The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women Part 2

Ailen nodded. He had a partial view of the South Transept, a shaded arm of the cathedral at that hour.

"Tell me, Canon. What do you see in those shadows?"

The canon forced his gaze in that direction. He c.o.c.ked his head.

"I see nothing."

"Good. Then you won't mind a.s.sisting Popule and Naw in investigating that quadrant."

"Oh. Oh, I see. Do I need to be armed?" asked the young man tensely.

Popule brought two fingers to his lips, kissed them and pressed them to the cross around his neck. "Faith, Canon. All the weaponry you need."

Nicholas thought he knew the cathedral intimately, but the South Transept's atmosphere seemed queer today while its shadows deepened.

"See them now, Canon?" Popule pointed to the far end of the transept. "Blur your eyes and stare ahead. Don't try to look at them directly. They'll disappear."

Nicholas played with the keys at his belt. He wanted to call the mummers madmen and demand they leave that sacred house. But then he remembered the dean, all tucked in on himself against some unseen foe. Nicholas slit his eyes and focused ahead.

Three silhouettes came into focus, just as if they had moved to stand immediately behind him when he was looking in a mirror. The figures were wraith-thin and stooped. They wore long robes, cloaks, and spiky crowns.

"Still not scared?" Popule murmured in an aside.

Heart drumming, Nicholas shifted his focus to the exclergyman. Popule rested his revolver against one shoulder. His strange blue eyes coruscated.

w.i.l.l.y led the way and Ailen let him, knowing that w.i.l.l.y's failure to save his possessed mother burdened him with a lifetime's worth of guilt. Sometimes Ailen wondered if all w.i.l.l.y's travelling pack contained was guilt great sticky clumps of the stuff. Which was why the man had to lead the way now, face the demon first, and strive eternally for relief from that oppression.

"What have we got, w.i.l.l.y?" Ailen brought up the rear, followed noiselessly by Thom. He liked to know the kid was with him. It gave him courage as the antechamber threatened to seal them in.

"Angry raggedy sprite. You see the shadows?"

Ailen looked. The shadows cast by the rippled stone of the numerous arches spiked as they pa.s.sed. Bone fingers stretching.

"Air too. You get a lungful of that sulphur?"

Ailen grimaced. "One of the least appealing aspects of our job." He glanced back at Thom.

"What do you see, lad?"

Colours danced in Thom's wide eyes. "It's a cross one, Mr Savage. I see red mist coming off the stones. Waves of it."

"Aye." Ailen watched the mist tendril out. "What's at the end there?"

"Chapter House," answered w.i.l.l.y over his shoulder.

"A dead end."

"Not literally, I hope." w.i.l.l.y showed his teeth. He stepped aside. "You going to pipe the nasty inside?"

Ailen nodded. "Get ready to join in the song, w.i.l.l.y."

Thom stuck close, twitchy and bright-eyed. He clutched a handful of lavender stems from Naw's stock for protection.

Ailen put the mouthpiece of the dragon pipe between his lips. A small sighting lens was mounted halfway down the body; Ailen squeezed one eye shut and peered through it with the other. The mist transmogrified into clawing, fleshless arms. A hideous face loomed amongst the tangle of limbs.

"Angry is an understatement." He concertinaed out the wing sections of the pipe and sounded his first note. Long and low, a musical whisper.

Something shifted in the atmosphere. Where the poltergeist had only been playing with them before, now it began to realize these men posed a threat. The face in the mist broke open, revealing spindly teeth. Ailen didn't falter. Playing a second note, he kept the mist inches from their faces. His grandfather had calibrated the pipe at a frequency too seductive for the spirit to ignore. The men moved through the narrow arched doorway to the Chapter House and the mist followed.

"Is that the last of it?" w.i.l.l.y pushed back his sleeves. "All right then. I'm going to block us in." He stood in the narrow arch, raised his arms sideways and touched the stone to either side of him. He closed his eyes. "Nasty raging thing, this one. Don't leave me too long."

"I won't." Ailen flexed his large fingers around the winged extension of the pipe. Thom stared around the room, enthralled.

w.i.l.l.y began to chant weird, ancient, dangerous words in the language of the dead Ailen did not want to understand. Instead he played the long, slow notes on his dragon pipe and walked in a circle around the sigil chalked on to the floor.

The mist altered, becoming more substantial and moving in ripples. As Ailen played, a fat tendril oozed out from the wall, drawn to him. It nosed at the mouth of the dragon pipe like a cat sniffing an offered morsel. Ailen continued to weave a circle around the sigil while Thom stayed quiet nearby and w.i.l.l.y kept up his peculiar chant. Slowly, doing his level best not to alarm the spirit, Ailen moved the fingers of one hand on to the bra.s.s nodules along the neck of the pipe. Steam escaped the dragon pipe's opening jaws.

Ailen crushed his fingers around the neck of the pipe and the jaws slammed shut. The tendril lashed from side to side, its tip covered in suckers. w.i.l.l.y's voice faltered, but he struggled on, his face crumpled in pain.

Running over, Thom produced Popule's smelling salts and waved them under the man's nose. w.i.l.l.y showed the whites of his eyes, but managed to refocus.

Ailen touched the tip of his pipe to the floor sigil, attaching the tendril to it. He began to trace out the design with his footsteps, and the poltergeist was forced to follow, tethered to the embroidery of lines.

It was the cry of a wounded man from the other side of the cathedral which broke the spell. The misty poltergeist quivered and reared, tearing free from the sigil. A heatwave burst around the walls, prompting w.i.l.l.y to utter his own cry and collapse, knocking the smelling salts out of Thom's hand. The bottle shattered on impact with the flagstones.

Naw fell back into Nicholas's arms, leaving a ghost warrior's spear slick with blood. A tremendous crack resounded; Nicholas saw a slug of rock salt punch in the back of the ghost's head. The apparition flickered and was snuffed out.

More warriors solidified out of the walls. Their flesh was crisp and black, their weapons large and brutal. A few carried swords. Most wielded axes, spears and short blades.

"What are these devils?" cried Nicholas. Lowering Naw to the floor, the canon brushed away blood from his own nicked eyebrow and tried to focus.

"Devils is the right word for them! Get Naw over to the sigil, stand inside its circle and quote your Bible." Popule flipped the grid over the muzzle of his revolver and fired. Plumes of salt exploded into the air; the warriors faded as it dusted down on them. Seconds later, they were whole again.

Fresh blood trickled from Nicholas's eyebrow. Fear threatened to liquefy his bones as he dragged Naw on to the sigil, leaving a glossy red trail behind. His conscience rebelled as he thought about the occult symbols chalked beneath his feet. But he remembered Popule's words about having to open his mind. Seeing the ex-clergyman dodge a tremendous hammer blow from one warrior, he began to recite.

"'In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame.'"

Popule fired off more cartridges. A wave of warriors went up in flames, but still more kept materializing out of the walls.

"'Deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me.'"

Spectres lunged in Nicholas's direction but backed away when they struck the circ.u.mference of the sigil. Death's stink was in the air.

"Why haven't the other three spirits moved?" he called between snippets of scripture, pointing at the colossal wraiths visible under the large stained gla.s.s window.

It was Naw who answered, gulping in great lungfuls of air. "The three Christian kings, martyred in Lichfield in the time of the heathen Emperor Diocletian. Their burial ground is at Borrowcop."

"But that's just a legend!"

"Yet here they are," panted Naw.

"But why are their spirits here and why do these demon warriors attack?"

Ghosts charged at the sigil. Nicholas gabbled a fresh section of a psalm; the warriors' weapons struck the air overhead like hammers brought down upon an anvil. In an opposite corner of the South Transept, Popule shot a couple clean through with his salt revolver.

"The warriors protect their lords, who are linked to this site by their own spilled blood." Naw let out a sigh. "I'm blacking out, boyo. Help Popule fight the good fight." The Welshman's eyes rolled back and he slumped unconscious.

The spirit evaporated the instant w.i.l.l.y lost his hold on the sides of the archway.

Ailen ran over to his friend, who collapsed into his arms. He lowered w.i.l.l.y to the floor. Thom worried at the man's tunic collar, loosening it.

Ailen stepped away. "Check his hands," he said.

Thom turned w.i.l.l.y's hands palm up. They were burned red-raw.

"Stay here, w.i.l.l.y. Thom and I can see to the devil."

"Not in a month of Sundays." w.i.l.l.y sucked air through his teeth and fought his way to standing. "We've spooked the blighter now. You're going to need me to chant, to help chain it. First, though, you're going to need to coax the flibbertigibbet out of its hiding place-"

Ailen glanced at Thom. "The poltergeist likes you. I need you to lure it out." He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't worry. It can burn down the cathedral about our ears but it can't harm you."

"Someone has been harmed, though. We heard the cry." Thom looked pained. "It sounded like Naw."

Ailen pointed through the doorway. "Let's deal with the ghost first. Then we can help our man."

They exited the vestibule to find the sun had gone in. The nave was cavernous and very dark. From the south side of the building came the crash of swords, blasts of fire from Popule's revolver and the young canon's quivering prayer.

"On second thoughts, I'm going to help Naw and the others first." Ailen pointed in the direction of The Sleeping Children monument. "I know where to find you."

Ailen arrived in the South Transept to see Popule fire off a salt spray and the five ghost warriors who had him cornered fade at their edges. He looked for the canon and found him muttering prayers and gone wild about the eyes. Naw bled at his feet. The sigil provided them with a circle of protection, but if Popule and Ailen were to catch the spirits, they would need the trap to be empty.

"Canon!" he shouted, avoiding the arc of a ghost's axe by bending low. "I need you to exit the sigil if we're going to tie the spirits down."

"But they'll destroy us the instant we step off," answered Nicholas, close to tears.

Ailen chuckled. "How soon you adopt our wicked pagan ways, Canon." Again, he avoided the fall of the axe and, seconds later, the huge sword that was swung towards his throat. "Have faith in your own spells," he called. "Prayer will keep the ghosts at bay long enough."

The canon looked doubtful. Ailen had no choice but to trust that the man would exit the sigil in time, and hopefully drag Naw out too. Charging towards Popule like a bull elephant, Ailen cried, "I'm going to pipe them in. Salt ain't enough. These spirits are too ancient and justified."

Justified in misunderstanding the alterations to the building and wanting to keep their deathbed intact, he thought as he ran through the salt mist, tasting it on his lips. Figures came at him, their burned flesh, whited eyes and flashing weapons seemingly birthed from h.e.l.l. Ailen fought their blows with bursts of notes from his dragon pipe. Ahead, the three kings flickered beneath the stained gla.s.s window. Their crowns were th.o.r.n.y, their bodies elongated like men put to the rack. Ailen didn't need them to speak to sense the tremendous anger issuing from them. He would have liked to reason with the three ancients rea.s.sure them that the stonemasons were repairing, not destroying. But he knew enough about ghosts to understand they were capable of raw emotion but otherwise inflexible.

His tune quickened as he approached the kings. Images smoked in his mind hundreds slaughtered by Roman hands, crowns falling into pools of blood. The noise of battle tenderized his brain. Still he played, steam spilling from the mouth of the instrument. The images broke, spraying up pain and torn flesh and death so much death. The faces of the kings distorted. Their bodies leaned towards him, drawn to the pipe. Thinner and thinner they stretched, as if hypnotized. In rapid snaps, the dragon pipe's jaw caught each by a thread.

Ailen walked backwards, towing the spirits in the direction of the sigil. He sensed shadows lunge for him, heard the explosion of salt in the air and knew Popule was keeping the warriors at bay. The kings, meanwhile, became trailing ether. Ailen didn't look away for a moment but kept on stepping backwards until he saw the chalked line of the sigil underfoot. He heard the canon chanting his Bible pa.s.sages a few feet away; all he could do was trust in the man to have left sanctuary and taken Naw with him. Stepping to the edge of the sigil, he twisted at the waist, cast out over the chalked circle and released the jaw of the pipe.

It took only seconds for the kings' spirits to interweave on top of the weird symbols, like st.i.tches in time. The instant their masters were gone, the ghost warriors dissolved. Returned to history.

Ailen nodded at Popule, who returned the gesture. Nearby, Canon Nicholas hugged Naw. His face streaked with blood and tears, the priest's eyes danced about the walls and he kept up his muttering. The Shakes, thought Ailen.

He would tend to the young man later. First he had a poltergeist to catch.

A distant spectator could be forgiven for mistaking the two young girls in nightgowns and the boy in mummer's garb for the best of friends. Ailen, though, knew the girls owed their manifestation to a malevolent spirit. Once upon a time he had been interested in the origins of such ent.i.ties, had studied papers by the great spiritualists of the modern age. It was w.i.l.l.y who had convinced him that there was no reasoning with a poltergeist, no explanation which would aid his understanding or his empathy. There was only the squatting toad of a spirit inside its chosen object, ready to scare or taunt or main on a whim.

Yet seeing Thom conversing with the ghost girls suggested a softer, more human presence. Ailen knew that was a lie. He joined w.i.l.l.y in the shadows.

"The others alive?" w.i.l.l.y nodded sharply in the direction of the South Transept.

"Naw's wounded. Canon's got the Shakes. Popule is in one piece."

w.i.l.l.y glanced up. "Beautiful building, this. Shame it's built on a field of the dead." He sucked his gums against the pain of his burned hands and stared back over at Thom. "Seems almost a shame to interrupt them."

"Aye. If they were what they seem." Ailen slipped the macabre necklace from around his neck. It was one of w.i.l.l.y's voodoo creations, made up of dead beetles, lambs' wool, chicken claws and the dried remains of mice. He pointed at the apparitions of the two girls. "We both know poltergeists love dead things."

He rattled the necklace. The girls moved on to all fours, shoulders hunching, c.o.c.king their heads one way then the other. Hanging the necklace off his belt, Ailen adjusted his grip on his dragon pipe. He muttered: "I could use a little salt in the atmosphere."

A hand patted his shoulder. Popule's. The man's eyes shone crystal blue; the soot covering his face was streaked by sweat.

Popule fed a fresh cartridge into his revolver and spun the barrel shut. Ailen was glad of the backup as he stepped out of the shadows.

"You all right there, Thom?"

"They're very sad, Mr Savage," he replied. Ailen felt the familiar twinge of regret not to be recognized as anything more than the boy's employee. But his own feelings were secondary to the boy's safety.

"The real sisters are buried miles away, Thom. At peace, let's hope. Our poltergeist here likes the way their monument looks and has bedded down there. Now I want you to tell your friend it has the choice to leave or we can exorcise it."

Thom bit his bottom lip. "All right." He turned back to the girls, who had crawled close, their opaque white eyes rolling.

As Thom spoke to them, Ailen felt the atmosphere still like the surface of a millpond. When the ghost girls started to fade, he felt a tinge of relief. Had Thom really talked the poltergeist into leaving? Wonderful, kind, accident-p.r.o.ne Thom.

A wall of flames rolled around them in seconds, firing off a heatwave. Both girls opened their mouths unnaturally wide and the screams of Lichfield's martyred issued forth. Ailen steeled himself against the noise as Thom backed away.

The poltergeist had no intention of losing its new friend. The girls' heads morphed into a mess of silvery, mouth-tipped tentacles while the bodies remained separate. It crawled towards Thom, a crablike Medusa.

"Get away, Thom." Ailen stepped between the boy and the poltergeist, causing it to rear up on its back limbs, tentacles hissing. "Start chanting, w.i.l.l.y! Popule . . . keep the air full of salt!" he demanded, and put his lips to the reed of the dragon pipe.

Rock salt burst overhead like fireworks and Ailen began to play. The poltergeist tried to sink back into its marble tomb. It tugged at itself as if attempting to prise itself free from thick mud. Ailen quickened his tune and bit out at the spirit with the steaming jaw of the dragon pipe. The poltergeist arched away, a serpentine movement at odds with its crabbed lower limbs. Seconds later, it had scrabbled around to the opposite side of the chalk sigil marked out on the flagstones.

Wind blew in red hot and scented with decay. w.i.l.l.y's chanting grew weaker; Ailen suspected the man's palms were freshly aflame. Blinking against the ash and snow whipped up by the vicious spirit alongside Popule's salt sprays, he fought to put one foot in front of the other. Blood trickled from his ears, his nose. Ailen pressed on against the tremendous volume of suffering and the searing heat of the funeral pyre from many centuries before. One thought gave him strength some ghosts stay to ease the agonies of those left behind while others stay to torment those who live on. Unlike Thom, the poltergeist belonged to the latter category and needed to be put back among the demons.

Ailen ran the last few steps, lungs baking against his ribs. He grasped the neck of his dragon pipe, burned the tips of his fingers on the glowing nodules and clamped the steaming jaw around one misty tentacle. The poltergeist writhed, but Ailen held fast this time. Hearing w.i.l.l.y's voice harden, those ancient, occult words seeming to pepper the poltergeist's surface like hot coals, Ailen moved to the sigil's edge.

"I make you an offering. Pieces of death for peace inside this hallowed hall." Retrieving the voodoo necklace from his belt, he tossed the offering into the chalked circle. Arching at the spine, he cast out with the dragon pipe and released the jaw.

The poltergeist streamed into the sigil, a bolt of silver ether. Writhing and whipping against its bonds, it found itself dragged down over the symbols, one tentacle at a time. As the last thread of it was engulfed, the screams of the martyred ceased. The wall of flame around the men brightened then went out.

A month pa.s.sed before the large man came to call at The Deanery. Mrs Rook the housekeeper would later describe the pains she was put to, trying to place the gentleman. His suit was of cheap cloth but cut well enough, while a starched collar hugged his neck. But the face a mask of steel with scars aplenty!

The man's voice betrayed him. Nicholas recognized its deep tone from his place before the fire and on instinct gripped the blanket tucked over his legs. He forced himself to let go and call, "Mrs Rook! Show Mr Savage in. He and I have business."