Read The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books) for Free Online Page B

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 marked out on the flagstones.
    Wind blew in – red hot and scented with decay. Willy’s chanting grew weaker; Ailen suspected the man’s palms were freshly aflame. Blinking against the ash and snow whipped up by the vicious spirit alongside Popule’s salt sprays, he fought to put one foot in front of the other. Blood trickled from his ears, his nose. Ailen pressed on against the tremendous volume of suffering and the searing heat of the funeral pyre from many centuries before. One thought gave him strength – some ghosts stay to ease the agonies of those left behind while others stay to torment those who live on. Unlike Thom, the poltergeist belonged to the latter category and needed to be put back among the demons.
    Ailen ran the last few steps, lungs baking against his ribs. He grasped the neck of his dragon pipe, burned the tips of his fingers on the glowing nodules and clamped the steaming jaw around one misty tentacle. The poltergeist writhed, but Ailen held fast this time. Hearing Willy’s voice harden, those ancient, occult words seeming to pepper the poltergeist’s surface like hot coals, Ailen moved to the sigil’s edge.
    “I make you an offering. Pieces of death for peace inside this hallowed hall.” Retrieving the voodoo necklace from his belt, he tossed the offering into the chalked circle. Arching at the spine, he cast out with the dragon pipe and released the jaw.
    The poltergeist streamed into the sigil, a bolt of silver ether. Writhing and whipping against its bonds, it found itself dragged down over the symbols, one tentacle at a time. As the last thread of it was engulfed, the screams of the martyred ceased. The wall of flame around the men brightened then went out.
     
    A month passed before the large man came to call at The Deanery. Mrs Rook the housekeeper would later describe the pains she was put to, trying to place the gentleman. His suit was of cheap cloth but cut well enough, while a starched collar hugged his neck. But the face – a mask of steel with scars aplenty!
    The man’s voice betrayed him. Nicholas recognized its deep tone from his place