The Devil’s Paintbox Read online

  Cherry grabbed her and dragged her into the hallway, praying she wasn’t too late. Then she lifted the girl in her arms and ran to the now open front door.

  Verne was kneeling on the ground outside, frantically smacking and brushing the beetles off himself. He was covered in red splotches and looked like he’d been in a terrible accident. Glancing up from his crimson hands, he saw Cherry come staggering from the cottage.

  ‘Lil!’ he bawled.

  Cherry laid the girl on the ground and they urgently scooped the beetles off her face. She was motionless.

  ‘Lil! Lil!’ Cherry called, shaking the girl. ‘Come back to us, honey. Come on, you’re not checkin’ out yet.’

  Just as Verne thought Lil was never going to recover, she suddenly spluttered and spat out a fist-sized clot of squirming beetles. Yelling in disgust, she leaped up and ran around the yard, thrashing her arms and legs.

  Cherry kissed the ammonites on her bracelet in thanks and smiled at Verne, but the boy was staring over her shoulder. Cherry followed his dumbfounded gaze.

  Issuing from her front door was a dark river. The mass of flying insects soared up like a column of thick smoke. When it was chimney high, it spread outwards, swelling like a menacing storm. A cold shadow reached across the narrow streets of the East Cliff as the buzzing cloud expanded, stretching towards the bridge. And still incalculable numbers surged from the cottage.

  Lil raked her fingers through her hair and shivered in revulsion. She was drenched in vibrant red, as though she had been swimming in blood. Blinking up at the mounting threat above, she rejoined Verne and Cherry.

  ‘I thought you put protection around us!’ she barked.

  Cherry was cleaning her sunglasses. She looked tired.

  ‘Did either of you two get bit or stung?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Lil said.

  ‘Nor me,’ added Verne.

  ‘Then you were protected,’ Cherry told them. ‘The rest of the town won’t be so lucky.’

  Lil stared with fresh horror at the beetle-filled sky.

  ‘They’re going to attack?’ she murmured.

  ‘I’d bet my signed Hendrix shirt on it.’

  ‘We have to warn everyone!’ Lil cried.

  Cherry looked at her front door: the raging flood was beginning to thin.

  ‘Too late,’ she said.

  ‘We must do something!’ said Lil. ‘Think, Cherry! There must be a way.’

  ‘I can’t throw protection over the whole of Whitby!’ Cherry answered testily. ‘What we need is . . .’

  ‘Is what?’

  Cherry stared at her keenly.

  ‘We need a wild, ragged witch,’ she told her. ‘Someone really plugged into Momma Nature, who can sing up a wind. Real old-school primitive. We need Scaur Annie.’

  Lil edged back. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked nervously. ‘Annie is gone. We laid her ghost to rest.’

  ‘Yeah, but she gave you some of her gifts. There might be something we can use, locked up in that head of yours. If I could . . .’

  ‘Not your party piece!’ the girl protested.

  ‘Sorry, hun,’ Cherry said, her pale blue eyes blazing brightly. ‘I weren’t asking. This is my job. Now let me see what else that seventeenth-century gal left behind. Don’t struggle – you just make it worse for yourself.’

  Cherry’s eyes burned even more fiercely and Verne watched his best friend go limp. He had never seen Cherry do this before and it panicked and frightened him. Then, with a cold, sick feeling in his stomach, he realised the last of the insects had flown from her cottage. The massed cloud above was complete.

  On the outskirts of Whitby, beyond the barricades, the assembled TV crews were setting up for the first report of the day. The mystery epidemic was still confounding experts. Inexplicably, even the emergency teams that had gone in wearing protection suits had suffered casualties, so none of the rest were allowed out again. Whitby was in strict lockdown and no more teams would be sent in.

  Protest groups had started to gather, and makeshift camps were set up within sight of the tanks and armoured vehicles that now patrolled the boundary. Activists objected to the draconian treatment of those trapped within the town. But, until the pathogen had been identified, containment was the only defence. Whitby was a sealed no-go zone.

  As the news crews prepared to go on air, they spotted a dark plume snaking up from the East Cliff. Was it a fire? Lenses rapidly zoomed in and someone yelled that it looked more like a colossal swarm of insects. The media watched in dumb fascination as a broad cloud formed above the town. When it had spread so far as to cast its shadow on the West Cliff, it hung menacingly in the morning air, as if waiting. A cable news channel launched a drone to get closer aerial footage.

  Then, suddenly, the cloud burst, spilling down upon the streets like heavy, torrential rain.

  Even far away, the screams could be heard.

  Hovering over the rooftops, the camera drone captured the nightmarish scene in high definition. The Whitby residents that were out, visiting the emergency medical centres, were pursued down the narrow streets. Thick formations hunted them, surrounding their screeching heads, biting with sharp, tiny jaws. Panic and terror were everywhere. The drone flew lower, over the swing bridge, towards the West Cliff. The image became swamped with blurred shapes hurtling past, as its course cut through the path of a large swarm. In moments the drone was totally covered in a thick layer of insects. It faltered in the air. The four propellers scythed through hundreds of angry bodies and scarlet rain drizzled down, before the grotesque numbers clogged the blades and stopped them spinning. The drone toppled from the sky and splashed into the river.

  From the safety of the barricades, the news teams watched with disbelief. Then they saw that the helicopter was approaching the town from the sea, to broadcast an updated bulletin.

  ‘Call them back!’ the reporters yelled. ‘Get that thing out of there!’

  The colonel in charge of the armed presence radioed the helicopter’s ship that was anchored a mile out to sea, but it was no use.

  As the aircraft flew over the harbour, the many separate swarms regrouped, forming an almost solid monstrous mass. With nauseating speed and hideous purpose, it rushed towards the helicopter and swallowed it whole.

  Engulfed within that furious horde, the noise of the rotor blades changed. They chugged and juddered and the engine screeched and whined. A vivid red trail poured into the waters below as the helicopter lost control. Spinning free of the seething cloud, it plummeted down, crashing on to the rocks of the Scaur. A ball of searing flame erupted against the cliff.

  The news crews turned back to the cameras, ashenfaced.

  The hashtag #PrayforWhitby began to trend.

  Stepping into Lil’s mind, Cherry Cerise moved through a dreamlike, warped vision of Whitby. It was bathed in silver moonlight that sparkled over diamond-dusted cobbles. The streets were narrower here and the buildings leaned in overhead. All was crooked and oversized, and large knitted decorations festooned the eaves like bunting.

  Strange creatures sat in shop windows, waving and pulling faces. Many were cartoonish caricatures of the owners; others were freaky distortions of what they sold. Gibbering clown masks crowded the joke shop, pressing rubbery noses against the glass. The bookshop was filled with flocks of flying books, flapping their pages against the panes. In the jewellery and clothing shops, shadowy images of Lil were trying on outfits and necklaces, and admiring themselves in distorting mirrors. An obese and spotty Lil was guzzling the contents of the fudge shop.

  Cherry chuckled as a teacup the size of a bath came clattering down the street, chased by a Whitby Lemon Bun as large as an armchair. Then she passed the opening that led to her own cottage. It pulsed with welcoming rosy light and she could hear her favourite 1970s music drifting on the air, combined with gales of laughter. A selection of her beloved kinky boots and platform shoes were grooving on down in the alleyway.

  Touched and flattered by t
his mental image, the colour witch hurried on. Some of the other alleys contained watching, huddled figures that whispered the word ‘freak’ or sniggered when she went by, but they were just manifestations of everyday paranoia and Cherry ignored them.

  When she came to the 199 steps, she smiled. In this mindscape they were an escalator that smoothly ascended a vastly enlarged cliffside, where giant gravestones jutted like wonky teeth and the abbey was a craggy crown, with pinnacles that ripped the moonlit clouds.

  She passed into Henrietta Street. The change here was abrupt and startling. It felt cold. There were no more knitted decorations. Ugly faces and cruel names were scrawled on the walls and the shadows were impenetrable and intimidating. When Cherry saw the Wilsons’ cottage she caught her breath. Lil’s home was a forbidding castle, with turrets and battlements and dimly lit slits for windows. A shrill voice was yelling inside.

  ‘You might have killed your father! You’re nothing to me. I wish you’d never been born! I want nothing to do with you! Keep away from me! You’re worthless! Are you listening? You ruined my life! I hate what you are! You’re disgusting! Hate you . . . hate you!’

  The front door swung open and a caricature of Mrs Wilson stormed out. She was dressed in a widow’s gothic finery with her hair piled on top of her head, elaborately entwined with black roses and sable ribbons, and a veil covering her tearful eyes. She got into a waiting horse-drawn carriage and departed, her accusations echoing through the streets with the sound of the horses’ hooves.

  ‘What was that about?’ Cherry murmured, taken aback. ‘Land sakes, Lil, what’s been goin’ on with you at home?’

  Inside the grim castle she could hear a girl sobbing, but there wasn’t time to investigate this private wound. Cherry turned round and looked across the harbour. A glittering palace, ablaze with friendly light, towered over the quayside. It was the Thistlewoods’ arcade, where a small figure holding something large and golden was flying overhead, squealing and whooping with joy.

  Cherry lowered her gaze to where a fluffy white dog was scampering over Tate Hill Sands, chasing and playing with a much younger version of Lil.

  ‘Come on,’ Cherry urged herself. ‘Annie’s gotta be here someplace. There must be a bit of her left behind.’

  It was then she heard the singing. There, down on the rocks, was the shadowy shape of a slim woman, with a tangle of hair, paddling through the shallows.

  ‘Does I love a bonnie sailor, or shepherd? No sir.

  Did I kiss the brave young soldier lad I met at Scarborough Fair?

  And farm boys and fishermen, they all to me would woo,

  But I’ll laugh and snap my fingers, a Lord alone will do.’

  ‘Gotcha!’ said Cherry, and she ran over to her.

  Annie stopped singing.

  ‘You doesn’t belong in this place,’ she scolded, not bothering to look up. ‘Poaching and trespass, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Right back atcha,’ Cherry replied.

  ‘Nay. This daughter of Whitby is gone; she’s with her gentleman now and evermore. What you see is just a parcel of dusty old thoughts, remnants wrapped in her shape. Nothing more.’

  ‘OK, so you’re a walking scrapbook. Whatever you are, Whitby needs you.’

  ‘You wear the snake stones now. The town is under your care, not mine.’

  ‘Get real, Annie, you know it don’t work like that. You can’t split from your responsibilities so easy. As the incumbent witch, I’m ordering you to get your dirty cockle toes outta here and help us.’

  Annie raised her eyes. Her stare was keen and piercing. ‘You know the danger if I do,’ she warned gravely. ‘These lingering shreds were never meant to cloud the girl’s waking thoughts. She might never be the same.’

  ‘That’s a risk I have to take.’

  ‘The choice is not yours.’

  ‘As long as Whitby is my business, it sure is. So put your ragged booty in gear, sister. We have to leave this minute.’

  As the helicopter fuel blazed black and orange up the cliffside, and the horde of flying beetles swung back to torment the town, Verne stood before Cherry’s cottage, waiting and watching anxiously.

  The colour witch exhaled abruptly and she coughed and fought for breath. Exhausted, she put on her sunglasses with shaking hands.

  ‘Hey, you in there,’ she told the girl. ‘Wake up. Come on, snap out of it.’

  Very slowly, Lil lifted her face, her eyes lightly closed. She raked her fingers through her hair and tossed her head. Then she opened her eyes and Verne gasped as a cunning, feral sharpness animated her features.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he cried in alarm. ‘Where’s Lil?’

  The girl grinned at him, then jerked her head around, taking in her surroundings. The courtyard was heaving with zooming insects. They battered against windows and clustered around doorways, creeping through gaps to fly inside and attack. For every beetle swatted and squashed, five more buzzed in to take its place, their tiny razor mouths greedily slicing through human skin, or squirting acid that blistered and burned. Whitby was filled with screams of pain and fear.

  ‘Can you do it, Annie?’ Cherry asked urgently. ‘Call up a wind to drive them into the sea?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘’Tis no weather charm you’re wanting,’ she said in a voice that was nothing like Lil’s. ‘Be an army you need – but I know where to find one.’

  She leaped away, darting with animal swiftness through the alley and into Church Street.

  Verne grabbed hold of Cherry’s arm. ‘Where’s Lil?’ he snapped.

  ‘She’s still in there!’ Cherry assured him. ‘Don’t worry. She’ll be back, soon as Annie’s done.’

  ‘She’d better be!’ the boy answered angrily as he set off after her.

  The cobbles of Whitby were stained a vibrant red where insects had been crushed by lurching feet, like the grisly aftermath of some mass slaughter.

  Verne saw Lil’s possessed figure ahead of him. She had thrown off her shoes and was jumping down on to Tate Hill Sands.

  The boy hesitated when he saw the black smoke pouring into the sky in the distance. The buckled rotor blades of the helicopter made it look like a giant burning spider. He shuddered, wondering if the pilot had got out alive.

  Dragging his eyes away from the wreckage, he gazed out across the town. The West Cliff was blanketed in a huge dark smear of tormenting insects.

  On the beach below, Annie had taken up a stick of driftwood and was drawing shapes in the sand.

  Verne stopped himself going down to her. The shapes she traced weren’t random squiggles, they were signs, painstakingly executed, and she sang strange-sounding words over each one. When the beach was completely inscribed, she hurled the stick into the water and twirled around, skipping between the images, humming and whistling, making dramatic and specific gestures with her arms.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ he asked when Cherry caught up with him.

  ‘It’s a summoning. Those are witchmarks, a sort of nature alphabet used for conjuring. There’s a few examples in my books, but I don’t have a clue about the meaning. Be surprised if anyone today knows . . . Ow!’ She slapped her arm. A beetle had bitten her.

  ‘Your protection is wearing off,’ Verne said. ‘We should get inside.’ He flinched as an insect flew into his face and another bit the back of his neck.

  ‘Shouldn’t wear off so soon,’ Cherry declared. ‘What’s with me today?’

  On the sand, Annie gave a great shout, threw herself round like a spinning top, then flung herself down, arms outstretched.

  ‘Is it done?’ Verne asked, smacking the side of his head and crunching several beetles at once. ‘Is Lil coming back now?’

  The colour witch didn’t know, and the bites were becoming more frequent.

  ‘We gotta get out of this!’ she cried. ‘We’ll be eaten alive. Go down and get her.’

  But Annie had already picked herself up.

  ‘Come, my loves!’ she called. ‘Come
, dine.’

  ‘Who’s she talking to?’ Verne asked.

  Cherry brushed the bright hair of her wig away from her ears. Amid the vibrating drone of the insects there was a new sound, one that grew louder with each moment.

  ‘Glory be,’ she breathed, then spat out the seven beetles that flew into her mouth.

  Tens of thousands of seabirds came squawking round the cliffs in a chaotic, clamorous riot. The tremendous draught of their wings scattered the oily smoke rising from the helicopter. Rushing down the valley was an even greater multitude of sparrows, finches, blackbirds, pigeons, crows and starlings. They were joined by a host of herons, geese and ducks, and a squadron of swans swooped down on to the river, their voices like hoarse bugles declaring war.

  Verne had never seen so many birds.

  They immediately set about gorging themselves, diving and darting with their beaks and bills wide open, scooping and guzzling great quantities of insects. He almost felt like cheering.

  ‘That’s what I call an army,’ Cherry murmured with an admiring nod. ‘You did good, Annie.’

  The feast raged on. Windows and doors were flung open by overjoyed townsfolk and the feathered liberators were welcomed into every invaded home, where the rooms were swiftly cleared. It was a tumultuous, frenzied blowout.

  A flock of chattering starlings circled Cherry and Verne, striking with expert accuracy at the beetles that clung to their clothes. The boy held very still. One of them squared up to his ear and glared inside, then scooted across his shoulders and did the same to the other. The next thing Verne knew it was on top of his head, searching through his hair. When he saw two more weaving in and out of Cherry’s nylon tresses, he laughed and the one on his head flew off in annoyance.

  Annie left the beach and clambered up to join them. All three stared at the glad, gluttonous uproar rampaging across Whitby. It was an incredible, exuberant display, but it lasted only as long as the birds were hungry. Yet there were still festering patches of beetles streaking through the air, encrusting the rigging of fishing boats and creeping out from the cover of pantiles.