The Spook's Mistake Page 5

  In front of the house, the stream hurled itself at the huge wooden waterwheel, which remained idle, immobile despite the furious efforts of the torrent; this rushed on into a dark tunnel beneath the building. Looking at the wheel more closely, I could see that it was rotten and broken and probably hadn't moved for many a long year.

  The first door I came to was boarded up, as were the three windows closest to it. So I walked on towards the stream until I reached a narrow porch enclosing a large, sturdy door. This looked like the main entrance so I knocked three times. Perhaps Arkwright was back by now? When nobody came in response, I rapped again, harder this time. Finally I tried the handle but found the door locked.

  What was I supposed to do now? Sit on the step in the cold and damp? It was bad enough in daylight but soon it would be dark. There was no guarantee that Arkwright would be back before then. Investigating the body in the water might take him days.

  There was a way to solve my problem. I had a special key, made by Andrew, the Spook's locksmith brother. Although it would open most doors, and I expected the one before me to present little difficulty, I was reluctant to use it. It just didn't seem right to go into someone's house without their permission, so I decided to wait a little longer to see if Arkwright turned up after all. But soon the cold and damp began to seep into my bones and changed my mind for me. After all, I was going to live here for six months and he was expecting me.

  The key turned easily in the lock but the door groaned on its hinges as it slowly opened. The mill was gloomy within, the air damp and musty and tainted with the strong odour of stale wine. I took just one step inside, allowing my eyes to adjust, then looking about me. There was a large table at the far end of the room, at the centre of which was a single candle set within a small brass candlestick. I put down my staff and used my bag to wedge open the door and allow some light into the room. Pulling my tinderbox from my pocket, I had the candle lit within moments. That done, I noticed a sheet of paper on the table, held in position by the candlestick. One glance and I could see that it was a note for me so I picked it up and began to read.

  Dear Master Ward,

  It seems that you have used your initiative, otherwise you would have spent the night outside in the dark, an experience that would be less than pleasant. Here you will find things very different to Chipenden.

  Although I follow the same trade as Mr Gregory, we work in different ways. Your master's house is a refuge, cleansed from within; but here, the unquiet dead walk and it is my wish that they do so. They will not harm you, so leave them be. Do nothing.

  There is food in the larder and wood for the stove by the door, so eat your fill and sleep well. It would be wise to spend the night in the kitchen and await my return. Do not venture down into the lowest part of the house nor attempt to enter the topmost room, which is locked.

  Respect my wishes both for your good and for mine.

  Bill Arkwright

  CHAPTER 5

  A shrill high scream

  I found Arkwright's comments about the dead very strange. Why would he allow them to disturb the tranquillity of his house? Surely it was his duty to give them peace by sending them towards the light? That's certainly what the Spook would have done. But my master had already explained that Arkwright might do things differently and it would be my duty to adapt to his ways.

  I looked about, now able to see the room properly for the first time. It was not in the least inviting – it wasn't really a living room at all. The windows were boarded up, so no wonder it had been gloomy. No doubt it had been used for storage when the building was a working mill. There was no fireplace, and apart from the table the only items of furniture were two hard-backed wooden chairs, standing in opposite corners of the room. But there were several crates of wine stacked against the wall and a long row of empty bottles. Dust and cobwebs festooned the walls and ceiling, and although the front door opened directly into the room, Arkwright clearly used it only as a means to reach the other parts of the house.

  I moved my bag away from the door, before closing and locking it. Next I took the candle from the table and went through to the kitchen. The window over the sink wasn't boarded up but it was still very foggy outside and the light was starting to fail. On the window ledge lay one of the biggest knives I'd ever seen. It certainly wasn't for the preparation of food! However, the kitchen was tidier than I'd expected, free of dust, with plates, cups and pans neatly stacked in wall cupboards and a small dining table and three wooden chairs. I found the larder filled with cheese, ham, bacon and half a loaf.

  Rather than a fireplace there was a large stove, wider than it was tall, with two doors and an iron chimney that twisted over it to enter the ceiling above. The lefthand door opened to reveal a frying pan; the right was filled with wood and straw, ready for lighting. No doubt this was the only way to heat and cook in a wooden building like this.

  Wasting no time, I used my tinderbox to light the stove. The kitchen soon filled with warmth and then I began frying three generous rashers of bacon. The bread was dry and past its best but still good enough to toast. There was no butter but the food went down very well and I was soon feeling much better.

  I began to feel sleepy so I decided to go upstairs and look at the bedrooms, hoping to work out which one was intended for me. I carried the candle with me and it proved to be a wise decision. The stairs could hardly have been darker. On the first floor there were four doors. The first led to a lumber room full of empty boxes, dirty sheets, blankets and miscellaneous rubbish which gave off an unpleasant smell of mould and decay. The walls had damp patches and some of the heaped sheets were heavily mildewed. The next two doors each led to single bedrooms. In the first, the crumpled sheets showed that the bed had been slept in; the second contained a bed with a bare mattress. Was that meant to be mine? If so, I longed to be back in Chipenden. There was no other furniture in the bleak, uninviting room and the air was chilly and damp.

  The fourth room had a large double bed in it. The blankets lay in an untidy heap at its foot, and again the sheets were rumpled. Something didn't feel right in this room and the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. I shivered, lifted the candle higher and approached the bed. It actually looked wet, and when I touched it lightly with my fingers, I found it saturated. It couldn't have been wetter if someone had emptied half a dozen bucketfuls of water over it. I looked up at the ceiling but could see no hole there nor any signs of staining due to leaks. How had it got so wet? I quickly backed away through the door, closing it firmly behind me.

  The more I thought about it, the less I liked this floor. There was another level above but Arkwright had warned me to keep away, so I decided to take his advice and sleep on the kitchen floor. At least it didn't feel damp and the heat from the stove would keep me warm until morning.

  Just after midnight something woke me. The kitchen was in almost total darkness, with just the faintest of glows from the stove.

  What had disturbed me? Had Arkwright returned home? But the hairs on the back of my neck were rising again and I shivered. As a seventh son of a seventh son, I see and hear things that other people don't. Arkwright had said that the unquiet dead were present in the house. If so, more than likely I'd soon know about it.

  Just then there was a deep rumbling sound from somewhere below that vibrated right through the walls of the mill. What was it? It seemed to be getting louder and louder.

  I was intrigued but I decided not to get up. Arkwright had told me to do nothing. It was none of my business. Even so, the noise was scary and disturbing and I couldn't get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. Eventually I worked out what the sound was. The waterwheel. The waterwheel was turning! Or at least it sounded like it.

  Then there was a shrill scream and the rumbling stopped as quickly as it had started. It was a scream so terrible and filled with such extreme anguish that I covered my ears. Of course, that didn't help. The sound was inside my head – the remnants of something that had ta
ken place many years earlier in this mill. I was listening to someone in terrible pain.

  At last the scream faded away and everything became peaceful and quiet again. What I'd heard would have been enough to drive most people from the building. I was a spook's apprentice and such things were part of the job but I still felt scared – my whole body was trembling. Arkwright had said that nothing here would harm me but there was something strange going on. Something more than just a routine haunting.

  Even so, gradually I became calmer, and soon I was fast asleep again.

  I slept well, too well. It was long past sunrise when I awoke to find that someone else was with me in the kitchen.

  'Well, boy!' a deep voice boomed. 'You're easily taken unawares. It doesn't pay to sleep too deeply in these parts. Nowhere is safe!'

  I sat up quickly, then stumbled clumsily to my feet. Facing me was a spook, holding his staff in his left hand and a bag in his right. And what a bag! It could have easily contained both my master's and my own within it. Then I noticed the tip of the staff. My master's staff and mine both had retractable blades but this one was clearly visible, a wicked-looking knife at least twelve inches long, with six backward-facing barbs, three on each side.

  'Mr Arkwright?' I asked. 'I'm Tom Ward . . .'

  'Aye, I'm Bill Arkwright, and I guessed who you must be. I'm pleased to meet you, Master Ward. Your master speaks highly of you.'

  I stared at him, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes. He wasn't quite as tall as my master but he was sturdier in a sort of wiry way that suggested strength. His face was gaunt and he had large green eyes and a strikingly bald head, from which not even a solitary hair sprouted – it was shaved as closely as that of a monk. On his left cheek was a vivid scar, which looked to be from a wound recently inflicted.

  I also saw that his lips were stained purple. The Spook didn't drink, but once, when he'd been ill, raving with the fever, he'd drunk a whole bottle of red wine. Afterwards his lips had been that same purple colour.

  Arkwright leaned his staff against the wall next to the inner door, then put down his bag. There was a chink of glass as it made contact with the kitchen floor. He held out his hand towards me. I shook it. 'Mr Gregory thinks well of you too,' I told him, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the guinea. 'He sent you this to help towards my keep . . ..'

  Arkwright took it from me, put it to his mouth and bit into it hard. He inspected it closely, then smiled and nodded his thanks. He'd checked to make sure it was a real guinea made out of gold rather than some counterfeit. That annoyed me. Did he think my master would try to cheat him? Or was it me he suspected?

  'Let's trust each other for a while, Master Ward,' he said, 'and see how we get on. Let's allow time enough to give us a chance to judge each other.'

  'My master said you'd have lots to teach me about the area north of Caster,' I continued, trying not to show my irritation about the guinea. 'About things that come out of the water . . .'

  'Aye, I'll be teaching you about that all right, but mostly I'll be toughening you up. Are you strong, Master Ward?'

  'Quite strong for my age,' I said uncertainly.

  'Sure about that, are you?' Arkwright said, looking me up and down. 'I think you'll need a bit more muscle on you to survive in this job! Any good at armwrestling?'

  'Never tried it before . . .'

  'Well, you can try it now. It'll give me an idea of what needs to be done. Come over here and sit yourself down!' he commanded, leading the way to the table.

  I'd been the youngest by three years and had missed those family games, but I remembered my brothers Jack and James arm-wrestling at the kitchen table back at the farm. In those days Jack always won because he was older, taller and stronger. I would be at the same disadvantage against Arkwright.

  I sat down facing him and we placed our left arms together and locked hands. With my elbow on the table, my arm was shorter than his. I did my best but he exerted a strong, steady pressure, and despite my best attempts to resist he bent my arm back until it was flat against the table,

  'That the best you can do?' he asked. 'What about if we give you a little help?'

  So saying, he went over to his bag and returned carrying his notebook. 'Here, put this under your elbow . . .'

  With the notebook raising my elbow from the tabletop, my arm was almost as long as his. So when I felt the first steady pressure from his arm, I brought all my strength to bear just as suddenly as I could. To my satisfaction I managed to force his arm a little way back, and I saw the surprise in his eyes. But then he countered with a strength that forced my arm to the surface of the table in seconds. With a grunt, he released my hand and stood up while I rubbed my sore muscles.

  'That was better,' he said, 'but you need to harden those muscles if you're going to survive. Hungry, Master Ward?'

  I nodded.

  'Right then, I'll cook us some breakfast and after that we'd better start getting to know each other.'

  He opened his bag to reveal two empty wine bottles - along with other provisions: cheese, eggs, ham, pork and two large fish. 'Caught this morning, these!' he exclaimed. 'Don't come much fresher. We'll have one between us now and the other for breakfast tomorrow. Ever cooked fish?'

  I shook my head.

  'No, you've got the luxury of that boggart doing all your chores for you,' said Arkwright, shaking his own head in disapproval. 'Well, here we have to do things for ourselves. So you'd better watch me while I cook this fish because you'll be doing the other one tomorrow. You don't mind doing your share of the cooking, do you?'

  'Of course not,' I replied. I just hoped I'd be able to manage. The Spook didn't think much of my cooking.

  'That's all right then. When we've finished breakfast, I'll show you around the mill. We'll see if you're as brave as your master makes out.'

  CHAPTER 6

  Water lore

  The fish tasted good and Arkwright seemed keen to chat as we ate.

  'The first thing to remember about the territory I protect,' he said, 'is that there's a lot of water about. Water is very wet and that can be a problem . . .'

  I thought he was trying to make a joke so I smiled, but he glared at me fiercely. 'That's not meant to be funny, Master Ward. In fact it's not funny at all. By "wet" I mean that it saturates everything, soaks into the ground, into the body and into the very soul. It permeates this whole area and is the key to all the difficulties we face. It's an environment within which denizens of the dark thrive. We are of the land, not of water. So it is very difficult to deal with such creatures.'

  I nodded. 'Does "permeate" mean the same thing as "saturate"?'

  'That it does, Master Ward. Water gets everywhere and into everything. And there's a lot of it about. There's Morecambe Bay for a start, which is like a big bite taken out of the County by the sea. Dangerous channels like deep rivers cross the shifting sands of the bay. People cross over when the tides permit, but they come in fast and sometimes a thick mist comes down. Every year the sea claims coaches, horses and passengers there. They vanish without a trace.

  'Then there are the lakes to the north. Deceptively calm some days, but very deep. And there are dangerous things that come out of the lakes.'

  'Mr Gregory told me that you bound the Coniston Ripper. And that it had killed over thirty people before you made the shores of the lake safe.'

  Arkwright positively glowed when I said that. 'Aye, Master Ward. At first it was a mystery that baffled the locals,' he explained. 'It seized lone fishermen and pulled them overboard. People assumed the missing men had drowned, but if so, why weren't their bodies washed ashore? At last there were too many victims and I was called in. It wasn't an easy task. I suspected a ripper, but where was its lair? And, once drained of blood, what had happened to the bodies? Well, Master Ward, you need both patience and perseverance in this job, and finally I tracked it down.