"jp brought me. i knew mary beth was in danger."

"jp? where is he?"

"he's in the car. he won't move, he's kind of stuck."

that made no sense, but before i could enquire further, harriet interrupted.

"who the hell's mary beth?"

"the little girl who was with you at the carousel. she's my friend. look." she points behind me and i turn to see my little girl appear through the gloom of the woods. she is smiling, her arms outstretched, and she rushes into the arms of issy. with the innate capacity of children to switch emotions at will issy, too, breaks into a smile; the girls embrace, like old friends reunited. i am too confused to speak. the little girl, mary beth, is happy and relaxed, not like the screaming, mutilated, piteous wretch i had seen two nights ago, and she seems to know issy: two children, separated by seventy years, but completely at ease with one another.

"i knew you'd come," says mary beth shyly.

"i told you i would, on the carousel," issy replies, squeezing her hand. issy told us she had seen nothing on the carousel, i think, and my confusion deepens. had issy seen the girl at the carousel? i know that harriet and i were pitched into an alternative reality as the carousel circled innocently in the coven grounds: had issy, also, been projected into another time, a time when she met mary beth weaver?

"i liked the carousel, it was fun." mary beth stops, her smile evaporating, to be replaced with an alarmed squint. "he's here again," she says. casually, more casually than she could have felt, she indicates towards the towering, enraged presence of her father, weaver morgan, an innocent incomprehending of what is happening around her.

weaver morgan notices his daughter with us and bellows in fury. "mary beth!" he snarls and despatches a furious thunderbolt. it strikes a tree next to us, about fifteen feet up, and a startling crack erupts through the clearing, rifling and echoing across jackson flats; it is replaced immediately by a ripping noise as the tree snaps apart, its bough breaking and the upper reaches sinking forward in a sickening, slow motion descent, before snapping off and collapsing with a lingering, aching sigh to the ground beside us. the casual, nonchalant destruction of the solid, seemingly untouchable tree is shocking. before we can recover, the air is rent with another firecrack and the tree to our left is stricken; it shakes with the impact and after a sickening second of anticipation, it, too, succumbs to the blow, its solid bough split in two and collapsing to the ground with a deafening crackle of twisted wood.

"mary beth," yells issy, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, "you've got to wake your mommy. get your mommy. we need her, mary beth."

by now i have no idea what is happening, but i have the sense that we are reaching a climax, and that issy and mary beth are our only hope. mary beth is crying, her happy features crumpled once more into the pained, glassy-eyed torment i had seen the other night. she sobs, a huge tear coursing down her cheek, and her body is quivering with fear. she blinks fiercely and screws her eyes shut, her little hands clenched into fierce fists. the little girl looks so afraid and so vulnerable that i want to sweep her up and cuddle her.

at that instant a fierce chill descends on us, as dramatic as anything which has happened all evening. i gasp and shiver and i am immediately aware of another presence. i look around me, startled, and mary beth yells with glee.

"mom!"

through the ghostly picket of trees, noiselessly and full of grace, comes a woman. she is beautiful, but haunted by sadness, her features etched with despair and misery. she is about forty, and dressed in plain, battered clothing, obviously poor but proud and upstanding. mary beth's mother. mrs weaver morgan.

she wraps herself around her daughter, gripping her tightly, her fingers running through and through the little girl's hair; her head is bowed, her cheek grazing against mary beth's and the two, mother and daughter, reunited after seventy years, enfold themselves into a kiss of exquisite and tender love, as passionate and moving as anything i have ever seen. they are both overcome, tears streaming from their eyes and sobs panting from their mouths as they embrace. harriet and i, too, are overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment, and we hold hands as we observe this most intimate reunion.

"this time, mom," mary beth whispers through her tears, "this time you have to fight back. don't let him get away with it again." the mother dissolves into floods of tears, as decades of guilt collapse onto her thin, spindly shoulders. the world moves, spinning on its axis, and we have to learn, use our mistakes, adapt our knowledge to new experience.

"no, poppet," she sobs. "never again. he'll never harm you again." she looks upward and shakes her head abruptly, tossing her straggly hair from side to side, as though galvanising herself for action. reluctantly letting go the grip of her daughter, she steps from the cover of the trees into the clearing.

"weaver, it's me, ellen. it's time to stop this, weaver. i won't let it go on any longer. do you hear me?" a firecrack lands at her feet, but she remains rooted to the spot, unfazed. "no, weaver," she shouts calmly into the night, "you can't frighten me any more." another firecrack, and another, and another explode around the woman, basking her in the flickering, terrifying light of their flames, but she is immovable. she turns to us.

"come out, girls."

apprehensively, we abandon the cover of the trees and approach the resolute woman. she reaches out her hand to me and i grasp it. i am not sure what i am expecting: something ghostly, something immaterial, i suppose, but she is solid flesh and blood: deathly cold, but substantial.

"you're welcome, whoever you are," she says to me, a sad smile playing round her mouth.

"carlee," i reply. "and this is harriet."

"harriet, what a lovely name. welcome harriet."

"and issy," i continue.

"ah yes, issy. issy was mary beth's invisible friend. i knew you'd turn out to be real; i knew you'd come to save her one day. thank you, child, for looking after mary beth for me."

gently, she wrests the skull from my grip and turns it over and over in her hands, affording it the most tender caresses, stroking quietly across the eye sockets as though wiping away a tear. she herself bears a look of self-reproach, an unforgettable, unforgiving cast in her eye which lays bare her eternal sadness; it is a heartbreaking sight.

weaver morgan's lightshow continues unabated. all around us he spews and strews missiles of fire, hurtling them over our heads, thrusting them at our feet. i sense his rage is increasing as we ignore him, and the frequency and severity of his outbursts increases. issy screams and we look behind us: weaver has erected another wall of fire. quickly, it encircles us and harriet and i are thrust once more into the eye of a burning tempest.

this time it is far greater, the height of the redwoods to our left, and god knows how dense. i panic as i calculate that there is no way out, but mary beth's mother calms us.

"don't be afraid, girls, he cannot harm us. his strength relies on fear and surrender, and we won't give in this time." he voice is calm and measured, a tower of reassurance. she grips the skull and hold it in front of her at waist height. nodding to it, she invites us to do likewise; i step forward and take hold, once more, of this talismanic remnant of a life unfulfilled. next to me is mary beth, and the vision steps forward, hand stretched nervously towards the touchstone of her own life and death. as her pale, frail hand touches it a wisping, electrifying sensation spurts through the skull: body and spirit are reunited after seventy years, reunited in their determination to fight. issy is next, grasping mary beth's free hand before placing her tiny fingers on the skull; and finally harriet stretches forward and posits her hand.

the circle is complete.

five women, of different ages and from different ages, united against tyranny. we stare at the skull before us, each of us weeping, weeping for innocence lost, for pain and suffering, for weakness and irresolution, for doubt and uncertainty; weeping for the knowledge that good is often submerged, not by evil, but by vacillation. i stare at the mortal remains of mary beth and feel her ghostly presence beside me, and i experience a rage i have never known. i am burning inside with the betrayal of a child's hope, with the knowledge of the pain and suffering the child was forced to endure in her brief, difficult life, with contempt for the perpetrator of such cowardly acts: contempt for weaver morgan.

each of us stares into the eyes of the skull, each of us wrestles with our own demons, each of us resolves not to buckle. united we stand, and weaver morgan's evil can find no chink in our armour, nowhere to insinuate its malevolent power. all around us his fire rages, but it is waning, shrivelling in the face of our concerted opposition. no longer towering over us, it appears more like a friendly bonfire than an advancing instrument of death.

we are winning. enraged by his failure, weaver morgan hurls firesticks at us and i know that, this time, he is aiming to hit us, not frighten us. but he can't. they cannot break our circle, they will not touch us, they shall not do us harm. united we're as strong as a mountain, united we're as deep as the sea. i am murmering the words to harriet's song, i realise. stand together, shoulder to shoulder, sisters and brothers united and free.

weaver morgan is howling with fury, the night sky filled with his impotent rage. his wall of fire has subsided to a fragile carpet of flames licking slackly across the scrub. i believe we have won. i believe we have faced down terror.

but i am wrong.

a hideous, almighty wail rents the air, prolonged and unforgiving. it is one extended shreik of pain which comprises a million moments of despair, and it is the most desolate sound i have ever heard. it is coming from the house and we turn towards it. the wooden doors of the root cellar have been flung open and up the stairs runs the pitiful vision i saw the other night, of mary beth, one arm ripped off, the other stretched imploringly towards us.

and behind her, in a never-ending stream, rush hundreds of mary beths, all screaming, all crying, an army of the tormented. mary beth aged five, with weals on her back; mary beth aged seven, with cuts to her face; aged eight, with eyes glazed and hopeless; and crawling along the dust of the compound, mary beth aged one, mewling and crying, welts on her baby skin. the entire, short, painful history of mary beth, a vision for every moment of abuse in her tortured life, emerges from the depths of the cellar, filling the air with frantic, scrabbling, shameful tumult. the stench of blood fills our nostrils, the sound of agony fills the air and visions, such visions of anguish assault our eyes. i fear i am going to be sick. i try to look away, but i can't: she is everywhere, her suffering spilled out over the length and breadth of the clearing.

"don't give in," her mother shouts to us. "it's his last throw. he's trying to frighten us." well, he sure is succeeding. beside me, harriet is consumed with tears, one hand covering her eyes. our mary beth is staring morosely into the skull - her skull - the dancing, merry eyes we saw earlier when she embraced her mother dulled with the pain of remembrance. and her mother, poor woman, is distraught, disconnected. it breaks my heart.

it is issy who breaks the circle. she shucks her hand free from mary beth and pulls away from the skull. "issy," i shout, but she has gone. she darts towards one of the visions, a mary beth aged about four, sitting on a stone, hugging her knees and crying to herself. issy kneels down and embraces the child, gently kissing her cheek. surprised, the child looks up and a fragile, hopeful smile breaks across her face. in that instant the vision melts away into time and issy is left alone.

she runs to the next vision, mary beth when she was around nine, with six savage, bloodied stripes across her back. she is screaming with pain, her mouth contorted in a rictus of agony. again, issy hugs her and kisses her lightly, and once more the vision floats into the ether in the instant when it responds to the kindness, released for eternity from the bondage of its suffering.

harriet releases her grip on the skull and runs towards one of the visions, a baby sprawled miserably on the ground, fists clenched in pain. she picks her up and cradles her in her lap, rocking her gently, and plants a kiss on her chubby, tear-streaked face. the baby mary beth goes silent and looks up at harriet, then dissolves into peace. i step away from the skull, and from mary beth and her mother, and head towards the ghostly visions streaking across the clearing. there are hundreds of them, each one trapped and tortured, each craving an instant of love which will give them their release. i follow the lead of issy and harriet, and seek them out, stroking them, kissing them, whispering goodbye in their ears as they dissolve into history.

it takes us an hour. finally there is only one left, the mary beth with the severed arm whom i encountered two nights before. harriet understands that i have to release this one, and takes issy's hand, leading her to one side. the vision is running dementedly, round and round the cellar door, screaming in agony. she spots me and runs headlong towards me, just as she did before, but this time, rather than run straight through me she crashes into my legs and grips her remaining arm around me. her shrill screaming fills the night sky, a keening, wailing plea for comfort. i kneel beside her and stroke her face.

"poor child," i say. "don't worry, it's over now." i stretch forward and kiss her cheek, stroking my hand up her sweating back soothingly. through the decades of pain etched in her eyes a momentary flicker of comfort escapes, and for a fraction of a second her mouth curls into a curious smile. and then she vanishes. i sink to the ground, my head bowed, tears coursing down my cheek. i am exhausted, emotionally and physically. i feel a hand on my shoulder, harriet, stroking my neck, and i reach behind me to press my hand against hers. i look up.

it is silent. once more, the clearing has taken on an ethereal calm, as though nothing had happened. i am struck by the total lack of sound. after the howls of anguish we have had to endure in the past hour it is almost overwhelming. and then i realise.

there is no weaver morgan.

we have won. love has conquered hate. he had no answer, he couldn't divide us, he couldn't intimidate us, and in the end his strength was defeated by the power of love. little mary beth has been freed from her torture and her mother from her guilt. harriet, issy and i turn towards the trees, where mother and daughter are standing, hand in hand. they smile and wave airlessly, then melt into the night sky, melt into repose, and the three of us are alone.

"carlee," says issy, "will i ever see mary beth again?"

i smile and get to my feet, taking her hand. "yes you will, issy. any time you want to. just close your eyes and call to her."

hand in hand we walk to jp's car. as we approach we see that he is frozen in time, an unwanted player in this drama. it was men who created the catastrophe, and only strong women could set it free. i open the door and he springs back to life.

"hell, carlee," he says, "i know your car was pretty used up, but there was no need to torch it, was there?"