Joseph Delaney - The Spooks battle

To stay in Mam's refuge for any significant length of time, I needed water and provisions. Things had happened so quickly, though. From the time I'd entered Pendle with the Spook, it had been one threat after another, danger after danger. What chance had there been?For a while I paced the floor. Backward and forward, from wall to wall. There was nothing else to do. Backward and forward, my boots thumping on the wooden boards. As I paced, I started to develop a severe headache. I didn't usually get headaches, but this one was really bad. It was as if a great weight were pressing down on the top of my head and it throbbed with every frantic beat of my heart.How long could I go on like this? Even if time was actually passing, it wasn't like anything I'd experienced before. With that I had a sudden dark thought…Mam had protected the room, and the Fiend couldn't get in. But that didn't stop what he could do outside the room. He had changed the world-or at least changed the world that I could see from the window. Everything outside this room-the farm, the house, the trees, people, and animals-was in his grip. Would I ever be able to leave the room again? Maybe the world would only return to normal once I went outside?

Dark thoughts started to slip into my mind, despite all my efforts to keep them out. What was the use of anything? We were born, we lived a few years, grew old, and then died. What was the point of it all? All those people in the County and the wide world beyond, living their short little lives before going to the grave. What was it all for? My dad was dead. He'd worked hard all his life, but the journey of his life had had only one destination: the grave. That's where we were all heading. Into the grave. Into the soil, to be eaten by worms. Poor Billy Bradley had been the Spook's apprentice before me. He'd had his fingers bitten off by a boggart and had died of shock and loss of blood. And where was he now? In a grave. Not even in a churchyard. He was buried outside because the Church considered him no better than a malevolent witch. That would be my fate, too. A grave in unhallowed ground. And Father Stocks hadn't even been buried yet. He was still lying dead in bed at Read Hall, his body rotting on the sheets. All his life he'd struggled to do right, just like my dad. Better to get it over with now, I thought. Better to leave Mam's room. Once I was dead, it would be finished with. There wouldn't be anything to worry about anymore. No pain, no more heartache.Anything was better than being imprisoned in this room until I died of thirst or starvation. Better to go outside now and be done with it.I was actually walking toward the door and reaching for the key when I sensed a sudden coldness; a warning. Something that didn't belong in this world was close by. In the corner of the room farthest from the door and the window, a shimmering column of light began to form.I backed away. Was it a ghost or something from the dark? I saw walking boots materialize first, then a black cassock. It was a priest! The head formed quickly, the face looking at me uncertainly. It was the ghost of Father Stocks! Or was it? I shivered again. I'd met things that could shape-shift. What if this was the Fiend, taking on the form of Father Stocks in order to deceive me? I fought to steady my breathing. Mam had said that nothing evil could enter here. I had to believe that. It was all I had left. So whatever the apparition was, it had to be good, not evil.

"I'm sorry, Father!" I cried. "Sorry that I didn't return in time to save you. I did my best and got back before dark fell, but it was already too late."Father Stocks nodded sadly. "You did all you could, Tom. All you possibly could. But now I'm lost and afraid. I've been wandering in a gray fog for what seems like an eternity. Once I thought I saw a faint glimmer of light ahead, but it faded and died away. And I keep hearing voices, Tom. The voices of children calling my name. Oh, Tom! I think they're the voices of the children I never had, my unborn children calling out to me. I should have been a real father, Tom. Not a priest. And now it's too late." "But why are you here, Father? Why have you come here to visit me? Are you here to help?"The ghost shook its head and looked bewildered. "I just found myself here, Torn, that's all. I didn't choose to be here. Perhaps somebody sent me. But why, I don't know."You lived a good life, Father," I told him, stepping closer and starting to feel sorry for him. "You made a difference to lots of people and you fought the dark. What more could you do? So just go back. Go and look after yourself and forget me! Leave me-go back and search for the light."I can't, Tom. I don't know how. I've tried to pray, but now my mind's just full of darkness and despair. I tried to fight the dark but didn't do it very well. I should have seen what Wurmalde was long ago. I let her blind me with glamour and fascination. Nowell suffered the same. But I should have known better. I failed as a priest, and all my training as a spook came to nothing. My life's been a complete waste. It was all for nothing!"

The plight of poor Father Stocks finally made me forget my own fears. He was in torment, and I had to help. I remembered how the Spook usually dealt with troubled ghosts that couldn't move on. If giving them a good talking-to had no effect, he would ask them to consider their own lives. To focus on a happy memory. A memory that usually freed them from the chains binding them to this world."Listen to me, Father. You were a spook as well as a priest. So remember now what John Gregory taught you. All you have to do is think about a happy memory and concentrate on that. So think now! Think carefully. Concentrate! What was your happiest moment on this earth?"The anguished face of the dead priest shimmered and almost faded away, but then it came back into sharp focus and looked very thoughtful."One morning I woke up and looked about me. I was lying on a bed and the sun was shining through the window and dust motes were dancing in that broad beam of sunlight, glittering like a thousand angels. But for a moment I could remember nothing. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know where I was. I couldn't even remember my own name. I had no worries, no cares. I was just a point of consciousness. It was as if I was free of the burden of life. Free of all that I'd been and done. I was nobody, but I was everybody at the same time. And I was happy and content."

"And that's exactly what you are now," I told him, seizing on the idea he'd just put forward. "You're nobody, and you're everybody. And you've already found the light…"Father Stocks's mouth opened in astonishment. Then a slow smile spread across his face, a smile of joy and understanding. His ghost slowly faded away, and I smiled, too; my first smile for a long time. I'd just sent my first ghost into the light.And, speaking of light, Mam's room was suddenly full of it! As Father Stocks faded away, a bright shaft of sunlight fell through the window, and it too was full of gleaming dust motes, just as the dead priest had described.I took a deep breath. It seemed to me that I'd been very-low. The Fiend hadn't been able to enter the room, but somehow he'd reached into my mind so that I would despair, open the door, and go out to him. Just in time the ghost of Father Stocks had appeared, and I'd forgotten my own pain. My ordeal was over. I knew instinctively that it was safe, at last, to leave the room.I walked over to the window. The blood moon had gone. The nightmare was over. Suddenly my awareness of the passage of time returned. Two days must have passed since the arrival of the Fiend through the portal, so it was now the third day of August. Today was my birthday. I was fourteen.The sky was blue, the grass green, and there wasn't a trace of frost anywhere. It had all been a trick, an illusion to draw me from the room to my destruction.Then I saw two people walking side by side down Hangman's Hill toward the farm. One of them was limping, and even from a distance, I recognized them: It was the Spook and Alice. My master was carrying two bags and two staffs. But then I saw that something on the hill above them had changed.A dark vertical shadow, like a scar, now divided the wood.