All five ghost children were waiting for her. The tallest one—blond hair, bright eyes, dressed in a green suit—standing by the window: the next—not so tall, auburn hair, dark eyes, in a long brown coat—to the left of the doorway. The little boy and girl she had seen before—to the left of the doorway: and another boy, of medium height, dressed in black, a long robe affair, his black eyes glittering in a rather alarming fashion if one looked at them too long. His black hair hung down to his shoulders.
Not one moved. Not so much as a blink or the merest movement of a finger. Motionless effigies. Three dimension shadows of what had been. Images recreated from personality debris by her brain and projected by her eyes. Maybe the vicar had instinctively pinpointed the truth of the matter, but she could not believe these five shades had anything evil in their make-up. That must be impossible.
Now to give them life and make them her own.
She called softly. “Come, children. There’s nothing to fear in this house now. I will be a mother to you all. Take from me the essence you need to live again. To be always with me, awake or asleep. So I can hear your voices, your footsteps—if possible feel your hands touching me.”
The little boy and girl (they might have been twins) were the first to move. The glided to her and came to rest some two feet away, heads tilted, eyes looking up into hers. But she could not detect a glimmer of intelligence. Merely the glitter that might be reflected in the eyes of some animal. Then the tallest came to her and stood behind the twins (if such they were) and looked into her eyes (or so it seemed). Then came the lad in brown who took up a position to her right; finally the one in black—all save the dead white face.
Her fearful-hopeful dream had been fulfilled. She was half surrounded by the five ghost children.
Now what to do with them?
She turned and after saying: “Follow me, children,” led the way into the kitchen. At least such was her intention, but when she looked back they had not moved. All stood in the same positions, staring at the spot she had just vacated, motionless again, and she giggled.
“Silly me. They will not be hungry. Food and kitchens mean nothing to them. It is love they need.”
She went back to them and bending down whispered the wonderful message. “Children, I want you to know you are mine—I am yours from now on. Do you understand? We now belong to each other. Your loneliness is over. So is mine.”
The boy in black moved slightly. His eyes gleamed like sparks floating in the dark.
“Can no one—not a single one of you, give me some sign that you understand?” Celia pleaded. “Don’t let that awful clergyman be right. Please.”
They all vanished. Were switched off. Were no more.
Celia spent the rest of the day looking for them.
The bed had come with the house and was very wide. Celia had always slept in a three foot bed, never having had occasion to require anything larger. This might have been the reason she slept on the left side of this giant and never parted upper from lower sheet on the right. Despite—or maybe because of—the experience of that day, she slept soundly all night; sank into a deep coma of unawareness that drugged every sense, save for the one which has never been explained.
Then she awoke and lay quite still, knowing the unexpected had happened, but unwilling at that moment to open her eyes and discover what shape it had taken.
The senses returned to seventy-five percent normality, the brain expelled the fog of sleep, but still Celia kept her eyes tight closed, conjecture creating mental pictures that were without understanding.
Then hearing recorded a sound. Low childish laughter. Not far off, but near—in this room—by—or on—her bed.
The demand to know would not be denied. Celia opened her eyes.
The window curtains were drawn apart and the room was flooded with silver moonlight and revealed their slender forms in every detail. All five children were seated on her bed. The two small ones, the twins, on the spare pillows, the tall boy and he in brown way down at the foot and he in black lying on his stomach, his head turned in her direction, the black eyes now glittering with an alien intelligence.
Joy came shuffling on reluctant feet, for had they not come to her, sought her out of their own accord, and surely it was not their fault they had so white faces, or that the lad in black should have rather frightening eyes.
They had that death-beauty that rightfully belongs to some vivid nightmare that has long been forgotten by the active mind, but still can be recalled by the subconscious at that moment which separated sleep from awakening. Celia thought briefly of sleeping castles where mist formed strange shapes in ruined corridors.
She tried to sit up, but for some reason her body refused to obey the dictates of her brain, although she was permitted to turn her head from side to side, but that was hardly an asset, for some of the joy seeped away every time she met the glittering-eyed gaze of the lad in black.
Then a giggle came from one or maybe all of them; a deep-throated inane giggle that had the suggestion of a squeal, and undiluted fear slid into her mind and she became as one who has encouraged the presence of half-grown tigers. Instinct warned body and mind and she succeeded in sitting up, but as freedom of movement returned to her, so, it would seem, it did to them. They all drifted off the bed and blanket and sheets went with them. Then the squealing inane giggle blending with the tearing of her nightdress, and they moved, danced, round the bed, while she called out in fear-joy ecstasy:
“No, children, you must not be so naughty. Please ... please you’ll hurt mummy ...”
The giggling became louder, the five moved faster until they became a whirling mass of colored mist; a scratch appeared on Celia’s right shoulder and seeped a thin trail of blood down her back. Her hair stood on end and she screamed when it was tugged abruptly. Invisible fingers poked at her naked flesh, pinched and punched, while a roaring darkness threatened to engulf her. Then all movement ceased and she was left trembling on the bed, as the dreadful five congregated in the doorway. All had dead white faces now and every one giggled, ejected the inane squealing sound from between lax lips.
Celia raised herself up on to her elbows and managed to speak reproachfully with a sob-racked voice.
“You naughty-naughty children. You’ve hurt and frightened Mummy who only wanted to love you.”
The giggling took on a higher-pitched tone and the five turned and fled over the landing and running footsteps could be heard descending the stairs.
Then for a while silence—and loneliness.
For two days Celia dismissed the minor destruction as nothing more than infantile mischief with no sinister intent. All glass jars and bottles were smashed, the refrigerator door refused to stay shut, then ceased to function. “They don’t understand,” she told the empty house. “If they had been reared in a loving atmosphere, they wouldn’t be like this. Never mind, patience and endurance will work the miracle. It must.”
But on the morning of the third day, when she distinctly saw the lad in black dart from under her right elbow and deliberately upset the frying pan in which she was cooking some sausages, thus causing a roaring flame to soar up toward the ceiling and all but set her hair alight, then she very reluctantly accepted that the children were not just mischievous, but had at least some evil propensities.
But it made not the slightest difference.
Beauty can hide any number of imperfections and love can explain away any number of crimes. In an odd sort of way it was rather exciting having to keep one’s wits alert as to what trap they had set overnight. The footstool placed at the very top of the stairs, the bare patch on electric wiring, the turned on gas taps that just needed a lighted match to send her hurtling into eternity. Probably join them in that dimension they inhabited. So far as was possible she experienced surprise at their ingenuity which resulted in the topmost cellar step being transformed into a death hazard by means of spirit of salts (transported from the loo) poured on the wooden supports. Had not her
nose transmitted a warning, the undermined tread would have collapsed under her right foot.
“Artful monkeys,” she murmured, after successfully smothering the blast of terror that threatened to destroy beyond repair the bastion of sanity. “I wonder what they’ll think of next?”
If they were capable of thought, there was little for them to think of, for from then on Celia rarely left a chair she had dragged into the hall, this being the place “her family” were most likely to materialize. She smiled indulgently when the twins removed her shoes and flung them across the room and laughed softly when the Reverend Rodney climbed in through the sitting-room window, then somehow finished up on the topmost cellar step. After the initial scream, he never bothered her again.
“I should have had children,” she announced again and again. “I should have considered the possibility of having children, long ago. They are such a comfort.”
In fact they gave her more than comfort. More likely satisfaction, fulfillment, a most gratifying understanding that she had not lived her solitary life in vain. For the children grew fatter, particularly the lad in black who became positively bloated. They never acquired the slightest hint of color, for all their faces retained that rather disconcerting dead-white complexion, but Celia was certain it was a healthy pallor.
For herself—well—occasionally, she became aware of her own alarming thinness, the fact that her hands were well nigh transparent and she lacked the strength to do more than stir in her chair. But presently she took little interest in such mundane matters, for the antics of her family demanded all of her time. How they ran up and down stairs, in and out of those rooms she could see from her position in the hall, chasing each other, stopping now and again to plant a burning kiss on bare flesh, a reward out of all proportion to any slight discomfort she might suffer.
And they squealed with joyful excitement. Yes, really squealed with unrestrained joy. And Celia expressed her joy with some such sound, for had she not at last managed to create a happy family?
They came in through the sitting-room window, the one the Reverend Rodney had inadvertently left open. Tall burly men in blue uniforms, followed by a more slender one in a neat gray suit.
He was the only one to be actually sick. One of the others exclaimed: “Oh, my God!” but generally speaking they were all fairly immune against being upset by the extremely unpleasant. Two made their way to the cellar steps, only to return a few minutes later, when the one with three white chevrons on his right arm, stated briefly:
“The missing parson isn’t missing any more. At the bottom of the steps, what’s left of him. Oh, my Gawd! Look at them!”
Shouts that expressed horror, disgust and downright loathing, followed five bloated rats as they raced up the stairs.
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