A New Darkness by Joseph Delaney Page A

he have felt? What would be the worst thing?”
    And it had worked. I’d become sad rather than afraid. Soon the ghasts had faded away.
    I came to a halt. “What can you see?” I asked Jenny.
    “Dead soldiers hanging from the trees.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “They’re just young boys. It’s not right. They were too young to fight in a war.”
    “Are you afraid?” I asked.
    “Yes, it’s scary. But I’m more sad than afraid. They didn’t deserve to die like this.”
    “Do you see that one?” I pointed to a boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. His mouth was opening and closing as he struggled for air, and his eyes bulged in his head. “Let’s go and stand in front of him. I want you to walk right up to him—so close that if you reached out, you could touch his shoulder.”
    Jenny nodded. I could tell that she had to force herself to take each step. We walked forward, side by side, until we were as close as I’d instructed.
    “His name is George, and he’s only fourteen,” Jenny said suddenly. “He lied about his age so that he could join the army. Now he’s terrified and in awful pain. But there’s something wrong with his mind. It’s as if he isn’t all there. Maybe the terror of being hanged has done that to him. . . . Send him to the light, please! Don’t let this go on any longer.”
    I was stunned. My master had simply asked me to imagine what it was like to be in a dead soldier’s place. That way I identified with his plight and overcame my fear. Jenny seemed to know what it was like, as if she could read his mind in some way. It was something that was beyond me.
    “He’s not a ghost, Jenny, he’s a ghast,” I explained gently. “The largest part of him has already gone to the light. This is just the fragment that’s broken away from his spirit and stayed behind to haunt this hill with the others. That’s what ghasts are—the parts of a spirit that suffered terrible pain or committed acts they couldn’t bear to remember, like the miner who killed his wife. They couldn’t go to the light with that part of them, so it broke away and became a ghast. Do you understand?”
    She nodded, and the ghasts began to fade away. Within moments, the leaves were back on the trees. Jenny had faced up to the ghasts bravely. She hadn’t run.
    I smiled at her.
    “Have I passed the test, then?” she asked.
    “Yes, you passed, without a shadow of a doubt. As far as I know, John Gregory never kept anybody on after they’d failed the test in the haunted house. But I have the right to do it my way. For him, it was just a routine procedure to see how brave a lad was. But I believe that you are telling the truth, that you didn’t run because of fear. So I’ll keep you on—at least for a little while. The worst that can happen is that I’m wrong and you’ll run away again.”
    “I won’t. But next time, if I feel the same about something and it’s getting too much to bear, I’ll warn you.”
    I nodded and smiled.
    “So I’m your apprentice now? It’s official?” Jenny asked. “Even though I’m a girl?”
    “It’s official. As far as I know, you’re the first girl ever to become a spook’s apprentice. That makes you special,” I added.
    The image of my dead master came into my mind. I could imagine him shaking his head in disapproval. I felt sure that he would never have taken on a girl apprentice.
    “My mam and dad, they’ll never pay you,” Jenny said.
    I shrugged.
    “Don’t you mind?”
    The truth was, I wasn’t sure whether I minded or not. Being a spook was never going to make me rich. Getting money out of some people was harder than getting blood from a stone. But it was a steady job and you didn’t go hungry, so it didn’t really matter that much whether Jenny’s foster parents paid up or not.
    But the trouble was, I kept comparing myself with my master. John Gregory would never have stood for that. I felt somehow lessened by letting the