“In the Middle Ages,” he continued, “there was a superstition that a man who was hanged could save himself from eternal damnation if he soaked the skin of an onion in his own blood and kept it under his tongue while he was hanged. It was believed that this would give the ghost a protective skin, which would keep him out of hell and could grow back seven times. Hangmen were generally told to look under the tongues of condemned men, but Stourton was, of course, rich enough to bribe his executioner.”
“Seven times?” I asked.
“Yes.” The Beard nodded as if I’d asked him the number of his fillings. “We can only hope the skin you saw was already the seventh. How many servants did he have with him?”
“Four,” I muttered.
“Did they also shed skins?”
I shook my head.
“Hmm.” He tugged at his beard, as he always did when he was thinking. “If we’re lucky, he only managed to bring back one of them. Supposedly you can call back a ghost if you offer him the body of a dead man. To bring back all four of his servants, Stourton would have had to kill four men. That wouldn’t have gone unnoticed in a small village like Kilmington. On the other hand, if they immediately slipped into those bodies…”
“Oh, stop it, Matthew!” Zelda put her hand over his mouth. “You always went for these dark stories, even when you were barely Jon’s age.”
“But how does he know all these things about ghosts?” I asked her. “Since when do dentists know this stuff? Or did he lie to my mother, and he’s really some kind of secret ghost hunter?”
“Your mother?” Zelda gave The Beard a baffled look. “What have you got to do with Jon’s mother?”
“She’s the woman I’m living with, Mother. Margaret Whitcroft. I introduced you to her. One of your toads jumped into her lap.”
Zelda looked at me with wide eyes. “Then Jon here is the spoiled little…?”
The Beard didn’t let her finish. “Never mind that.” He turned to me. “Of course I’m a dentist!” he asserted in an offended voice (though my doubts had been meant more as a compliment). “But what do you expect, with a mother like Zelda? When I was your age, she took me on dozens of ghost tours. I even had to dress up and play a ghost! So I read everything I could find about ghosts, but, disappointingly, still haven’t met one.”
“Well, at least that’s about to change tonight,” Zelda observed drily.
The Beard didn’t really seem to be looking forward to it, which didn’t surprise me. I’d always taken him to be someone who was much more comfortable with books and teeth than he was with real life. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how he was going to help us against Stourton. But Zelda had probably been unable to think of anything else.
A dentist, an old woman, and a kid. Poor Ella!
The Beard had let the letter drop to the carpet, and a toad had settled on it. I nudged it away and read the letter once more.
“Why are we still sitting here? We should go to Kilmington right away!” I said. “Maybe we’ll find Ella before it gets dark.”
But Zelda shook her head. “I’m sure Stourton will only bring her to the cemetery at nightfall.”
“But where is he keeping her?” My voice was trembling, which was pretty embarrassing in front of The Beard. But there was nothing I could do about it. I pictured Ella in some dark dungeon, guarded by one of those huge black hounds, and I wished once more that Longspee could have taught me how to handle his sword. I would have cut Stourton out of all his skins and sent him to hell for good.
“I still think he frightened some farmer into becoming his accomplice,” Zelda said. “That means Ella is probably in his house. That’s how Stourton did it with your ancestors, Jon. First he held them prisoner on a farm, and then…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Then why don’t we look for that house?” I exclaimed.
“How?” Zelda retorted. “By ringing every doorbell in Kilmington and asking, ‘Excuse me, did you kidnap an eleven-year-old girl because you were frightened by a ghost?’ ”
“ ‘Or murdered by one?’ ” The Beard added, which immediately earned him another stern look.
So we all sat in silence. It was terrible. I felt that I was abandoning Ella after getting her sucked in to this whole mess in the first place. And our fight was just making it all worse.
It was Zelda who finally broke the silence.
“Fine, Matthew,” she said. “Jon is right. What are we still doing here? Let’s go to Kilmington. I want my granddaughter back.”
The Beard swallowed hard, but then he nodded and got to his feet.
“You’d better go back to school, Jon,” he said. “They probably called your mother, and she’ll be wondering where you are.”
“Didn’t you read the letter?” I barked at him. “They’ll hand over Ella only if Zelda brings me to them. I’m coming with you.”
Zelda gave her son a puzzled look.
“I’m coming,” I repeated. “End of discussion.”
Zelda looked at me and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Thanks, Jon!” she muttered. “Now my glasses will get all fogged up again.”
“But you can’t take him with you!” The Beard protested. “His mother’s going to kill me. It’s too dangerous.”
“Matthew!” Zelda snapped. “If Jon doesn’t come with us, then whoever wrote that letter is going to kill our Ella.”
The Beard had run out of arguments—even dumb ones.
“Maybe we should inform the police,” he said feebly.
“The police don’t believe in ghosts, Matthew,” Zelda said. She hobbled to the cupboard in which she kept her car keys. “And the letter says we have to come alone.”
“And what about his knight?” The Beard put on his jacket.
“Of course!” Zelda spun around and looked at me, her hope restored. “Jon! Why haven’t you called Longspee yet?”
I didn’t know where to look. “Because… because he may be a murderer as well.” I’d finally managed to get it out. “And we’ll have more than enough of those to deal with tonight already, don’t you think?”
THE CHURCH OF THE HARTGILLS
The Kilmington cemetery lies at the end of a narrow, sleepy road that doesn’t at all look as if it’s frequented by deceased murderers. To the right of the graveyard stands the very house in which the Hartgills once lived. It has, of course, changed a bit over the past five hundred years, but what stopped us in our tracks was the FOR SALE sign by the front gate. I’m sure each one of us had the same thought: Either the owners must have grown tired of living next door to a cemetery that was haunted by a gang of dead killers, or—if The Beard’s stories were correct—the owners were no longer alive. I decided not to think about the second possibility.
The cemetery is surrounded by a high hedge, and the gate was locked. The Beard and I climbed over it. Zelda tried, but in the end she had to accept our help, which she did with a very grim face. I think she still had a hard time accepting that she was seventy-five years old.
All was quiet on the other side of the hedge. So quiet that I thought I could hear my own heartbeat. But there was nothing peaceful about this stillness; it seemed to be filled with stifled sighs and silenced cries—as if the earth itself had preserved the memory of what had happened here so long ago. Among the gravestones stood a church, its walls as craggy as an old man’s face, watching us through its dark windows like eyes.
“No need to look for Stourton’s name here,” Zelda said as I scanned the gravestones. Most of them were so weathered that they poked out of the short grass like bad teeth. “He was buried in Stourhead, the seat of the Stourtons. I’ve always asked myself why he doesn’t do his haunting there. This cemetery isn’t even where he committed the murder. This is where William Hartgill was saved by his son’s bravery.”
The Beard was also looking around. “Who knows. Maybe Stourton doesn’t like all the tourists in Stourhead,” he said.
The sky was already darkening, bu
t the sun wasn’t going to set for another hour or so. What if Ella’s captors had already frightened her to death? My heart clenched like a fist.
“Ella?” I called. “Ella!”
Of course, there was no answer. Just don’t start crying now, Jon Whitcroft, I ordered myself. The Beard will take it as further evidence that you’re a spoiled wimp, and Ella wouldn’t like it either. But it was futile; hot tears still shot into my eyes.
Luckily, Zelda distracted me.
“Come on, Jon,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
The church was locked, so The Beard picked the lock with a piece of wire.
He noticed my astonished look. “If you like checking out deserted haunted houses, this is a necessary skill,” he said matter-of-factly.
I wondered whether my mother knew of this side to The Beard. I decided not to tell her about it. Those hidden talents would just make him even more exciting in her eyes.
The air behind the church doors smelled of wax and wilting flowers, and it was as cold as a ghost’s breath.
“This way,” Zelda said, waving me along the central aisle. We stopped a few steps from the altar.
“There they all lie,” she said, pointing at the tombstones set into the floor in front of us. “Lots of Hartgills. The two murdered ones are probably also buried here. Did your mother never bring you here?”
I stared at the names chiseled into the floor and shook my head. “I don’t think Mum even knows about this place,” I mumbled. “She’s not really into ancestry.”
“That’s true.” The Beard gave a quiet laugh. “Quite the opposite, in fact. Margaret makes fun of people who poke around in their family history.”
The look he got from me was probably not very friendly. I still couldn’t handle that he knew so much about my mother.
Zelda guided me to a window on our right.
“This window commemorates John and William Hartgill,” she said. “One of their descendants commissioned it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I nodded. It was a strange feeling to find out I had ancestors who were pictured on lead glass and were buried under church floors. I wasn’t sure whether that was something to be proud of, and yet I was. I suddenly saw them all standing in a long line behind me, all those Hartgills who’d passed their name on to my mother. They’d all once been as young as I. They’d loved their mothers, and maybe some of them even had to deal with their own Beard. I felt them in my bones and in my blood. I heard them like a choir of voices in my heart. There’d been so many—that thought was comforting and at the same time unsettling. Those names on the flagstones made it very clear to me that one day there would be a gravestone with my name on it.
Zelda tore me out of my thoughts, and this time I was deeply grateful to her.
“I think it’s going to be dark soon,” she said. “Matthew, you’d better hide between those trees by the gate. Jon and I will stay here in the church. Call my cell as soon as you see someone or something out there. As soon as we hear from you, we’ll come out. Then we’ll pretend as if we’re exchanging Jon for Ella, and as soon as they let Ella go, we’ll distract them so the kids can run into the church.”
That didn’t really sound like a very sophisticated plan, considering we’d have to deal with Stourton and at least one living man. (I was still hoping that Stourton’s helper would be alive and not, as The Beard had predicted, a corpse-skin on one of Stourton’s servants.) And we’d also not be safe in the church forever. However, I couldn’t think of a better plan, and The Beard seemed to have no problem with the role he’d been assigned, so I decided to keep my thoughts to myself.
“Fine, that’s how we’ll do it,” he said to Zelda. “I’d better take the rifle, Mother.”
The rifle?
Zelda noticed my incredulous look. “As a boy, Matt always shot at the foxes and the falcons that wanted to get his rabbits. He became quite a good shot. And he only ever lost one rabbit.”
“Yes, I still dream of that fox,” The Beard growled. For the first time I could see the boy he’d once been. But even in that image I couldn’t erase the beard, which made him look quite strange.
“My marksmanship may be a little rusty,” he continued, “but I’ll try my best. But what am I going to shoot? Bullets don’t really harm ghosts, do they?”
“Shoot the live one,” Zelda replied with a grim face. “He kidnapped Ella.”
The Beard swallowed. “I tell you again, Mum, there won’t be any live ones. And I hope I’m right. I’ll find it much easier to shoot at a corpse, though I doubt a barrel full of bullets will stop him.”
Zelda didn’t reply. She just muttered, “I swear by all my toads, whoever turns up in this cemetery will leave unharmed only if I get my granddaughter back—without a scratch on her.”
Her hands were shaking as she pulled a handkerchief from her coat pocket and started rubbing her fogged-up glasses. The Beard put an arm around her shoulder. Then he turned and walked toward the church door. He opened it, and we could see that Zelda had been right. It was already getting dark.
“Matthew, wait!” Zelda called after The Beard. “My crutches are in the car. Will you bring them to me before you go and hide? They might come in handy.” A rifle and a couple of crutches. That didn’t sound like a very effective set of weapons against Stourton. I looked at my hand. The mark of Longspee’s lion was still very clear. I was sorely tempted to close my fist over it. But then I dropped my hand. I just couldn’t shake the memory of the chorister. Maybe that was the darkness that haunted Longspee—that he himself was no better than the ones he’d protected me from. And maybe that was the reason he was still here. Maybe all ghosts were either murderers or their victims. Had my dad ever come back as a ghost? No.
Fear gives you gloomy thoughts. And those are not always the sharpest.
Whatever. Waiting empty-handed for Stourton was not a good feeling.
“You can have one of the crutches.” Zelda must’ve read my thoughts. Maybe she was a witch after all.
She hugged me to herself as if she wanted to break my ribs.
“Thank you so much for coming with us,” she said. “You are a true friend, and there’s nothing more precious in life than that. Ella is really lucky to have you.”
“It’s okay,” I muttered. “Ella would do the same for me.”
“Yes, you’re right about that. She definitely would. But still—thank you.”
CORPSE-SKIN
We waited. To me, it felt like weeks, months, years. Zelda kept marching up and down in front of the altar while I sat in one of the pews, where maybe one of my ancestors had once sat. I asked myself whether Ella was still alive. In books and movies, heroes can always feel whether those they love are safe or not. Since that night in Kilmington, though, I don’t believe in that stuff. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing except fear and helpless rage. I missed Ella. I missed her as much as if Stourton had cut off one of my legs or arms. How could that be? I’d known her for barely more than a week, and she was, after all, still a girl.
My mother had once said to me, “We make our best friends in dark times because we always remember how they helped us out of the darkness.” She was probably not talking about times in which she had been hunted by vengeful ghosts. But I think there are many kinds of darkness that every one of us has to go through, and those are the times when, in order not to get lost, you need someone like Ella.
When Zelda’s cell phone rang, I jumped out of my pew so quickly that I slipped and landed with my knees on the name Hartgill. My hand trembled as I grabbed one of the crutches that The Beard had leaned against the baptismal font. I followed Zelda to the door, and I felt as if all the Hartgills were looking at us, hoping that we might succeed at what the silken rope had failed to do: finally rid them of Stourton and take revenge for the two murders that had begun everything. But I wasn’t interested in any of that. I just wanted Ella back—without a scratch on her, as Zelda had said.
It was a c
old night. Fog had gathered between the gravestones, white and damp, as though the dead were exhaling beneath the turf. Four men were waiting in the haze. It was immediately obvious that there was something wrong with them. They looked as if their skin didn’t fit them, and their faces were as expressionless as rubber masks. The Beard had been right. Ghosts could wear corpses like clothes, and Stourton had supplied not one but all of his servants with such a new dress. My heart froze in my chest. I could barely breathe as I gripped Zelda’s crutch more firmly. My eyes, however, were looking among the gravestones for one figure.
“Where’s my granddaughter?” Zelda barked at the creatures who had once been men. What a way to end up—as a corpse-skin for a ghost.
Zelda’s voice didn’t tremble quite as much as my hands, but I was comforted and frightened to hear in her words the same fear I myself felt.
Stourton’s minions didn’t answer. Talking is probably not easy for a dead man. But one of them turned and dragged Ella out from behind a gravestone.
She looked terribly pale. Her eyes were wide with fear, but I also saw a good deal of anger in them. She held herself very upright, and when one of the corpses grabbed her long hair, she kicked him in the shin. Brave Ella.
“Let her go!” I screamed, waving my crutch. I wasn’t sure at all how much damage it would cause to someone who was already dead.
The one to Ella’s left uttered a horrible laugh and grabbed her hair again. When he spoke, it sounded as if his tongue fit him as badly as his new clothes.
“Your girl stays here, Hartgill!” he slurred. “Until the silken lord comes to get you. He’s on his way now.”
“We shouldn’t wait for him!” Zelda hissed, but just as she firmed her grip on her crutch, the pale rider, who had filled my past days and nights with terror, leaped over the cemetery gate. This time he was surrounded by light. Unlike Longspee’s, however, his light made the fog glow a filthy green, like mold on rotting bread.