SPINK, HEATHER (1968 - ) Witch. A fellow pupil at Drumfeld Primary School, Spink immediately attracted my notice as she skipped around the playground, her blonde fringe ringed by a garland of daisies. To the untrained eye, she gave impression of harmlessness. Softly spoken and shy, her imposture might have been effective anywhere else. She had not, however, reckoned on the presence of a classmate with enhanced intuition. A vivid, red birth-mark on the back of her left hand, throbbing with malign energy, alerted me to the fact that simpering Heather was not as she appeared. Later persistent impressions of semi-transluscent fat flies hovering around her, gorged on blood caused me further concern. The final, and as far as I was concerned, conclusive piece of evidence against Heather came in the vision of a tiny old woman who crawled behind her, dragging herself by her knuckles.
Naturally, I was eager to warn our classmates of these presentiments. One might argue that I acted rashly, but circumspection only comes with age. For Heather, the consequences of exposure were immediate: found guilty of witch-craft in a playground trial presided over by Judge Hamilton Coe, the first and last time I assumed such a role, she was immediately ostracised. This was never my intention. I'm not, by nature a cruel person, and despite the shadow that clouded her personality, the pain Heather endured on account of her isolation gave me no satisfaction. As far as I was concerned, it was sufficient for our classmates to be forewarned of the potential repercussions of her friendship.
By the time Heather's parents removed her from the school some of the other children had become dependent upon the presence of a scapegoat. After a week of simmering resentment, they turned on me. The trial of Hamilton Coe was brief and brutal, the verdict 'Guilty' and the sentence that I be tied to a tree and pelted with mud, the first of several mortifications that eventually led to my own removal from Drumfeld Primary.
Throughout my teens, I closely monitored the behaviour of Heather and her younger brother Declan. My early intuitions were entirely vindicated as their transgressive behaviour led to both being expelled from a succession of schools. Declan, with whom Spencer, always attracted to bad character, attempted to forge a friendship, attained notoriety as Drumfeld's first teenage Hitlerite, shaving his head and strutting around town in bovver boots. I suffered more than one pummelling at his hands, indignities reversed when my investigation was instrumental in his apprehension for substance abuse, assault and twenty seven separate counts of vandalism. Relocated to a residential school and surrounded by more accomplished thugs than himself, the menace was menaced and eventually broken, returning to Drumfeld a stammering advocate of sandals and non-confrontation.
Heather, however, persisted in transgressive behaviour. Formerly a member of Karen Gardner's set of promiscuous delinquents, she was almost certainly involved in Karen's disappearance. The last time Karen was seen in Drumfeld, she was with Heather and an unidentified man in the lounge bar of the Red Lion. (On that occasion, incidentally, Heather, irritated by a barman who refused to serve her alcohol, left a small effigy fashioned out of a beer mat attached to the underside of her table. Within a week, the barman was seriously injured in a car accident. Over the years, I've also received various items containing curses including mutilated animals.)
When she was eighteen, Heather moved to Glasgow, ostensibly to study but, as it turned out, to pursue a drug habit and immerse herself in the city's Satanic underworld. Ten years ago, I adopted the persona of 'Donald the Druid' in order to investigate her activities. After inadvertently rendering myself insensible with a drug-spiked cake, I came within seconds of being subjected to a facial tattoo, emerging from my trance as the needle whirred hideously over my left cheek.
Three years ago, Heather returned to Drumfeld suffering the effects of septicaemia caused by a profusion of bacteria on her numerous facial piercings. Rendered hideous by her seeping wounds, she is largely housebound.
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