Chapter Text
The famous Dorset Jurassic Coast was no stranger to a storm.
Seagulls cawed and fought against the whining wind while sea spray and rain soaked the sleepy seaside town of Weymouth as it had done for centuries, as it would continue to do until the end of time. Danger followed the coastal paths along the cliffs, a few visitors dared to sneak a peek over the heart-stopping drop in the hopes of witnessing sea foam explode against the chalk but the threat of being flung off by a rogue gust of wind always drew them back. Even during England's cold summer spells, tourists came from all over the world to see the prehistoric natural wonders, the tumultuous drop was half of the coast's allure.
Jane Cole wiped her dripping face and cranked up the volume of her tatty Walkman, praying that the rain would be kind to her music player. She shoved it deeper into her coat pocket and dragged her foot along the pavement, her skateboard finally gathering speed. The wind whipped her cheeks harder as she flew off but she didn't care, she'd grown to love its ferocious kisses. With Frankie Goes to Hollywood blasting in her ears, she took in the scenic view of the town behind the cliffs — the place she (unfortunately) called home — and sighed.
She fucking hated it here.
The dank orphanage, a faded salmon structure that looked ghastly both up close and from afar, stuck out like a sore thumb on the green hill west of the town, sandwiched in between an abandoned retirement home and a cow farm that stretched beyond the valley. It looked just as horrible as the children who lived inside it (Jane always thought it was fitting that Coles Children's Home shared a hill with a field full of cow dung), with its peeling fences and a front garden littered with broken toys. It was no secret that the whole town despised the unsightly orphanage, the council had received several complaints over the years from bitter locals, but none compares to their distaste for the orphans themselves.
Jane didn't blame them, she hated them too. The Coles kids were a nuisance to everyone they met, constantly causing trouble and giving all the children, Jane included, a bad name. She loathed being a Coles kid with every fibre of her being.
Jane gasped and skirted around a young couple holding hands, spitting out a hurried, "Sorry!" as she zoomed past and nearly knocked them sideways.
Whenever she could, Jane was out on her skateboard. Her hobby started as a lie, she found it on the beach after school one day and used it as an excuse to escape the home, to 'practise.' Once she got a handle on her footwork, though, she was never seen without it — which, unfortunately, also meant discovering it made a decent shield against the rocks the other kids hurled at her.
Despite the chipped paint and the dents made by stones, Jane thought her skateboard was most likely the coolest thing she owned.
The wind only grew worse when Jane arrived at Poor Man's Point (a nickname coined by the locals for the cluster of homeless people who revered the privacy of the coves tucked beneath the cliffs) and she shivered in relief when she found it deserted. Poor Man's Point was a local tourist attraction, a natural phenomenon where two of the cliffs curved to form a stone plank that many thrill seekers used as a makeshift diving board. It was a mere two-hundred feet drop into the ocean that was enough to make the stomachs of even the bravest of jumpers cramp.
Jane came here most weekends. She found solace in the screeches of gulls and the rustle of leaves surrounding the cliff peak. Locals rarely visited, which made it the perfect candidate for Jane's favourite place.
Rubbing her frozen hands in the hopes of gaining back feeling, Jane shuffled over to one of the many battered benches and plonked herself down. Her stomach did a small kickflip of its own when her skateboard rolled towards the drop, but she quickly snatched it up and hugged it to her chest. She'd be furious with herself if it tumbled off the cliff — the walk home would take over an hour! Ah well. Danielle's not working today, so it's not like anyone would notice if I broke curfew.
With the Walkman still blaring, Jane fumbled around in her paint-splattered backpack and scooped out the instant camera that she received last Christmas by the only saving grace in her life; Danielle Greene, a carer at Coles.
Roughly twenty-six years old, Danielle was the youngest support worker at the children's home, and she was the only person in the world who liked Jane. She wished that were an exaggeration but it really wasn't. Danielle was very kind with a pretty pointed face and a rather thick Welsh accent, something Jane had spent the past two years trying to imitate. She seemed to be the only one at Coles who took notice of Jane's creative streak — who took notice of her at all, to be honest — and she bought Jane a cheap instant camera to experiment with. Jane had never received a gift before Danielle. She'd never been more protective of anything in her life. Jane smiled, fingers brushing Danielle's old Walkman in her pocket. That was her second most treasured gift.
The threatening grey clouds swirled with the wind out above the sea, the waves were violent and clashed, rolling over and over towards the deep nothingness beyond. Jane shuddered, traumatised by the mere thought of the water, by how heavy the ocean could be when you're panicking, and her chest seized as though she were back in its deadly depths.
She had nearly drowned twice in her life.
Twice she had been dragged into the water by the kids who made her life a living hell and each incident haunted her to this day. Still, she shoved the dark thoughts from her mind and allowed the camera to soak in the beautiful bittersweet sea view. You couldn't avoid the ocean in a seaside town, practically impossible.
Whenever Jane lost herself in something creative, her focus tunnelled. The outside world just... fell away. She never noticed how easily the hours slipped by and she subconsciously blocked out the group making their way up zigzagged cliff paths, their rattling bikes in their hands.
The gang of girls was older than Jane by a couple of years. They were a bunch of teenagers who should've known better than to bully a vulnerable girl younger than them, but adolescence was a fickle thing and the thought of ruining Jane's day was too sweet to resist. They spotted her a mile off. That patched green coat. The frantic camera flashes. Everything they hated about her, lit up against the growing dark — and just like that, their plans changed with an exchange of menacing smiles.
Their leader had been waiting all summer for a moment like this. How could she say no?
It wasn't until the white beams of a lighthouse further down the coastline started to blink that Jane noticed the time. It was always hard to tell what time of day it was when a storm was in town. July had arrived, but summer hadn't, just cold rain and bitter winds that never let up. They were in the midst of a perpetual storm and it had not stopped raining for almost three weeks. Jane didn't mind the rain but there were only so many moody ocean photos one girl could take!
The Walkman clicked and switched off, the CD whirling to a stop inside her jacket. Jane set the camera on the bench and yanked off her headphones, and the booming waves and wind roared on. With her hair whipping around her, she rummaged around in her bag for another rattling CD case but something in the corner of her peripheral caught her attention. Her stomach plummeted and her mouth suddenly became very dry.
"Oi!" someone shouted behind her, their yell carrying with the wind. It was too dark to make out any faces but Jane didn't need a torch to know who it was. Did they stalk her here? She couldn't catch a fucking break!
Instead of looking up, she carried on searching for something loud and energising to boost her sudden mood dip.
"Oi!" they shouted again. "You deaf?"
"It's Sunday, the holy day, the Sabbath —the day of rest!" Jane shouted back, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Have a day off, love!"
"Piss off, freak!"
Jane sighed and dropped the bag on her lap, taking a deep, calming breath. It's ok, she's doing that on purpose, don't rise to it.
The antagonist was starting early today, usually the f-word came halfway through their petty fights, when her bullies got physical and her taunts had gone too far. She looked toward the four approaching figures, their bike lights flashing through the dark, trying to look intimidating. Jane just snorted.
This might have worked a few years ago but Jane had gotten used to her bully's tactics as though it was her sixth sense, even taunting them to get a little more creative with their oppression. With a lifetime of torment under her belt Jane had heard every swear word and slur come out of the girl's mouth and it was beginning to get a little boring.
"Come on guys, I bet there's another lonely girl out there looking to be bullied, it's not fair on them if I hog all of the abuse, is it?" she asked, deciding to go with Danielle's various 80s hits album. She clicked it into place just as the group arrived, giving her a chance to see their faces in their bike's dying lights.
Rachel Madden sneered down at Jane, her highlighted blonde hair shoved into two pigtails with little blue butterfly clips framing her fringe. She was the worst of them all, the leader, the one whose face Jane had memorised once out of fear but now out of pure hatred. Rachel lived at Coles too, she was the only other child who had been there as long as Jane and she knew how hard it was growing up as an orphan. And yet, instead of offering sympathy, civility, or even the decency of leaving her alone, Rachel made it her personal goal to make Jane Cole's life a slow, agonising nightmare.
"Where is it?" growled Rachel, stomping up to the bench, and Jane could only blink back in response.
"Huh?"
"Where… Is… It..?" Rachel repeated, slowing down each word to emphasise her thinning patience. She flashed her teeth with malice, and Jane struggled to come up with an answer.
What the hell is she on about?
"Wha—?"
" WHERE IS MY SISTER'S BLANKET, FREAK?! I KNOW YOU HAVE IT!"
Oooh… Jane swallowed, fighting the urge to smile. Oh fuck — it was her sister's?!
She knew exactly where the only memento Rachel had left of the little sister she hadn't seen in years was, and a single bead of sweat escaped Jane's brow when she remembered watching the blanket drift away with the tide days ago. It was a total accident, she hadn't meant to throw it into the ocean but the vicious clifftop winds thought very differently and the blanket was whipped from her loose grip, lost to the abyss. She hadn't wondered where it came from, she didn't think twice that it might have been Rachel's, but now she was cursing herself for her own ignorance.
Besides, it was Johnny's fault — one of the other Coles kids — that the freshly charred blanket he set fire to was likely lost in the English Channel, not hers. He was the one who planted it in her backpack, framing her for a crime she didn't commit. She didn't technically steal it, he did. But that wouldn't matter to Rachel. The truth never mattered when Jane was involved, she was always the default punching bag.
"Er," Jane kept her tremors to a minimum but she didn't know what to say, "ask Johnny?"
"I did. And he told me he saw you messing with it — defiling it." Rachel's snarl deepened. "So I'll ask you one more time, bitch… Where's my sister's blanket?"
Jane's eyes darted towards the ocean and she clicked her tongue, debating whether she should throw her towel in early and risk fleeing the scene. She knew it wouldn't work, the rest of Rachel's gang were circling her bench like a pack of hounds sniffing out their next meal. The only realistic escape route was her jumping over the edge of the cliff but she didn't particularly fancy ending up as a splattering of viscera for the seagulls to peck at.
"My guess? Somewhere near France," Jane whistled. "Depends on the current this time of year—,"
THWACK!
"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
Prickly stars invaded Jane's vision as she fought against gravity's pull to stay upright. Rachel's fist connected with her right eye and an acute throbbing began to trickle down her face.
"It was an accident!" Jane yelled, blindly reaching for her belongings as the girls closed in.
"LIAR!" roared Rachel as her skin grew blotchy from her increased fury, and she snatched Jane by the collar.
It wasn't a secret that Rachel suffered from anger issues stemming from her own dark past, but quite frankly Jane didn't care. It wasn't Jane's fault Rachel couldn't control her emotions. She wasn't the only one with a shit past and she was done with Rachel using it as an excuse to beat her down again and again.
"Get off! You're a fucking psycho," Jane grunted, yanking at Rachel's grip. Rachel was larger than most girls, she towered over everyone in her class and she loved to use her height as an advantage, especially against Jane who was considered small for her age.
The girl gang oohed at her response and Rachel cocked a brow, almost amused by her frosty little insult.
"I'm a psycho?" Rachel drawled, longing for her to repeat it. "Me?"
She yanked Jane to her feet, face inches away, blue eyes flashing with icy fire.
"Say that again. I dare you."
" You're the one everyone's scared of," piped up the redhead beside Rachel, Beverly Goldman.
Jane knew her from school, she was just as mean-spirited and unpalatable as her best friend, all of her friends were. She too was wearing butterfly clips in her red curls, and Jane suddenly noticed that the four girls were practically identical. They looked like some sort of cutesy Lisa Frank cult and she found it rather ironic that their angelic appearances contrasted with their awful personalities.
" You're the one who can't hold a friend to save her life!" Beverly continued, "no one even looks at you let alone goes near you since the crow thing. What sane person wants to be friends with a freak who plays with dead animals?"
"It wasn't dead!" Jane seethed, rattled by the horrid memory, "it was just injured. It's not myfault everyone in that school is blind and dumb!"
"You keep telling yourself that, witch," sneered the third girl, a spotty teen with a pixie cut and glasses too large for her small face, "that bird was nothing but a pile of bones until you worked your little voodoo charms on it. It's fucking weird."
"That's not the only strange thing she's done," Rachel encouraged the taunts with a wicked grin, and she shoved Jane back down onto the bench, "is it?"
The wind roared in her ears, helping Jane centre herself. She straightened her collar with a sharp tug, refusing to flinch. The stabbing in her eye was fading but the forming bruise throbbed as she scowled up at Rachel.
"I haven't got a clue what you're on about."
"Aww, don't get shy now," Rachel cooed, baring her teeth, "let me jog your memory! Remember what Connor caught you doing in the bathroom? With the hairbrush?"
Something more powerful than fear washed over Jane and her gut tied itself in knots, like a tangled net lost at sea. The eyes of the girls sneering down at her grew hotter, she swore her face was burning from their intensity.
Connor was another Coles kid, a sixteen-year-old boy who intended to move out and join the army in the coming months, and she couldn't wait for him to leave. The memory of him barging into the grotty bathroom and catching her levitating her hairbrush was still too painful for her to think about… her ribs were still fragile from his many kicks.
Don't, Jane. Don't think about it. Don't rise to her bait. Jane repeated the quiet mantra over and over just to stop her hands from shaking.
"You're just making shit up now, nothing happened. Connor lied," Jane spat out her fable as if it were riddled with poison. If she said it enough times then it would be true, it had to be.
She wasn't weird.
She was normal.
They're lying.
"The only liar around here is you," Rachel snarled, her voice deeper than the rumbles of thunder boiling above their heads. They could barely see each other now, only the flickers of their bike lights kept them safe from the descending night.
"Did you seriously come all the way up here to tease me?" Jane wondered with a smirk, attempting to change the topic as a means of calming the anger flushed in her veins. "Do you lot have nothing better to do than bring up old gossip? What sad little lives you all live, I almost feel sorry for you."
"Ha! You're the one up here with a camera, what are you doing? Taking pictures of the hobos, you perv?" scoffed the fourth member of the cutesy cult, a girl clad in a bright yellow rain mac. Her narrowed eyes caught sight of the instant camera poking out of the lips of Jane's backpack and she went to snatch it–
OH HELL NO!
"HEY!" Jane shouted, triggered by her sudden movement, and she went to smack the girl's hand away when Rachel seized her wrist in a vice-tight grasp.
"Good idea, Lisa," Rachel smirked, her icy glare never moving from Jane's freckled face as Lisa stole her precious camera, "an eye for an eye. That's fair, right?"
The thought of her camera breaking made Jane's heart lurch but it didn't compare to the overwhelming shame she would feel telling Danielle why she didn't have her favourite treasure anymore.
"I told you," Jane struggled to keep her voice steady, "I didn't mean to lose your sister's stupid blanket, it was an accident."
She winced as Rachel twisted her wrist, threatening to snap it. Jane froze. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.
"It wasn't an accident, it's never an accident when it comes to you, freak," Rachel's breath was ragged with the kind of rage that hadn't seen the light of day in years, "you know how much that blanket meant to me — YOU KNEW IT WAS THE ONLY THING I HAD LEFT OF RILEY AND YOU FUCKING THREW IT AWAY LIKE IT WAS RUBBISH!"
"OH GIVE ME A BREAK!" Jane screamed back, yanking her bruising wrist away, "IT'S JUST A STUPID PIECE OF FABRIC! GET OVER IT ALREADY!"
Silence.
A violent absence. Even the wind slowed to listen in to the silence that suffocated them.
Jane immediately knew she fucked up.
The girls surrounding them inhaled sharply, exchanging flinches as they waited for their leader's reaction. Jane braced for Rachel to bend her hand backwards until the bones snapped under her pressure, she anticipated her to scream until her throat tore into something bloody — but no.
More silence, heavy, concentrated silence.
Rachel stared at her as though she had been slapped across the face, and Jane felt the spikes of adrenaline rising to the surface like soldiers marching into battle in the dead of night.
Waiting for the bomb to explode. Waiting for the eye of the hurricane to pass.
But the storm raged on and the silence was no more. A small part of Jane, although she didn't know how small, had been waiting for this moment her whole life.
"Rachel, I…" Jane could barely hear herself over her own pulse, "I'm sorry I—,"
Rachel exploded.
"YOU'RE DEAD, CUNT!"
Jane hit the ground with enough force to blur her vision, vicious gravel bit into the back of her skull and she swore she felt the hot ooze of blood warm her scalp. A flurry of fists pounded into her face again. And again. And again and again—
"THEY SHOULD'VE DROWNED YOU IN THE SEA THE DAY THEY FOUND YOU!"
She couldn't breathe.
Rachel leapt on top of her, straddling her chest to stop her from writhing like she was made of pure stone. Has the storm stopped? She couldn't feel the wind anymore, all Jane felt was her bully's white-hot knuckles pummelling her within an inch of consciousness. She was surprised she was still awake, the agony in her face was unmeasurable.
"Go on Rachel!"
"Knock her teeth out!
The audience to her demise didn't care for her, not one bit. The heartache consumed her chest just as much as Rachel's kicks, her ribs bowed and cracked as did her hopes of surviving the attack. Not one of the faces peering over her cared, not a single one of them would mourn if she died today.
It would be appropriate to say that this wasn't what Jane wished for most.
For it to end. To cease to exist.
This wasn't the first time she wished for death. It would be easier for everyone if she died, it was that simple. She wanted her life to fade from her body, she craved the release it would bring. The sheer peace. For the first time in her life.
Twice Jane had brushed shoulders with Death, and she begged that this third meeting would be their last.
I'm ready… Please… take me away from this hell…
"NOT EVEN AN EXORCISM COULD FIX YOUR SICK HEAD. YOU'RE A FUCKING DISEASE!"
"Do it!"
"Let's see if the witch floats, third time's the charm!"
Drunk on fury, Rachel climbed to her feet and spat at the broken girl beneath her, her entire body quaking. Jane attempted to blink the blood from her vision but the redness was everlasting, blurring the faces of her demons glowering from above. Her chest was concaving, her nose was more than broken, and her feeble attempts to move her numb limbs made the audience laugh harder.
But suddenly she was moving, gravel crackled and confused her already mushed brain and Jane assumed the worst was over. Was this what it meant to die? Was she drifting away from her body?
Rachel hauled Jane from the floor like the master of a puppet whose strings had snapped. The wind played with Jane's hair and the flyaways stuck to her blood-slick face like flies on glue paper. The hiss of the ocean was louder here, wherever here was.
As though her body was preparing for its last moments, Jane's vision sharpened to give her one last look at the pathetic, unimportant life she lived. Rachel hovered inches from her face, as though memorising every mangled feature of the girl she loathed with all her heart. Feeling jumped back into her legs but her stomach hurtled down to her feet — she couldn't feel the floor.
"Beg," Rachel whispered, panting as though she had run a marathon. She stretched her arm out further over the edge of the cliff.
"Beg for your life."
Words were meaningless, she had none.
"Rachel," Jane rasped, using the last of her energy to grasp the hand holding her over the edge of what felt like the end of the world. She couldn't see the ocean anymore, but she could hear it. An unseen threat swooshing and clashing against each other, each wave more powerful than the last.
"I said — beg."
"Do it," Jane spat, mantled by the suffering her body had been put through, "they'll know who did this… Danielle will know—,"
"Greene doesn't give a shit about you, she gets paid to like you," Rachel spat, her voice low so only Jane could hear, "no one will give a damn what happened to you… you're always up here with your silly little skateboard… now beg for your life… witch."
The howls of the storm meshed perfectly with the jeers of the onlookers, both of them manic from the anticipation of what was about to happen.
"Witch," Jane repeated, barely audible over the sounds of her shallow breath. The word sounded foreign coming from Rachel and her friend's mouths, but it resonated when it came out of her own.
"Freak… Demon… Devil…"
The chorus of words that had been used as weapons against her for her entire life spewed from her lips as though they held power she knew not. An unfamiliar force was growing deep within her chest and pried her soul open, as though calling to a long-forgotten fragment of her that lay hidden for an age.
Witch, freak, demon, devil. Witch…
WITCH!
I'LL SHOW HER WHAT A WITCH REALLY LOOKS LIKE!
For a moment Rachel froze, a spasm of fear flashing fleetingly over her pink face, but it was soon replaced with pleasure when the arm holding Jane out began to shake.
"Aw well," Rachel tutted as though sorely disappointed in her victim's lack of fight, "it was nice knowing you—,"
"Not so fast, Madden," Jane fought for the scraps of what was left of her courage and forged them into daggers. The raging sea below her faded away, the two-hundred feet drop was irrelevant now. Rachel hesitated and her friends finally fell silent.
"Oh?"
"Oh," Jane snarled, cracking the drying smears of blood with a cruel smile, and she shakily raised her arm as though condemning the quartet to a life full of misery and regret.
"You want a witch? I'll show you a witch— ARGH!"
Power blasted from Jane's chest, pure, ancient power. Dark power. The Jurassic Coast trembled under the might of the tiny girl's outburst and the four bullies shrieked as tendrils of magic lashed through the air towards them. The instant camera shot out of Beverly's hands, shooting up into the sky like a small firework flashing sporadically as it captured the last moments of Jane's life.
"WHAT IS SHE DOING?!"
"RACHEL, DO SOMETHING!"
And then all of a sudden, Jane was flying. Limbs flailing and heart hammering, she tried desperately to grab onto something, anything. Her mind was blown from her cosmic outburst as gravity pulled her towards the treacherous black water below.
This was it, this was the last time she would fall prey to the ocean. She knew she would never return to the surface. Jane always suspected her life would end like this and she finally looked Death in the face and smiled, nothing but peace in her mind. A flash of white, like lightning. Bliss was brighter than she expected. There were better ways to meet her end, she supposed, but drowning was firmly at the top of her list of worst ways to die…
MY LOVE… OH HOW I'VE MISSED YOU…
The moment her body broke the sea's surface was when nature fought back. The water began to foam angrily, spitting and growing as though Jane was made from peppermint sweets and the sea was fizzing soda. As the strong current pulled her body down, bubbles hissed and shot upwards, loud and furious and finally alive.
Their hollers came first. The four girls cowering atop the cliff stared at the bubbles in fright and latched onto each other, tears and snot pouring down their faces from paralysing fear as they continued to panic.
The waves transformed and two gigantic black hands shot towards them, white sea foam hissing against the cliffs like red hot pokers in snow. Water slapped the cliff's head and the ocean's hungry claws found its victims. The hands engulfed the girls, two in each palm, and yanked them away from the cliff and towards the thunderous waves below. Swallowing them whole.
Gone.
The water receded as quickly as it came, taking the skateboard and racing bikes with it as though smug with its reaction. Poor Man's Point fell silent for the first time that evening with only the rustling of the trees that circled the attraction filling the sad sea air. Echoes of the girls' screams rode the wind out to sea but they were soon smothered by the storm like the girl they had just sentenced to death.
PLONK!
Jane's camera crashed onto the wet gravel, its plastic shell cracking open on impact. It lay still for a moment, as though it were waiting for a signal — then suddenly whirred to life one last time.
From its peeled lips came its final picture: four girls stolen by tidal wave hands, torn from the earth by the wrath of a witch who died screaming.