ditch than ran along its length.
Alice was standing in the gloom, with just the toes of her pointy shoes poking out into the sunlight. She beckoned me closer but I kept my distance, staying a {good three paces away. After all that had happened, I didn’t trust her one little bit, but I was still glad that she hadn’t been burned or stoned.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ Alice said, ‘and warn you never to go walking near Pendle. That’s where we’re going. Lizzie has family living there.’
‘I’m glad you escaped,’ I said, coming to a halt and turning to face directly towards her. ‘I watched the smoke when they burned your house down.’
‘Lizzie knew they were coming,’ Alice said, ‘so we got away with plenty of time to spare. Didn’t sniff you out though, did she? Knows what you did to Mother Malkin, though, but only found out after it happened.
Didn’t sniff you out at all and that worries her. And she said your shadow had a funny smell.’
I laughed out loud at that. I mean, it was crazy. How could a shadow have a smell?
‘Ain’t funny,’ Alice accused. ‘Ain’t nothing to laugh at. She only smelled your shadow where it had fallen on the barn. I actually saw it and it was all wrong. The moon showed the truth of you.’
Suddenly she took two steps nearer, into the sunlight, then leaned forward a little and sniffed at me. ‘You do smell funny,’ she said, wrinkling up her nose. She stepped backwards quickly and suddenly looked afraid.
I smiled and put on my friendly voice. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘don’t go to Pendle. You’re better off without them. They’re just bad company.’
‘Bad company don’t matter to me. Won’t change me, will it? I’m bad already. Bad inside. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve been and done. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve been bad again. I’m just not strong enough to say no-’
Suddenly, too late, I understood the real reason for the fear on Alice ’s face. It wasn’t me she was scared of. It was what was standing right behind me.
I’d seen nothing and heard nothing. When I did, it was already too late. Without warning, the empty sack was snatched out of my hand and dropped over my head and shoulders and everything went dark. Strong hands gripped me, pinning my arms to my sides. I struggled for a few moments, but it was useless: I was lifted and carried as easily as a farm hand carries a sack of potatoes. While I was being carried, I heard voices – Alice ’s voice and then the voice of a woman; I supposed it was Bony Lizzie. The person carrying me just grunted, so it had to be Tusk.
Alice had lured me into a trap. It had all been carefully planned. They must have been hiding in the ditch as I came down the hill from the house.
I was scared, more scared than I’d ever been in my life before. I mean, I’d killed Mother Malkin and she’d been Lizzie’s grandmother. So what were they going to do to me now?
After an hour or so I was dropped onto the ground so hard that all the air was driven from my lungs.
As soon as I could breathe again, I struggled to get free of the sack, but somebody thumped me twice in the back – thumped me so hard that I kept very still. I’d have done anything to avoid being hit like that again so I lay there, hardly daring to breathe while the pain slowly faded to a dull ache.
They used rope to tie me then, binding it over the sack, around my arms and head and knotting it tightly. Then Lizzie said something that chilled me to the bone.
‘There, we’ve got him safe enough. You can start digging now.’
Her face came very close to mine so that I could smell her foul breath through the sacking. It was like the breath of a dog or a cat. ‘Well, boy,’ she said. ‘How does it feel to know that you’ll never see the light of day again?’
When I heard the sound of distant digging, I began to shiver with fright. I remembered the Spook’s tale of the miner’s wife, especially the worst bit of all when she’d lain there paralysed, unable to cry out while her husband dug her grave. Now it was going to happen to me. I was going to be buried alive and I’d have done anything just to see daylight again, even for a moment.
At first, when they cut my ropes and pulled the sack from me, I was relieved. By then the sun had gone down, but I looked up and could see the stars, with the waning moon low over the trees. I felt the wind on my face and it had never felt so good. My feeling of relief didn’t last more than a few moments though, because I started to wonder exactly what they had in mind for me. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being buried alive, but Bony Lizzie probably could.
To be honest, when I saw Tusk close up for the first time, he wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. In a way he’d looked worse the night he was chasing me. He wasn’t as old as the Spook but his face was lined and weatherbeaten, and a mass of greasy grey hair covered his head. His teeth were too big to fit into his mouth, which meant that he could never close it properly, and two of them curved upwards like yellow tusks on either side of his nose. He was big too, and very hairy with powerful muscular arms. I’d felt that grip and had thought it bad enough, but I knew that he had the power in those shoulders to squeeze me so tightly that all the air would be forced from my body and my ribs would shatter.
Tusk had a big curved knife at his belt, with a blade that looked very sharp. But the worst thing about him was his eyes. They were completely dull. It was as if there was nothing alive inside his head; he was just something that obeyed Bony Lizzie without even a thought. I knew that he’d do anything she told him without question, no matter how terrible it was.
As for Bony Lizzie, she wasn’t skinny at all and I knew, from my reading in the Spook’s library, that she was probably called that because she used bone magic. I’d already smelled her breath, but at a glance you’d never have taken her for a witch. She wasn’t like Mother Malkin, all shrivelled with age, looking like something that was already dead. No, Bony Lizzie was just an older version of Alice. Probably no older than thirty-five, she had pretty brown eyes and hair as black as her niece’s. She wore a green shawl and a black dress fastened neatly at her slim waist with a narrow leather belt. There was certainly a family resemblance – except for her mouth. It wasn’t the shape of it, it was the way she moved it; the way it twisted and sneered when she talked. One other thing I noticed was that she never looked me in the eye.
Alice wasn’t like that. She had a nice mouth, still shaped for smiling, but I realized then that she would eventually become just like Bony Lizzie.
Alice had tricked me. She was the reason I was here rather than safe and sound back in the Spook’s house, eating my supper.
At a nod from Bony Lizzie, Tusk grabbed me and tied my hands behind my back. Then he seized me by the arm and dragged me through the trees. First of all I saw the mound of dark soil, then the deep pit beside it, and I smelled the wet, loamy stink of freshly turned earth. It smelled sort of dead and alive at the same time, with things brought to the surface that really belonged deep underground.
The pit was probably more than seven feet deep, but unlike the one the Spook had kept Mother Malkin in, it was irregular in shape, just a great big hole with steep sides. I remember thinking that with all the practice I’d had, I could have dug one far better.
At that moment the moon showed me something else – something I’d have preferred not to see. About three paces away, to the left of the pit, there was an oblong of freshly turned soil. It looked just like a new grave.
Without time even to begin worrying about that, I was dragged right to the edge of the pit and Tusk forced my head back. I had a glimpse of Bony Lizzie’s face close to mine, something hard was jammed into my mouth and a cold, bitter-tasting liquid was poured down my throat. It tasted vile and filled my throat and mouth to the brim, spilling over and even erupting out of my nose so that I began to choke, gasping and struggling for breath. I tried to spit it out but Bony Lizzie pinched my nostrils hard with her finger and thumb, so that in order to breathe I first had to swallow.
That done, Tusk let go of my head and transferred his grip back to my left arm. I saw then what had been forced into my mouth – Bony Lizzie held it up for me to see. It was a small bottle made out of dark glass. A bottle with a long, narrow neck. She turned it so that its neck was pointing to the ground and a few drops fell to the earth. The rest was already in my stomach.
What had I drunk? Had she poisoned me?
‘That’ll keep your eyes wide open, boy,’ she said with a sneer. ‘Wouldn’t want you dozing off, would we? Wouldn’t want you to miss anything.’
Without warning, Tusk swung me round violently towards the pit and my stomach lurched as I fell into space. I landed heavily but the earth at the bottom was soft, and although the fall winded me, I was unhurt. So I twisted
