The Seventh Apprentice
Read The Seventh Apprentice Online
Authors: Joseph Delaney
F
OR
M
ARIE
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XTRACTS FROM
W
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J
OHNSON’S
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OTEBOOK
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HE
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AZIEST
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PPRENTICE
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’M
Will Johnson, apprentice to John Gregory, the Chipenden Spook.
It’s a very dangerous job. Two of my predecessors were slain by boggarts—troublesome entities that are mostly invisible but sometimes take on the shape of animals such as cats, rats, horses, and dogs. Often they do little damage and simply scare people. Then it’s a spook’s job either to move them away or bind them in pits so that folk can get on with their lives.
However, some boggarts are lethal. For example, there’s an extremely dangerous type known as a ripper. They usually start by killing cattle but eventually prey upon people, ripping out their throats and draining their blood. My master’s first apprentice, Benjamin Roberts, was struck dead by a stone chucker, a violent sort of boggart with six arms that throws missiles—sometimes even large boulders. It split Benjamin’s skull wide open and dashed out his brains on the grass.
Mr. Gregory’s second apprentice, Paul Preston, was attacked by a deadly goat boggart as he walked across a muddy field near Wheeton. The creature’s horns pierced him under the ribs and speared his heart. He died instantly.
My master’s next three apprentices ran away because they found the job too difficult and scary. Mr. Gregory is still annoyed that he wasted all that time training them.
His sixth apprentice, Brian Houghton, completed his five-year apprenticeship successfully and is now practicing his trade somewhere south of the County. So far he has been the Spook’s only success. This is hardly surprising: Ours is a dangerous and terrifying occupation. We fight the dark, dealing with ghosts, ghasts, boggarts, and witches.
I’m the Spook’s seventh apprentice, and now it’s my turn to be trained. Recently I’ve been thinking of running away myself—before my master kicks me out. The truth is, my apprenticeship hasn’t been going too well, and recently things got a lot worse. . . .
One cold December afternoon, just a couple of weeks before Christmas, we were in the garden. I was shivering despite my exertions—I’d been using the Spook’s silver chain, casting it at the practice post. It’s a way of dealing with witches. If you do it right, the chain forms a spiral in the air and falls over the witch, pinning her arms to her sides. Then you can drag her away and put her in a pit.
So far I hadn’t accompanied the Spook when he’d been summoned to deal with witches, and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to meeting one. They kill people—sometimes even young children—and drink their blood or cut away their bones, which is why many end up in a pit dug by my master or his apprentice.
My practice session hadn’t gone too well. In theory, this should have been easy. A wooden post kept still; a witch wouldn’t. However, I’d managed only about twenty successful throws out of more than fifty attempts. My final throw of the session was the worst of all: I somehow managed to wrap the chain around my head and shoulders. I slipped and fell heavily to my knees. Struggling to my feet, I readied myself for a lashing from the Spook’s tongue.
Sure enough, it came immediately: “That’s not good enough, lad!” he snapped angrily, the look in his green eyes making me cringe. He was tall—I hardly reached his shoulder—and his black beard had only a few flecks of gray. His fierce face looked like it was chiseled from stone. He was not someone to be trifled with.
“Have you been keeping up with that extra practice I set you?” he demanded.
I couldn’t meet his gaze, hanging my head instead. I was supposed to work with the chain for an hour each day. I been going to the practice post, but I hadn’t actually cast the chain much. It seemed like a waste of time—I never got any better at it—so I’d mostly spent my time leaning on the post and staring into space, daydreaming.
The Spook shook his head angrily. “Give me your notebook, lad!” he demanded, holding out his hand.
He gave each apprentice a blank notebook in which to keep a record of everything we learned and the things we encountered. He flicked through the pages now, and I waited for his anger to erupt. A lot of the pages were blank . . . too many. When he’d given me lessons, pacing backward and forward beside the bench in the garden, I’d taken notes. I could do nothing else under the Spook’s fierce gaze. But whenever he’d sent me up to the library to make additional notes from the books there, I’d done little work—sometimes nothing at all.
“This is a disgrace,” he said. At first his voice was very calm, which somehow made it worse than if he’d shouted. “You must be the laziest apprentice I’ve trained so far.”
I was annoyed at being called lazy. The job was exhausting and difficult. I felt like telling him that this was too much to ask of a boy my age and that only a fool would become a spook, but I managed to control my anger and make the apology I knew he expected.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll get the notes up to date by the end of the week, I promise. I’ll not procrastinate anymore.”
“Aye, and pigs might fly!” snapped the Spook, raising his voice and glaring at me angrily. “You sound like you’ve swallowed a dictionary, lad. If you’re good with words, why don’t you try writing a few more down? What would your father think of this? No doubt he taught you that procrastination is the thief of time! It’s very true. Keep putting things off until later and you waste your time on this earth, which is short enough as it is.”
My father was the village schoolmaster at Cockerham. The Spook had first met him when a dark entity—believed to be the devil—was plaguing the local church, terrifying the parishioners, who didn’t even dare cross the churchyard to attend Sunday service. The priest had been too scared to do anything about it, so the villagers, judging my father to be the cleverest and wisest man in the village, had elected him to deal with the problem.
Rather than trying to face the dark himself, he’d sent for a man who was an expert on such things—John Gregory, who quickly discovered that the entity in question was a very dangerous boggart that couldn’t be persuaded to move elsewhere. The Spook had to throw salt and iron at it, and that was enough to destroy it.
My six elder brothers all had good jobs. Some were clerks, and one had become a lawyer, which made my father especially proud. But although I had an aptitude for both writing and sums, that kind of work didn’t appeal to me at all. It had been a relief when the Spook approached my father and suggested that he take me on.
At that point, I hadn’t realized what the job entailed. Being a seventh son of a seventh son meant that I had been born with gifts that fitted me to be trained as a spook—for example, the ability to see and talk to the dead. But apart from the boggart in the churchyard, a visitation that had occurred when I was too small to understand what was happening, the dark had not come near our village. I had little idea what I was getting involved with and little chance for my seventh-son skills to be put to the test. The rumors I had heard made the job sound much more glamorous and exciting than the boring work of a clerk or a lawyer. Although many folk from the County feared Mr. Gregory because he worked close to the dark, they also respected his bravery and competence. It would be nice to have people look up to you like that.
The Spook was right in what he said—my father expected a high standard of conduct from his sons. He would be very angry if he knew how badly I was doing.
“I really don’t see the point in keeping you on,” Mr. Gregory continued. “I think it would be for the best if you went back home and found yourself another trade.”
I bowed my head. This wasn’t really a surprise—I’d been expecting to be dismissed for some time. But how could I face my father if I was sent home?
“Please give me another chance!” I blurted out. “I really will try harder.”
The Spook stared at me without blinking. Eventually he gave a long, deep sigh. “Look, lad, I’ll give you one final chance. There’s some serious boggart trouble at Coate Farm, near Burnley. I was going to take you with me, but I think it’s best if I go alone and give you a chance to put things right. You can stay here and do two things. First, put in some practice with that chain. You need to show me some significant improvement when I return. Second, get your notes up to date. Accomplish both those tasks, and I’ll keep you on. Otherwise, you go back home. Understand?”
“Yes. Thank you,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”
“Then let’s hope that your best is good enough, lad. I’ll be away for about a week. If there’s any spook’s business, just keep a record of what and where the problem is. That’s all you need to do. Don’t go anywhere near it yourself.”
I was only too happy to comply with the Spook’s orders. I’d been his apprentice for just over a year, and I’d seen some pretty scary things: a boggart with six arms that threw rocks, a ghost with its skull split wide open so that you could see its brains (which were filled with wriggling maggots), and the inside of a witch’s cottage. Fortunately, the witch herself had already left the County, but the cellar was full of human bones and the kitchen sink was filled to the brim with blood. So far I hadn’t faced a witch, and I certainly didn’t want to do so alone.
I nodded, and within the hour the Spook was on his way to Burnley, carrying his bag and staff himself, for a change. As he was dealing with boggarts, he wouldn’t need his silver chain. He’d left it behind for me to practice with. Silver chains were very costly, and a young apprentice sometimes had to save up for years before he could buy one of his own. I had to take great care of it.