Page 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE WITCH’S HEAD INN

P ercy flung the door of the pub wide, ushered a reluctant Joe in ahead of him, and within the space of thirty-six seconds, the following events occurred in this order:

A woman behind the bar yelled, “That’s not Percy Ashdown!”

“Percy Ashdown?” called a man from a nearby table. “It can’t be!”

“Did you say Per— It couldn’t be Percy!” exclaimed a woman sitting at the table with the man.

A blood-curdling scream shot out from god only knew where, every lightbulb in the room exploded, the music stopped, and the landlady smashed a full pint all over the stone flags of the floor.

The room fell dark and silent for the subsequent four seconds, until the landlady muttered, “Yep, that’s Percy, all right.”

A hideously loud sob broke out in the back somewhere, accompanied by the shout, “Fuck you, Percy!”

A man’s voice followed. “That’s the fucker, is it?”

The sobbing woman rammed into Joe’s shoulder as she fled out the door, Percy calling as she went, “I said I’m sorry!”

“Debbie! Debbie, wait!” yelled the man, pausing only to shake a threatening finger in Percy’s face, before sploshing through the dubious red puddle in pursuit.

And from there, the first minute of their arrival completed itself with the landlady plonking two pints of ale down on the counter and flashing an expectant smile, which allowed Percy to skip out on Joe’s fuming non-verbal reprimand.

“What’s all this Thomas Archer business?” she began as Percy settled his box on the bar. “Is that your boy there?”

“No,” he replied with an encouraging raise of his chin at Joe, who pulled the suitcases up beside Percy and made himself smile politely. “This is Joe. My fiancé. Spectacular, isn’t he?”

“My, yes, he is.” The good woman moved her hands to her hips to thoroughly assess a now-pink Joe, then, “ Fiancé ! Don’t tell me you’re settling down!” Percy gave a handsome, slightly bashful chuckle, but before he could answer, he was cut off by, “George! George! Percy Ashdown’s here, and he’s got a fiancé !”

“Percy’s never got a fiancé !” A short, nearly bald, but moustachioed man appeared from a doorway behind the bar carrying a box full of lightbulbs.

“George,” Percy said cheerily by way of greeting.

George dumped the lightbulbs down, threw his arm around his wife, and with a happy nod at Joe, said, “Who’s this, then?”

“That’s Joe,” his wife replied, adding scandalously, “Percy’s fiancé .”

“Isn’t he beautiful?” said Percy, over a sip of ale.

“Ah, he’s a looker all right.” George extended a hand to Joe, who took it by instinct, too thrown to begin to get his bearings. “I’m George,” he said. With a tilt of his head to the attractive sixty-something blonde by his side, “And this is Maisie.”

“Hi,” Joe mumbled, sinking to the stool beside Percy.

“What’s all this Thomas Archer business?” said George.

“If we knew it was you coming, we’d have done something special,” Maisie added.

“My assistant seems to have booked me under the wrong name,” replied Percy. “What are you both doing here, anyway?”

“The Witch’s Head is ours. We bought it. We own all three pubs in town now.” Maisie cast her gaze long and loving over Percy’s shoulder, prompting he and Joe to follow her lead.

It was a pub anyone would be pleased to own. Even before the lights blew, the wide, plentifully stuffed stone fireplace provided the primary source of illumination, and all the varnished wood that made the ceiling beams, the many low and intimate table and chair settings, the smooth and well-used bar, sat rich and welcoming beside its flames. Yellow and red stained glass augmented the little bar and the windows with a charming golden glow, and the glistening copper pots and polished viking shields that decorated every spare inch of space sparkled with all the pride of their adoring owners.

“Marvellous.” Percy swished out the flame of the match that lit his cigarette, opened his mouth to speak again, and was cut off by another terrifying scream that made Joe spill his beer before he could take his first sip.

“She’s rowdy today.” Maisie sent a glare through an open doorway. “Haven’t heard a peep out of her in months, and now with the lightbulbs again…”

“I’m on it.” George picked up his box and wandered off.

With a knowing sparkle in her eye and an air of adventure, Maisie asked, “Would you like me to bring her out?”

“Yes, please,” Percy responded at once.

Maisie gave a nod and disappeared.

“Bring who out?” Joe rasped.

“The skull,” Percy replied.

“The what?”

“The screaming skull,” Percy elucidated.

“Here she is,” said Maisie, setting down a lacquered wooden block with a gold plaque and a perfectly preserved, fully toothed, bleached-white skull on top. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

Another ghastly scream racked out of the thing the second it was placed before them.

“Hello, darling,” said Percy, cigarette lazing at the corner of his lips, his fine fingers tilting the skull up to meet his eyes.

“Heeeeeeeee…” the skull wheezed.

“Hmm,” said Maisie, eyebrows raised and hands back on hips. “She likes you.”

“I like her too,” Percy mused, leaning his head back to examine the remains that continued to sigh out the unearthly moan.

Joe shifted a little closer with an inquisitive gaze. “How’s she making that sound?”

“I haven’t a clue.” Percy turned the skull, searching for some trick or other that would explain the noise, but it was nothing more than some old bone stuck on a plank of wood.

Joe manoeuvred the base in order to read the little plaque. “Molly Tulloch.”

“That’s right.” Maisie leaned in close, the flames of the fireplace lighting a pair of watery grey eyes and scarlet lips eerily as she whispered, “Molly Tulloch. Also known as… The Headless Witch of Twatt.”

Percy choked a laugh in the back of his throat, but Joe was already too caught up in the mystery of the thing to break into more than a smile. “She’s the woman on the sign outside?”

“That’s her,” said Maisie, clearly impressed with Joe already.

Joe took the cigarette from Percy’s mouth, along with the skull that was handed across. It was in supernaturally good condition, and no wonder, being a supernatural object. It was small, sleek, and it had exactly the same presence an occupied head would usually have. Joe placed it down carefully, keeping it close on the bar in front of him. “Why did they do it?”

“She’s a witch. Isn’t that enough?” came a booming voice by Joe’s left arm.

“Not really, no,” Joe responded on a sharp exhalation of smoke.

That stumped the man, who frowned at Joe briefly, until Percy said, “Hello, Charlie.”

“Percy.” The tall man, with white beard and hair, wearing a rustic woollen blue sweater, tipped his head to Percy. “When were you going to come say hi to the Mrs?”

“Oh, leave him be.” ‘The Mrs,’ another sexagenarian, though a small and grey one, slipped her slender fingers around Percy’s biceps.

For that, she got a kiss on her cheek from Percy, which made her shoulders curl delightedly and her hands grip his arm that much tighter.

“Vaila, have you met my fiancé?” Percy said. “His name’s Joe, and he’s beautiful.”

Joe, again, blushed at his introduction, particularly when both Vaila and Charlie agreed loudly that he was indeed ‘a very fine specimen of manhood’.

“Fiancé, is it?” asked Charlie. “Well, we’ll need some scotch to celebrate, then.”

“You always need some scotch.” Maisie gave an eye roll, but immediately pulled a bottle from the top shelf and commenced the arrangement of six glasses on the bar. In doing so, she must have decided the skull was in the way. She placed her hands on the cranium to move it, at which contact it let out an ear-shattering scream, so loud it slipped from her fingers with the shock.

“Looks like she wants to stay,” Percy said.

Maisie dusted her fingers as though they were tarnished by the touch of the unwilling witch. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve been here three years now, and hardly a peep out of her, except for that incident shortly after we took over. She screamed non-stop, didn’t she, George?”

“That she did, Maisie,” George called back from across the room.

“Non-stop,” said Maisie. “We thought we’d made a terrible mistake buying the place, but she calmed down after a while. We hadn’t heard a peep from her for months until the very minute you two walked in the door.”

“Then a scotch for Molly, too, please, Maisie. I’ll get the first round.” Joe easily endeared himself to the small group with the offer, while sparking a small note of curiosity in Percy. George soon returned from fixing lights and cleaning up broken glass, and the six drank and smoked and chatted, while Joe in particular watched the skull, which remained quiet with a scotch in front of her, and the occasional cigarette shoved in the gap that served as a mouth. After roughly two hours of this merriment, Joe asked casually, “So, why did they murder her?”

“Murder?” repeated Charlie, a touch of derision in his good-humoured voice. “Looks like old Molly’s bewitched your fiancé already, Percy.”

Percy sent his bony rival a stern narrowing of the eyes. “She’ll have to fight me for him.”

Maisie laughed, but stayed on topic, addressing Joe. “You heard her screaming. That proves she was a witch. Now, I won’t say all those other women should have been burned, but this one?—”

“They burned her?” asked Joe. “The sign shows she was beheaded.”

“They burned her first ,” said George.

“No, strangled,” Vaila corrected.

“Strangled,” George agreed. “As was the way up here. Strangle them, then burn them, which I think was a good measure kinder than down south.”

Maisie brought them back on track. “But, when they tried to strangle her, she simply would not die. Just kept screaming.”

“So they tried to burn her,” Charlie put in, “as you do.”

“But she would not burn,” said George.

“Just kept screaming,” said Maisie.

“So they had to chop off her head,” said Vaila.

“And she just kept screaming,” said Maisie. “And she’s been here ever since. They buried the rest of her Lord knows where, because of course it was unmarked. Her pale skin and snaky black curls rotted away through the years, all over this pub floor, and now here she is, enjoying a glass of scotch with the likes of you.”

There was a clinking of glasses that Joe sat out as he took the smoking cigarette from beneath the skull’s teeth and placed it between his own lips. Crossing his arms on the bench, resting his chin on his wrists, Joe leaned in close to look Molly in the eye cavities. He thought he heard her give one of her long wheezes, but the small group was loud and tipsy and talkative by that time, and he couldn’t be sure. He cut into their conversation. “What were her crimes?”

“Oh, she was a wicked one, Molly,” said Maisie. “What did she do? There was the— Was it a porpoise, George?”

“That it was, Maisie.”

“That’s right. A porpoise. She turned herself into a porpoise, went out to sea, and drowned a lad who’d been rude to her on land.”

Joe’s mouth set itself on a displeased slant.

“And she was a sea monster that other time,” George offered.

“That’s right.” Vaila, on the Chartreuse by now, tapped her glass down on the bar and pushed it forward for a refill. “She turned herself into a kraken and smashed a whole ship to pieces. Killed six men! But they knew it was her who’d done it because one of them managed to snare the beast’s tentacle during the attack, and sure enough, the very next day, Molly was limping.” She moved her little head up and down, slowly, meaningfully, as though this were undeniable proof of the woman’s guilt.

Joe kept his eyes on the skull, and Percy kept his on Joe’s quiet face.

“And not only that.” Maisie slid the green liquid that brought a distinct sneer across Percy’s face back to Vaila. “She was known for making healing potions.”

“The bitch,” Percy threw off sarcastically.

“And then there was the old…” Charlie tilted his head downwards with an odd blinking of his left eye.

“Erectile dysfunction,” Vaila whispered over her drink. “One man said, after he slept with her, he never could get it up again.”

“And that was her fault too, was it?” Joe muttered.

“Well, that’s what happens when a woman lays with the devil,” Charlie replied, failing to hide the touch of irritation he was developing for Joe’s evident distaste of the island’s sordid history. “She’s no use to any man once she lays with the devil. And a man should know what he’s getting into before he goes in that.”

“That?” Joe flared, sitting up straight.

Percy reached for his hand, drawing it down off the bench and onto his knee. “Shall we go see our room?”

“No.” Joe withdrew his hand and snapped open Percy’s golden cigarette case, lighting another smoke. He forced a smile that fooled everyone but Percy. “It’s a fun ghost story. I want to hear more. How did they get her to confess?”

A communal sigh wafted around the little group.

“They did get a confession, didn’t they?” Joe pushed.

“Of course,” said George. “But Molly put up a fight.”

“They asked her nicely at first,” said Vaila. “As they always do. But when she lied to them, well, they had to start with the cashielawes…”

“What’s that?” asked Percy.

“It’s an iron cage.” Joe spoke through the same smile, but his golden brown eyes were downcast and far away. “They put it tight around the legs of the accused, and heat it until it sears the flesh off the body.” He said it as matter-of-factly as if he was reading the bus timetable, giving everyone except Percy the idea it was fine to carry on with the vile conversation.

“Two days, she lasted on that,” said George, with a slow shake of his head.

“Because of her supernatural powers,” Maisie added.

“All the skin burned off her legs, it was,” George went on. “She would pass out from the pain, so they’d have to revive her to go again. She wouldn’t give them a thing but her screams, so they were forced to turn to her family.”

“They placed stones on the husband right there in front of her until they almost squashed him flat,” said Maisie. “She didn’t give an inch.”

“Brought her little boy in and smashed his feet to pieces with a hammer,” said Charlie. “And not a word.”

“But it was the little girl that eventually broke her,” said Vaila, shaking her head sadly.

Maisie took up the story with a softening of her voice and a glistening of her eyes. “For all the terrible things she’d done, she must have had a heart in there somewhere. They put that little girl’s fingers in the pilliwinks, and crushed them right in front of Molly’s eyes until Molly cried out that she truly was the Devil’s own bride.”

Joe, by this time, had fallen into silence, an unmistakably sickened pallor having taken over the usually bright cheeks. Percy gently drew his hand back, wrapping it in the nook of his elbow, where Joe let it remain this time.

“It was a dreadful business,” Vaila said quietly.

“But it was four hundred years ago,” George added.

Maisie cast her eyes over Joe, over Percy’s watchful gaze on him, and said gently, “This little skull couldn’t scream like it does if it weren’t true that she was a witch. I can’t agree with what they did to get the confession out of her, but she was evil .”

Joe remained still, reflective, then stubbed his half-smoked cigarette out with a sudden and decisive jab at the heavily laden copper ashtray. “How much?”

Maisie looked back over her shoulder at the rows of bottles on their little wooden ledges. “How much for what?”

“For Molly,” he said. “I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”

Vaila laughed in surprise, Charlie laughed along with her, George’s mouth dropped open, and Maisie chided, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Two thousand,” said Joe, his knee beginning to tap as his mind went to work trying to figure out where he was going to get his hands on that sort of money.

“She’s not for sale,” Maisie laughed out, but in an unsure and defensive sort of way.

“Four,” Joe tried.

“No—”

“Five.”

“I told you?—”

“Fifty thousand,” said Percy. The group fell silent, Joe set panicked eyes on Percy, and Percy lifted Joe’s fingers to his lips, dropping a quieting peck on them. “That would probably buy half this place. You’ll have your next pub in no time.”

Maisie stood a little taller, looking as though he’d just told her she smelled like old turnips. “Absolutely not. Molly is not for sale. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get your room key.”

Molly’s skull screamed the second Maisie’s fingers touched her, and it didn’t stop. Maisie disappeared around the corner with her. They heard her shouting at the skull, the skull screaming back, then still more screaming but muffled, with the slamming of what sounded like a fridge door.

“You’re mad. The pair of you,” muttered George. Then to Joe, “I can see why he likes you so much.”

“I do like him,” said Percy, leaning a little closer and lowering his voice. “And I want that skull. As a wedding gift. Can you talk her around?”

“Percy,” Joe whispered, trying to halt him, but with that sinking, nerve-racking, utterly adoring feeling he’d accidentally set a boulder in motion that wasn’t going to stop for anything.

George let out a sharp laugh. “Maisie? The Devil himself couldn’t talk her around. But it’s not up to her anyway. It’s the curse, you see. Molly can’t ever leave this building. If she goes, the whole place goes up in flames. Or so the story says. We’re not about to put it to the test.”

Without missing a beat, Percy asked, “Would you consider selling me the pub?”

Maisie slammed a key down on the counter top. “Up those stairs, first door on the left. You’ll be here by yourself from ten tonight until twelve tomorrow. Lock up the front door if you go out, and Don’t. Touch. Molly.”

“But couldn’t she come up to our room just for tonight?” This request Joe paired with an artless flutter of his eyelashes so flooring that Percy thought it must be case-closed, irresistible as he obviously was.

Unfortunately for them, Maisie was made of sterner stuff. “Goodnight,” she said sharply.

Too well-mannered to not follow direction, Percy tugged at Joe’s unwilling arm, said their goodnights, and they made their way upstairs.