An English Ghost Story (26 page)

Each, in their dream, was alone, terrified.

From the
JOURNAL
of a
VICTORIAN
GENTLEWOMAN

8 February

The Reverend Mr Bannerman is blind. He does not –
cannot
– understand the Hollow. No one who has not spent night after night after night under its roof can hope to fathom this place. The Mama understands, only too well. But not half so well as I.

13 February

I barely remember Father, yet I am certain the portrait which hangs in the Summer Room, painted from his death mask, is not a good likeness. I have read every word he ever set down, but still he is a stranger. The Mama has devoted her life –
and mine!
– to his sacred memory, but she despises him. His first great sin was dying so carelessly. His second, more unforgivable lapse was not to
manifest
thereafter. The parade of mediums and sensitives and psychics and charlatans who have passed through the Hollow bear witness to the Mama’s desperate need that Father linger here as a ghost. These people, without fail, commence by stating that they sense his presence, that they are sure they can coax him out of his shadows of concealment with their especial –
expensive
– services. Then, after a period of various mumbo-jumbo, they take fright. Even arrant frauds swiftly realise that the Hollow is capable of trumping their manufactured illusions. Some flee in panic, some swear to quit their professions, a few even return monies given over to them. Father is not here, not any more, but others are… earthbound spirits and goblins damned!

20 February

The Mama is a worse monster than the others. She is petitioning Bannerman to perform a rite of exorcism. She wishes to be alone in the Hollow, with Father. I am never mentioned. She half-believes an exorcism will cast me out too, I think. She cannot tell the difference between her own living daughter and Apple Annie. That song, heard all too often hereabouts, has stuck in her mind. None of the ghosts we have seen or heard – ghosts are not all people, some are things or sensations or transformations – resembles in the least the wailing girl of the song, but the Mama has taken it into her head that Father has deserted her for this chit of a spirit and dallies with her in the orchard. She has fixed upon the tallest of the trees as their amorous nest and loiters by it, tutting and fretting. If Bannerman doesn’t allow bell, book and candle, she will have sawmen in and bring down the tree. The prospect horrifies and saddens me, though I know her beliefs about the tree are baseless. It is a living thing and spirits do cling to it. Apple Annie is a creature from a song and Father is gone. The Mama cannot accept this. Bannerman, no less than her charlatans, is not helping her, or me.

28 March

Bannerman will not come back. The Hollow took against him as soon as he started to believe in it. I have seen it do that before, to the worst of the sensitives. The wonderment of levitating crockery passes rapidly when a heavy tureen smashes against a man’s face. The Hollow can mark those it deems enemies. It can kill. It killed Father, I am sure. Then it cast him out. I wish it would kill again. Truly, I do.

2 April

The Mama is worse in spring, as apple blossom thickens the air. She wavers between decreeing an execution order for the tall tree and having the whole orchard destroyed. The ‘school’ attracts fewer and fewer pupils as the fad for Father’s works passes from the public memory. Our only real income is from the apples. ‘Apple Annie’s, they call them. It is believed that the fruit has bewitching properties. Girls who set their caps at lads make them gifts of Apple Annie’s. It falls to me every year to arrange the picking and sale of the fruit. The Mama sometimes takes to calling me ‘the farm girl’. I have caught her out several times in her claim that ‘her Primrose’ died soon after Father, and that I am a jumped-up pupil who has become a servant. When the mood takes her, she threatens me with dismissal, accuses me of stealing items (in truth, I have had to resort to the pawnshop in Taunton to pay for household necessities) and upbraids me for my many mismanagements. Her Primrose would never be so ungrateful, she shrieks. She carries with her a riding-crop, though she has not set herself on a horse these past twenty-five years. She lashes out, inflicting what she calls her ‘sting’. My hands, as I write, are striped with repeated stings. Some who I employed last year to bring in the apples will not return because of her habit of doling out instant punishments for ‘liberties’.

24 April

I dread death, not as most do. I have no terror of the great unknown. For I know only too well what is to come. Bannerman’s heaven and hell are comforting lies, just as Apple Annie’s enchanted orchard or the Spiritualists’ ‘other side’ are fairy tales. What comes after is eternal torment, here on earth. When the Mama sits at her place at the end of the long table, I see the rows of shades in all the empty places along either side. As she is in this life, so are they in the life to come. Cold, dark, damp, alone, spiteful. Each carries their own miasmic hell, like a shroud or one of Mr Dickens’s chains.
A Christmas Carol
is a lie. People, like ghosts, cannot change. All are trapped, as in aspic or amber. I have stripes on my back and shoulders. This last week, since her stroke, the Mama’s right arm is frozen. Her fingers cannot hold her sting, but still the lash falls on me when she is near and angry. It is as if her arm is dead but its ghost extends from her shoulder, invisible but supple and with a sting – a flint-studded length of ghost leather – as an extension of the phantom fist. The pain will last, will extend into the twilight beyond death. The Mama will be there first, awaiting me. I should leave this place, but have known nowhere else. Sometimes, I find it impossible to step over the boundary of the Hollow. The world outside is haunted and tormented too. At least here, I…

3 May

The orchard has blossom and apple-buds. Soon, fruit will swell. I can hardly walk for the whipping I have taken. Since the Mama has had to use a stick, the lashes have always been at my legs. It is if I were being stroked with stinging nettles. I have angry red blotches. Tonight, we had the full company at dinner. The Mama talks to them, lectures on Father’s greatness, with outrageous outbursts of abuse at him, myself and the assembly. It seems the seated figures grow less shadowy. I can make out faces, all as twisted and shut as the Mama’s. They nod at her whim, humouring her. They have stings, too. Mother does not want to join them before me. I fear for my life.

31 July

The tree is to come down. In a week’s time. The anticipated victory has given the Mama strength. She has left her bed and hobbles about, lashing with her tongue and sting. She quibbled with Adam Cobb on the price, but finally settled the matter. We cannot afford the loss of the tree, can barely afford the price of its murder. It is no use talking with the Mama. I cannot sleep. Fingers like twigs rake at me. I fear for the Hollow. Without the tree, it will change again.

2 August

I have done it! I have talked with Adam Cobb and told him the Mama has changed her mind. He would have argued, but – though it pains me to let the matter go – I allowed him to keep the portion of the fee he was gifted. I, Primrose, am true mistress of the Hollow. My decision is that the tree should remain. Returning from the village, with angry sky boiling overhead and the heat crackling, I felt straighter than in months. The stings do not bother me. They seem to change quality, almost to become caresses. Almost. In the evening, the first drops of rain spattered against the windows, pellets the size of thumbs. Penny-sized dark splashes marked the bleached stones of the orchard paths. A summer storm, long predicted, is upon us. Thatch lets in trickles of water. The house fills with a damp straw smell that is a ghost in itself, a presence which only makes itself known in heavy rain.

Later

The Hollow has cheated me! As the storm smote the countryside, I sat at table and informed the Mama of my decision about the tree. I was prepared for anger on a level of the storm, but knew she was too feeble to lash in a way that would hurt. I am mistress here, not her. But the Mama smiled, cunningly, and said I had not the power to overrule her. She laughed, cruelly. At that moment, an arc of lightning lanced down and struck at the base of the very tree I had sought to protect. In a white moment, I saw everything. Flames, instantly extinguished by the torrent. The earth that bound the tree’s roots seemed blasted out of existence. For a heart-smiting moment, I was afraid the tree would fall towards the house, smashing through the wall and the windows, an apple-pimpled fist coming down on us. But no, it fell outwards, away from the house. It took a long time, I think. Other lightning strikes seared my eyes with lingering images of the great living thing tottering, branches shaking and snapping, fruit raining and rolling. I dare not go out to see what damage the felled titan has caused. The Mama laughs still, not alone.

3 August

The tree has smashed a copse of smaller trees, at the edge of the property. Adam Cobb’s labourers are at work, hauling away the ruins, costing money I cannot spare. Girls pick up the shiny, wet apples. Each must be accounted for and sold. If so much as one is eaten, it shall come out of their wages. I must be strict, for we are desperate and only I can cope. The miracle is that the tall tree still lives. It is on its side, but enough of its roots are in the earth for it to survive. Adam says it will adjust to its new position and continue to fruit for a hundred years or more. The Mama called down the lightning, but has not won. She is talking with Adam now, insisting he bring axes and saws. She will not be stopped. I write in the Summer Room, surrounded by ghosts who dare not venture out into the sunshine. Everything is clean and dripping. Insects buzz and swarm. Insects have stings, too. Some of the insects are not living things. Generation upon generation has lived and died here. They all remain. The Mama has just clapped her hand to the back of her neck.

7 August

It is over. The Mama is not here. I was afraid she would linger. The others remain, silent, at attention. I am uneasy around them. They have grown used to the habit of cruelty. It is hard to break.

10 August

She tried to kill the tree; I did kill her. That is how I see it. Everyone knows. I should hang for it, but I will not. She was old, bodies grow weak, wasps sting, people must die. We must wish what we must and cannot be held accountable for it. If Bannerman’s God answers a parishioner’s prayer, He, not the supplicant, is given the credit; therefore, I cannot be blamed. And yet, a voice of doubt.

13 August

The ghosts are hooded, like wigged judges or hangmen. A black rope of slimy stuff hangs from the chandelier in the Summer Room. A verdict has been passed, which I must agree with. It will come soon.

14 August

The fallen tree, which thrives, is a bridge over the rhyne. That part is dead, and will be cut away soon. But now it is a way out of the Hollow. Tonight, I will escape justice, crawl across the tree bridge. This will stay behind, with the ghosts. The Mama is murdered, and I can be free. I shall be stung no more.

D
awn came, August early, to the Hollow, creeping across the moors like a poacher. Long black shadows dwindled, going underground for the day. No birdsong, no wind. A summer Sunday: no commuter’s car growled on the road, no insect moved on the glassy rhynes. Fruit lay where it had fallen. The topmost leaves had gone from green to red overnight.

The family awoke in the East Tower, wrung out by dreams and unrefreshed by sleep, nagged by aches and pains and memories.

They were all alone, together.

Loose pages, covered with faded ink, lay at the foot of the bed. They got underfoot.

* * *

J
ordan drifted through the hours. Voices were faint and buzzing. Making out the words wasn’t worth the trouble. Her only sensations, heartache and the bloat of her belly and limbs, were inside. Her skin was nerveless – thick, unfeeling cloth. She saw in sharp focus, as if through Weezie’s stereoscope. Figures were flattened and dark-rimmed, separate and distinct, each on their own plane. A sourceless ozone tang persisted high in her nose, like the beginning of a sneeze, clean but shocking. She felt like a condemned murderess in the electric chair, living an eternity in the split second between the switch being thrown and the juice hitting her spine.

Someone was dead. A long time ago, she thought. She was guilty, though not too sure of the details. Perhaps she had been murdered herself and was now a ghost.

No.
They
were the ghosts.

She was pestered by apparitions. A stern, old-fashioned couple and their silent, big-eyed child.

And others.

A terrible hunger clawed inside. She must not eat, for she was full to bursting, but she wasn’t satisfied. She thought of stripping paint off her furniture and eating that.

How had she come to this house?

What had gone before?

If she concentrated so much that it hurt, she knew. Her name was Jordan Naremore; her Mum and Dad were Kirsty and Steven; her brother was Tim, the pest. Her boyfriend was Rick. No, Rick was out of the picture.

The first jolt hit her, through the eyes.

Rick was dead. It was Rick who was dead. His dad had told her, just as everything was slipping away, just as the ghosts were taking over the house.

She remembered the ghosts. A brown man. Twin oriental imps. A crooked girl. A giantess and her dwarf. A woman-man. They wanted to haunt this house. They had tried to drive Jordan and her family from their home. But the ghosts were gone, and she was still here.

Had she won or lost?

She could not tell. It hurt to remember, made her eyes like hot coals in her skull. She held the family picture in her mind, like the dozen tiny pieces in the right depressions in the hand-held Drearcliff Grange game. Eyes in sockets and smiles on mouths. Then, she let the game drop and the picture fell to pieces, features falling from faces to leave only blank dimples.