The ghost swung high into the peaked ceiling and glared down at the people in the hut. She seemed like she could see straight through each of them, but she’d been that way in life as well. Not liking what she saw, she threw back her head and shrieked.
Dunk and the others clapped their hands to their ears in a vain attempt to protect themselves from the painful noise. They fell to their knees, their eyes watering as they begged for it to stop. Somewhere, glasses shattered, dogs howled, bats fell from the sky, and babies wept.
“Stop it, Mother!” Dunk shouted. “Knock it off!”
The screeching stopped as if someone had turned off a tap. Dunk’s ears rang so loud from the racket that for a moment he didn’t notice what had happened. When he finally opened his eyes and looked up, he saw his mother’s ghost staring down at him.
“Dunkel?” she said in a soft, stunned howl. “Dirk? Boys? Is it really you?”
Dunk stood up, and Dirk joined him, just a half-step behind. Both of them stood shaky on their feet.
“Yes, Mother,” Dunk said.
For a ghost, Greta Hoffnung seemed fairly calm and stable. Not that she’d been either of those things in life. Dunk had spent a good deal of his childhood trying to worm out from under her oppressive ways. The rest of the time he’d spent being punished every time he was caught, which was more often than he cared to think about.
“Oh, my boys, my precious boys!” Greta swooped down and tried to take Dunk and Dirk in her arms, but she only managed to sweep right through them instead. To Dunk, it felt like walking through a freezing breeze.
Greta swung around behind them and back to the spot where she’d been hovering before. “Oh, the humanity!” she said with a horrifying moan. “The cruelty that we should be reunited, finally, and I not be able to hold you in my arms. How could the gods be so petty and mean?”
Dunk shrugged, pretty sure that the gods hadn’t had anything to do with this. Greta had always been strictly religious, which is perhaps what had turned Dunk off from the various churches she attended to appease all the different gods in the human pantheon. He wondered how death had affected that in her, especially since she hadn’t found herself hauled into the heavens for the just rewards a righteous woman deserved.
“Oh, you’ve never given the gods the respect they deserve,” she said grimly. “Why should you start now? After all, you have me as such a horrible example.”
Greta broke down entirely, and sobbed uncontrollably. Despite her nature, Dunk wanted to reach out and hold her, to pat her on the back and comfort her. For all the differences they’d had over the years, she was still his mother, and Dunk still loved her.
At the moment, Dunk felt no sadness for his mother, and he wondered why that would be. He supposed he’d mourned both her and Kirta years ago, when he’d first thought they were dead, and he’d used all his tears up then. The fact that Kirta was alive and in the same room with Dirk and him thrilled him to no end, but the fact that their mother’s ghost hovered over them gave him chills.
“What happened?” Dunk asked Kirta. He hoped he might get Greta’s mind off of the present by talking about the past, plus, he really wanted to know. “I thought you were killed the night the mob stormed the keep in Altdorf.”
Kirta didn’t answer. She was too busy staring up at Greta’s ghost with a look of mingled disgust and fear on her face. Dirk gave her an elbow in the ribs and jerked his head at Dunk. Startled, she finally turned to Dunk and spoke loudly to be audible over Greta’s wailing.
“That creep Lehrer brought us down to the keep’s front gate. He told us that Father had sent him to bring us to safety. At the time, I didn’t realise that he’d had a thing with Mother. I just thought he was doing his job.
“I trusted him.”
Greta paused to collect her thoughts. The memories of that fateful night clearly still troubled her. Dunk wondered if she might sometimes dream about it on the darkest nights of the year, much like he did.
“When we got to the gate, Lehrer revealed his plot. He told us that he’d arranged it so that we could go away together and leave you and Father. He tried to spin some pack of lies about Father being involved with the Blood God.”
Dunk squirmed in his boots until Kirta stopped and stared at him. “That’s not true is it? Tell me that’s not true.”
“I’d love to. I really would.”
Kirta folded her arms across her chest. “Who told you? Was it Lehrer? You can’t believe a word he says.”
“Father told me.”
“He confessed his sins to you as he died that day? How noble!”
Dunk grimaced. “We found out about it last year when Father resurfaced. I lost track of him after the riot. I thought everyone was dead but me, and Dirk, of course, but he’d left years before that.”
“I was the smart one,” said Dirk. He stared uneasily at the sobbing ghost. Her tears flowed away from her like wisps of mist, dissolving into nothing before they hit the ground.
“Hey!” Dunk and Kirta said together.
“You two stuck around with a domineering woman and a man who sold us all to a Lord of Chaos. You tell me who was the wiser.”
“We didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know. You didn’t want to admit that something was wrong but I knew it. I knew it from when I was a kid. That’s why I got out when I did.”
“And left us behind.” Kirta smacked Dirk in the shoulder. Her eyes flared at him. Thanks for nothing! If you were so sure, why’d you just leave us to the dragons?”
“I didn’t know for sure,” Dirk said, raising his arms as a shield.
“You were sure enough to leave home. Wait!” She turned to Dunk. “Father’s alive?”
Dunk frowned. “He was, right up until the Blood Bowl tournament last year. He played with us, for the Hackers. Lehrer played for the Chaos All-Stars. I would have thought you’d seen the highlights.”
Kirta clutched at her chest. “I didn’t see the actual game. We only have one crystal ball here on the island, and the elders use it for the big games. We just get the reports.”
She looked down at the ground. “That’s why it took me so long to realise that Dunk was playing Blood Bowl.” She shot Dirk a dirty look. “I’d have figured out about you earlier if you hadn’t changed your name.”
“Dunk knew about my new name.”
“Well, I didn’t. Our parents sheltered me from such things. I think they thought I might be too delicate to handle the horrors of the real world.” She looked up at Greta’s ghost. “We can all see how well that worked out.”
29
“How did you survive that day?” Dunk was determined to keep pressing her on this until he got an answer.
“Mother refused Lehrer’s advances, and he threw open the gate to the keep. ‘There they are!’ he shouted to the mob. He ran away while they rushed us and tried to tear us to bits.”
Greta stopped, choking up, but forced herself to go on. “Mother saved me. She threw herself over me to protect me from the mob, and they killed her almost instantly. She had such a death grip on me I could barely breathe. By the time the rioters pried her fingers off of me, her ghost had already come back to haunt them.”
Dunk’s jaw dropped.
“I suppose when eternal vengeance wants to get started it wants to get started right away,” said Jiminy.
“We escaped down the Reik. Well, I did, and Mother’s ghost shadowed every step of my voyage. In Marienburg, I tried to get away from her by slipping aboard a ship that set sail at dawn, but she found me.
“Unfortunately, I hadn’t figured out where the ship was heading, and by the time the crew found me it was too late for them to drop me somewhere else. We were heading for the Scorpion Coast, where the captain of the ship auctioned me off on the slave block. Fortunately, the Lusties purchased the rights to me rather than some of the more unsavoury types in Tlaxtlan.”
She allowed a faint smile to cross her face as she looked up at her brothers.
“And that’s how I ended up here.”
“And a fine thing that you did too,” Greta’s ghost said. “If you’d just listened to me instead of always doing the exact opposite of whatever I say, only out of spite, you never would have had to face such tribulations.”
The ghost had stopped sobbing. She seemed collected and rational, but Dunk knew it had to be a facade. He hoped that she’d been wailing too loud to hear everything they’d been talking about, but she soon shattered his hopes on that count.
“When I heard your father had survived the incident, I was thrilled,” the ghost said. “The news of his death disappoints me more than anything your sister has done since I died, and let me tell you that is a high mark to have to top.”
Kirta rolled her eyes. Then she leaned in close to her brothers and whispered to them, “Get ready to run.”
Dunk and Dirk shot her confused looks, but she ignored them to listen to whatever their mother was ranting about.
“I said, ‘I wish I could have seen him one last time.’”
“Why is that, Mother?” Dunk asked.
“So I could take my revenge on that multiply-damned son of a bitch!”
The ghost seemed to grow with her rage, expanding to fill the whole of the space under Kirta’s ceiling. Dunk had seen this before, back when his mother had been breathing. She was only moments away from a full and complete meltdown, and there was little that he or anyone else could do to stop it.
Back when Greta had been alive, Lügner, Dunk’s father, had always had some kind of extraordinary power over her. No matter how wound up or psychotic she got, he could always talk her down from the edge. With him gone, though, she’d have lost any sense of restraint.
“He never meant to hurt you,” Dunk said. “He never meant to hurt any of us.”
“Well, he blew that all to hell then, didn’t he?” Greta’s voice became more shrill with every syllable.
“Why are you defending him?” Dirk said. “You’re only making her mad.”
“Don’t take her side. You always took her side.”
“Somebody had to. Between you and Father, she never had a chance.”
“She didn’t deserve one!”
Dunk stopped. He hadn’t realised he still had such strong feelings about his mother. He thought he’d buried all that when she’d died, but seeing her ghost brought it all surging back.
“Father died a hero,” Dunk said, trying to scramble back from the edge. “You were there. You saw him.”
Dirk nodded. “He lived like a villain though. That’s what drove me out of our home. You were just blind to it. You didn’t want to see it.”
Dunk clenched his fist. This was how it had always started with them when they were kids. They’d start talking and end up shouting. Then one of them would take a swing at the other, and they’d wind up in a brawl that would shake down the walls.
The last time Dunk and Dirk had a knock-down, drag-out fight, they’d thrown each other out of the window of a dwarf tavern set in the side of a cliff face, a hundred feet above the sea. That sobering experience had put a check on their future arguments, cutting them short at mere bickering.
Now, though, Dunk could feel that restriction slipping away.
“If you folks would pardon me for getting involved in a family feud, I think I might be able to help,” Jiminy said.
All eyes snapped to focus on the singer.
“Now I don’t know most of you all that well. Some of you I know better than I’d like, and others I’m sure I’d like better if I knew you more… I think.”
Kirta gave Jiminy a hand signal to hurry up whatever he had to say. He cleared his throat and started again.
“Y’all love each other and should be happy that you’re all back together again. Think about how much you missed each other all those years you were apart. Then you’ll realise how petty you’re being.”
With each of the singer’s words, Dunk’s anger faded. He blushed with shame at his words and his actions, and he wanted nothing more than to ask for forgiveness for his stupidity. Before he could say anything, though, Greta’s ghost spoke.
“What is he doing here?”
She punched the word “he” as if she could drive the man through the back wall of the hut with the force of the pronoun alone.
Jiminy put up his hands in a placating gesture. “Now, Mrs. Hoffnung, I’m just trying to help. I brought your sons here to see you, and I figured you’d enjoy that. Believe me, I have nothing but the most honourable intentions with regard to your daughter.”
Dunk gaped at Jiminy and then Kirta. “You two know each other,” Spinne said. “That’s how you knew just which hut to go to. You grew up here, but you left years ago, long before Kirta wound up here.”
“And he has been banned from this hut,” the ghost said, “forbidden from ever returning!”
“Run!” Kirta said to the men, not bothering to whisper any longer. “Run!”
“There can only be one penalty for such poor behaviour,” Greta’s ghost said. “Death! Death! Death!”
“You’ll pardon my saying so, ma’am,” Jiminy said as he backed towards the open window behind him, “but that sounds like three penalties.”
Dunk grabbed Spinne by the hand and dashed for the window. Dirk came hot on their heels, with Jiminy right behind him. As they moved, the air behind them turned as cold and biting as a blizzard.
Dunk put his hands down to form a cradle, and Spinne used them to vault out through the open window. Dirk did the same, any beef he had with his brother long forgotten. Jiminy made the leap without Dunk’s help, vaulting over the windowsill with an ease that could only come from many chances to practise.
As Jiminy cleared the window, Dunk looked to Kirta. “Go!” she screamed at him. “She’ll stay with me. She never leaves.”
Dunk blew her a quick kiss, much as they used to do when they were kids, and then dived through the window. As he did, the ghost’s hands closed around one of his ankles, and he felt it begin to freeze solid. The colder it grew, the more solid the fingers felt, and he knew if he could not get away fast he would be trapped there for what little might be left of his life.
Dunk drew back his good foot and lashed out with it. His boot swished right through his mother’s face, disrupting it as if it were made of smoke. It re-formed a moment later, and the ghost screeched at him.
“Dunkel! You’ve been a very bad boy!”
“Mother!” Dunk spun in her grasp, but she wouldn’t let go. Her grip grew stronger by the moment, and Dunk knew that he only had seconds until she froze his leg solid, and perhaps the rest of him as well.
“Mother!” He shouted at her, needing her attention. As enraged as she was, he didn’t know if she’d even hear him. “You’re killing me!”
He felt hands on him, and he looked back to see that Spinne and Dirk had come back for him, each of them grabbing one of his arms. They pulled as hard as they could, but they could not yank him free of the ghost’s grasp.
Dunk knew what he had to do, as distasteful as it might be. He couldn’t harm his mother’s ghost with his hands or feet, and she was too strong for him at any rate. All he had left were words.
“Greta!” He shouted her name until she looked him in the eyes, until he could be sure she would hear what he had to say. “Mother! I have always hated you! You were a terrible mother, and I! Always! Hated! You!”
Shocked at Dunk’s venom, the ghost recoiled, releasing his foot as she went. Dirk and Spinne hauled him out through the hut’s window and half-carried him into the jungle beyond as fast as they could.
As Dunk tried to get his frozen foot back beneath him, Dirk and Spinne each got under one of his arms and hustled him along. When it was clear that the ghost had not followed them into the jungle, nor any Amazons either, Dunk heard Dirk giggling like a little boy.
“What is so damned funny?” Dunk said. The feeling had started to return to his foot, and it tingled so hard it hurt.
“
I’m just so jealous,” Dirk said as he squashed his laughter.
“Of having our mother’s ghost try to rip my leg off?”
Dirk shook his head, still smiling. “Of what you said. I’ve wanted to tell her that for years.”
When they reached the beach, Dunk decided that they should leave the island right away. “With all the screeching from Mother’s ghost, half the island has to be looking for us by now. I’d like to be halfway back to Columbo’s Island before they reach this beach.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Jiminy said. He’d got to the beach first and scouted it out to make sure no one was waiting there for them, besides Edgar, Slick, Lästiges and M’Grash, of course.
“I think he has a point,” said Slick. “I could hear that racket from here.”
Jiminy shook his head. “Sad to say, but no one who lives on the island is going to pay any attention to that. We hear it all far too often.”
“You’re kidding,” Dunk said. His mother’s shrieks still rang in his ears. “I’d have thought they’d have run Kirta out of town by now if that was true.”
Jiminy winced. “There’s been a lot of talk about that for sure, but anytime someone even approaches Kirta about it, Greta comes out and scares them away. Kirta’s talked about leaving, but the owners of the Lusties don’t want to let her out of her contract. She’s the best catcher they’ve ever had.”
“Blood Bowl must run in the family,” Slick said, smiling at Dunk.
The thought was little comfort to Dunk. He took pride in doing well anything he put his mind to, but playing Blood Bowl had always made him more than a little uncomfortable. Besides the physical injuries he sustained, the fact that he made his living in such a violent way bothered him. He sometimes dreamed of giving it all up, retiring to the family keep, or perhaps a secluded island off the coast of Magritta, and settling down with Spinne to raise a pack of kids.
[Blood Bowl 04] - Rumble in the Jungle Page 22