The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection

by Joseph Delaney

  Her voice was rising and falling, just like Bony Lizzie’s had when she’d been standing above the pit, holding a small white thumb bone in each hand.

  Almost before I realized what I was doing, I seized the door handle, turned it, and opened the door wide.

  Alice, her mouth opening and closing, was chanting at the mirror. She was sitting on the edge of a straight-backed chair, staring over the top of a candle flame into the dressing-table mirror. I took a deep breath, then crept nearer so as to get a better look.

  It was a County spring and after dark, so the room had a chill to it, but despite that there were big beads of sweat on Alice’s brow. Even as I watched, two came together and ran down into her left eye and then beyond it onto her cheek like a tear. She was staring into the mirror, her eyes very wide, but when I called her name she never even blinked.

  I moved behind the chair and caught the reflection of the brass candlestick in the mirror, but to my horror the face in the mirror above the flame didn’t belong to Alice.

  It was an old face, haggard and lined, with coarse gray-and-white hair falling like curtains across each gaunt cheek. It was the face of something that had spent a long time in the damp ground.

  The eyes moved then, flicking to the left to meet my gaze. They were red points of fire. Although the face cracked into a smile, the eyes were burning with anger and hate.

  There was no doubt. It was the face of Mother Malkin.

  What was happening? Was Alice already possessed? Or was she somehow using the mirror to talk to Mother Malkin?

  Without thinking, I seized the candlestick and swung its heavy base into the mirror, which exploded with a loud crack followed by a glittering, tinkling shower of falling glass. As the mirror shattered, Alice screamed, loud and shrill.

  It was the worst screech you can possibly imagine. It was filled with torment, and it reminded me of the noise a pig sometimes makes when it’s slaughtered. But I didn’t feel sorry for Alice, even though now she was crying and pulling at her hair, her eyes wild and filled with terror.

  I was aware that the house was quickly filled with other sounds. The first was the cry of Ellie’s baby; the second was a man’s deep voice cursing and swearing; the third was big boots stamping down the stairs.

  Jack burst furiously into the room. He took one look at the broken mirror, then stepped toward me and raised his fist. I suppose he must have thought it was all my fault, because Alice was still screaming, I was holding the candlestick, and there were small cuts on my knuckles caused by flying glass.

  Just in time, Ellie came into the room. She had her baby cradled in her right arm and it was still crying fit to burst, but with her free hand she got a grip on Jack and pulled at him until he unclenched his fist and lowered his arm.

  “No, Jack,” she pleaded. “What good will that do?”

  “I can’t believe you’ve done that,” Jack said, glaring at me. “Do you know how old that mirror was? What do you think Dad will say now? How will he feel when he sees this?”

  No wonder Jack was angry. It had been bad enough waking everybody up, but that dressing table had belonged to Dad’s mam. Now that Dad had given me the tinderbox, it was the last thing he owned that once belonged to his family.

  Jack took two steps toward me. The candle hadn’t gone out when I’d broken the mirror, but when he shouted again it began to flicker.

  “Why did you do it? What on earth’s got into you?” he roared.

  What could I say? So I just shrugged, then stared down at my boots.

  “What are you doing in this room anyway?” Jack persisted.

  I didn’t answer. Anything I said would only make it worse.

  “Stay in your own room from now on!” Jack shouted. “I’ve a good mind to send the pair of you packing now!”

  I glanced toward Alice, who was still sitting on the chair, her head in her hands. She’d stopped crying, but her whole body was shaking.

  When I looked back, Jack’s anger had given way to alarm. He was staring at Ellie, who suddenly seemed to stagger. Before he could move, she lost her balance and fell back against the wall. Jack forgot about the mirror for a few moments while he fussed over Ellie.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” she said, all flustered. “I suddenly felt light-headed. Oh! Jack! Jack! I nearly dropped the baby!”

  “You didn’t and she’s safe. Don’t worry yourself. Here, let me take her. . . .”

  Once he had the baby in his arms, Jack calmed down. “For now, just clear this mess up,” he told me. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  Ellie walked across to the bed and put her hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Alice, you come downstairs for a bit while Tom tidies up,” she said. “I’ll make us all a drink.”

  Moments later they’d all gone down to the kitchen, leaving me to pick up the pieces of glass. After about ten minutes I went down there myself to get a brush and pan. They were sitting around the kitchen table sipping herb tea, the baby asleep in Ellie’s arms. They weren’t talking and nobody offered me a drink. Nobody even glanced in my direction.

  I went back upstairs and cleared up the mess as best I could, then went back to my own room. I sat on the bed and stared through the window, feeling terrified and alone. Was Alice already possessed? After all, it had been Mother Malkin’s face staring back out of the mirror. If she was, then the baby and everyone else were in real danger.

  She hadn’t tried to do anything then, but Alice was relatively small compared with Jack, so Mother Malkin would have to be sly. She’d wait for everyone to go to sleep. I’d be the main target. Or maybe the baby. A child’s blood would increase her strength.

  Or had I broken the mirror just in time? Had I broken the spell at the very moment when Mother Malkin was about to possess Alice? Another possibility was that Alice had just been talking to the witch, using the mirror. Even so, that was bad enough. It meant I had two enemies to worry about.

  I needed to do something. But what? While I sat there, my head whirling, trying to think things through, there was a tap on my bedroom door. I thought it was Alice, so I didn’t go. Then a voice called my name softly. It was Ellie, so I opened the door.

  “Can we talk inside?” she asked. “I don’t want to risk waking the baby. I’ve only just gotten her off to sleep again.”

  I nodded, so Ellie came in and carefully closed the door behind her.

  “You all right?” she asked, looking concerned.

  I nodded miserably but couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Would you like to tell me about it?” she asked. “You’re a sensible lad, Tom, and you must have had a very good reason for what you did. Talking it through might make you feel better.”

  How could I tell her the truth? I mean, Ellie had a baby to care for, so how could I tell her that there was a witch somewhere loose in the house with a taste for children’s blood? Then I realized that, for the sake of the baby, I would have to tell her something. She had to know just how bad things were. She had to get away.

  “There is something, Ellie. But I don’t know how to tell you.”

  Ellie smiled. “The beginning would be as good a place as any . . .”

  “Something’s followed me back here,” I said, looking Ellie straight in the eyes. “Something evil that wants to hurt me. That’s why I broke the mirror. Alice was talking to it and—”

  Ellie’s eyes suddenly flashed with anger. “Tell Jack that, and you certainly would feel his fist! You mean you’ve brought something back here, when I’ve got a new baby to care for? How could you? How could you do that?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to happen,” I protested. “I only found out tonight. That’s why I’m telling you now. You need to leave the house and take the baby to safety. Go now, before it’s too late.”

  “What? Right now? In the middle of the night?”

  I nodded.

  Ellie shook her head firmly. “Jack wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t be driven out of his own house in the
middle of the night. Not by anything. No, I’ll wait. I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to say my prayers. My mother taught me that. She said that if you pray really hard, nothing from the dark can ever harm you. And I really do believe that. Anyway, you could be wrong, Tom,” she added. “You’re young and only just beginning to learn the job, so it may not be quite as bad as you think. And your mam should be back at any time. If not tonight, then certainly tomorrow night. She’ll know what to do. In the meantime, just keep out of that girl’s room. There’s something not right about her.”

  As I opened my mouth to speak, intending to have one more go at persuading her to leave, an expression of alarm suddenly came over Ellie’s face, and she stumbled and put her hand against the wall to save herself from falling.

  “Look what you’ve done now. I feel faint just thinking about what’s going on here.”

  She sat down on my bed and put her head in her hands while I just stared down at her miserably, not knowing what to do or say.

  After a few moments she climbed back to her feet again. “We need to talk to your mam as soon as she gets back, but don’t forget, stay away from Alice until then. Do you promise?”

  I promised, and with a sad smile Ellie went back to her own room.

  It was only when she’d gone that it struck me. . . .

  Ellie had stumbled for a second time and said she’d felt light-headed. One stumble could be just chance. Just tiredness. But twice! She was dizzy. Ellie was dizzy, and that was the first sign of possession!

  I began to pace up and down. Surely I was wrong. Not Ellie! It couldn’t be Ellie. Maybe Ellie was just tired. After all, the baby did keep her awake a lot. But Ellie was strong and healthy. She’d been brought up on a farm herself and wasn’t one to let things drag her down. And all that talk about saying prayers. She could have said that so I wouldn’t suspect her.

  But hadn’t Alice told me that Ellie would be difficult to possess? She’d also said that it would probably be Jack, but he hadn’t shown any sign of dizziness. Still, there was no denying that he had become more and more bad tempered and aggressive, too! If Ellie hadn’t held him back, he’d have thumped my head off my shoulders.

  But of course, if Alice were in league with Mother Malkin, everything she said would be intended to put me off the scent. I couldn’t even trust her account of the Spook’s book! She could have told me lies all along! I couldn’t read Latin, so there was no way to check what she’d said.

  I realized that it could be any one of them. An attack could occur at any moment, and I hadn’t any way of knowing who it would come from!

  With luck, Mam would be back before dawn. She’d know what to do. But dawn was a long time off, so I couldn’t afford to sleep. I’d have to keep watch all night long. If Jack or Ellie were possessed, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t go into their room, so all I could do was keep an eye on Alice.

  I went outside and sat on the stairs between the door to Ellie and Jack’s room and my own. From there I could see Alice’s door below. If she left her room, at least I’d be able to give a warning.

  I decided that if Mam wasn’t back, I’d leave at dawn; apart from her, there was just one more chance of help. . . .

  It was a long night, and at first I jumped at the slightest sound—a creak of the stairs or a faint movement of the floorboards in one of the rooms. But gradually I calmed down. It was an old house and these were the noises I was used to—the noises you expected as it slowly settled and cooled down during the night. However, as dawn approached, I started to feel uneasy again.

  I began to hear faint scratching noises from inside the walls. It sounded like fingernails clawing at stone, and it wasn’t always in the same place. Sometimes it was farther up the stairs on the left; sometimes below, close to Alice’s room. It was so faint that it was hard to tell whether I was imagining it or not. But I began to feel cold, really cold, and that told me that danger was near.

  Next the dogs began to bark, and within a few minutes the other animals were going crazy, too, the hairy pigs squealing so loud you’d have thought the pig butcher had already arrived. If that wasn’t enough, the row started the baby crying again.

  I was so cold now that my whole body was shaking and trembling. I just had to do something.

  On the riverbank, facing the witch, my hands had known what to do. This time it was my legs that acted faster than I could think. I stood up and ran. Terrified, my heart hammering, I bounded down the stairs, adding to the noise. I just had to get outside and away from the witch. Nothing else mattered. All my courage had gone.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Hairy Pigs

  I RAN out of the house and headed north, straight for Hangman’s Hill, still in a panic, only slowing down when I’d reached the north pasture. I needed help, and I needed it fast. I was going back to Chipenden. Only the Spook could help me now.

  Once I’d reached the boundary fence, the animals suddenly fell silent, and I turned and looked back toward the farm. Beyond it, I could just see the dirt road winding away in the distance, like a dark stain on the patchwork of gray fields.

  It was then that I saw a light on the road. There was a cart moving toward the farm. Was it Mam? For a few moments my hopes were high. But as the cart neared the farm gate, I heard a loud hawking cough, the noise of phlegm being gathered in the throat, and then somebody spat. It was just Snout, the pig butcher. He’d five of our biggest hairy pigs to deal with; once dead, each one took a lot of scraping, so he was making an early start.

  He’d never done me any harm, but I was always glad when he’d finished his business and left. Mam had never liked him either. She disliked the way he kept hawking up thick phlegm and spitting it out into the yard.

  He was a big man, taller even than Jack, with knotted muscles on his forearms. The muscles were necessary for the work he did. Some pigs weighed more than a man and they fought like mad to avoid the knife. However, there was one part of Snout that had gone to seed. His shirts were always short, with the bottom two buttons open, and his fat, white, hairy belly hung down over the brown leather apron he wore to stop his trousers from getting soaked with blood. He couldn’t have been much more than thirty, but his hair was thin and lank.

  Disappointed that it wasn’t Mam, I watched him unhook the lantern from the cart and begin to unload his tools. He set up for business at the front of the barn, right next to the pigpen.

  I’d wasted enough time. I had started to climb over the fence into the wood when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement on the slope below. A shadow was heading my way, hurrying toward the stile at the far end of the north pasture.

  It was Alice. I didn’t want her following me, but it was better to deal with her now than later, so I sat on the boundary fence and waited for her to reach me. I didn’t have to wait long because she ran all the way up the hill.

  She didn’t come that close but stayed about nine or ten paces away, her hands on her hips, trying to catch her breath. I looked her up and down, seeing again the black dress and the pointy shoes. I must have woken her up when I’d run down the stairs; to reach me so soon she must have gotten dressed quickly and followed me straightaway.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” I called across to her, nervousness making my voice wobbly and higher than usual. “Don’t waste your time following me either. You’ve had your chance, so from now on you’d better keep well away from Chipenden.”

  “You better had talk to me if you know what’s good for you,” Alice said. “Soon it’ll be too late, so there’s something you’d better know. Mother Malkin’s already here.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I saw her.”

  “Not just in the mirror, though. It ain’t just that. She’s back there, somewhere inside the house,” Alice said, pointing back down the hill.

  “I told you, I know that,” I said angrily. “The moonlight showed me the trail she made, and when I came upstairs to tell you that, what did I find? You were alr
eady talking to her, and probably not for the first time.”

  I remembered the first night when I went up to Alice’s room and gave her the book. As I went inside, the candle had still been smoking in front of the mirror.

  “You probably brought her here,” I accused. “You told her where I was.”

  “Ain’t true, that,” Alice said, an anger in her voice that matched my own. She took about three steps closer to me. “Sniffed her out, I did, and I used the mirror to see where she was. Didn’t realize she was so close, did I? She was too strong for me, so I couldn’t break away. Lucky you came in when you did. Lucky for me you broke that mirror.”

  I wanted to believe Alice, but how could I trust her? When she moved a couple of paces nearer, I half turned, ready to jump down onto the grass on the other side of the fence. “I’m going back to Chipenden to fetch Mr. Gregory,” I told her. “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Ain’t time for that,” said Alice. “When you get back it’ll be too late. There’s the baby to think about. Mother Malkin wants to hurt you, but she’ll be hungry for human blood. Young blood’s what she likes best. That’s what makes her strongest.”

  My fear had made me forget about Ellie’s baby. Alice was right. The witch wouldn’t want to possess it, but she’d certainly want its blood. When I brought the Spook back, it would be too late.

  “But what can I do?” I asked. “What chance have I got against Mother Malkin?”

  Alice shrugged and turned down the corners of her mouth. “That’s your business. Surely Old Gregory taught you something that could be useful? If you didn’t write it down in that notebook of yours, then maybe it’s inside your head. You just have to remember it, that’s all.”