The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Read online

  I needed help badly and I thought of going down to the village, but I knew there was a more special kind of help near at hand. So I went into the kitchen and sat at the table.

  At any moment I expected to have my ears boxed, so I talked quickly. I explained everything that had happened, leaving nothing out. Then I said that it was my fault and could I please be given some help.

  I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t feel foolish talking to the empty air because I was so upset and frightened, but as the silence lengthened, I gradually realized that I’d been wasting my time. Why should the boggart help me? For all I knew it was a prisoner, bound to the house and garden by the Spook. It might just be a slave, desperate to be free; it might even be happy because I was in trouble.

  Just when I was about to give up and leave the kitchen, I remembered something my dad often said before we went off to the local market: “Everyone has his price. It’s just a case of making an offer that pleases him but doesn’t hurt you too much.”

  So I made the boggart an offer.

  “If you help me now, I won’t forget it,” I said. “When I become the next Spook, I’ll give you every Sunday off. On that day I’ll make my own meals so that you can have a rest and please yourself what you do.”

  Suddenly I felt something brush against my legs under the table. There was a noise, too, a faint purring, and a big ginger cat strolled into view and moved slowly toward the door.

  It must have been under the table all the time—that’s what common sense told me. I knew different, though, so I followed the cat out into the hallway and then up the stairs, where it halted outside the locked door of the library. Then it rubbed its back against it, the way cats do against table legs. The door slowly swung open to reveal more books than anyone could ever have read in one lifetime, arranged neatly on rows of parallel racks of shelves. I stepped inside, wondering where to begin. And when I turned around again, the big ginger cat had vanished.

  Each book had its title neatly displayed on the cover. A lot were written in Latin and quite a few in Greek. There was no dust or cobwebs. The library was just as clean and well cared for as the kitchen.

  I walked along the first row until something caught my eye. Near the window there were three very long shelves full of leather-bound notebooks, just like the one the Spook had given me, but the top shelf had larger books with dates on the covers. Each one seemed to record a period of five years, so I picked up the one at the end of the shelf and opened it carefully.

  I recognized the Spook’s handwriting. Flicking through the pages, I realized that it was a sort of diary. It recorded each job he’d done, the time taken in traveling and the amount he’d been paid. Most importantly, it explained just how each boggart, ghost, and witch had been dealt with.

  I put the book back on the shelf and glanced along the other spines. The diaries extended almost up to the present day but went back hundreds of years. Either the Spook was a lot older than he looked or the earlier books had been written by other spooks who’d lived ages ago. I suddenly wondered whether, even if Alice was right and the Spook didn’t come back, there was a possibility that I might be able to learn all I needed to know just by studying those diaries. Better still, somewhere in those thousands upon thousands of pages there might be information that would help me now.

  How could I find it? Well, it might take time, but the witch had been in the pit for almost thirteen years. There had to be an account of how the Spook had put her there. Then, suddenly, on a lower shelf, I saw something even better.

  There were even bigger books, each dedicated to a particular topic. One was labeled Dragons and Wormes. As they were displayed in alphabetical order, it didn’t take me long to find just what I was looking for.

  Witches.

  I opened it with trembling hands to find it was divided into four predictable sections. . . .

  The Malevolent, The Benign, The Falsely Accused, and The Unaware.

  I quickly turned to the first section. Everything was in the Spook’s neat handwriting and, once again, carefully organized into alphabetical order. Within seconds I found a page titled “Mother Malkin.”

  It was worse than I’d expected. Mother Malkin was just about as evil as you could imagine. She’d lived in lots of places, and in each area she’d stayed, something terrible had happened, the worst thing of all occurring on a moss to the west of the County.

  She’d lived on a farm there, offering a place to stay to young women who were expecting babies but had no husbands to support them. That was where she’d gotten the title “Mother.” This had gone on for years, but some of the young women had never been seen again.

  She’d had a son of her own living with her there, a young man of incredible strength called Tusk. He had big teeth and frightened people so much that nobody ever went near the place. But at last the locals had roused themselves, and Mother Malkin had been forced to flee to Pendle. After she’d gone, they’d found the first of the graves. There was a whole field of bones and rotting flesh, mainly the remains of the children she’d murdered to supply her need for blood. Some of the bodies were those of women; in each case the body had been crushed, the ribs broken or cracked.

  The lads in the village had talked about a thing with too many teeth to fit in its mouth. Could that be Tusk, Mother Malkin’s son? A son who’d probably killed those women by crushing the life out of them?

  That set my hands trembling so much that I could hardly hold the book steady enough to read it. It seemed that some witches used bone magic. They were necromancers who got their power by summoning the dead. But Mother Malkin was even worse. Mother Malkin used blood magic. She got her power by using human blood and was particularly fond of the blood of children.

  I thought of the black, sticky cakes and shuddered. A child had gone missing from the Long Ridge. A child too young to walk. Had it been snatched by Bony Lizzie? Had its blood been used to make those cakes? And what about the second child, the one the villagers were searching for? What if Bony Lizzie had snatched that one, too, ready for when Mother Malkin escaped from her pit so that she could use its blood to work her magic? The child might be in Lizzie’s house now!

  I forced myself to go on reading.

  Thirteen years ago, early in the winter, Mother Malkin had come to live in Chipenden, bringing her granddaughter, Bony Lizzie, with her. When the Spook had come back from his winter house in Anglezarke, he’d wasted no time in dealing with her. After driving off Bony Lizzie, he’d bound Mother Malkin with a silver chain and carried her back to the pit in his garden.

  The Spook seemed to be arguing with himself in the account. He clearly didn’t like burying her alive but explained why it had to be done. He believed that it was too dangerous to kill her: once slain, she had the power to return and would be even stronger and more dangerous than before.

  The point was, could she still escape? One cake and she’d been able to bend the bars. Although she wouldn’t get the third, two might just be enough. At midnight she might still climb out of the pit. What could I do?

  If you could bind a witch with a silver chain, then it might have been worth trying to fasten one across the top of the bent bars to stop her from climbing out of her pit. The trouble was, the Spook’s silver chain was in his bag, which always traveled with him.

  I saw something else as I left that library. It was beside the door, so I hadn’t noticed it as I came in. It was a long list of names on yellow paper, exactly thirty and all written in the Spook’s own handwriting. My own name, Thomas J. Ward, was at the very bottom, and directly above it was the name William Bradley, which had been crossed out with a horizontal line; next to it were the letters RIP.

  I felt cold all over then, because I knew that they meant Rest in Peace and that Billy Bradley had died. More than two thirds of the names on the paper had been crossed off; of those, nine besides Billy were dead.

  I supposed that a lot were crossed out simply because they’d failed to make the grade as app
rentices, perhaps not even making it to the end of the first month. Those who had died were more worrying. I wondered what had happened to Billy Bradley, and I remembered what Alice had said: “You don’t want to end up like Old Gregory’s last apprentice.”

  How did Alice know what had happened to Billy? It was probably just that everybody in the locality knew about it, while I was an outsider. Or had her family had something to do with it? I hoped not, but it gave me something else to worry about.

  Wasting no more time, I went down to the village. The butcher seemed to have some contact with the Spook. How else had he gotten the sack to put the meat into? So I decided to tell him about my suspicions and try to persuade him to search Lizzie’s house for the missing child.

  It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at his shop, and it was closed. I knocked on the doors of five cottages before anyone came to answer. They confirmed what I already suspected: The butcher had gone off with the other men to search the fells. They wouldn’t be back until noon the following day. It seemed that after searching the local fells, they were going to cross the valley to the village at the foot of the Long Ridge, where the first child had gone missing. There they’d carry out a wider search and stay overnight.

  I had to face it. I was on my own.

  Soon, both sad and afraid, I was climbing the lane back toward the Spook’s house. I knew that if Mother Malkin got out of her grave, then the child would be dead before morning.

  I knew also that I was the only one who might even try to do something about it.

  CHAPTER IX

  On the Riverbank

  BACK at the cottage, I went to the room where the Spook kept his walking clothes. I chose one of his old cloaks. It was too big, of course, and the hem came down almost to my ankles, while the hood kept falling down over my eyes. Still, it would keep out the worst of the cold. I borrowed one of his staffs, too, the one most useful to me as a walking stick: It was shorter than the others and slightly thicker at one end.

  When I finally left the cottage, it was close to midnight. The sky was bright and there was a full moon just rising above the trees, but I could smell rain and the wind was freshening from the west.

  I walked out into the garden and headed directly for Mother Malkin’s pit. I was afraid, but someone had to do it, and who else was there but me? It was all my fault anyway. If only I’d told the Spook about meeting Alice and what she’d told the lads about Lizzie being back! He could have sorted it all out then. He wouldn’t have been lured away to Pendle.

  The more I thought about it, the worse it got. The child on the Long Ridge might not have died. I felt guilty, so guilty, and I couldn’t stand the thought that another child might die and that would be my fault, too.

  I passed the second grave, where the dead witch was buried head down, and moved very slowly forward on my tiptoes until I reached the pit.

  A shaft of moonlight fell through the trees to light it up, so there was no doubt about what had happened.

  I was too late.

  The bars had been bent even farther apart, almost into the shape of a circle. Even the butcher could have eased his massive shoulders through that gap.

  I peered down into the blackness of the pit but couldn’t see anything. I suppose I had a forlorn hope that she might have exhausted herself bending the bars and was now too tired to climb out.

  Fat chance. At that moment a cloud drifted across the moon, making things a lot darker, but I could see the bent ferns. I could see the direction she’d taken. There was enough light to follow her trail.

  So I followed her into the gloom. I wasn’t moving too quickly, and I was being very, very cautious. What if she was hiding and waiting for me just ahead? I also knew that she probably hadn’t gotten very far. For one thing, it wasn’t more than five minutes or so after midnight. Whatever was in the cakes she’d eaten, I knew that dark magic would have played some part in getting her strength back. It was a magic that was supposed to be more powerful during the hours of darkness—particularly at midnight. She’d only eaten two cakes, not three, so that was in my favor, but I thought of the terrible strength needed to bend those bars.

  Once out of the trees, I found it easy to follow her trail through the grass. She was heading downhill, but in a direction that would take her away from Bony Lizzie’s cottage. That puzzled me at first, until I remembered the river in the gully below. A malevolent witch couldn’t cross running water—the Spook had taught me that—so she would have to move along its banks until it curved back upon itself, leaving her way clear.

  Once in sight of the river, I paused on the hillside and searched the land below. The moon came out from behind the cloud, but at first, even with its help, I couldn’t see anything much down by the river because there were trees on both banks, casting dark shadows.

  And then suddenly I noticed something very strange. There was a silver trail on the near bank. It was only visible where the moon touched it, but it looked just like the glistening trail made by a snail. A few seconds later I saw a dark, shadowy thing, all hunched up, shuffling along very close to the riverbank.

  I started off down the hill as quickly as I could. My intention was to cut her off before she reached the bend in the river and was able to head directly for Bony Lizzie’s place. I managed that and stood there, the river on my right, facing downstream. But next came the difficult part. Now I had to face the witch.

  I was trembling and shaking and so out of breath that you’d have thought I’d spent an hour or so running up and down the fells. It was a mixture of fear and nerves, and my knees felt as if they were going to give way any minute. It was only by leaning heavily on the Spook’s staff that I was able to stay on my feet at all.

  As rivers went, it wasn’t that wide, but it was deep, swollen by the spring rains to a level where it had almost burst its banks. The water was moving fast, too, rushing away from me into the darkness beneath the trees where the witch was. I looked very carefully, but it still took me quite a few moments to find her.

  Mother Malkin was moving in my direction. She was a shadow darker than the tree shadows, a sort of blackness that you could fall into, a darkness that would swallow you up forever. I heard her then, even above the noise made by the fast-flowing river. It wasn’t just the sound of her bare feet, which were making a sort of slithery noise as they moved toward me through the long grass at the stream’s edge. No—there were other sounds that she was making with her mouth and perhaps her nose. The same sort of noises she’d made when I’d fed her the cake. There were snortings and snufflings that once again brought into my mind the memory of our hairy pigs feeding from the swill bucket. Then a different sound, a sucking noise.

  When she moved out from under the trees into the open, the moonlight fell on her and I saw her properly for the first time. Her head was bowed low, her face hidden by a tangled mass of white-and-gray hair, so it seemed that she was looking at her feet, which were just visible under the dark gown that came down to her ankles. She wore a black cloak, too, and either it was too long for her or the years she had spent in the damp earth had made her shrink. It hung down to the ground behind her, and it was this, dragging over the grass, that seemed to be making the silver trail.

  Her gown was stained and torn, which wasn’t really surprising, but some were fresh stains—dark, wet patches. Something was dripping onto the grass at her side, and the drips were coming from what she gripped tightly in her left hand.

  It was a rat. She was eating a rat. Eating it raw.

  She didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. She was very close now, and if nothing happened, she’d bump right into me. I coughed suddenly. It wasn’t to warn her. It was a nervous cough, and I hadn’t meant it to happen.

  She looked up at me then, lifting into the moonlight a face that was something out of a nightmare, a face that didn’t belong to a living person. Oh, but she was alive all right. You could tell that by the noises she was making eating that rat.

  But there was so
mething else about her that terrified me so much that I almost fainted away on the spot. It was her eyes. They were like two hot coals burning inside their sockets, two red points of fire.

  And then she spoke to me, her voice something between a whisper and a croak. It sounded like dry, dead leaves rustling together in a late autumn wind.

  “It’s a boy,” she said. “I like boys. Come here, boy.”

  I didn’t move, of course. I just stood there, rooted to the spot. I felt dizzy and light-headed.

  She was still moving toward me and her eyes seemed to be growing larger. Not only her eyes; her whole body seemed to be swelling up. She was expanding into a vast cloud of darkness that within moments would darken my own eyes forever.

  Without thinking, I lifted the Spook’s staff. My hands and arms did it, not me.

  “What’s that, boy, a wand?” she croaked. Then she chuckled to herself and dropped the dead rat, lifting both her arms toward me.

  It was me she wanted. She wanted my blood. In absolute terror, my body began to sway from side to side. I was like a sapling agitated by the first stirrings of a wind, the first storm wind of a dark winter that would never end.

  I could have died then, on the bank of that river. There was nobody to help, and I felt powerless to help myself.

  But suddenly it happened. . . .

  The Spook’s staff wasn’t a wand, but there’s more than one kind of magic. My arms conjured up something special, moving faster than I could even think.

  They lifted the staff and swung it hard, catching the witch a terrible blow on the side of the head.

  She gave a sort of grunt and fell sideways into the river. There was a big splash, and she went right under but came up very close to the bank, about five or six paces downstream. At first I thought that that was the end of her, but to my horror, her left arm came out of the water and grabbed a tussock of grass. Then the other arm reached for the bank, and she started to drag herself out of the water.