The Whitby Witches 3: The Whitby Child (11 page)

Like a pelican, the nun swooped upon the table and carried off a handful of food which she rapidly made short work of. Just as a sausage was disappearing into her wide mouth, Ben put his head around the door.

Without pausing to greet Aunt Alice, the boy raced forward and piled a teetering quantity of sandwiches and crisps on to a plate.

And so the party began, but Jennet enjoyed none of it. In silence, she picked at her food and solemnly watched the others. It was as though she were isolated from all of them, a separate and lonely figure who no longer belonged amongst this cheerful group. As if from a great distance, she dispassionately viewed the proceedings and the sober ticking of the grandfather clock soon became the only sound she was conscious of.

"Is that orange squash I spy?" Sister Frances enthused. "Might I partake of just a smidgen?"

Aunt Alice passed the nun an empty glass but the frown which had furrowed her brow since the unwanted guest's arrival suddenly evaporated and a mischievous chuckle issued from her lips as she casually opened a cabinet and reached inside.

Presently Miss Wethers finished her work on the cake and nipped into the parlour for a bite to eat. But she had spent so long preparing and tasting everything that she was no longer very hungry and nibbled tentatively at a cube of cheese and a small tomato.

The appetite of Sister Frances startled them all. It was as though she had not eaten for days. Ben attempted to guard what was left of the crisps and sausages, for the nun had wolfed most of them, and he glowered at her as she moved towards the table for a fourth helping.

"Some more squash, Sister?" Miss Boston beamed, handing her a third tumbler full.

"Rather!" came the eager reply and the nun swigged it down in two great gulps.

"Oh, let me fetch you another," Aunt Alice declared.

Presently, Miss Wethers slipped out and scurried back into the kitchen. When she returned, her face was aglow with the flames of thirteen candles that crowned the cake she had laboured over. It was decorated with pale pink icing and, in a deeper shade, fine fondant worms spelt out the merry occasion alongside a rather distorted yellow blob that she wistfully proclaimed to be a "darling baby bunny".

A loud chorus of "Happy Birthday" erupted but the exuberant voice of Sister Frances drowned out all others and when she had finished, the nun gave out a great and giggling laugh.

Miss Wethers and Ben stared at her in astonishment but Aunt Alice had to hide her face to conceal the guilty smirk which had appeared there.

Jennet looked at Sister Frances coldly. She had always thought the nun was stupid and the way she was tittering at the slightest thing seemed to prove she had been right.

When the cake was cut and passed around it was discovered to be one of Edith's less successful creations. At least the chewing required to swallow it kept Frances quiet, although by then she had started to sway unsteadily.

An unexpected knock at the door made Miss Wethers choke and she scampered into the hall to answer it amidst much coughing.

"Doctor Adams!" she announced in a shriek as she realised how dreadful she looked covered in flour and icing sugar. Hurriedly, she herded him into the parlour, handed him a clean serviette and disappeared upstairs to make herself more presentable.

"Halloo there, Doctor!" hailed Sister Frances. "Isn't thish marfel... marvellesh?"

The fleshy man could only blink at her, for the nun's head was waggling on her long neck as though it was about to fall off. With one eye half closed and the other fixed upon him in a defiant glare, she held her tongue between her teeth and hissed through them.

"Do have a thothage! They're the nithesht lickle porkers and sho teeny and thweet. Go on! What about a thandwij, or a wee dwinky? Don't be thuch a fuddy duddy! HIC! Oh, pardin me."

"Are you feeling quite well?" the doctor asked.

"Coursh I do," came the slurred and indignant reply. "Never felt bitter—better. HIC! Shcuse again, mosht impoleet."

Doctor Adams was horrified: the woman was drunk. "I think you had better sit down," he said sternly. "You ought to be ashamed. In front of these children too—what sort of an example is that?"

"To which are you alluding?" the nun asked primly.

"Whatever it is, you should take more water with it," he scolded, removing the glass of orange from her grasp and giving the dregs a cautious sniff.

"Hum," he mumbled. "What would your Mother Superior say about this?"

The nun's face became an exaggerated vision of wounded innocence. "How outrage outrageoush!" she gasped. "How could you accushe me of sutch wickednish! To imply that I am inebri... inebri—squiffy! 'Tis you who ought to be ashamed, Doctor! Is that why your whole face goesh beetroot shometimes? Oh yesh, I've theen you quaff it down at the fête."

Folding her arms with as much dignity as she could muster, the nun turned her face towards the wall and sniffed loftily.

Doctor Adams glanced at Miss Boston. "How long has she been like this?" he asked in a low whisper.

Aunt Alice tutted under her breath and with mock condemnation in her voice answered, "Rolled up like this over half an hour ago. Disgraceful, isn't it? I don't know what to do, I really don't."

An odd twinkle glimmered in her eyes but the doctor failed to notice it, for at that moment Frances whirled around and jabbed him with her forefinger.

"Ash for Mother Shuperior," she cried, "you can tell her all you like. She'sh a rotten old ratbag and I don't give a jot!"

"I'll make you a strong black coffee," the doctor said.

"No!" Frances roared loftily. "It's time I was going anywaysh. Thank you for a mosht delightful evenin', Miss B. Ta-ta Bennykins, happy birthday Jennet—goodbye Doctor!" And she strode in a wavering line from the room, navigated to the front door and stumbled outside where she crashed into Miss Boston's rusting bicycle.

The old lady bit her lip to keep from laughing but the doctor scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Is she often like that, I wonder?" he mused. "How dreadful. Perhaps I should have a word with someone about her problem."

"I shouldn't worry too much," Aunt Alice said, choking back the mirth. "I'm sure it only occurs very rarely."

Before he could answer, Miss Wethers came skipping down the stairs, attired in a new dress and with her hair thoroughly brushed and pinned behind her ears.

"Well, I'm ready," she said.

"Ready for what?" Aunt Alice asked. "You look as though you're off out somewhere."

"We are," the doctor smiled. "There's another old-time dance on tonight and Edith has accepted my invitation once again."

"Oh, Doctor Adams!" cooed Miss Wethers.

"Conway!" he reminded her.

In a matter of minutes they had both left the cottage and Miss Boston uttered a grateful sigh.

"At least I can get on with my studies without her twittering around me," she said. "Here, Ben, put this in the dustbin if you would be so kind."

From the blanket which covered her knees, she brought out an empty bottle of vodka. "Only had it in for when the late Mrs Banbury-Scott used to call round," she explained, handing it to him. "I thought I would explode trying to keep a straight face. Oh, what sublime revenge for all those afternoons of 'Torture by Nun'! Did you see the expression on old Adams?"

Ben pushed her from the parlour back to her sickroom and, laughing together, they left Jennet sitting alone.

The girl gazed sorrowfully around the room and slowly began to clear the table. In the distracting spectacle of Sister Frances, they had completely forgotten to give Jennet her birthday presents.

The sun was still just above the horizon and pale shadows filled the streets and lanes of the West Cliff. A cool breeze blew in from the sea and, as Sister Frances staggered unsteadily over the cobbles she felt extremely giddy.

"What ish the matter with me?" she burbled aloud. "Don't feel at all... I say, why is the street spinning round?"

Lurching against a wall, she tried to balance herself and drew a hand over her brow.

"Mosht unlike me, thish ish," she rambled on. "Wonder if it was something I ate? Praps if I sat down for a while? No—fresh air, that'sh the chappy. Get some good air in you, Frances, that'sh the ticket—do you a power of good. If I shtand on the shore for a few minutes it'll all clear."

Carefully, she made her way down the steps of Tate Hill Pier, holding on to the wall with one hand and her reeling head with the other.

The world was revolving in the most disagreeable manner and she lifted her eyes to the sky but that too was whirling. When her feet sank into the soft sand the nun halted as she tried to control her rubbery legs. Then she took several steps down the gentle slope, slithering only once, and breathed deeply.

"Aarghkk!" she coughed, wildly backing away with her fingers pinching her long nose.

The effects of the alcohol disappeared immediately as a most putrid and disgusting stench filled her nostrils and the poor woman turned a livid green colour.

"What is it?" she shrieked, the back of her throat burning from the bile that she could not keep down.

Sister Frances' eyes grew wide and round as she stared about her.

The entire beach had turned silver. Covering the shore were hundreds upon hundreds of dead fish.

It was a bizarre and grotesque sight. The countless scaly bodies trailed right down to the water's edge where the waves relentlessly washed over them, churning up more of the glittering corpses and disgorging them on to the stinking sand.

With her hand covering her mouth as well as her nose, the now sober nun stooped to peer at the grisly shoal that surrounded her and shuddered in horror and revulsion.

The fish were the most grotesque creatures she had ever seen. They were hideously mutated, with cancerous bulges and weeping ulcers peppering the silver skin. Many were deformed monsters of spine and fin with rows of savage teeth and dead, staring eyes. Others had weird horns growing behind the gills or barbed, vicious-looking lower jaws that curved upwards over the fishes' pointed faces.

The scene reminded Sister Frances of old religious paintings that depicted the saints tormented by similar demons. No, not even they had imagined anything so vile as these foul carcasses. It was as if even the sea could not bear to hold them and had flung the unholy shoal at the land to be rid of its unclean presence.

Overhead the gulls screeched in alarm, but none of them dared alight upon the ghastly shore. No bird would dare feed off that flesh and the air was thick with their agitated flapping.

"Sweet Lord," Frances uttered as she crossed herself in despair, "deliver us!"

Yet as she retraced her steps back to the pier stairs, the nun caught sight of the most revolting malignance she had yet witnessed.

In shape it resembled the other fish but there the similarity ended. The creature was a bloated terror and halfway up the flabby body it split in two, possessing a pair of loathsome heads which lolled over the other corpses and filled Frances with nausea.

Each was coated in a phosphorescent slime that glimmered in the fading light. The wide mouths gaped up at her and the three eyes which protruded from each deformed head seemed to follow her movements.

Sister Frances backed away and to her distress she realised that the thing was not quite dead.

A clawed fin jerked upon the ulcerated side and one of the mouths gave a deep, gasping moan.

That was too much. The nun gave a distressed scream and bounded up the steps, gulping for breath as the fish had done.

Along the curving shore, sitting behind a large, weed-covered boulder, was Nelda.

The young aufwader had been there for some time. She had seen the horrific multitude wash on to the sands and her blood had run cold.

"'Tis a sign," she wept. "Thus do the Deep Ones reveal their displeasure. What other terrors will come to pass? What new foulness shall be shown before my time comes?"

Bowing her head, she brought from her pocket Old Parry's disc of polished glass and clutched it desperately as the tears flooded from her eyes.

In the rugged miles of coast that lie between Whitby and the hill-hugging town of Robin Hood's Bay, the exposed clifftop path is a magnet for ramblers and the hardy tourist.

In places the dirt track disappears completely where the ground has slipped into the ravaging sea far below and the intrepid traveller is forced to cut through fields where placid cows graze and plod through the well-clipped grasses.

That evening, as the inland farms faded in the encroaching dusk, a solitary figure hurried over the pathway.

Hillian Fogle cursed her own foolishness for the umpteenth time. Unwisely she had forgotten to change her shoes and the spikes of her heels continually plunged deep into the mud, impeding her progress.

"Ninety-five pounds," she uttered, heaving the Italian leather from the mire yet again, "ruined totally."

She had left Whitby some distance behind and here, amongst the twisted hawthorn hedges and cow pats, her designer clothes looked even more incongruous.

"Preparation," she intoned, grimacing at the mud spatters that stained her skirt. "Not enough prepared—this will teach you. What did
he
always used to tell? 'Prepare and succeed, blunder and fail.' 'Tis true, I shall not let it be happening again. Those who fail do not wear the amethyst."