The Mystery of the Marsh Malaise: Wonky Inn Book 5 Read online

  The enormity of what she was saying cut me to the bone. Of course she wouldn’t possibly be able to do that. “What are we going to do?” I asked in despair. “It’s not just the animals, it’s the trees and plants and insects and pretty much the whole ecosystem.”

  “We’ll never find one solution that will fit all,” Millicent agreed, worry creasing her brow.

  “There has to be a way,” I said, but if Millicent didn’t know, who would?

  Breakfast service finished at 9.30. By the time I’d helped Charity and Florence to clear up the bar area, it was an hour later. I made one final check on Mr Hoo, who had started to look increasingly sorry for himself, and then hurriedly changed into a fresh robe, collected some jars and paper bags from the kitchen and made my way outside.

  The day had promised to be a warm one from the minute I’d woken up, and it hadn’t disappointed. The air outside seemed positively steamy, and it was a relief to take shelter in the cooler woods.

  This time I walked more slowly, eyes to the ground. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, just anything out of the ordinary. Through the woods I meandered, occasionally placing a hand on the bark of a tree and listening to the life within—thousands of tiny creatures who lived on and in and below the bark—as the tree drank the water found in the earth. Each one of these ancient sentinels stretched with the tips of its branches, reaching to touch neighbours, or seeking the sun. I could feel the vibration of tiny paws as squirrels and their like scampered along the branches, jumping from tree to tree, and the tiniest touches of all manner of birds as they gently alighted from forays under the canopy, feeding off the insects flying there.

  And yet the heartbeat of Speckled Wood, the solid beating I had grown so accustomed to when I had wandered here on many earlier occasions, did not feel as strong and certain as it once had. It didn’t miss a beat, but perhaps that beat was not as deep and assured as it had previously been.

  That was a concern.

  But it was the malaise of the marshland that brought the issue home the hardest.

  It could only have been a few days since I had walked here, and yet in front of me, the undergrowth that surrounded the marsh was dying back. Brown bracken hung limply, and bull rushes looked dry and tired. The long grass had turned yellow. In fact, everywhere I looked the foliage had turned limp and sad looking, and a smell of decaying vegetation permeated the air.

  I turned my nose up and wafted the smell away. “That reeks.”

  I quietly picked my way along the path until the trees gave way to more open areas, and I could stand between several stagnant pools of water and stare in dismay at the dank, green water.

  Algae forms on the surface of standing water, and it may not be pleasant to look at, but it is one sign that the ecosystem is healthy. Here the algae had disappeared and been replaced with a kind of coffee-coloured oily sludge. Debris littered the bank areas of the marshes, fallen twigs and bullrushes, but also—as I poked among the litter with my toe—I could make out the tiny corpses of dozens and dozens of frogs and beetles, decaying slugs and snails, a few water rats, and to my utter dismay, a recently deceased kingfisher, the blue of its plumage shining brilliantly among the detritus.

  “Oh little ones,” I lamented, bending down to the bird, its eyes glaring back at me somehow accusingly. “I promise this wasn’t my fault.” I reached out to touch it, but something held me back. How deadly was the poison in the water? Stan and Godfrey were still in hospital. I’d heard through the grapevine that Godfrey was doing better, but worryingly it sounded like it might be touch and go with Stan.

  I stared again at the water, considered dipping my fingers in as I had done before, but at that time the water had been clear, and this looked more like concentrated dishwashing detergent. I plucked one of the jars I’d brought with me from my bag, and gingerly squatted by the side of the pool, meticulously scooping up some of the dank liquid, careful not to spill it on myself.

  Wishing I’d brought gloves with me, I inserted my hand into a paper bag and picked up first the kingfisher, and then in a fresh bag, several of the frogs. Finally I gathered up a jar full of earth and a jar containing dead beetles and general mulch. Finally I sealed everything.

  Job done.

  I was bending over my rucksack to secure the buckles when I heard a noise coming from the north of me. Something larger than a bird or a squirrel, maybe a badger or a fox. The noise came again. This time more like a heavy shuffling. I peered into the tree line, half expecting to see a deer, but there was nothing immediately obvious. I cocked my head, listening, and reaching out, using my witchy intuition to search for a clue. As soon as I met a blank wall I was on my feet, scouring the perimeter in alarm.

  Something was out there, and it didn’t want me to know what it was. It had blocked my tentative searching with ease.

  “Revelare!” I demanded in a hiss, and the trees swayed this way and that, disclosing secrets and banishing shadows, but whatever had been there had melted away, well out of the reach of my magick. I glared into the trees for a little longer. How could there be anything or anyone in Speckled Wood that shouldn’t be there? How had they crossed Mr Kephisto’s magickal barrier?

  There was a definite edge to Speckled Wood today. Someone was using magick that appeared to counter my own far too easily. Could it be The Mori? For sure they were a profligate organisation. Were they truly invincible? I couldn’t fight them on my own, and despite what Wizard Shadowmender had said, I didn’t see how Millicent and Finbarr were going to be of much use by themselves.

  I turned uneasily for the inn, unable to shake off the feeling that I was leaving something dark and calculating to its own devices in my precious Speckled Wood.

  I didn’t like it one little bit.

  Monsieur Emietter and Florence were up to their necks in vegetables and steaming fish when I walked through the back door and into the kitchen.

  I waved at them but didn’t stop to talk. Instead, I made my way into one of the cold stores accessible only from the kitchen. There were two of these. The first was used on a daily basis to store food that didn’t need to otherwise live in one of the fridges or industrial sized freezers we had. The second was only utilised as an overspill at certain times of the year—Christmas for example—or when we were hosting a large event. Today I chose the overspill room, and let myself in.

  This large cool storage room was largely empty apart from some forgotten bottles of ketchup in one corner. There were slatted wooden shelves on two sides of the room and a preparation table at the far end. I dumped my rucksack on the table and with clumsy fingers—the adrenaline coursing through my body—I unbuckled the straps and delicately extracted the paper bags and the jars I’d carried home. I was just lifting the last one free when Gwyn apparated beside me, scaring me half to death, so much so that I nearly dropped the jar I was clutching. I righted it at the last second and placed it safely on the table.

  “My my, you’re jumpy today,” she trilled. “What do you have there?” She scrutinized the contents of the packages. “Is that a dead bird?”

  “A kingfisher. Yes it is.”

  “Why have you brought that indoors, Alfhild? And why are you hiding out in here? Brrrrr.” Gwyn shivered for effect and I looked at her askance.

  “Grandmama, you’re a ghost. You don’t feel the cold.”

  “I can feel the memory of it.”

  I was pretty sure she couldn’t, but I was in no mood to argue. “Somebody has poisoned the wood,” I told her.

  “The wood? Our wood? Speckled Wood?”

  I nodded in affirmation.

  “But that’s preposterous. How?”

  I shrugged. “I discovered some huge plastic sacks last night that were supposed to have contained rocksalt, but I think they were actually used to carry toxic chemicals. I found them near the spring in the north of the wood.”

  “And the water is poisoned?”

  “Yes.” I rubbed my face, trying to erase the stress.
“But not just the water, Grandmama. It’s impacting on everything that needs the water to survive.” I indicated the bird, the frogs and the jar of beetles. “This is just a fraction of what I found out there. All the grass and reeds, the moss and bull rushes. Everything that comes into contact with the water in any way, shape or form.”

  “And the trees?”

  “It’s just a matter of time.” I stared down at the corpse of the kingfisher, pitying it, sorry that I’d let the worst happen. We had to act. “Unless we can find some way to neutralise it.”

  Gwyn folded her arms. “Then neutralise it we must.”

  If only it was that easy.

  “But that’s not all, grandmama. I think the perimeter had been breached. I felt a presence up there in the woods. Something that shouldn’t have been there.”

  Gwyn studied me quizzically. “But the barrier?”

  “I’ll check with Finbarr, but as far as I know, it’s all in place.”

  “Have you spoken to Wizard Shadowmender?”

  I nodded. “I called him using the orb last night. I’ve asked for help, and he said he would send some, if he can find anyone available to help us. I promised I would send these samples to him. He’ll have them analysed. In the meantime we’re on our own.” I sorrowfully scanned the items on the bench in front of me, feeling bereft for the poor creatures who had been poisoned. “But he also suggested I should make use of those I have around me.” I gingerly slid the jars to the back of the table out of harm’s way and turned to my great grandmother desperately. “But Millicent, Finbarr and I do not an army make.”

  Gwyn’s eyebrows rose. She was momentarily silent. I looked back at her in surprise. Her eyes sparked with fury, and finally she snorted in derision. I quickly worked out I’d said the wrong thing.

  “At times your arrogance knows no bounds, Alfhild,” she snapped with a definite bite to her words. “You are not the only witch inhabiting this inn, far from it.”

  Of course. People were always telling me what an amazing witch my great grandmother had been in her day. But now she was a ghost and—

  “I’m not just a ghost, Alfhild. I’m a witch. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m incapable of doing magick. I have the same skills now that I ever had before.”

  Of course she had. Hadn’t I witnessed that first-hand the previous evening? At the meeting the night before, Gwyn had blown open the windows in the village hall. She’d caused quite a stir.

  I could only apologise. “I’m so sorry, Grandmama, I shouldn’t have underestimated you. That was wrong of me.”

  “Let’s not forget you have Silvanus staying right here at Whittle Inn too.”

  There was no doubting the power of Silvan’s magick. I’d discounted him because he was a witch-for-hire with dubious loyalty. Maybe he wouldn’t want to stick around. “You’re right.”

  I realised with a fresh sense of optimism that things weren’t as bleak as they looked. Silvan, Gwyn, Millicent, Finbarr and me. Then anyone else Wizard Shadowmender could send us. “We could call on Mara too.” Mara was the old witch who lived deep in the forest north of Whittlecombe. She had been a member of the Council of Elders at one time, so there could be no denying she knew her stuff.

  “And don’t forget Charity,” Gwyn said.

  “Charity is not a witch,” I said firmly.

  “Says who?”

  “Surely I’d know?” I replied pointedly, but part of me wasn’t so sure. Yeah. The way I’d known that Jed was a warlock.

  But even as I protested on Charity’s behalf I knew that Gwyn was right, and I was wrong again. Millicent had called on Charity to help her with a spell at Halloween. Because Millicent knew. And on the day I’d invited Charity to work with me at Whittle Inn, hadn’t Charity told me about her experiences with ghosts? She had never struggled to see or converse with any of the ghosts who inhabited the inn.

  “You do know,” Gwyn replied, smug in the knowledge. “It’s Charity who doesn’t know. And possibly Charity’s mother. But Charity’s grandmother was most certainly a witch, and her great grandmother Isabella. She was one of my dearest friends.”

  I gaped at Gwyn is surprise. You learn something new every day.

  “You’ll catch flies unless you close your mouth, my dear,” Gwyn told me in her brusque manner, but I could tell she was as pleased as punch to have put me in my place.

  Seven of us. Seven is a good number. It has magickal properties.

  But Gwyn didn’t want to stop there. “It’s time to call upon your father too, and the Circle of Querkus.”

  My father Erik had been absent from the inn for six months. His business with the Circle of Querkus, a top-secret agency dedicated to fighting back against The Mori whenever they appeared had been keeping him busy. I never had a clue where his missions took him, but Gwyn was right. The Mori were beginning to appear more frequently, firstly in October and then again at Easter, and this demonstrated how emboldened they were feeling. My own abduction, and the heart-breaking disappearance of George were tragic enough, but the poisoning of the land was a step too far.

  At the very least the Circle of Querkus could support us with strength in numbers, and they’d be able to keep watch among the trees in Speckled Wood.

  “How do we call them back to Whittlecombe?” I mused.

  “Leave that to me,” Gwyn said. “In the meantime, I have something far more pressing that I need you to do. I’d do it myself, but one of the drawbacks of being a ghost is being unable to interact with your physical world. I’ll just have to entrust this task to you.”

  I frowned. “You make it sound as though I’m not up to it, Grandmama.”

  Gwyn pursed her lips. “I’m not sure you are.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve talked me into doing this,” I muttered, as I slipped out of my clothes. The prickly scattering of pine needles scratched at the sensitive skin on the bottom of my feet. The full moon floated high in the sky, and the stars winked down at us, visible in this clearing in the centre of Speckled Wood.

  Gwyn had brought me out here—the same pool of water where I had walked with Wizard Shadowmender just over a week ago—to meet with someone she said could help us. But for some reason the meeting had to be at midnight and the fuller the moon the better.

  Gwyn had ensured I’d come equipped with a velvet pouch full of moon-bathed stones. An aqua aura quartz stone to ensure I was able to communicate with the creature I was about to encounter, aquamarine to grant me courage—something I certainly needed—and a large egg-sized moonstone to enhance my intuition and strengthen my soul.

  I had a feeling my great grandmother was trying to tell me something.

  When she’d informed me she had a mission for me, I’d imagined I’d need to get in touch with someone and ask them to come to Whittle Inn as soon as possible. Someone along the lines of Perdita Pugh perhaps, but a chemist rather than a ghost whisperer.

  Not so.

  It turned out I had to wade into this stagnant body of toxic water, armed only with a handful of semi-precious stones, and speak to someone named Vance.

  Not only that, I had to do it naked.

  “Could you at least look away?” I asked Gwyn as she watched me disrobe.

  Gwyn rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’ve never seen you naked before, Alfhild. Besides, many witches prefer to undertake magick by the full moon completely sky clad.

  I knew that. “I’m not a fan.” I pouted. “Not in company anyway.”

  “Tsk tsk,” Gwyn waved her hands at me. “I’m not company. I’m family. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  I divested myself of my undergarments and thanked the goddess that it was such a warm evening. I felt oddly vulnerable to completely bare myself this way, when only hours before I’d sensed someone watching me. Were they still out there? Were they watching us now?

  Well so be it.

  “Run this by me once more,” I instructed my great grandmother. “I wade into the water and I offer the s
tones?”

  “You have to go right into the centre where the water is deepest and then duck under. No short cuts.”

  A baptism in toxic pond water. What fun.

  Strictly speaking this was not a pond but a small lake, perhaps a creek might be a fitting label for it. It was fed from the stream running down the hill from the spring, and in turn it spilled out and down the valley heading towards the inn, so this wasn’t the standing water you’d expect with a pond.

  “How deep is it?” I wondered aloud.

  “You’ll soon find out.” Gwyn’s crisp retort did not fill me with confidence.

  I retrieved a scrunchie from the pocket of my robe and tied my hair up on top of my head, Samurai style, then picked up the pouch and hesitated. Turning to face Gwyn I asked, “Do I just offer the pouch?”

  “No. Take the stones and leave the pouch behind.”

  I scootched to the edge of the water, trying to ignore the prickly nature of pine cones and small twigs that littered the edge of the pool, and worse—squidgy things underfoot that did not bear thinking about for too long. With one final glance back at Gwyn—who nodded encouragingly—I manoeuvred across the rocks and stepped down into the water. By night it was difficult to see just how murky and corrupt the water had become, but my active imagination filled in the blanks.

  The water was deeper than expected. I gasped with the shock of the cold as my leg disappeared up to my knee, and my foot sunk into sandy silt. Off balance, I steadied myself by waving my arms about, nearly dropping the stones into the water. Before I could think about what I was doing—and therefore stop doing it—I committed, quickly plunging my other leg in. Then, grimacing with discomfort, I hobbled forwards, wary of unseen sharp objects or other dead creatures. Surprisingly the water was soon up to my hips, and another few steps had it up to my chest. I wasn’t anywhere near the centre of the pool yet.

  I paused, took time to breathe properly and take in my surroundings. I could see the trees beyond, and the undergrowth, but anything further away remained completely in shadow. However the moon was bright enough to light up the surface of the pond and the surrounding rocks, and I didn’t need to see the rotting vegetation to know it was there.