‘I chose to end my life. That was wrong, and now I’m being punished!’
It was always much harder for suicides and those who had died sudden violent deaths to find their way to the light. They sometimes wandered within the mists of Limbo for years. But it could be done. A spook could help.
‘You are punishing yourself unnecessarily,’ my master told the girl’s spirit. ‘There’s no need. You were unhappy. You didn’t know what you were doing. I want you to think very carefully now. Have you a happy memory of your earlier life?’
‘Yes. Yes. I have lots of happy memories …’
‘Then what’s the happiest one – the happiest one of all?’ he demanded.
‘I was very young, no more than five or six years old. I was walking across a meadow, picking daisies with my mother on a warm sunny morning, listening to the droning of the bees and the singing of the birds. Everything was fresh and bright and filled with hope. She made a chain out of the daisies and put it on my head. She said I was a princess and would one day meet a prince. But that’s just foolishness. Real life is very different. It can be cruel beyond measure. I met a man who I thought was like a prince, but he betrayed me.’
‘Go back to that moment. Go back to the time when the future still lay ahead, full of warm promise and hope. Concentrate,’ the Spook instructed. ‘You are there again now. Can you see it? Can you hear the birds? Your mother is beside you, holding your hand. Can you feel her hand?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ cried the spirit. ‘She’s squeezing my hand. She’s taking me somewhere …’
‘She’s taking you towards the light!’ exclaimed the Spook. ‘Can’t you see its brightness ahead?’
‘I can see it! I can see the light! The mist has gone!’
‘Then go! Enter the light. You’re going home!’
The spirit gave a sigh full of longing, then suddenly laughed. It was a joyful laugh, followed by utter silence. My master had done it. He had sent her to the light.
‘Well,’ he said ominously, ‘we need to talk about what’s happened here.’
Despite our success, he wasn’t happy. Alice had used dark magic to free the girl’s spirit from the spell.
DOWN IN THE kitchen, we ate a light supper of soda bread and gammon. When we’d finished, the Spook pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.
‘Well, girl, tell me what you did.’
‘The maid’s spirit was bound by a dark spell of compulsion,’ said Alice. ‘It was trapped within the inn and forced to utter a Befuddle spell that drives anyone who hears it to the edge of madness. Scares them so much, it does, they’ll do anything to get away.’
‘So what exactly did you do?’ demanded the Spook impatiently. ‘Leave nothing out!’
‘I used what Bony Lizzie once taught me,’ Alice replied. ‘She was good at controlling the dead. Once she’d got what she wanted from them – so long as they hadn’t tried too hard to resist, she let them go. She needed another spell to release them. It’s called avaunt – an old word for “be gone”.
‘So, despite all my warnings against it, you used dark magic again!’
‘What else was I supposed to do?’ Alice said, raising her voice in anger. ‘Salt and iron ain’t going to work! How could it when you were dealing with a young girl’s tortured spirit rather than something from the dark? And soon we’d have all been in real trouble. So I did what I had to do.’
‘Good came out of it too,’ I said in support of Alice. ‘The girl’s spirit has gone to the light and the inn is once again safe.’
The Spook was clearly deeply worried but had little more to say. After all, he had already compromised his principles by allowing us to keep the blood jar. Sensing that his silence was mostly directed at her, Alice got to her feet and stamped off up the stairs to her room.
I looked at my master; I felt sad when I saw the hurt and dismay in his eyes. Over the past two years a rift had gradually come between the three of us because of this use of dark magic. I had to try and make amends, but it was hard to know what to say.
‘At least we dealt with the jibber,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll write it up in my notebook.’
‘Good idea, lad,’ the Spook said, his face brightening a little. ‘I’ll make a fresh entry in my Bestiary too. Whatever happens, we need to record the past and learn from it.’
So while I jotted a brief account of what had happened in my own notebook, the Spook pulled the Bestiary – the only book that had survived the burning of his house and library in Chipenden – from his bag. For a while we both wrote in silence, and by coincidence finished our records at almost the same moment.
‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and it’s safe to return to Chipenden,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get back to our normal routine …’
‘Aye, lad, it would. I certainly miss the County, and I’m looking forward to rebuilding that house of mine.’
‘It won’t be the same without the boggart, will it?’ I commented.
The boggart had been a mostly invisible resident, occasionally appearing as a large ginger tom cat. It had served the Spook well in many ways, and had guarded the house and garden. When the house was burned down and the roof collapsed, the pact between my master and the boggart had ended. It had been free to leave.
‘It certainly won’t. We’ll have to do our own cooking and cleaning, and you’ll be making the breakfasts. My poor old stomach will find that hard to cope with,’ said the Spook with the faintest of smiles. He always used to joke about my poor cooking, and it was good to see him attempting it again.
He looked a little more cheerful, and soon after that we went to bed. I felt nostalgic for our old life, and wondered whether it had now gone for ever.
However, the night’s terrors weren’t over yet. Back in my room I made a horrific discovery.
I put my left hand into the pocket of my breeches and immediately realized what had caused the pain when I’d fallen on my side. It had been the blood jar.
Was it damaged? My heart sank into my boots. With a trembling hand I carefully withdrew the small jar from my pocket, carried it over to the candle and examined it. I shuddered with fear. There was a crack running along almost half its length. Was the jar now in danger of breaking? I wondered.
Close to panic, I went next door to Alice’s room and knocked softly. When she opened it, I showed her the jar. At first she looked as alarmed as I was, but after examining it thoroughly she smiled reassuringly.
‘It seems all right, Tom. Just a fine crack, it is. Our blood’s still inside, which means we’re safe from the Fiend. They’re tough jars, those, and don’t break easily. We’re still all right, so don’t you worry.’
I went back to my room, relieved to find that we’d had such a lucky escape.
The word soon spread around the city that there was a spook who could deal with a jibber.
So while we enjoyed the payment for our success – a week’s stay at the inn – we were visited by others seeking our help.
The Spook refused to work with Alice again, but grudgingly allowed me to do so. So the night after our first visitation, Alice and I set out to deal with another jibber, this one plaguing the back workroom of a watchmaker’s premises. The man had fallen into debt and had killed himself late one night after drinking too much wine. His relatives needed to sell the shop, but couldn’t do so with a jibber in residence.
The encounter mirrored the first one at the inn almost exactly. After the rhythmic raps, a column of light appeared, and the spirit began its deadly work. However, it had hardly begun to jibber and jabber at us before Alice countered it with a spell. She did better than me, shutting it up quickly; for my part, I needed three attempts afterwards to send the spirit of the watchmaker to the light. It was no easy task: he’d had a difficult life, always counting his money and worrying about losing it. He didn’t have many happy memories that I could draw upon. But at last I managed it, and his spirit was free.
But then something happe
ned that filled me with dismay. Beside the workbench I saw a shimmer, and a column of grey light appeared. It seemed that another spirit had joined us. And there, close to the top of the column, was a pair of eyes glaring at me with extreme malice. One was green and the other blue; they looked very like the ones that I had seen in the storm cloud, and I stepped back in alarm.
Then the column of light shimmered and a woman stood before us. She wasn’t present in the flesh – she was translucent, the candle on the workbench behind visible through her dark gown; it was her image projected from somewhere else. Suddenly I recognized her face. It was the witch that Bill Arkwright had killed.
I looked again, and with a stab of fright realized that this was the witch from my recurring dream.
‘I hope you enjoyed my storm!’ she cried, a gloating expression in her strange eyes. ‘I could have drowned you then, but I’m saving you for later. I have something else in mind! I’ve been waiting for you, boy! With jibbers to be dealt with, I knew you’d show up. How do you like them? It’s the best spell I’ve cast for many a long year.’
I didn’t reply, and the witch’s eyes swivelled towards Alice. ‘And this is Alice. I’ve been watching the pair of you. I’ve seen what good friends you are. Soon you’ll both be in my clutches.’
Angrily I stepped forward, placing myself between the witch and Alice.
She gave an ugly leer. ‘Ah! I see that you care for her. Thank you for that, boy. You’ve confirmed what I suspected. Now I know another way to hurt you. And hurt you I will. I’ll certainly pay you back many times over for what you’ve done!’
The image rapidly faded, and Alice came to my side. ‘Who was that, Tom?’ she asked. ‘She seemed to know you.’
‘Remember those eyes I saw in the cloud during the storm? It was her. Her face was that of the Celtic witch slain by Bill Arkwright.’
‘I think we’re both in danger. She has powerful magic – I can sense it,’ Alice said, her eyes wide. ‘Responsible for the jibbers, she is. She must be really powerful to do that.’
Back at the inn, we told the Spook of our encounter with the image of the witch.
‘It’s dangerous, being a spook,’ he said. ‘You could stop dealing with jibbers, but that would mean that many people would be harmed – innocent people who could be saved if you did your job bravely. It’s up to you. The witch is an unknown quantity – someone to be treated with great caution. I wouldn’t blame you for walking away. So what will you do?’
‘We’ll carry on – both of us,’ I said, nodding towards Alice.
‘Good lad – I thought that would be your answer … It still saddens me to think that the only way we can get rid of jibbers is by using dark magic,’ my master added. ‘Maybe things are changing, though. Maybe in the future that will be a new way for a spook to fight the dark, using the dark against itself. I don’t hold with it myself, but I’m from a different generation. I belong to the past, but you’re the future, lad. You’ll face new and different threats, and deal with them in a different way.’
So Alice and I continued with our work, and in the space of six days, together we freed two inns, another shop and five private houses from jibbers. Each time, Alice countered the spell, and I then talked the freed spirit out of Limbo and into the light. Each time we felt apprehensive, but the witch didn’t appear again. Was she bluffing and just trying to scare me away? But I had my job to do.
In contrast to the County, it seemed that the custom in Ireland was to pay someone immediately a job was completed, so we had plenty of money in our pockets. Then we had a visitor – someone who arrived on the seventh day, sending us off on a different course.
We were sitting at our usual table having breakfast. The inn still had no other customers, but the landlord was confident that the situation would soon change and had hinted that our departure would hasten the arrival of his first paying guest. Our presence here was now widely known, and although the inn was no longer haunted, few people would really wish to take a room in a place where a spook was staying. My master understood that, and we’d already decided to move our quarters later that day, probably heading south of the river Liffey, which divided the city.
I was just swallowing my last piece of bacon and mopping up my egg yolk with a wedge of buttered bread when a stranger entered the room from the street. He was a tall, upright man with white hair and a contrasting black beard and moustache. That alone was enough to earn him a second glance on any of the teeming Dublin thoroughfares; but add to that his clothes – a formal knee-length coat, neatly pressed black trousers and expensive boots, which marked him out as a gentleman of the first rank – and all eyes would have marked his passing. He also carried an ivory walking stick with a white handle in the shape of an eagle’s head.
The landlord rushed across to greet him, bowing low before welcoming him into the inn and offering him the best room. But the stranger was barely listening to his host; he was staring across at our table. Wasting no time, he came across and addressed the Spook.
‘Have I the pleasure of speaking to John Gregory?’ he asked. ‘And you must be Tom Ward,’ he added, looking at me. He gave just a curt nod in Alice’s direction.
The Spook nodded and got to his feet. ‘Aye, that’s me,’ he said. ‘And that’s my apprentice. Are you here to ask for our help?’
The man shook his head. ‘On the contrary, I am here to offer you assistance. Your success in ridding the city of many of its troublesome apparitions have brought you to the attention of a powerful and dangerous group. I speak of the goat mages of Staigue. We have our own spies, and they tell me that the mages have already dispatched assassins to this city. Being servants of the dark, they cannot tolerate your presence in our land. That is why the few remaining Irish spooks avoid the main towns and never settle in one place for more than a couple of days.’
The Spook nodded thoughtfully. ‘We’d heard that they were a dying breed. What you say makes sense, but why should you wish to help us? By doing so, won’t you be putting yourself at risk?’
‘My life is permanently at risk,’ said the man. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Farrell Shey, the leader of the Land Alliance, a league of landowners who have been at war with the mages for many years.’
In addition to what I’d read in the Spook’s Bestiary, while working with Bill Arkwright I’d met a landowner who’d fled Ireland to escape the mages. It had done him no good. They’d sent one of the Celtic witches to slay him in his County refuge, and she had been successful, despite our best efforts to save him.
‘Well, in that case, we would certainly welcome your assistance,’ said the Spook.
‘And in return,’ Shey said, ‘you may be able to use your expertise to help us. A dangerous few months lie ahead – ones which some of us will be hard-pressed to survive: the goat mages are preparing for their next ritual in Killorglin – so we must delay no further. Gather your things together and I’ll get you out of the city immediately.’
We did as he instructed, and within a few minutes we’d taken our leave of the grateful landlord and were following Shey through a number of narrow alleyways, emerging onto a side street where a large carriage was waiting. Drawn by a team of six horses, it seemed to be made for speed, and its appearance was not deceptive. The coach driver was smartly dressed in green livery, and in attendance was a large black-bearded man with a sword at his belt, who bowed to Shey and opened the carriage doors for us before taking his place beside the driver.
Seated in comfort and hidden from the gaze of the curious by lace curtains, we had soon crossed the river and were heading west out of the city; the clip-clop now became a rhythmical thunder of pounding horses’ hooves.
Alice turned towards me, and as our eyes met, I guessed that she was thinking the same thing as me: this had all happened too fast. This Farrell Shey was used to being in command, and it had taken little persuasion to make us follow him. Just what were we getting ourselves into?
‘Where are we bound?’
asked the Spook.
‘We’re making for Kerry in the southwest,’ Shey replied.
‘But isn’t that where the goat mages are based?’ I said, starting to feel more than a little uneasy.
‘It is indeed,’ he answered. ‘But we live there too. It is a beautiful but dangerous part of this fair island. And sometimes, in order to counter a threat, you have to go out boldly and face it. Would you rather have died in the city, waiting for the assassins to come for you? Or would you come and place your strength alongside ours in an attempt to end the power of the mages for ever?’
‘We will add our strength to yours,’ answered the Spook. ‘Don’t doubt that.’
Alice and I exchanged another look. The Spook had clearly made his decision.
‘I’ve fought the dark all my life,’ he told Shey, ‘and I will do so until my dying day.’
All that day the carriage took us west, stopping only twice to change horses. The dogs travelled with us, occasionally running alongside to stretch their legs. Then the roads became narrower and the pace slowed considerably. By now, we could just make out snow-capped mountains in the far distance.
‘Those are the mountains of Kerry; my home lies on the peninsula of Uibh Rathach,’ said Shey. ‘But we won’t be able to reach it tonight. There’s an inn ahead that we can make secure.’
‘So we are in danger already?’ asked the Spook.
‘There is always danger. We’ll have been followed from the city, and our enemies will be lying both ahead and behind us. But don’t worry – we are well prepared.’
The place where we were to stay was situated on the edge of a wood and reached by a single narrow track. In fact it had no sign hanging outside, and although Shey had called it an ‘inn’, it looked more like a private house commandeered to provide a refuge in a dangerous location.
That night, after walking the dogs, we dined well on generous portions of a potato and onion stew, rich with pieces of succulent mutton. As we ate, my master started to question Shey about the goat mages. He already knew the general answers to some of his questions, but that was the Spook’s way: what Shey told him could also contain important new information that might make the difference between victory and defeat. Our survival could depend on what we were able to learn here.