An English Ghost Story

by Kim Newman

  * * *

  He 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.

  * * *

  Jordan 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.

  * * *

  Respect 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.

  It helped to focus on that.

  The Enemy had scurried up to the next level, leaving blood on the ladder. Tim stood back while one of the IP checked the ladder for loosened crossbars or wire-traps. It was clear. Good. The Enemy was sloppy, thinking too much of getting away and not enough of stalling his pursuer.

  There was a silent discussion. Tim was point. His squaddies fell back in a half-circle as he mounted the ladder, but were behind him all the way.

  He climbed to the next level. Hanging just under the top of the fixed ladder, he poked his head up over the edge. The quality of the dark was different, as if the sky were lower, and there was a woodier smell, more enclosed.

  The Enemy was in the distance, retreating.

  Tim pulled himself up onto the next level and stood up straight. His squaddies made it over the edge too and regrouped. He was part of a fighting unit, a cog in a well-oiled killing machine. He took a silent breath and recalculated.

  He turned on the torch he’d requisitioned and cast its beam across the wooden plain. The Enemy froze in the light, then picked up his feet and ran into the dark.

  One of the IP, a blonde girl with a tiger-striped face, pointed, snarling.

  Tim turned off the torch, course fixed in his mind, and began to run.

  * * *

  Jordan found her mother in the Summer Room with the brown man, spotlit by lamps which burned with unholy fire. Neither were in a fit state to have a conversation. Mum had panda-eyes from crying hard. Mr Wing-Godfrey was pliable but unresponsive, a sleepwalker.

  Through the French windows, she could see the patio and the barn and as far as the orchard. It was still dead of night. All the clocks and watches she’d checked were stopped somewhere between midnight and two.

  She was too exhausted to stay awake but too wired to sleep.

  They were not alone and they were not safe.

  A wind rattled the window-panes and disturbed the curtains. Mum and the brown man were on the sofa, surrounded by Louise’s things. The television set and the standing lamps had advanced by inches, rucking up the rugs with wooden paws. Jordan picked up one light, an old-fashioned pole with a cream coolie hat shade, and carried it back to a corner where it wasn’t in the way. As she moved it further from the sofa, its bulb dimmed and fizzed but did not die or burst. From the corner, it cast little light.

  ‘Mum, where’s Tim? Where’s Dad?’

  Her mother didn’t say anything, but reacted to the mentions of her son and husband as if they were darts thrown at her. Her face grew paler and brighter as if under an interrogation light.

  Jordan turned and saw the coolie light was out of its corner.

  As long as she kept it in sight, the thing stayed put. When she looked away, it was on the move, growing brighter. It had hopped forward a yard. She looked at Mum and then back and it was a yard nearer and five candles brighter. She wanted to snap it over her leg and throw it away. Instead, she picked it up and put it firmly back in its corner.

  ‘You,’ she said to Wing-Godfrey, ‘keep watching this lamp.’

  The brown man’s head moved slowly but his eyes were open.

  Jordan patted the coolie hat and felt a smug sense of victory.

  There were four other standing lamps, identically shaded but a few inches shorter. She had dealt with the general, and now must take care of the privates. There were nooks and alcoves for them all. She shifted the lamps, damping down the painful, bleaching light which made the Summer Room into an overexposed moonscape.

  Wing-Godfrey couldn’t look in five directions at once.

  Except he could. Jordan shifted his head and pointed at the big window. Five fixed lights reflected there.

  ‘If one of them moves, call out,’ she said.

  The television set was on a trolley with rebellious castors. Trundling it was a job, but she managed. She humped the big box over the fireguard and put it in the fireplace. It should be happy there.

  Knee-high occasional tables piled with vintage magazines and high-backed armchairs with lace antimacassars had occupied spaces they had been banished from earlier, but Jordan left them alone. Anything that couldn’t cast light was less likely to be a discipline problem.

  She drew up a stool and sat
down, by the sofa.

  Mum had stopped sniffling. She was at least responding to her.

  ‘I put Tim in the top drawer,’ Mum said, and sobbed.

  Jordan had no idea what that meant, but it was evidently a terrible thing.

  ‘He’s lost,’ Mum went on.

  Jordan found a tissue in her pocket and wiped her mother’s face, cooing that she would find Tim soon, that Dad would come back, that it would all be all right in the end.

  Did she believe it? Was she was just feeding back the speech Mum used on Jordan when she woke up from a bad dream.

  (The good old days? When all they had to fear was each other?)

  Mum tried to smile and laid a shaking hand on her hair.

  ‘We have to be strong, Mum,’ said Jordan.

  Mum began to stroke, then grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked hard. A patch of Jordan’s scalp hurt, badly. She yelped. Tugged off the stool, she landed hard on her knees.

  All the lights flared, turning Mum’s face into a snarling skull with deep black eye-pits. Then the room went dark. Light-ghosts swarmed in Jordan’s eyes and aftershocks of pain shot through her.

  Mum was still pulling her hair.

  The lights came back and Mum stopped pulling. Jordan looked up and around. The five lamps were in a tight circle around the sofa, towering overhead, hats angled forward in threat, cords stretched across the floor.

  She stood, knocking over two of the lamp stands. They tumbled like tall trees and lost their shades. Their filaments still burned.

  Jordan was outside the circle. Mum and Wing-Godfrey were trapped.

  She put her hand to her head and found wetness.

  The mad bitch had pulled out a chunk of hair by the roots.

  After all she had done! Ungrateful cow!

  She should leave her here to stew but knew she couldn’t. Striking out on her own had been a mistake. And Mum’s attack hadn’t been as bad as other things. Jordan remembered she had seriously assaulted Dad after he hit her. Out in the night, the ghosts had almost killed her.

  Mum wasn’t herself.

  Though, God knew, Mum’s own self wasn’t always a comfortable person to be around. She’d never been one for smoothing things over. That bad-dream speech Jordan remembered wasn’t from Mum, but a film. It was something a 1950s movie mother might say. Mum didn’t notice nightmares, unless they were her own.