Spook's Curse Read Free Page B

less blood is reaching its mouth. It wants more blood, but blood comes in lots of different flavours and it likes the taste of what it’s been sucking. It likes it very much.
    So it wants more of the same, and once it works out that the rest of the body has been separated from the leg, it goes after it. That’s why the riggers had to lift the priest up onto the cart. By now the cart would have reached the edge of Horshaw, every  clip-clop  of the horse’s hooves taking it further from the angry boggart, desperate for more of that same blood.
    A ripper’s like a bloodhound. It would have a good idea of the direction in which the priest was being taken. It would also realize that he was getting further and further away. Then it would be aware of something else. That more of what it needed was very close by.
    That’s why I’d put the dish into the pit. That was why it was called a ‘bait-dish’. It was the snare to lure the ripper into the trap. Once it was in there, feeding, we had to work fast and we couldn’t afford to make a single mistake.
    I looked up. The mate was standing on the platform, one hand on the short chain, ready to start lowering the stone. The rigger was standing opposite me, his hand on the stone, ready to position it as it came down. Neither of them looked in the least bit afraid, not even nervous, and suddenly it felt good to be working with people like that. People who knew what they were doing. We’d all played our part, all done what had to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. It made me feel good. It made me feel a part of something. Quietly we waited for the boggart.
    After a few minutes I heard it coming. At first it sounded just like the wind whistling through the trees.
    But there was no wind. The air was perfectly still and, in a narrow band of starlight between the edge of the thundercloud and the horizon, the crescent moon was visible, adding its pale light to that cast by the lanterns.
    The rigger and his mate could hear nothing, of course, because they weren’t seventh sons of seventh sons like me. So I had to warn them.
    ‘It’s on its way,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you when.’
    By now the sound of its approach had become more shrill, almost like a scream, and I could hear something else too: a sort of low, rumbling growl. It was coming across the graveyard fast, heading straight for the dish of blood inside the pit.
    Unlike a normal boggart, a ripper is slightly more than a spirit, especially when it’s just been feeding.
    Even then, most people can’t see it but they can feel it all right, if it ever gets a grip on their flesh.
    Even I didn’t see much - just something shapeless and a sort of pinky red. Then I felt a movement of the air close to my face and the ripper went down into the pit.
    I said ‘When’ to the rigger who, in turn, nodded to his mate, who tightened his grip upon the short chain. Even before he pulled it there came a sound from the pit. This time it was loud and all three of us heard it. I glanced quickly at my companions and saw their eyes widen and mouths tighten with the fear of what was below us.
    The sound we heard was the boggart feeding from the dish. It was like the greedy lapping of some monstrous tongue, combined with the ravenous snuffling and snorting of a big carnivorous animal. We had less than a minute or so before it finished it all. Then it would sense our blood. It was rogue now and we were all on the menu.
    The mate began to loosen the chain and the stone came down steadily. I was adjusting one end, the rigger the other. If they’d dug the pit accurately and the stone was exactly the size specified on the sketch, there should be no problem. That’s what I told myself - but I kept thinking of the Spook’s last apprentice, poor Billy Bradley, who’d died trying to bind a boggart like this. The stone had jammed, trapping his fingers under its edge. Before they could lift it free, the boggart had bitten his fingers off