As we approached it, our feet squelched across soggy ground. The front door was slightly ajar, and Thorne didn’t knock. She eased it open and led us through an empty room to some stone steps that led downwards.
As our pointy shoes clip-clopped on the stone, signalling our arrival, I became more and more uneasy. I could never have walked down these particular steps before, but they reminded me of something from my past; something scary and terrible.
We emerged into a cellar that spread out over a larger area than the old house above us. About half of it was taken up by a big pit full of murky water. I knew this place now. It was the exact replica of a certain cellar back on earth; a place I remembered all too well.
Against the wall stood a single large chair.
It was occupied.
Facing me was a large, podgy-faced woman with piggy eyes. Her hair was grey and unkempt. She was scowling at me from under her bristly eyebrows, hatred radiating from every pore of her body.
It was Betsy Gammon, an old enemy of mine. Someone who had plenty of cause to do me harm.
This was a trap.
Thorne had betrayed me.
TO EXPLAIN ABOUT Betsy Gammon, I have to go way back to my time with Lizzie.
I was born just east of Pendle in the shadow of that big, brooding hill. My kin were witches, and so there was badness in my blood. It was inevitable that I would be trained as a witch, and I had two years of learning the dark craft from one of the most powerful witches of all – Bony Lizzie. It was a difficult two years. She taught me a lot of dark stuff, and there were things that happened during my time with her – things I’ve never told my friend, Tom Ward; dark, scary things that led me to my first confrontation with Betsy.
One of the worst weeks I ever spent with Lizzie was when she took me with her to try and kill a spook.
I was down in the cellar of her dark, dingy cottage studying. I heard the clip-clip of her pointy shoes coming down the cold stone steps. I was surprised. There was still another hour until midnight and I wasn’t expecting Lizzie until dawn – she had gone off to meet the rest of the Malkin coven.
I looked up from my book just as she moved into the candlelight. Wasn’t a bad-looking woman, Lizzie, with dark hair and big eyes, but she scowled a lot. Muttered under her breath too – spells and curses mostly – and I could tell she was in a foul mood now because the corners of her mouth were twitching.
‘That’s enough reading for now. We’re off to Bury,’ she said.
It was the middle of the night and I wasn’t best pleased by this news. I was tired and looking forward to crawling into bed. ‘Where’s that?’ I asked.
‘It’s a village not far south of Ramsbottom.’
I’d never heard of Ramsbottom either. I’d lived in the Pendle district all my life and didn’t know much of the County beyond that.
‘Got work to do, we have – dark work,’ Lizzie hissed. ‘Coven business. We drew straws, and of the thirteen, mine was the shortest. The witch assassin is busy elsewhere, so it’s down to me now. I’m going to kill a spook. Deserves to die, he does. We cursed him before, but somehow he survived. Messed with us far too long, and now he’s got it coming.’
Lizzie must have seen the reluctance in my face and she scowled at me. ‘Right, girl! You’ve dawdled long enough. On your feet, or you’ll wish you’d never been born!’ She stamped her foot. Immediately, nasty twitchy things with tentacles and sharp teeth began to form in the darkest corners of the room – places where the flickering light from the candle flame couldn’t reach.
They were sprogs from the dark – those newborn entities, still trying to understand who they were and what their place was. Lizzie could summon them to do her bidding, and she was good at that: they could terrify, torment or even kill if there were enough of them. I shuddered. Lizzie loved to use them against me – she knew how scared of them I was. The first time she set sprogs on me, she’d told me the story of a young Malkin girl who’d been killed by them. The witch training her had been old and a bit absent-minded. She’d summoned the sprogs to punish the girl for burning the toast but then forgot all about them. She was deaf too, so she didn’t hear the screams. And when she finally went looking for the girl, it was too late. Her brain had been eaten clean away. Her eyes were empty sockets, and there were bloody holes all over her before the sprogs had eaten their fill and left the body.
That was why I was so terrified. If I didn’t get up right away, the most powerful ones would come closer, and start to nip and scratch. I’d have to close my mouth firmly and pinch my nostrils to stop any getting up my nose. But while I was doing that, they’d be trying to get into my ears . . . I just didn’t have enough hands to fight them off. The pain would get worse and worse, while my panic slowly grew. It was a nasty experience, and I really believed that if I angered Lizzie enough, one day she’d walk away and leave me to be eaten.
So I closed the grimoire, Lizzie’s oldest book of spells, got up and pushed my stool underneath the table. As the sprogs started to fade away, I blew out the candle and followed her up the stairs.
We were off to kill a spook, and I didn’t like the sound of that one little bit. This was well before I met John Gregory, Tom Ward’s master; at that time I had only heard witches’ tales about them – that they were our enemies and they fought ghosts, ghasts, boggarts and malevolent witches like Lizzie. I believed that to fall into their hands was the worst fate possible. Some would throw you into pits and leave you to rot there for the rest of your miserable life. Or they might cut out your heart and eat it to stop you coming back from the dead.
I did know that some spooks were better at their job than others. If this spook had messed with Lizzie’s coven, which was the most dangerous one in Pendle, he was no doubt brave and knew what he was doing. Maybe sorting out witches was his speciality? In that case, he’d have a silver chain and lots of pits ready to bind his victims.
Didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life in a pit, did I? But I had no choice, so I followed Lizzie out into the night.
Lizzie was in a rush: we set off south at a fair old pace, and I struggled to keep up. But just before dawn, we settled down in a wood to pass the daylight hours. I was tired and was pleased that Lizzie let me sleep right through until dusk, when she sent me out hunting for rabbits. I was good at that – been able to set traps since I was a little girl, I had. I also knew how to charm a rabbit. If you whispered in exactly the right way, they’d come right to your hand.