KAT'S TIC TOCC 8

On the rocks you find a smashed ceramic container. Inside there is a rolled piece of parchment. Most of the words have been damaged; washed away by the sea spray. But there are three words visible. They are: Garnet * Blood * Magic

I feel uneasy. Could this be a link with the suicide girl, washed up only three days ago half a mile down the coast? Karen had just told me about her. She hadn't been long in the water, yet no one had come forward to identify her. Long, black hair, body thin and white- as if drained of blood; the news reader had reported sombrely. Most strikingly, she had a tattoo'd crown on her shoulders. Surely someone would have recognised her description?

I remember when I first came to East Cornwall, marks scrawled on the doors of outhouses fronting on to overgrown lanes.

“Witchcraft.” My father said. “You see evidence of it in these wild areas. I remember Worcestershire in the fifties...”

I pooh-poohed him then, but now I shudder a little. The shards that remain of the container seem to be made of serpentine from the Lizard.

“What was the girls tattoo'd crown like? Did they say?”

“Very ornate, spikey, set with rubies I think.” Says my friend Karen, returning to the surf after a perfunctory glance at my find.

In the evening the weather grows threatening and we struggle back up along the short, steep cliff, taking it in turns to carry the surf board. At the top I look down and see there's a door open in the old tarred hut with it's nets. There's been a fire there, blackened thorn bushes surround it like a sad parody of Sleeping Beauty's palace. Someone, it's an elderly woman; has a little fire going outside, heating soup by the look of her.

“Bless!” Says Karen. “I wonder if she owns that place? I've never seen it open before.”

“We could talk to her if we come back next weekend. Maybe she saw something...”

As I speak she looks up. I expect a smiling weatherbeaten face, twinkling eyes under her scarf.

I see a shadowed, hook nosed face with eyes that glint red in the sinking sun under a black, heavy hood. Her lips draw back and I jump, heart suddenly pounding, as she turns away, bends to lift up the soup bowl and twists round to thrust it to her mouth. She drinks and pulls the bowl away.

I back away, back towards the car, my eyes fixed on the serpentine bowl where dark scurrying clouds reflect on the remains of her - soup. Then I look up - the woman looks as if she has a dark, curdled beard of blood, dripping, running down her curved chin, dying her sharp, long teeth red.

***

480 words

I seem to enjoy these Tic Toccs more every week. Please see the picture called “Kingsdown” early in my Blog, for the inspiration behind the witches hut, (obviously I moved it a few hundred miles down the coast for Kent to Cornwall for the story, but that's what prompts are for!)

NB I dont usually like stereotypical evil witches as most real witches are lovely, but couldn't resist a scary touch for this one.