The Circle
of
The Enchantress
Wheldrake
Copyright 2008 Strict Publishing International
Chapter One – Annabelle’s Village
I suppose the great adventure of my life began as I was coming to the end of a pint of strong, flavourful beer, the stuff they call “bitter” up there in the north of England. I was sitting at the bar of a cosy little hotel in a village somewhere in the middle of the Peak District, on a truly ugly November afternoon with rain beating against the thick glass of the windows and wind moaning through the branches of the ancient oak trees outside. There were only two of us at the bar, and nobody at all sitting at the tables, so the bartender – the landlady, as I reminded myself the locals would call her – had apparently found it easy to keep a professional eye on my progress towards the bottom of the glass. She was a big-boned, vaguely matronly woman with very curly hair that was half grey and half blonde, but she had a toughness about her that fitted perfectly with the battered old furniture and the faded hunting trophies above the big, unlit fireplace. I could tell you exactly where the little hotel was and what it was called, but there are some things that should never be told, however compelling the reasons might be for wanting to know them.
“Another pint, lad?” the landlady asked. I glanced out the window. I had planned to drive for another hour or two before stopping for the night, but the rain was coming down in sheets and the idea of trying to fight my way through it did not appeal to me in the least.
“You can stop here for the night, if you like,” she added, clearly guessing my thoughts. “I can let you have a lovely little room upstairs for thirty-five pounds.”
“I would advise against it,” said the other man at the bar suddenly. “We have a witch in this village, and young men are generally her favourite victims.”
It was the first time he had spoken to me, other than a brief greeting when I had first sat down. Unlike the landlady, he was incongruous in this setting. For one thing, he was Asian – not Asian in the British sense, which usually refers to the Indian subcontinent, but from somewhere further east with a definite oriental slant to his features that perhaps was Chinese or Japanese or Korean. However, his accent sounded more like a Londoner’s than anything else, and he looked very much the English gentleman in his long grey coat. His strong, angular face struck me as handsome, which is something I would not say about a lot of men, and his expression was one of studied neutrality. I blinked at him, not sure if I had heard him correctly. There had certainly been nothing in his voice to suggest that he was joking.
“A witch?” I echoed. “You mean some sort of eccentric neo-pagan?”
“I mean a witch,” he replied coolly. “A practitioner of dark magic.”
I laughed, perhaps a bit uneasily, to the faint accompaniment of the wind and the rain. “This is the 21st century. I really don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
“You don’t have to believe it,” said a good-natured northern voice from the direction of the stairs that led up to the guest rooms. “Just consider yourself duly warned. If you keep yourself here too long, odds are she’ll find a way to ensnare you. I’ve seen it happen time and again. He’s just her type, isn’t he, love?”
The speaker was a big, balding man with a thick beard and a considerable belly. He gave the landlady a long, knowing glance.
“Oh, leave him alone, you two,” she retorted, sounding half worried and half amused. “Don’t fill his head with things that are none of his concern. You can stay here tonight, lad, and everything will be fine.”
Perhaps it was the bitter working in me, or perhaps it was the faint indignity of being repeatedly addressed as “lad”, but I suddenly found myself seething with aggressive pride.
“All right then,” I said aloud. “I suppose I will stay here, if only to expose this talk of witchcraft for the plain nonsense it is.”
The Asian and the big landlord both looked uneasy as if I had blurted something about my penis to a roomful of old ladies.
“I wouldn’t say that sort of thing,” the Asian declared slowly. “It’s an exceptionally bad idea to challenge her. Unless, of course, you actually want to end up in her clutches.”
The thought occurred to me briefly that I was on my way to becoming the victim of some absurdly convoluted English prank, but it certainly did not smell that way. It was hard to avoid having the impression that all three of them believed every improbable word they were saying. I was summoned, then, to do battle with some astonishingly crude local superstition; one that had somehow survived the march of reason and technology. I drew myself up on the barstool and folded my arms.
“Oh, I would be only too happy to challenge her,” I announced. “What do I need to do in order to attract her diabolical attentions? Cut down a sacred tree? Chant psalms in the village square?”
The landlady actually reached across the bar and laid a hand on my wrist. “You’re getting onto thin ice, son. Just settle down and have another drink, and don’t trouble yourself about what goes on in this little place. Are you over from America for a holiday?”
“From Canada,” I replied evenly. “I’m celebrating my university graduation with a bit of a vacation, and I refuse to be distracted. What do I need to do in order to convince you people that this witch business is just a figment of your imaginations? At the very least, I want to plant just a tiny seed of doubt in your minds by doing everything possible to invite her wrath – before I drive away from here completely unharmed.”
A particularly vicious gust howled outside, followed by a sudden crack as if of rending wood.
“I’d say you already have her attention,” said the Asian man dryly.
“He could well be right,” the landlady put in. “If I were you, I’d be awfully tempted to climb in my car and start driving. Sod the rain. Don’t you agree?”
She glanced from the Asian to her husband, and back again.
The Asian gave me an appraising look. “Yes, of course,” he said at length. “Unless, as I said earlier, you really do find the idea of falling victim to a witch more exciting than frightening. Some men seem to.”
“I find it implausible. But if by some miracle it happened, I suppose I would be excited, yes. It would be the strangest and most unlikely experience of my life.” I eyed them all sceptically. “But you still haven’t told me how to precipitate it. It’s going to take more than a freak gust of wind to convince me that some latter-day Circe has her evil eye on me.”
The landlady shook her head ruefully. “You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for. Please don’t wind him up any more, you two.”
“I’m not wound up,” I said as calmly as I could. “We’re just having a slight disagreement about the validity of certain mediaeval beliefs about the world. If someone will lend me an umbrella – sorry, a brolly – I’m off to chant my psalms through the streets. I think I may be able to remember one or two.”
“Oh, there are better ways than that,” the landlord said, his voice perfectly level and serious. “If you’re really so determined to put yourself in her power. You know how to make Annabelle’s circle, don’t you, Doreen?”
The landlady met his gaze almost angrily. “Yes, as it happens, I do, but I’m not going to use it to help her ensnare a boy from overseas who insists on thinking with his arse instead of his brains.”
The intensity of her apparent belief in the premises of this fantastic discussion made me pause for a moment, but I quickly recovered. There were no such things as witches. Of course there weren’t. And if there were, perhaps it would be rather exciting to find myself – what was the word they kept using – “ensnared” by one.
“Please go ahead and make your circle,” I said a bit grandly. “I promise you, nothing will happen.”
“Oh, go on,” the Asian said softly. “He’s old enough to reap what he sows.”
The landlady's eyes flicked in my direction. “You are absolutely sure about this? Despite all our warnings you really want to do it?”
“Yes, I’m sure," I told her. "What do you think this Annabelle will do; turn me into a bat?”
I think I managed to sound brash, but it was strangely unsettling to say her name. It made her seem more palpable.
“No, not exactly, but she can be shockingly cruel when she gets her hands on a good-looking young man and I can assure you that you do fall into that category.”
I rolled my eyes, and she literally threw up her hands.
“It’s all falling on deaf ears, isn’t it?” she exclaimed. “All right, I don’t believe in protecting mentally competent adults from the consequences of their own foolish decisions. But Annabelle is going to owe me a big sodding favour.”
For some reason she glanced significantly at the Asian who gave a slight nod.
“The circle will take a good hour,” she announced, suddenly business-like. “You would be extremely silly to try to drive away afterwards. It would be best to book you a room now.”
“All right, if you like.”
“That will be thirty-five pounds, then. Credit card will be fine, or cash. John, why don’t you get him sorted while I fetch the chalk.”
John moved behind the till at the end of the bar as his wife bustled out of the room. The Asian guy, meanwhile, rose slowly to his feet and nodded towards a table near the bar.
“Will this one do?” he asked softly.
“I don’t see why not,” John replied with a shrug. “Just pull it away from the bar a little, so that Doreen has room for the circle.” He turned to me. “Thirty-five quid, son, if you still want to go through with this.”
I had already counted out my cash, and wordlessly I handed it over. The register pinged, and John fetched a key on a plastic tab from a cupboard near the bar.
“Room 18, upstairs and to the right,” he announced. “You can go up there after the circle is finished.”
“Thanks, I guess. What’s she going to do, just draw a circle around me in chalk?”
“You’ll see in a minute. Why don’t you have a seat while you're waiting?”
The Asian had moved the table he had selected well away from the bar, and he was hauling the other chairs and tables well out of the way. The tables in that part of the room were round little things, small enough that three people gathered around one would have made a crowd, but nevertheless I was impressed with how effortlessly he seemed to lift them and set them aside. When he was still seated at the bar, I hadn’t realized just how big the guy was: he stood a few inches taller than I was, and his shoulders were broad under the enveloping coat. Even now, he carried himself so smoothly and deliberately that his bulk was hardly imposing, or even obvious. He waved me back when I stepped forward to help with the last of the furniture, and then motioned me with a smile towards the one chair he had left at the designated table. I shrugged, walked over, and sat down, my back to the bar and my right side to the door.
We all lapsed into silence then, so Doreen’s footsteps were loud when she returned with a piece of white chalk and a small, unlit black candle in a brass holder. She set the candle on the table in front of me and put her hands on her hips, regarding me almost aggressively.
“I don’t suppose you’ve thought better of this foolishness?” she asked in a level voice.
“I’d still like you to go ahead and draw your circle, if that’s what you mean. The black candle is a nice touch, though. Very melodramatic.”
“Oh, it could be any colour. The important thing is that you light it and let it burn all the way down once the circle is complete. Speaking of which…” She pulled a lighter from the pocket of her jeans, tested it, and laid it on the table next to the candle-holder. “You’ll light it yourself, of course,” she explained. “I wouldn’t step into a circle of Annabelle’s for love or money.”
“Not even for me, dear?” John put in with a laugh.
“Not until you keep your word and fix the drainpipes. Now…” she broke off and frowned at me. “What’s your name?”
“Alan Fraser.”
“I’m Doreen Maxwell. Pleased to meet you. Now then, Alan, I’m going to chalk Annabelle’s circle around you on the floor. You are to sit quietly the whole time. When it’s finished, I’ll tell you to light the candle, and you’ll let it burn all the way down. When it’s gone, you’ll be completely in Annabelle’s power, full stop. If she chooses, she’ll be able to jerk you around like a puppet on a string. Of course, she might decide you aren’t worth her time and attention, but I really don’t think that’s likely. I don’t know what would happen if you were to interrupt either the drawing of the circle or the burning of the candle, but I suspect it would be dangerous for all of us. I know you don’t believe that, but I need you to give your word that you’ll sit quietly through the whole thing, light the candle when you’re told, and let it burn all the way. Otherwise I won’t do this.”
“You have my word,” I said immediately, and she nodded.
“Good. You understand that as soon as I start the circle there is no changing your mind and no going back. You have made your decision and you are committed. We are all committed. Are you sure you want me to go ahead and start?”
I was about to nod when I thought of something. “Can I go to the bathroom first?”
“Of course. It’s just over there, past the fruit machines.”
As I stepped out of the bathroom, I felt a mad impulse to dash through the room, past John and past the Asian, past Doreen with her chalk, and take to my car in defiance of the rain. But the candle was on the table, and Doreen was actually tapping her foot in nervous impatience. I could not possibly back out at that point, and anyway it was silly. All this business of witchcraft and circles was silly. There was nothing to worry about.
I walked over to the table, trying not either to rush or to dawdle. I resumed my seat.
“Ready?” Doreen asked a bit tersely.
“Yes. Kindly go ahead and do your worst.”
She sighed and gave a slight shake of her head. “As you wish. No more talking, then.”
I nodded my understanding, and she crouched down to begin the circle.
It was fascinating to watch her work. I had expected a rough scrawl across the hardwood floor, but she drew a near-perfect circle around me and the table with the sure, precise hand of a true artist.
As the chalk line joined to complete the circle I shivered, half expecting to feel something despite my firm conviction that this was all nonsense. There was nothing. The room remained exactly as it had been before the circle was complete, and I remained exactly as I had been before the circle was complete. There was no sudden change in temperature, no inexplicable gust of air, no ghostly touch of an ectoplasmic hand gripping the back of my neck to drag me into the world of the supernatural... nothing. Absolutely nothing, but Doreen was far from finished. She began to embellish the inner edge of the circle with an intricate patter, based on three-armed spiral discs but with subsidiary lines intertwining in all directions. It looked a bit like the ersatz Celtic designs I had seen on the web and in the margins of books.
I sat in perfect silence, as I had promised to do. Doreen’s face was a mask of concentration as she wove that elaborate circle around me, and watching her really did put me in mind of someone weaving rather than drawing. I could not see John but neither could I hear him, which probably meant that he was standing quietly and watching his wife’s handiwork. The Asian seemed to become bored after a few minutes. He slipped out the front door without a word to any of us. Perhaps he had just been waiting for the rain to let up as now it evidently had. The assault on the windows had faded to a gentle patter, and the sky outside had lightened considerably.
A few minutes later the door opened again, but from the outside. A young man and woman stepped in, talking and laughing, but one look at what Doreen was doing made them hastily step out again. Doreen glared over my shoulder for a moment, and John ambled over to flip the sign in the window from “open” to “closed”. If Doreen noticed, she gave no sign, and if anything her absorption in her task seemed to have deepened further. She was working very quickly now, but very precisely, and the chalk was worn down to a nub that looked nearly useless. She stood up, frowned down at what she had done, and suddenly made a quick pass around the entire circumference of the circle, the chalk weaving one final line in with the others. The design around the circle was complex and baroque, with curved triangles that suggested leaves or flames and interlocking rings that looked uncomfortably like links of chain, but the three-armed discs were still perfectly clear if you looked for them. I wanted to compliment Doreen on her work, but I had promised to keep my mouth shut and I did.
Doreen stood up again. “Light the candle,” she said abruptly, her voice remote and impersonal. I picked up the lighter and flicked it into life, just as I used to do during my teenage experiments with smoking, and I held the flame to the wick. After a moment the candle caught fire.
The wick burned with a surprising intensity, the flame blue with heat and unexpectedly large. I thought I heard a long, low murmur from the air around me as the candle blazed up, almost a purr of anticipation. There was something about the sound that struck me as undeniably feminine, although it was hard to say what exactly led me to that conclusion. At the same moment, I did feel something, a sensation as if an invisible hand had brushed across my forehead. It was so sudden and distinct that my body gave a little jerk, and without thinking I took a deep breath to extinguish the candle.
Doreen shook her head sharply, and her lips silently formed the words, “You promised.”
I nodded, sat back in my chair, and replaced the lighter on the table, but I could feel a faint trembling right through my whole body. The murmur and the invisible hand might have been my imagination, but I somehow did not think so.
I sat and watched the candle burn, as Doreen stood silently nearby with folded arms. There was no repetition of the murmuring sound, and indeed we were all being so quiet that I could distinctly hear John and Doreen’s breathing as well as my own. But the phantom caress, if that was what it had been, was repeated time and again as I waited for the candle to burn down. A few moments after that first touch upon my forehead I seemed to feel fingers stroke the back of my neck, and a little later they were feeling their way across my shoulders and prodding and squeezing my upper arms. I had the distinct impression that an invisible presence was exploring my body, perhaps even evaluating it. If what I was experiencing was some sort of tactile hallucination, it was a surprisingly convincing one and I could think of no explanation for it beyond the standard, almost ritualistic response to claims of the supernatural - that it was no more than the power of suggestion. I sat quietly in my place, but I could feel my whole body beginning to tremble with what I could only describe as primitive superstitious dread. Doreen must have noticed, because her lips curved into a faint smile that seemed half sympathetic and half vindictive. 'I’m sorry you’re getting more than you bargained for,' her smile seemed to say, 'But we warned you, didn’t we?'
I gasped as I felt something almost imperceptible and ephemeral brush across my left nipple, and there came a low laugh in what might have been the same voice that gave rise to that first languid murmur. The candle was almost half burned away, although I had no idea how much time had passed since I had set it aflame. I glanced towards the window, as if hoping for a glimpse of a saner world beyond the four walls of the tavern, and I could see that the rain had stopped entirely. The sun, now low in the sky and its light thin and pale, was struggling to burn its way through the clouds. The man and woman who had tried to come in were standing on the sidewalk opposite the pub, holding hands. Others had joined them as if waiting, watching. I felt something prod my belly briefly, withdrawing almost as soon as it pressed against me.
John came over to put his arm around Doreen’s shoulder, and she snuggled back against him. We all watched the candle burn with surprising rapidity down to a tiny stub, and the flame guttered and seemed about to die. Suddenly it blazed up again, reaching almost the original height of the candle, and I felt the invisible fingers between my legs. I gave another small gasp and clapped my thighs together like a girl waking up to find a lecherous uncle climbing into bed with her, but it seemed to make no difference. The fingers had a firm grip around my balls, and they tightened until I groaned aloud in pain. Another laugh sounded, this time so loud that it echoed off the walls and ceilings, and the candle flame winked out as suddenly as it had flared up. The pressure at my crotch instantly vanished. I blinked and shook myself.
“You can stand up now, if you like,” Doreen said at once. “It’s over. She’s got you as surely as if you were already in her chains.”
I gave a weak laugh. “Chains? Does she do that?”
“Oh, yes. I expect you will find out all about it. Was she touching you?”
“I felt like something was, but it could have been… oh, I don’t know. What exactly was in that candle?”
“Just wax, Alan. You’re not drugged, and you’re not hallucinating. If she was touching you, it means she’s keen to have you. You ought to go up to your room right now, and wait there until she calls you or comes for you. It won’t be long if she has already started.”
I got to my feet and stretched. At least I was no longer trembling, but my mind felt somehow hazy, as if I was just waking up from a long sleep. I noticed with bafflement but little sense of real surprise that the elaborate circle on the floor had disappeared. All that remained were a few indistinct smudges of white on the floor around the table. I gave my head a sharp shake, which seemed to clear it a little.
“It’s still early,” I protested. “I want to go for a walk around the village, and find somewhere to have dinner.”
John shook his head. “That would be very dangerous,” he said. “It's not what she would want. If you're hungry then I’ll bring something up to your room, free of charge.”
“No, I want to go out,” I insisted, looking slowly from one of them to the other. “Look, I’ll admit that what happened just now was strange., very strange. Maybe it was something in the candle, or maybe the circle really did have some kind of paranormal influence. Who knows what it might have been, but don’t expect me to believe it was a witch reaching through the ether to touch me and acquiring some kind of power over me because I burned a candle. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”
I grimaced suddenly as I felt a hard pinch on both nipples at once.
“I’m going out,” I declared firmly, and hardly knowing what I did, not giving them time to reply, I lurched off towards the door. A gust of wind caught it as I pushed it open, and it swung violently outwards.
Doreen called “Alan! Wait!” and I think John hushed her, but at any rate I heard nothing more as I strode out onto the sidewalk. A dozen or so people had gathered on the other side of the street, men and women ranging from university age to geriatric, and an intrigued murmur went up from them as I marched past. I set off for what I thought was the “high street” of the village, the main thoroughfare where most of the shops and restaurants would be located. Despite the wind, and the chill in the air, it had turned into a good day for a brisk walk, and I already felt better and sharper than I had felt inside the pub. Already in those few minutes the ritual circle and the burning of the candle seemed far less real than they had done at the time, and I was more inclined than ever to put the voice and the invisible hand down to my imagination or perhaps the result of something I had inhaled as the candle burned. Out here in the real world it all seemed distant and unimportant.
Nevertheless, I was not quite my usual self. I saw a crow looking down at me from the branches of an elm tree, and I caught myself wondering if it was going to fly back to this mysterious Annabelle and report my whereabouts. Shortly after I had passed it, I glanced uneasily over my shoulder, half-expecting to see a female figure in a dark cloak and a tall pointed hat creeping up on me from behind. The crow gave a throaty caw as if my thoughts had amused it. I glared at it defiantly and kept walking, my fists clenched and my jaw set. It was a chilly October day in an English village, and I was going for a late afternoon walk. That was all. That had to be all.
I had seen a big Tesco supermarket on the way into the village, but the local businesses here seemed to be holding up fairly well against the onslaught of the corporate giants. The high street had a post office and a grocery store, although I had heard that many villages like this were losing such little stores, and other than the logo of the Royal Mail I did not see a single name or corporate emblem I recognised anywhere. I passed a cosy-looking bookstore, and thought about going in only to be distracted by the place on the opposite side of the street. A sign over the door said Diabolical Designs in bright red gothic letters, and the window displayed an impressive array of curiosities that might have been props and bits of costume for some old Dracula movie. There was a human skull sculpted in what was probably brass, a gargoyle, a painting of a translucent female figure descending a spiral staircase, a row of silver pendants in the shapes of spiders, swords, and Nordic runes. In front of the base of a gargoyle there were a pair of heavy, mediaeval-looking shackles I stared at them.
“She uses chains,” I murmured aloud, and hurried on with an uncomfortable cold shiver that seemed to run up and down my back.
Further down the street there was a nice café opposite a small park, if it could really be called a park. It was not much more than a grassy lawn with a few shrubs and benches, and a magnificent old oak tree in the middle. The light from the café windows was inviting in the gathering dusk, and I did not hesitate to open the door and step in. The interior was exactly as I had hoped it would be, warm and comfortable but plain enough that I felt instantly at ease. It was still a little early for dinner, perhaps, and there were only a few people seated at the wooden tables. None of them, of course, was a woman in black robes with a pointed hat. They all seemed perfectly ordinary and harmless. A waitress with a pleasant face and long brown hair motioned me towards a table in the corner, and a few minutes later I was washing down a hot beef pie with beer almost as good as the bitter Doreen had given me earlier.
***
Chapter Two – Annabelle’s Emissary
I was feeling considerably better by the time I returned to John and Doreen’s place after a leisurely walk through the dark streets. If the circle and the invisible hands had unsettled me, fresh air and a good dinner had almost entirely restored my equilibrium. The little pub and guesthouse certainly did not appear to be a seat of sinister forces. In fact, the place seemed positively lively and I could hear laughter and the hum of contented voices from inside as I unlocked my car and took my duffle bag from the back seat. The moment I walked through the door, however, a pall of silence descended as surely as if someone had turned off the flow of conversation with a tap. There must have been thirty or forty men and women in there, from silvered-hair pensioners to crisply dressed young professionals to farmers in rough work clothes, and every one of them looked up and stared at me.
John was behind the bar, but I could not see Doreen or the Asian guy anywhere. I did recognise the young couple who had tried to come in while Doreen was drawing the circle, and my eyes lingered on their table for a moment. The man gave me a hesitant smile, and the woman lifted her eyebrows. She was not wearing a pointed hat, and neither was anyone else that I could see.
John cleared his throat. “Good to see you back,” he said calmly. “You might want to go right on up, if you’ve eaten now.”
It actually sounded like an excellent idea. I did not much enjoy being the centre of so much attention, and it seemed to me that I was attracting something more than the curiosity that falls naturally on an outsider. I supposed the word of that afternoon’s experiment must have got around. Maybe John had been regaling everyone with the story of it all evening, and quite probably they had all had a good laugh at me. Part of me was tempted to insist on staying down there for a drink, if only to demonstrate that I was not worried in the slightest about the possibility being snatched away by a witch at any second. I doubted whether I would much enjoy drinking under all that scrutiny.
“I think I will,” I said aloud. “Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
John gave a slight nod. “Sleep well. I’ve been asked to change around a couple of things in your room. You’ll see when you get up. Let me know if you need anything.”
Change around a couple of things? I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but I did not particularly feel like prolonging the conversation. I headed for the staircase, and found room 18 near the end of the upstairs hall. The key turned easily – much more reliable than the swipe cards they usually give you in hotels these days – and the room turned out to be small but rather cosy. There was a thick carpet, a single bed, and a washroom with the standard sink, shower and toilet. It all looked perfectly ordinary, and it took me a couple of minutes to realise what John had meant by his warning that a couple of things had been changed around. For one thing there was no television, despite the presence of a wooden stand that was quite obviously intended to hold one. The thing had simply been taken away. On the bottom shelf of the stand were folded some loose, white linen clothes, almost like old-fashioned pyjamas. I had no intention of putting them on. The only other peculiarity was subtler, and in fact I was not sure that it was a change at all. In a hotel room like this I would have expected a painting somewhere of a landscape or maybe of a sailboat or something similar. There was nothing like that on the walls, but directly over the bed there hung a rather realistically painted mask of a white androgynous face with full red lips that seemed to curve into the faintest suggestion of a smile. It seemed clear that the mask was never intended to be worn because there were no holes for the eyes. Instead, the artist had painted in deep green irises and big, liquid pupils. It was hard to suppress a feeling of being watched, and something of my earlier uneasiness began to return as I unpacked clothes for the morning, a book, and a few toiletries. I was halfway through the book, Homage to Catalonia, and I had intended to read a chapter or two before going to bed, but a sudden tiredness descended almost as soon as I took my shoes off. I sighed, brushed my teeth, and began to undress, feeling more exhausted by the minute. I was almost relieved to switch the light off and collapse into bed, stark naked as usual. I have never really seen the sense of sleeping with clothes on.
I must have fallen asleep almost instantly, and I remember a confused dream in which I lay in a pitch-black room with voices murmuring incomprehensibly in the darkness and unseen hands pressing and feeling every part of my body. I will not pretend that I have never fantasized about lying passively while a lustful woman had her way with me, and the dream was close enough to those voluptuous mental images that I woke up with a tremendous erection. I still seemed to be half under the fog of sleep, because my surroundings had an insubstantial, dream-like quality to them. For one thing, the room was dark, but I could nevertheless make out the contours of the mask on the wall above me. If anything, it seemed even more animated and lifelike than it had when the lights were on, and the sense that it was actively looking down at me was stronger than ever. There was no sound of conversation from downstairs, and indeed everything was perfectly silent. The feeling of continuity between the dream and my current situation was so strong that I could almost see mysterious figures looming out of the darkness around me, and feel their cool, probing hands on my nipples and my cock and my balls. I reached down to take my own shaft gently in my fist, and began to stroke slowly back and forth.
“Stop that immediately,” said the mask, and my hand froze in mid-stroke more from sheer surprise than from a conscious decision to obey. Its voice was curiously neutral, neither male nor female and neither very young nor very old. The sound did not pervade the room, like the murmur and the laugh I had heard during the ritual of the circle, but seemed to come directly from the lips of the mask above my bed.
“Sexual pleasure is forbidden to you,” the mask continued calmly, “Except when your Mistress gives her express permission. Move your hand away from your crotch and go back to sleep at once.”
The thought that I was surely dreaming flashed across my mind. “What are you?” I asked incredulously. My hand stayed precisely where it was.
“An emissary,” the mask replied. “And one that expects to be listened to. I think the Mistress would agree that it is time for you to be controlled, since you seem to have little interest in controlling yourself in accordance with her wishes. Remember, you have only yourself to blame.”
Before I could even begin to puzzle out what this meant, the covers flew off the bed, or rather, seemed to peel themselves back as if swept aside by the same invisible hands that had begun molesting me when I lit the candle. I was suddenly naked and supine in the bed, my erection fully exposed. Ridiculous as it might sound, I had an impulse to protect myself from the mask’s scrutiny, and I hastily tried to cover my cock and balls with my hands. To my astonishment, something unseen seized both my wrists in an iron grip and jerked them up above my head. At the same time I felt a similar pressure on my ankles. I quite literally rose into the air, hovering a good metre above the surface of the mattress, and I found myself rolling like a hog on a spit before being driven face-down onto the bed with my arms and legs spread wide apart. I struggled and yelled, but it was like trying to free myself from the grip of giants. I managed to get out one hoarse bellow at the top of my lungs before I felt something fill my mouth and my shouts were reduced to no more than a pathetic mewling.
“That’s better,” said the mask, a hint of smug satisfaction in its voice. “Now you won’t get up to any mischief. There’s only one kind of sexual activity on the cards for you, and it definitely doesn’t involve you pumping your cock like a horny teenager. No, it involves something rather different.”
Incredibly, I felt a gentle outward pressure on my buttocks just as if someone were standing over me and spreading my cheeks apart with both hands. I snarled into my invisible gag and tried to look over my shoulder to see what was happening, only to feel my hair seized and my face pushed down into the pillow. I could breathe, with a little discomfort, but I was unable to see anything.
“Something different indeed,” the mask proclaimed, and I felt something – a finger, a phallus, or perhaps just a tendril of ectoplasm – intrude between my buttocks and press gently against the tight portal of my anus, firm and threatening. I struggled and got nowhere. Despite my terror and discomfort, I could still feel my erection pressing almost painfully against the surface of the mattress, and something else unexpected was happening – I was rapidly growing sleepy, so sleepy that I could hardly remember where I was or what was being done to me. Surely it was all a dream.
“Should we look in on him?” asked Doreen’s voice, sounding distant and muffled. “I’m sure he shouted.”
“Aye, love, he did,” John replied. They were out in the corridor, or perhaps on some other plane of existence. “But that’s between him and Annabelle. Are you really surprised that she’s making him squeal a little?”
“No, but I don’t much like the thought of it.” John said something inaudible, and she laughed quietly. “Oh, all right, I suppose I do, a little, and he deserves every bit of it, the way he was carrying on today. But still, I feel a bit guilty about helping her prey on the innocent. Something like that, anyway. It feels uncomfortable.”
“We couldn’t interfere now even if we wanted to,” John replied. “I’m glad you thought to ask for a favour in return, though. Perhaps she could do something about the rats in the cellar…”
Their voices were growing faint, as if they were moving off down the hallway. I tried to struggle and tried to yell for help, but for the first time in my adult life I was absolutely and completely helpless. Tears of hopelessness welled up in my eyes just as sleep took me.
*
When I awoke the next morning, sunlight was filtering in around the edges of the blinds and the mask had returned to a state of silence and quiescence that seemed much more appropriate than its talkative mood of the night before. In fact, it was hard to believe that the whole thing had been anything more than a strange, superstitious dream, even if I did wake up on my stomach with the bed covers thrown back. I was not usually given to tossing and turning in my sleep, but that explanation was far easier to accept than the alternative.
I took my time over showering and dressing, and I shaved for the first time in a few days. Getting rid of the dark stubble on my face certainly made me look fresher, but my eyes were still a bit red and baggy beneath my unruly shock of thick black hair. I am normally a reasonably energetic person, but that morning I felt drained and groggy, and by the time I was ready to head downstairs it was no particular surprise to me to see that it was already almost noon. Although I had gone to bed rather early, I had clearly been exhausted. Nothing else would account for the way I had fallen asleep without even opening the Orwell book I had been determined to read. It might also account for the dreams of the mask and the invisible rapists or whatever they were. The mind does strange things when you are exhausted and, bizarre as the dreams might have been, I knew very well that the subconscious can produce far stranger dreams at the smallest provocation. In any case, I was basically fine, and I saw no reason to prolong my stay in the village. Almost a full day after Doreen had drawn the circle around me I was still free and there was no sign of any witch, controlling or otherwise. As far as I was concerned, the experiment was over, and I had been proven correct. Whoever this Annabelle was, she had no more power over me than she did over the Pope or the Queen.
Despite lingering bleariness, I sauntered downstairs in a jaunty, triumphant mood, to find Doreen bustling about behind the bar. A half dozen people were already at the tables, working through pints of beer and hearty pub lunches, which seemed like an excellent idea before I took to the road.