A story from The Witch Cord

“Elizabeth,” she said, looking at me with eyes that had clawed their way from the fires of Hell. “It’s your turn now.”

Mad Joan, they called her. Tugged her hair when she was little and gossiped about her when she was old. We all knew her. Our mams told us to steer clear, but then everyone’s mam tells them to steer clear of old women who talk to themselves and have tatty clothes and no husband.

We should have listened.

It was Luke Dockers who started the hunt. He wasn’t normally one to start anything, being more the type to only talk when his dad told him to. Well maybe that’s what had happened or maybe Luke had just turned into him. Either way, it was him who started it. “We should sort her,” he said. “She’s a witch.”

A bunch of us agreed with him. Reckoned she worked for the devil. Reckoned she was six hundred years old. Reckoned she’d had no mam or dad. Reckoned it was her stealing kids from the east part of the village. That afternoon we reckoned lots of things about her but this last was the easiest to believe. Maybe because we wanted those kids to be stolen. Some of us said Mad Joan couldn’t be all bad because those kids would only have grown up to lie and steal like their parents. So maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for them to go missing.

I didn’t hold with that. I didn’t speak out against it, but I didn’t hold with it either.

“We should sort her,” Luke insisted, all full of new muscles and attitude.

The only reason any of was even listening to him was that it wasn’t just the east side kids going missing now. Fletch Barnes stopped coming to school last week and the story was that his dad just didn’t believe in school now he had to look after all eight kids himself. And it wasn’t like the school inspectors cared whether another Barnes boy got an education or not.

But some blamed Mad Joan. Luke Dockers did, for sure.

Fletch Barnes was ok. Not the brightest spoon, but nice enough and always quick to share his pies or punch a bully. So that night we all met up and had a talk about how maybe it was Mad Joan after all. And if she was moving from taking east side kids to taking ones like us, well, something needed to be done about it.

All it took after gossip had settled into fact, was for Luke to throw a bunch of knotted string on the ground. We stepped back like they were a clutch of fingers. We’d all been told about magic, me more than most. “That’s witchcraft,” he said, pointing to them. “My dad says that’s the mark of an evil woman.”

Luke’s dad was the pastor. A red-faced man who thought the lot of us were doomed and made no bones about it. He’d burn the entire village, given half the chance or a bad morning.

Each of us picked up a string. They might as well been pickaxes and flaming torches, and our blood was up. Even mine.

“We should get her,” said Luke.

“We should get her,” said the others.

I went along too, but I didn’t hold with it. Superstitious nonsense, I reckoned. It’s a long time ago now but before she did a runner, my mam had talked about knots and how they were good for binding or cursing, stopping or giving. She’d had me practice tying them, looping and twisting until I knew them backwards and blindfolded. And then she left, disappeared in the night. So much for the bonds between mother and daughter. Some knots were easily undone, it seemed to me.

Mad Joan lived by the Big Dip, that rough bit of hill covered in trees and dropping down to where the river twisted almost back on itself. The Big Dip had a few houses on it back then, runoffs from the main village really, though none since of course. We walked across the green and past the new houses on the east side. There was a ginnel out to the stretch of farmland which clung to the side of the old forest so we took it. The only other way meant going through the graveyard first and none of us fancied that.

The very last house on Taper Lane belonged to Mad Joan. It was set back from the path and by the time we’d got there we could see a poor light struggling through the thin curtains. These hung like shrouds behind the grimy windows. We looked and nobody spoke. It was all well and good having plans to rescue kids and bring justice to the old cow, but carrying them out was something else.

So by the time we got there, the mood had changed a bit.

“We can just mess with her.”

“Yeah. Scare her like.”

“She’ll go crying to the village and then the constable can nab her.”

But we were the scared ones. We all looked at the house and held our breath as though Mad Joan might smell what we had for tea and come out to eat us. Then a shadow moved across one of the downstairs windows and we ducked behind one of the scraps of the wall.

The door opened.

There was no light behind her but we knew it was her all the same. She was black. Not black like I am, but black like she was something cut out of the world. Her clothes were always piled on, everything she owned worn at once – even in the summers.

So there was no mistaking her.

One of the others started it though. I think it was Tony or Cal. I was the only girl there but both Tony and Cal were younger than me and still had soft voices. They started up a low moan and I heard Luke snigger and join in. They threw in some wails and I did a cackle.

Mad Joan lumbered out towards us. I saw her hobbling about, her neck twisting to find the source of the sound. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Then I saw Luke stand up and throw a stone at her. It went wide over her shoulder and she spun.

“Scarper,” I hissed. But Luke had picked up another stone and that one missed too. He was trying to scare her. He threw another. And another. I heard Mad Joan wheeze and shout at us. She was telling us to clear off and I wanted to. I did. I pulled at Tony but he held a stone too. I knocked it out of his hand but he bent again.

“Luke Dockers.” Mad Joan’s voice shot across the raggedy garden. “Luke Dockers. I know you. I pulled you from your mammy.”

Well, that did for Luke. He was all cocky when nobody knew his name but when Mad Joan nailed him he dropped his stone in a shot and the others did the same. They were like leaves when the wind stops.

“Bring us our friends,” Luke managed to shout back. He stooped and lifted another stone. “You old witch.”

“You don’t know muck from dirt, Luke Dockers. Get you all home before you hurt yourselves.”

I shouted but Luke threw the stone anyway. It hit her and she fell, and I saw him go white and stare at her.

She didn’t stay down for long though and that’s when Luke ran. It’s when we all ran. And we should have run the way we’d come, but we didn’t. Luke led us into the Big Dip, towards Old Merlin.

Old Merlin was a tree. It was about the oldest tree in the Big Dip and everyone called it that because its trunk was folded in and out of itself like a wizard’s robes. It was easily twice the thickness of any other tree, and none of them dared grow too close. We’d hung a rope on Old Merlin once and spent an afternoon swinging there. The next day we went back to play again and found a pig dead on the rope. None of us went back again.

“Wait up,” I shouted. Least, I think it was me. Cal was behind me so maybe I’m just getting mixed up. Either way, not all of us wanted to head towards Old Merlin, but we went anyway because Luke didn’t slow down and none of us knew how to stop him.

We stopped in the clearing around Old Merlin. More strings hung down from the branches and Luke began kicking at the dirt and jumping up to reach them. We all watched him as he pulled them down.

When my mam did a runner, dad said she was just mixed up. Said she loved me still but couldn’t escape believing in the magic. The magic of knots, he called it. The stuff mam had tried to teach me. Superstition, I’d thought. So I knew those strings. They were witch cords. And that meant power.

Mad Joan came limping up the path towards us. I knew she’d come. “Stop it, you silly boy,” she screeched. She stood between two trees, a giant of a woman grown from the earth. I could see more of her now. She was pale, like moonlight, and her face was full of wrinkled night. “Get away from there. You’ll let them all loose.”

She didn’t step into the clearing but I did. It was like I was her cat, leaping ahead to mark the path. There was a wrongness in the air, hardening each time Luke ripped another cord from Old Merlin’s branches.

I looked at the rope in my hand, the one I’d picked up earlier before we set off on our witch hunt. The knot dug into my palm and felt hot. I closed my fist around it as the ground began to swell. I thought of my mam. A witch ain’t bad, she always said. A witch is just a woman wronged, as the saying goes. Women didn’t get to be priests or judges. Women didn’t write the history books.

I rubbed the knot between my fingers and felt its twists. I knew this knot. It was supposed to be for binding. You could bind yourself to someone, or someone to something. Or you could use one to imprison…

“We’ve got to go,” I shouted. “She didn’t take the kids.” But Luke was wild-eyed and angry. He wasn’t going to be told what to do by an old woman or a girl. He threw a fistful of cords at me and then punched me, knocking me to the ground. “This is the devil’s work,” he said. I leapt up to punch him back, all thoughts of being the peacemaker gone, but before I could something happened.

There was a grinding noise followed by the sound of air rushing through a rock face, and then Luke Dockers got sucked into the earth. Leaves and dirt flew into the air and down he went and the earth heaved like a child in a belly.

I staggered backwards and saw the rest of us looking at the spot where Luke had been. Mad Joan was the only one who moved. She stepped in towards Old Merlin, another cord between her fingers like she was about to throttle the devil. But she moved too slow, still half-dazed from when Luke hit her with the stone. She fumbled and dropped her cord.

Cal was next to go. If anything he made even more of a noise and took longer to go. We heard him scream and Tony tried to grab for his hand.

Then it took Mad Joan. She gave up trying to tie a knot and sought me out. “Elizabeth,” she said, looking at me with eyes that had clawed their way from the fires of Hell. “It’s your turn now.”

And that was that.

There was silence as the earth settled. Tony looked at me. Everyone looked at me. I fingered the knot. There were a thousand ways to tie a knot. The way you held the cord, the way you breathed, the way you whispered into the weave – these things mattered. Or they did if you had power. And I had none. I was no witch. I was just a girl whose mam had walked out on her.

The ground rose again, rolling towards where Tony stood. We’d come to play tricks on an old woman and ended up opening a gate to Hell. Now we’d be the next missing kids and the whole village would die.

The knot came loose in my hand. Maybe whatever lurked beneath the ground wouldn’t take all of us. Maybe we could get far enough away.

Like maybe my mam had.

I wasn’t my mam.

I raised the cord. I did it slowly at first. The ground stopped shifting towards Tony. I raised the cord higher and pulled it taut between both hands. That did it. The ground began to move towards me.

I twisted the cord, looped it once and watched as the ground began to shake. Leaves and stones roiled on the surface.

“Lizzie?” Tony cried. “Lizzie, let’s go.” He made a move and the thing beneath the ground changed direction, hurling itself towards my friend before I could finish the knot. I threaded and turned and whispered into the cord as Tony was pulled through the earth.

I tied the knot but it only slowed the creature. I had to move quickly so I ducked down and gathered the handful of cords which Luke had thrown at me. Working as fast as I could I began to bind myself to the place, creating a net of knots from the cords and committing myself to become the Gate Witch of this place.

The sound was awful. The ground shook and a ravine opened up all the way back to the path. But I held firm and kept on tying, forcing it to release Tony.

The others managed to pull him to safety but still, I didn’t stop. Still, I went further, making the spell my own.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but knots can always find them.

One by one the earth surrendered all the missing boys, sleepers swaddled in the earth like knights laid to rest. Only Joan never resurfaced, maybe she gave up too much of herself, maybe she didn’t want to.

And in return, I buried my knots deep, away from meddling hands, a lock to the gate of my promise to this place.

They followed me back, those lost children, their skin wrinkled like the bark of a tree. We skirted around the collapsed path and past the ruins of Mad Joan’s house. Away from the woods where we’d all played as children.

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