The Spook's Destiny (Wardstone Chronicles Book 8) Read online

  “Surely you weren’t still using that room? No doubt you warned him about the rappings and the cold spot?”

  “He wasn’t staying in the room where the girl died—that was a servant’s room in the attic, right at the top of the building. A jibber haunts the very spot where a suicide occurs, and I assumed that it would stay there. Now they tell me that it can wander anywhere inside the building.”

  “Why do they call the thing a jibber?” I asked.

  “Because of the noise it makes, boy,” the landlord replied. “It makes jibbering and jabbering noises. It natters and prattles away to itself—sounds that don’t make any sense but are terrifying to hear.” He turned back to the Spook. “So can you sort it out? Priests can do nothing. This is a city full of priests, but they’re no better than doctors.”

  The Spook frowned. “Now, as I said, I come from a different place—the County, which is a land across the sea to the east,” he explained. “I have to admit that I’ve never heard of what you’re describing. You’d have thought that news of something so odd would have reached us by now.”

  “Well, you see,” said the landlord, “jibbers are new to the city. They first started to appear about a year ago. They’re like a plague. They were first sighted in the southwest and have slowly spread east. The first cases reached the city just before Christmas. Some think they’re the work of the goat mages of Kerry, who are always dabbling in dark magic. But who can say?”

  We knew little about the Irish mages—only that they were in a state of constant war with some of the landowners. There was just a short reference to them in the Spook’s Bestiary. They supposedly worshipped the Old God Pan, in return for power. It was rumored that human sacrifice was involved. It was a nasty business.

  “Am I right in saying that this jibber of yours is only active after dark?” inquired the Spook.

  The landlord nodded.

  “Well, in that case we’ll try to sort it out tonight. Would you mind if we took our rooms in advance of the job? We’d like to catch up on our sleep so that we’re fit to face this jibber of yours.”

  “By all means, but if you fail to sort it out, I’ll expect to be paid for every day you stay here. I don’t spend one minute in this place after dark—I sleep at my brother’s. So, if it proves necessary, pay me in the morning.”

  “That’s fair enough,” said the Spook, shaking hands with the landlord to clinch the deal. Most folk didn’t like to get too near to a spook, but this man was in serious financial trouble and grateful for my master’s help.

  We each chose a room and spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon catching up on our sleep, having arranged to meet in the kitchen about an hour before dark. Mine was a troubled sleep: I had a terrifying dream.

  I was in a forest. There was no moon, but the trees were glowing with an unearthly silver light. Alone and unarmed, I was crawling on all fours, searching for something that I needed very badly—my staff. Without it, I realized, I wouldn’t survive.

  It was just a few minutes to midnight, and I knew that something was coming after me then—something terrible. My mind was befuddled and I couldn’t remember what this creature was, but I knew that it had been sent by a witch. She wanted revenge for something I’d done to her.

  But what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I remember things properly? Was I already under some sort of spell? Somewhere in the distance, a church bell began to strike ominously. Petrified with fear, I counted each chime.

  At the third one I leaped to my feet in panic and began to run. Branches whipped at my face, brambles snatched and scratched at my legs as I sprinted desperately through the trees toward the unseen church. There was something after me now, but it wasn’t running through the under-growth; it wasn’t something on either two legs or four. I could hear the furious beating of gigantic wings.

  I glanced back over my shoulder, and my blood turned to water. I was being chased by an immense black crow, and the sight of it increased my terror. It was the Morrigan, the Old God of the Celtic witches, the bloodthirsty deity who pecked out the eyes of the dying. But I knew that if only I could reach the church, I’d be safe.

  Why that should be I didn’t know—churches weren’t usually places of refuge from the dark. Spooks and their apprentices preferred to rely on the tools of their trade and a sound knowledge of the practical defensive steps that could be taken. Nevertheless, I knew that I had to reach the church—or die and lose my soul to the dark.

  I tripped over a root and sprawled headlong. I struggled to my knees and looked up at the black crow, which had alighted on a branch, making it creak and bend under its weight. The air shimmered in front of me, and I blinked furiously to clear my vision. When I could finally see, I was confronted by a terrible sight.

  In front of me stood a tall figure wearing a black dress that came down almost to the ground. It was splattered with blood. The figure was female from the neck downward, but she had the huge head of a crow, with cruel beady eyes and an immense beak. Even as I watched, the crow’s head began to change. The beak shrank; the beady eyes softened and widened until the head was fully human. I suddenly realized that I knew that face! It was that of a witch who was now dead—the Celtic witch who the spook Bill Arkwright had once killed in the County. I’d been training with Arkwright and had seen him throw a dagger into her back; then he’d fed her heart to his dogs to make sure she couldn’t come back from the dead. Bill had been ruthless in his treatment of witches—much harder than my master, John Gregory.

  And in that moment I knew that none of this was real. I was having a bad dream—and it was one of the very worst kind: a lucid nightmare where you’re trapped and cannot escape, cannot wake up. It was also the same one that I’d been having for months—and each time it happened, it was more terrifying.

  The Morrigan was walking toward me now, her hands outstretched, talons ready to rend the flesh from my bones.

  I fought to wake myself up. It was a real struggle to break free. I opened my eyes and felt my fear gradually fall away. But it was a long time before I calmed down. I was wide awake now and couldn’t get to sleep again. It didn’t leave me in the best state of mind to face a jibber—whatever that might be.

  We met down in the kitchen, but we weren’t planning to eat anything substantial. We were about to face the dark, so the Spook insisted that we fast, managing with just a little cheese to sustain us. My master missed his favorite crumbly County cheese, and wherever we happened to be, he was always complaining that the local fare wasn’t a patch on it. But on this occasion he nibbled in silence before turning to me with a question.

  “Well, lad, what are your thoughts on all this?”

  I gazed into his face. It looked as if it had been chiseled from granite, but there were new, deeper lines on his brow, and his eyes were tired. His beard had been gray from the moment I first saw him, almost three years before, when he visited my dad’s farm to talk about my apprenticeship. However, there had been a mixture of other colors in there, too—mostly reds, browns, and blacks. Now it was entirely gray. He was looking older—the events of the past three years had taken their toll.

  “It worries me,” I said. “It’s something we’ve never dealt with before, and that’s always dangerous.”

  “Aye, it is that, lad. There are too many unknowns. What exactly is a jibber, and will it be vulnerable to salt and iron?”

  “There may be no such thing as a jibber,” said Alice.

  “And what do you mean by that, girl?” demanded my master, looking annoyed. He no doubt thought that she was putting her nose where it didn’t belong; meddling in spooks’ business.

  “What if it’s the spirit of each dead person that’s somehow trapped and causing the problem?” she said. “Dark magic could do that.”

  The frown left the Spook’s face, and he nodded thoughtfully. “Do the Pendle witches have such a spell?” he asked.

  “Bone witches have a spell that can bind a spirit to its own graveside.�
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  “Some spirits are bound like that anyway, girl. We call them graveside lingerers.”

  “But these don’t just linger, they scare people,” Alice pointed out. “The spell is often used to keep people away from a section of a churchyard so that witches are able to rob the graves and harvest the bones undisturbed.”

  Bone witches collected human bones to use in their type of magic. Thumb bones were particularly prized. They boiled them up in a cauldron to obtain magical power.

  “So, taken a step further, if these are trapped spirits, they’re somehow being forced to drive people to the edge of madness. That all makes sense, but how and why is it spreading?” my master asked.

  “If it is a spell,” Alice said, “then it’s out of control—almost as if it’s developed an energy of its own, spreading its evil, working its way east. Bony Lizzie once cast a powerful spell that got out of control. It was the first time I’d ever seen her scared.”

  The Spook scratched at his beard as if something wick were crawling there. “Aye, that makes sense,” he agreed. “Well, I reckon we should visit the place where the poor girl killed herself first. I’ll need the lad with me, so no doubt you’ll be joining us too, girl.”

  That last sentence was spoken with an edge of sarcasm. Alice and I were in a very bad predicament, and he could do nothing about it. The previous year, in order to save the lives of many people, including the Spook and Alice, I’d sold my soul to the Fiend—the Devil himself, the dark made flesh. He had been summoned to earth by a gathering of the Pendle witch clans and was now growing ever more powerful; a new age of darkness had come to our world.

  Only Alice’s dark magic now prevented the Devil from coming to collect my soul. She’d put three drops of her blood and three drops of mine together in what was called a blood jar. I carried it in my pocket, and now the Fiend couldn’t come near me—but Alice had to stay close by in order to share its protection.

  There was always a risk that somehow I might get separated from the jar and be beyond its protective spell. Not only that: When I died—whether that was six or sixty years hence—the Fiend would be waiting to claim what belonged to him and would subject me to an eternity of torment. The only way out was to somehow destroy or bind him first. The prospect of the task weighed heavy on my shoulders.

  Grimalkin, the witch assassin of the Malkin clan, was an enemy of the Fiend; she believed that he could be bound in a pit if he was pierced with silver-alloy spikes. Alice had made contact, and Grimalkin had agreed to join us in order to attempt this. But long weeks had passed, and there had been no further communication from Grimalkin: Alice feared that, invincible though she was, something had happened to her. The County was occupied by foreign troops—maybe they had moved against the Pendle witches, slaying or imprisoning them. Whatever the truth, that blood jar was as important as ever.

  Soon after dark, carrying a candle, the Spook led us up to the attic—the small, cramped room right at the top of the inn where the poor servant girl had lived and died.

  The bed had been stripped of its mattress, sheets, and pillows. At the side of the bed nearest the window, I saw dark bloodstains on the floorboards. The Spook set his candle down on the little bedside table, and the three of us made ourselves as comfortable as possible on the floor just in front of the closed door. Then we waited. It was reasonable to expect that if the jibber was in need of victims tonight, it would come for us. After all, there was nobody else staying at the inn.

  I’d filled my pockets with salt and iron—substances that usually worked against boggarts and, to a lesser extent, witches. But if Alice’s theory was correct and we were dealing with a trapped, dangerous spirit, salt and iron would be ineffective.

  We didn’t have long to wait before the jibber arrived. Something invisible began to rap on the floorboards. There were two quick knocks, then three slow ones. It happened over and over again, and my nerves were on edge. Next the candle flickered and there was a sudden chill in the air; I had an even colder feeling inside—the warning that a seventh son of a seventh son often receives when something from the dark approaches.

  Directly above the bloodstains, a column of purple light appeared; the sound that emanated from it confirmed that the jibber had been well named. The voice was high and girlish and sibilant. It jabbered nonsense, jarring my ears, making me feel uncomfortable and slightly dizzy. It was as if the world had tilted and I was unable to keep my balance.

  I sensed the malevolence of the jibber: It wanted to hurt me very badly. It wanted my death. No doubt the Spook and Alice could hear the same disturbing sounds, but I glanced right and left, and neither was moving; they were just staring, wide-eyed, at the column of light as if transfixed.

  But despite my dizziness I could move, and I decided to act before the jabbering got right inside my head and made me do exactly what it wanted. I rose to my feet and strode forward, plunging my hands into my breeches pockets: My right hand seized salt; my left, iron filings. I flung both handfuls at the column of light.

  The substances came together perfectly, right on target. It was a good shot. The bad news was that nothing happened. The column continued to shimmer, and particles of salt and iron fell harmlessly and ended up scattered across the floorboards beside the bed.

  Now the jibbering started to hurt. It felt as if sharp pins were being driven into my eyes and a band of steel was tightening across my forehead, slowly crushing my skull. I felt panic rising within me. At some point I would no longer be able to tolerate the pain. Would I be driven to madness? I wondered. Pushed to do something suicidal to end my torment?

  With a shock, I realized something else then. The jabbering wasn’t just meaningless prattling. The speed and sibilance had fooled me at first. This was the Old Tongue; a pattern of words. It was a spell!

  The candle suddenly guttered out, plunging us in darkness—though the purple light was still visible. All at once I found that I was unable to move. I wanted to leave this claustrophobic attic where that poor girl had killed herself, but I couldn’t—I was rooted to the spot. I felt dizzy, too, and lost my balance. I tottered and fell hard onto my left side. I was aware of a sharp pain, as if I’d fallen on a stone.

  As I struggled to rise, I heard another voice—a female voice, also chanting in the Old Tongue. This second voice grew louder while the first quickly died down until it had faded away altogether. To my relief, the jibbering had stopped.

  Then I heard a sudden anguished cry. I realized that the second voice was Alice’s—she’d used a spell of her own to end the jibber. The spirit of the girl was now free, but in torment. It knew that it was dead and trapped in limbo.

  Now there was a third voice, deeper, male—one that I knew well. It was the Spook.

  “Listen, girl,” he said. “You don’t have to stay here….”

  Befuddled as I was, for a moment I thought he was talking to Alice; then I understood that he was addressing the spirit of the dead girl.

  “Go to the light,” he commanded. “Go to the light now!”

  There was a wail of anguish. “I can’t!” cried the spirit. “I’m lost in the mist. I can’t find my way.”

  “The way is in front of you. Look carefully and you’ll see the path to the light.”

  “I chose to end my life. That was wrong, and now I’m being punished!”

  It was always much harder for suicides and those who had died sudden, violent deaths to find their way to the light. They sometimes wandered within the mists of limbo for years. But it could be done. A spook could help.

  “You are punishing yourself unnecessarily,” my master told the girl’s spirit. “There’s no need. You were unhappy. You didn’t know what you were doing. I want you to think very carefully now. Have you a happy memory of your earlier life?”

  “Yes. Yes. I have lots of happy memories….”

  “Then what’s the happiest one—the happiest one of all?” he demanded.

  “I was very young, no more than five or si
x years old. I was walking across a meadow, picking daisies with my mother on a warm, sunny morning, listening to the droning of the bees and the singing of the birds. Everything was fresh and bright and filled with hope. She made a chain out of the daisies and put it on my head. She said I was a princess and would one day meet a prince. But that’s just foolishness. Real life is very different. It can be cruel beyond measure. I met a man who I thought was like a prince, but he betrayed me.”

  “Go back to that moment. Go back to the time when the future still lay ahead, full of warm promise and hope. Concentrate,” the Spook instructed. “You are there again now. Can you see it? Can you hear the birds? Your mother is beside you, holding your hand. Can you feel her hand?”

  “Yes! Yes!” cried the spirit. “She’s squeezing my hand. She’s taking me somewhere….”

  “She’s taking you toward the light!” exclaimed the Spook. “Can’t you see its brightness ahead?”

  “I can see it! I can see the light! The mist has gone!”

  “Then go! Enter the light. You’re going home!”

  The spirit gave a sigh full of longing, then suddenly laughed. It was a joyful laugh, followed by utter silence. My master had done it. He had sent her to the light.

  “Well,” he said ominously, “we need to talk about what’s happened here.”

  Despite our success, he wasn’t happy. Alice had used dark magic to free the girl’s spirit from the spell.

  CHAPTER III

  THE VISITOR

  DOWN in the kitchen, we ate a light supper of soda bread and ham. When we’d finished, the Spook pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.