The Spook's Apprentice (4 page)

Eventually it began to cry, and then I knew for certain that it couldn’t possibly be Mam. Mam was strong. Mam never cried no matter how bad things got.

After a few moments the sounds faded and stopped altogether. I lay down on the floor and tried to sleep again. I kept turning over, first one way and then the other, but try as I might, I couldn’t get to sleep. The wind began to rattle the windowpanes even louder, and on every hour and half hour the church clock chimed, moving me closer to midnight.

The nearer the time came for me to go down the cellar steps, the more nervous I became. I did want to pass the Spook’s test, but, oh, how I longed to be back home in my nice, safe, warm bed.

And then, just after the clock had given a single chime - half past eleven - the digging began again ...

Once more I heard the slow
thump, thu
mp of heavy boots coming up the steps from the cellar; once more the door opened and the invisible boots stepped into the front room. By now the only bit of me that was moving was my heart, which pounded so hard it seemed about to break my ribs. But this time the boots didn’t veer away towards the window. They kept coming.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Coming straight towards me.

I felt myself being lifted roughly by the hair and skin at the nape of my neck, just like a mother cat carries her kittens. Then an invisible arm wrapped itself around my body, pinning my arms to my sides. I tried to suck in a breath but it was impossible. My chest was being crushed.

I was being carried towards the cellar door. I couldn’t see what was carrying me but I could hear its wheezing breath and I struggled in a panic, because somehow I knew exactly what was going to happen. Somehow I knew why there’d been the sound of digging from below. I was going to be carried down the cellar steps into the darkness and I knew that a grave was waiting for me down there. I was going to be buried alive.

I was terrified and tried to cry out, but it was worse than just being held in a tight grip. I was paralysed and couldn’t move a muscle.

Suddenly I was falling ...

I found myself on all fours, staring at the open door to the cellar, just inches from the top step. In a panic, my heart thumping too fast to count the beats, I lurched to my feet and slammed the cellar door shut. Still trembling, I went back into the front room to find that one of the Spook’s three rules had been broken.

The candle had gone out...

As I walked towards the window, a sudden flash of light illuminated the room, followed by a loud crash of thunder almost directly overhead. Rain squalled against the house, rattling the windows and making the front door creak and groan as if something were trying to get in.

I stared out miserably for a few minutes, watching the flashes of lightning. It was a bad night, but even though lightning scared me, I would have given anything to be out there walking the streets; anything to have avoided going down into that cellar.

In the distance the church clock began to chime. I counted the chimes and there were exactly twelve. Now I had to face what was in the cellar.

It was then, as lightning lit the room again, that I noticed the large footprints on the floor. At first I thought they’d been made by the Spook, but they were black, as if the huge boots that made them had been covered with coal dust. They came from the direction of the kitchen door, went almost to the window and then turned and went back the way they’d come. Back to the cellar. Down into the dark where I had to go!

Forcing myself forward, I searched the floor with my hand for the stub of the candle. Then I scrabbled around for my small bundle of clothes. Wrapped in the centre of it was the tinderbox that Dad had given me.

Fumbling in the dark, I shook the small pile of tinder out onto the floor and used the stone and metal to strike up sparks. I kindled that little pile of wood until it burst into flame, just long enough to light the candle. Little had Dad known that his gift would prove so useful so soon.

As I opened the cellar door there was another flash of lightning and a sudden crash of thunder that shook the whole house and rumbled down the steps ahead of me. I descended into the cellar, my hand trembling and the candle stub dancing till strange shadows flickered against the wall.

I didn’t want to go down there, but if I failed the Spook’s test, I’d probably be on my way back home as soon as it came light. I imagined my shame at having to tell Mam what had happened.

Eight steps and I was turning the corner so that the cellar was in view. It wasn’t a big cellar but it had dark shadows in the corners that the candlelight couldn’t quite reach, and there were spiders’ webs hanging from the ceiling in frail, mucky curtains. Small pieces of coal and large wooden crates were scattered across the earthen floor and there was an old wooden table next to a big beer barrel. I stepped around the beer barrel and noticed something in the far corner. Something just behind some crates that scared me so much I almost dropped the candle.

It was a dark shape, almost like a bundle of rags, and it was making a noise. A faint, rhythmical sound, like breathing.

I took a step towards the rags; then another, using all my willpower to make my legs move. It was then, as I got so close that I could have touched it, that the thing suddenly grew. From a shadow on the floor it reared up before me until it was three or four times bigger.

I almost ran. It was tall, dark, hooded and terrifying, with green, glittering eyes.

Only then did I notice the staff that it was holding in its left hand.

‘What kept you?’ demanded the Spook. ‘You’re nearly five minutes late!’

‘I lived in this house as a child,’ said the Spook, ‘and I saw things that would make your big toes curl, but I was the only one who could, and my dad used to beat me for telling lies. Something used to climb up out of the cellar. It would have been the same for you. Am I right?’

I nodded.

‘Well, it’s nothing to worry about, lad. It’s just another ghast, a fragment of a troubled soul that’s gone on to better things. Without leaving the bad part of himself behind, he’d have been stuck here for ever.’

‘What did he do?’ I asked, my voice echoing back slightly from the ceiling.

The Spook shook his head sadly. ‘He was a miner whose lungs were so diseased that he couldn’t work any more. He spent his days and nights coughing and struggling for breath and his poor wife kept them both. She worked in a bakery, but sadly for both of them, she was a very pretty woman. There aren’t many women you can trust and the pretty ones are the worst of all.

‘To make it worse he was a jealous man and his illness made him bitter. One evening she was very late home from work and he kept going to the window, pacing backwards and forwards, getting more and more angry because he thought she was with another man.

‘When she finally came in, he was in such a rage that he broke her head open with a big cob of coal. Then he left her there, dying on the flags, and went down into the cellar to dig a grave. She was still alive when he came back but she couldn’t move and couldn’t even cry out. That’s the terror that comes to us, because it’s how she felt as he picked her up and carried her down into the darkness of the cellar. She’d heard him digging. She knew what he was going to do.

‘Later that night he killed himself. It’s a sad story, but although they’re at peace now, his ghast’ s still here and so are her final memories, both strong enough to torment folks like us. We see things that others can’t, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a very useful thing in our trade, though.’

I shuddered. I felt sorry for the poor wife who’d been murdered and I felt sorry for the miner who’d killed her. I even felt sorry for the Spook. Imagine having to spend your childhood in a house like this.

I looked down at the candle, which I’d placed in the middle of the table. It was almost burned down and the flame was starting its last flickering dance, but the Spook didn’t show any sign of wanting to go back upstairs. I didn’t like the shadows on his face. It looked as if it was gradually changing, as if he was growing a snout or something.

‘Do you know how I overcame my fear?’ he asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘One night I was so terrified that I screamed out before I could stop myself. I woke everybody up, and in a rage my father lifted me up by the scruff of my neck and carried me down the steps into this cellar. Then he got a hammer and nailed the door shut behind me.

‘I wasn’t very old. Probably seven at the most. I climbed back up the steps and, screaming fit to burst, scratched and banged at the door. But my father was a hard man and he left me all alone in the dark and I had to stay there for hours, until long after dawn. After a bit, I calmed down and do you know what I did then?’

I shook my head, trying not to look at his face. His eyes were glittering very brightly and he looked more like a wolf than ever.

‘I walked down the steps and sat there in this cellar in the darkness. Then I took three deep breaths and I faced my fear. I faced the darkness itself, which is the most terrifying thing of all, especially for people like us, because things come to us in the dark. They seek us out with whispers and take shapes that only our eyes can see. But I did it, and when I left this cellar the worst was over.’

At that moment the candle guttered and then went out, plunging us into absolute darkness.

‘This is it, lad,’ the Spook said. ‘There’s just you, me and the dark. Can you stand it? Are you fit to be my apprentice?’

His voice sounded different, sort of deeper and strange. I imagined him on all fours, wolf hair covering his face, his teeth growing longer. I was trembling and couldn’t speak until I’d taken my third deep breath. Only then did I give him my answer. It was something my dad always said when he had to do something unpleasant or difficult.

‘Someone has to do it,’ I said. ‘So it might as well be me.’

The Spook must have thought that was funny, because his laughter filled the whole cellar before rumbling up the steps to meet the next peal of thunder, which was on its way down.

‘Nearly thirteen years ago,’ said the Spook, ‘a sealed letter was sent to me. It was short and to the point and it was written in Greek. Your mother sent it. Do you know what it said?’

‘No,’ I said quietly, wondering what was coming next.

‘"I’ve just given birth to a baby boy," she wrote, "and he’s the seventh son of a seventh son. His name is Thomas J. Ward and he’s my gift to the County. When he’s old enough we’ll send you word. Train him well. He’ll be the best apprentice you’ve ever had and he’ll also be your last."

‘We don’t use magic, lad,’ the Spook said, his voice hardly more than a whisper in the darkness. ‘The main tools of our trade are common sense, courage and the keeping of accurate records, so we can learn from the past. Above all, v?e don’t believe in prophecy. We don’t believe that the future is fixed. So if what your mother wrote comes true, then it’s because we make it come true. Do you understand?’

There was an edge of anger in his voice but I knew it wasn’t directed at me, so I just nodded into the darkness.

‘As for being your mother’s gift to the County, every single one of my apprentices was the seventh son of a seventh son. So don’t you start thinking you’re anything special. You’ve a lot of study and hard work ahead of you.

‘Family can be a nuisance,’ the Spook went on after a pause, his voice softer, the anger gone. ‘I’ve only got two brothers left now. One’s a locksmith and we get on all right, but the other one hasn’t spoken to me for well over forty years, though he still lives here in Horshaw.’

By the time we left the house, the storm had blown itself out and the moon was visible. As the Spook closed the front door, I noticed for the first time what had been carved there in the wood.

The Spook nodded towards it. ‘I use signs like this to warn others who’ve the skill to read them or sometimes just to jog my own memory. You’ll recognize the Greek letter gamma. It’s the sign for either a ghost or a ghast. The cross on the lower right is the Roman numeral for ten, which is the lowest grading of all. Anything after six is just a ghast. There’s nothing in that house that can harm you, not if you’re brave. Remember, the dark feeds on fear. Be brave and there’s nothing much a ghast can do.’

If only I’d known that to begin with!

‘Buck up, lad,’ said the Spook. ‘Your face is nearly down in your boots! Well, maybe this’ll cheer you up.’ He pulled the lump of yellow cheese out of his pocket, broke a small piece off and handed it to me. ‘Chew on this,’ he said, ‘but don’t swallow it all at once.’

I followed him down the cobbled street. The air was damp, but at least it wasn’t raining, and to the west the clouds looked like lamb’s wool against the sky and were starting to tear and break up into ragged strips.

We left the village and continued south. Right on its edge, where the cobbled street became a muddy lane, there was a small church. It looked neglected - there were slates missing off the roof and paint peeling from the main door. We’d hardly seen anyone since leaving the house but there was an old man standing in the doorway. His hair was white and it was lank, greasy and unkempt.

His dark clothes marked him out as a priest, but as we approached him, it was the expression on his face that really drew my attention. He was scowling at us, his face all twisted up. And then, dramatically, he made a huge sign of the cross, actually standing on tiptoe as he began it, stretching the forefinger of his right hand as high into the sky as he could. I’d seen priests make the sign before but never with such a big, exaggerated gesture, filled with so much anger. An anger that seemed directed towards us.

I supposed he’d some grievance against the Spook, or maybe against the work he did. I knew the trade made most people nervous but I’d never seen a reaction like that.

‘What was wrong with him?’ I asked, when we had passed him and were safely out of earshot.

‘Priests!’ snapped the Spook, the anger sharp in his voice. ‘They know everything but see nothing! And that one’s worse than most. That’s my other brother.’

I’d have liked to know more but had the sense not to question him further. It seemed to me that there was a lot to learn about the Spook and his past, but I had a feeling they were things he’d only tell me when he was good and ready.

So I just followed him south, carrying his heavy bag and thinking about what my mam had written in the letter. She was never one to boast or make wild statements. Mam only said what had to be said, so she’d meant every single word. Usually she just got on with things and did what was necessary. The Spook had told me there was nothing much could be done about ghasts, but Mam had once silenced the ghasts on Hangman’s Hill.

Being a seventh son of a seventh son was nothing that special in this line of work - you needed that just to be taken on as the Spook’s apprentice. But I knew there was something else that made me different. I was my mam’s son too.