The Spook's Apprentice (2 page)

‘I’m not sure, Mam,’ I told her, remembering Jack’s joke about having to buy friends. ‘Nobody wants to go anywhere near a spook. I’ll have no friends. I’ll be lonely all the time.’

‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ Mam said. ‘You’ll have your master to talk to. He’ll be your teacher, and no doubt he’ll eventually become your friend. And you’ll be busy all the time. Busy learning new things. You’ll have no time to feel lonely. Don’t you find the whole thing new and exciting?’

‘It’s exciting but the job scares me. I want to do it but I don’t know if I can. One part of me wants to travel and see places but it’ll be hard not to live here any more. I’ll miss you all. I’ll miss being at home.’

‘You can’t stay here,’ Mam said. ‘Your dad’s getting too old to work, and come next winter he’s handing the farm over to Jack. Ellie will be having her baby soon, no doubt the first of many; eventually there won’t be room for you here. No, you’d better get used to it before that happens. You can’t come home.’

Her voice seemed cold and a little sharp, and to hear her speak to me like that drove a pain deep into my chest and throat so that I could hardly breathe.

I just wanted to go to bed then, but she had a lot to say. I’d rarely heard her use so many words all in one go.

‘You have a job to do and you’re going to do it,’ she said sternly. ‘And not only do it; you’re going to do it well. I married your dad because he was a seventh son. And I bore him six sons so that I could have you. Seven times seven you are and you have the gift. Your new master’s still strong but he’s some way past his best and his time is finally coming to an end.

‘For nearly sixty years he’s walked the County lines doing his duty. Doing what has to be done. Soon it’ll be your turn. And if you won’t do it, then who will? Who’ll look after the ordinary folk? Who’ll keep them from harm? Who’ll make the farms, villages and towns safe so that women and children can walk the streets and lanes free from fear?’

I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t look her in the eye. I just fought to hold back the tears.

‘I love everyone in this house,’ she said, her voice softening, ‘but in the whole wide County, you’re the +only person who’s really like me. As yet, you’re just a boy who’s still a lot of growing to do, but you’re the seventh son of a seventh son. You’ve the gift and the strength to do what has to be done. I know you’re going to make me proud of you.

‘Well, now,’ Mam said, coming to her feet, ‘I’m glad that we’ve got that sorted out. Now off to bed with you. It’s a big day tomorrow and you want to be at your best.’

She gave me a hug and a warm smile and I tried really hard to be cheerful and smile back, but once up in my bedroom I sat on the edge of my bed just staring vacantly and thinking about what Mam had told me.

My main is well respected in the neighbourhood. She knows more about plants and medicines than the local doctor, and when there is a problem with delivering a baby, the midwife always sends for her. Mam is an expert on what she calls breech births. Sometimes a baby tries to get born feet first but my mam is good at turning them while they are still in the womb. Dozens of women in the County owe their lives to her.

Anyway, that was what my dad always said but Mam was modest and she never mentioned things like that. She just got on with what had to be done and I knew that’s what she expected of me. So I wanted to make her proud.

But could she really mean that she’d only married my dad and had my six brothers so she could give birth to me? It didn’t seem possible.

After thinking things through, I went across to the window and sat in the old wicker chair for a few minutes, staring through the window, which faced north.

The moon was shining, bathing everything in its silver light. I could see across the farmyard, beyond the two hay fields and the north pasture, right to the boundary of our farm, which ended halfway up Hangman’s Hill. I liked the view. I liked Hangman’s Hill from a distance. I liked the way it was the furthest thing you could see.

For years this had been my routine before climbing into bed each night. I used to stare at that hill and imagine what was on the other side. I knew that it was really just more fields and then, two miles further on, what passed for the local village - half a dozen houses, a small church and an even smaller school - but my imagination conjured up other things. Sometimes I imagined high cliffs with an ocean beyond, or maybe a forest or a great city with tall towers and twinkling lights.

But now, as I gazed at the hill, I remembered my fear as well. Yes, it was fine from a distance but it wasn’t a place I’d ever wanted to get close to. Hangman’s Hill, as you might have guessed, didn’t get its name for nothing.

Three generations earlier, a war had raged over the whole land and the men of the County had played their part. It had been the worst of all wars, a bitter civil war where families had been divided and where sometimes brother had even fought brother.

In the last winter of the war there’d been a big battle a mile or so to the north, just on the outskirts of the village. When it was finally over, the winning army had brought their prisoners to this hill and hanged them from the trees on its northern slope. They’d hanged some of their own men too, for what they claimed was cowardice in the face of the enemy, but there was another version of that tale. It was said that some of these men had refused to fight people they considered to be neighbours.

Even Jack never liked working close to that boundary fence, and the dogs wouldn’t go more than a few feet into the wood. As for me, because I can sense things that others can’t, I couldn’t even work in the north pasture. You see, from there I could hear them. I could hear the ropes creaking and the branches groaning under their weight. I could hear the dead, strangling and choking on the other side of the hill.

Mam had said that we were like each other. Well, she was certainly like me in one way: I knew she could also see things that others couldn’t. One winter, when I was very young and all my brothers lived at home, the noises from the hill got so bad at night that I could even hear them from my bedroom. My brothers didn’t hear a thing, but I did and I couldn’t sleep. Mam came to my room every time I called, even though she had to be up at the crack of dawn to do her chores.

Finally she said she was going to sort it out, and one night she climbed Hangman’s Hill alone and went up into the trees. When she came back, everything was quiet and it stayed like that for months afterwards.

So there was one way in which we weren’t alike.

Mam was a lot braver than I was.

I was up an hour before dawn but Mam was already in the kitchen, cooking my favourite breakfast, bacon and eggs.

Dad came downstairs while I was mopping the plate with my last slice of bread. As we said goodbye, he pulled something from his pocket and placed it in my hands. It was the small tinderbox that had belonged to his own dad and to his grandad before that. One of his favourite possessions.

‘I want you to have this, son,’ he said. ‘It might come in useful in your new job. And come back and see us soon. Just because you’ve left home, it doesn’t mean that you can’t come back and visit.’

‘It’s time to go, son,’ Mam said, walking across to give me a final hug. ‘He’s at the gate. Don’t keep him waiting.’

We were a family which didn’t like too much fuss, and as we’d already said our goodbyes, I walked out into the yard alone.

The Spook was on the other side of the gate, a dark silhouette against the grey dawn light. His hood was up and he was standing straight and tall, his staff in his left hand. I walked towards him, carrying my small bundle of possessions, feeling very nervous.

To my surprise, the Spook opened the gate and came into the yard. ‘Well, lad,’ he said, ‘follow me! We might as well start the way we mean to go on.’

Instead of heading for the road, he led the way north, directly towards Hangman’s Hill, and soon we were crossing the north pasture, my heart already starting to thump. When we reached the boundary fence, the Spook climbed over with the ease of a man half his age, but I froze. As I rested my hands against the top edge of the fence, I could already hear the sounds of the trees creaking, their branches bent and bowed under the weight of the hanging men.

‘What’s the matter, lad?’ asked the Spook, turning to look back at me. ‘If you’re frightened of something on your own doorstep, you’ll be of little use to me.’

I took a deep breath and clambered over the fence. We trudged upwards, the dawn light darkening as we moved up into the gloom of the trees. The higher we climbed the colder it seemed to get and soon I was shivering. It was the kind of cold that gives you goose pimples and makes the hair on the back of your neck start to rise. It was a warning that something wasn’t quite right. I’d felt it before when something had come close that didn’t belong in this world.

Once we’d reached the summit of the hill, I could see them below me. There had to be a hundred at least, sometimes two or three hanging from the same tree, wearing soldiers’ uniforms with broad leather belts and big boots. Their hands were tied behind their backs and all of them behaved differently. Some struggled desperately so that the branch above them bounced and jerked, while others were just spinning slowly on the end of the rope, pointing first one way, then the other.

As I watched, I suddenly felt a strong wind on my face, a wind so cold and fierce that it couldn’t have been natural. The trees bowed low, and their leaves shrivelled and began to fall. Within moments, all the branches were bare. When the wind had eased, the Spook put his hand on my shoulder and guided me nearer to the hanging men. We stopped just feet away from the nearest.

‘Look at him,’ said the Spook. ‘What do you see?’

‘A dead soldier,’ I replied, my voice beginning to wobble.

‘How old does he look?’

‘Seventeen at the most.’

‘Good. Well done, lad. Now, tell me, do you still feel scared?’

‘A bit. I don’t like being so close to him.’

‘Why? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing that can hurt you. Think about what it must have been like for him. Concentrate on him rather than yourself. How must he have felt? What would be the worst thing?’

I tried to put myself in the soldier’s place and imagine how it must have been to die like that. The pain and the struggle for breath would have been terrible. But there might have been something even worse...

‘He’d have known he was dying and that he’d never be able to go home again. That he’d never see his family again,’ I told the Spook.

With those words a wave of sadness washed over me. Then, even as that happened, the hanging men slowly began to disappear, until we were alone on the hillside and the leaves were back on the trees. ‘How do you feel now? Still afraid?’ I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just feel sad.’ ‘Well done, lad. You’re learning. We’re the seventh sons of seventh sons and we have the gift of seeing things that others can’t. But that gift can sometimes be a curse. If we’re afraid, sometimes there are things that can feed on that fear. Fear makes it worse for us. The trick is to concentrate on what you can see and stop thinking about yourself. It works every time.

‘It was a terrible sight, lad, but they’re just ghasts,’ continued the Spook. ‘There’s nothing much we can do about them and they’ll just fade away in their own time. In a hundred years or so there’ll be nothing left.’

I felt like telling him that Mam did something about them once, but I didn’t. To contradict him would have got us off to a bad start.

‘Now if they were ghosts, that would be different,’ said the Spook. ‘You can talk to ghosts and tell them what’s what. Just making them realize that they’re dead is a great kindness and an important step in getting them to move on. Usually a ghost is a bewildered spirit trapped on this earth but not knowing what’s happened. So often they’re in torment. Then again, others are here with a definite purpose and they might have things to tell you. But a ghast is just a fragment of a soul that’s gone on to better things. That’s what these are, lad. Just ghasts. You saw the trees change?’

‘The leaves fell and it was winter.’

‘Well, the leaves are back now. So you were just looking at something from the past. Just a reminder of the evil things that sometimes happen on this earth. Usually, if you’re brave, they can’t see you and they don’t feel anything. A ghast is just like a reflection in a pond that stays behind when its owner has moved on. Understand what I’m saying?’

I nodded.

‘Right, so that’s one thing sorted out. We’ll be dealing with the dead from time to time, so you might as well get used to them. Anyway, let’s get started. We’ve quite a way to go. Here, from now on you’ll be carrying this.’

The Spook handed me his big leather bag and without a backwards glance headed back up the hill. I followed him over its crest, then down through the trees towards the road, which was a distant grey scar meandering its way south through the green and brown patchwork of fields.

‘Done much travelling, lad?’ the Spook called back over his shoulder. ‘Seen much of the County?’

I told him I’d never been more than six miles from my dad’s farm. Going to the local market was the most travelling I’d ever done.

The Spook muttered something under his breath and shook his head; I could tell that he wasn’t best pleased by my answer.

‘Well, your travels start today,’ he said. ‘We’re heading south towards a village called Horshaw. It’s just over fifteen miles as the crow flies and we have to be there before dark.’

I’d heard of Horshaw. It was a pit village and had the largest coal yards in the County, holding the output of dozens of surrounding mines. I’d never expected to go there and I wondered what the Spook’s business could be in a place like that.

He walked at a furious pace, taking big, effortless strides. Soon I was struggling to keep up; as well as carrying my own small bundle of clothes and other belongings, I now had his bag, which seemed to be getting heavier by the minute. Then, just to make things worse, it started to rain.

About an hour before noon the Spook came to a sudden halt. He turned round and stared hard at me. By then I was about ten paces behind. My feet were hurting and I’d already developed a slight limp. The road was little more than a track that was quickly turning to mud. Just as I caught him up, I stubbed my toe, slipped and almost lost my balance.

He tutted. ‘Feeling dizzy, lad?’ he asked.

I shook my head. I wanted to give my arm a rest but it didn’t seem right to put his bag down in the mud.

‘That’s good,’ said the Spook with a faint smile, the rain dripping from the edge of his hood down onto his beard. ‘Never trust a man who’s dizzy. That’s something well worth remembering.’

‘I’m not dizzy,’ I protested.

‘No?’ asked the Spook, raising his bushy eyebrows. ‘Then it must be your boots. They won’t be much use in this job.’

My boots were the same as my dad’s and Jack’s, sturdy enough and suitable for the mud and muck of the farmyard, but the kind that needed a lot of getting used to. A new pair usually cost you a fortnight’s blisters before your feet got bedded in.

I looked down at the Spook’s. They were made of strong, good-quality leather and they had extra-thick soles. They must have cost a fortune, but I suppose that for someone who did a lot of walking, they were worth every penny. They flexed as he walked and I just knew that they’d been comfortable from the very first moment he pulled them on.

‘Good boots are important in this job,’ said the Spook. ‘We depend on neither man nor beast to get us where we need to go. If you rely on your own two good legs, then they won’t let you down. So if I finally decide to take you on, I’ll get you a pair of boots just like mine. Until then, you’ll just have to manage as best you can.’

At noon we halted for a short break, sheltering from the rain in an abandoned cattle shed. The Spook took a piece of cloth out of his pocket and unwrapped it, revealing a large lump of yellow cheese.

He broke a bit off and handed it to me. I’d seen worse and I was hungry so I wolfed it down. The Spook only ate a small piece himself before wrapping the rest up again and stuffing it back into his pocket.

Once out of the rain, he’d pulled his hood back so I now had the chance to look at him properly for the first time. Apart from the full beard and the hangman’s eyes, his most noticeable feature was his nose, which was grim and sharp, with a curve to it that suggested a bird’s beak. The mouth, when closed, was almost hidden by that moustache and beard. The beard itself had looked grey at first glance, but when I looked closer, trying to be as casual as possible so that he wouldn’t notice, I saw that most of the colours of the rainbow seemed to be sprouting there. There were shades of red, black, brown and, obviously, lots of grey, but as I came to realize later, it all depended on the light.

‘Weak jaw, weak character,’ my dad always used to say, and he also believed that some men wore beards just to hide that fact. Looking at the Spook though, you could see despite the beard that his jaw was long, and when he opened his mouth he revealed yellow teeth that were very sharp and more suited to gnawing on red meat than nibbling at cheese.

With a shiver, I suddenly realized that he reminded me of a wolf. And it wasn’t just the way he looked. He was a kind of predator because he hunted the dark; living merely on nibbles of cheese would make him always hungry and mean. If I completed my apprenticeship, I’d end up just like him.

‘You still hungry, lad?’ he asked, his green eyes boring hard into my own until I started to feel a bit dizzy.

I was soaked to the skin and my feet were hurting, but most of all I was hungry. So I nodded, thinking he might offer me some more, but he just shook his head and muttered something to himself. Then, once again, he looked at me sharply.

‘Hunger’s something you’re going to have to get used to,’ he said. ‘We don’t eat much when we’re working, and if the job’s very difficult, we don’t eat anything at all until afterwards. Fasting’s the safest thing because it makes us less vulnerable to the dark. It makes us stronger. So you might as well start practising now, because when we get to Horshaw, I’m going to give you a little test. You’re going to spend a night in a haunted house. And you’re going to do it alone. That’ll show me what you’re really made of!’