‘Yes. Yes. I have lots of happy memories …’
‘Then what’s the happiest one – the happiest one of all?’ he demanded.
‘I was very young, no more than five or six years old. I was walking across a meadow, picking daisies with my mother on a warm sunny morning, listening to the droning of the bees and the singing of the birds. Everything was fresh and bright and filled with hope. She made a chain out of the daisies and put it on my head. She said I was a princess and would one day meet a prince. But that’s just foolishness. Real life is very different. It can be cruel beyond measure. I met a man who I thought was like a prince, but he betrayed me.’
‘Go back to that moment. Go back to the time when the future still lay ahead, full of warm promise and hope. Concentrate,’ the Spook instructed. ‘You are there again now. Can you see it? Can you hear the birds? Your mother is beside you, holding your hand. Can you feel her hand?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ cried the spirit. ‘She’s squeezing my hand. She’s taking me somewhere …’
‘She’s taking you towards the light!’ exclaimed the Spook. ‘Can’t you see its brightness ahead?’
‘I can see it! I can see the light! The mist has gone!’
‘Then go! Enter the light. You’re going home!’
The spirit gave a sigh full of longing, then suddenly laughed. It was a joyful laugh, followed by utter silence. My master had done it. He had sent her to the light.
‘Well,’ he said ominously, ‘we need to talk about what’s happened here.’
Despite our success, he wasn’t happy. Alice had used dark magic to free the girl’s spirit from the spell.
DOWN IN THE kitchen, we ate a light supper of soda bread and gammon. When we’d finished, the Spook pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.
‘Well, girl, tell me what you did.’
‘The maid’s spirit was bound by a dark spell of compulsion,’ said Alice. ‘It was trapped within the inn and forced to utter a Befuddle spell that drives anyone who hears it to the edge of madness. Scares them so much, it does, they’ll do anything to get away.’
‘So what exactly did you do?’ demanded the Spook impatiently. ‘Leave nothing out!’
‘I used what Bony Lizzie once taught me,’ Alice replied. ‘She was good at controlling the dead. Once she’d got what she wanted from them – so long as they hadn’t tried too hard to resist, she let them go. She needed another spell to release them. It’s called avaunt – an old word for “be gone”.
‘So, despite all my warnings against it, you used dark magic again!’
‘What else was I supposed to do?’ Alice said, raising her voice in anger. ‘Salt and iron ain’t going to work! How could it when you were dealing with a young girl’s tortured spirit rather than something from the dark? And soon we’d have all been in real trouble. So I did what I had to do.’
‘Good came out of it too,’ I said in support of Alice. ‘The girl’s spirit has gone to the light and the inn is once again safe.’
The Spook was clearly deeply worried but had little more to say. After all, he had already compromised his principles by allowing us to keep the blood jar. Sensing that his silence was mostly directed at her, Alice got to her feet and stamped off up the stairs to her room.
I looked at my master; I felt sad when I saw the hurt and dismay in his eyes. Over the past two years a rift had gradually come between the three of us because of this use of dark magic. I had to try and make amends, but it was hard to know what to say.
‘At least we dealt with the jibber,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll write it up in my notebook.’
‘Good idea, lad,’ the Spook said, his face brightening a little. ‘I’ll make a fresh entry in my Bestiary too. Whatever happens, we need to record the past and learn from it.’
So while I jotted a brief account of what had happened in my own notebook, the Spook pulled the Bestiary – the only book that had survived the burning of his house and library in Chipenden – from his bag. For a while we both wrote in silence, and by coincidence finished our records at almost the same moment.
‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and it’s safe to return to Chipenden,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get back to our normal routine …’
‘Aye, lad, it would. I certainly miss the County, and I’m looking forward to rebuilding that house of mine.’
‘It won’t be the same without the boggart, will it?’ I commented.
The boggart had been a mostly invisible resident, occasionally appearing as a large ginger tom cat. It had served the Spook well in many ways, and had guarded the house and garden. When the house was burned down and the roof collapsed, the pact between my master and the boggart had ended. It had been free to leave.
‘It certainly won’t. We’ll have to do our own cooking and cleaning, and you’ll be making the breakfasts. My poor old stomach will find that hard to cope with,’ said the Spook with the faintest of smiles. He always used to joke about my poor cooking, and it was good to see him attempting it again.
He looked a little more cheerful, and soon after that we went to bed. I felt nostalgic for our old life, and wondered whether it had now gone for ever.
However, the night’s terrors weren’t over yet. Back in my room I made a horrific discovery.
I put my left hand into the pocket of my breeches and immediately realized what had caused the pain when I’d fallen on my side. It had been the blood jar.
Was it damaged? My heart sank into my boots. With a trembling hand I carefully withdrew the small jar from my pocket, carried it over to the candle and examined it. I shuddered with fear. There was a crack running along almost half its length. Was the jar now in danger of breaking? I wondered.
Close to panic, I went next door to Alice’s room and knocked softly. When she opened it, I showed her the jar. At first she looked as alarmed as I was, but after examining it thoroughly she smiled reassuringly.
‘It seems all right, Tom. Just a fine crack, it is. Our blood’s still inside, which means we’re safe from the Fiend. They’re tough jars, those, and don’t break easily. We’re still all right, so don’t you worry.’
I went back to my room, relieved to find that we’d had such a lucky escape.