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

man’s tunic collar, loosening it.

Ailen stepped away. “Check his hands,” he said.

Thom turned Willy’s hands palm up. They were burned red-raw.

“Stay here, Willy. Thom and I can see to the devil.”

“Not in a month of Sundays.” Willy 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 Hell. Ailen fought their blows with bursts of notes from his dragon pipe. Ahead, the three kings flickered beneath the stained glass window. Their crowns were thorny, 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 – reassure 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 passages 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 stitches 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 entities, had studied papers by the great spiritualists of the modern age. It was Willy 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 Willy in the shadows.

“The others alive?” Willy nodded sharply in the direction of the South Transept.

“Naw’s wounded. Canon’s got the Shakes. Popule is in one piece.”

Willy 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 Willy’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, cocking 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-prone 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, Willy! 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