The Spook's Bestiary - By Joseph Delaney Page 0,39

than a year, in a hamlet that had only forty remaining inhabitants. I was able to view the most recent corpse but was unable to interrogate its spirit, which had already moved on to the light.

Only rarely can strangler ghosts kill people; I knew that if this was what I was dealing with, then it must be exceptionally powerful, because it had exerted enough pressure to actually leave finger marks on the victim’s throat. And there was a chance that the murderer was human. There are many examples in the County record of killers who have attempted to blame supernatural agencies for the deaths they have been charged with. But in this case all the victims had died on the western edge of the hamlet, close to a small dell, and that’s where I eventually found the strangler.

There was no moon and the night was dark, with heavy cloud cover and hardly a breath of wind. I saw the ghost as a faint column of light moving through the trees toward the village. The strangler was no doubt seeking out its next victim. When I called out to it, the column of light halted and then proceeded swiftly in my direction. No doubt it thought I’d be easy prey. Stranglers and other ghosts are deterred by groups of people and are always more likely to manifest themselves to lone humans.

When it was no more than a staff’s length away, it halted for a moment, at which point it became aware that I was not the easy victim it had anticipated. Nonetheless it attacked me, and I felt it place its cold fingers around my throat. It tried to choke me, but a seventh son of a seventh son has a degree of immunity, and it lacked the strength to do me any serious harm. So I tried to talk to it.

“How came you here?” I demanded. “Why are you bound to this place?”

“Love this dark dell,” replied the strangler. “Killed many here before they caught me. Three women, a child, and an old man. Put my hands around their necks and squeezed until they struggled no more. But they caught me at last. . . .”

“Did you hang?”

“Nay. They kicked me with their heavy boots until all my bones were broken. Battered me until my spirit fled my body to escape the pain. Here I am now. Can’t go too far from this place, but it’s not so bad. Not so bad at all. Three I’ve taken in the last few months. So good, it is. So nice to put my cold fingers around warm plump necks!”

“You must leave here now,” I warned him. “Each life you take only makes it harder for you. Go to the light. Go now while you still can!”

“What chance have I got of ever reaching the light?” the strangler asked in a melancholy voice.

“It’s difficult, but it can be done,” I explained. “Think of a happy memory. The moment on this earth when you were most happy!”

There was silence for over a minute; then at last the strangler spoke. “I remember one summer’s morning when I was hardly higher than my mam’s knee. She’d just given me a good slapping for doing something wrong—I can’t remember what—when I saw a large butterfly hovering over a clump of long-stemmed dog daisies. It had red wings that shone in the sunlight, and I remember feeling so jealous that it should look that way when I was ugly and misshapen myself—my mam always said I should never have been born. It just didn’t seem fair that it should be able to fly as well, when all I could do was hobble about.

“So when it settled on a flower head, I seized it quickly and pulled off both its wings. That showed it! Now it was just an ugly little insect and couldn’t fly. I felt happier and better than I had in a long time. Aye, I remember that morning well. It taught me how I could make myself feel better by hurting others.”

At that, I knew that the strangler was beyond salvation. Part of me felt sorry for that poor twisted spirit. It sounded as if he had endured a difficult childhood. But others are afflicted by worse and yet still rise above their pain. My duty was clear.

“Look toward the light!” I cried. “You should be able to see it now . . .”

“I can’t see the light. Just a gray swirling mist . .