The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) Read online

  “It is certainly soul-rich,” murmured Naw, intent on the device he held in his palm.

  The tan leather box housed a circular device with a flickering hand – not dissimilar to a compass, thought Nicholas, distracted from his efforts to demonstrate his superior knowledge of the cathedral’s architectural history.

  “And that device suggests as much?” He stared at it quizzically. The hand was a shard of purple crystal.

  “Amethyst.” Naw tapped the glass cover over the dial. “Wards off danger while protecting mental and psychic clarity.” Circling slowly on the spot, he cast a long thin shadow.

  “Have you located the source of the apparitions?” Nicholas felt the weight of the cathedral keys at his belt.

  “The source?” Naw pointed down. “We’re standing on it. One thousand Christians murdered on this spot during the Roman occupation. And what about the three spires above us – coincidental, or in homage to the three martyred kings buried at Borrowcop Hill?”

  “Nothing but folklore!”

  “So their prominence on the city seal is pure fancy?” Naw eyed his ghost compass intently.

  Nicholas blustered, “I’m simply saying, a town as rich in history as Lichfield is bound to have an abundance of pagan lore and country legends.”

  “And the shrine?” Naw pointed to the far end of the nave and the High Altar with its decorative apse. “Saint Chad died in 672. But while he was originally interred here in the cathedral, the Reformation saw his bones travel as far as France and return at last, having acquired a third thigh bone. Or so legend has it.” Naw inclined his head respectfully. “Yet still you believe, Canon Nicholas.”

  The boy stood to the fore of the south-east aisle. A bird fluttered among the ceiling arches. Dawn lent the stained glass windows a subtle glow.

  “Thom?” Ailen approached slowly. The lad was so still he could have passed for a statue. He appeared absorbed in study of a large white marble monument depicting two young girls at rest in one another’s arms.

  “I’m not sure about this spot, Mr Savage. I think it might be colder here.” Thom cocked his head. “Are the girls’ bodies buried beneath?”

  “Dean Richards said not. It’s just a monument. Commissioned when a mother lost both her daughters and husband, who was a clergyman, inside three years.” Ailen laid a hand on the cool stone of the eldest sister’s forehead. A shooting pain lanced through his arm and he pulled away.

  “You all right, Mr Savage?”

  “Yes . . . yes, Thom. Thank you.” He cradled his arm. The pain subsided.

  “I touched the stone before you came and wasn’t hurt.” Thom sucked his lower lip.

  “Could be the children sense a kinship with you. Although—” Ailen stared at the monument, half-expecting the two sisters to open their eyes and stare back. “Objects can attract and house ghosts. I’m suspicious that the sympathetic rendering of the two dead girls has attracted a poltergeist. They are drawn to the young.”

  “Aye. And I remember how difficult it is to trap them buggers.”

  Ailen smiled and nodded. “Difficult, not impossible. But I may need to use you as bait.”

  Thom and Naw busied themselves salting the doorways; the windows were adequately protected by their ecclesiastical stained glass depicting Saint Chad and other holy entities. Meanwhile, the sounds of stone being chiselled and idle banter filtered in from outside. The stonemasons had started work

  “If you are afraid of ghosts you might want to step outside so we can close the salt line behind you.”

  Nicholas found he was being addressed by the mummer Knight – or Popule as the boy called him. The man had impossibly blue eyes.

  “I’m not afraid,” the canon lied.

  “Should be.” Popule dragged down his tunic at the neck, revealing a web of scar tissue across his collarbones. “Poltergeist pinned me to the floor of my church in Ashbourne. Poured blazing lamp oil all over my chest.” He pushed up his left sleeve. His arm was scarred by healed burns and bites. “Ghosts lash out when provoked. They learn to throw a punch . . . or grow teeth.”

  “You are a clergyman?” Nicholas wasn’t sure whether to find the fact reassuring or disturbing.

  “Was.” Popule put down his pack and undid the string at the neck. He talked as he retrieved a number of items. “Once the spirits had laid their marks on me I was lost to the Shakes. Know what that is?”

  Nicholas thought about Dean Richards, cocooned in eiderdowns. “I think I do.”

  “I pray you never experience it yourself and know for certain. Even if you can find a Spirit Catcher to doctor you, the sickness never truly leaves your soul. It’s always hovering, just below the surface.” Popule glanced up. Surrounded by a weird cornucopia of objects, he looked like a warlock from a romantic painting. Nicholas recognized sticks of chalk, a small brass bowl, a bunch of lavender, smelling salts and a tinder box. Less familiar was a long belt fitted with cartridges of some white mineral and the gun which accompanied it.

  Popule picked up the weapon and appeared to weigh it in his hand. It was a beautiful object, thought Nicholas, remembering the rusty flintlock his grandfather had used to shoot rabbits on the family estate. Popule’s gun had a long silver barrel, at least a foot and a half in length, and spiralled like a hazel branch. The loading mechanism was a traditional cylinder, but larger. The hammer and trigger were cast from an intensely black metal, the stock carved from exotic deep red hardwood. Symbols were inlaid in brass wire along it; they struck Nicholas as Arabic in origin.

  The ex-clergyman sensed his interest. “A revolver. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to discuss my requirements with a visiting American, Mr Samuel Colt. He was able to adapt his brand new design to fit my specialist needs. Here . . .” Popule picked up the gun and spun the barrel. “The cylinder revolves to align the next chamber and round with the hammer and barrel. Shoots cartridges of solid rock salt. I can fire the salt as a bullet, or if I close this small grid across the muzzle then the salt splinters and scatters. See?”

  Nicholas flinched as Popule pointed the gun at his face. He forced himself to stare down the capped barrel.

  “Salting the doorways keeps the spirits where we want them. Inside.” Popule’s strange blue eyes twinkled. “And this revolver helps stun them if need be. Ghosts of the sort you have here are not inclined to come quietly.” He gave his weapon an affectionate pat and slid it into a holster at his waist, the long barrel running the length of his thigh. He slung the cartridge belt over his head and slid one arm through.

  “If you are staying – and in these circumstances it’s always good to have a man of God not as lapsed as I – then you’d better open your mind to things the church doesn’t care for.” He put one hand to the side of his mouth, shouting, “Seal the doors! The canon’s staying put.” Kneeling, he picked up the chalk, appeared to examine the patterns of light on the flagstones and began to draw.

  It started out this way. Men moved stones set in place for hundreds of years, with no mind to the consequences. Sometimes a structure was depleted of spiritual energy and alterations left the ground sleeping. But for a building as entrenched in bloody history as Lichfield Cathedral, the ghosts’ awakening was inevitable. Of course the disturbances could have been avoided with the right consecrations and herbal homages buried beneath the dirt at ten-foot intervals around the building’s exterior. Fortunately for a Spirit Catcher such as Ailen, these rudimentary ghost traps were not common knowledge – which meant there was a profit to be made from tidying up after enthusiastic architects.

  Two hours in and the chalked traps were set. The mid-morning sun shone in weakly at the high windows. Dust speckled the air. Stonemasons could be heard at work on the Gothic façade. Behind the scaffolds, row on row of ancient kings were being restored to their plinths.

  Inside the cathedral, Ailen called his men to order and asked, “Canon, would you say a prayer?”

  The mummers formed a circle and bowed their heads. Nicho
las started to speak, the tremor in his voice betraying his nervousness.

  Ailen kept his gaze on his surroundings. He caught flickers of motion from the corners of his eyes. Three figures, all exceptionally tall – and twisting up from the floor near the South Transept. Each wore something on its head – a crown? The figures disappeared when he tried to focus.

  Smaller shadows danced about the walls – hundreds of them, layering over one another. The floor was patterned with them, too. Ailen knew that, for all their numbers, these were harmless shades.

  “See them, Mr Savage?” Despite his devil garb, there was still innocence in Thom’s eyes.

  “I see them, Thom.” Ailen kept his voice low so as not to interrupt Nicholas. Prayer niggled restless spirits. Used in isolation, it was a slow, unreliable method of exorcism. Combine prayer with psychic weaponry and the fight became quicker if potentially messier.

  The boy swallowed and stared down the length of the nave. “We’ve got to clear them all?”

  “No, lad. Most are harmless. We’ve got three ghosts to parcel up. Powerful ones. And then there’s the poltergeist.” Ailen pointed a finger upwards. “I think we have its attention.”

  Twenty or so prayer books levitated overhead. Canon Nicholas’s prayer petered out.

  “Everyone back up slowly.” Ailen led by example, his dragon pipe trained on the floating books.

  The circle of men widened.

  With a tremendous crack of leather spines, the books began spitting out their pages. A few stayed intact and careered down like black hailstones. Ailen saw Nicholas receive a cut to one eyebrow. The wound bled into the canon’s eye; he dabbed at it with a handkerchief and mopped his glistening brow with a sleeve. Other books aimed themselves at Popule and Thom. The ex-clergyman fired his revolver. Slugs of rock salt punched through the books, the blast holes giving off smoke.

  “I take it your prayer woke the blighter.” Willy winked at Nicholas. “You all right there, friend?”

  Nicholas nodded. He looked deathly pale, though.

  All the books had fallen. Except for the sounds of the men working outside, the cathedral was silent.

  “Which direction next?” Ailen kept his pipe close.

  Naw consulted his compass. He pointed south-east. “Originated at The Sleeping Children monument. But the reading is south-west now, vestibule most likely. Also—” The historian wheeled around, checking the coordinates. “I have a second reading from the South Transept.”

  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 cocked his head.

  “I see nothing.”

  “Good. Then you won’t mind assisting 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.

  Willy led the way and Ailen let him, knowing that Willy’s failure to save his possessed mother burdened him with a lifetime’s worth of guilt. Sometimes Ailen wondered if all Willy’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, Willy?” 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 passed. 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 Willy over his shoulder.

  “A dead end.”

  “Not literally, I hope.” Willy showed his teeth. He stepped aside. “You going to pipe the nasty inside?”

  Ailen nodded. “Get ready to join in the song, Willy.”

  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?” Willy 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.

  Willy 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 Willy 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 brass 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. Willy’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. Willy 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 Willy 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.