Breathe: A Ghost Story (Fiction - Middle Grade)

by Cliff McNish

  Seeing that, Ann tried to reach her, but the woman did not plead or reach out in any way for assistance. Tumbling beyond Ann’s grasp, her lids just slowly opened and closed, blank eyes full of unimaginable hurt. Otherwise she made no sound at all, not even to cry out—as if all expectation of any kind of help had gone. She simply fell away into the distance, her eyes on Ann the whole time until her body, still toppling, being injured over and over again, receded against the gray horizon.

  Ann became aware of movement around her.

  There were other people in the Nightmare Passage. Once her sight adjusted to the murky light, she could see more of their broken, neglected bodies—including children—blowing like litter across the great plain. And, watching them, Ann at last began to understand something of the brutal reasons why this place was called the Nightmare Passage. Death itself would have been preferable to such suffering. Death would have been a relief. The residents of the Nightmare Passage longed for death. Instead, in a thousand ways, they were perpetually injured.

  That was the horror of the Nightmare Passage.

  To her left, six other people were dimly visible through the murk. From different locations they were heading toward her.

  “Help me!” Ann shouted at them, waving her arms.

  The six figures ignored her. Scrambling in a crablike way, staying low to the ground, they cut a path sideways through the wind. One—a girl about six years old, looking as wild as any animal—grinned at Ann and rolled her eyes until the whites showed. All of the figures were covered from head to foot in thick clothing. It was especially bunched around their joints and vulnerable areas. They continued to take no notice of Ann, heading doggedly for an object on the ice. It was the black legging, fallen from the woman’s foot. Of course, Ann thought. Clothing must be the most valuable commodity in the Nightmare Passage, always shredding off on the ground. There would never be enough to protect you from the cold.

  “Who are you?” Ann screamed at them.

  They did not answer, just relentlessly closed the gap between themselves and the legging, making odd threatening noises at each other, obviously prepared to fight over it if they had to. There was another flash of lightning, and this time Ann saw something massing behind her. It was a vast wall of wind, like a storm-wave crashing toward a beach. The wave was so immense and terrifying that Ann screamed—until she saw a child on its crest.

  A boy was up there, riding the wave. He seemed to be almost dancing on the crest, making intricate movements of his feet as he strode laterally across it, heading toward her at a tremendous pace.

  In front of her, the six figures studied the wave anxiously, then formed a ragged little line at its base. Just before it struck they jumped—and the wave picked them up and threw them onto its crest.

  The sky was filled with thunder and lightning, but no rain. The boy, his arms held wide in the wind, soared closer. He leaped over the wild little girl, still tacking laterally across the wave top hundreds of feet above her, glanced at Ann, and lifted his arms. He kept doing that, as if he wanted Ann to—what?

  To jump.

  Ann clenched her teeth and did. For a moment she sank into the wave, her jump poorly timed, the thick heavy air knocking away her breath. Then she lifted her face and knew she was free of it, high up in the sky.

  The boy ran alongside her, clutching her hand, holding her up.

  He grinned, and whooped. “Hnya! Hnya!” he cried, or something like it—his voice so thin and dry Ann couldn’t understand. He lifted her hands up in triumph. Ann saw sheer joy on his face. Either he was insane, or this wave was a good place to be in the Nightmare Passage, somewhere a child could be happy.

  Other people were also on the wave top, riding it. She could see thousands of individuals now, mostly adults, but children as well, all moving with great deftness, dipping in and out of the crest like surfers, traversing the wave top.

  The little wild girl slipped down the wave, holding the legging proudly in her hand, fighting off the others with her nails.

  It wasn’t as cold as it had been. In fact, it wasn’t cold at all at this altitude in the Nightmare Passage. That’s why the boy’s whooping, Ann thought. Like all these other lost souls, he’s staying warm. Warmth means happiness here.

  A hat swaddled the boy’s head, firmly tied on with a knotted scarf. Dozens of other layered bits of clothing covered the rest of his body. This is what I’ll look like if I stay here long enough, Ann realized. If I’m lucky. If I can find enough clothes torn from people who’ve given up, like the woman.

  Before she could ask the boy his name the wave collapsed. It happened fast, and Ann descended the crest, but the boy held her up, controlling her fall. She spilled with him safely out of the wave back to the icy ground.

  There was no respite from the wind. It immediately picked her up again. Ann despairingly dug her heels in.

  “Hnn?” the boy said.

  He looked at her with feral blue eyes and took off his hat.

  Ann realized he was offering it to her for protection— an act of kindness.

  She accepted it, letting him tie it on. The boy smiled. Then, with another whoop, he tumbled straight into the darkness.

  Ann, frightened, tumbled after him, but her arms and knees kept jarring against the ice. “I can’t!” she said, stopping again. “It hurts too much!”

  The boy leaped in the air, dumbfounded that she’d spoken. Clearly no one had spoken to him for a long time. He gave a dry laugh, and touched her legs.

  “What are you doing?”

  He pointed to her, then himself.

  “Copy you? Is that what you mean?”

  “Rghn ma.”

  The boy rolled himself into what to Ann looked like a fetally tight ball.

  “Trust me?” Ann said.

  The boy nodded, and whooped again, immensely pleased that she understood. His teeth were the whitest Ann had ever seen. Polished by the wind, she realized. He had no real nails on his hands; at some point they had all been ripped off and had only partially grown back. There was an ugly scab on his nose where it had bled, rehealed, bled again, countless times, leaving a hard bony rind.

  How long had he been in the Nightmare Passage? A month? A hundred years? Longer?

  Ann got her body into a crouch like the boy’s and pulled in her legs. Instantly the wind swept her up, and she tumbled much faster than before. The tight position was hard to maintain—her muscles weren’t used to it yet—but her body also traveled far more smoothly over the ground, and the wind bothered her less. The friction of her fast-rolling body also generated heat. She was warming up. The boy had taught her the only way to avoid freezing on the surface of the Nightmare Passage.

  The wind abruptly ceased again, and she fell crazily out of her tumble to a halt. All around her the inhabitants of the Nightmare Passage immediately began checking themselves, looking for injuries. The boy did the same, then examined Ann. Finding a bruise on her left calf, he tore a wedge of padding from an inner pocket and tied it carefully around the area. He smiled at her again, jauntily indicating the special padding around his neck, elbows and knees. He’s proud of them, Ann realized. The clothing’s not for warmth. There’s no real warmth here. It’s more like armor. Keeping their clothing intact, more than anything else, shows how well people are surviving here. Even in the Nightmare Passage, there was pride of a kind.

  The boy smiled, showing Ann how to make the best of her slip, using strange knots and wrapping it in tight layers around her knees and elbows. He obviously found its thin threadbare quality hilarious, though he also admired its softness. He kept sniffing it. Ann wondered why. Did her clothing still have a hint of the real world attached to it?

  Then, without further ado, the boy tucked an arm under his head and fell asleep. Ann gazed around. All across the Nightmare Passage people were doing the same thing. Why? Was this the only chance to nap—the brief intervals between storm-waves?

  The boy woke a few minutes later, when the wind p
icked up again.

  “My name is—” Ann tried to speak, but her mouth was dry from the wind. She swallowed several times to line her throat with moisture. The boy tied part of his knee pad to her shoulder, and waited patiently. “I’d have been hurt more,” she said at last, “if you hadn’t helped. If you hadn’t shown me things. Thank you.”

  He stared down curiously at the spot where she touched his arm, and as he turned away Ann realized with a jolt that something about the boy was familiar. Although she’d been with him all this time, it was only when he bent his head a certain way that she recognized an old gesture.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  She knew exactly how long this boy had been in the Nightmare Passage.

  Forty-two years.

  His face was utterly changed, weathered, scabbed, a horror story of pain and endurance, but it was still him. It was Daniel. She was sure of it. Ann put her hand to her mouth, looking down to compose herself.

  “Ann,” she said, reaching out to him. “It’s . . . Ann. Don’t you recognize me?” The boy continued to smile at her. “I was with you in the farmhouse with the Ghost Mother. Ann. You don’t remember, do you?”

  Daniel, puzzled, examined her more thoughtfully. He felt her arms, especially the white cotton sleeves. He looked for a moment as if he didn’t want to remember, that it was too painful, and turned away from her to look out over the vast empty reaches of the Nightmare Passage.

  “I’m sorry,” Ann said, kissing him. “You shouldn’t have been here so long. It’s my fault. I told you to disobey the Ghost Mother. I encouraged you to. I shouldn’t have. It made her angry. I didn’t understand what would happen. Oh, look at you. . . .”

  “Thathiel,” he said quietly. He turned slowly back to her. “Dathiel?” He seemed pleased to be saying his name again. It took him several attempts to pronounce it anywhere near clearly, and even then he couldn’t quite get it right. There were portions of his throat, Ann realized, that the endless cold had totally destroyed over the years.

  The wind picked up again. There was no warning, no gradual transition from calmness to storm-force. All around them people glanced over their shoulders, judging what was to come next and how to prepare for it.

  Daniel stared at Ann, saying something. At first Ann thought he was trying to say her name, but it wasn’t that.

  “A fforth nnnn,” he said, smiling. He patted her hand.

  Another wave appeared on the horizon behind Ann. This one was twice the size of the last, and even the veterans of the Nightmare Passage looked anxious. There were urgent commands as people got into position.

  “What do we do?” Ann asked. “Ride it like the last one?”

  Daniel smiled and cupped her face in his hands.

  “I for than yeee,” he said. Ann had no idea what he was trying to tell her.

  The wave closed in, a massive black shadow, and across the Nightmare Passage people stood up, leaning against the wind, preparing for it. But Daniel just kept smiling and stroking Ann’s face, as if he’d not seen it at all.

  “I ferths yee,” he said, stroking her face. “I ferths yo.”

  The dark wave consumed the overhead sky now. Ann could barely even see Daniel’s face. He continued to stroke her and smile.

  “We haven’t got time for this,” she shouted, knocking his hand away. “Look!” She pointed at the wave crashing toward them. “We have to do something to get away from it! Show me what to do!”

  Tears appeared on Daniel’s face. He touched them with his fingers, then dabbed the wetness against Ann’s dry lips.

  “Stop it!” Ann wailed. “Please, Daniel . . .”

  He saw she did not understand. Smiling sadly, he grasped her hand and placed himself side-on to the massive oncoming wave, ready to jump.

  “I forgith ou,” he whispered.

  Oliver lay in the corner of Sarah’s wardrobe, burning with anger. To have been captured so easily! The shame of it! The only good news, he thought, was that at least Charlie hadn’t seen his pathetic struggle to hold the Ghost Mother off.

  A weak crack of moonlight pierced the keyhole, but he couldn’t escape that way. The Ghost Mother had taken too much of his soul to squeeze out. His mouth felt bruised from her grip, his cheeks like two aching hollows where she’d clamped her mouth over them. Oliver rubbed his jaw, smiling grimly to himself. She’d certainly enjoyed herself well enough. Her first feed had been a fast, greedy one; the second a deeper savoring that left him almost nothing.

  Payback time.

  He knew she’d come for him again. Maybe in the next hour, maybe later, but soon. One slim hope sustained him while he waited—that somehow he could take her with him into the Nightmare Passage. He’d been feeling its soft, almost playful, tugs at his hair for hours now, as it prepared to welcome him into its cold depths. Could he force the Ghost Mother to join him inside it? Maybe. If he could get close enough to her. If, when the Nightmare Passage came to claim his soul, she was feeding from him.

  But to have any chance, Oliver knew he had to hold on until the Ghost Mother returned. She’d already fed from him twice. Come on, he thought. One more meal. It’s me, Oliver! You can’t have seen me suffer enough yet. Surely you’re still hungry for more of that. . . .

  He stayed entirely still. The Nightmare Passage rustled with anticipation, tiny gusts flickering his face, but he disregarded them. Motionless, facing the wardrobe door, he waited for the Ghost Mother to come back.

  “You’re back!” Jack whispered.

  Isabella arrived in his bedroom that night more suddenly than the first occasion, ripped through from the Other Side. She screamed—it clearly caused her pain now—and floated precariously beside Jack’s bed. He’d had no rocking chair this time to summon her, but he didn’t need it. He already knew from before how to trace her; his gift, delving in so much death, was stronger than ever.

  “I had no choice,” he apologized. “I had to do it.”

  She nodded. “I cannot stay, Jack. It hurts too much. I want to help you, but I am not meant to be here any longer. I never was.”

  The shadow branch of the garden tree shook against Isabella’s face. It was her shaking, not the tree.

  “Help me,” Jack pleaded. “Your mother is inside mine. I don’t know how, but she’s taken her body. She wants me to love her. She wants kisses. I’ll give her them if I have to, if it gets her out of Mum. Tell me what I need to do!”

  Isabella raked her hair behind her ears, striding across to the window.

  “If it is true . . . for her to steal like this, a living body . . . is extremely rare. Only the greatest need could allow it to occur. Oh, Mother, what horror have you become?”

  Jack stood up angrily. “Why didn’t she just go to the Other Side, like you and everyone else? I know something terrible happened between you and your mother in this house. What was it? What aren’t you telling me, Isabella?”

  “On this matter I will keep my silence, Jack.”

  “You didn’t die normally. It wasn’t just the illness, was it?”

  “Do not press me on this, I beg you.”

  “I have to. Forgive me.”

  Jack walked toward Isabella, until part of her insubstantial body intersected with his. That hurt her again, but when she tried to pull away he wouldn’t let her.

  “I’m sorry, Isabella.”

  There was an iron bed. On that bed Isabella, close to death, lay in her own sweat, daring herself to get up.

  Now or never, she thought. Now or never.

  She rose from the bed with enormous difficulty, needing to use the wall to steady her arm. Nearly swooning as she stood, she coughed and concentrated on opening her bedroom door. One day, she knew, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, she would no longer have the strength to open it on her own, but that time had not quite arrived yet.

  It’s all right, she thought. No one will know.

  She shuffled in tiny hesitant steps along the landing, pausing often to rest. Her mother was ou
t for the morning, on some errand, and when she reached her room, Isabella entered it like a thief. She had already thoroughly washed herself all over from the pitcher, so that she would not leave a mark of any kind.

  The dress was draped across the back of a chair, ready for collection tomorrow. It was an unusual one, different hues of blue, heavily embellished. Not much seamstress work came her mother’s way, but she was cheap and capable and had been asked to do some complicated embroidery at the waist and on the sash by one of the few local families that could afford such luxuries. It was not a remarkable dress by some standards, but in all her life Isabella had never been close to anything like it.

  Walking over to the dress, she caught a glimpse of herself in her mother’s bedroom mirror. She hated to see herself now, especially her face, the sunken eyes, the brown skin, the brown gums.

  I’ll do it, she thought. No one will know. Just this one time. I’ll be careful.

  Isabella Kate Rosewood put on the blue dress on the morning of January twenty-seventh in her mother’s room. First she took off her cotton wrap and nightgown and discarded them like an old skin. Then, shivering, and standing there for a moment, scared to touch the dress at all, she memorized the exact way it hung over the chair.

  The dress was full-length on her. The skirt, of course, was loose, and so was the waist as she stepped into it, but the material was rich and wonderfully unfamiliar against her skin. She wriggled into it, careful not to snag or damage any part, adjusted the neckline, and went over to see how she looked in the mirror. She gave a small gasp as she regarded herself. Not so bad, she thought. With the right pose, and some padding, she could pass by in the street as something more than a skellington. She wished she had decent footwear to try with it. Well, no matter. She put on her old hobnailed boots—too wide for her thin feet now—and twirled slowly in the dress. Wearing it was wonderful. In fact, it gave Isabella such a surge of giddy happiness that she decided to take a greater risk.