An English Ghost Story (34 page)

Whenever she thought she’d made progress, and a tree seemed familiar or a patch of mown grass suggested the kitchen lawn, she pushed through bushes or stepped onto a gravel path to find herself on the edge of the circle again.

Where she had nearly died.

The stones were inert now. She didn’t know which of them had been Rick.

She tried different ways of leaving, walking
away
from the light as often as towards it, but wound up back here.

She couldn’t feel her feet. Which was a mercy.

She clutched at her neck and found rubber tubing. Tim’s catapult. Her brother had tried to strangle her with the thing. She’d been wearing it like a pendant. How had that happened? How had it come to her brother trying to kill her to prevent her killing their father?

She took off the catapult. The rubber loop was limp, as long as a skipping rope. The forked wooden weapon was larger than she had thought, as if the arms were handles and the handle a pointer.

Holding the thing lightly, thumbs and forefingers loosely gripping the fork-ends, she felt it twitch, the extended handle rising and pointing like a needle.

It was not a catapult but a dowsing stick.

The pointer indicated an unpromising path, one she had taken and failed at already. At least once. The stick was definitely tugged, as if on a fishing line.

Jordan stepped out of the circle. The stick pulled her on. The line was being reeled in.

She didn’t know if she was being saved or caught.

She stumbled but kept balance, then pulled back, resisting the tugging, and got herself in walking shape. She took a deep breath, feeling power gathering in the stick, and decided she was equal to the force, that she would collaborate in this.

Steadily, she walked on, fork in front of her.

A hedge came up to block the way, but the stick led her to the gap that was only there if you looked a certain way. She went through without so much as a twig brushing her hair. She passed between trees, along the edge of a stretch of still, dark ditchwater, across a nighted lawn towards a wall of blackness that might have been a towering cliff.

The tugging shut off and the stick fell out of her fingers, hanging like a pendant again.

She was on the kitchen lawn, close enough to reach out and touch the house. The garden table and chairs were out, leaf-curls trapped in the filigree. She looked around and, in the gloom, saw trees and buildings where they should be.

Jordan realised she was crying. For joy.

* * *

H
e was on his guard, which made unseen walls close in. Not daring to use his torch for fear of attracting attention, Steven kept tripping over detritus, bumping into things. Twisted hangers extended infinitely, a barbed tank-trap tangle. More jetsam was scattered among the hooks. Torn-up comics. Broken toys. Cast-off computer monitors with the plugs snipped off. Unusable Christmas decorations. Oddments.

He no longer felt secure, no longer a boy in his private domain. Old worries returned.

The strew of hangers was purposeful. Not a tank trap, but a Steve trap.

Blind in the dark, he listened out.

The space was quiet but there were tiny sounds. Animals scurrying in the distance. Something small, breathing. A tinkle of running water. The hangers shifted, clinking against each other, creaking as they bent and unbent into hook-headed stick-men.

He had his back to a wall, which felt like stone.

Time passed. The noises continued, unthreatening but disturbing.

A low whistle, not a bird but a bird-call. Kids playing Red Indian, scouting through imaginary caverns, tracking the wounded paleface.

An answering whistle. Another.

It was just kids. The thought was not reassuring. Children could have a dark meanness, an innocent malice. The memory of cruelty came back to mind in a hot, embarrassing rush. He’d made Steve caves to hide in, away from bigger boys. Playground bastard-bullies. The comic-rippers, the arm-twisters, the name-callers.

A fourth distinctive whistle, lazily extended.

All points of the compass. He was surrounded.

The quality of the dark changed, from warm and spongy to cold and thin. When he shut his eyes, the neon patterns inside his lids were centipedes not sunbursts.

His thumb brushed the torch-switch.

One burst of light would end the game. A flare, marking his position. He could be found and dealt with.

In return, he’d have a mental image of his situation. As it was, he had no idea what was in the dark beyond the reach of his arm. He had lost all sense of the size of the space he was confined to.

Against his back was stone. He could be in a snug coffin or a vast cavern. He couldn’t tell from the sounds, which could be loud and distant or quiet and close.

The dark was stasis and eventual decay.

He was tired, hungry, thirsty. He needed to pee. He missed Kirsty and his own kids. He wanted to shower, fall into his bed, let go of consciousness.

But he was here and had to be alert.

A whisper breeze brushed his face, riffled his hair, shocking as the cold touch of a razor.

His whole body was tense.

He would not call out. That would be as much a giveaway as turning on the torch. If he gave his position away, they could converge on him, pressing out of the dark with fists and boots, teeth and claws.

Did he believe that?

Was he alone in the middle of nowhere, forgotten and ignored, frightening himself with bogeys? He felt abandoned, insignificant, obscure. There was no real reason for the ghosts to have anything against him.

Not the ghosts.

But there were others, the whistling tribe.

He thought of his family. They were strangers, aliens almost. How had that happened? It wasn’t as if they had changed much, just dropped the masks.

His ribs hurt where his daughter had hit him. His left hand was useless, since his son had fallen on him.

He had a flash of Jordan’s frenzied attack and flinched.

Another whoosh of wind passed, like a near-miss guillotine blade.

Steven chewed his lip. He knew he had to look.

He held up his torch and stuck his hand out. His thumb was frozen on the switch.

It was the only thing he could do.

He closed his eyes and exerted pressure on the switch, wanting the light but not wanting to see.

That was absurd. He stopped, opened his eyes, calmed himself. He heard his own heartbeat, waited for it to slow. He breathed deeply and normally, told himself this was not important, and turned on the torch.

An orange face glared at him, close to his own. Small, round, merciless. Tiny hands, fingers hooked, reached out.

Screaming, he shut off the torch.

He awaited the touch of the hands.

The orange face hung in his vision, streaked with movement, eyes glittering with malice.

The worst thing was that he had recognised it.

His son, Tim, transformed into a fury. And yet as terrified as he was terrifying.

Beyond the face-flare had been other child-sized figures, in blazers and straw hats, faces all angry eyes and war-paint. Another After Lights-Out Gang.

Steven shrank against the wall, and skittered sideways to avoid the touch, feet tangled in coat hangers, palm scraped bloody on the rough stone.

He heard Tim slam against the wall, with incredible force. He felt the impact in the stone.

It was no use talking.

He had to get away.

Launching himself away from the wall, kicking free of the hangers, he ran into the dark.

After five steps, he slammed his face into a low, solid object.

He clutched the torch, turning it on, but lost his hold on the thing.

The space was a passageway, a corridor, recognisably part of the house though he couldn’t say where. A cone of light showed the painted ceiling and a moulded picture rail, then fell to show a twisted, surreal tangle of hangers on a carpeted floor.

The torch rolled away, taking the light with it.

Tim’s face shone orange again. He was on all fours, eyes intent on Steven, lips drawn back.

Hanger-hooks tore at Steven’s clothes. He worried that he was punctured.

Tim edged forward on his hands and knees, intent.

The echo of Steven’s scream hadn’t yet dissipated.

Steven squirmed backwards, away from his son, away from the light. Behind Tim were the After Lights-Out Gang. Cigarette glow-worms burned, red phantom faces glowed in the dark. They were girls. Not schoolchildren, but ancient-eyed, primal creatures. These were the goddesses those long-ago bastard-bullies had worshipped, made sacrifice of smaller boys to. This was their shrine of pain.

Tim crawled to the torch and picked it up. He shone the beam directly into Steven’s face. The dazzling flare blinded him.

Then, Tim turned the torch off.

Darkness. And crawling.

* * *

J
ordan stepped into the Summer Room. No one was there. She lifted her T-shirt from her stomach and bent to wipe her face with the cloth.

There were lights on. Louise’s lights.

Should she search the house for the others? Or wait here? Everything revolved around this room, the heart of the Hollow. Everyone came back here eventually, as she had.

She thought she had an idea now, how the place worked.

If she concentrated, she could keep things stable. She could walk down the corridor, go upstairs to her room (Louise’s room) and not get lost on the way. Not this time.

She left the Summer Room.

The corridor was shadowed but not unlit. She didn’t know if she could trust the light switches (they were new). After her venture out into the vast nightlands, she should be able to walk ten feet in the gloom.

She made it to the stairs and went up, eyes lightly closed, feeling her way along the bannister. She reached the landing. The moon, visible from inside the house if not the orchard, shone through the landing window, whitening the walls and patterning the carpet.

Her door hung open. She stepped into her room.

The lamp on her bedside table was lit. Her room was filled with soft, jungle light – the lampshade was patterned with tiger stripes and turquoise foliage. The wardrobe door hung open.

A dress hung there, a satin sausage skin for someone with no hips or bust, a tall famine refugee. Jordan felt a yearning, an excitement. She could get into that, and become the creature she had thought was inside her.

She shut the wardrobe door, firmly.

There was water in the wash-stand. She stripped off her smelly shirt and cleaned her face and legs, working the dirt out of her scratches, combing water into her hair.

She dropped the Letter on the bed. It lay like a used knife.

Then she pulled on a baggy pair of jeans and a jumper that smelled of fabric softener. She unrolled thick socks over her feet and massaged life into her toes, then slipped on comfortably loose trainers.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Lit from below, she was a strange being, with jungle stripes on her face like Tim in camouflage. There was a dresser lamp, a slim tube over the mirror. She tugged a beaded pull-string and the stripes went away.

She lifted her jumper off her tummy. It was soft, but not bloated. As she breathed, she saw her ribs move, the knitted bones clearly outlined.

If anything, her face was gaunt. She had one or two spots and some fresh scratches. But she wasn’t a monster, wasn’t a freak. She’d never be a supermodel but, with care, she’d be at least average. Above average.

A tear welled and dribbled.

She had wasted so much worry, hurt herself and others so much, over nothing, a fancy. Having Ana to stay was a waste of time and energy. Jordan lamented cooked breakfasts and chocolate bars and cream pastries she had passed by.

Over her shoulder, in the mirror, she saw the Old Girl.

She wasn’t dressed as a schoolgirl now, though she did wear a pinny and a straw hat. She was a little old lady.

She turned, but there was no one there.

‘Louise?’ she asked the mirror.

Louise Magellan Teazle must have looked into this mirror every day of her long life. It wasn’t surprising some of her remained in the glass.

The Old Girl smiled. She was faint, not transparent but blended in with the light and shade.

‘You kept this place well, but we’ve wrecked it.’

The apparition showed sadness but understanding.

‘We didn’t understand. How could we?’

Jordan realised there had been an instruction manual for the Hollow, but they hadn’t recognised it. Mum had come the closest.

Even in the mirror, the Old Girl was just a shape on the wall, the shadow of a hat stand.

It was time to go back to the Summer Room.

* * *

R
espect the Enemy. But track him and kill him.

Tim advanced stealthily through the dark. He was point-man, but his squaddies backed him up. In Country, he trusted the IP.

Night-vision gave him an edge but the Enemy was twice his size, victor of a thousand skirmishes.

They had a fix, and worked forward patiently, following spoor. Anything that came to hand could be an ally or a traitor, a weapon or a trap.

The Enemy had stumbled off, deserting his position, routed by Tim’s surprise attack. This was now a mopping-up operation. However, that didn’t mean he could slack off. The Enemy had nothing more to lose but his life. He would be more dangerous now he’d broken military discipline and was fighting only for survival, like an animal.

Track and kill.

The company were practiced night-fighters. Their minds were sharpened, stripped of all excess thought. They had been in this dark for a thousand years.

Once, he’d had a family, a home, friends. But Tim had been taken away from all that, out of the world and into the combat zone. He had fallen a long way without a parachute, but landed on his feet and come out fighting. He had joined the IP, the best fighting unit in the night-world.

He didn’t hate. The Enemy wasn’t a man, but a stone that must be broken so the road could go through. You didn’t hate a stone, just shifted it out of the way.