for this sort of thing but it can work for us too: you try to blackmail Robert over some ancient document relating to the family. Although I bring the requested money to the appointed place you become greedy and aggressive. There is nothing I can do but shoot in self-defence. Requires a little explanation of the firearm’s presence, but having read your chapter I am already feeling vulnerable.’
I didn’t move.
Felix raised the gun and took a step towards me. A couple of moths zigzagged over his head and up to the moon.
Don’t they say that when you look death in the eye your whole life flashes before you?
Well, that’s not true. No, at that point it wasn’t my life but the lives of others that flitted in a montage across my eyes – fragments of love, seconds of distress, moments of anguish. Elizabeth Clarke pushed up to the noose; Susan Cock, afraid, fainting; Rose Hallybread, Joyce Boones … the old ones … the poor ones … the young … Anne West silently sacrificing herself. Rebecca. Her vision swam before me, then I blinked and I saw him through her eyes. Felix took another step and it was as if some filmy projection had covered him – dressed in his tall hat, his red rheumy eyes on fire. With black, lank hair dripping off his skull, the Witchfinder stared back.
And then the witches were not in my mind’s eye but out there, before me, swirling in the cold autumn night like wreaths of smoke, circling the Witchfinder and me, shooting in between us like ethereal comets, lighting the air with flares of brilliance, sprouting wings like moths, then melting into the atmosphere, reappearing, criss-crossing the space, repeating the pattern again and again. I could feel a churning energy about me. It was coming in through my fingertips, pulsing down my arms, filling me with incredible strength and power. Claiming me.
It had always been there, but latent, until now, on Halloween, it pervaded my entire form, hitting the ground beneath my feet and passing through it into the earth.
Everything that had ever been fell into place.
I was caught in a moment between time and space – a complete and perfect being with no beginning, no end – a single point of conversion. There was no dissonance or fear, only a surge of feeling – a profound sense of strength, justice, duty.
And knowledge.
I gasped out as my conscious mind connected with the feeling and in response the air about me rippled and opened, like a torn veil. Voices came in from different directions. Low at first, like a bubbling stream. Women, old, young, poor, and men, too, pleading, demanding, their words stabbing the air like needles. Then louder, more pressing, urgent, harsh until, like the thunderous trumpet of an avenging archangel, the sounds gathered and contracted into a point and a deafening roar blew out across the world.
The man was spinning round, gripping the gun. He looked at me, pathetically, but I was not myself. One of many and yet of none. The women filled me up. Gone were their limps, their arthritic aches, their fear, loneliness, horror and frailty. Their rage was fuelling my strength and guiding me.
The man’s expression changed as I came to him. ‘Your eyes,’ he said, stepping back from me. ‘They’re like wish lanterns.’ And briefly through the overlay I glimpsed Felix. But then he vanished and the red eyes appeared again. Hopkins.
A blaze of power raged through me. Outside of my own pinprick of consciousness I was aware of others, thousands surrounding me, kaleidoscoping in over my soul, pushing down, concentrating my will.
The man reached out to steady his hand and aim the gun.
I took another step closer to him, put my hand over the barrel and pulled him so close I could smell the stink of decay on his breath.
‘You are not going to kill me again,’ we said.
I think he knew what was coming. He could see it on my face. Up close I could see his hair bristling with fear. He tried weakly to pull the gun down but my grip was firm. Rock solid, and just as unyielding, I held it still with the force and will of all those waking vengeful souls.
‘It ends now,’ we told him.
‘You can’t,’ he said simply.
But the dice had been cast. It had to be.
He made to push me to the ground but I held firm. He looked me straight in the eye then, in a single