An English Ghost Story

by Kim Newman

  The Ipkick was pleased with the start of the guerrilla campaign. Tim hadn’t been sure but had gone along with it. Psychological warfare was effective, but his simple soldier’s ways would have preferred something that did a goodly amount of concrete damage.

  The birds killed the shrews, or they were squashed under tyres on the road and scraped along the verges. Nasty little creatures anyway, like mutant mice with sharp teeth and constant aggression. The Ipkick warned him away from live shrews. They could open a serious wound with a bite, and had the habit of locking their mouths in flesh and not letting go until their heads were cut off.

  A shrew was a kind of nasty girl, too. That was what made the action appropriate.

  The BS was under notice now.

  If she chose to escalate, it would not be his fault.

  He thought about DefCon 1. All-out war. He dreaded it, of course. No soldier wanted war, no matter what the conchies and civvies said. But it was the duty of all soldiers to be ready.

  * * *

  Careful, he had been told. Warned. The word had come up on his screen again, several times. He saw it sideways, in the folds of curtains, in newspaper headlines. If he looked straight on, it was gone, but that wasn’t the point.

  He sat in his study, looking away from the screen, adjustable chair leaned back. He considered the ceiling, the room above.

  He knew he must not let it happen again.

  It.

  The things with Jordan. They so easily led to the things with Kirsty, the things with Tim. He saw the first signs already, the backward steps. His stomach burned when he remembered the worst of it.

  Steven was not going to let his family come apart again. It had happened on his watch before, too many times. At the Hollow, he was stronger, swifter, smarter. He saw the invisible ties that kept them together, not just the fault-lines that cracked when they were on the outs.

  As he saw it, everything came down to Jordan, though she was blameless. It was her useless so-called boyfriend, Rick. He had given the Naremore family a good thump and run off like a coward.

  Steven was not going to let him get away with it.

  If his daughter wanted the bastard’s head on a plate, he’d buy an electric carving knife and clear space in the freezer.

  How to do it?

  He could wait until he had business in London and make a point of finding Rick. But that wasn’t immediate enough. Maybe he should make a special trip?

  No. That was going too far.

  A phone call would do it. But not now. Jordan had to be a part of this.

  Later.

  * * *

  The shrews were still outside her door. By evening, the hallway was gloomy enough that she didn’t have to see the tiny corpses in detail. Their dull eyes reflected. Were they all completely dead? She’d seen too many films in which supposed corpses spring to life.

  Jordan wore her heaviest boots, with thick winter socks that made her feet sweat, and this evening’s dress. It was stretched around the hips. Should she wear a butterfly-bow sash – one was provided – to cover her huge bottom, or would that just draw attention to her ridiculous shape?

  In the end, she left the sash off and hoped the dress hung loose enough over her waist – which she wasn’t happy with either – to make some sort of silhouette.

  The dress bit into her under her arms, around her shoulders and across her chest…

  (That’s not fat, those are breasts.)

  …pinching nerves and cutting off circulation.

  Her white arms felt frozen.

  They were the part she was best pleased with, slim but not bony, ice-white with delicate blue lines inside her elbows. Her hands were beautiful. Her feet were patties of fat, though.

  Soon, all of her would match her hands. She would be statue-perfect.

  With her boots, she kicked the shrews away.

  Time to go downstairs. She was determined not to put up with any harassment from Mum and Dad. She was a woman now. They had no right to interfere.

  She made an entrance, into the Summer Room.

  Dad, from his chair by the unlit fire, turned to look. Tim, at the table, glanced up from a war comic. Mum, coming in from the kitchen, stopped to stare.

  Jordan felt her cheeks burning.

  Silence hung in the air. There were others in the room, applauding her. Only Mum and Dad (and her brother) were aghast, eyes popping. The others threw phantom flowers and rose to their feet to give acclaim.

  ‘Where did you get that dress?’ asked Mum.

  She walked across the room, taking tiny steps, hobbled by the gown. She arranged herself on a tall stool, the only piece of furniture in sight she could use without fear of overstraining the dress.

  ‘It was in my wardrobe.’

  ‘It’s… ah, old.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Dad inspected her, getting up and walking around. Jordan felt icy fury grow as Dad’s smile cracked. She remembered the expression, from when she was little and dressed up for Hallowe’en as a tiger or Madonna. She was being treated as a sweet little curiosity, not a person. A lift of his eyebrows said she was not taken seriously. She was being indulged.

  It would have been better if Dad raged at her and sent her back to her room to strip out of that ridiculous, indecent thing and come back to table in proper clothes. That would show awareness of what was changing, of the threat her parents should feel.

  She was growing up. They would have to move over.

  But no. To them, she was growing down. They wanted to turn her into one of those ageless, sexless Drearcliff Grange girls.

  ‘Are you sure it’s comfortable?’ Mum asked.

  Jordan nodded.

  ‘It’s awfully tight up top,’ Mum said. ‘You should probably let it out under the arms. There’s a sewing machine in one of the spare rooms.’

  ‘I’ll change,’ Jordan insisted. ‘Not the dress.’

  ‘You won’t change that much. It’s a child’s dress. It’s only long enough to reach your ankles because it’s supposed to be a train, held up by attendants.’

  ‘Rat coachmen,’ put in Dad.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mum. ‘It’s Cinderella’s ball-gown. In Weezie and the Phantom of the Pantomime, she dresses up as Cinderella.’

  Jordan felt the walls closing in. She was being trapped. It was a plot. She was being forced to stay a little girl. She looked at her parents’ faces, and even at her brother. Tim was fixed on his comic, all hatches down like in the old days, tensed up to ignore the argument.

  She would not cry. That was babyish.

  ‘We’ve been talking about Rick,’ Dad said.

  It was all she could do not to explode.

  Mum looked startled. She had been talked to, not with. This was one of Dad’s decrees.

  ‘I should call him, or his father.’

  Jordan was speechless.

  It was as if she were five years old. She had sorted out the Rick thing; he would get the Letter in the morning. Anything Dad did could only undermine her work.

  Dad took the cordless phone from its cradle. Jordan was cold throughout. Rick’s number was still stored. The whole family got to nominate numbers.

  ‘Seven, isn’t it?’ Dad said, stabbing the auto-dial.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Daddy, don’t,’ she said, inside her head. Her throat was stretched and dry. No words came out.

  She was close enough to hear the ring at the other end of the line.

  Please, nobody be there. That would be a mercy.

  The ringing shut off and a woman’s voice sounded.

  ‘Might I speak to Richard, please,’ Dad purred, with his hard-as-steel phone voice, suitable for defaulting creditors or absconded boyfriends.

  Dad briefly covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘He’s coming.’

  Who had the woman been? Rick’s parents were separated, and he lived with his Dad. His brother and sister lived with their mother.

  ‘Is that Rick?’ Dad a
sked, into the phone. ‘This is Mr Naremore, Jordan’s father. You’re a callous little git, aren’t you? I’d like you to know Jordan’s been through hell because of you. Did you even think of what it would do to her? Of all the progress she’s made that you were pissing away?’

  Jordan shut down inside and toppled from the stool. As she fell, she heard a ghastly renting sound as the seams of her dress came apart.

  ‘Jordan’s not wearing any underwear,’ Tim said.

  She lay on the floor, feeling cold flagstones through the carpet, impossibly and comprehensively violated.

  ‘I hope you’re satisfied, Richard,’ Dad said. ‘Jordan’s just dropped dead.’

  Click. At last, Dad had rung off.

  She wished she had fainted, that she was unconscious. The waking world was too, too dreadful to bear.

  Her face was on fire with a blush that was permanent, that would turn to the worst kind of weeping acne. Her dress was ripped apart, exposing vast stretches of her grotesquely swollen flesh. And Dad had wrecked everything.

  She wanted to dwindle to nothing. And stay there.

  * * *

  There, that was done. Drastic measures, extreme results. But the trouble was over. Now, things could be fixed.

  Steven stood up, letting Kirsty wrap Jordan in a shawl from one of the chairs. He twirled the phone like a gunslinger’s smoking Colt.

  He’d heard the little wretch squirm. He had settled Mr Precious’s hash in a way that the kid wasn’t going to forget in a hurry. In the background, as Steven said his piece, the woman who answered the phone was laughing. It had almost put him off.

  Who was she laughing at?

  Jordan sat up a little, holding her strange dress over her chest, hair over her face. Kirsty was comforting her, stroking her hair, murmuring into her ear.

  Tears all round.

  The womenfolk were in shock, but they would appreciate what he had done. A threat had risen, a threat to the balance of the family, and he had faced it, slain it and come home in time for supper.

  Kirsty looked up at him, face pinched.

  ‘Steven,’ she said, ‘how could you be such an idiot?’

  * * *

  Jordan eating tonight was a lost cause. Helping her daughter up to bed was all Kirsty could manage.

  Steven was no help.

  This was another example of what Vron called her husband’s fondness for ‘chainsaw microsurgery’. He would walk away satisfied that he’d done a good job, leaving her to cope with the wreckage.

  God, she would have to call Rick’s father and apologise. Without choking on it.

  Her first priority was her daughter: the zombie.

  By the time she got Jordan to her room, the dress she was wearing had turned into a tabard. The stitching had rotted through, splitting the dress up the sides. When Kirsty was Jordan’s age, she’d bought a similarly ancient frock at Oxfam and carefully unpicked the seams, replacing them with safety-pins. That was the only thing that could rescue this rag. She lifted the remains of the dress off over her daughter’s head.

  Jordan dived under her duvet and held it over her head, booted feet sticking out.

  Kirsty should give her advice.

  She was better off. She’d get over it. Things would rearrange themselves.

  It was what her mother would have done.

  The trouble was she didn’t believe it. She still carried all her emotional scars, from kindergarten on. The hurts didn’t loom large in her mind, but – if she thought of each individual heartbreak – they were as real, raw and bloody as the day they happened.

  If Steven wanted to help Jordan, he’d have Tatum do something useful for a change and run Rick down in the street. It was about the only thing that would make any difference. Kirsty would feel a glow of cold secret pleasure if any of her old boyfriends were mysteriously murdered. She smiled to imagine them being killed in one night, all over town, long-stemmed roses left by the corpses to sign the deed. Vron would have done it for her.

  She touched the bed, where she thought Jordan’s shoulder was. The Jordan-shaped lump was wracked with silent sobbing. Kirsty withdrew her hand.

  This was the first time she’d really been in Jordan’s room. She had been trying to let the girl have her own space, especially since she’d let Kirsty have the magic chest of drawers.

  Jordan hadn’t put up the posters from her tiny room at the old flat, which Kirsty knew she had carefully rolled into cardboard tubes for the move. Her CDs were arrayed in clear plastic racks.

  She had set up Louise’s old word processor, which Steven said was a prehistoric flint implement, at a desk by the window. Jordan had boxed her paperbacks in London. Few of the books had made it out of the boxes to the shelves.

  Where was the wardrobe Jordan had mentioned? There was none in the room, not even a fitted cupboard. She probably meant a wardrobe in one of the spare rooms. Goodness knew, there was enough treasure trove to keep them supplied in oddments forever.

  (Oddments, a Kirsty project, not lost after all…)

  The Old Girl came in and sat in the rocking chair.

  Kirsty shrugged a ‘what can you do?’ shrug. The Old Girl’s outsize head nodded.

  Steven shouldn’t have his office in Louise’s old study. This was the female tower of the Hollow. Men were unwelcome here. One had been killed during its building, a sacrifice to consecrate it to womanhood. Here, in Louise’s lifelong room, the circle – strongest, most female of all shapes – held.

  It was important that this be shared.

  ‘Jordan,’ Kirsty said, gently.

  She tugged the duvet away from her daughter’s head, wrestling it out of Jordan’s fingers. The girl whined in the back of her throat and screwed her eyes shut.

  ‘Shhh, my love, look at me, look at our friend.’

  She got Jordan to sit up in bed. The cover fell away from her bare chest. With a pang, Kirsty saw how womanly her little girl had become. She dabbed the tracks on her daughter’s face with a spit-damped thumb-knuckle.

  Eventually Jordan opened her eyes, blinking.

  Kirsty put her head next to her daughter’s and they both looked at the Old Girl.

  She felt Jordan’s body tense with fear.

  Objectively, the Old Girl was a scary apparition. It took a moment to realise she was on their side. Her scariness was directed away from the women of the Hollow and against those who would harm them.

  Kirsty shushed soothingly.

  ‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ said the Old Girl.

  ‘Everything will be fine,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘Fine as spring rain and thrice-sieved flour,’ said the Old Girl.

  (Something Cook said in the Weezie books.)

  The Old Girl’s face creaked into a smile.

  Jordan gulped out a panicky laugh, clinging to the last of her fear.

  ‘If she’s a witch,’ Kirsty said, ‘she’s a good one.’

  ‘I should hope so, my lovers,’ said the Old Girl, with a West Country burr. ‘Tears have been spilled. Wet water dries in a trice, but ghost tears tarry until cast out. This you can do. It is in you to rid yourself of these pest ghosts.’

  Kirsty understood. Sadly, she realised, her daughter didn’t.

  * * *

  His allies were wearing the BS down. The incident in the Summer Room was proof of that. Jordan was trailing the curse of the shrews when she came down. The little animal spirits nipped her ankles and shins, poisoning her until she came apart (Tim had seen her naked, her boobs and everything) and fell over.

  The MP had taken her upstairs and Tim was on solo guard duty. The PP didn’t see the big board yet. He was always the last to catch on.

  Jordan knew, now. And probably Mum.

  There was a war on.

  Tonight, he could sleep soundly. The Ipkick would take the watch.

  Tomorrow, he would think of victory.

  * * *

  In the end, the women would thank him for it. Steven was master in his own
home. Everything came down to him. He must consult – make a show of democracy – but it was his decision, his risk, his triumph. He’d always known it was how his business worked. Now he understood the world outside his office was exactly the same.

  Kirsty had come to bed after he’d fallen asleep. She’d done her part of the job, calming down Jordan after the necessary shock. He let her sleep on after he was up, planning to reward her good and faithful service with a lie-in and a late breakfast. He’d cook for the family. A man should be proficient in the kitchen, to show he was not a shirker, that he could cope.

  Steven thought of himself as an all-rounder, adaptable and multi-skilled. This was underlined at the Hollow. In its many rooms, the house itself contained his whole life, business and family. It was like a castle, a community unto itself. Each room, each part of the grounds, was a different section of his life, connected by secret passageways and sliding doors. It was all one, all his realm. At long last, after the turmoil of the city, he had risen to the top and become master of his own life.

  Last night, he had done battle for his daughter’s honour and prevailed. Precious Rick was routed.

  This morning, he would cook. The family would assemble, blearily, at table. He would serve them, joshing them out of their sleepy fug with light banter. They would divide the Saturday newspapers into sections and discuss items of interest to them all.

  Later, he would sit in his favourite chair and watch football on satellite TV. Tim would sit at his feet, asking questions about the game. Kirsty would bring him beer and shaped potato nibbles. Jordan, understanding at last, would pop in at half-time and, unembarrassed, kiss him on the top of his head, then dart away like a sylph.

  All was right.

  He left his wife in her half of the bed, strode to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, washed his face and shaved (as he did every day, except Sunday). He dressed in jeans and a rugby shirt.

  No one else was stirring in the house.

  In the kitchen, he found last night’s washing-up in the sink. What with all the drama, it had been forgotten. When Tim showed his head, Steven would assign him the chore. The sight of encrusted pans and plates put him off the idea of cooking breakfast. There weren’t any urgent customers.