by Cliff McNish
She tottered down the staircase.
She had not been out in the garden since the early part of winter, and then always accompanied. Her mother barely allowed her out in winter at all, because the cold air always set off a coughing fit. But Mother was always over-protective. How, Isabella thought, could a little saunter down the garden be dangerous? She would be careful to cover her mouth, to protect her throat. Snow was in the air, but only a few flakes, nothing that would damage the dress. Isabella stared out at the whiteness longingly. She hadn’t touched snow for more than a year. Her cough would start up in the wind, but what of that? It would start up anyway. She only had to be careful, surely, not to fall over, and she could take small steps to ensure that.
A small saucepan of vegetable broth had been left on the range by her mother. She forced it down, though she wasn’t hungry; she rarely felt hungry these days. Sam followed her everywhere, as always, wagging his tail, hoping for the leftovers. She let him lick the bowl.
“Shall we go out?” Isabella asked him. “Shall we go out and see the world again?”
Sam had no objection.
Isabella leaned against the glass of the kitchen window. There was nothing left of her except a remnant of body under a blue dress, but she had no thought for that. She laughed to herself and rubbed Sam’s hairy old belly as she draped her shawl over her shoulders. Donning her outdoor bonnet, she opened the front door a crack and peered out. Not too cold. A breeze lifted the hem of the dress and Sam wagged his tail.
“Just for a minute, that’s all,” Isabella said to herself, stepping out. “Just to the top of the garden.”
She shuffled determinedly up the garden path with Sam alongside. By the time she reached the gate she was more tired than she expected to be, though at least she was not coughing. She rested, a steadying hand on the gate, enjoying the slightly ticklish feel of the dress. Then she headed back to the house, watching her step the whole way. Snowflakes drifted into her mouth. She grinned and held out her hands to catch more of them. Her feet were cold but she didn’t care. Very carefully, bunching the dress material underneath her, making sure her shawl completely covered it, she eased herself down on the small lawn and looked up at the swirling white sky.
It was only when Isabella tried to get up that she realized there was a problem. The strength, the leverage she needed from her back, was not there. After so much time propped up in bed, and always having a helping hand from her mother, the wasted muscles would no longer lift her.
She tried again, managing to tip herself onto her side. For several minutes she attempted to push herself into a sitting position, but could not. Every part of her was getting cold now. For a while she kept her face off the ground. Soon she did not have strength even for that. “Sam!” she cried out, and he trotted up to her, digging his nose curiously into her side, snuffling and wagging. “Go fetch help! Go!” she told him, flinging out her arm to indicate the path.
Sam ran partway up, then back. He didn’t understand.
“Go on!” she encouraged him. “Go on!”
The snow began to settle against the side of her face. After a few minutes she lost the strength to call out.
Isabella woke to find herself back in the house, her wet shawl removed. Her mother was bathing her in warm water by the hearth. The blue dress, thrown across a chair, was sodden and ruined.
“I’m sorry!” Isabella wept. “What have I done? The cost of—”
“Shush now, it doesn’t matter,” her mother replied softly. She washed Isabella’s shivering legs.
“Can it . . . be repaired?” Isabella asked.
“Of course I can repair it. It will not take much effort at all.”
“Oh, why did I go out? I only—”
It was then that the cough erupted. It wasn’t the familiar cough this time. It was thicker, heavier. Isabella tried to focus on her mother, but could not. She felt only an intense nausea. “I have to sit up.” She could feel the contents of her stomach loosening, and rose up enough to be sick, and it was red, red. It was not the food from earlier. It was red, all over the blanket, the floor, her mother, who held her, and still it came forth.
Isabella, in Jack’s bedroom, stared at him fiercely.
“I didn’t die,” she said. “Not then. But I wish I had. Go on!” she challenged him. “You wanted to see! You forced me back here! You wanted to know everything! What’s stopping you! Not I!”
“Isabella . . .” Jack let go of her, but she reached for him again.
“No,” she said, pressing her body up to his. “All of it. All of it!”
Three weeks had passed. In all that time not once had Isabella been well enough to leave the upper house. The fire in her room was lit every day, however, by her mother. Only that kept her clinging onto life.
Apart from Isabella and Sam, the house was empty. Her mother was out again. Isabella did not know where. She rarely said what she was doing these days. It took Isabella over half an hour to make her way down the stairs. When she stumbled into the kitchen she felt her way along the walls until she reached the chair, and sat down in it.
The kitchen was bitterly cold. The rest of the house was bitterly cold. Only her room was being heated, she realized. The ruined blue dress was in a corner of the room. Isabella saw where her mother had tried to repair the dress, but it was not possible. The cost of replacing it was beyond belief. Isabella could only imagine how much extra work her mother was having to take in to do so. There were men’s working boots on the floor, in need of repair. Isabella did not know her mother had started taking in boots. There was also a list of the houses she was to clean today in her mother’s clear handwriting near the fireplace. She had skillfully concealed from Isabella how she had become a drudge for half the houses in the village.
Isabella glanced at the range and saw two saucepans. One held the remains of a potato stew her mother had fed her before she left. The second was a watery soup made from boiled meat bones. They were horse bones.
This was her mother’s food.
Isabella wept, and looked at Sam. He sat, thin as a whippet, by her feet.
“I was not meant to see any of this,” Isabella whispered to him. “Sam, you should have told me. She’ll die before me, won’t she?” She rubbed his muzzle. “No. We can’t have that. We can’t allow that. We can’t.”
It was a freezing day outside. Heavy snow gusted and drifted against the side of the house. Isabella stared out at it. She narrowed her eyes, then smiled at Sam.
“Will you accompany me one more time into the garden?”
Without putting on her boots, she opened the front door. An icy wind cut in at once, and she thought the door would blow back and knock her down, but she held it until the gust was gone. Her bonnet was by the door. She left it there.
Her cough started up as soon as the cold penetrated the swollen damaged passages of her throat. Isabella ignored it. Barely able to make it out through the thick snow underfoot, she shuffled over to the flowers she could reach. They were mostly hidden under the snow, and there were more weeds than she expected. Her mother had not had the energy to keep up the garden this year.
Next year, perhaps.
For a moment, as Isabella bent toward a rose thorn, the sun came out. It was low on the horizon, and not warm, but Isabella blinked at it through the snow and smiled. A robin saw her and flew off. Sam chased it for a few seconds, then sniffed Isabella’s feet.
“Come here,” Isabella said.
She lay down on the snow with him, and kissed his head.
Sam stayed next to her. After a while, restless, he slipped away. He ran toward the gate and back. He kept doing that. He knew something was wrong, but what? Isabella stayed still. She did not shout for help. The snow began to cover her mouth. Gradually the cold bothered her less, then not at all. Sam trotted back and forward from the gate, increasingly concerned, whimpering, nuzzling her face. After an hour he started to howl.
Isabella gave Jack one more memory. The se
cond she died he saw her soul rise up from the snowy garden. He expected it to be her death-face he saw, the one pinched against the cold, but Isabella had already left that behind. The face Jack saw was full of new life, and as it hesitantly looked up, the sky opened and the loved ones came for her, and the first of them to reach her was her father. Smiling, she held out her skinny arms to him and he took hold of them, and cradled her face, and carried her away into the whiteness of the clouds.
In the bedroom, Jack and Isabella sat together on the floor. For a long time they watched the moon and a sprinkling of stars on the eastern horizon, saying nothing. Then Isabella looked at Jack. “Did you really think my mother would kill me?” she whispered. “Did you really think she could ever have done that?”
Jack stared down, breathing heavily.
Isabella’s face was bathed in moonlight.
“I must go now,” she said, clearly in enormous pain. “The Other Side is calling me. If I stay any longer, the Nightmare Passage will claim me. Don’t let that happen, Jack. Let me go.” She touched his face. Her hand passed through him, and she smiled regretfully. “Remember me, Jack,” she whispered. “When you die, an old man many years from now, and perhaps far from here, I will be waiting for you.”
“Isabella, not yet . . . don’t . . .”
Jack reached out to her, but she was already fading.
“Dream of me,” she murmured. “Dream of me, and I’ll dream of you. Tr y to remember me.” She managed to say one more thing before she departed. “The longer my mother is inside yours, the more damage she may do to her. If all else fails, remind her of her name. It is Mary Eloise. She responded to that name dearly enough once. If all else fails, remind her of who she once was. . . .”
“Isabella!” Jack called out. “Wait! Before you go, what is life on the Other Side like? My dad’s there. I have to know!”
Her voice came in a whisper toward him.
“It is a better place, Jack. A . . .” He could barely hear her last words. “. . . kinder place. Good-bye, Jack. Close your eyes.”
“No. Let me see you leave. I . . . I want to see the Other Side. I need to.”
She set her lips, fixing her gaze on Jack—as if daring him to watch. And then her body blurred into a windless gray gale, mist and dress, and for a moment Jack glimpsed something utterly warm and pure behind her.
Then she was gone. Jack listened, thinking that if he stayed quiet and concentrated he might still be able to hear her voice. But he could not. The room was entirely dark and silent. The only indication that Isabella had ever been within it was a faint sway of the curtains.
He sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.
“Isabella Kate Rosewood,” he whispered. “I will. Of course I’ll remember you.”
For a few minutes Jack sat back, remembering what Isabella’s fading body had looked like in the moonlight and wondering about the damage being done to his mum. Then he heard the softest of footfalls outside his bedroom door.
“Jack, are you awake?”
He barely had time to lie down before the door swung open. There was no chance to pull the duvet over his legs. The door creaked as the Ghost Mother swept into the room. Standing over his bed, she gazed down at him.
In her hand there was a knife.
The knife was six inches long. It was one of the biggest of the kitchen cutting knives, with a pinewood handle indented for easy gripping. The Ghost Mother held it casually, the tip pointed toward the ceiling. Part of Jack knew there must be an innocent explanation for its presence in her hand, but he couldn’t take his gaze off it. His airway constricted—the shock initiating an asthma attack.
“I thought I heard your voice,” the Ghost Mother said.
She saw him staring at the knife, and her eyes widened in understanding.
“I am your mother!” she shrieked. “Do you think I would use a knife against my own flesh and blood? I couldn’t sleep,” she explained. “I was preparing food for tomorrow. I . . . Jack?”
Jack tried to speak, but his throat was too tight. He knew his only chance to stop the attack was to get to his medication quickly. Staggering upright, he reached for the inhaler on his bedside table, took a full dosage and waited. There was no improvement. He needed the extra chemicals in his beta-agonist supplemental inhaler.
“My medicine . . .”
“I will take care of you, Jack.”
“You . . . you don’t understand. My medicine. I . . . need to get . . .”
He stumbled past her to the bathroom, couldn’t find the emergency inhaler, then found it, sat on the toilet seat, and sucked out four dosages. It took Jack over twenty minutes to get his breathing back to a regular rhythm. The Ghost Mother tried laying a hand on his back to hearten him, but he swatted it away and, though it upset her, she did not touch him again. She allowed him to close the bathroom door for privacy, though she remained outside. He could hear her anxious pacing.
I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t talk to her about Isabella. Not now.
He slumped to his knees on the bathroom floor. He wanted nothing more than to stay there, curled up next to the toilet until morning, and wake to find his real mother calling him down to breakfast. Mum’s being hurt, he thought. Damaged. I’ve got to find a way to get the Ghost Mother out of her!
“Jack?” The Ghost Mother’s voice.
“I’m . . . okay.”
“Can I see you?”
“I’ll . . . be out soon. I just need a minute . . . a few minutes . . .”
She cleared her throat to reply, then changed her mind.
When he left the bathroom he found her reclining in one of the living-room armchairs, waiting for him. The knife was gone. She’d also changed into Sarah’s chocolate-brown robe. For some reason that infuriated him.
“Are you better, Jack? Are you well?”
He didn’t bother answering.
She lowered her eyes, then raised them again.
“I have been thinking,” she said. “I want you to have things. Your mother bought you presents. I could buy you presents as well. Is that what you’d like?”
“No.”
She smiled, his answer pleasing her.
“I did not think so. One cannot judge how much one is loved by gifts, can one, Jack? One judges it in other ways. By what one says. By what one does. I will always be here for you.”
Jack said nothing.
“Come to me,” she murmured.
“Why?”
Irritation creased her face. “Why do you always give such brief or snappish replies? Indulge me, Jack. Come here.”
“I have . . . something to say to you. I know what happened to—”
“Shush.” She put a finger to her lips. “I am sure you have much to say to me, and I wish to hear it. But first, come here.”
Jack remained where he was.
“Stay away from me!” he shouted. “I mean it!”
“The knife . . . if it was the knife . . .”
“It’s more than the knife. It’s you! You’re not my mother! Stop pretending to be my mother! Stop—”
The constriction in his chest returned. This time it nearly bent him over backward.
The Ghost Mother sidled up to him.
“Calm yourself, Jack.”
“Get . . . away . . . from me!”
While he still had some control of his breathing, Jack struck out at her, but his fists in that moment had no strength. Blocking his hands, her arms gathered him up. He struggled against her, but she hugged him, and finally Jack realized that the only way he could survive was to let her. So he stayed in her embrace, his flesh crawling at her touch, until his breathing came back to something like normal.
After many silent minutes, the Ghost Mother broke the embrace.
“You see,” she whispered, “you don’t need your old mother, after all. She never took care of you the way I will.” She smiled. She had never looked more relaxed and comfortable. “I want to show you something, Jack.” Sh
e took his hand firmly.
Jack yanked it away, but the Ghost Mother cornered him and reached out again.
“Get away from me!” he rasped, unable to stop her.
“Let me do away with all these fears once and for all,” she murmured, taking his hand again. “I have something to show you, Jack.”
“I don’t want any more of your memories!”
“One more. Nothing will be the same after it.”
It was late afternoon before Mary Eloise Rosewood found her daughter lying in the snow-blown garden. Her return had been delayed partly by the atrocious weather and partly by a client who questioned her workmanship on a perfectly scrubbed floor, forcing her to do it again.
By the time she returned Isabella, of course, was dead.
With Sam running in anxious circles around her, Mary Eloise lifted Isabella with both arms—an easy weight—and took her into the house. She carried her up the stairs to Isabella’s room and wiped the snow out of her eyes. Undressing her, she wrapped Isabella in every warm thing in the house, talking to her as if she was still alive.
And then she began to scream.
Later, she arranged Isabella’s body out on the bedsheets, placing cold flowers from the garden around her head. She stayed there until sunset, then went out into the garden. She looked for signs of a struggle that Isabella had accidentally gotten herself in trouble like last time, but of course there were no such signs. Isabella’s footprints led in a straight line from the house to this spot in the garden. Her shoes were still in the house, and her bonnet. She’d obviously wanted to rush away from this world before anyone could stop her.
Mary Eloise walked back to the kitchen. She saw the ruined blue dress she’d lied about, the list of houses to clean, the men’s boots. She saw the horse bones congealed in the pan—all left in plain sight for Isabella to see. She’d been in such a rush this morning, and Isabella had not been up in weeks. And then she had come down and seen. . . .