‘You still hungry, lad?’ he asked, his green eyes boring hard into my own until I started to feel a bit dizzy.
I was soaked to the skin and my feet were hurting, but most of all I was hungry. So I nodded, thinking he might offer me some more, but he just shook his head and muttered something to himself. Then, once again, he looked at me sharply.
‘Hunger’s something you’re going to have to get used to,’ he said. ‘We don’t eat much when we’re working, and if the job’s very difficult, we don’t eat anything at all until afterwards. Fasting’s the safest thing because it makes us less vulnerable to the dark. It makes us stronger. So you might as well start practising now, because when we get to Horshaw, I’m going to give you a little test. You’re going to spend a night in a haunted house. And you’re going to do it alone. That’ll show me what you’re really made of!’
Chapter Three. Number 13 Watery Lane
We reached Horshaw as a church bell began to chime in the distance. It was seven o’clock and starting to get dark. A heavy drizzle blew straight into our faces, but there was still enough light for me to judge that this wasn’t a place I ever wanted to live in and that even a short visit would be best avoided.
Horshaw was a black smear against the green fields, a grim, ugly little place with about two dozen rows of mean back-to-back houses huddling together mainly on the southern slope of a damp, bleak hillside. The whole area was riddled with mines, and Horshaw was at its centre. High above the village was a large slag heap which marked the entrance to a mine. Behind the slag heap were the coal yards, which stored enough fuel to keep the biggest towns in the County warm through even the longest of winters.
Soon we were walking down through the narrow, cobbled streets, keeping pressed close to the grimy walls to make way for carts heaped with black cobs of coal, wet and gleaming with rain. The huge shire horses that pulled them were straining against their loads, hooves slipping on the shiny cobbles.
There were few people about but lace curtains twitched as we passed, and once we met a group of dour-faced miners, who were trudging up the hill to begin their night shift. They’d been talking in loud voices but suddenly fell silent and moved into a single column to pass us, keeping to the far side of the street. One of them actually made the sign of the cross.
‘Get used to it, lad,’ growled the Spook. ‘We’re needed but rarely welcomed, and some places are worse than others.’
Finally we turned a corner into the lowest and meanest street of all. Nobody lived there – you could tell that right away. For one thing some of the windows were broken and others were boarded up, and although it was almost dark, no lights were showing. At one end of the street was an abandoned corn merchant’s warehouse, two huge wooden doors gaping open and hanging from their rusty hinges.
The Spook halted outside the very last house. It was the one on the corner closest to the warehouse, the only house in the street to have a number. That number was crafted out of metal and nailed to the door. It was thirteen, the worst and unluckiest of all numbers, and directly above was a street sign high on the wall, hanging from a single rusty rivet and pointing almost vertically towards the cobbles. It said, WATERY LANE.
This house did have windowpanes but the lace curtains were yellow and hung with cobwebs. This must be the haunted house my master had warned me about.
The Spook pulled a key from his pocket, unlocked the door and led the way into the darkness within. At first I was just glad to be out of the drizzle, but when he lit a candle and positioned it on the floor near the middle of the small front room, I knew that I’d be more comfortable in an abandoned cow shed. There wasn’t a single item of furniture to be seen, just a bare flagged floor and a heap of dirty straw under the window. The room was damp too, the air very dank and cold, and by the light of the flickering candle I could see my breath steaming.
What I saw was bad enough, but what he said was even worse.
‘Well, lad, I’ve got business to attend to so I’ll be off, but I’ll be back later. Know what you have to do?’
‘No, sir,’ I replied, watching the flickering candle, worried that it might go out at any second.
‘Well, it’s what I told you earlier. Weren’t you listening? You need to be alert, not dreaming. Anyway, it’s nothing very difficult,’ he explained, scratching at his beard as if there was something crawling about in it. ‘You just have to spend the night here alone. I bring all my new apprentices to this old house on their first night so I can find out what they’re made of. Oh, but there’s one thing I haven’t told you. At midnight I’ll expect you to go down into the cellar and face whatever it is that’s lurking there. Cope with that and you’re well on your way to being taken on permanently. Any questions?’
I had questions all right but I was too scared to hear the answers. So I just shook my head and tried to keep my top lip from trembling.
‘How will you know when it’s midnight?’ he asked.
I shrugged. I was pretty good at guessing the time from the position of the sun or the stars, and if I ever woke in the middle of the night, I almost always knew exactly what time it was, but here I wasn’t so sure. In some places time seems to move more slowly and I had a feeling that this old house would be one of them.
Suddenly I remembered the church clock. ‘It’s just gone seven,’ I said. ‘I’ll listen for twelve chimes.’
‘Well, at least you’re awake now,’ the Spook said with a little smile. ‘When the clock strikes twelve, take the stub of the candle and use it to find your way down to the cellar. Until then, sleep if you can manage it. Now listen carefully – there are three important things to remember. Don’t open the front door to anyone, no matter how hard they knock, and don’t be late going down to the cellar.’
He took a step towards the front door.
‘What’s the third thing?’ I called out at the very last moment.
‘The candle, lad. Whatever else you do, don’t let it go out…’
Then he was gone, closing the door behind him, and I was all alone. Cautiously I picked up the candle, walked to the kitchen door and peered inside. It was empty of everything but a stone sink. The back door was closed but the wind still wailed beneath it. There were two other doors on the right. One was open and I could see the bare wooden stairs that led to the bedrooms above. The other one, that closest to me, was closed.
Something about that closed door made me uneasy but I decided to take a quick look. Nervously I gripped the handle and tugged at the door. It was hard to shift and for a moment I had a creepy feeling that somebody was holding it closed on the other side. When I tugged even harder, it opened with a jerk, making me lose my balance. I staggered back a couple of steps and almost dropped the candle.
Stone steps led down into the darkness; they were black with coal dust. They curved away to the left so I couldn’t see right down into the cellar, but a cold draught came up them, making the candle flame dance and flicker. I closed the door quickly and went back into the front room, closing the kitchen door too.
I put the candle down carefully in the corner furthest away from the door and window. Once I was satisfied that it wouldn’t fall over, I looked for a place on the floor where I could sleep. There wasn’t much choice. I certainly wasn’t sleeping on the damp straw, so I settled down in the centre of the room.
The flags were hard and cold but I closed my eyes. Once asleep, I’d be away from that grim old house and I felt pretty confident that I’d wake just before midnight.
Usually I get to sleep easily but this was different. I kept shivering with cold and the wind was beginning to rattle the windowpanes. There were also rustlings and patterings coming from the walls. Just mice, I kept telling myself. We were certainly used to them on the farm. But then, suddenly, there came a disturbing new sound from down below in the depths of the dark cellar.