A figure emerged from the mist, walking straight toward me. For a moment his garb made me think he was a priest, but then I realized he was a spook. He wore a hood and gown, and boots of the finest quality leather. He came up really close, until I could see his scarred face. It was the same man who had been digging in the churchyard at Horshaw.
“You lost, boy?” he demanded, glaring at me from under his black bushy eyebrows.
I nodded.
“Thought so. We’ve been heading in the same direction for miles. You make enough noise to wake the dead! Doesn’t do to draw too much attention to yourself in these parts. Where are you bound?”
“The seminary at Houghton. I’m going to study there for the priesthood.”
“Are you now? Well, you won’t get to Houghton tonight. Follow me—I’ll see if I can find you somewhere better to bed down. This area is even more dangerous than usual, but as you’re here you’d be better off in my company.”
I had mixed feelings about the offer. I felt nervous being anywhere near a spook, but at the same time it was better than spending the night on my own in the open, at the mercy of any passing robber. And what did he mean, “more dangerous than usual”?
It was as if the spook had read my thoughts. “Please yourself, boy. I’m only trying to help,” he said, turning his back and beginning to walk away.
“Thanks for the offer. I’d like to travel with you,” I blurted out, something deep inside having made the decision for me.
So I followed him through the trees, glancing nervously both left and right into the mist. It was said that spirits and all manner of creepy things were towed along in the wake of a spook because of his line of work. That’s why people usually crossed the road to avoid passing close to one—and here I was on a dark misty night near enough to touch him!
He finally led me to an old wooden barn, and we settled ourselves down on some dry straw. There were holes in the roof and the door was missing, but it wasn’t raining and there was hardly any wind, so it was comfortable enough. The spook took a lantern from his bag and lit it while I opened my pack of cheese sandwiches and offered him one.
He declined with a smile and a shake of his head. “Thanks for the offer, boy. That’s generous of you, but I’m working at present, and it’s my habit to fast when facing the dark!”
“Is something from the dark nearby?” I asked nervously.
He grimaced. “That’s more than likely. I buried my apprentice today. He was killed by a boggart. Do you know anything about boggarts?”
I nodded. I’d been told that boggarts were spirits; they usually made a nuisance of themselves, scaring people by breaking plates or banging on doors. But I hadn’t heard of anyone being killed by one before.
“There was one that plagued the Green Bottle Tavern in Horshaw for a while,” I told him. “It used to howl down the chimney and whistle through keyholes. It never hurt anybody, though, and after a few weeks it just disappeared.”
“Sounds like a type we call a whistler, boy. They are mostly harmless. But there are lots of different kinds of boggarts, and some are more dangerous than others. For example, there are hall knockers, which usually just make noises. They feed on the fear they generate—that’s how they get their power. But hall-knockers sometimes change without warning into stone chuckers, which can hurl large rocks and kill people. But there are even worse types of boggarts. I’ve been trying to deal with what we call a bone breaker. They rob fresh graves, digging up the corpses, then scraping off the flesh and devouring the marrow inside the bones.”
I shuddered at the gruesome picture he’d painted, but he hadn’t finished yet.
“However, the worst of them develop a taste for the living. This happens when a witch gets involved. Some witches use bone magic as the source of their dark power. What better for such a malevolent witch than to control a bone breaker and get it to bring her what she needs!”
I shivered. “Sounds horrible!” I told him.
“It’s worse than that, boy. Soldiers fighting a battle rarely have to face such terrors. There I was, just two nights ago, on my way to bind a bone breaker, when the boggart struck. I heard it coming across the field, and I called out a warning to my apprentice. But it was too late. The boggart snatched the thumb bone of his left hand. Well, that’s what it wanted, but it took off the whole hand at the wrist. There was little I could do. I managed to stop the bleeding by binding his upper arm tightly with strips torn from his cloak. But he soon went blue round the lips and stopped breathing. The shock of the injury must have killed him.
“That was totally unexpected,” continued the spook. “The boggart would have had no idea we were in the vicinity. Someone must have directed it to us. I suspect a witch must have been involved . . .”
He fell silent and stared at the wall for a long time, as if reliving those terrible events. It gave me chance to study his face. The scar was exceedingly deep and ran from high on his forehead right down to his chin. He was lucky not to have lost the sight of his left eye. The scar cut a white swath through his eyebrow, and the two separated ridges of hair were not quite in line.
The spook glanced at me quickly. I looked away, but he knew that I’d been studying his face. “Not a pretty sight, is it, boy?” he growled. “Another boggart did that—a stone chucker. But that’s another story.”
“The boggart that killed your apprentice . . . is it close by?” I asked.
“It won’t be far away, boy. It all happened less than a mile from here. Over yonder to the east,” he said, pointing through the open doorway. “Just south of Grimshaw Wood—and that’s where I’ll be heading at first light. The job needs finishing.”
The thought of such a dangerous boggart so close to our shelter made me really nervous, and I jumped a few times when some noise outside disturbed me. But I was so tired that I eventually fell asleep.
Soon after dawn, with a brief “Good morning” and a nod, the spook and I parted, and I continued north through the trees. The weather had changed. It was now unseasonably warm, and dark clouds were gathering overhead. I’d traveled less than a mile when I heard the first rumble of thunder. Soon forked lightning was splitting the sky with flash after jagged flash. I’d never liked thunder—it made me nervous, and I wanted to get away from the trees and the risk of being struck by lightning.
Suddenly I saw what I took to be a ruined cottage ahead. One of the windows was boarded up, another had a broken pane, and the front door hung wide on its hinges. It seemed like a good place to shelter while the storm passed. But no sooner had I stepped inside than I realized I’d made a very big mistake.
The place showed signs of recent occupation. The ashes of a fire were still smoking in the grate of the small front room, and I saw the stub of a fat candle on the window ledge. A candle made from black wax.
When I saw that, my heart began to hammer with fear. It was said that witches used such candles: They were that dark color because blood had been stirred into the molten wax. This cottage must be a witch’s lair!
I held my breath and listened very carefully. The cottage was totally silent. All I could hear was the rain drumming on the roof. Should I run for it? Was it safer out there, at the mercy of the elements? Ready to flee at the slightest hint of danger, I tiptoed to the kitchen doorway and peered through. What I saw was bad. Very bad . . .
There were bones in an untidy heap in the far corner of the flagged floor: leg bones, arm bones, finger bones, and even a skull. But they weren’t just animal bones left over from cooking. My whole body started trembling at what I saw.
They were human bones. And among them were thumb bones. Lots of them.
I turned around and made straight for the cottage door, but I was too late. I glimpsed something through the broken window. Someone was approaching through the trees—a woman dressed in black, her long gown trailing on the wet grass. The sky was very dark now, and at first I couldn’t make out her face. But she suddenly came to a halt and the lightning flashed almost directly overhead, so I could see her clearly. How I wished I hadn’t! Her expression was cruel, her eyes narrow slits, her sharp nose almost fleshless. As I watched, she tilted her head upward, and I heard her sniff loudly three times. Then she started to move more quickly toward the cottage, as if she knew I was there.
I ran back into the kitchen. Could I escape through the back door? Desperately I tried to open it. The door was locked and too sturdy to force open. There were only two places to go. Either up the stairs or down stone steps into the darkness of the cellar! It was no choice at all, so I quickly tiptoed upstairs. The witch would surely have reached the front door by now.
I crept onto the landing and saw that there were only two bedrooms. Which one should I choose? There was no time to think. I opened the door and stepped into the first one. There was no bed, just a small table and lots of rubbish on the floor: a heap of moldering rags, pieces of a broken chair, and an old pair of pointy black shoes with the soles worn right through.
I sat down on the floor and tried to keep as still as possible. I heard the witch enter the house. She crossed the front room and stepped into the kitchen. Would she come up the stairs?
Lightning flashed just outside the window, to be answered by a loud crack of thunder. The storm was now almost directly overhead. I heard the click-click of the witch’s heels as she crossed the kitchen flags. Next the creaking of the wooden stairs. She was coming up toward me. And as she climbed, I began to feel very cold—the same sort of cold I’d experienced when my dad had locked me in the cellar and I’d come face-to-face with the dead miner.
Maybe the witch would go into the other room? This one was only a storeroom, but there might be a bed in the one next door. A bed where she’d settle down and go to sleep. I’d be able to sneak out of the house and make my escape then.
“Please, God! Please!” I prayed silently. “Make her choose the other room!”
But my prayer was in vain. My last desperate hopes were dashed as the witch came directly to the room where I was hiding. For a moment she paused outside: My heart pounded in my chest, the palms of my hands began to sweat, and the cold became more intense. Then she opened the door and looked down at me, her cruel eyes staring into mine so that I felt like a rabbit in thrall to a stoat. I tried to stand but found that I couldn’t even move. It wasn’t just fear. I was bound to the spot. Was she using dark magic against me?
To my horror, the witch pulled a knife from the pocket of her black gown. It had a long, sharp blade and she held it out, moving toward me purposefully. Was she going to take some of my bones? She held the knife above my head and suddenly grasped me very tightly by my hair, twisting my head backward. She was going to kill me!