Horse skull, preserved cat, witch’s bottle: lying upon the black sheet within the temporary chalk markings, upon which herbs rain down and patter the artefacts; a cleansing shower within the golden womb of Blackwood’s temple.
From the permanent protective circle, Blackwood finally stops mumbling and dusts his hands, sending a cascade of dry fragments upon the pile of tomes rearing beside his ankles. Raising his mangled thickets of eyebrow over his reading glasses, he directs proceedings at Tom. ‘Now the salt. Sprinkle it. Evenly. All over.’
Sleep-deprived, Tom moves like an automaton, pouring rock salt from the sack provided.
‘That’s it. That’s it. And there. Cover them as if you were pouring cement over a radioactive isotope. Good. Good. Now. The rite you observed. The boar. Did it stand before the altar?’
Tom nods.
‘Which direction does that face?’
Tom considers where the sun rises at the front of the house. ‘That would be north.’
As if on receipt of terrible news, Blackwood closes his eyes. His voice becomes a breathless wheeze. ‘The hare. Opposite the boar in the circle?’
‘Yes. At the start. That’s how they were. By that hill. After their dance, or whatever the bloody hell they were doing.’
Blackwood’s eyes open. ‘Preceded by circumambulation in reverse?’
Tom shakes his head, confused.
‘Widdershins?’ Blackwood interrogates in a schoolmasterly tone.
‘Widder-fuck?’
‘Oh for God’s sake! Did they dance backwards?’
Tom nods.
‘Holy Christ.’
‘You can stop them, yeah? More bowls? A spell?’
‘Not this. If it’s what I think it is.’
‘You’re starting to freak me out, if the truth be told.’
Blackwood hauls in a breath, sighs it out. ‘Then you appreciate the gravity of this process. They’ll have spent a lifetime on the vision. The vision they sustain is inner. The entire interface is inside them. The Moots are the conduit. But across the threshold they build in their minds, something far more powerful than mere elemental energy, or a spirit, is called upon. Must have been. And they have bound it to themselves.’
‘I don’t follow.’
Blackwood paces inside his chalk ring. His eyes are still puffy from the sleep Tom interrupted just after six. ‘This is the oldest magic. Old as stones. The North is death. The Underworld. They’ve always been greedy. Spiteful, yes. But stupid? I never took Magi and Medea for stupid.’
Above the artefacts, now twinkling with salt crystals, Blackwood dismissively wafts a hand. ‘These curses are trifles, child’s play in comparison. The defences we have built won’t hold for long. Not against this calibre of magic.’ Blackwood then closes his eyes and bows his head, palms pressed together, as if in prayer.
Realising this man is starting to express far too much respect for the shits on the other side of his broken garden fence, Tom lunges. He crosses the chalk boundaries and seizes Blackwood’s shirt front. Buttons pop and bounce. ‘My daughter! She lost a bloody eye! There’s an infection now! She could fucking die! You better—’
Blackwood seizes Tom’s wrists and wrestles him back a step. Then loosens his grip because Blackwood has been forcefully reminded of what is at stake; of what Tom and Fiona stand to lose if the practitioner’s interventions do not succeed. A childless old curmudgeon, perhaps; a committed or even an involuntary bachelor: Tom doesn’t know, but the man’s murky eyes too clearly reveal his horror at what the Moots have inflicted upon a child. He doubts that even Blackwood believed Magi and Medea would sink so low. And now that the old practitioner must second-guess a situation growing graver by the hour, he appears as winded as Tom feels. Blackwood won’t meet his eye.
And perhaps there is some guilt in the man too, festering under those ungroomed bushels of eyebrow, because maybe Blackwood has worsened the situation. And knows it. The conflict has escalated, vertically. This is no longer some petty rivalry about the selling of charms in the South-West.
Gracey’s only chance is Blackwood. Not antibiotics or a life-support system, no medical expertise or twenty-four-hour care with observation. None of that will matter a damn. There is only Blackwood standing between him and a casket so small, he cannot consider its pitiful dimensions for more than half a moment.
Will the Moots then kill him and Fiona? Or will their lingering in some kind of wretched half-life of perpetual mourning for a dead child please them more?
Tom’s fists clench tighter upon Blackwood’s lapels. ‘What the fuck do I do?’
Blackwood totters where he stands. Peers down at Tom’s hands as if they are covered in dog mess. ‘Pictures. I need pictures. A name. A sign. Of what serves them. From what they draw their greater power. There may be a shrine. An incantation. A name recorded, inscribed… Indoors. When they leave the house, you must go inside. Find it.’
Despair lowers Tom’s eyelids. Fear keeps them shut. When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Blackwood’s tatty slipper, nudging the cash-card reader across the protective circle towards him.