Joseph Delaney - The Spook

I walked along the first row until something caught my eye. Near the window there were three very long shelves full of leather-bound notebooks, just like the one the Spook had given me, but the top shelf had larger books with dates on the covers. Each one seemed to record a period of five years, so I picked up the one at the end of the shelf and opened it carefully.

I recognized the Spook’s handwriting. Flicking through the pages, I realized that it was a sort of diary. It recorded each job he’d done, the time taken in travelling and the amount he’d been paid. Most importantly, it explained just how each boggart, ghost and witch had been dealt with.

I put the book back on the shelf and glanced along the other spines. The diaries extended almost up to the present day but went back hundreds of years. Either the Spook was a lot older than he looked or the earlier books had been written by other spooks who’d lived ages ago. I suddenly wondered whether, even if Alice was right and the Spook didn’t come back, there was a possibility that I might be able to learn all I needed to know just by studying those diaries. Better still, somewhere in those thousands upon thousands of pages there might be information that would help me now.

How could I find it? Well, it might take time, but the witch had been in the pit for almost thirteen years. There had to be an account of how the Spook had put her there. Then, suddenly, on a lower shelf, I saw something even better.

There were even bigger books, each dedicated to a particular topic. One was labelled, Dragons and Wormes. As they were displayed in alphabetical order, it didn’t take me long to find just what I was looking for.

Witches.

I opened it with trembling hands to find it was divided into four predictable sections…

The Malevolent, The Benign, The Falsely Accused and The Unaware.

I quickly turned to the first section. Everything was in the Spook’s neat handwriting and, once again, carefully organized into alphabetical order. Within seconds I found a page titled: Mother Malkin.

It was worse than I’d expected. Mother Malkin was just about as evil as you could imagine. She’d lived in lots of places, and in each area she’d stayed something terrible had happened, the worst thing of all occurring on a moss to the west of the County.

She’d lived on a farm there, offering a place to stay to young women who were expecting babies but had no husbands to support them. That was where she’d got the title ‘Mother’. This had gone on for years, but some of the young women had never been seen again.

She’d had a son of her own living with her there, a young man of incredible strength called Tusk. He had big teeth and frightened people so much that nobody ever went near the place. But at last the locals had roused themselves and Mother Malkin had been forced to flee to Pendle. After she’d gone they’d found the first of the graves. There was a whole field of bones and rotting flesh, mainly the remains of the children she’d murdered to supply her need for blood. Some of the bodies were those of women; in each case the body had been crushed, the ribs broken or cracked.

The lads in the village had talked about a thing with too many teeth to fit in its mouth. Could that be Tusk, Mother Malkin’s son? A son who’d probably killed those women by crushing the life out of them?

That set my hands trembling so much that I could hardly hold the book steady enough to read it. It seemed that some witches used ‘bone magic’. They were necromancers who got their power by summoning the dead. But Mother Malkin was even worse. Mother Malkin used ‘blood magic’. She got her power by using human blood and was particularly fond of the blood of children.

I thought of the black, sticky cakes and shuddered. A child had gone missing from the Long Ridge. A child too young to walk. Had it been snatched by Bony Lizzie? Had its blood been used to make those cakes? And what about the second child, the one the villagers were searching for? What if Bony Lizzie had snatched that one too, ready for when Mother Malkin escaped from her pit so that she could use its blood to work her magic? The child might be in Lizzie’s house now!

I forced myself to go on reading.

Thirteen years ago, early in the winter, Mother Malkin had come to live in Chipenden, bringing her granddaughter, Bony Lizzie, with her. When he’d come back from his winter house in Anglezarke, the Spook had wasted no time in dealing with her. After driving Bony Lizzie off, he’d bound Mother Malkin with a silver chain and carried her back to the pit in his garden.

The Spook seemed to be arguing with himself in the account. He clearly didn’t like burying her alive but explained why it had to be done. He believed that it was too dangerous to kill her: once slain, she had the power to return and would be even stronger and more dangerous than before.

The point was, could she still escape? One cake and she’d been able to bend the bars. Although she wouldn’t get the third, two might just be enough. At midnight she might still climb out of the pit. What could I do?

If you could bind a witch with a silver chain, then it might have been worth trying to fasten one across the top of the bent bars to stop her climbing out of her pit. The trouble was, the Spook’s silver chain was in his bag, which always travelled with him.

I saw something else as I left that library. It was beside the door, so I hadn’t noticed it as I came in. It was a long list of names on yellow paper, exactly thirty and all written in the Spook’s own handwriting. My own name, Thomas J. Ward , was at the very bottom, and directly above it was the name William Bradley , which had been crossed out with a horizontal line; next to it were the letters RIP.

I felt cold all over then because I knew that they meant Rest in Peace and that Billy Bradley had died. More than two thirds of the names on the paper had been crossed off; of those, another nine were dead.

I supposed that a lot were crossed out simply because they’d failed to make the grade as apprentices, perhaps not even making it to the end of the first month. Those who had died were more worrying. I wondered what had happened to Billy Bradley and I remembered what Alice had said: ‘ You don’t want to end up like Old Gregory’s last apprentice.’

How did Alice know what had happened to Billy? It was probably just that everybody in the locality knew about it, whereas I was an outsider. Or had her family had something to do with it? I hoped not, but it gave me something else to worry about.

Wasting no more time, I went down to the village. The butcher seemed to have some contact with the Spook. How else had he got the sack to put the meat into? So I decided to tell him about my suspicions and try to persuade him to search Lizzie’s house for the missing child.

It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at his shop and it was closed. I knocked on the doors of five cottages before anyone came to answer. They confirmed what I already suspected: the butcher had gone off with the other men to search the fells. They wouldn’t be back until noon the following day. It seemed that after searching the local fells, they were going to cross the valley to the village at the foot of the Long Ridge, where the first child had gone missing. There they’d carry out a wider search and stay overnight.

I had to face it. I was on my own.

Soon, both sad and afraid, I was climbing the lane back towards the Spook’s house. I knew that if Mother Malkin got out of her grave, then the child would be dead before morning.

I knew also that I was the only one who might even try to do something about it.