He cleared his throat. ‘If Torchwood really is looking for ghosts, you should try Greendown Moss. It’s haunted.’
Toshiko gaped. ‘Did you just say Torchwood?’
He stood up, towering over both women. ‘Don’t look so startled. I know all about Torchwood.’ He suddenly roared with laughter. ‘The look on your faces! He said it’d be priceless, and he was right. He was always right!’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Gwen.
The man gave another laugh, full of warmth. ‘How is Cap’n Jack these days? Still looking like he’s dodging forty? Still going misty-eyed whenever someone mentions the war? I bet he’s still addicted to Glenn Miller and wearing that old greatcoat!’
Gwen smiled despite herself. ‘You know Jack.’
‘I only ever knew him as Captain Jack. A damned fine man, even if he did wear boots with turn-ups. American, too, but that’s not his fault, is it? He was a glory-hunting maniac and the kindest man I ever knew. Saved my life twice in ’73, and then left me for a chorus girl from Boston. Give the smooth-talking bastard two fingers from me next time you see him.’
‘Uh, right,’ Gwen nodded.
‘Anyway,’ the man carried on regardless, ‘I owe him a favour or two, don’t I? And he sent a message to say you two would be coming this way. A looker and a genius, he said. Which one’s which?’
Toshiko and Gwen exchanged another glance.
‘I’m an unnatural historian,’ continued the old man, not waiting for a reply. ‘Been studying the area and its ghosts and ghoulies for the last fifty years. Professor Leonard Morgan, at your service. You can call me Professor Len.’
THREE
Gwen pulled the Saab over to the side of the road and switched off the engine.
‘Now ain’t that a beautiful sight,’ said Professor Len softly. He was leaning forward, between the front seats, looking out at the sunrise. The sky was a brilliant eggshell blue, streaked with a dozen wide strips of orange and lilac cloud. The sun was low, little more than a glare on the horizon, and beneath it was a vast sea of mist. A distant line of bare winter trees cast long, ghostly shadows.
The professor scratched his beard and let out a low, appreciative whistle, causing both Gwen and Toshiko to wrinkle their noses. It was far too early for beer breath. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’ He looked at Toshiko and winked. ‘That’s Shakespeare, that is. Just showing off my education, see. Just so you know you’re not the only genius in the car.’
‘So you’ve decided I’m not the looker?’ Toshiko observed acidly.
‘Don’t worry, girl, I go for brains over beauty every time.’ He looked apologetically at Gwen. ‘No offence, mind.’
Gwen was grinning at Toshiko. ‘None taken.’
‘You’re sure this is the place?’ Toshiko asked, leaning slightly away from the professor with a sour expression.
‘Of course I am. I was brought up around here.’
Gwen was checking the OS map. They were miles from any main roads. ‘Yep, here it is: Greendown Moss. Marshland, mainly. We should have brought our wellies.’
They got out, the two women wrapping their coats around them to keep out the cold. Professor Len stood and watched as Gwen locked the car. Away to the right was a long, undulated field covered with a blanket of grey mist and ringed by silver birch rendered almost invisible in this weather.
‘Is it safe to walk across?’ Toshiko asked.
Professor Len shrugged. ‘If you know what you’re doing. It can be treacherous, though. You’ve got to treat it with respect. Greendown Moss is what’s known as a floating bog: it’s basically a great raft of peat floating on a lake. It’s over fifty feet deep. It’s dangerous because, although you can walk on most of the peat quite easily, there are holes in it that you can’t see — thin patches where a person can just slip right through.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Gwen.
‘But what about the ghosts?’ asked Toshiko. ‘Where do they come into it?’
‘Ah,’ said Professor Len. ‘Local legends. A woman — a witch — is said to haunt this place. They call her Sally Blackteeth. She lurks in the ditches and drags the unsuspecting traveller down into the bog. Men, mostly, it has to be said. Pulls them all the way down to the bottom and drowns them — if they’re lucky. You can sometimes see her around these parts, wandering the Moss, looking for her next victim.’
Gwen and Toshiko watched the thin mist rolling across the bog. In was unnaturally quiet out here — there was no traffic and all they could hear was the occasional, distant cry of the ravens in the spectral trees. Otherwise it was silent.
‘Let every bird sing its own note,’ whispered Professor Len, his eyes closed, listening as though he was at an opera.
‘What do you mean, “if they’re lucky”?’ asked Gwen loudly and clearly.
The eyes snapped back open. ‘Sometimes Old Sally would take a man down into the bog to live with her and have her babies. Fate worse than death, that. Dunno how she did it, mind, but I guess she can do it if she’s a witch.’
Gwen and Toshiko were both smiling at him now, amused by his earnestness. He coughed and scratched his beard fiercely. ‘Some of her victims she throws back, when she’s finished with ’em, as a warning to others — to stay away.’ He looked sideways at them and then shrugged. ‘It’s up to you if you want to believe it or not. But you’re Torchwood, so anything goes.’
‘We like to keep an open mind,’ nodded Gwen.
‘I’ve seen Sally,’ the professor said. ‘She often comes here. Water hags tend to keep to their own patch. Black Annie, who lived in the Dane Hills of Leicestershire, used to live in a cave. She dug it out herself with claws as hard as iron and decorated it with the skins of the children she ate.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘They can be vicious, but they can also be fair. They’re sometimes called grindylows in Yorkshire. There was one there who took a man to be her husband, lived in a ditch with him for two years before his wife came and asked for him back. The grindylow agreed, but said she could only have him back if she could swap him for someone else. So the wife tricked another man into the ditch and got her husband back. The grindylow changed her mind because she didn’t like the replacement, so she let him go. He went and found the wife and her husband and murdered them both in their bed out of revenge. Seemed a bit mean-spirited, that, I always thought.’
‘You’re full of charming stories, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, I know all of them. And what’s more they’re all perfectly true.’
‘And you say you’ve met this Sally Blackteeth person?’
‘Seen her. You’ve got to be careful, though. She doesn’t always look the same way twice. She’s got a bit of the bogie in her.’
‘Bogie?’
‘Shape-shifting spirits which torment menfolk. More common than you think.’
‘When does the Sally Blackteeth story date from?’ Toshiko asked. ‘Middle Ages?’
‘Oh, yeah, from right back then. But they reckon the last man to be dragged down to his death by Sally was in 1974.’
‘Really?’
‘They never did find his body. It’s probably still down there, rotting away.’ Professor Len smiled and gave Gwen a nudge with his elbow. ‘Food for the worms — and company for Sally, probably.’
Toshiko had taken a small, hand-held device out of her coat pocket and scanned the field. It could easily have been mistaken for a sophisticated mobile phone, because that is what it had once been. Toshiko had redesigned it to accommodate a smart piece of alien kit that helped to track warps in the Earth’s localised time field, and she
