1
A Mysterious Death
THERE was a cold draft coming from somewhere; maybe that was making the candle flicker, casting strange shadows onto the wall at the foot of the bed. The creaky wooden floor was uneven; perhaps that was why the door kept opening by itself, as if something invisible was trying to get in.
But ordinary commonsense explanations didn’t work here. As soon as I’d walked into the bedroom, I’d known that there was something badly wrong. That’s what my instincts told me, and they’ve rarely let me down.
Without doubt this room was haunted by somebody or something. And that’s why I was here, summoned by the landlord of the inn to sort out his problem.
My name is Tom Ward, and I’m the Chipenden Spook. I deal with ghosts, ghasts, boggarts, witches, and all manner of things that go bump in the night.
It’s a dangerous job, but someone has to do it.
I walked over to the bedroom window and pulled on the sash cord to raise the lower half. It was about an hour after sunset and the moon was already visible above the distant hills. I looked down on a large graveyard shrouded by trees, mostly drooping willows and ancient elms. In the pale moonlight the tombstones seemed luminous, as if radiating a strange light of their own, and the elms, which cast sinister shadows, were like huge crouching beasts.
This was the village of Kirkby Lonsdale, just over the County border, and although it was less than twenty miles northeast of Caster, it was an isolated place, well off the beaten track.
I went downstairs, leaving the inn through the front room, where three locals drank ale by the fire. They stopped talking and turned to watch me, but not one called out a greeting. No doubt any stranger to the village would have received a similar response—silence, curiosity, and a drawing together against the outsider.
Of course, there was an additional factor at work here. I was a spook who dealt with threats from the dark, one of only a few scattered throughout the County, and although I was needed, I made people nervous. Folk often crossed over to the other side of the street to avoid me, just in case a ghost or a boggart was hovering close by, drawn by my presence.
And as was the way of things in the County, by now, all the inhabitants of this isolated village would know my business here.
A voice called out to me as I walked through the front door and out onto the street.
“Master Ward, a quick word in your ear!”
I turned and watched the landlord approach. He was a big, hearty man with a florid face, full of forced good cheer—something that he had no doubt cultivated for the benefit of his customers. But although I was spending the night in one of his rooms, he didn’t treat me like that. He showed the same impatience and superiority that I’d noted when he dealt with his staff and the man who’d delivered fresh casks of ale soon after I arrived.
I was the hired help, and he expected a lot for his money—which annoyed me. I had changed a great deal over the past few months; a lot had happened, and I was far less patient than I used to be . . . and quicker to anger.
“Well?” the landlord said, raising his eyebrows. “What have you found out?”
I shrugged. “The room’s haunted, all right, but by what I don’t know yet. Maybe you could speed things up a little by telling me everything you know. How long has this been going on?”
“Well, young man, isn’t it up to you to find out the situation for yourself? I’m paying you good money, so I don’t expect to have to do your job for you. I’m sure your master, God rest his soul, would have had the job done by now.”
With this last sentence, the innkeeper had gotten to the heart of the problem, and it was his problem, not mine. John Gregory, the Spook who had trained me, had died the previous year. He had been fighting to help destroy the Fiend, the devil himself and ruler of the dark, who’d threatened to bring an age of tyranny and fear to the world. As his apprentice, I had now inherited his role and was operating as the Chipenden Spook. But, in truth, I hadn’t really completed my apprenticeship and was young to be plying my trade alone like this.
Over the months I’d spent working alone, I’d met quite a few people who shared the innkeeper’s attitude. I’d learned that it was important to set them right from the outset. They had to understand that they were not dealing with a boy who was still wet behind the ears; young though I was, I had been well taught and was good at what I did.
“Mr. Gregory would have asked you the same question that I just did, make no mistake about it,” I told the innkeeper. “And I’ll tell you something else—if you’d failed to answer, he would have picked up his bag and gone straight home.”
He glared at me, clearly unaccustomed to being spoken to like that. My dad had taught me to be polite and to display good manners, even if the person I was dealing with was rude. So while I stared back without blinking, I kept my expression mild and my tongue still. I waited for him to speak.
“A girl died in that room exactly a month ago tomorrow,” he said at last. “I employed her in the kitchen, and sometimes, when it got busy, she helped out by serving ale in the bar. She was fit and strong, but one morning she didn’t get up, and we found her dead in bed with a terrified expression on her face and blood all down the front of her nightgown. But there was no sign of any wound on her body. Since then her ghost walks, and I can’t let the room—or any of the others, for that matter. Even down in the ale room, we can hear her pacing back and forth. There should have been a dozen people taking that room by now, with more to come. It’s affecting my business badly.”
“Have you seen her ghost?” I asked, wondering how strong the manifestation was. Some ghosts could only be heard.
“There’s been no sign of her down here or in the kitchen. The sounds all come from the bedroom, but I’ve never been in there after dark when she walks, and I wouldn’t ask my staff to do so, either.”
I nodded and offered him my best sympathetic expression. “What about the cause of death?” I asked. “What did the doctor have to say?”
“He seemed as puzzled as everyone else but thought it might have been some sort of internal hemorrhage, possibly in her lungs; she’d coughed up blood.”
I could tell that the man wasn’t convinced by this explanation, and indeed he continued. “It was the look of horror on her face that made us all uneasy. The doctor said seeing all that blood coming out of her mouth might have terrified her and caused her heart to stop. Or she might have carried on bleeding inside. To my way of thinking, he didn’t really have any idea why she died.”