Chalk Dust & Broomsticks, Chapter 25

Shirley decides to do some scrying and invites some friends to join her in her cottage.

The Scrying at Crows-Foot Cottage

Dusk had fallen over the village of Woodend like a heavy velvet cloak, dyed the deep, bruised purple of a ripening damson. At the end of a winding path, a tangle of medicinal herbs, thorny roses, and robust, oddly shaped foxgloves, Crows-Foot Cottage sat nestled into the earth as if it had grown there alongside the moss.

The cottage was Shirley’s home and tonight, the windows glowed with a flickering, amber light that suggested more than just a simple hearth. Smoke curled from the crooked chimney in lazy, cerulean ribbons, smelling of dried mugwort and charred cedar.

Inside, the atmosphere was thick enough to chew. Shirley had spent the afternoon preparing. Bunches of drying rosemary, sage, and lavender hung from the low oaken beams, brushing the heads of her guests. The walls were lined with jars of curious things: preserved rose hips, crow feathers, and smooth river stones etched with runes that seemed to pulse when the light hit them just right.

Around the heavy, circular oak table sat a small, nervous congregation. Dora, still wearing her sensible cardigan but twisting a damp tissue in her hands; Christine Cracker, newly disported into the Nursery Unit from Year 3 infants; and Mary Pink, ex Nursery Teacher, recently away from work with stress and newly disported into Year 3. Her eyes were wide with a mix of academic skepticism and raw, human terror. She reached into her handbag for another valium tablet.

"Drink your cordial, Mary Shirley said, her voice like the sound of dry leaves skittering over stone. "It’s elderberry and star anise. It will steady your heart."

Shirley herself looked like a creature of the woods. She wrapped a kaftan of deep emerald silk around herself, and smoothed her auburn hair, which was woven with tiny, dried starflowers. On her lap she stroked Bast, her familiar, a jet black cat with a white shirt, whose yellow eyes never left the centre of the table.

In the middle of the table, resting on a cushion of black sand, was the Crystal Ball. It wasn't the clear, cinematic glass of a fairground tent. It was a sphere of ancient obsidian, shot through with veins of silver that looked like trapped lightning.

"We shouldn't be here," Mary whispered, her voice trembling. "The police are at the school. Inspector Stanhope... he’ll think we’re obstructing. He’ll think we’re mad."

"Stanhope looks for footprints in the mud," Shirley replied, lighting a taper from a beeswax candle. "We are looking for the footprints of the soul. There is a vacuum at Primrose, Mary. Nature, especially the nature of this land, abhors a vacuum."

Shirley gestured to the platters of snacks she had prepared. They were "witchy" in the truest sense, food that grounded the spirit while opening the mind. There were moon-shaped oatcakes topped with goat’s cheese and a single, bitter drop of wild honey; "petrified" ginger root rolled in dark cocoa; and small, tart crabapples roasted until their skins burst, releasing a scent of autumnal decay and sweetness.

Dora took an oatcake, her hands shaking as she remembered finding Althea after the attack. "I can’t stop seeing her, Shirley. In the shower. Not just the blood... but the look on her face. Like she was seeing something that wasn't there."

"She was," Shirley said darkly. "She was seeing the debt collector and he has come to settle the account."

Shirley reached out and hovered her hands over the obsidian sphere. The room seemed to grow colder. The candles flickered, their flames turning a strange, ghostly blue. Mary gasped as a low, rhythmic thumping began beneath the floorboards, the "heartbeat" of the cottage, or perhaps the echo of the school’s boiler room miles away.

"Look into the smoke," Shirley commanded.

She cast a pinch of silver-grey powder into a small brazier. A thick, sweet-smelling cloud rose, curling around the crystal ball. As the smoke touched the obsidian, the silver veins began to glow.

"I see a cage," Shirley whispered, her eyes rolling back slightly. “A woman, young in years, trying to escape from the darkness – a smell of oil and a feeling of suffocating warmth. She is trying to free herself from something.”

The guests leaned in, breath held. In the depths of the ball, a picture began to resolve.

"I see the school," Shirley continued, "but it is hollow. Like a rotted tooth. Beneath the floors, the iron pipes are turning into ribcages. There is a name chalked onto the boiler: I can’t quite make it out. The name is screaming, but there is no mouth to carry the sound."

Suddenly, the image shifted. The ball turned a dull, muddy gold.

"The Owl," Shirley hissed. "A bird of stone and spice. It sits on a mantelpiece in a house filled with secrets. Inside the bird, there is a golden 'A'. It is a hook, waiting to be pulled. When the hand of the law touches the owl, the house of cards will fall."

Mary let out a small sob. "Is it Gerald? Did Gerald do it?"

"Gerald is a hand," Shirley said, her voice dropping an octave. "Althea was the mind: but the mind is broken now. I see her in the white room. She is building a wall of 'I don't know' and 'I don't remember.' The wall is made of glass, and Inspector Stanhope is carrying a hammer."
The crystal ball suddenly flared with a bright, harsh white light, the colour of high-grade office paper.

"The Letter," Shirley whispered, her brow furrowing. "the long-awaited decision.” It lies in the belly of the beast, buried under dirt and paper. It says, but what does it say? Oh, how frustrating, I can’t read it, the words are blurring together. No one has seen it, but it will change the future of Primrose for ever!”

The vision began to fracture. The silver veins in the obsidian pulsed violently.

With a sudden crack, the brazier went out. The candles snapped back to their orange hue, and the room felt abruptly, uncomfortably warm again. Bast jumped down from Shirley’s lap and vanished into the shadows of the kitchen.

Shirley slumped back in her chair, looking exhausted. The "witchy" glow had faded from her skin, leaving her looking like a tired woman who had seen too much.

The guests sat in stunned silence. The snacks remained half-eaten. The crabapples looked like shrivelled hearts on their pewter plates.

"What does it mean, Shirley?" Mary asked, her voice small. "About the ribcages and the owl?"

"It means," Shirley said, wiping a bead of sweat from her lip, "that the summer holidays are over before they’ve even begun. The police will find some evidence and they will eventually find whatever is signified by the pepper pot."

She looked directly at Dora. "You saw the beginning of the end in that shower, Dora. You saw the start of mysterious things to come. We must be prepared.”

One by one, the guests stood up. They moved like sleepwalkers, gathering their coats and handbags. The "witchy" atmosphere of the cottage had shifted from a place of sanctuary to a place of terrible clarity.

"Take the rest of the oatcakes," Shirley said, her voice returning to its normal, soft tone. "You’ll need the strength. Soon it will be Monday and Monday is when the Inspector begins to search."

As the three women walked down the garden path, the owls began to call from the silver birches. To Mary and Dora, it sounded like a warning. To Shirley, standing in her doorway with the purple dusk silhouetting her frame, it sounded like a welcome.

She looked up at the moon, which was just beginning to silver the edges of the clouds. Somewhere, miles away, a caretaker’s wife had been looking at an owl-shaped pepper pot, and a headteacher was staring at a hospital ceiling.

"The flavour of the ghost is getting stronger," Shirley murmured to the night air. "and it is hungry for the truth."