Chapter Thirteen

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 towards the farm. Beyond it, I could just see the dirt road winding away in the distance, like a dark stain on the patchwork of grey fields.

It was then that I saw a light on the road. There was a cart moving towards 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 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 and 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 towards 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 got dressed quickly and followed me straight away.

‘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 already 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.’

‘He’s not said that much about witches,’ I said, suddenly feeling annoyed with the Spook. Most of my training so far had been about boggarts, with little bits on ghasts and ghosts; while all my problems had been caused by witches.

I still didn’t trust Alice, but now, after what she’d just said, I couldn’t leave for Chipenden. I’d never get the Spook back here in time. Her warning about the threat to Ellie’s baby seemed well intentioned, but if Alice were possessed, or on Mother Malkin’s side, they were the very words that gave me no choree but to go back down the hill towards the farm. The very words that would keep me from warning the Spook, yet keep me where the witch could get her hands on me at a time of her own choosing.

On the way down the hill I kept my distance from Alice, but she was at my side when we walked into the yard and crossed close to the front of the barn.

Snout was there sharpening his knives; he looked up when he saw me and nodded. I nodded back. After he’d nodded at me he just stared at Alice without speaking, but he looked her up and down twice. Then, just before we reached the kitchen door, he whistled long and loud. Snout’s face had more in common with a pig’s than with a wolf’s but it was that kind of whistle, heavy with mockery.

Alice pretended not to hear him. Before making the breakfast she had another job to do: she went straight into the kitchen and started preparing the chicken we’d be having for our midday meal. It was hanging from a hook by the door, its neck off and its insides already pulled out the evening before. She set to work cleaning it with water and salt, her eyes concentrating hard on what she was doing so that her busy fingers wouldn’t miss the tiniest bit.

It was then, as I watched her, that I finally remembered something that might just work against a possessed body.

Salt and iron!

I couldn’t be sure but it was worth a try. It was what the Spook used to bind a boggart into a pit and it might just work against a witch. If I threw it at someone possessed, it might just drive Mother Malkin out.

I didn’t trust Alice and didn’t want her to see me helping myself to the salt, so I had to wait until she’d stopped cleaning the chicken and left the kitchen. That done, before going out to start my own chores, I paid a visit to Dad’s workshop.

It didn’t take me long to find what I needed. From amongst the large collection of files on the shelf above his workbench I chose the biggest and roughest toothed of them all. It was the one called a ‘bastard’ which, when I was younger, gave me the only chance of ever using that word without getting a clip round the ear. Soon I was filing away at the edge of an old iron bucket, the noise setting my teeth on edge. But it wasn’t long before an even louder noise split the air.