope with life on the inside. I’ve seen it. Those people live like animals. They’d eat you up for breakfast and spit you out for supper, especially being a copper and all.” He paused, then added, “Can’t you see I’m just trying to protect you?”

“I know,” I said softly, but the feelings of guilt felt just as raw as ever.

There was a long pause.

“Why don’t you go and see your mum for a few days?” he suddenly suggested. "The change of scenery will do you good. You know, get right away from Cliff View. You might even decide that you want to stay...”

“You want to get rid of me?” I breathed, feeling crushed at his suggestion. “You don’t want me to come back because I’m an embarrassment to you. I cause you problems and always have.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “What I’m trying to say is
, you might decide there is a better life for you in Spain. Let’s be honest – what’s there to offer you in Cliff View? You’re always telling me that there is no life down here – that you don’t really have any friends. All I’m trying to say is that you might have a more interesting life over there with your mum...”

“And Julio?”
I snapped, wanting to hurt him as much as he had hurt me.

There was another long silence at the mention of my mum’s lover’s name.

Almost at once, I regretted what I had said. My father didn’t deserve that. Trying to make amends, I said, “I don’t want to go to Spain. If I had wanted to, I would’ve gone already. I want to stay in Cliff View – it’s my home...and I don’t want to leave you.”