Riti Bridie - Coullian Cuill: Apprentice Ghost Guardian

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.

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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, whos 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 thats a lot of all! But especially, Adrian, Deirdre, Finola, Bernard, Helen, Martin, Tony and Fr Bernard.

Contents

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 hadnt been cut off.

Sethaliss could still taste the victims 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 Sethalisss 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

Devious Distraction

One Year Later Seven Weeks to All Souls Night

Sethaliss rapped his nails on the distressed pine table wasnt 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 wasnt the same without his trophy snack. Devouring that tiny morsel of flesh from those hed 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 hed 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 theyd 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 wasnt his name, but it fitted him well, and Sethalisss 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 werent 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 Apprentices neck. He rubbed his teeth until they sparkled. It was always easier to kill an Apprentice before theyd completed their lets-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. Hed yet to meet one who didnt make his centuries-rotten intestines squirm. Except there was no morbid chance of that now, seeing as hed 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, wouldnt 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 & Sons Funeral Parlour was the perfect profession for a soul-stealing Grey Ghost (he didnt 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, theres 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 todays 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.