The Spook's Bestiary - By Joseph Delaney Page 0,22

from right under the house.”

At last, convinced of the need for urgency, I wasted no further time in leading Mr. Hurst out into the night. We headed down the steep clough and onto the slope that led off the snow-clad moor. White flakes were dancing into our faces, and it was bitterly cold. It was a good hour before we had finally trudged across to Moor View Farm. No sooner had we crossed the threshold than I realized that the old farmer had not exaggerated. The farmhouse was unnaturally cold, that strange chill that warns us spooks that something from the dark is close at hand.

As we approached the locked room, I heard an unnerving sound from deep beneath the house: a grinding, crunching, grating roar, as if some huge beast were munching on rock. We both became still, feeling the boards move beneath our feet. When the noise subsided, I rapped hard on the door and called out Morgan’s name loudly.

There was no reply. On the outside of the wooden door, rivulets of ice had formed. Suddenly the noise began again, as if some monster were rising up from the depths beneath, clawing aside rocks and earth in its eagerness to be free of its subterranean prison.

I threw my shoulder against the door again and again, desperation lending me strength. At last the hinges sheered away from the wood and the door burst open. I stepped into a cold more severe than that on the bleak moor from which we’d just descended.

I’d been in that room before and knew its layout. Longer than it was wide, it had one window on the far wall, shrouded with heavy black curtains. There was a big table with two chairs; these usually occupied the center of the room, but now they’d been pushed right back against the wall. Morgan was sitting inside a huge pentacle that he had chalked on the floor. At each of its five outer points was a black candle. Their yellow flickering light filled the room and showed me exactly what I was dealing with.

In his left hand Morgan held a grimoire, a book of dark magic incantations. It was bound in green leather, and there was a silver pentacle embossed on its cover. Where he had gotten it from I didn’t know, but he was chanting from it, reading words in the Old Tongue—the language of the ancients who first made their home in the County. His accent was far from perfect, but close enough to make the incantation potent, and although it was invisible, I sensed that something was taking shape just beyond the pentacle, between Morgan and the dark curtains at the window.

Behind me, in the open doorway, I heard Mrs. Hurst scream with fright, and her husband give a deep groan of pure terror. I too was very afraid, but something greater than fear for my own safety urged me forward and gave me the courage I needed. It was a realization of what threatened; the knowledge that the whole County was just a few seconds away from a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.

There was one other creature in the room: the farm dog. It was chained to a hook in the wall just by the curtains. Flat on its belly, its ears back against its skull, the poor animal was whining softly and trembling all over. The dog was the blood sacrifice that Morgan was offering in order to bring Golgoth into our world. He was trying to raise the Lord of Winter and had almost succeeded.

The cold intensified, blasting toward me; it felt as if sharp knives were cutting into my face. But although my foolish apprentice was far closer to the emerging Old God, he was protected by the pentacle.

I ran forward and kicked over one of the candles, thus destroying its protective power. Immediately Morgan’s eyes widened as he felt the first icy fingers of cold reach toward him. But lust for power had filled him with madness, and although he rose to his feet, he continued to chant from the grimoire.

I stepped inside the pentacle and struck his wrists hard with my staff. The book flew from his hands. He stared at me, his expression a mixture of anger, bewilderment, and fear. For a moment he seemed in a trance, unaware of who he was or what he was trying to do. But then his eyes widened in alarm and he looked across to where Golgoth had begun to