The Spook's Mistake

'Well, boy!' a deep voice boomed. 'You're easily taken unawares. It doesn't pay to sleep too deeply in these parts. Nowhere is safe!'

I sat up quickly, then stumbled clumsily to my feet. Facing me was a spook, holding his staff in his left hand and a bag in his right. And what a bag! It could have easily contained both my master's and my own within it. Then I noticed the tip of the staff. My master's staff and mine both had retractable blades but this one was clearly visible, a wicked-looking knife at least twelve inches long, with six backward-facing barbs, three on each side.

'Mr Arkwright?' I asked. 'I'm Tom Ward. '

'Aye, I'm Bill Arkwright, and I guessed who you must be. I'm pleased to meet you, Master Ward. Your master speaks highly of you.'

I stared at him, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes. He wasn't quite as tall as my master but he was sturdier in a sort of wiry way that suggested strength. His face was gaunt and he had large green eyes and a strikingly bald head, from which not even a solitary hair sprouted — it was shaved as closely as that of a monk. On his left cheek was a vivid scar, which looked to be from a wound recently inflicted.

I also saw that his lips were stained purple. The Spook didn't drink, but once, when he'd been ill, raving with the fever, he'd drunk a whole bottle of red wine. Afterwards his lips had been that same purple colour.

Arkwright leaned his staff against the wall next to the inner door, then put down his bag. There was a chink of glass as it made contact with the kitchen floor. He held out his hand towards me. I shook it. 'Mr Gregory thinks well of you too,' I told him, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the guinea. 'He sent you this to help towards my keep..'

Arkwright took it from me, put it to his mouth and bit into it hard. He inspected it closely, then smiled and nodded his thanks. He'd checked to make sure it was a real guinea made out of gold rather than some counterfeit. That annoyed me. Did he think my master would try to cheat him? Or was it me he suspected?

'Let's trust each other for a while, Master Ward,' he said, 'and see how we get on. Let's allow time enough to give us a chance to judge each other.'

'My master said you'd have lots to teach me about the area north of Caster,' I continued, trying not to show my irritation about the guinea. 'About things that come out of the water. '

'Aye, I'll be teaching you about that all right, but mostly I'll be toughening you up. Are you strong, Master Ward?'

'Quite strong for my age,' I said uncertainly.

'Sure about that, are you?' Arkwright said, looking me up and down. 'I think you'll need a bit more muscle on you to survive in this job! Any good at armwrestling?'

'Never tried it before. '

'Well, you can try it now. It'll give me an idea of what needs to be done. Come over here and sit yourself down!' he commanded, leading the way to the table.

I'd been the youngest by three years and had missed those family games, but I remembered my brothers Jack and James arm-wrestling at the kitchen table back at the farm. In those days Jack always won because he was older, taller and stronger. I would be at the same disadvantage against Arkwright.

I sat down facing him and we placed our left arms together and locked hands. With my elbow on the table, my arm was shorter than his. I did my best but he exerted a strong, steady pressure, and despite my best attempts to resist he bent my arm back until it was flat against the table,

'That the best you can do?' he asked. 'What about if we give you a little help?'

So saying, he went over to his bag and returned carrying his notebook. 'Here, put this under your elbow. '

With the notebook raising my elbow from the tabletop, my arm was almost as long as his. So when I felt the first steady pressure from his arm, I brought all my strength to bear just as suddenly as I could. To my satisfaction I managed to force his arm a little way back, and I saw the surprise in his eyes. But then he countered with a strength that forced my arm to the surface of the table in seconds. With a grunt, he released my hand and stood up while I rubbed my sore muscles.

'That was better,' he said, 'but you need to harden those muscles if you're going to survive. Hungry, Master Ward?'

I nodded.

'Right then, I'll cook us some breakfast and after that we'd better start getting to know each other.'

He opened his bag to reveal two empty wine bottles — along with other provisions: cheese, eggs, ham, pork and two large fish. 'Caught this morning, these!' he exclaimed. 'Don't come much fresher. We'll have one between us now and the other for breakfast tomorrow. Ever cooked fish?'

I shook my head.

'No, you've got the luxury of that boggart doing all your chores for you,' said Arkwright, shaking his own head in disapproval. 'Well, here we have to do things for ourselves. So you'd better watch me while I cook this fish because you'll be doing the other one tomorrow. You don't mind doing your share of the cooking, do you?'

'Of course not,' I replied. I just hoped I'd be able to manage. The Spook didn't think much of my cooking.

'That's all right then. When we've finished breakfast, I'll show you around the mill. We'll see if you're as brave as your master makes out.'

CHAPTER 6 Water lore

The fish tasted good and Arkwright seemed keen to chat as we ate.

'The first thing to remember about the territory I protect,' he said, 'is that there's a lot of water about. Water is very wet and that can be a problem. '

I thought he was trying to make a joke so I smiled, but he glared at me fiercely. 'That's not meant to be funny, Master Ward. In fact it's not funny at all. By "wet" I mean that it saturates everything, soaks into the ground, into the body and into the very soul. It permeates this whole area and is the key to all the difficulties we face. It's an environment within which denizens of the dark thrive. We are of the land, not of water. So it is very difficult to deal with such creatures.'

I nodded. 'Does "permeate" mean the same thing as "saturate"?'

'That it does, Master Ward. Water gets everywhere and into everything. And there's a lot of it about. There's Morecambe Bay for a start, which is like a big bite taken out of the County by the sea. Dangerous channels like deep rivers cross the shifting sands of the bay. People cross over when the tides permit, but they come in fast and sometimes a thick mist comes down. Every year the sea claims coaches, horses and passengers there. They vanish without a trace.

'Then there are the lakes to the north. Deceptively calm some days, but very deep. And there are dangerous things that come out of the lakes.'

'Mr Gregory told me that you bound the Coniston Ripper. And that it had killed over thirty people before you made the shores of the lake safe.'

Arkwright positively glowed when I said that. 'Aye, Master Ward. At first it was a mystery that baffled the locals,' he explained. 'It seized lone fishermen and pulled them overboard. People assumed the missing men had drowned, but if so, why weren't their bodies washed ashore? At last there were too many victims and I was called in. It wasn't an easy task. I suspected a ripper, but where was its lair? And, once drained of blood, what had happened to the bodies? Well, Master Ward, you need both patience and perseverance in this job, and finally I tracked it down.

'Its lair was a cave right under the lake shore. It dragged its victims up onto a rock shelf and fed at leisure. So I dug down into the cave from the bank above. It was a sight straight out of a nightmare. Its lair was full of bones and corpses — rotting flesh heaving with maggots, together with other more recent bodies emptied of blood. I'll never forget that stench. I waited for that ripper for three days and nights until it finally arrived with a fresh victim. It was too late to save the fisherman but I finished the ripper off with salt and iron.'