Joseph Delaney - The Spook

I began with the strange title of the book: The Damned, the Dizzy and the Desperate. What did it mean? Why call the book that?

‘First word is just priest-talk,’ Alice said, turning down the corners of her mouth in disapproval. ‘They just use that word for people who do things differently. For people like your mam, who don’t go to church and say the right prayers. People who aren’t like them. People who are left-handed,’ she said, giving me a knowing smile.

‘Second word’s more useful,’ Alice continued. ‘A body that’s newly possessed has poor balance. It keeps falling over. Takes time, you see, for the possessor that’s moved in to fit itself comfortably into its new body. It’s like trying to wear in a new pair of shoes. Makes it bad tempered too. Someone calm and placid can strike out without warning. So that’s another way you can tell.

‘Then, as for the third word, that’s easy. A witch who once had a healthy human body is desperate to get another one. Then, once she succeeds, she’s desperate to hold onto it. Ain’t going to give it up without a fight. She’ll do anything. Anything at all. That’s why the possessed are so dangerous.’

‘If she came here, who would it be?’ I asked. ‘If she were wick, who would she try to possess? Would it be me? Would she try to hurt me that way?’

‘Would if she could,’ Alice said. ‘Ain’t easy though, what with you being what you are. Like to use me too, but I won’t give her the chance. No, she’ll go for the weakest. The easiest.’

‘Ellie’s baby?’

‘No, that ain’t no use to her. She’d have to wait till it’s all grown up. Mother Malkin never had much patience, and being trapped in that pit at Old Gregory’s would have made her worse. If it’s you she’s coming to hurt, first she’ll get herself a strong healthy body.’

‘Ellie then? She’ll choose Ellie!’

‘Don’t you know anything?’ Alice said, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Ellie’s strong. She’d be difficult. No, men are much easier. Especially a man whose heart always rules his head. Someone who can fly into a temper without even thinking.’

‘Jack?’

‘It’ll be Jack for sure. Think what it’d be like to have big strong Jack after you. But the book’s right about one thing. A body that’s newly possessed is easier to deal with. Desperate it is but dizzy too.’

I got my notebook out and wrote down anything that seemed important. Alice didn’t talk as fast as the Spook, but after a bit she got into her stride and it wasn’t long before my wrist was aching. When it came to the really important business – how to deal with the possessed – there were lots of reminders that the original soul was still trapped inside the body. So if you hurt the body you hurt that innocent soul as well. So just killing the body to get rid of the possessor was as bad as murder.

In fact that section of the book was disappointing: there didn’t seem to be a lot you could do. Being a priest, the writer thought that an exorcism, using candles and holy water, was the best way to draw out the possessor and release the victim, but he admitted that not all priests could do it and that very few could do it really well. It seemed to me that some of the priests who could do it were probably seventh sons of seventh sons and that was what really mattered.

After all that, Alice said she felt tired and went up to bed. I was feeling sleepy too. I’d forgotten how hard farm work could be and I was aching from head to foot. Once up in my room, I sank gratefully onto my bed, anxious to sleep. But down in the yard the dogs had started to bark.

Thinking that something must have alarmed them, I opened the window and looked out towards Hangman’s Hill, taking a deep breath of night air to steady myself and clear my head. Gradually the dogs became quieter and eventually stopped barking altogether.

As I was about to close the window, the moon came out from behind a cloud. Moonlight can show the truth of things – Alice had told me that – just as that big shadow of mine had told Bony Lizzie that there was something different about me. This wasn’t even a full moon, just a waning moon shrinking down to a crescent, but it showed me something new, something that couldn’t be seen without it. By its light, I could see a faint silver trail winding down Hangman’s Hill. It crept under the fence and across the north pasture, then crossed the eastern hay field until it vanished from sight somewhere behind the barn. I thought of Mother Malkin then. I’d seen the silver trail the night I’d knocked her into the river. Now here was another trail that looked just the same and it had found me.

My heart thudding in my chest, I tiptoed downstairs and slipped out through the back door, closing it carefully behind me. The moon had gone behind a cloud, so when I went round to the back of the barn, the silver trail had vanished, but there was still clear evidence that something had moved down the hill towards our farm buildings. The grass was flattened, as if a giant snail had slithered across it.

I waited for the moon to reappear so that I could check the flagged area behind the barn. A few moments later the cloud blew away and I saw something that really scared me. The silver trail gleamed in the moonlight and the direction it had taken was unmistakable. It avoided the pigpen and snaked round the other side of the barn in a wide arc to reach the far edge of the yard. Then it moved towards the house, ending directly under Alice ’s window, where the old wooden hatch covered the steps that led down to the cellar.

A few generations back, the farmer who’d lived here used to brew ale which he’d supplied to the local farms and even a couple of inns. Because of that, the locals called our farm ‘Brewer’s Farm’ although we just called it ‘home’. The steps were there so that barrels could be taken in and out without having to go through the house.

The hatch was still in place covering the steps, a big rusty padlock holding its two halves in position, but there was a narrow gap between them, where the two edges of the wood didn’t quite meet. It was a gap no wider than my thumb, but the silver trail ended exactly there and I knew that whatever had slithered towards this point had somehow slipped through that tiny gap. Mother Malkin was back and she was wick, her body soft and pliable enough to slip through the narrowest of gaps.

She was already in the cellar.

We never used the cellar now but I remembered it well enough. It had a dirt floor and it was mostly full of old barrels. The walls of the house were thick and hollow, which meant that soon she could be anywhere inside the walls, anywhere in the house.

I glanced up and saw the flicker of a candle flame in the window of Alice ’s room. She was still up. I went inside, and moments later I was standing outside her bedroom door. The trick was to tap just loud enough to let Alice know I was there without waking anybody else up. But as I held my knuckles close to the door ready to knock, I heard a sound from inside the room.

I could hear Alice ’s voice. She seemed to be talking to someone.

I didn’t like what I was hearing but I tapped anyway. I waited a moment, but when Alice didn’t come to the door, I put my ear against it. Who could she be talking to in her room? I knew that Ellie and Jack were already in bed, and anyway I could only hear one voice and that was Alice ’s. It seemed different, though. It reminded me of something I’d heard before. When I suddenly remembered what it was, I moved my ear away from the wood as if it had been burned and took a big step away from the door.

Her voice was rising and falling, just like Bony Lizzie’s had when she’d been standing above the pit, holding a small white thumb-bone in each hand.