Joseph Delaney - The Spook's Curse

Your dad’s, Jack’s Ellie’s and Mary’s graves are up on Hangman’s Hill. You’ll find your mother in the barn.

My heart aching to bursting point, I ran out into the yard. Then I halted outside the barn, listening carefully. Everything was silent. There wasn’t even a breath of wind. I stepped nervously into the gloom, hardly knowing what to expect. Would there be a grave there? Mam’s grave?

There was a hole in the roof almost directly above, and within a shaft of moonlight I could see Mam’s head. She was looking straight at me. Her body was in darkness, but from the position of her face she seemed to be kneeling on the ground.

Why would she do that? And why did she look so unhappy? Wasn’t she pleased to see me?

Suddenly Mam let out a scream of anguish. ‘Don’t look at me, Tom! Don’t look at me! Turn away now!’ she cried as if in torment.

The moment I looked away Mam rose up from the floor, and out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed something that turned my bones to jelly. From the neck down Mam was different. I saw wings and scales and a glint of sharp claws as she flew straight up into the air and smashed her way out through the barn roof, taking half of it with her. I looked up, shielding my face from the pieces of wood and debris that were falling towards me, and saw Mam, a black silhouette against the disc of the full moon as she flew upwards from the wreckage of the barn roof.

‘No! No!’ I shouted. ‘This isn’t true, This isn’t happening!’

In reply, a voice spoke inside my head. It was the low hiss of the Bane.

‘The moon shows the truth of things, boy. You know that already. All you have seen is true or will come to pass. All it takes is time.’

Someone began to shake my shoulder and I woke up in a cold sweat. The Spook was bending over me.

‘Wake up, lad! Wake up!’ he called. ‘It’s just a nightmare. It’s the Bane trying to get into your mind, trying to weaken us.’

I nodded but didn’t tell the Spook what had happened in the dream. It was too painful to talk about. I glanced up at the sky. Rain was still falling but the cloud was patchy and a few stars were visible. It was still dark, but dawn was not far off.

‘Have we slept all night?’

‘We have that,’ replied the Spook, ‘but I didn’t plan it that way.’

He rose stiffly. ‘Better move on while we still can,’ he said anxiously. ‘Can’t you hear ‘em?’

I listened and finally, above the noise of the wind and rain, I heard the distant baying of hounds.

‘Aye, they’re not too far behind,’ the Spook said. ‘Our only hope is to throw them off our scent. We need water to do that but it needs to be shallow enough for us to walk in. Of course, we’ll have to get back on dry land sometime but the dogs will have to be taken up and down the bank to pick up the scent again. And if there’s another stream close by it makes the job a lot easier.’

We scrambled over another wall and walked down a steep slope, moving as fast as we dared across the damp, slippery grass. There was a shepherd’s cottage below us, a faint silhouette against the sky, and next to it an ancient blackthorn tree, bent over towards it by the prevailing winds, its bare branches like claws clutching at the eaves. We kept walking towards the cottage for a few moments but then came to a sudden halt.

There was a wooden pen ahead and to our left. And there was just enough light to see that it contained a small flock of sheep, about twenty or so. And all of them were dead.

‘I don’t like the look of this one little bit, lad.’

I didn’t like the look of it either. But then I realized that he didn’t mean the dead sheep. He was looking at the cottage beyond.

‘We’re probably too late,’ he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘But it’s our duty to go in and see…’

With that he set off towards the cottage, gripping his staff. I followed carrying his bag. As I passed the pen, I glanced sideways at the nearest of the dead sheep. The white wool of its coat was streaked with blood. If that was the work of the Bane it had fed well. How much stronger would it be now?

The front door was wide open so without ceremony we went in, the Spook leading the way. He’d just taken one step over the threshold when he halted and sucked in his breath. He was staring to the left. There was a candle somewhere deeper in the room and by its flickering light I could see what, at first glance, I took to be a shadow of the shepherd. But it was too solid to be just a shadow. He had his back to the wall and the crook of his staff was raised above his head as if to threaten us. It took a while for me to understand what I was looking at, but something set my knees a-trembling and my heart fluttering up into my mouth.

On his face was a mixture of anger and terror. His teeth were showing but some of them were broken and blood was smeared across his mouth. He was upright but he wasn’t standing. He’d been flattened. Pressed back against the wall. Smeared into the stones. It was the work of the Bane.

The Spook took another step into the room. And another. I followed close behind until I could see the whole of the nightmare within. There’d been a baby’s cot in the corner but it had been smashed against the wall and amongst the debris were blankets and a small sheet streaked with blood. Of the child there was no sign. My master approached the blankets and raised them cautiously. What he saw clearly distressed him and he motioned at me not to look before replacing the blankets with a sigh.

By now I had spotted the infant’s mother. A woman’s body was on the floor, partly hidden by a rocking chair. I was grateful that I couldn’t see her face. In her right hand she gripped a knitting needle, and a ball of wool had rolled into the hearth close to the embers, which were fading to grey.

The door to the kitchen was open and I had a sudden sense of dread. I felt certain something was lurking there. No sooner had that thought entered my head than the temperature in the room dropped. The Bane was still here. I could feel it in my bones. In terror I almost fled from that cottage but the Spook stood his ground and while he remained how could I leave him?

At that moment the candle was suddenly extinguished, as if snuffed out by unseen fingers, plunging us into gloom, and a deep voice spoke out of the utter blackness of the kitchen doorway. A voice that resounded through the air and vibrated along the flagged floor of the cottage so that I could feel it in my feet.

‘Hello, Old Bones. At last we meet again. Been looking for you. Knew you were somewhere nearby.’

‘Aye and now you’ve found me,’ said the Spook wearily, resting his staff on the flags and leaning his weight against it.

‘Always were a meddler, weren’t you, Old Bones? But you’ve meddled once too often now. I’ll kill the boy first, while you stand and watch. Then it’ll be your turn.’

An invisible hand picked me up and slammed me back against the wall so hard that all the breath was driven from my body. Then the pressure began, a steady force so strong that my ribs felt about to snap. Worst of all was the terrible weight against my forehead and I remembered the face of the shepherd flattened and smeared into the stones. I was terrified, unable to move or even breathe. A darkness came over my eyes and the last thing I knew was a sense that the Spook had rushed towards the kitchen doorway raising his staff.

Someone was shaking me gently.

I opened my eyes and saw the Spook bending over me. I was lying on the floor of the cottage. ‘Are you all right, lad?’ he asked anxiously.

I nodded. My ribs felt sore. With every breath I took they hurt. But I was breathing. I was still alive.

‘Come on, let’s see if we can get you to your feet…’