Coullian Cuill: Apprentice Ghost Guardian

By Riti Bridie

Whatever you know about ghosts – forget it. They don’t haunt, go headless or vanish in white floaty sheets. But they do have a tendency to reek like foul, rotting flesh – something that Sethaliss, a soul-stealing Grey Ghost masquerading as the village undertaker, is somewhat proud of. With extendable cracking bones and a retractable extra finger, he’s a master of deception and disguise, as well as the ruthless enemy of Creeven, where the good ghosts live. Coullian Cuill is a twelve-year-old who’s lost his father, been abandoned by his mother and is living with his grandmother in a rear-end-of-nowhere village. When a strange letter arrives inviting him to compete for the role of Ghost Guardian Apprentice, Creeven’s sworn protectors on earth, he has little hesitation in applying. With bruiser best friend Rawsy as his Assistant, Coullian is trained in everything ghost, from the tell-tale signs to spot a living ghost to the 3Gs (Gadgets for Grey Ghosts). When Sethaliss learns that Coullian is to be the next Apprentice, their relationship rapidly deteriorates – culminating in endeavours to chop off Coullian’s head, attempts at poison, and getting his trusted Assassin to murder him. When all this fails, he then tries his bony hand at kidnapping... On All Souls’ Night, when souls rise from graves to become good ghosts or Greys, Sethaliss is desperate to discover the secret entrance into Creeven. With time running out, Sethaliss gives Coullian an impossible choice: his life for Rawsy’s, a soul for a soul. Coullian must prove what he’s willing to do to save others – even after all he’s lost – to show that he’s got what it takes to become the next Ghost Guardian Apprentice. Coullian Cuill: Apprentice Ghost Guardian is a coffin-cracking adventure that will appeal to all lovers of scary, sharp comedy aged 10+.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: May 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781788032278

Riti Bridie

Riti Bridie once starred as a witch and has seen a ghost – salivating credentials in the cut-throat (hers usually) Management Consultancy world that she’s thrived in for the last 20 years. She currently lives in Oxford.

Book preview

COULLIAN CUILL

APPRENTICE

GHOST GUARDIAN

RITI BRIDIE

Copyright © 2017 Riti Bridie

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Illustrations and cover copyright © 2017 Alan Graham, Section D

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

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Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

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ISBN 978 1788032 278

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Helen, who’s always made me feel I can do anything

And Tom and Bridie, who now can

Acknowledgements

Section D – Phil, Alan and Sam – your creative genius is immense and your patience endless. Who knew we could create such wonder? Okay, you did!

That Lot – David Beresford and David Schneider – your incredible, infectious enthusiasm had even Sethaliss believing (me too, in grave-digging spades).

The family – dead and alive – my thanks to all, and that’s a lot of all! But especially, Adrian, Deirdre, Finola, Bernard, Helen, Martin, Tony and Fr Bernard.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

PART 1

Devious Distraction

Life Stirs

Spade

Ashes and Dust

Fair Play

Off With Your Head

Fallen Angel

Open Invitation

Killane

All Things Ghost

Gadgets for Greys

Proof of Blood

Position Filled

Ghostdustrial Fortnight

PART 2

Wind of Warning

A Taste to Die For

Shadows Creep

Up in Smoke

Fatal News

Pain and Gain

Roof-Diving Party

Batsyard

Dead Already

Time to Go

PART 3

Dumpy-Lump

Shim Ghosts’ Reek

Corpses Rising

Graves and Grievances

Kick-Ash Granny

Murderer Anonymous

A Soul for a Soul

Last Breath

Light of Day

Awkward Enemies

Going it Alone

Soul Ache

Prologue

All Souls’ Night

Sethaliss swallowed the tongue.

Still warm, saliva still drooling, it slid down his throat. He savoured the moment. A trophy snack like that cried out to be indulged – or it might have, if it hadn’t been cut off.

Sethaliss could still taste the victim’s blood as he slurped it down. And that always got his Grey Ghost gases going. He opened the kitchen window, proudly wafting his black cassock to share his bowels-of-hell stench.

The scent of death carried on the cool November breeze. It always did on the Night of All Souls, when souls rose from graves to become ghosts and Sethaliss finally, brutally had the Apprentice murdered. Run right through by his best Assassin, slaughterer supreme, Aukram.

A sinister sneer teased Sethaliss’s newly veneered teeth. A Ghost Guardian Apprentice sworn to protect good living ghosts dies on the night ghosts rise to live – how horrifically, hilariously tragic.

He stared in the mirror – he did every hour. Unnerving green eyes and ridge-hard, sharp cheeks glared back. He was like the drawn last breath of a tortured life: long, deadly and painfully thin. He stretched out his bloodstained tongue, dabbing his finger to paint crimson streaks across his cheeks. It felt fiendishly furtive marking his kill like that – so he dabbed his face again.

PART 1

DEATH WALKS

1

Devious Distraction

One Year Later – Seven Weeks to All Souls’ Night

Sethaliss rapped his nails on the distressed pine table – wasn’t it great that even tables suffered distress – and wracked his decayed-to-mush brain for something to do.

He leant back in the wicker kitchen chair, which creaked like cracking bones. Breakfast wasn’t the same without his trophy snack. Devouring that tiny morsel of flesh from those he’d killed; so warm, so supple and way more filling than nibbling on a cold side of corpse.

Which was exactly how all his victims ended up: souls lying in graves, waiting to be converted to an afterlife of sin. All polished off by the master of killing himself. A ruthless, living Grey Ghost (if he did say so himself), masquerading as the village undertaker.

He summoned his chief undertaker, who, after finishing with formaldehyde for the day, switched to being his caretaker at night. Both jobs offered little distinction: each respectfully tended the dead.

Fetch out my coat and hang it on the line, will you? Sethaliss smiled at the honed accent he’d practised for years. A hint of Eastern European denoting suffering and survival, laced with a gentlemanly, elegant crispness.

Grey one or black? asked the caretaker, like it was a matter of grave importance, when he clearly doubted it was. His talent at blending into the background while relatives poured out their grief was the main reason he got the job – that, and his ability to talk in the hushed tones of a sermon-whispering parson.

Grey one, I think, said Sethaliss, sticking with his preference for all things grey. It was a tough decision given the warm forecast, but either way his coat had to be aired, otherwise they’d smell his rancid odour quicker than a second coming. And a respectable funeral director never went anywhere without his long, dark coat.

Very well. The caretaker clicked his heels, a habit Sethaliss found disturbing, which was probably why he did it. Sethaliss called him Henrick. It wasn’t his name, but it fitted him well, and Sethaliss’s assumed identity even better.

Sethaliss rose from the table, glancing – for the hundredth time that morning – into the mirror. A lifeless finger traced the central parting of his black splayed hair, a good style for his line of work. Wolf-wild eyebrows twitched over pale green eyes. Splendidly sinister, his best feature, when in normal body mode (extendable cracking bones and a retractable extra finger weren’t exactly suited to daytime living).

A defiant thread hung from the frayed hem of his black cotton robe. Around the house – shaded by partially drawn curtains and some sombre respect – he wore floor-length cassocks over his white shirt and black trousers that had been left to him by a priest. Not in his will. In the boot of the car Sethaliss had run off the road.

He picked at the hem and then broke off the thread. If only it were a new Ghost Guardian Apprentice’s neck. He rubbed his teeth until they sparkled. It was always easier to kill an Apprentice before they’d completed their let’s-guard-a-good-soul training. For Sethaliss, anyway, as fully-fledged Ghost Guardians got right up his dirt-caked nose, with all their stopping him from stealing souls and insufferable goodness. Sethaliss pulled a saint-like face and the top of the mirror cracked. He’d yet to meet one who didn’t make his centuries-rotten intestines squirm. Except there was no morbid chance of that now, seeing as he’d already murdered the last in the adult line.

But if he ignored that tiresome complication (and he was a glass half-full kind of slaughterer), let his dark imagination run wild, pretend a new Apprentice was out there somewhere, wouldn’t that make his grey squalid life complete? Nothing sent gaseous propulsions up and down his spine like murdering an Apprentice.

Sethaliss sighed, mournfully (he was good at that). There must be something he could do to darken these sickeningly sunny days of September, and in one of the quietest of villages, too. Sidling into its underbelly ten years ago had been such a genius thing to do. ‘Seth & Son’s Funeral Parlour’ was the perfect profession for a soul-stealing Grey Ghost (he didn’t actually have a son, but a family business went a long way in a rural community).

His eye caught the Grey Ghost Informers’ Calendar, which was impaled on the blood-red kitchen wall. Now, there’s a thought, he said to himself, tapping a gnarled talon across each day of the week. What are all you hideously good ghosts getting up to right now? His finger landed on today’s date, the second Saturday in September. Only weddings happened on Saturdays, never funerals, so he was as free as a soul-leaving-splattered-body bird.

The Greyhole Gruesome Fair, how could he forget?

Grey my hole, he scoffed to himself. He supposed they thought it funny to change the Hall’s name from Greyfell to Greyhole to make a mockery of him. So what if he stank to bum’s blazes, there was no need to get personal.

Of course, he wasn’t invited, but why let a trivial detail like that put him off? After all, he was a master of deception and disguise. He’d been living a lie since the day he’d left Creeven – that do-good world of ghosts. What other funeral director went around smiling?

He followed the caretaker into the hall, halting in front of the mirror. Even in the sallow light, he could see that his skin needed attention: a grey, sickly face only ever made people think of death, which was the last thing he wanted them to do until they met their end.

Sethaliss opened the wooden box on the hall side table. Three recently deceased animals lay on their backs, pinned to a black velvet cushion: a mouse, a toad and a vole. Each wore the same startled expression.

Which one today? thought Sethaliss.

He always liked to go to work on a good stiff (and preferably human) kill. In fact, as long as it couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a tragic accident or natural causes, he revelled in every kind of bumping-off. With one iced-corpse rule: never recruit on his own doorstep, no matter how tongue-lashingly tempting. Sooner or later, it would come back to haunt him and he could do quite enough of that himself.

I took the liberty of varying your selection this morning, Master Sethaliss.

Somewhere in the hall’s dim shadows, Sethaliss sensed Henrick bow. Master had the same effect on Sethaliss as an electrified probe. He wasn’t a boy. Boys were excrement on the heel of his smart-shined shoe. One of these days, he was going to make Henrick pay for using it, unless, of course, he actually meant it as testimony to Sethaliss’s greatness. Without even realising, Sethaliss’s eyelashes fanned his face.

Considerate, Henrick, said Sethaliss, disguising a crumbling smile.

Always, Master. With a click of his heels, the caretaker disappeared into the gloom.

Sethaliss’s eyeballs swivelled to his untamed eyebrows. How tempting it would be to slice through Henrick’s silk-robed neck. That would give his gown the authentic red hue he was after. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Henrick only wore red around the house to belittle his trained Assassins. Sethaliss would never put up with him if he weren’t so smart. It pained him to say it, but most of the Grey Ghosts he’d recruited lacked a certain grey matter.

He drew a long, fine knife from the cuff of his shirt and shredded the magazine on the table, banishing a screwed-up ball to the bowels of the umbrella stand. He turned on the mouse, blade tearing flesh until his fingers squelched in blood. His taste buds watered as the act of slaughter calmed him. Breathing deeply, he dabbed his face.

There was no better colouring for lips and cheeks than slightly warm blood. Live, wriggling – and preferably squealing – blood might be superior, but even he daren’t upset any animal rights’ groups. A blood-splattered door would do nothing for his Funerals R4 Family blog.

Satisfied with his work, he picked up a pile of business cards from the table, admiring his Burying is our Business strapline as he slid them into his wallet. He realised opportunities for soliciting business might be limited at the Greyhole Gruesome Fair, but he liked to be prepared. Preparation was key. Success depended on it. Look how easily his Assassin had murdered the last Apprentice – and with the Apprentice’s own blade, too.

Sethaliss’s mouth flushed with saliva. Killing had that effect. Which was why his self-imposed abstinence each summer was hard to take, but he daren’t draw attention at a time when the place was overrun with pure whitey ghosts. Why did good ghosts even want to take their holidays back in this world? Even the thought of it maddened, and thoroughly inconvenienced, him.

He stuck out his thick-coated tongue. He’d need a trowel to shift that fur.

The caretaker appeared behind him, long grey coat in hand. The sight made Sethaliss jump. All that white hair; not surprising he never looked closely at Henrick. He really had to employ better-looking Grey Ghosts.

He made a note: only recruit attractive specimens when killing resumes.

2

Life Stirs

Coullian drummed his fine-bone fingers on the beaten kitchen table.

Saturday morning, breakfast in Soul Save Cottage, Granny Silvery hard at her snores – another day stirring in snooze-cripple village.

The post plopped onto the floor. Always some catalogue or other selling winter thermals to die for – and without them, all grannies believed they would. Coullian dragged his soon-to-be-twelve bones to the front door.

A lone, stampless envelope lay on the mat, addressed to him. What dull cretin had put a party invitation through the door this time? He ducked into the front room to sneak a stare through the window.

No one there – story of his life.

He ripped open the envelope, his thumb tracing the silver writing on pale blue card.

Apprenticeship Opening at Greyhole Hall

He stopped, gave a praise-be-to-muck shout to the ceiling and read on.

Spirited individual, able to withstand extreme cold, foul smells and unusual guests, invited to attend the Greyhole Gruesome Fair and compete in a once-in-a-lifetime race to qualify for Apprenticeship training.

If interested, please be at the gates of Greyhole Hall at noon today.

A new life awaits.

BREMUS BARN, Owner of Greyhole Hall.

Attendance is Deemed Acceptance.

No one got invited to the mysterious Greyhole Hall, which loomed high above the edge of the village – well, right outside the duck pond, which was hardly horror-stark material. There were rumours, of course, with an old house like that, but they weren’t offering Coullian ‘a new life’. And in a village that had none, it was the best thing to come his way since Rawsy, his bruiser best friend.

And besides, working for a recluse might suit him.

Coullian felt a bit crowd-shy himself some days, since his dad’s sudden death and funeral. All those pained, tear-stained faces asking if he was okay. Would they be okay if life smacked them in the mouth?

Granny Silvery’s heels tapped down the hall. Nothing got her up quicker than flittering post.

Anything for me? she asked, fully dressed in a full-length, cashmere skirt.

Coullian handed her the card, his spark-green eyes daring surprise not to startle her face. Granny Silvery dared surprise back, and she won.

You better not lose. She had to be the only granny who didn’t reach for her hairnet at the mere mention of something gruesome, or to pick out a race as the only thing of interest on the card.

There was more flesh on a scavenged carcass than Coullian’s chest, but he knew how to run. Even the wind sighed when his spindly legs got going, but that didn’t mean he should have been invited. Coullian put his interest-me face to work.

Granny Silvery turned away, scraping strands of silver hair into a loose bunch. Her voice sounded muffled, as if something heavy pressed on her heart. Must be short of runners. Can’t think why else you’d be invited, can you?

Truth was, all Coullian had really taken in was Apprenticeship Opening. And that was almost enough.

Almost, he’d learned, covered a great deal of things: he was almost ready to accept his dad was never coming back; almost able to close his eyes at night without seeing his coffin-cold face; and almost willing to accept that what he was feeling had something to do with grief.

Coullian hadn’t cried at his dad’s funeral. He’d wanted to, but he knew if he started, if he let one tear fall… His throat became unbelievably sore. It always did when he thought about his father. It was easier if he blocked it out. Most days, he wanted to either stay in bed or kick someone’s head. Each delivered the same result – a phone call from school.

Coullian’s fingers ran through his flyaway hair, which lifted like soft weaves of silk. Light brown and dull, like his living-in-the-back-end-of-nowhere life.

A fist pounded the door, at just the right height and ferocity for a lumbering squat giant.

Better let Rawsy in, said Granny Silvery, her sage-green eyes (what else would they be?) glistening as she straightened her skirt. Old oak was never built to survive such punishment.

Coullian opened the door to Barry John Rawlings – or Rawsy to him – picking the seam of his shorts from his sturdy backside. Rawsy yawned like the earth waking then turned.

Do you have to? said Coullian, in that bored tone he’d owned for a year now.

Rawsy eyed Coullian’s invitation. Well, flip-me-bits, he said, shuffling words like a clumsy poker (a skill Coullian much admired, along with Rawsy’s thick voice).

Rawsy tugged a bedraggled square from his strapping-laced boots and shoved an identical blue card in Coullian’s face. It had the same silver writing and twelve-dagger watermark as Coullian’s, with one big difference. Rawsy’s said ‘Assistant’.

And it’s always good to get that straight from the start.

* * *

At noon exactly, Coullian and Rawsy were standing at the towering, silver gates to Greyhole Hall, which creaked open on the twelfth stroke of the church clock.

Creepy, said Rawsy, stubbing his boots on the gravel.

Halfway up the driveway, someone came to meet them. Well, more like kind of appeared, wearing…

Coullian squinted.

Is that a straitjacket? said Rawsy, under his breath.

It was the smartest – designer-creased – white paper suit that Coullian had ever seen: jacket, collar, tie, waistcoat, and restraining buckles dangling from the hem and sleeves. The man, who was rakishly thin and sprinkled in ash, flicked strands of rat-tailed hair over his shoulders. Particles of white powder dusted the air.

Are you intending to run in those? said the man, his voice as pinched as his waist.

Coullian checked his brown high-top trainers. Granny Silvery knew where to shop: black jeans, dark T-shirts – all very together for someone who wasn’t at all.

"And you