An English Ghost Story

by Kim Newman

  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.

  * * *

  Jordan 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.

  * * *

  His 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.

  ‘Come on then,’ Mum said, getting up, holding his hand too firmly, yanking him off the sofa. ‘I want to show you some magic. It’s in my room.’

  * * *

  Turning back to look, she couldn’t see the copse or the house. The Old Girl and her After Lights-Out Gang were gone.

  She had been given something to think about. She wasn’t out here for herself but for Rick.

  Whatever sort of ghost he was.

  Rick’s voice was still with her, hissing like an old record winding down. It was more than a memory of the voice she’d heard on the phone. It was in the wind that stirred gently against her legs and arms, raising the fine hairs she hated which no one else could see.

  She had come out to meet him, to confront him.

  This was nothing to do with her parents; this was between her and her ex-boyfriend, the ex-boy.

  ‘Rick,’ she called, not loud.

  Her voice didn’t echo, but the name hung in her mind a few moments before popping like a bubble.

  ‘Ri-ick,’ she tried again, hating the whining.

  Then, he was there.

  ‘Jord,’ he acknowledged.

  His face shone like a shirt in a detergent ad. Death hadn’t marked him. At least, not where she could see.

  She was weak with relief. Finally, after all that waiting and grief, he was here! He had kept his word after all, gone along with the plan.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ she asked, remembering to be angry with him. It was well past his deadline.

  ‘It’s you, Jord. I couldn’t stay away from you.’

  ‘You might have thought about that before…’

  He shrugged, trying to get round her with a grin she’d once mistakenly told him was adorable. For ever after, he put it on when he wanted to make up for something unforgivable or get something unobtainable.

  ‘…before…’

  ‘Before you died, you bastard.’

  She hauled around and slapped him, half-expecting her hand to pass through smoke. She connected and raked her nails across his cheek.

  He bent with the blow, but stood up and wiped the mark off his face.

  ‘Kiss kiss,’ he said. ‘Kiss kiss?’

  She was not going to kiss a ghost. Not yet. Not until things were straightened out.

  ‘What happened to you? Why didn’t you come when you said you would? How did you die?’

  He waved away her questions, infuriating her.

  ‘It was your bloody mates, wasn’t it? They talked you out of trotting off to the country for the old ball and chain. Probably talked you into some stunt that got you bloody killed. One thing about this, you’re better off without them dragging you down all the time. Though what they did is about as bad as it could be. Which one of them was it?’

  ‘Which,’ he repeated.

  Or had he said ‘witch’?

  They stood in a rough circle. Stonehenge-height megaliths, like giant battered speakers at a death metal festival. Dark mist had given way to blackened earth and shrivelled grass, as if there had been a fire here long ago.

  ‘Love you, Jord,’ said Rick.

  He was a real presence, who could be slapped and felt. He displaced air. His clothes moved when he did. He was not just a hologram or a vivid memory.

  Rick reached out for her, hands long and white.

  She backed away, grazing her feet and ankles on black brambles. She did not want to be touched.

  ‘Love you,’ he repeated.

  He had never been able to form a sentence with both ‘I’ and ‘love you’ in it. She only just noticed that.

  ‘Kiss kiss,’ he implored.

  There was something moronic about the repetition, as if he were a three-dimensional photocopy of the original, a degraded image that would never be a substitute for the real thing.

  ‘Are you really there?’ she asked, suddenly sorry for him (hating herself for that, he had deserved to die for dumping her so sneakily) and for herself.

  He came close to her, angling his head to kiss her. His fingers touched her shoulders. She was colder than him. His grip was familiar, fingers and thumbs lightly holding her, arms drawing her near.

  She was an open-eyed kisser. He was not.

  His eyes fluttered shut as his lips closed on hers. She felt the tip of his nose touch her cheek and opened her mouth, sucking air to clear a spit bubble.

  Rick stopped and stepped back, letting her go.

  He was still a bastard. It had all been a trick. He didn’t want a kiss, he just wanted to prove he still owned her.

  They were not alone in the circle.

  Rick had a gang. She could not see the others clearly, as if their images were smeared or blurred, but she recognised the way Rick fitted in with them, head cocked to one side, hunched over so his hands reached the gorilla-pockets halfway down his jeans.

  ‘You’ve made new friends?’ she said. ‘Not much improvement on the last lot.’

  Rick shook his head.

  ‘Jord, you shouldn’t.’

  Puffs of flame burst in the darkness, making the circle into an arena. A bonfire rose around a flat black stone, like a cartoon witches’ cauldron. She felt the warmth of the flame. Firelight had reddened her legs and arms.

  Rick’s friends had faces now. Some wore reflective motorcycle helmets or mirrored sunglasses, others badly knotted Drearcliff Grange ties and kilt-like skirts. One, a tall woman, wore full-length robes and a pointed hood which showed only her vicious eyes.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Jordan asked, not of Rick but of his gang. ‘Why have you changed? You weren’t like this when we came to the Hollow. You were kind, you were nice.’

  ‘It’s not us,’ said Rick. ‘It’s you.’

  She wanted to strangle him, sink fingers into his throat until his eyes popped out of his head and his blackened tongue stuck out between his teeth.

  ‘It’s because of you all,’ Rick said.

  She had made fists. Rick sounded like Dad at his worst.

  ‘Because of what you’re like, because of what you are,’ said Rick, ‘we can hurt you.’

  ‘Not “can”,’ boomed the witch woman, ‘“must”.’

  * * *

  How long had he been here? He had been unconscious – or had he? – when bundled into the Steve cave. Comfortable in the dark, he must have dropped off, if only for moments. Or maybe longer. Time wasn’t behaving itself at the Hollow, anyway. Had he been dreaming or thinking? What was the difference?

  Steven perfectly fitted into the cave under the stairs. It was cosy, not cramped. He no longer banged his head or elbows if he turned. He relished the dry, woody under-the-stairs smell.

  If he thought of his family, his wife and children, they seemed like the ghosts. As a child, as soon as he understood he would grow up, he had thought of the wife he would have, the children who would come along. Those imaginings hadn’t had names or faces,
but were like the real people in too many disturbing details.

  At once, he knew why it seemed so strange.

  He had been dreaming. Kirsty, Jordan, Tim. He had made them up. He had expected them, and there they were.

  This was waking life, in the dark under the stairs.

  Out there in the house, Watch With Mother was on television. The Flower-Pot Men. His Meccano set was in a box under his bed, with his neat stack of comics. Dad was out at the office and Mum doing the housework. He was home from school for the long, long holidays, happy to be at a loose end.

  Everything else, he had made up.

  He had been fuzzy, but his head was clear now.

  Where had he got the names from? And the faces? They were vague now, like a damp magazine cover. The advertisement on the other side showed through in reverse. A black-and-white car erupted across the colour face of a smiling woman.

  It was time to put his toys back in the box and have tea.

  Already, with the aching melancholy of knowing they were just made up, he missed his dream family. He knew so much more about them that he hadn’t thought of, little things and big things that just hadn’t come up in the course of his latest dream.

  Jordan had taken flute lessons, but given it up.

  Kirsty used to have a habit of chewing a strand of her hair. Her mouth still scrunched up at one side when she was thinking, though her once-long hair was cropped and spiked when she met him and had never grown back. It had taken him years to work out what she was doing. He had never told her about it, knowing it would make her self-conscious.

  They were gone. Those things were gone.

  He found himself crying.

  * * *

  It was a chance to start over, to unpick all the mistakes.

  Steven and Jordan were gone of their own volition, wandered off into the dark. By now, they would have found their places, away from her, on their own. From her wrong turn in life, only Tim was left.

  If he were to go she would be alone again, able to start afresh, free of the domestic coral that had accrued when she wasn’t looking.

  Kirsty couldn’t believe she had pretended to be interested in washing machines.