Joseph Delaney Read online

  THE LAST APPRENTICE

  THE SPOOK’S TALE AND OTHER HORRORS

  Illustrations by

  PATRICK ARRASMITH

  Joseph Delaney

  Dedication

  FOR MARIE

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  THE HORRORS BEGIN

  THE SPOOK’S TALE

  CHAPTER I: The Dead Apprentice

  CHAPTER II: The Witch’s Lair

  CHAPTER III: A Spook’s Bones

  CHAPTER IV: The Blood Dish

  CHAPTER V: The Silver Chain

  ALICE’S TALE

  Mouldheels and Maggots

  GRIMALKIN’S TALE

  The Witch Assassin

  THE GALLERY OF VILLAINS

  Mother Malkin

  Bony Lizzie and Tusk

  The Bane

  Morgan

  Marcia

  Golgoth

  Tibb

  Wurmalde

  Grimalkin

  Bloodeye

  The Fiend

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE HORRORS BEGIN

  THE LAST APPRENTICE books tell the continuing story of Tom Ward’s apprenticeship to Old Gregory, the County Spook who rids the land of boggarts, ghosts, and witches. Over the course of his journey, Tom has been befriended by Alice Deane, a girl raised by witches. He has also survived an attack by the witch assassin Grimalkin.

  In The Spook’s Tale and Other Horrors, readers will learn about other adventures experienced by these people in Tom’s life. Long before he was Tom Ward’s master, John Gregory had his first confrontation with the dangers of the dark. Alice Deane relates what happened when she journeyed into the dangerous, witch- infested district of Pendle in search of Tom’s kidnapped family. And Grimalkin reveals the twisted road that the led her to become a witch assassin.

  THE SPOOK’S TALE

  SOME say that John Gregory is the greatest of the County spooks. Others believe that he only prepared the way for the one who was to follow. What is certain is that from an early age, he had true courage and the ability to overcome his greatest fears.

  Before becoming the Spook, John Gregory faced many terrors: a malevolent witch, a bone-snatching boggart, and a tormented ghast. “The Spook’s Tale” is his own account of how he took the first steps toward becoming a spook’s apprentice.

  CHAPTER I

  The Dead Apprentice

  WHEN I was really young, perhaps no older than six or seven, I had a terrible nightmare. It began as a pleasant dream. I was sitting on a hearth rug in the small front room of our cramped row house in Horshaw. I was gazing into a coal fire, watching the sparks flicker and dance before they disappeared up the chimney. My mam was also in the room. She was knitting. I could hear the rhythmical click-click of her needles, and I felt really happy and safe. But then, over the noise of the knitting needles, I heard the dull thud of approaching footsteps. At first I thought they were outside, where my dad and brothers were working, but with a growing sense of unease I realized they were coming from the cellar. Who could possibly be down in our cellar? The sound of the heavy boots on stone grew louder. They were climbing the steps toward the kitchen, and I knew that, whatever it was, it was coming to get me. The air suddenly developed a distinct chill—not the cold that winter brings; this was something else.

  In the nightmare I tried to call out to my mam for help, but I couldn’t make a sound. I was mute and paralyzed, frozen to the spot. The boots came nearer and nearer, but my mam just carried on sitting and knitting while my terror slowly increased. The fire flickered and died in the grate and the room grew colder and darker with each ominous approaching footstep. I was terrified, panic and dread building within me by the second.

  A dark shadow shaped like a man entered the room. He crossed to where I cowered by the fire, and before I had a chance to move or cry out, he picked me up and put me under his arm. Then he took me back into the kitchen and began to descend the cellar steps, each clump of his big boots taking me deeper and deeper. I knew that I was having a nightmare and realized I had to wake myself up before I was taken into the absolute darkness at the foot of the cellar steps.

  Struggling and straining with all my might, I somehow managed to do it just in time. I awoke, panting with fear, my brow wet with sweat, trembling at the thought of what had almost happened.

  But my nightmare didn’t happen just once. It came to me time and time again over the course of several years. After a while I had to tell someone, so I confided in my brother Paul. I was afraid that he might laugh, that he might mock me for being so terrified of a dream. But to my surprise his eyes widened, and with a shaking voice, he revealed that he had been having exactly the same nightmare! At first I could scarcely believe him—but it was true! We had both been dreaming the same dream. In some ways it was a comfort, but what could this strange coincidence mean? Together we reached an important agreement.

  If you were in the dream and managed to escape it, you had to wake your brother, because he might still be trapped in that nightmare, awaiting his turn to be taken down the cellar steps. Many’s the night when I was sleeping peacefully, not dreaming at all, and my brother would shake me by the shoulder. I’d wake up blazing with anger, ready to thump him. But then he’d whisper in my ear, his eyes wide, his face terrified, his bottom lip trembling:

  “I’ve just had the dream!”

  I was instantly glad I hadn’t thumped him—otherwise next time he might not wake me when I was having the nightmare and needed his help!

  Although we told ourselves this was just a dream, there was one thing that terrified us both. We felt absolutely sure that, if we were ever taken into the dark at the foot of the cellar steps, we would die in our sleep and be trapped in that nightmare forever!

  One night as I lay awake, I heard disturbing noises coming from the cellar. At first I thought I was in the dream, but slowly, with a shudder of fear, I realized these were waking sounds, not dreaming sounds. Someone was digging into the soft earth of the cellar floor with a shovel. I felt that strange unnatural coldness again and heard boots climbing the stone steps, just as they did in my nightmare. Covering my ears to block out the sounds was hopeless, because they didn’t stop. Eventually, scared almost witless and weeping in distress, I screamed out into the darkness.

  That wasn’t the only time it happened, and my family’s patience started to wear thin. Another night, angered by the fact that I’d woken them all up again, my dad dragged me down the cellar steps, threw me into the darkness, and nailed the door shut, leaving me alone and trapped there.

  “Please, Dad! Please. Don’t leave me here in the dark!” I pleaded.

  “You’ll stay there until you learn to stop waking us up!” he retorted. “We’ve all got work in the morning. Think of your brothers and your poor mam. It’s about time you grew up!”

  “Please, Dad! Give me another chance!” I begged, but he didn’t relent.

  He was a good man but also hard—that’s why he put me in that dark, terrifying cellar. He didn’t realize what I could see and hear: things other people couldn’t, things that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your heart hammer hard enough to break out of your chest. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was a consequence of what I was. I was the seventh son and my dad had been a seventh son before me. For me, the world was a very different place. I could both see and hear the dead; sometimes I could even feel them. As I sat on the cold cellar floor, I heard things approaching me in the dark, seeking me out with cold fingers and whispers, taking form
s that only I could see.

  I shivered with a coldness that went right through my bones and watched as a figure emerged from the darkness, carrying something over his shoulder. He had big boots and looked like a miner. At first I thought it was a sack of coal he was carrying, but then, to my horror, I saw that it was the limp body of a woman. I watched the tears running down the man’s face as he dropped the lifeless form into the shallow pit he had dug and started to cover it with earth. As he worked, the miner gasped for air, his lungs destroyed by years of breathing in the coal dust.

  It was only later that a neighbor told me the whole story. The miner mistakenly believed his wife had betrayed him by seeing another man, so he’d killed the woman he truly loved. It was a sad tale, and my pity for those who’d died so long ago slowly helped me to overcome my fear.

  I didn’t know it then, but that was my first step toward becoming a spook. I faced my fear, and slowly it ebbed away. Confronting the dark and overcoming his fear is what every spook first needs to do.

  My name is John Gregory, and I’ve worked at my trade for more than sixty years. I protect the County against ghosts, ghasts, witches, and boggarts. Especially witches and boggarts. If anything goes bump in the night, I deal with it.

  Mine’s a lonely and difficult life, and I’ve been close to death more times than I care to remember. Now, as I approach the end of my time on earth, I’m training Tom Ward, who’ll be my last apprentice.

  So here’s an account of my own early days. How it began for me. How I lost one vocation and gained another. How I took the first tentative step toward becoming a spook’s apprentice myself.

  I left home when I was twelve. Not as an apprentice to a spook—mine was a very different vocation then. I was going to travel to the seminary at Houghton and train there for the priesthood.

  It was a bright, crisp day in late October, and I was looking forward to the long walk and eagerly anticipating the beginning of my new life.

  “It’s a proud day for me, son,” my poor old dad said, struggling for each breath. By then the coal dust had started to clog his lungs, too, and each month they became more damaged. “It’s what every devout father wants—that one of his sons should have a vocation for the priesthood. I look forward to the day when you return to this house to give me your blessing.”

  My mam wasn’t there to see me leave, as she’d already set off for work. As for my brothers, four of them had left home for good. Of those, one was already dead: He’d been drowned while working on a canal barge that plied the route between Priestown and Caster. The two still living at home had left the house long before dawn. Andrew was an apprentice locksmith. Paul had already begun working down the mine.

  Before I started out on the road to Houghton, I called in at the little parish church to speak to Father Ainsworth. He’d been my teacher for as long as I could remember. His inspirational sermons and tireless work to aid the poor of the parish had made me want to follow in his footsteps. Not for me days of claustrophobic darkness toiling in the mine. I was going to be a priest and help people.

  As I walked down the narrow lane that led out of Horshaw, I could see someone digging in the field that belonged to the church. At first I thought it was a gravedigger, but then I noticed he was working just outside the boundary of the churchyard—not actually in holy ground. Also, he seemed to be wearing a hood and gown, the garb of a priest.

  However, I’d much more exciting things to think about, so I put it from my mind. I took a shortcut through the hedge and began to weave my way through the gravestones toward the dilapidated church. It was always in need of repair, and I could see now that there was new damage—a couple of slates missing from the roof, the result of a recent storm.

  It was another of Father Ainsworth’s routine tasks to raise the necessary funds for such repairs. When I entered the church, he was standing in the central aisle, counting copper coins into a small leather pouch.

  “I’ve come to say good-bye, Father,” I told him, my voice echoing from the high ceiling.

  “Are you looking forward to it, John?” he asked, his eyes bright with excitement. It was almost as if he were going rather than me.

  “Aye, Father. I can’t wait to get started on my studies. The Latin you’ve taught me should help me get off to a good start.”

  “Well, you’ve been a good, diligent pupil, my boy. My hope is that one day you’ll come back and take over this parish. It would be a fine thing if a member of the local flock could one day be its shepherd. That would be fitting, John. Very fitting indeed. I can’t carry on forever.”

  Father Ainsworth was a small, wiry, gray-haired man, well into his sixties. He still looked fit and far from ready to retire, but someone would need to take over this small church one day. I remember thinking how proud that would make my dad—one of his own sons becoming the parish priest!

  “It looks like last Sunday’s collection plate was unusually good, Father!” I said, looking down at the pouch full of money that he was cradling in his hand.

  Father Ainsworth smiled. “It was a little better than usual, that’s true, but what’s really made a difference is the money I got from the spook. Did you see him working by the hedge? He paid me to allow him to dig a grave there.”

  Although spooks dealt with witches and got rid of ghosts and boggarts, the hierarchy of the Church considered them no better than creatures of the dark themselves. As spooks weren’t ordained into the priesthood, it was thought they had no right to meddle with the dark; priests were nervous of the methods they used. Some spooks had been imprisoned or even burned at the stake. However, Father Ainsworth was a tolerant man who took people as he found them.

  “I thought he was a gravedigger,” I explained, “but it was odd because he wasn’t working in the right place.”

  “Well, his apprentice died last night, and because of his trade he can’t be laid to rest in the holy ground of the churchyard. But the spook wants to bury him as close to consecrated ground as possible because it’ll make the boy’s family feel better. Why not, John? What harm can come of it?”

  I took my leave of Father Ainsworth and set off north toward Houghton, my coat buttoned against the chill wind from the west. My path took me close to the place where the Spook was still digging.

  The grave was almost deep enough, and I could see the body of a young boy lying on the ground beside it. He looked no older than I was. The eyes of the corpse were wide open, and even from a distance it seemed to me that the dead face was twisted into an expression of absolute terror. There was something else really horrible, too. Where his left hand should have been, there was just a red and bloodied stump. How had he died? An accident?

  I shuddered and walked on quickly, but the spook glanced in my direction. I saw that he had very bushy eyebrows and a thick head of dark hair, but the most noticeable thing about him was a very deep scar that ran the whole length of the left side of his face. I remember wondering what sort of accident had left him with such a serious disfigurement. I shuddered, wondering if a witch had done it, raking down his face with her razor-sharp talons.

  The late morning and afternoon passed quickly, and the sun began to sink lower in the sky. I’d no hope of reaching Houghton before nightfall and planned to spend the night in a barn or outbuilding. I had a pack of cheese sandwiches to keep my hunger at bay, so it was just a case of finding some shelter. At least it was dry, unusually for this time of year in the County, but as the sun went down, a mist began to swirl in from the west. Soon I could hardly see half a dozen paces in any direction. Somehow I wandered from the track and became completely lost.

  It was getting colder, and soon it would be totally dark. I didn’t fancy a night in the open but had little choice in the matter. I’d reached the edge of a wood and decided to settle down under a tree and try to sleep. It was then that I heard footsteps in the distance. I held my breath, hoping they would pass by, but they just came nearer and nearer. I wasn’t happy at the prospect of meeting a st
ranger out here in the dark, miles from anywhere.

  It could well have been a robber, someone who’d cut my throat simply to steal the coat off my back. People sometimes went missing in the County, never to be seen again. The countryside was dangerous at night—anything could be out there.

  CHAPTER II

  The Witch’s Lair

  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.