Wormes
They are mainly water dwellers, and although they prefer deep lakes, they occasionally make do with a marsh or river. Wormes are rare in the County but are to be found in its most northerly regions, ranging from the lakes down almost as far as Caster.
When they catch humans, they invariably squeeze their prey to death before eating them, bones and all, leaving hardly a trace. Sometimes they even swallow the clothes and shoes. But with animals such as cattle, they just bite deeply and drain them of blood.
Wormes are dangerous creatures to approach and are best dealt with by two people attacking the creature simultaneously.6
A Dragon
Elemental Spirits
As the name suggests, elemental spirits emerge from earth, water, air, or fire over a long period of time. The elements give birth to them, but they move only very slowly toward consciousness. It is in the early stage of their development that novice witches can use them to exert power; the older the spirit, the more aware it is. Once they have interacted with a fully fledged malevolent witch, their development is complete.
One plausible theory is that elemental spirits eventually evolve first into demons, then finally into gods. There is no hard evidence for this, but it does seem likely. Thus the Old Gods are the result of a long developing process, the final catalyst being their worship by humans.1
Barghests
Barghests are earth spirits that take the form of a huge black dog with fiery eyes and enormous fangs. Usually artificially bound to a certain location, they draw their strength from human fear, something they have in common with ghasts and boggarts. They are used and controlled by some witches to guard their homes, or places where covens gather. A spook can deal with them using salt and iron, but they can be a great danger to ordinary folk, projecting waves of fear that can stop a heart or drive the susceptible insane.
A Barghest
Boogles
Boogles are elemental spirits of earth that frequent caves and tunnels. Most are harmless, but they naturally make miners very nervous. They take the form of grotesque shadows that move extremely slowly. Occasionally they whisper or sigh. (Tappers are a much greater threat.)
Dragons
Dragons are mistakenly believed by many to be fire breathers with wings and talons. True dragons are very different. They are elemental spirits of the air, some so large they can coil themselves right round a big hill. They often sleep for centuries like that, covering it from foot to summit. They are invisible, so most people aren’t even aware of them. The more sensitive may just shiver suddenly on a hot summer’s day and think they’re coming down with a cold. Big dragons are sluggish things. They don’t move much, but if they do, it happens very slowly.
Their thought processes also seem slow, but that’s because they experience time differently: A day seems of no more duration than a second. Thus to them humans are no more than tiny insects and they are hardly aware of our existence. In ancient times, spooks could communicate with such beings, but that art has been lost.
Some mages try to use the energy of a dragon—with mixed results. There is great danger in such attempts. The mage is sometimes trapped within the aura of the dragon and falls into a deep sleep from which he never awakes, the most famous example being Merlin (under Mages) who, it is said, still sleeps within a dragon’s lair and will do so until the end of the world.
Fire Elementals
Fire elementals are not found in the County because of its wet climate and prevailing westerly winds from the sea.2 In hot lands, however, they can be very dangerous, often taking the form of glowing orbs, some of which are translucent, others opaque. At noon they are usually to be found on rocks, from which they draw heat and power. Additionally, they may frequent ruined or abandoned buildings.
As a general rule, the opaque ones are hotter and more dangerous than translucent ones. Indoors these often float close to the ceiling but can move very suddenly, which makes them almost impossible to dodge. Contact with such a sphere can result in severe burns and a painful death. In more extreme cases, such elementals can reduce their victims to ashes almost instantly.
Other fire elementals called asteri are similar in shape to a starfish, with five fiery arms. These elementals cling to the surface of walls or ceilings and drop onto the heads of unsuspecting victims.
The most dangerous fire elemental of all is the salamander, a large lizard that basks in the heat of intense flames. These can spit streaks of fire or scalding steam.
A Salamander
Fire elementals are notoriously difficult to defend against, but a metal alloy blade with the correct percentage of silver can sometimes cause one to implode. A spook’s staff is particularly useful for this purpose.3 Failing that, water can seriously weaken a fire elemental and cause it to hibernate until drier conditions prevail.4 Water also offers a refuge when under attack.
Moroi
These are vampiric elemental spirits found in Romania. They are sometimes controlled by the strigoi and strigoica, but even when operating alone are a considerable threat to travelers. In their disembodied form, they inhabit hollow trees and clumps of holly. However, they often possess bears, which crush and lacerate their human victims before dragging them back to their lair. Sunlight destroys them, and they are only at large after dark.
Moroi have one significant weakness: They are compulsive in their behavior and often linger close to their lair, counting holly berries, seeds, twigs, or even blades of grass, wasting the hours that would otherwise have been used to hunt human prey. By the time they have finished counting, it’s usually almost dawn—which can be the most dangerous time of all for unwary humans, because the creatures are desperate to drink blood before the sun rises.
This weakness is exploited by Romanian spooks, who always have a pocketful of seeds or berries. Threatened by the moroi, they cast these toward it. Rather than attack, it is forced to begin counting again.
Tappers
Tappers, distant cousins to the boggarts that plague the County, live deep within rock clefts and sometimes cause tunnels to collapse. County miners fear them more than anything else.
Tappers try to drive humans away from territory they have claimed as their own. First of all, they use fear—hence the mysterious and unnerving rhythmical tapping sounds that are typical signs of their presence. But if fear doesn’t work, they bring down rocks and try to crush those they consider to be interlopers.
In an abandoned mine, huge numbers may gather unchecked over time, endangering the lives of any humans who venture there. Even many of them working together cannot cause a tunnel to collapse unless there is an existing fault line. However, if they do find a serious crack in the structure of the rock above, they can easily bring the ceiling down, either crushing or sealing victims underground so they perish from lack of air or water.5
Water Elementals
Water elementals are mostly found in the north of the County, where the bogs, lakes, and coast are inhabited by other denizens of the dark, such as water witches. There is a dangerous type called a wisp, which appears as a spiral of light over dangerous marshes and lures travelers off the path to their doom. These are usually too elusive to be dealt with unless there is a severe drought (a rare thing in the County). Then a spook can bind one in a pit using the same method as he would for a boggart.
A Wisp
Then there are banshees (also known as bean sidhe), which are female water spirits that warn of death. Mostly they are invisible: All you hear is a wailing cry, uttered just three times each night. If they are heard close to a house three nights running, it is said someone inside will die at the very moment the final wail is heard.
Sometimes banshees can be glimpsed apparently washing a burial shroud. If there is blood either on the shroud or in the water, then a violent death is predicted.6 They are not solid and do not leave footprints or any other evidence of their presence.
A spook has no means of dealing with banshees, but they react to future
events rather than bringing them about, so are not in themselves dangerous.7
A Banshee
The Cawley Stone Crawler
Mysterious Deaths in the County
Spooks catalog the creatures of the dark. Bit by bit, year by year, we learn more about the threats posed by the dark and develop ways in which to thwart or limit its effects. But there are still entities out there that defy our attempts to take their measure. In the County there have been many mysterious deaths that so far have not been explained.
THE BLOATED BODY OF EMILY JANE HUDSON
Emily Jane Hudson had lived in Ormskirk all her life but had taken to her sick bed two years before her plight was brought to my notice. Doctors had visited her regularly, attempting unsuccessfully to deal with her strange affliction.
Emily was still alive when I first saw her. I had been called to her bedside by Dr. Gill, with whom I’d worked many times in the past; he was a liberal and intelligent man who understood the part played in the County by the servants of the dark and routinely sought my advice.
At first I thought I was dealing with a woman who was extremely obese, but when the doctor lit a candle and pulled back the bedclothes slightly, I was astonished by the sight of poor Emily. Her face, shoulders, and neck were terribly swollen, but there was not an ounce of visible fat on her. The bright red skin was stretched tight by the blood beneath it. It was as if someone or something had forced blood into the space between skin and flesh. To support that theory, there were two large puncture marks on her neck, and the same on each shoulder.
There are many cases in the County where blood has been removed from a living body. Witches who use blood magic do so routinely. Sometimes they drain their victim completely; at other times they draw blood in small amounts over days or even weeks. But never had I encountered a case where blood had been added rather than subtracted.
I was unable to help, and within two hours poor Emily was dead. Fortunately the local priest allowed her to be buried within the churchyard, which was of some consolation to her family.
Thus I was forced to record one more mysterious death in the County. I can only suppose that some unknown type of witch or dark entity was using her body as a place to store blood for some future ritual. But although I watched over her grave for weeks, they never returned to take it.
THE CAWLEY STONE CRAWLER
There have been many mysterious deaths near the outcrop of rock known as the Cawley Stone. At first it was animals being killed: sheep, rabbits, stoats, and squirrels. But twice I have been called to the area to investigate human deaths. The first was that of a hermit who lived in the woods nearby; the second time I traveled to view the remains of a shepherd who had pursued a stray lamb into the vicinity of the rock.
Both the lamb and shepherd were dead, but they had no marks on their bodies—not even the slightest sign of violence.
The Cawley Stone has one visible peculiarity. About six feet from the ground on its northern face, there is a shape that might be a carving carried out in the distant past. If so, it has been weathered and worn and the details are not sharp. Alternatively, the shape could be the result of natural erosion. Whatever the truth of the matter, it has the appearance of a head, with muscular shoulders, arms, and hands. In certain lights, particularly just before sunset, it appears to be climbing out of the rock. If so, let us hope that it never completes its slow escape, because there is something very frightening about the figure.1
Some say that it is indeed emerging very slowly and claim to remember a time when it had not climbed out as far. Human memory is fallible, so we must allow for that, but I happened to speak to Jonathan Brown, the oldest resident of the nearby village. He says that as a young man he approached the Cawley Stone crawler for a dare and spent some time examining it closely. He was an artist who specialized in drawing landscapes and landmarks such as churches, so he took the opportunity to make a sketch of what he saw, striving, as usual, for accuracy. That sketch was still in his possession after all those years, and he showed it to me.
In the drawing, the figure was much further embedded in the rock: only one hand had emerged. I looked at some of his other work and was impressed by his eye for detail—particularly in his sketch of the gargoyle of the Bane, which is located over the main entrance to Priestown Cathedral. I was satisfied that he had rendered the crawler accurately—as it was then!
My suspicion is that we are dealing with some new type of earth elemental. It might well be that the rock face was worshipped in ancient times, sacrificial blood being splattered against it. That would have awakened the elemental, giving it strength and a sense of self. How it kills those who venture close, I do not know. But it is something to be aware of as it makes its slow escape from its rocky prison.
It may not need my attention again, but no doubt some future spook will be forced to deal with it.
THE MYSTERY OF THE CREEPING VINE
Late in the August of my fiftieth year, I was called from my Chipenden home to view a death that defied explanation. A suspected witch, Agatha Anderton, had long been watched at a distance by wary and distrustful neighbors. I’d talked to her once and found no evidence to support their whispered accusations. Although advanced in years, Agatha was bright, alert, and in my opinion, completely without malice—definitely falling into the category of witch known as the falsely accused.
This final time I was summoned because of the state of her house and garden. The latter had been overrun by a strange yellow vine that had displaced her herbs and flowers; worse, and far more ominously, it had grown over the exterior of her cottage, covering walls, doors and windows in a profusion of sickly smelling bloodred blossoms. No smoke had come from her chimney for days, and her neighbors believed that witchcraft was involved.
The vine was tough. Although it looked like fresh growth, the stems were woody and I had to use an ax to cut it away from the front door. Once inside, although it was just before noon, I was forced to light a lantern because the rooms were so dark. I gasped in shock, finding it difficult to believe my eyes.
The vine had apparently sprouted directly from poor Agatha’s body before displacing the floorboards and splitting the wooden bed upon which the old woman lay. She was cold and dead and had been in that condition for some time; her corpse was severely decayed.
But the real horror lay in what the vine had done to her body. Buds erupted from her dead flesh; shoots sprang from her ears and eyes; tendrils snaked down her nostrils and coiled about her throat; her feet and hands were covered in red blooms. The creeping vine had used her body as its soil, a nutrient to sustain its prolific growth.
Though it was hard to cut her from the bed, it had to be done. A priest was called, but although he said a few prayers over the body, he would not allow her to be buried in holy ground. So with his grudging permission, I laid her to rest just outside the churchyard.
From her grave the vine continued to sprout—but far more slowly than previously. Nevertheless, it’s a dense, tangled growth from which both animals and humans keep their distance. After many years, it now covers a roughly circular area of approximately one hundred yards in diameter. I say circular, but it has extended in every direction but one; it has halted at the boundaries of the churchyard, almost encircling it but seemingly unable to encroach upon holy ground.
Why did it happen? It must remain one of the great mysteries of the County. I have no doubt that dark forces were involved. But whether it was conjured by Agatha Anderton or by some unidentified enemy, we will never know. If dark magic was used, it is a spell unknown to the witches of the County, suggesting that an incomer was involved.
Final Words
This Bestiary, my personal guide to the dark, is the last remaining book from the old spooks’ library.
It is hard for me to convey the sense of loss I felt when the Chipenden library was destroyed. Up in flames went words written by generations of spooks, a great store of knowledge, the heritage of countless years of struggle
against the ever-growing power of the dark. I was its guardian, and it was my task to extend and preserve it for the future. And now it is gone.
Its destruction filled me with a great sense of personal failure. It was a terrible blow that literally brought me to my knees.
Now I have had time to reflect, and I am filled with renewed strength and determination. My fight against the dark will continue. One day I will rebuild the library, and this book, my personal Bestiary, will be the first to be placed upon its shelves.
John Gregory of Chipenden
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
The Last Apprentice: The Spook’s Bestiary
Text copyright © 2011 by Joseph Delaney
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Julek Heller
The right of Joseph Delaney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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The Last Apprentice: Complete Collection Page 298