An English Ghost Story (30 page)

How deep might that sea be? An inch, or a thousand fathoms?

She stood exactly at the centre of the open windows. Her bare toes stubbed against the draught excluder.

Looking straight in front of her, she saw nothing.

But she still heard the voice.

…Kiss kiss kiss… kiss kiss kiss… kiss kiss kiss…

Was that even what it was saying? Or was she just finding words in a susurrus?

She opened and closed her eyes. There was more light inside her head than out.

She wavered in the doorway.

If she stepped across the threshold, would she plunge from a cliff-like overhang (from Hilltop Heights) to an unimaginable pit of spears a mile below?

Or would she just feel patio stone under her feet, and then soft, damp grass?

She swayed back and forwards, only by a few millimetres, with each breath.

Ki
…

…
sss sss sss
…
sss sss sss
…
sss sss sss
…

The cold was in her, a part of her. She had accepted it, was ready to work with it. But it was out there, too, waiting for her, wanting her.

Her hair rose around her, stiff with static electricity, crackling as it lifted. Tiny hairs on her arms stuck up like quills.

She reached for the window-catches, mind made up.

Looking back, she saw Tim’s face oval with horror and Mum distracted from the television.

She would shut out the ghosts.

But her hair wouldn’t turn with her head. She felt a painful tugging at the roots. A blast of wind from
inside
the house pushed her and she missed her footing.

Her hands fumbled the catches and her arms waved about, windmilling.

‘Mum,’ she said, pleading.

Her mother ignored her.

Instinctively, she hopped over the draught excluder and tried to stand upright, to get her balance back.

She stepped into cold, black, running water.

* * *

H
e was in a confined space. If he moved, he banged his head. His numb right hand was in his lap. For a moment, he didn’t know whether it was attached to his wrist. He felt with his swollen left hand and found it was still there. The bones were under the skin and meat, though they might as well have dissolved. The muscles just weren’t obeying orders. His nerveless right hand wasn’t particularly cool to touch, but the sensation of the icy grip lingered. The memory of pain was scarcely less sharp than the pain itself.

Steven was alone in the dark.

He wriggled into a half-sitting position, trying to cross his legs but banging his knees. He smelled wood and mothballs. Was he bundled into a cupboard or under the stairs?

As a kid, he had made Steve caves, lairs in his parents’ houses where he stashed comics, torches, tools, supplies. He disappeared into them for hours on end, not noticing the passage of time.

He had an adult’s body now and was less comfortable in his Steve cave. Not only was he bigger, shoulders hulking against the sides of the space and neck bent over so his chin jammed against his breastbone, but his arms and legs didn’t fold up the right way. When did he get so creaky?

There must be an exit – a latch or a catch. If he just rolled hard, he should be able to burst open the door or lid.

He had loved his Steve caves. He never wanted to escape from them.

There were worse things than being alone in the dark.

Like being in the dark, but not alone.

The smell of mothballs was fainter here. He remembered, with terror, the shape that had advanced on him, its indistinct silhouette and distinct smell.

The shape, the figure, the person.

The ghost, he admitted.

He was shaking, jamming his spine against wooden ridges. His fear spasm threatened to become a fit.

There were ghosts. The Hollow was haunted.

Who had it been? Louise? Rick?

Or someone older, ancient even?

Louise Teazle had been dead less than a year; Rick not more than a day or two. Whatever was going on at the Hollow had been about its business for much longer. The ghosts were too good at haunting to be newbies.

Something had held him fast as something else closed on him.

Two, at least. And they smelled
old
.

He was sure there were more, maybe many more. Tim acted as if a whole army of ghosts lurked in the Hollow, guerrilla spooks in every bush or shadow.

Here, in his space, was he safe?

Steve caves were always a refuge from the outside world. Once inside, nothing could get him.

He had the memory of fear, but not fear itself.

His right hand began to have feeling again. He could move his fingers.

In pitch darkness, he felt out the contours of his cave. He recognised the shape of the ridges above him. He was in a wedge of emptiness under a flight of stairs. There were cupboards Kirsty hadn’t explored yet. This must be one of them. He’d got here first and it was his.

He could stay here, beyond harm.

Steve caves had mystic properties. Tim would understand, but not the women. The caves rendered him invisible to the monsters. They were equipped with life-support systems. Once inside, he was home free and safe. He never needed to go to the toilet.

He had his place and could defend it.

But what about his family? Kirsty, Jordan, Tim. It wasn’t that he wished them harm. He had done all he could for them and they hadn’t cooperated. If they’d listened, jumped when he said frog, they might be safe now too. Instead, they’d gone against him.

He could weep with frustration. Nothing he had done got through to them. Now they were out there, at the mercy of the ghosts, probably lost for all time.

There was nothing more he could do.

* * *

J
ordan didn’t know how long she’d been walking. This was still the Hollow, though. She was seeing the place from a different angle now. The house and grounds contained this unending dark land, tucked into a fold which usually went unnoticed. In
Weezie and the Lands of Mayhap, Perchance and Might-Be
, doors led to different gardens depending on how they were opened.

She waded through shadow that came up to her calves. More than darkness and less than liquid, cold and feathery, cleansing not staining. She wished she’d worn shoes and socks. She’d gone barefoot because her fat feet wouldn’t fit into even her oldest pair of trainers. In her nose and mouth, she had that tang she’d come to associate with the ghosts.

There were no stars or moon but the black sky had a violet underglow. Trees and stones made distinct silhouettes. Aside from her bare, white arms, everything was a flat, unreflective black.

She trudged up a bank and found herself in a copse. She was not alone.

The ghost Mum had introduced her to sat on a low branch, solemn old-lady face on a child’s body. She had her own After Lights-Out Gang, dark girl-shapes in boaters and skirts, with green and violet cat-eyes. None were Rick.

‘What are you?’ asked Jordan.

‘That’s a question,’ said the Old Girl.

It was like talking to herself.

‘I think you’re a ghost,’ she ventured, ‘that you’re all ghosts.’

The Old Girl slipped off her branch. Pale light came from above, casting harsh shadows. She had blonde braids, like Weezie. Her face, what Jordan could see below the visor-shadow of her hat brim, was withered and dry, like fruit left too long in the bowl. Brown patches wept on her cheeks.

‘What are ghosts?’ the Old Girl asked.

‘Dead people,’ Jordan said, swallowing water from her mouth. ‘People who’ve lived in a place and stay on after their bodies have gone, tied to a house or a piece of ground. By unresolved feelings.’

The Old Girl smiled, showing yellow teeth. Apple pips were caught in her gums.

‘Maybe they – maybe
you
– died suddenly,’ Jordan continued, shuddering to think. ‘Before you could finish everything in your life. A violent death, murder or suicide or a terrible accident. Perhaps if your life is cut off, you have things left to do in your mind. It keeps you here, binds you to – what would you call it? – the earthly plane.’

‘Earthly plane?’

‘There might be better reasons to stay, not to go on to wherever you go on to. A long, happy life lived in one place. Perhaps that puts down roots, means you stay where you were most loved. The tie doesn’t have to be a terrible thing, does it?’

She looked into the Old Girl’s face, hoping for a nod that she was on the right track.

‘Do you believe in personal survival after death?’ the ghost asked.

The question brought her up sharp.

It was asked in a man’s voice. Still in the register she had heard earlier, but different. A master’s question, not a schoolgirl’s.

‘Do you believe,’ the voice continued, ‘human personality survives the passing of the body? Can a coherent mind, with memory and intent and all the rest of the package, exist without corporeal form?’

Was the Old Girl even speaking? The ghost’s mouth was in and out of shadow, shining when opened.

‘I suppose I have to,’ Jordan replied. ‘You’re here.’

‘Who am I?’

That was what had been puzzling her.

‘Are you Louise?’

The Old Girl turned away. Her braids hung down the back of her school blazer.

‘I think you look the way you do to me because Louise lived here for so long,’ Jordan said. ‘Are you not a person at all, not someone who ever lived, but something else, something given shape by what people expect to see?’

One of the others shifted closer to the Old Girl, enveloping her in a dark cape. It was like a scene from an opera, a tableau held long enough for the aria to finish.

‘Or are you just a recording? Set off by the presence of an audience? Something that happened here once, playing over and over, with no more intelligence than a video? A tape that’s been played too often and stretched and corrupted. If there’s no personal survival, then you’ve no mind to listen with. If you seem to react, that’s just an interpretation I put on it. Are ghosts like the weather, something you just have to work around?’

Was the Old Girl listening to her?

Were any of them?

There were a dozen in the copse, but she could be alone, as silly as an old woman giving advice out loud to characters in afternoon soaps. It frightened Jordan to think she was arguing with herself.

She shut up, sobered. She thought of Mum and Tim back in the Summer Room, spellbound by the black-and-white fuzz of old television. And Rick, off there in the night somewhere, a ghost or a hoaxer.

She worried about Rick. If he was a ghost now, was he a mindless replay loop or a conscious, aware thing? If he was just a shadow-echo, they couldn’t hurt each other any more. If he were a person, he could have feelings for her, either way. Love or hate. Again, which would be worse?

The Old Girl turned round, shrugging off the taller, shadow-cloaked ghost. She had green eyes, like Weezie and like Louise.

Jordan couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell if anything was behind the eyes, a mind or a blank.

The thought made her want to cry.

Was she wasting her tears on someone long gone?

She had asked the wrong questions. What are you? Who are you?

The words wouldn’t come. All the moisture was gone from her mouth. Her tongue was dry.

The Old Girl’s eyes were liquid.

A person’s? An animal’s? A portrait’s?

Finally, Jordan croaked, ‘Who am I?’

‘That’s a question,’ the Old Girl said, in the female voice so like and unlike those she knew. ‘That’s a question, indeed.’

They all stepped back, joining the tree-shadows. Jordan was alone and out of the copse.

* * *

H
is sister was gone. Tim was left with Mum. From her face, he wasn’t sure she was here really either.

There were others in the Summer Room.

They came in through the French windows and down the chimney, from out of the shadows and from behind the sofa and chairs, through the television screen and in the light from the old lamps.

The IP.

The hostiles.

There had never been any difference. They’d just picked sides and played a game.

Now the game was nearly over.

He thought Mum couldn’t see the hostiles. The Ipkick was in the cold fireplace. Black light fell around her, making her straw hat shine but shading her withered face except for an orange slice of chin.

She looked like a real child. Her soldiers were with her, the hostiles. Savage, creeping things, with twig fingers and hooded eyes.

Tim hugged Mum and watched. The Ipkick came out of the fireplace and walked across the room, at the head of her column. She paused by the television and turned the off switch. The screen shrank to a light dot which died, leaving only an after impression, which squiggled as Tim shook his head.

When the television turned off, so did the ghosts. Apart from the squiggles, Tim saw no one else in the room. Just because you couldn’t see them any more didn’t mean they’d gone away.

Tim clung to Mum.

The Summer Room was quiet, but every shadow was cover, every light deceptive.

It was an indoor jungle.

‘They’re watching,’ he said.

Mum held him tight. She knew too.

They had always been watched at the Hollow. The smile was back, where he had broken the window, cracked across but crueller than ever.

Mum’s hold relaxed. Tim didn’t understand why.

‘I know a game,’ she said. ‘A good game.’

Her eyes were too bright and her smile twitched. Mum was very, very frightened, and that killed something inside Tim, pushing him into a world without rules and regs. The tunnel wasn’t shored up, and could fall at any time.

Tim had to be brave for Mum.

But he didn’t know if he could.

Frightened people were scary in themselves. You never knew what they would do (Jordan and Dad had fought, really meaning it, hurting each other) and what they meant.

‘Do you want to play?’

Her eyes shone with unshed tears. Her smile put deep creases in her cheeks and around her eyes. It made her look much older.

Tentatively, he nodded.