Free The Spook's Battle by Joseph Delaney Page A

closed the door gently behind me, my eyes darted around the room, alert for danger. It seemed deserted, but I didn't move. I just leaned back against the door, the stink of rancid fat and rotting food in my nostrils, and breathed slowly to calm my nerves, listening very carefully all the while.
     The rest of the cottage sounded empty, but it was almost too silent. It seemed hard to believe that Alice would make no sound at all. At that thought, my heart began to hammer in my chest again and my throat tightened with fear. What if she'd already been killed? What if the man had brought her into the house for just that purpose?The horror of that thought started me moving. I would have to check each room in turn. It was a small single-story cottage, so there was no upstairs to investigate. The inner door opened into a tiny, cramped room; on the bed were creased, dirty sheets, and another black candle flickered on the window ledge. There was no sign of Alice. Where could she be?Beyond the bed, set into the far wall, was another door. I turned the handle, eased it open, and stepped through to find myself in the living room.One glance told me that I wasn't alone! To my right was the hearth, where the embers of a coal fire gleamed. But directly facing me, sitting hunched at a table, was a witch with wild eyes and a mass of frizzy white hair. In her left hand was a candle stub with a flickering flame that gave off a lot of smoke. Instinctively I raised my staff as her mouth opened and she began to shout, shaking her fist toward me.
     But there was no sound, and instantly I realized that the witch wasn't actually in the room with me. I was looking into a large mirror. She was using it to watch from a distance.How far off was she? Miles away or close at hand? Wherever she was, using another mirror, she might well be able to tell the Mouldheels that there was an intruder in the cottage. How long before somebody returned?Below the mirror and to my left I could see narrow steps leading down into the darkness. There must be a cellar. Could Alice be down there?Quickly I pulled my tinderbox and a candle stub from my breeches pockets. Moments later, ignoring the witch, who was still ranting silently in the mirror, I was on my way down the steps, candle in my right hand, staff in my left. There was a locked door at the bottom, but my key made short work of that. I eased it open and let the candle illuminate the room.Relief washed over me as I saw Alice sitting with her back against the wall next to a heap of coal. She seemed unhurt.
     She looked up, opening her mouth to speak, fear etched into her face. Then she recognized me and sighed with relief."Oh, Tom! It's you. I thought they were coming to kill me."It's all right, Alice," I told her. "I'll have you free in a minute."I knelt down, and it really was but the work of a moment to unlock the padlock with my key and ease the chains from Alice's legs. So far things were going really well. But when I helped her to her feet, she was shaking and still seemed fearful. It was then that I realized there was something odd about the cellar. It was too bright. One candle shouldn't have lit it so well.As I came to my feet, I saw why. Fastened to each of the four walls, at about the height of my own head, was a large mirror set in an ornate black wooden frame. The mirrors were reflecting the candle back, intensifying the light.
     But then, to my horror, I saw something else: In each mirror was a face staring out at me, eyes filled with spite.Three were women --witches with wild, malevolent eyes and thick, unkempt hair --but the fourth looked like a child. And it "was that fourth image that held my gaze, fixing me to the spot so that I felt unable to move. The head was small--that's why I'd assumed it was a boy--but the features were those of a man, completely bald and with a hooked nose. For a moment the image was still, frozen in time like a portrait, but as I watched, the mouth widened like an