Sheena and Other Gothic Tales. Brian Stableford
off because I’d stood up again. She stood too, so that she could look down at me. She was only five foot seven, and she wasn’t wearing heels, but she still had the advantage endways as well as sideways. She took a deep breath, as if to assert that no one with a conventional B-cup had any right to threaten or insult the proud wearer of a C-cup Wonderbra.
‘We’ll see, shall we?’ I said.
‘We’ll see all right,’ she assured me, as I went past her into the hallway. The silver patterns in the wallpaper glistened with obliquely reflected sunlight as I passed them by.
‘Anyhow,’ Barbie called after me, as I reached out both hands to open the security-conscious door, ‘isn’t that sort of thing supposed to rebound on the ill-wisher? You’re supposed to be a white witch, aren’t you?—although you certainly don’t look it.’
‘The question is,’ I told her, before I closed the door on her, ‘what kind of witch are you?’
I had closed the door behind me before she could formulate a reply. I had, after all, had the benefit of my rehearsals.
She was right, of course. The first thing Mrs. Cole told me, when Mum sent me to her to receive instruction in witchcraft, was that the Art should only be used to achieve good ends. ‘Beware of curses, Rose,’ she said. ‘They work, but they always rebound. You never can tell how many people will get hurt, but you’ll always be among them.’
The name on my birth certificate is Rosemary but everybody called me Rose until Barbara Schiff gave me a new nickname—and even Barbie, who was now Mrs. Fletcher, had thought better about using that when she found me on her doorstep while she was in the middle of a red hot affair with my husband.
I didn’t take Mrs. Cole seriously, about curses or anything else. How could I? I was eleven years old and it was 1989. I’d got used to Mum being a witch, having grown up with it, and I’d got used to being included, the way Keith got included in all Dad’s hobbies, but I spent seven hours a day in school and another three watching TV. I couldn’t take any of it seriously. Not that it stopped me doing it, of course. Keith played football and went fishing; I did witchcraft. It was the way things were. Keith learned ball skills and line-casting; I learned recipes and rituals. We did it because it was expected of us. Mum and Dad had divided us up almost from birth, without ever really thinking about it; they’d just taken it for granted that their son would follow in his dad’s footsteps and their daughter in her mum’s. Maybe Mum wouldn’t have been heartbroken if I hadn’t shown willing, but she’d have been disappointed, and if Keith wasn’t going to disappoint Dad then I certainly wasn’t going to disappoint Mum. We weren’t the kind of family that went around disappointing one another more than was strictly necessary.
I never told Mum that I didn’t take it seriously, of course. It was easy to keep the secret. You soon become used to keeping secrets when your mother’s a witch. Not that she was ashamed of it, of course. If anyone brought the subject up, she’d talk about it gladly, explaining with minute care that she was a worshipper of the Mother Goddess, not a Satanist, a healer, not a fortune-teller. It was different for me; most kids can’t be made to see distinctions like those, and would refuse to understand them even if they could. When other kids asked me if it was true that my mother was a witch, I’d say yes but wouldn’t elaborate; if they asked me if I was one too, I’d refuse to talk about it—and I wouldn’t yield to pressure.
When I was sixteen Mum started taking me to the Annual Conference of the Pagan Federation. It was her idea of taking note of the fact that I’d reached the age of consent. We’d sit through all manner of lectures and workshops on rituals and alternative medicine, and I’d listen to it all with saintly patience, waiting for last thing Saturday night, when there’d be a big party with a rock band—usually Inkubus Sukkubus—playing live.
I liked the music; it was the one thing that seemed to me to be worth taking seriously—that and the style that went with it. All the rest, it seemed to the awkwardly shy teenager I then was, was just so much hot air, just like any other kind of religion—including football and fishing.
I never thought of myself as a truly weird kid, but I suppose I must have been, or else I’d never have got into my twenties without ever trying to curse anyone or anything, and without ever finding out that Mrs. Cole was right.
Curses rebound, and you never can tell how many people will get hurt.
I was in my upstairs room, putting the finishing touches to the last figurine, when John arrived home. I had Funeral Nation on the mini-system, playing as loud as the little speakers would allow; he would have timed it better if ‘Graveyard Eyes’ had been playing, but in fact the title track had just given way to ‘Sacred Cities’.
John was late, of course, but not that late. He’d stopped off for a double, or maybe a couple of doubles, at the Rat & Parrot or the Newt & Cucumber or one of the other ghastly newfangled pubs that had sprung up all over the town centre in the mid-90s. He’d probably gulped the booze down in ten seconds flat, with no time to spare for anything more than a nod to anyone he knew; parking and unparking the Peugeot was what had taken up the extra time.
Barbie had phoned him on his mobile, of course. ‘Better get along home, Coldheart,’ she would have told him. ‘Rag Doll’s found us out and flipped. Better calm her down before she goes over the edge.’
If the nickname Barbie had stuck on him had been apt, he wouldn’t have needed the top-up at the Rat & Parrot, or wherever, but it wasn’t warmth he was after in the whisky. I knew he hadn’t had enough—he wouldn’t have dared to have enough, even though the double or two he’d had must have pushed him over the legal limit—and I knew full well that the first thing he’d do when he came stumbling through the door was have another, and another after that.
I was right, of course. He gulped those too before he came up to my room. By the time he arrived in the doorway, aesthetic propriety had been restored; the speakers were booming out the ‘resurrected’ remix of ‘Chaos Mind’.
John had never liked Midnight Configuration; he didn’t mind the poppier goth rock, but he hated anything with guttural vocals and a real edge. ‘Chaos Mind’ wasn’t his sort of thing at all, although at that particular moment in time I couldn’t think of anything that would have suited me better. When he saw that I wasn’t going to switch it off he did it himself, with what was intended to be an angry flourish.
The fact that I’d been to see Barbara had licensed his anger, but it was still a mask for shame and guilt and terror. When he turned towards me from the mini-system he didn’t know whether to yell at me or beg forgiveness, but when he saw the figurines on the desktop the choice became more complicated.
In the end, he could only manage, ‘What the hell are those?’
‘Didn’t Barbie tell you?’ I said, picking up the Barbie doll—one of two that wasn’t entirely my own work. I knew she wouldn’t have; it would have sounded too silly, and she would have known that he’d find out as soon as he confronted me.
I watched his brow furrow, and I knew he was wondering why there were four figurines instead of only two—but all he said was: ‘Well, I can understand why you might want to stick pins in both of us—but it doesn’t mean anything, Rose. It really doesn’t. It needn’t affect you and me. We can get past this, if we can just talk it through. The thing with Barbara’s over—I give you my word.’
By my count, that was four clichés; I had to keep count because I’d promised him a needle for every cliché, starting with the thinnest one and making my way through the packet towards the thickest.
‘It means something to me,’ I said. ‘Even you must have an inkling as to just how much.’ I picked up a big hatpin and held it up alongside the Barbie doll, but it was just for show; I was keeping my real first move in reserve, because I knew it had to be timed exactly right.
‘That’s not going to help,’ he said. ‘Even if it makes you feel better, it’s not going to solve anything.’
‘It’s not supposed to solve anything,’