A New Darkness

by Joseph Delaney

  I read the entry on boska, too:

  Boska: This is the breath of a Kobalos haizda mage, which can be used to induce sudden unconsciousness, paralysis, or terror in a human victim. The mage varies the effects of boska by adjusting the chemical composition of his breath. It is also sometimes used to change the mood of animals.

  I decided to begin my updates here, adding my own observations and possible countermeasures.

  Note: This was used on me; it leached the strength from my body. But I was taken by surprise. It is wise to be on our guard against such a threat and not allow a haizda mage to get close. Perhaps a scarf worn across the mouth and nose would provide an effective defense. Or perhaps plugs of wax fitted into the nostrils.—Tom Ward

  The following day I tried to settle back into my routine, but I soon became restless. Apart from the three hauntings that I’d investigated, each a direct result of the incursion by the haizda mage, things had been quiet for months.

  The Battle of the Wardstone had resulted in the destruction of the Fiend, and the dark had now become unusually quiet in the County. But the god Talkus had been born, and the Kobalos would eventually wage a war to exterminate us.

  That was what had obsessed Grimalkin. I doubted that she had been performing the routine work that was demanded of the Malkin witch assassin: dealing with the enemies of her clan. She was traveling and gathering information about our future Kobalos enemies. And now she could study this dead mage’s lair. It was good to have made a useful contribution—though I still wondered if I should have insisted on staying involved.

  I was the Chipenden Spook, but I now had no clear task ahead of me. I was at a loose end, so I decided to visit Grimsargh and reclaim my tinderbox from the girl. It was a precious link between me and Dad, something that kept him in my mind. It had helped me out of difficult situations more than once.

  I had been hoping for a bit more sun and warmth before the winter set in. The air was still cold for the time of year, but it was dry, so I set off southeast toward Grimsargh, striding out at a good pace.

  As I approached the Calders’ cottage, Jenny opened the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind her. It was almost as if she knew I was coming. Had she been watching from behind the curtains? I wondered.

  She met me about twenty paces from the door; she was carrying my tinderbox and held it out toward me.

  “No doubt you’ve come for this,” she said sheepishly, avoiding my eyes.

  “Of course I have,” I said brusquely. “It’s of great sentimental value. It belonged to my dad—it was the last thing he gave me before he died. . . . There’s one thing I want to ask you,” I went on, putting the tinderbox carefully into my bag. “Why did you run from the haunted house?”

  “Does it matter?” she asked me, her voice bitter.

  “Yes, it does. You were brave when dealing with the beast in the tree. I thought you’d have been brave when facing ghasts.”

  “In the tree I was the creature’s prisoner. I had no choice in the matter.”

  “No! I mean before that. You risked following it. You found out where its lair was.”

  Jenny shrugged. “I didn’t know how dangerous it was at the time.”

  “No? You knew that it had killed three girls. You could have been next, but you persisted despite the danger.”

  “I was scared—absolutely terrified at times. . . . I knew that it was a killer, and I suspected that it was very powerful. But I forced myself to do it because I knew that I could use the knowledge to persuade you to let me become your apprentice.”

  “And yet when you finally got that chance, you fled from the haunted house? Were you that scared that you’d give up your dream? I remember my own experience in that house when I was an apprentice. I was terrified too, but there was no way I would have run. That would have meant letting down my mam, who had faith in me and wanted me to learn from John Gregory. I faced my fear and stuck it out. You could have done the same. Did you run when the ghast came up the stairs from the cellar?”

  Jenny nodded, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.

  “Why didn’t you face your fear?” I demanded harshly.

  She turned away, but she wasn’t fast enough. I’d already seen the tears streaming down her face.

  “Why did you run? There must have been some other reason. Come on, Jenny, tell me.” Suddenly I felt sorry for the girl. She’d dreamed of becoming a spook, and I knew that it had hurt her to fall at the first hurdle.

  “I was scared,” she said, without turning round, “but it wasn’t the fear that made me run. It was the anguish of the miner and his wife. I knew exactly how they felt. I knew what it was like to be them and experience what they went through. He was jealous beyond all reason and murdered his wife, but then instantly regretted it. He was in torment as he buried her because he’d loved her so much; now he’d lost her forever. And she was lying there paralyzed, waiting to be buried, but she was still alive, aware of everything that was happening to her. She was in terror of being buried alive. And the terrible thing was that she loved him with all her heart. She loved him every bit as much as he loved her. And she hadn’t been unfaithful. I lived through every moment of her terror, every moment of his fear and anguish. And yes, she went alive into that grave and had to watch as her own husband threw earth over her until it grew dark and she couldn’t breathe. . . .

  “You see, that’s one of my gifts as a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. I have a strong empathy with others. I can’t read their minds, but sometimes I can sense their emotions so strongly that they become my own. So that’s why I ran. I couldn’t stand being so close to the miner and his wife any longer. When he came up the stairs, I just had to get away.”

  She seemed to speak from the heart, and my instincts told me that she wasn’t lying. I was impressed. Empathy could be very useful for a spook’s apprentice. She had been able to attune her mind to the anguish of ghasts, something I certainly couldn’t do.

  “Right,” I told her. “Turn round!”

  She turned to face me, her eyes swollen, her face wet with tears.

  I held out my bag to her. “Carry this!” I said. “It’s one of the advantages of being a spook that you don’t have to carry your own bag. That’s what an apprentice is for.”

  “You’re giving me another chance?” she asked, her eyes widening in astonishment.

  “Yes, one more chance!” I told her. “The very last.”

  However, I still needed to find out how strong she really was.

  The Spook had used his haunted house test on all of his apprentices.

  I’d just thought up one of my own.

  13

  Tom Ward’s Test

  JENNY had been aware of the ghasts in Watery Lane, but it was supposedly her feelings of empathy with them that had caused her to flee. Could she get really close to one and stand her ground? If not, there was no way I could take her on as my apprentice. To deal with the dead, you had to be able to do exactly that. It was a necessary part of the job.

  Many years ago, there’d been a bitter civil war, and the victorious army had hanged some soldiers in a place that became known as Hangman’s Hill. It was on the northern boundary of Dad’s farm, the place where I’d been brought up.

  When the ghasts of the dead soldiers were particularly active, I’d been able to hear them twisting and groaning on the ends of their ropes. It had even kept some of my older brothers awake and made them uneasy—though my eldest brother, Jack, had slept through it all like a log!

  Jack was one of the least sensitive people I’d ever encountered, but even he wouldn’t go into the north pasture when the ghasts were at their most active. So you see, everybody has some sensitivity to the dark.

  The fact that Jenny had been so aware of the ghasts in the haunted house didn’t mean that she had what was necessary to become my apprentice. She had to demonstrate courage too. For all I knew, all that talk about empathy was just an excuse, and she’d fled in fear.
I had to be sure.

  My test would be to take her to confront these ghasts on Hangman’s Hill.

  We approached it from the north, heading up into the gloom beneath the trees. It got colder as we climbed—that special kind of cold that sometimes warns a seventh son of a seventh son that something from the dark is close by.

  I wondered if Jenny could sense it too.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “A bit chilly,” she replied.

  I made no further comment.

  I heard the branches creaking and groaning before I saw them. The dead soldiers were in among the trees just below the summit, hanging from the branches, still in their uniforms and boots. Some dangled, inert, with bulging eyes and twisted necks; others danced and kicked or spun; all had their hands bound behind their backs. They were young too, mostly about my age. It was a pitiful sight.

  As we drew closer, even nature seemed to change. The leaves vanished from the trees—the branches were stark and bare. I was seeing something from the past.

  On the morning I’d begun my apprenticeship all those years ago, my master and I had left Dad’s farm and come straight up this hill. We could have taken a different route, but the Spook had brought me this way deliberately. He wanted our first confrontation with the dark to be close to home, close to something that had scared me as I’d grown up.

  He’d taken me up to one of the dead soldiers. Now, suddenly, I heard my master’s voice inside my head, as clear as if he was standing next to me. I remembered his advice.

  “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?”

  And it had worked. I’d become sad rather than afraid. Soon the ghasts had faded away.

  I came to a halt. “What can you see?” I asked Jenny.

  “Dead soldiers hanging from the trees.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “They’re just young boys. It’s not right. They were too young to fight in a war.”

  “Are you afraid?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s scary. But I’m more sad than afraid. They didn’t deserve to die like this.”

  “Do you see that one?” I pointed to a boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. His mouth was opening and closing as he struggled for air, and his eyes bulged in his head. “Let’s go and stand in front of him. I want you to walk right up to him—so close that if you reached out, you could touch his shoulder.”

  Jenny nodded. I could tell that she had to force herself to take each step. We walked forward, side by side, until we were as close as I’d instructed.

  “His name is George, and he’s only fourteen,” Jenny said suddenly. “He lied about his age so that he could join the army. Now he’s terrified and in awful pain. But there’s something wrong with his mind. It’s as if he isn’t all there. Maybe the terror of being hanged has done that to him. . . . Send him to the light, please! Don’t let this go on any longer.”

  I was stunned. My master had simply asked me to imagine what it was like to be in a dead soldier’s place. That way I identified with his plight and overcame my fear. Jenny seemed to know what it was like, as if she could read his mind in some way. It was something that was beyond me.

  “He’s not a ghost, Jenny, he’s a ghast,” I explained gently. “The largest part of him has already gone to the light. This is just the fragment that’s broken away from his spirit and stayed behind to haunt this hill with the others. That’s what ghasts are—the parts of a spirit that suffered terrible pain or committed acts they couldn’t bear to remember, like the miner who killed his wife. They couldn’t go to the light with that part of them, so it broke away and became a ghast. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, and the ghasts began to fade away. Within moments, the leaves were back on the trees. Jenny had faced up to the ghasts bravely. She hadn’t run.

  I smiled at her.

  “Have I passed the test, then?” she asked.

  “Yes, you passed, without a shadow of a doubt. As far as I know, John Gregory never kept anybody on after they’d failed the test in the haunted house. But I have the right to do it my way. For him, it was just a routine procedure to see how brave a lad was. But I believe that you are telling the truth, that you didn’t run because of fear. So I’ll keep you on—at least for a little while. The worst that can happen is that I’m wrong and you’ll run away again.”

  “I won’t. But next time, if I feel the same about something and it’s getting too much to bear, I’ll warn you.”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “So I’m your apprentice now? It’s official?” Jenny asked. “Even though I’m a girl?”

  “It’s official. As far as I know, you’re the first girl ever to become a spook’s apprentice. That makes you special,” I added.

  The image of my dead master came into my mind. I could imagine him shaking his head in disapproval. I felt sure that he would never have taken on a girl apprentice.

  “My mam and dad, they’ll never pay you,” Jenny said.

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t you mind?”

  The truth was, I wasn’t sure whether I minded or not. Being a spook was never going to make me rich. Getting money out of some people was harder than getting blood from a stone. But it was a steady job and you didn’t go hungry, so it didn’t really matter that much whether Jenny’s foster parents paid up or not.

  But the trouble was, I kept comparing myself with my master. John Gregory would never have stood for that. I felt somehow lessened by letting the Calders get away with it. It made me feel weak, as if I was a soft touch. For now I shrugged away the worry; there were more important things to be concerned about.

  “I don’t mind,” I told her. “Money isn’t everything. All that matters is that you try to be a good spook. I’d like you to meet some of my family now. They live in the farm just the other side of this hill.”

  “I’ll bet your mam and dad are nicer than mine,” Jenny said.

  “They’re both dead now. My eldest brother runs the farm. He has a wife, Ellie, and a little girl called Mary, and a baby son too. Another of my brothers lives there as well. He’s called James, and he’s the local blacksmith. He has his forge on the farm.”

  “What knocked down all those?” Jenny asked, pointing to the huge swathe of felled trees as we began the descent. “Was it a storm?”

  “It was far worse than a storm,” I told her. “One day I’ll tell you all about it. It’ll be part of your training.”

  The trees had been knocked down by the Fiend; he’d chased after me, and I’d taken refuge in the farmhouse. There were lots of things to tell Jenny, but most of them could wait for another time.

  My own apprenticeship had been cut short. I hoped that she would get her full seven years. And I hoped that I would be good enough to train her.

  Mam’s rosebush was still growing up the farmhouse wall, but instead of the usual brilliant display of County red, the blooms and buds were blackened by the early frost. Usually it didn’t strike until October.

  Ellie came to the door, drying her hands on her apron. Her face lit up, and she gave me a hug. “Oh, Tom, it’s good to see you!”

  “It’s good to see you too, Ellie. This is Jenny,” I said, by way of introduction. “She’s my first apprentice.”

  I saw Ellie’s eyes widen in surprise at that, but she smiled warmly and gave Jenny a hug too.

  Little Mary came running up to me. “Uncle Tom! Uncle Tom!” she cried. “Have you come to kill another bog?”

  “Not this time, Mary,” I laughed. By a “bog,” the child meant a boggart. On my last visit, she had been very interested in the local boggart I’d dealt with; it had been a dangerous stone-chucker.

  “Come in and see the baby,” Ellie said, beckoning us inside. So we went into the farmhouse kitchen and then up the stairs.

  “This is Matthew,” Ellie said, liftin
g the baby out of its bed. “It’s made Jack so happy to have a son.”

  I knew that my brother would love both his children equally, but for a farmer it was something special to have a son who could help with the tough physical work, which only became harder as you grew older. The first son inherited the farm, too. The others were found trades. My dad would have found it difficult to find someone to take on his seventh son, but Mam had intervened. It had been her idea all along for me to become a spook’s apprentice.

  “Would you like to hold him, Tom?” Ellie could see the reluctance on my face; she shook her head and sighed. “He won’t break, Tom. Babies aren’t that delicate!”

  She was right. I was nervous about holding babies because they were so small and their heads were floppy. Of course, little Matthew was a few months old now, so he was much stronger than Mary had been when I first saw her—she’d been only six days old. So I held the child for a few moments, and Matthew stared up at me with his wide-open blue eyes and made little gurgling sounds.

  “Could I hold him, please?” Jenny asked.

  “Of course you can, love.” Ellie took the baby from me and handed him over.

  “Where’s Jack?” I asked.

  “It’s Friday morning. He’s gone to the market at Topley with James,” she replied.

  Of course. Friday was market day. I’d been away from the farm for so long that I’d forgotten its routines. The Friday visit to the local market, straight after morning milking, had been part of my life. Still, they’d be back before noon, and I was looking forward to seeing them.

  We gathered around the big wooden table for the midday meal. Jack was at its head, Ellie on his left. Mary was seated on a high stool next to her mother. I was opposite Jenny, while James, my brawny blacksmith brother, sat at the foot of the table, head down, tucking into a massive plate of hotpot.