The Spook's Curse Read online

  I came down into the forest at dusk.. All the leaves had fallen and were rotten and brown on the ground, and the tower was like a black demon finger pointing at the sky. A girl had been seen waving from its solitary window, Beckoning frantically for aid. The creature had seized her for its own and now held her as its plaything, imprisoning her within those dank stone walls.

  Firstly I made a fire and sat gazing into its flames while gathering my courage. Taking the whetstone from my bag, I sharpened my blade until my fingers could not touch its edge without yielding blood. Finally, at midnight, I went to the tower and hammered out a challenge upon the door with my staff.

  The creature came forth brandishing a great club and roared out in anger. It was a foul thing dressed in the skins of animals, reeking of blood and animal fat, and it attacked me with terrible fury.

  At first I retreated, waiting my chance, but the next time it hurled itself at me I released the blade from its recess in my staff and, using all my strength, drove it deep into its head. It fell stone-dead at my feet but I had no regrets at taking its life, for it would have killed again and again and would never have been sated.

  It was then that the girl called out to me, her siren voice lurinq me up the stone steps, There, in the topmost room of the tower, I found her upon a bed of straw, bounds fast with a long silver chain. With skin like milk.

  and long fair hair, she was by far the prettiest woman that my eyes had ever seen., Her name was Meg and she pleaded to be released from the chain and her voice was so persuasive that my reason fled and the world spun about me.

  No sooner had I unbound her from the coils of the chain than she fastened her lips hard upon mine own. And so sweet were her kisses that I almost swooned away in her arms.

  I awoke with sunlightt streaming through the window and saw her clearly for the first time. She was one of the Lamia witches, and the mark of the snake was upon her. Fair of face though she was, her spine was covered with green and yellow scales.

  Full of anger at her deceit, I bound her again with the chain, and carried her at fast to the pit at Chipenden. When I released her, she struggled so hard that I barely overcame her and was forced to pull her by her long hair through the trees, while she ranted and screamed fit to wake the dead. It was raining hard and she slipped on the wet grass but I carried on dragging her along the ground, though her bare arms and legs were scratched by brambles. It was cruel but it had to be done.

  But when I started to tip her over the edge into the pit, she clutched at my kniees and began to sob pitifully. I stood there for a long time, full of anguish, about to topple over the edge myself, until at last I made a decision that I may come to regret. I helped her to her feet and wrapped my arms about her and we both wept. How could I put her into the pit, when I realized that I loved her better than my own soul? I begged her forgiveness and then we turned together and, hand in hand, walked away from, the pit.

  From this encounter I have gained a silver chain, an expensive tool which otherwise would have taken many long months of hard work to acquire. What I have lost, or might yet lose, I dare not think about.

  Beauty is a terrible thing; it binds a man tighter than a silver chain about a witch.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just read! The Spook had warned me about pretty women more than once, but here he’d broken his own rule! Meg was a witch and yet he hadn’t put her into the pit!

  I quickly leafed through the rest of the notebook, expecting to find another reference to her, but there was nothing - nothing at all! It was as if she’d ceased to exist.

  I knew quite a bit about witches, but had never heard of a Lamia witch before so I put the notebook back and searched the next shelf down, where the books were arranged in alphabetical order. I opened the book labelled Witches but there was no reference to a Meg. Why hadn’t the Spook written about her? What had happened to her? Was she still alive? Still out there, somewhere in the County?

  I was really curious and I had another idea; I pulled a big book out from the lowest shelf. This was entitled The Bestiary and was an alphabetical listing of all sorts of creatures, witches included. At last I found the entry I wanted: Lamia witches.

  It seemed that lamia witches weren’t native to the County but came from lands across the sea. They shunned sunlight, but at night they preyed upon men and drank their blood. They were shape-shifters and belonged to two different categories: the feral and the domestic.

  The feral were lamia witches in their natural state, dangerous and unpredictable and with little physical resemblance to humans. All had scales rather than skin and claws rather than fingernails. Some scuttled across the ground on all fours, while others had wings and feathers on their upper bodies and could fly short distances.

  But a feral lamia could become a domestic lamia by closely associating with humans. Very gradually, it took a woman’s form and looked human but for a narrow line of green and yellow scales that could still be found on its back, running the length of its spine. Domestic lamias had even been known to grow to share human beliefs. Often they ceased to be malevolent and became benign, working for the good of others.

  So had Meg eventually become benign? Had the Spook been right not to bind her in the pit?

  Suddenly I realized how late it was and I ran out of the library to my lesson, my head whirling. A few minutes later my master and I were out on the edge of the western garden, under the trees with a clear view of the fells, the autumn sun dropping towards the horizon. I sat on the bench as usual, busy making notes while the Spook paced back and forth dictating. But I couldn’t concentrate.

  We started with a Latin lesson. I had a special notebook to write down the grammar and new vocabulary the Spook taught me. There were a lot of lists and the book was almost full.

  I wanted to confront the Spook with what I’d just read, but how could I? I’d broken a rule myself by not keeping to the books he’d specified. I wasn’t supposed to have been reading his diaries and now I wished I hadn’t. If I said anything to him about it, I knew he’d be angry.

  Because of what I’d read in the library, I found it harder and harder to keep my mind on what he was saying. I was hungry too and couldn’t wait until it was supper time. Usually the evenings were mine and I was free to do what I wanted, but today he’d been working me very hard. Still, there was less than an hour before the sun went down and the worst of the lessons were over.

  And then I heard a sound that made me groan inside.

  It was a bell ringing. Not a church bell. No, this had the higher, thinner note of a much smaller bell –

  the one that was used by our visitors. Nobody was allowed up to the Spook’s house so people had to go to the crossroads and ring the bell there to let my master know they needed help.

  ‘Go and see to it, lad,’ the Spook said, nodding in the direction of the bell. Generally we would both have gone but he was still quite weak from his illness.

  I didn’t rush. Once out of sight of the house and gardens, I settled down to a stroll. It was too close to dusk to do anything tonight, especially with the Spook still not properly recovered, so nothing would get done until morning anyway. I would bring back an account of the trouble and tell the Spook the details during supper. The later I got back, the less writing there’d be. I’d done enough for one day and my wrist was aching.

  Overhung by willow trees, which we in the County call ‘withy trees’, the crossroads was a gloomy place even at noon and it always made me nervous. For one thing, you never knew who might be waiting there; for another, they almost always had bad news because that’s why they came. They needed the Spook’s help.

  This time a lad was waiting there. He wore big miners’ boots and his fingernails were dirty. Looking even more nervous than I felt, he dashed off his tale so quickly that my ears couldn’t keep up and I had to ask him to repeat it. When he left, I set off back towards the house.

  I didn’t stroll, I ran.

  The Spook was standing by the bench wi
th his head bowed. When I approached, he looked up and his face seemed sad. Somehow I guessed that he knew what I was going to say, but I told him anyway.

  ‘It’s bad news from Horshaw,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. ‘I’m sorry but it’s about your brother. The doctor couldn’t save him. He died yesterday morning, just before dawn. The funeral’s on Friday morning.’

  The Spook gave a long, deep sigh and didn’t speak for several minutes. I didn’t know what to say so I just kept silent. It was hard to guess what he was feeling. As they hadn’t spoken for over forty years, they couldn’t have been that close, but the priest was still his brother and he must have had some happy memories of him - perhaps from before they’d quarrelled or when they were children.

  At last the Spook sighed again and then he spoke.

  ‘Come on, lad,’ he said. ‘We might as well have an early supper.’

  We ate in silence. The Spook picked at his food and I wondered if that was because of the bad news about his brother or because he still hadn’t got his appetite back since being ill. He usually spoke a few words, even if they were just to ask me how the meal was. It was almost a ritual because we had to keep praising the Spook’s pet boggart, which prepared all the meals, or it got sulky. Praise at supper was very important or the bacon would end up burned the following morning.

  ‘It’s a really good hotpot,’ I said at last. ‘I can’t remember when I last tasted one so good.’

  The boggart was mostly invisible but sometimes took on the shape of a big ginger cat; if it was really pleased, it would rub itself against my legs under the kitchen table. This time there wasn’t even so much as a faint purr. Either I hadn’t sounded very convincing or it was keeping quiet because of the bad news.

  The Spook suddenly pushed his plate away and scratched at his beard with his left hand. ‘We’re going to Priestown,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’ll set off first thing tomorrow.’

  Priestown? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The Spook shunned the place like the plague and had once told me that he would never set foot within its boundaries. He hadn’t explained the reason and I’d never asked because you could always tell when he didn’t want to explain something. But when we’d been within spitting distance of the coast and needed to cross the river Ribble, the Spook’s hatred of the town had been a real nuisance. Instead of using the Priestown bridge we’d had to travel miles inland to the next one so that we could steer clear of it.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, my voice hardly more than a whisper, wondering if what I was saying might make him angry. I thought we might be going to Horshaw, for the funeral.’

  ‘We are going to the funeral, lad,’ the Spook said, his voice very calm and patient. ‘My daft brother only worked in Horshaw, but he was a priest: when a priest dies in the County, they take his body back to Priestown and hold a funeral service in the big cathedral there before laying his bones to rest in the churchyard.

  ‘So we’re going there to pay our last respects. But that’s not the only reason. I’ve unfinished business in that godforsaken town. Get out your notebook, lad. Turn to a clean page and make this heading...’

  I hadn’t finished my hotpot but I did what he asked right away. When he said ‘unfinished business’, I knew he meant spook’s business so I pulled the bottle of ink out of my pocket and placed it on the table next to my plate.

  Something clicked in my head. ‘Do you mean that ripper I bound? Do you think it’s escaped? There just wasn’t time to dig nine feet. Do you think it’s gone to Priestown?’

  ‘No, lad, you did fine. There’s something far worse than that there. That town is cursed! Cursed with something that I last faced over twenty long years ago. It got the better of me then and put me in bed for almost six months. In fact I almost died. Since then I’ve never been back, but as we’ve a need to visit the place, I might as well attend to that unfinished business. No, it’s not some straightforward ripper that plagues that cursed town. It’s an ancient evil spirit called “the Bane” and it’s the only one of its kind. It’s getting stronger and stronger so something needs to be done and I can’t put it off any longer.’

  I wrote ‘Bane’ at the top of a new page but then, to my disappointment, the Spook suddenly shook his head and followed that with a big yawn.

  ‘Come to think of it, this’ll save until tomorrow, lad. You’d better finish up your supper. We’ll be making an early start in the morning so we’d best be off to bed.’

  Chapter 3

  The Bane

  We set off soon after dawn, with me carrying the Spook’s heavy bag as usual. But within an hour I realized the journey would take us two days at least. Usually the Spook walked at a tremendous pace, making me struggle to keep up, but he was still weak and kept getting breathless and stopping to rest.

  It was a nice sunny day with just a touch of autumn chill in the air. The sky was blue and the birds were singing but none of that mattered. I just couldn’t stop thinking about the Bane.

  What worried me was the fact that the Spook had already nearly been killed once trying to bind it. He was older now and if he didn’t get his strength back soon, how could he possibly hope to beat it this time?

  So at noon, when we stopped for a long rest, I decided to ask him all about this terrible spirit. I didn’t ask him right away because, to my surprise, as we sat down together on the trunk of a fallen tree, he pulled a loaf and a big hunk of ham from his bag and cut us a very generous portion each. Usually, when on the way to a job, we made do with a measly nibble of cheese because you have to fast before facing the dark.

  Still, I was hungry, so I didn’t complain. I supposed that we’d have time to fast once the funeral was over and that the Spook needed food now to build up his strength again.

  At last, when I’d finished eating, I took a deep breath, got out my notebook and finally asked him about the Bane. To my surprise he told me to put the book away.

  ‘You can write this up later when we’re on our way back,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’ve a lot to learn about the Bane myself so there’s no point in writing down something that you might need to change later.’

  I suppose my mouth dropped open at that. I mean, I’d always thought the Spook knew almost everything there was to know about the dark.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised, lad,’ he said. ‘As you know, I still keep a notebook myself and so will you, if you live to my age. We never stop learning in this job, and the first step towards knowledge is to accept your own ignorance.

  ‘As I said before, the Bane is an ancient, malevolent spirit that has so far got the better of me, I’m ashamed to admit. But hopefully not this time. Our first problem will be to find it,’ continued the Spook.

  ‘It lives in the catacombs down under Priestown cathedral - there are miles and miles of tunnels.’

  ‘What are the catacombs for?’ I asked, wondering who would build so many tunnels.

  ‘They’re full of crypts, lad, underground burial chambers that hold ancient bones. Those tunnels existed long before the cathedral was built. The hill was already a holy site when the first priests came here in ships from the west.’

  ‘So who built the catacombs?’

  ‘Some call the builders the “Little People” on account of their size but their true name was the Segantii; not that much is known about them apart from the fact that the Bane was once their god.’

  ‘It’s a god?’

  ‘Aye, it was always a powerful force, and the earliest Little People recognized its strength and worshipped it. Reckon the Bane would like to be a god again. You see, it used to roam free in the County. Over the centuries it grew corrupt and evil and terrorized the Little People night and day, turning brother against brother, destroying crops, burning homes, slaughtering innocents. It liked to see people existing in fear and poverty, beaten down until life was hardly worth living. Those were dark, terrible times for the Segantii.

  ‘But it wasn’t just the poor people it plagued. The Segantii’s k
ing was a good man called Heys. He’d defeated all his enemies in battle and tried to make his people strong and prosperous. But there was one enemy they couldn’t beat: the Bane. It suddenly demanded an annual tribute from King Heys. The poor man was ordered to sacrifice his seven sons, starting with the eldest. One son each year until none remained alive. It was more than any father could bear. But somehow Naze, the very last son, managed to bind the Bane to the catacombs. I don’t know how he did it - perhaps if I did it would be easier to defeat this creature. All I know is that its way was blocked by a locked silver gate: like many creatures of the dark it has a vulnerability to silver.’

  ‘And so it’s still trapped down there after all this time?’

  ‘Yes, lad. It’s bound down there until someone opens that gate and sets it free. That’s fact and it’s something that all the priests know. It’s knowledge passed down from generation to generation.’

  ‘But isn’t there any other way out? How can the Silver Gate keep it in?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, lad. All I know is that the Bane is bound in the catacombs, and is only able to leave through that gate.’

  I wanted to ask what was wrong with just leaving it there if it was bound and unlikely to escape, but he answered before I could voice the question. The Spook knew me well by now and was good at guessing what I was thinking.

  ‘But we can’t just leave things as they are, I’m afraid, lad. You see, it’s growing stronger again now. It wasn’t always just a spirit. That only happened after it was bound. Before that, when it was very powerful, it had a physical form.’

  ‘What did it look like?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll find out tomorrow. Before you enter the cathedral for the funeral service, look up at the stone carving directly above the main doorway. It’s as good a representation of the creature as you’re likely to see.’

  ‘Have you seen the real thing then?’