Soon the ghasts of the main house began to make themselves known.

It started in the far corner of the cellar. I heard a rhythmic digging: the sound of heavy, damp earth being turned with a spade. There was a soft squelching as the spade lifted the soil from the cellar floor. The chill that came from being close to something from the dark intensified, and though I knew it would be far worse for the girl, I reflected that I’d be heartily glad when this was all over. I wasn’t scared, but it was unpleasant.

The ghast was digging a grave, and it had a terrible story. It belonged to a miner who’d grown jealous, thinking that his wife was secretly seeing another man. One night, in a fit of rage, he killed her, striking her on the head with a big cob of coal, and had dug her grave down here in this cellar. But, even worse, she wasn’t actually dead when he’d put her in the grave. He’d buried her alive. And then he’d killed himself.

So that’s what I could hear now—the ghast of the miner digging his wife’s early grave. If Jenny truly had the abilities she claimed, she would be able to hear it too. It was truly terrifying.

John Gregory had come up with this effective means of testing his apprentices. After all, what was the point of training someone for weeks, only to have them flee from the first really scary thing they encountered? There was no doubt: it was a hard job. You had to be tough to do it.

Suddenly the sound of digging stopped and the cellar grew quiet, a stillness that seemed to fill the whole house. Then there was a sequence of thumps. Heavy invisible boots were climbing up the cellar steps toward the kitchen. The ghast was moving away from me.

It was approaching Jenny.

A ghast feeds on fear and draws strength from it. The more scared Jenny was, the scarier the encounter would be for her.

After a while the invisible boots descended the steps again and crossed the earth floor of the cellar, passing very close to where I was sitting.

Next, the expected knocking on the front door began. It went on for a long time, but Jenny had listened to me, and I didn’t hear her respond.

When the distant chimes of the clock chimed half eleven, the ghast’s digging started up once more. But to my surprise, it didn’t climb the stairs this time. Jenny must have shown a brave face, which meant that the ghast had nothing to feed on and wouldn’t bother her again.

There was no doubt about it: courage made spook’s business much easier, and Jenny clearly possessed it in abundance. Of course, that was if she really was sensitive enough to experience the full horror of the ghasts. The next half hour passed slowly. Then at last I heard the clock chime twelve to mark midnight.