‘There, we’ve got him safe enough. You can start digging now.’

Her face came very close to mine so that I could smell her foul breath through the sacking. It was like the breath of a dog or a cat. ‘Well, boy,’ she said. ‘How does it feel to know that you’ll never see the light of day again?’

When I heard the sound of distant digging, I began to shiver with fright. I remembered the Spook’s tale of the miner’s wife, especially the worst bit of all when she’d lain there paralysed, unable to cry out while her husband dug her grave. Now it was going to happen to me. I was going to be buried alive and I’d have done anything just to see daylight again, even for a moment.

At first, when they cut my ropes and pulled the sack from me, I was relieved. By then the sun had gone down, but I looked up and could see the stars, with the waning moon low over the trees. I felt the wind on my face and it had never felt so good. My feeling of relief didn’t last more than a few moments though, because I started to wonder exactly what they had in mind for me. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being buried alive, but Bony Lizzie probably could.

To be honest, when I saw Tusk close up for the first time, he wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. In a way he’d looked worse the night he was chasing me. He wasn’t as old as the Spook but his face was lined and weatherbeaten, and a mass of greasy grey hair covered his head. His teeth were too big to fit into his mouth, which meant that he could never close it properly, and two of them curved upwards like yellow tusks on either side of his nose. He was big too, and very hairy with powerful muscular arms. I’d felt that grip and had thought it bad enough, but I knew that he had the power in those shoulders to squeeze me so tightly that all the air would be forced from my body and my ribs would shatter.

Tusk had a big curved knife at his belt, with a blade that looked very sharp. But the worst thing about him was his eyes. They were completely dull. It was as if there was nothing alive inside his head; he was just something that obeyed Bony Lizzie without even a thought. I knew that he’d do anything she told him without question, no matter how terrible it was.

As for Bony Lizzie, she wasn’t skinny at all and I knew, from my reading in the Spook’s library, that she was probably called that because she used bone magic. I’d already smelled her breath, but at a glance you’d never have taken her for a witch. She wasn’t like Mother Malkin, all shrivelled with age, looking like something that was already dead. No, Bony Lizzie was just an older version of Alice. Probably no older than thirty-five, she had pretty brown eyes and hair as black as her niece’s. She wore a green shawl and a black dress fastened neatly at her slim waist with a narrow leather belt. There was certainly a family resemblance – except for her mouth. It wasn’t the shape of it, it was the way she moved it; the way it twisted and sneered when she talked. One other thing I noticed was that she never looked me in the eye.

Alice wasn’t like that. She had a nice mouth, still shaped for smiling, but I realized then that she would eventually become just like Bony Lizzie.

Alice had tricked me. She was the reason I was here rather than safe and sound back in the Spook’s house, eating my supper.

At a nod from Bony Lizzie, Tusk grabbed me and tied my hands behind my back. Then he seized me by the arm and dragged me through the trees. First of all I saw the mound of dark soil, then the deep pit beside it, and I smelled the wet, loamy stink of freshly turned earth. It smelled sort of dead and alive at the same time, with things brought to the surface that really belonged deep underground.

The pit was probably more than seven feet deep, but unlike the one the Spook had kept Mother Malkin in, it was irregular in shape, just a great big hole with steep sides. I remember thinking that with all the practice I’d had, I could have dug one far better.

At that moment the moon showed me something else – something I’d have preferred not to see. About three paces away, to the left of the pit, there was an oblong of freshly turned soil. It looked just like a new grave.

Without time even to begin worrying about that, I was dragged right to the edge of the pit and Tusk forced my head back. I had a glimpse of Bony Lizzie’s face close to mine, something hard was jammed into my mouth and a cold, bitter-tasting liquid was poured down my throat. It tasted vile and filled my throat and mouth to the brim, spilling over and even erupting out of my nose so that I began to choke, gasping and struggling for breath. I tried to spit it out but Bony Lizzie pinched my nostrils hard with her finger and thumb, so that in order to breathe I first had to swallow.

That done, Tusk let go of my head and transferred his grip back to my left arm. I saw then what had been forced into my mouth – Bony Lizzie held it up for me to see. It was a small bottle made out of dark glass. A bottle with a long, narrow neck. She turned it so that its neck was pointing to the ground and a few drops fell to the earth. The rest was already in my stomach.

What had I drunk? Had she poisoned me?

‘That’ll keep your eyes wide open, boy,’ she said with a sneer. ‘Wouldn’t want you dozing off, would we? Wouldn’t want you to miss anything.’

Without warning, Tusk swung me round violently towards the pit and my stomach lurched as I fell into space. I landed heavily but the earth at the bottom was soft, and although the fall winded me, I was unhurt. So I twisted round to look up at the stars, thinking that maybe I was going to be buried alive after all. But instead of a shovelful of dirt falling towards me, I saw the outline of Bony Lizzie’s head and shoulders peering down, a silhouette against the stars. She started to chant in a strange sort of throaty whisper, though I couldn’t catch the actual words.

Next she stretched her arms out above the pit and I could see that she was holding something in each hand. Giving a strange cry, she opened her hands and two white things dropped towards me, landing in the mud close to my knees.

By the moonlight I saw clearly what they were. They almost seemed to be glowing. She’d dropped two bones into the pit. They were thumb-bones – I could see the knuckles.

‘Enjoy your last night on this earth, boy,’ she called down to me. ‘But don’t worry, you won’t be lonely because I’ll leave you in good company. Dead Billy will be coming to claim his bones. Just next door, he is, so he’s not got too far to go. He’ll be with you soon and you two have a lot in common. He was Old Gregory’s last apprentice and he won’t take kindly to you having taken his place. Then, just before dawn, we’ll be paying you one last visit. We’ll be coming to collect your bones. They’re special, your bones are, even better than Billy’s, and taken fresh they’ll be the most useful I’ve had for a long time.’

Her face drew back and I heard footsteps walking away.

So that was what was going to happen to me. If Lizzie wanted my bones it meant that she was going to kill me. I remembered the big curved blade that Tusk wore at his belt and I began to tremble.

Before that I had Dead Billy to face. When she’d said, ‘Just next door’, she must have meant the new grave next to the pit. But the Spook had said that Billy Bradley was buried just outside the churchyard at Layton. Lizzie must have dug up his body, cut off his thumbs and buried the rest of him here amongst the trees. Now he’d be coming to get his thumbs back.

Would Billy Bradley want to hurt me? I’d never done him any harm but he’d probably enjoyed being the Spook’s apprentice. Maybe he’d looked forward to finishing his time and becoming a spook himself. Now I’d taken what he once had. Not only that – what about Bony Lizzie’s spell? He might think I was the one who’d cut off his thumbs and thrown them into the pit…