The Spook's Apprentice (17 page)

As I opened my mouth to speak, intending to have one more go at persuading her to leave, an expression of alarm suddenly came over Ellie’s face and she stumbled and put her hand against the wall to save herself from falling.

‘Look what you’ve done now. I feel faint just thinking about what’s going on here.’

She sat down on my bed and put her head in her hands for a few moments, while I just stared down at her miserably, not knowing what to do or say.

After a few moments she climbed back to her feet again. ‘We need to talk to your mam as soon as she gets back, but don’t forget, stay away from Alice until then. Do you promise?’

I promised, and with a sad smile Ellie went back to her own room.

It was only when she’d gone that it struck me ...

Ellie had stumbled for a second time and said she’d felt light-headed. One stumble could be just chance. Just tiredness. But twice! She was dizzy. Ellie was dizzy and that was the first sign of possession!

I began to pace up and down. Surely I was wrong. Not Ellie! It couldn’t be Ellie. Maybe Ellie was just tired. After all, the baby did keep her awake a lot. But Ellie was strong and healthy. She’d been brought up on a farm herself and wasn’t one to let things drag her down. And all that talk about saying prayers. She could have said that so that I wouldn’t suspect her.

But hadn’t Alice told me that Ellie would be difficult to possess? She’d also said that it would probably be Jack, but he hadn’t shown any sign of dizziness. Still, there was no denying that he had become more and more bad tempered and aggressive too! If Ellie hadn’t held him back he’d have thumped my head off my shoulders.

But of course, if Alice were in league with Mother Malkin, everything she said would be intended to put me off the scent. I couldn’t even trust her account of the Spook’s book! She could have told me lies all along! I couldn’t read Latin so there was no way to check what she’d said.

I realized that it could be any one of them. An attack could occur at any moment and I hadn’t any way of knowing who it would come from!

With luck, Mam would be back before dawn. She’d know what to do. But dawn was a long time off so I couldn’t afford to sleep. I’d have to keep watch all night long. If Jack or Ellie were possessed, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t go into their room, so all I could do was keep an eye on Alice.

I went outside and sat on the stairs between the door to Ellie and Jack’s room and my own. From there I could see Alice’s door below. If she left her room, at least I’d be able to give a warning.

I decided that if Mam wasn’t back, I’d leave at dawn; apart from her, there was just one more chance of help...

It was a long night, and at first I jumped at the slightest sound - a creak of the stairs or a faint movement of the floorboards in one of the rooms. But gradually I calmed down. It was an old house and these were the noises I was used to - the noises you expected as it slowly settled and cooled down during the night. However, as dawn approached, I started to feel uneasy again.

I began to hear faint scratching noises from inside the walls. It sounded like fingernails clawing at stone and it wasn’t always in the same place. Sometimes it was further up the stairs on the left; sometimes below, close to Alice’s room. It was so faint that it was hard to tell whether I was imagining it or not. But I began to feel cold, really cold, and that told me that danger was near.

Next the dogs began to bark, and within a few minutes the other animals were going crazy too, the hairy pigs squealing so loud you’d have thought the pig butcher had already arrived. If that wasn’t enough, the row started the baby crying again.

I was so cold now that my whole body was shaking and trembling. I just had to do something.

On the riverbank, facing the witch, my hands had known what to do. This time it was my legs that acted faster than I could think. I stood up and ran. Terrified, my heart hammering, I bounded down the stairs, adding to the noise. I just had to get outside and away from the witch. Nothing else mattered. All my courage had gone.

I ran out of the house and headed north, straight for Hangman’s Hill, still in a panic, only slowing down when I’d reached the north pasture. I needed help and I needed it fast. I was going back to Chipenden. Only the Spook could help me now.

Once I’d reached the boundary fence, the animals suddenly fell silent and I turned and looked back towards the farm. Beyond it, I could just see the dirt road winding away in the distance, like a dark stain on the patchwork of grey fields.

It was then that I saw a light on the road. There was a cart moving towards the farm. Was it Mam? For a few moments my hopes were high. But as the cart neared the farm gate, I heard a loud hawking cough, the noise of phlegm being gathered in the throat and then somebody spat. It was just Snout, the pig butcher. He’d five of our biggest hairy pigs to deal with; once dead, each one took a lot of scraping so he was making an early start.

He’d never done me any harm but I was always glad when he’d finished his business and left. Mam had never liked him either. She disliked the way he kept hawking up thick phlegm and spitting it out into the yard.

He was a big man, taller even than Jack, with knotted muscles on his forearms. The muscles were necessary for the work he did. Some pigs weighed more than a man and they fought like mad to avoid the knife. However, there was one part of Snout that had gone to seed. His shirts were always short, with the bottom two buttons open, and his fat, white, hairy belly hung down over the brown leather apron he wore to stop his trousers getting soaked with blood. He couldn’t have been much more than thirty, but his hair was thin and lank.

Disappointed that it wasn’t Mam, I watched him unhook the lantern from the cart and begin to unload his tools. He set up for business at the front of the barn, right next to the pigpen.

I’d wasted enough time and started to climb over the fence into the wood when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement on the slope below. A shadow was heading my way, hurrying towards the stile at the far end of the north pasture.

It was Alice. I didn’t want her following me but it was better to deal with her now than later, so I sat on the boundary fence and waited for her to reach me. I didn’t have to wait long because she ran all the way up the hill.

She didn’t come that close but stayed about nine or ten paces away, her hands on her hips, trying to catch her breath. I looked her up and down, seeing again the black dress and the pointy shoes. I must have woken her up when I’d run down the stairs; to reach me so soon she must have got dressed quickly and followed me straight away.

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ I called across to her, nervousness making my voice wobbly and higher than usual. ‘Don’t waste your time following me either. You’ve had your chance, so from now on you’d better keep well away from Chipenden.’

‘You better had talk to me if you know what’s good for you,’ Alice said. ‘Soon it’ll be too late so there’s something you’d better know. Mother Malkin’s already here.’

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I saw her.’

‘Not just in the mirror, though. It ain’t just that. She’s back there, somewhere inside the house,’ Alice said, pointing back down the hill.

‘I told you, I know that,’ I said angrily. ‘The moonlight showed me the trail she made, and when I came upstairs to tell you that, what did I find? You were already talking to her and probably not for the first time.’

I remembered the first night when I went up to Alice’s room and gave her the book. As I went inside, the candle had still been smoking in front of the mirror.

‘You probably brought her here,’ I accused. ‘You told her where I was.’

‘Ain’t true, that,’ Alice said, an anger in her voice that matched my own. She took about three steps closer to me. ‘Sniffed her out, I did, and I used the mirror to see where she was. Didn’t realize she was so close, did I? She was too strong for me so I couldn’t break away. Lucky you came in when you did. Lucky for me you broke that mirror.’

I wanted to believe Alice but how could I trust her? When she moved a couple of paces nearer, I half turned, ready to jump down onto the grass on the other side of the fence. ‘I’m going back to Chipenden to fetch Mr Gregory,’ I told her. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

‘Ain’t time for that, said Alice. ‘When you get back it’ll be too late. There’s the baby to think about. Mother Malkin wants to hurt you but she’ll be hungry for human blood. Young blood’s what she likes best. That’s what makes her strongest.’

My fear had made me forget about Ellie’s baby. Alice was right. The witch wouldn’t want to possess it but she’d certainly want its blood. When I brought the Spook back it would be too late.

‘But what can I do?’ I asked. ‘What chance have I got against Mother Malkin?’

Alice shrugged and turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘That’s your business. Surely Old Gregory taught you something that could be useful? If you didn’t write it down in that notebook of yours, then maybe it’s inside your head. You just have to remember it, that’s all.’

‘He’s not said that much about witches,’ I said, suddenly feeling annoyed with the Spook. Most of my training so far had been about boggarts, with little bits on ghasts and ghosts; while all my problems had been caused by witches.

I still didn’t trust Alice, but now, after what she’d just said, I couldn’t leave for Chipenden. I’d never get the Spook back here in time. Her warning about the threat to Ellie’s baby seemed well intentioned, but if Alice were possessed, or on Mother Malkin’s side, they were the very words that gave me no choree but to go back down the hill towards the farm. The very words that would keep me from warning the Spook, yet keep me where the witch could get her hands on me at a time of her own choosing.

On the way down the hill I kept my distance from Alice, but she was at my side when we walked into the yard and crossed close to the front of the barn.

Snout was there sharpening his knives; he looked up when he saw me and nodded. I nodded back. After he’d nodded at me he just stared at Alice without speaking, but he looked her up and down twice. Then, just before we reached the kitchen door, he whistled long and loud. Snout’s face had more in common with a pig’s than with a wolf’s but it was that kind of whistle, heavy with mockery.

Alice pretended not to hear him. Before making the breakfast she had another job to do: she went straight into the kitchen and started preparing the chicken we’d be having for our midday meal. It was hanging from a hook by the door, its neck off and its insides already pulled out the evening before. She set to work cleaning it with water and salt, her eyes concentrating hard on what she was doing so that her busy fingers wouldn’t miss the tiniest bit.

It was then, as I watched her, that I finally remembered something that might just work against a possessed body.

Salt and iron!

I couldn’t be sure but it was worth a try. It was what the Spook used to bind a boggart into a pit and it might just work against a witch. If I threw it at someone possessed, it might just drive Mother Malkin out.

I didn’t trust Alice and didn’t want her to see me helping myself to the salt, so I had to wait until she’d stopped cleaning the chicken and left the kitchen. That done, before going out to start my own chores, I paid a visit to Dad’s workshop.

It didn’t take me long to find what I needed. From amongst the large collection of files on the shelf above his workbench I chose the biggest and roughest toothed of them all. It was the one called a ‘bastard’ which, when I was younger, gave me the only chance of ever using that word without getting a clip round the ear. Soon I was filing away at the edge of an old iron bucket, the noise setting my teeth on edge. But it wasn’t long before an even louder noise split the air.

It was the scream of a dying pig, the first of five.

I knew that Mother Malkin could be anywhere, and if she hadn’t already possessed someone, she might choose a victim at any moment. So I had to concentrate and be on my guard at all times. But at least now I had something to defend myself with.

Jack wanted me to help Snout but I was always ready with an excuse, claiming that I was finishing this or just about to do that. If I got stuck working with Snout I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on everyone else. As I was just his brother visiting for a few days, not the hired help, Jack wasn’t able to insist but he came very close to it.

In the end, after lunch, his face as black as thunder, he was forced to help Snout himself, which was exactly what I wanted. If he was working in front of the barn, I could keep an eye on him from a distance. I kept using excuses to check on Alice and Ellie too. Either one of them could be possessed, but if it were Ellie, there’d not be much chance of saving the baby: most of the time it was either in her arms or sleeping in its cot close to her side.

I had the salt and iron but I wasn’t sure whether it would be enough. The best thing would have been a silver chain. Even a short one would have been better than nothing. When I was little, I’d once overheard Dad and Mam talking about a silver chain that belonged to her. I’d never seen her wearing one but it might still be in the house somewhere - maybe in the storeroom just below the attic, which Mam always kept locked.

But their bedroom wasn’t locked. Normally I’d never have gone into their room without permission but I was desperate. I searched Mam’s jewellery box. There were brooches and rings in the box, but no silver chain. I searched the whole room. I felt really guilty looking through the drawers but I did it anyway. I thought there might have been a key to the storeroom but I didn’t find it.

While I was searching, I heard Jack’s big boots coming up the stairs. I kept very still, hardly daring to breathe, but he just came up to his bedroom for a few moments and went straight down again. After that, I completed my search but found nothing so I went down to check on everyone once more.

That day the air had been still and calm, but when I walked by the barn, a breeze had sprung up. The sun was beginning to go down, lighting everything up in a warm, red glow and promising fine weather for the following day. At the front of the barn three dead pigs were now hanging, head down, from big hooks. They were pink and freshly scraped, the last one still dripping blood into a bucket, and Snout was on his knees wrestling with the fourth, which was giving him a hard time of it - it was difficult to tell which of them was grunting the loudest.

Jack, the front of his shirt soaked in blood, glared at me as I passed but I just smiled and nodded. They were just getting on with the work in hand and there was still quite a bit to do, so they’d be at it long after the sun had set. But so far there wasn’t the slightest sign of dizziness, not even a hint of possession.

Within an hour it was dark. Jack and Snout were still working by the light of the fire that was flickering their shadows across the yard.

The horror began as I went to the shed at the back of the barn to fetch a bag of spuds from the store ...

I heard a scream. It was a scream filled with terror. The scream of a woman facing the very worst thing that could possibly happen to her.

I dropped the sack of potatoes and ran round to the front of the barn. There, I came to a sudden halt, hardly able to believe what I was seeing.

Ellie was standing about twenty paces away, holding both her arms out, screaming and screaming as if she were being tortured. At her feet lay Jack, blood all over his face. I thought Ellie was screaming because of Jack - but no, it was because of Snout.

He was facing towards me, as if he were waiting for me to arrive. In his left hand he was holding his favourite sharp knife, the long one he always used to cut a pig’s throat. I froze in horror because I knew what I’d heard in Ellie’s scream.

With his right arm, he was cradling her baby.

There was thick pig blood on Snout’s boots and it was still dripping onto them from his apron. He moved the knife closer to the baby.

‘Come here, boy,’ he called in my direction. ‘Come to me.’ Then he laughed.

His mouth had opened and closed as he spoke but it wasn’t his voice that came out. It was Mother Malkin’s. Neither was it his usual deep belly-rumble of laughter. It was the cackle of the witch.

I took a slow step towards Snout. Then another one. I wanted to get closer to him. I wanted to save Ellie’s baby. I tried to go faster. But I couldn’t. My feet felt as heavy as lead. It was like desperately trying to run in a nightmare. My legs were moving as if they didn’t belong to me.