The Spook's Apprentice Read Free Page A

half a dozen houses, a small church and an even smaller school - but my imagination conjured up other things. Sometimes I imagined high cliffs with an ocean beyond, or maybe a forest or a great city with tall towers and twinkling lights.
    But now, as I gazed at the hill, I remembered my fear as well. Yes, it was fine from a distance but it wasn’t a place I’d ever wanted to get close to. Hangman’s Hill, as you might have guessed, didn’t get its name for nothing.
    Three generations earlier, a war had raged over the whole land and the men of the County had played their part. It had been the worst of all wars, a bitter civil war where families had been divided and where sometimes brother had even fought brother.
    In the last winter of the war there’d been a big battle a mile or so to the north, just on the outskirts of the village. When it was finally over, the winning army had brought their prisoners to this hill and hanged them from the trees on its northern slope. They’d hanged some of their own men too, for what they claimed was cowardice in the face of the enemy, but there was another version of that tale. It was said that some of these men had refused to fight people they considered to be neighbours.
    Even Jack never liked working close to that boundary fence, and the dogs wouldn’t go more than a few feet into the wood. As for me, because I can sense things that others can’t, I couldn’t even work in the north pasture. You see, from there I could hear them. I could hear the ropes creaking and the branches groaning under their weight. I could hear the dead, strangling and choking on the other side of the hill.
    Mam had said that we were like each other. Well, she was certainly like me in one way: I knew she could also see things that others couldn’t. One winter, when I was very young and all my brothers lived at home, the noises from the hill got so bad at night that I could even hear them from my bedroom. My brothers didn’t hear a thing, but I did and I couldn’t sleep. Mam came to my room every time I called, even though she had to be up at the crack of dawn to do her chores.
    Finally she said she was going to sort it out, and one night she climbed Hangman’s Hill alone and went up into the trees. When she came back, everything was quiet and it stayed like that for months afterwards.
    So there was one way in which we weren’t alike.
    Mam was a lot braver than I was.
     

Chapter Two
On The Road
     

     
    I was up an hour before dawn but Mam was already in the kitchen, cooking my favourite breakfast, bacon and eggs.
    Dad came downstairs while I was mopping the plate with my last slice of bread. As we said goodbye, he pulled something from his pocket and placed it in my hands. It was the small tinderbox that had belonged to his own dad and to his grandad before that. One of his favourite possessions.
    ‘I want you to have this, son,’ he said. ‘It might come in useful in your new job. And come back and see us soon. Just because you’ve left home, it doesn’t mean that you can’t come back and visit.’
    ‘It’s time to go, son,’ Mam said, walking across to give me a final hug. ‘He’s at the gate. Don’t keep him waiting.’
    We were a family which didn’t like too much fuss, and as we’d already said our goodbyes, I walked out into the yard alone.
    The Spook was on the other side of the gate, a dark silhouette against the grey dawn light. His hood was up and he was standing straight and tall, his staff in his left hand. I walked towards him, carrying my small bundle of possessions, feeling very nervous.
    To my surprise, the Spook opened the gate and came into the yard. ‘Well, lad,’ he said, ‘follow me! We might as well start the way we mean to go on.’
    Instead of heading for the road, he led the way north, directly towards Hangman’s Hill, and soon we were crossing the north pasture, my heart already starting to thump. When we reached the boundary fence, the Spook climbed over