Wicca Read online

  WICCA

  By

  James Follett

  The second book in the

  Silent Vulcan triolgy.

  by James Follett

  [email protected]

  www.james-follett.co.uk

  REPRESENTATION:

  Marjacq Script Ltd

  Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7563 1302

  FAX: + (0)20 7935 9115

  email: [email protected]

  http://www.marjacq.com

  KINDLE EDITION PREPARED BY:

  Richard Follett

  Kindred Partners [email protected]

  Tel: 01730 819915

  My thanks to Ivor Bunn for providing much valuable information on that shadowy figure, Matthew Hopkins -- the so-called Witchfinder General; and to Deborah Smith at Severn House Publishers for her helpful comments in the early days.

  WICCA

  by

  James Follett

  Chapter 1.

  VIKKI PRESSED THE BACK of her hands to her eyes and started wailing.

  The four-year-old was tired and hungry. The Gatwick-Alicante holiday flight had been delayed 8 hours. She wanted the familiar surroundings of her bedroom, the reassurance of her cuddly toys.

  Anne Taylor scooped up her daughter and carried the lightest case into the holiday apartment block's deserted lobby while her husband struggled with the larger cases. The lift was typical of Spain's 1960s-built apartment blocks: a tiny car barely large enough for four adults, with a hinged outer door that had to be propped open with a bag while it was loaded. Anne entered the lift first and put Vikki down so she could help Jack stack the cases.

  `Bloody courier and coach scooting off like that,' he grumbled. `Not showing us what's where or anything.'

  `It's gone one o'clock, Jack.'

  Once all three and their belongings were crowded into the lift and the outer door closed, Jack checked the tag on the keys the courier had virtually thrown at them as the airport coach pulled away. He pushed the button for the fourth floor.

  Time would never blot out the memory of Vikki's terrible scream of agony when the lift started moving. The couple had never encountered a lift without an inner door. Anne's cry of terror when she saw her daughter's hand being dragged into the gap between the lift's floor and the side of the lift shaft as the car started rising was lost in the sheer volume of Vikki's scream. Jack's horrified glance took in everything as Anne fell to her knees beside her stricken daughter. Priceless seconds were lost as he struggled with the unfamiliar control panel to stop the lift. It jerked to a halt and he threw himself dementedly against the door in a futile attempt to spring it open, but the lift had risen two metres; the safety interlocks and the floor above held the outer door closed.

  The next two hours passed in a nightmare montage of sounds and images. English voices in the lobby; Jack pleading with them not to try to move the lift, shouting above Vikki's terrible screams; the blood pooling across the floor; the sudden silence when Vikki mercifully fainted; the blood; Anne's handkerchief as a makeshift tourniquet; Spanish voices; arguments; a crash overhead as the roof panel was ripped off and an engineer adding to the crush in the lift; the blood; the luggage being passed up to make room for a doctor and a nurse; the blood; Anne refusing to leave Vikki; the blue flare and crackle of cutting equipment slicing into the door; Vikki being carried unconscious to an ambulance that disappeared into the night, sirens howling despite the hour, with Jack and Anne following in a Guardia Civil car.

  Four hours after the terrible accident, a surgeon in the general hospital at Denia told Anne and Jack that Vikki was out of danger. He normally spoke good English but exhaustion had him reverting to Spanish as he tried to explain that the damage was too severe and that it had been too late to save their daughter's left hand. Amputation of the hand's shredded remains had been essential.

  Anne's sobs of despair were swamped by Vikki's anguished scream. `Please!' she begged. `Please don't take my hand away! Please!'

  A voice invaded Vikki's nightmare.

  `Viks -- it's all right. Everything's all right. You've got a fabulous new hand.'

  `No! No! They're going to take it away!’

  Chapter 2.

  A STINGING SLAP ACROSS the cheek brought Vikki weaving erratically to full wakefulness. She opened her eyes and stared uncomprehendingly up at the thin-faced girl with the straggling blonde hair. It was some seconds before she recognised the face as belonging to Sarah Gale -- her classmate and best friend.

  `Bloody hell,' said Sarah worriedly, shaking the pain out of her fingers. `I thought that belting someone having a nightmare only worked in the movies.'

  `What's going on up there?' Anne Taylor's voice called from the foot of the narrow flight of stairs that led to the girls' bedroom.

  `It's all right, Mrs Taylor,' Sarah answered. `Vikki had a bad dream.'

  `Vikki! Are you okay?'

  Vikki propped herself on her elbows. `I'm fine, mum!'

  `Breakfast in ten minutes,' Anne replied. `And go easy on the hot water, ladies -- it's got to last. The radio said it might be another cloudy day today.'

  Sarah slid her gawky frame onto the bed beside Vikki and put her skinny arms around her friend. The two 16-year-olds clung to each other -- a tangle of Vikki's natural blonde hair and Sarah's not so natural blonde hair. `What happened, Viks?'

  Vikki stared at Dario -- her full-length, life-size wall poster of a magnificent Zulu warrior. He was holding a leopard skin-covered shield in one hand and a short, stabbing assegai in the other. His crane feather headdress erect, his skin a fine honey-coloured sheen from its treatment with ox tallow. Vikki had named him Dario because it seemed to suit his majestic bearing.

  `It's not going away,' said Vikki unsteadily. `I mean -- dreams when you wake up start going away. But it's still clear, sort of. They made my hand, Sarah. Made it whole.'

  The girls separated. Sarah took Vikki's left hand and stroked it. It was a perfect hand. As always when she wasn't using it, Vikki had closed the fingers in a slight clench -- the default position of the artificial hand she used to wear. `Who did, Viks?'

  `The visitors in Pentworth Lake.'

  Sarah stared quizzically at her friend. Pentworth Lake was at the precise centre of an invisible force wall that completely enclosed Pentworth and the surrounding West Sussex countryside. The Wall had appeared three months previously at the end of March. It was thought that the visitors' UFO -- dubbed The Silent Vulcan -- or whatever it was they had arrived in, was buried deep in the silt that filled the bottom of the seemingly bottomless lake.

  `Well,' said Sarah. `I always thought it had to be them. Your hand. And I bet they had something to do with Cathy Price being able to walk again. But how do you know for sure?'

  `I dreamed that they called me to the lake,' Vikki replied, washing at the bedroom hand basin.

  `And you went?'

  `Yes.'

  Sarah grimaced. `Had to be a dream then. The morris police are taking this stupid curfew seriously. Nothing under 18 moves at night without an adult.'

  Vikki had a vague recollection of being caught by a morris police patrol and being dropped at the end of the lane in their Range Rover but daylight was making the edges of her memory fuzzy.

  `So the visitors told you that they gave you your new hand?'

  A hook came away from Vikki's bra. She placed it carefully in a pot on her dressing table. Hooks and eyes were precious now. `Yes.'

  `Anything else?'

  `They said that they came from a place called...' Vikki frowned as she tried to recall details. `Sirius.'

  `I am being serious,' Sarah replied.

  `No -- what we call Sirius. It's a star or planet or something.'

  `Did they speak English in this dream?'

  `Now you're lau
ghing at me.'

  `No,' said Sarah seriously as she started dressing. `If they spoke to you they must've used some sort of language.'

  Vikki sat on her bed and wriggled her jeans over her hips. `These feel damp.'

  `Heavy dew last night and the window was open.'

  `They spoke in pictures,' said Vikki, tugging carefully on the zip fly. A broken zip was a disaster. She stared at Sarah, her large green eyes clouded with worry. `They said that they wanted me to do something but not yet.'

  `What?'

  `I can't remember.'

  `You said everything was clear.'

  Vikki struggled manfully not to cry. `Supposing I can't do it? They'll take my hand away.'

  `I wish they'd take their bloody force wall away.'

  `I wish you'd take me seriously.'

  `I wish you'd take yourself seriously,' Sarah snapped back. `Look at you -- putting that stupid glove on. You're going to have to "out" your hand sooner or later, Vikki.'

  `I'd rather it were later.'

  `But you've had it three months now! Ever since the Wall appeared. You can't go on hiding it inside a glove just because of this stupid idea that you're going to lose it again. It's a real hand, Vikki. It's yours for keeps.'

  Vikki stared down at her gloved left hand, resting on her lap, the fingers looking unnatural in their usual half-clenched position of her old artificial hand. `The dream was so real, Sarah,' she said in a low voice.

  `It was just a dream, stupid!'

  `Vikki! Sarah!' Anne Taylor's voice called from the foot of the stairs. `Breakfast is nearly ready. Now come on!'

  Vikki reached down for her trainers. She picked one up. Both girls stared at it in astonishment. Vikki found the other and held both up, her eyes widening in fear.

  The trainers were caked with fresh mud.

  Chapter 3.

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT MIKE MALONE'S regular jogs rarely took him this close to the Wall but today was an exception.

  He swung his rangy, muscular frame over the farm gate in an easy vault and paused to wring out his sodden sweatband, and tighten the drawstring on his white tracksuit. He seemed engrossed but his eyes missed nothing. The morning sun was evaporating the dew quite rapidly but he had no difficulty picking out the two recent trails that crossed the field from the gate where he was standing.

  He resumed jogging -- long, easy strides across the close-cropped grass -- following the pony and trap tracks in the disturbed dew. The second set of tracks were made by someone on foot. In places where the over-grazed field was bare of grass he noted that the footprints partially obliterated the wheel ruts. Cuban heel boots. He knew of one person in Pentworth who wore such boots and who had reason to follow the trap -- a suspicion that was confirmed a few minutes later as he breasted a rise and saw the footprints veer into a small, bramble-protected stand of chestnut and larch saplings -- a future crop of fencing posts and an ideal hiding place to observe the valley and the tall, stooping figure of Bob Harding.

  Malone slowed his pace as he took in the strange splendour of the alien landscape that lay beyond the valley. It was the icy, frost-crisped wilderness of Farside -- the unattainable land beyond the Wall.

  What should have been the rolling hills of West Sussex were the bleak steppes of Northern Europe of 40,000 years ago -- an endless vista of sturdy sedge grasses swept by ceaseless, loess-laden winds that bore no moisture for they were chilled and desiccated by the mighty glaciers to the north. Only when the glaciers had receded would the winds become warmer and bring moisture instead of dust thus enabling forests of the pre-Ice Age to re-establish. But, for the time-being, the steady rain of loess was building the rich top soil of what would become the fertile pastures and downs of southern England 400 centuries in the future.

  The picture was very different within the invisible 10 kilometre diameter dome that had isolated Pentworth for 13 weeks from the rest of the world. Trees were making vigorous growth in the longer hours of daylight compared with the barren wilderness of Farside.

  The early summer sun was already uncomfortably hot, and the relative humidity rising to its now customary and near-suffocating 80 per cent. Bob Harding's prediction in the spring that the greenhouse effect of the dome would create a Mediterranean climate was turning out to be correct. The benefits were doubtful as people were now discovering. Traditional crops such as brassicas were not faring so well whereas less nourishing fruit and salad crops were flourishing. There was a prospect of more food rationing ahead.

  Bob Harding was near some old tree stumps on the far side of a small field of sugar beet. Tethered nearby was his government-issue pony and trap. The retired scientist was right at the periphery of the invisible Wall -- indicated by black and white striped survey poles that had been driven into the ground at 100-metre intervals around the dome's 30-kilometre circumference. They had been put in place, not as a warning -- no one had ever been harmed by coming into contact with the Wall -- but to aid the careful mapping of the dome the previous March when it had appeared.

  There was no way across the field because salad catch crops had been sown between the slower growing rows of beet. Intensive cultivation was essential to provide food stocks for Pentworth's 6000 inhabitants -- particularly during the coming winter. The former Pentworth Town Council, now the government, had given itself emergency powers to ensure that every hectare was put to good use.

  Malone jogged around the perimeter of the field and pounded up to Bob Harding. There were few men in Pentworth that commanded the police officer's respect but the retired government scientific adviser was one of them. Tired of London and its fumes that played hell with his asthma, and made the pursuit of amateur astronomy impossible, Bob Harding had taken early retirement, moved to Pentworth where he had supplemented his pension by running an electrical repair shop -- now an important part of Pentworth's social structure. He had also married a former student nearly 40 years his junior and had been voted onto the town council. Shortly after the Wall's appearance, it was Bob Harding who had calculated that Pentworth's night sky was 40,000 years in the past following his discovery that the Pole Star was no longer in its proper place.

  `Good morning, counsellor,' said Malone.

  A flash of blinding light from the clump of saplings and brambles. The unseen watcher was being careless with a camera or binoculars.

  The scientist ignored his visitor. He was standing on one of the stumps, staring intently southward across the frost-scorched sedge grasses of Farside. Malone's eyes were sharp. Despite the slight distortion caused by the Wall, he spotted the distant family group of slow-moving reddish-brown creatures immediately. They were about three kilometres away -- their breath leaving clouds of swirling vapour in the freezing air beyond the Wall.

  `Woolly mammoths!' Malone breathed in wonder, his usual phlegmatic nature forgotten.

  `Goddamn it -- I should've brought my camcorder,' Harding grumbled.

  `It would be a recording of a recording,' Malone observed.

  Harding chuckled. `Good morning, Mr Malone. You still really believe that Farside has been created artificially by the visitors? After all these weeks?'

  Malone shrugged. `I recall telling you the day the Wall first appeared that I'd seen a similar trick at the London Planetarium.'

  `A dome some five miles high at the centre and covering thirty square miles is some planetarium,' said Harding quietly. `Besides, it's not a dome -- it's a completely enclosing sphere.'

  `How's Suzi?' Malone inquired.

  `Looking after the shop. Slave-driving my assistants, I hope.'

  The two men watched the mammoths disappear into a valley.

  `I suppose our erstwhile chairman has sent you to spy on me?' Harding inquired.

  `Mr Prescott has his own informants he can call on,' Malone replied evenly, his expression giving nothing away. `I'm spying on my own account.' The older man grinned and met the police officer's wide-set brown eyes. `My apologies. Mike Malone owes no allegiance to anyone.'


  `Any spying on you is too late,' said Malone ruefully. `That museum piece manual telephone exchange you've got up and running was a mistake.'

  `You don't approve?'

  `I suppose it's okay, being limited to essential services and a few kiosks. But I'd hate to think of the telephone returning as an instrument to rule our lives and drain our bank accounts.'

  `This Ludditism is a bit rich coming from someone whose idea it was that I set up Radio Pentworth using one of my old Spectrum transmitters,' Harding observed.

  `I worry about this talk of moving the station to Government House,' said Malone. `It will lose its independence.'

  `I need the room. You've seen how crowded my workshop is these days. Turning the old courthouse into centralized government offices was a sensible move. It's a big building which gives them plenty of room for a proper studio.'

  `I'm not a Luddite, Councillor Harding,' said Malone seriously. `My two kids are Farside.'

  `I'd forgotten... I'm sorry.'

  The scientist recalled how Malone's eyes had been fixed on him at the first meeting of the town council the day after the Wall's awesome appearance. At that meeting Harding had surmised that the visitors' Silent Vulcan UFO was deep in the mud and silt of Pentworth Lake because that was the precise centre of the Wall's circumference. Also his gravimeter had detected an anomaly in the lake. He had speculated that perhaps the UFO had been damaged and that the Wall was the visitors' means of defending themselves until help arrived as a result of their powerful radio emissions from the lake. Assuming that they were from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, it could take as longer as 27 years, or many thousands of years if the visitors were from the centre of the galaxy.

  Malone stretched his hand tentatively towards the force wall. The tingling sensation in his fingertips was not unpleasant. He pushed harder and watched the strange blackening effect around his hand as the Wall became visible. `I want to see this... obscenity destroyed, Mr Harding. If that makes me a Luddite, then so be it.'