Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Rational Katherine came back with a second wind, trying to bash stupid fairy tale girl into oblivion. A psychic, a ghost whisperer, and a witch? Just how? What? This was just plain crazy…

Hans interjected my thoughts.

“Feeling not thinking, remember? Throw the clockwork thoughts out of the window, and let your intuition guide you.”

I must have been open-mouthed. The battle was still raging inside me.

Hans read it in an instant.

“It’s interesting don’t you think? How you are coping so well with the supernatural elements of the people around you, but not of the ones in yourself?”

“I’m not sure I’m coping so well with anything,” I told him.

“That’s not true, sweetheart. You’re coping extremely well with everything. It’s an awful lot to comprehend.”

Sweetheart.

My sweetheart was a vampire. A bisexual, murdering, vampire. A stunningly handsome vampire with a monster cock. And I was his witch. I wasn’t sure whether my cackling laugh was aloud or in my head.

He pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead.

“I ask you again,” Hans said. “Do you not think it’s interesting how you can accept the supernatural elements around you, but not within you?”

I heard my grandma’s screeching voice in my head. STUPID GIRL! STOP IT WITH THE DAYDREAMING!

Memories came back like a typhoon, running savage through my mind.

A teddy cat when I was a young girl, given to me by one of our neighbours. Me convinced he was a familiar called Goblin, and casting pretend spells with him, using one of Mum’s big cooking pots as a cauldron.She’d gone ballistic and thrown him out with the trash. STOP IT, KATHERINE! NO GAMES ABOUT WITCHES!

Me telling Mum about my dream where Grandma had a nasty fall in church at the harvest festival, later that week. Please make sure she’s safe, I said. I don’t want her to hurt herself!

STOP IT, KATHERINE! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT ANY MORE OF YOUR STUPID DREAMS! THEY AREN’T REAL!

I’d been right, though. Grandma had tumbled and knocked herself out on one of the pews.

“That’s why you haven’t realised,” Hans said softly against my ear. “You’ve been told you’re crazy for feeling the truth of things, ever since the day you were born.”

“But how can it be like this?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter how. All that matters is that you are. Embrace it, Katherine. Let go of the fight and accept who you truly are.”

“How can I embrace it? How can I accept who I am? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know what being a psychic, or a ghost whisperer, or a damn witch even means.”

Or do I?

The thoughts tickled and prickled inside me.

“I promise you, sweetheart,” Hans said. “You have a huge number of skills you can learn to use. Spellcraft, divination, and communicating with the spirits of the dead. Reading astrology, channelling energy, tuning into psychic waves. They are all there ready and waiting inside you.”

The truth in Hans’ words was beginning to hit my heart. My guts were churning, senses on alert to the max. The trapdoor was rattling.

Hans rocked me gently in his arms. “Let yourself run with it. Allow your intuition to guide you, not your mind.”

I took a breath and let myself sink into the sensations, the spinning of the bathroom disappearing. I listened to the trapdoor rattling in the distance, but this time I didn’t run away from the sound.

I was on a woodland path, in the cool breeze of day, not drowning underwater, desperate to swim to the surface. The trapdoor was ahead of me, with its dark lid of wood sunk into the earth.

Red light started to glow around the edges, then came the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP like a pounding drum echoing through the woodland.

My skin prickled with fear, but it didn’t stop me.

The THUMP, THUMP, THUMP got louder the closer I stepped.

What was under there? Monsters? Demons? Ghouls?

The undead? Zombies about to claw their way out…

The terror kept rising, but it didn’t matter. I forced my steps steadily, in time with the thumps. My feet kept on moving in tiny little steps, and I knew I was sinking deeper inside my subconscious. I looked behind and the path was growing misty, taking me further and further away from the places I knew. The thought of turning around and running back to safety was so strong I could barely take it. But still I inched forward.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

I wished I had a weapon for when the demons burst out. Even a pathetic little tree branch to put up a tiny bit of a fight. The glow of red around the edge of the wooden lid grew brighter, the thumps getting louder. The trapdoor rattling.

What the hell was in there? What was trying to get out?

It didn’t make any difference what was waiting under there, I had to keep walking and face it. For once, finally, I had to face it. I was going to do it, whatever the cost.

THUMP.

I moved closer.

THUMP, THUMP.

The beats were in line with my heart.

Then I heard something else underneath the thumps. Something I’d never heard before…

Screams.

Screams coming out from underneath the wooden slats, and they were frantic. The thumps were the fists of something – someone – desperate to escape.

I froze, glanced behind, the path had gone, nothing but a wall of mist.

Another high-pitched scream and the trapdoor rattled.

THUMP. THUMP.

I’d never felt so terrified. Once I opened that door and whatever was in there ran free, I knew there was no way I’d ever get it closed again. It would be open for all time.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

I arrived at the trapdoor and crouched down, reached out for the round iron handle and I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wanted to bolt and run.

But that’s what I’d been doing my whole life, wasn’t it? Bolting and running instead of facing up to whatever was going on underneath.

I was going to open the trapdoor and face whatever was inside.

Do or die!

I turned the handle and it clanked. The light around the edges was no longer red, it was white. The screams were from a solitary voice in need of saving, rather than a chorus of demons baying for blood.

“HELP ME! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

“I’m coming!” I yelled. “Don’t worry! I’ll get you out!”

I struggled because it was so damn heavy. I had to get to my feet and brace myself hard, wrenching up that door with everything I had. I gritted my teeth and strained, every muscle taut in my body until I managed to pull it up and push it back where it landed on the grass with a thud.

And there she was. A little girl.

She tugged herself up from the deep, wearing a white nightdress, with my teddy cat, Goblin, clutched under her arm, crying so hard her tears were streaming.

She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and the shock on her face matched the shock on mine.

Of course, I should have known it. Feeling, not thinking. The trapped girl was me.

She stared up at me with huge, wide eyes and I pulled her to her feet and held her tight.

“It’s ok,” I whispered. “You’re going to be ok now. You’re free.”

I could barely hear her words through her sobs.

“Why didn’t you save me sooner? I was so scared!”

The answer was obvious to me. I was crying along with her as I answered her question.

“Because I was too scared myself. But I’m not now. I’m not scared anymore.”

I opened my eyes and took a huge gulp of air. The creature in my arms wasn’t the little girl me, it was the vampire who’d led me to the trapdoor.

His stare said it all.

“Yes,” he said. “You were trapped inside and cut off from the light. Bolted in so deeply that you couldn’t hear your own cries.”

The room spun afresh, but I didn’t try to steady myself this time, I let it swirl and swirl, and I trusted Hans to keep me steady. Keep me safe. Keep me warm.

The sobs ate me up, just like the little girl crying with Goblin under her arm. I saw Mum wrenching him away from me in my nightdress, as I screamed and cried and begged her to let me keep him.

NO WITCHES, KATHERINE! NEVER ANY WITCHES!

“I can’t believe they did this to me,” I sobbed to Hans. “They did this to me, didn’t they? Mum and Grandma. Why?”

He held me tighter and his silence said it all. He didn’t need to speak the words, I was already beginning to know them.

Feeling not thinking.

I saw Mum and Grandma in church, praying. I saw them scowling and whispering, trapped in the world on the surface, just as I was trapped in the world underneath. Because they didn’t want to face it either, did they? They didn’t want to open their own trapdoors…

“That’s it,” Hans said. “Keep on feeling.”

The years rewound themself in flickers, my own deep past, where they would hold my hand and lead me into church for prayers every weekend, before I even knew what prayers meant.

Please, our Saviour. Save Katherine from the path of darkness. Hold her in your arms and keep her from sin.

Please, Lord Above, take our child into your embrace, and forgive her the chains of our past.

Ourpast.

The chains of OUR past.

What past did they mean?

Now was the time to use my skills… I had to trust them. Trust myself…

The flickers of the past kept on coming.

Witches being burnt on stakes and drowned in lakes. A chain of women hiding who they were throughout my whole family line. The fear. The torment. The shame.

Mum and Grandma ignoring the screams from their own trapdoors.

I was the one who was freeing myself from the shackles.

I was the woman who would connect us back to our roots.

The little girl stepped back inside me, and my soul came home. My tears stopped, and the room stilled, and I pulled free from Hans’ arms, because I didn’t need his strength anymore. I had more than enough of my own.

His smile was magnificent as I stood before him. He nodded, sharing the secrets of my mind.

“Welcome home, little one,” he said. “See the world through your brand new eyes.”

The joy was incredible as I looked around me. There were sparkles of life and energy glistening through everything I could see. My senses were heightened, but they weren’t intimidating. I held up a hand and felt the energy coursing through my fingers, free to burst out in whichever direction I chose.

Yes.

I was a psychic and a ghost whisperer, but most importantly of all. I was a witch.

“What do you want to do now?” Hans asked me. “Would you like to go back home? Take some time out?”

But I shook my head, touched my hands to his handsome face and kissed him. Kissed him deeply and tugged on his lip before I looked him in his gorgeous eyes.

“No, thank you,” I told him. “I want to go to the blood house. Just like we planned.”