The Witch Who Killed Christmas Read online

  The Witch Who Killed Christmas

  A Wonky Inn Christmas Special

  BY

  JEANNIE WYCHERLEY

  Copyright © 2018 Jeannie Wycherley

  Bark at the Moon Books

  All rights reserved

  Publishers note: This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and for effect. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Sign up for Jeannie’s newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cN3Q6L

  The Witch Who Killed Christmas was edited by Anna Bloom @ The Indie Hub

  Cover design by JC Clarke of The Graphics Shed.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Need more Wonky?

  Even More Wonky!

  Wonky Inn Book 3

  Please?

  Acknowledgments

  The Wonky Inn Series

  Also by Jeannie Wycherley

  Coming Spring 2019

  It must have been the cold that woke me.

  Or perhaps the incessant tapping on my bedroom window.

  Shivering, and imagining that the bedclothes must have somehow fallen from me in the middle of the night, I sat up. Nope. My covers were intact. I struggled upright, yanking the arms of my pyjamas down and shuddering at the biting cold that ran icy fingers around my neck as the duvet pooled around my middle.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Blinking sleepily into the oddly pale glow that promised a bland dawn beyond the window, I tossed the bedclothes fully back, swinging my feet onto bare wooden boards. Most of the inn was habitable and beautiful now, after many months of hard work, but obviously I had left my own quarters till last. No curtains, no carpets, just necessities until everything else had been completed to my desired standard throughout the inn. My guests had to come first.

  I crept on tip-toe to the window—more to keep my feet off the cold floor than in an effort to keep noise to a minimum—and peered down at Mr Hoo, my stalwart companion. A familiar, if ever a witch had one. Mr Hoo was a long-eared owl, who stood about a foot high, with mottled pale brown markings mixed with darker brown. His round brown face looked up at me. His black eyes bleak, and his hooked beak raised, ready to tap against the glass again if I didn’t let him in immediately.

  Until that moment, I don’t think I had ever considered it possible for an owl to look cold. From handling him, I knew that Mr Hoo possessed the ultimate in nature’s insulation; a thick cloud of down padding that wrapped around his body and enveloped him in cushiony heaven.

  A layer of warmth I could only dream of at 5.55 am on a December morning.

  Now he stood several inches deep in fresh white snow, and his eyes conveyed his shock at being so sorely inconvenienced by the weather, so early in the day, so unseasonable for this part of England.

  I gaped at Mr Hoo in surprise, then peered further afield. Just the previous afternoon hadn’t I been remarking how mild the winter had been so far this year? And how kind the seasons were to grant me such an abnormally long Autumn? I’d used the clement weather to press on with both the internal and external decoration the inn so desperately needed. More to the point, I could have sworn that the long-range forecast had been for a damp but relatively warm Christmas.

  So why then, as I stood in front of the window in my absurdly thin nightwear, could I see the ground sparkling with a foot of frost covered snow? And why in the near distance were the trees of Speckled Wood laden with the white stuff too? Something, somewhere had gone wrong.

  Really wrong.

  I groaned.

  A snow storm on December 23rd?

  Tomorrow Whittle Inn would be packed to the rafters with new arrivals. The majority of my guests had booked—months in advance in some cases—to spend a carefree holiday here in the depths of the countryside under my hospitality. The preparations were in full swing, and I had hoped we were on track for my first full-on festive season. I’d been praying it would be problem-free, after all a busy Christmas could make or break the reputation of my wonky inn.

  Today I expected several large food and drink deliveries, plus extra wood and coal, not to mention Christmas crackers and novelties, and little gifts I intended to hand out to all the guests.

  But if I knew rural England the way I was beginning to think I did, there was little chance of the delivery trucks making it out from the depot, to say nothing of getting them up the narrow and winding lanes even to the nearby village of Whittlecombe, let alone my inn.

  Mr Hoo took umbrage at the length of time it was taking for me to answer his call, and rapped urgently on the glass once more.

  I flung open the window, only to be rewarded by a bitter blast of freezing air against my face. Mr Hoo shot past, shaking tiny shards of brittle frost all over me. He landed gracefully on a bedpost, where he preened his feathers furiously and studiously ignored me as I jumped up and down in a bid to warm myself.

  Reaching out to catch the frigid brass of the handle, I wrenched the window closed, but not before fresh flakes of snow fell onto my bare arm.

  I peered out at the sky in dread. Even in the semi-darkness, it appeared ominously heavy.

  This could spell disaster.

  Not what I needed at Christmas!

  “Alf?” The plaintive voice, piping unexpectedly close to my ear, startled me. I jumped up and banged my head on the boiler.

  I rubbed my crown and scowled at Charity who stepped away when she caught the look on my face. “Why’s it so cold, Alf?” she asked. She looked sweet, clad in pyjamas and a thick woollen jumper, with her normally spiky pink hair, abnormally flattened, and much warmer than I felt. Charity was my new hotel manager. I’d recently pinched her from The Hay Loft—the other inn in the village—and it was one of the best business decisions I’d made since taking over the inn.

  “I can’t get the boiler to work.” I waved my spanner in her direction and she backed off to the doorway. Probably wise. I’d stepped into my shower expecting warm water and met only a frigid waterfall. I had dried myself off rapidly but now I was colder than a naked Siberian mammoth during the Ice Age. And about as warm-tempered. I’d been trying to fix the huge old-fashioned boiler, housed in its own little room next to the kitchen, for the past forty minutes and I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “Brrr.” Charity shivered.

  “Brrr indeed.” I glowered. “Have you seen outside?”

  “Outside? No.” Charity headed for the door and I quickly followed her into the kitchen.

  “How about we just look at it from in here,” I suggested, eager to keep what little warmth the draughty old building had inside where it would do the most good.

  I clasped Charity’s arm and woman-handled her to the window. We both stared out, agog at the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions. Snow fell relentlessly from a dull white sky.

  “It’s snowing!” Charity erupted with excitement. Einstein had very little to worry about where Charity was
concerned. “That’s incredible! I haven’t seen snow in Whittlecombe for years! And never in December.”

  It’s probably worth pointing out a few facts here. When Charity says she hasn’t seen snow for years, you need to remember she’s all of about twenty-four. Six years younger than me. However, what she said was true. With our proximity to the south coast, and therefore the prevailing jet stream, snow is always a rarity. Snow in December is virtually unheard of. It’s usually far colder at the end of January and beginning of February, if it gets cold at all.

  “Wow.” Charity clapped her hands in glee. “So pretty!” She stopped when she caught my expression. “Oh.”

  “Yes, ‘oh’. What am I going to do?” I asked. “Do you think the pipes are frozen? Maybe that’s why the boiler isn’t working?” Charity grimaced and shrugged, plumbing not being her forte, nor mine come to that. “What time is it now?”

  That was a question she could answer. “Just after eight.”

  “Eight? That’s almost civilised, isn’t it? Could you call a plumber for me, please? There’s a number in the book in the office. Under P. For plumber. I can’t remember his name. Henry, or Eddie or…something.”

  “No probs,” Chastity replied, and skipped away. I returned my attention to the boiler and prodded a few buttons, pulled a few levers, and depressed a switch, praying the darn thing would ignite. But when Chastity padded back into the kitchen a few minutes later, I’d still had no joy, and was considering taking a hammer to the decrepit old machine and smashing it to bits. How much would a new boiler cost me?

  “It’s Perry,” Chastity announced. “Perry the plumber.”

  “Great. And will Perry come out in this weather?” I dropped my spanner into the toolbox with relief.

  “Um, no. The phone’s dead.”

  “The phone’s dead?”

  “No tone. Nada.”

  “You can’t get a signal?”

  “Ohhhhhh.” Charity laughed with relief. “I didn’t try a mobile. I just used the phone on your desk.” My office housed a large Bakelite phone from the 1970s in matt black, complete with chrome rotary dial.

  I shook my head in disbelief, but I had to laugh. Charity could be a dolt at times, but she was the most hard-working manager I could ask for. She had to put up with so much, after all.

  It’s easy to forget you’re living in the twenty-first century in Whittle Inn. So many of the features, and a fair amount of the furnishings, date from a bygone era. This is both an aesthetic and a practical decision on my part. While the marketing we use attracts a number of ‘traditional’ guests from time-to-time, the bulk of reservations for my wonky inn are made up of witches, wizards, faeries, vampires and others of —shall we say—more mythical persuasion? You couldn’t describe them all as evil or even particularly mischievous by any means, although some certainly are. However, I would admit, that on the whole my clientele are…well…weird.

  And that meant that a large number of them liked to communicate via alternative means. Bakelite phone being one of their preferred methods, telegraph, owl, headless coachman and carrier pigeon among the others.

  It all made sense to me.

  “Try Perry the plumber on your mobile,” I said, emphasising the word mobile sarcastically. “And keep trying if he’s busy.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Thanks.” I stretched and heard the satisfying crick of the bones in my neck. “I’m going to get dressed and go out and see what the lanes are like. Maybe organise the Wonky Inn Clean-up Crew to shovel snow.” I gave the boiler one last kick.

  “Alf?” Charity called after me as I headed for the stairs. “Can we ask the crew to light fires inside too?”

  “Will do!” I yelled back. I expected Florence was already on to that anyway.

  I headed for the attic.

  Upstairs was far colder than downstairs. I don’t have a clue how thatched roofs work, but I have always generally assumed they are naturally insulating—warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. That didn’t appear to be the case today. The air was positively icy in the rafters. My breath wheezed out in clouds of white steam.

  The good thing about ghosts however, is that they don’t feel the cold.

  Nonetheless, when I opened the attic door I found them all huddled together, peering out of the circular window at the end of the attic, watching the falling snow with varying expressions on their pale and slightly opaque faces.

  A stately looking woman turned to look at me as I entered. Alfhild Gwynfyre Daemonne, my great grandmother, sported a diamond tiara and a navy blue velvet evening gown with matching gloves rolled up above her elbows. She didn’t smile when she spotted me.

  “This is a rum business,” she said before I could greet her.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Her general predisposition for pessimism and doom and gloom had a tendency to set some of her fellow spirits off too, and given the day I was already experiencing, I wanted to avoid an outpouring of maudlin and melancholy where possible.

  I’d had quite enough of sobbing ghosts for one year.

  “Grandmama,” I chastised, using the address she preferred. Behind her back I called her Gwyn. “It’s just a bit of snow.”

  Before she could retort, and I could see she was poised to do so, I clapped my hands like a school ma’am. “Guys,” I sang. “I’m sorely in need of your help this morning.”

  The motley collection of ghosts turned their attention to me. “Zephaniah,” I addressed a tall thin man with only one arm, dressed in a First World War soldier’s outfit. “Can you gather the troops together, please? I need you to lay fires in every room that will be inhabited by guests from tomorrow, but can you prioritise the rooms we will use today. Light the fires in communal areas, but hold off on the others. I need you to make sure the fires remain well-stoked, all day. Understood?”

  “Yes ma’am!” Zephaniah shot back at me, and clicked his heels.

  “Then when that’s under control,” I continued, “Can you get a crew outside and shovel snow? Start in the drive—”

  “Oh but it’s so pretty!” interjected Florence, a housemaid who had worked under my great great grandparents and who had met her end when her clothes caught alight. Even now, she smouldered all day long, and I could smell her before I would see her.

  “I know it is, Florence, but we have to be practical. I’m expecting some big deliveries today. The vans won’t make it up the lane unless we give them a helping hand.”

  “In my day—” Gwyn began, but I waved my hand at her.

  “Do what you can to help everyone, Grandmama, please?” I pleaded. “I’ll check back with you all soon. I must head into the village.”

  I winked at Zephaniah, and shot back downstairs, ignoring the lamentations that followed me.

  That’s the problem with ghosts. They’re so overly dramatic.

  Here in Britain, we find it hard to cope when the weather becomes a little extreme. Today was no exception. I donned a pair of old Wellington boots I’d found in the shed, pulled on an extra woollen layer, and a huge old mackintosh from the attic that smelled of mildew and old cologne, while regretting the fact I didn’t have any of the right clothes of my own for this unseasonable turn of events.

  By the time I left the inn, the scent of wood fires mingled pleasantly with the sharpness of the frosty air. Turning to observe my wonky inn with its thatched roof and numerous high brick chimney breasts, I watched the curls of grey smoke drift out against the milky background of the sky. A low sky that promised even more snow.

  The snow itself was surprisingly deep and firm. I’d been expecting loose powdery snow, the kind that melts at the slightest hint of sun, but I should have known better. The air was biting, and the cold seeped through my layers and settled into my bones. My feet sank into the snow, but only by a few inches. This stuff was hardcore.

  I trudged down the lane, humming as I walked, keeping myself company, and trying to convince myself I felt warm enough. Once out on what passed for
the main road into the village, I was struck by how silent everywhere was. Whittlecombe is a quiet village at the best of times, but there is always traffic of some kind. Locals on bicycles, or in their sports cars in some cases, jeeps and tractors from the local farms, delivery vehicles, sometimes even commuter traffic heading from hidden and remote hamlets to the city of Exeter, some 18 or so miles away.

  But the lack of traffic noise wasn’t what struck me the most. It was the total absence of animal noise, something as a witch I was usually finely attuned to. I paused in the middle of what was normally the road and cocked my head, stilling my breathing and listening hard. Not a tweet or a cheep. Not a rustle, snuffle or a grunt. No honking, no braying, no barking, no meowing.

  Whittlecombe and surrounding areas appeared to be entirely devoid of animals.

  Either that or they had holed up somewhere, and were busy keeping themselves warm.

  I carried on down the road and into the village, pleased to see more life here. There were several locals gathered outside the community centre, including Mr Bramley who waved cheerily at me as he took a break from shovelling snow from the pavement there. I noticed the café had remained closed, but Whittle Stores was open, and busy enough. I made my way in, shaking the snow from my boots and coat and waving at Rhona and Stan behind the counter.

  “Ah, hi Alf,” Rhona called as she finished serving the woman in front of me. “I wondered whether you’d call in. We have several boxes to deliver to you today, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get the van out.”

  “That’s what I was worried about,” I replied. “Won’t the council get the snowploughs on the road?”

  Stan shook his head. “Our phone lines are down, along with the broadband, so it’s difficult to get any information. We’ve been trying to ring on Rhona’s mobile, but we can’t seem to get through.”

  “I guess they’re very busy,” Rhona interrupted.

  “I’m sure they are.” My stomach churned at the thought that I’d be losing customers if the roads weren’t clear. In London, snow clearance and gritting etc., often seemed to happen automatically. I guess there were more resources allocated to a smaller area, compared to the county of Devon, which is vast. “Are they normally on the ball with this kind of thing?”