by Cliff McNish
It had been a test, after all.
“I’m . . .”
Jack couldn’t manage to form any words as she ran at him. She grasped the hand holding the keys savagely and used his fingers to relock the door before throwing the keys into the hall. Then she hauled him to the stairs. Her face was set, furious. “You promised . . . you lied . . . you lied! Now there will be new rules to follow in this household!” She dragged him up the staircase.
“Let me go!”
She threw him down on the floor of his bedroom. Jack felt his asthma bubbling up, and breathed slowly to compensate.
“All right,” he said, thinking furiously. “I’ll . . . I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want.”
She stared at him, surprised. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I said I’ll do anything you want.”
“You will accept my rules?”
“Yes.”
The Ghost Mother gazed at him suspiciously, but Jack had gotten her attention and now he stood up. He had to do this standing up. Maybe he could shock the Ghost Mother out of his mum? That’s what he was thinking. What would shock her the most? What would force her to listen?
“It was cold that morning Isabella went out, wasn’t it?” he said. “It was freezing that day. Snowing.”
The Ghost Mother’s face drained of color.
“How dare you mention her name! I have told you—” She hesitated, then slapped his face hard. “That is the last time you will ever speak her name again! The very last!”
“Listen to me!”
But she would not. She shoved him onto his bed and raised her arm again. Jack was so sure she was going to hit him a second time that he picked up the bedside lamp to defend himself.
“Things will be different!” she yelled. “Do you hear me?” Her hands beat her chest. “I have . . . tried and tried! What else must I do to prove myself? Am I to be under trial forever by my own son? Does any mother deserve such treatment?” Her lips were white with rage. “Do not push me too far, Jack,” she warned. “I mean it. I have my limits! Do not take me beyond that which any mother can be expected to endure!”
He heard the sinister change in tone and knew she expected an immediate apology. No, he thought. Damn her. I won’t.
He jumped off his bed and barged past her onto the landing.
“You’ve stopped going in here, haven’t you?” he said, flinging open Sarah’s bedroom door. “Why? What’s in here you’re so scared of?”
The Ghost Mother shrank back from the open doorway, her hand against her mouth, expecting Oliver to come flying toward her with the Nightmare Passage clinging to his back. When he did not, she knew the Nightmare Passage had taken him. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, she walked inside the room and looked around.
“The children are in here, aren’t they?” Jack said.
“The children, the children,” the Ghost Mother muttered. “Do you never stop talking about them!” Then she stopped and slowly turned to him, a changed look on her face. Her expression was still angry, but there was a new silkiness to her tone.
“Perhaps you want to see what I do with them, Jack? What I do to the children? You are always asking questions about them, after all. Perhaps I should answer some of them.”
“Just let me see that they’re all right,” Jack replied nervously.
“Very well.”
The Ghost Mother unlocked the wardrobe.
“Oliver has joined Ann in the Nightmare Passage,” she said, smiling. “As for the shining knight who came to his rescue . . .” She opened the wardrobe door and reached inside. Charlie was crammed in the back. He raised his arms to protect himself, but the Ghost Mother easily brushed his wispy hands aside.
There was someone else in the wardrobe with Charlie. Earlier, the Ghost Mother had smashed her way methodically through the floorboards of the pantry until she reached Gwyneth. Even cringing next to the mice had not saved her. Now, as the Ghost Mother picked Charlie up by the neck, Gwyneth clung onto him, swinging loosely from his legs.
“This is what I do to them,” the Ghost Mother said to Jack, plucking Gwyneth off. “You have driven me to this. I hope you are satisfied.” She upended Charlie and thrust his face against her lips.
Jack yelled and ran at the Ghost Mother, but she knocked him aside with the outside of her arm. His skull struck the frame of the bed. The pain was blinding—and his asthma exploded.
No, he thought. Not now. Not now!
He started to hyperventilate, breathing twice as fast, knowing that was making it worse, but unable to stop himself.
The Ghost Mother stared indifferently down at him. Charlie did not have the strength to resist her. She held him in both hands, taking lengthy swallows from his face, pausing only to let Jack see what she was doing. Then she did the same to Gwyneth.
Jack’s inhaler was back in his bedroom. The biggest attack of his life was coming.
The Ghost Mother withdrew her mouth from Gwyneth, went back to Charlie, and Jack heard a rustle from the corner of the room. He looked up to see Charlie’s face disappearing into the Nightmare Passage. Gwyneth held on a little longer. Her legs flopped, then drifted upward on the air. Wiping her lips, the Ghost Mother stared at Jack. “See what you have forced upon me!”
“Don’t hurt her anymore,” Jack managed to whisper. “I’ll . . . I’ll do anything you want. I’ll . . . be . . . anything you want.”
“You’ll never love me.”
“Please . . . I will. . . .”
“No. I am done with you now, Jack, done with you.”
The Ghost Mother rubbed her lips dry to improve the contact, then clamped herself to Gwyneth again. Jack couldn’t do anything to stop her. He gasped, trying to get more air into his lungs. I’m going to black out, he realized. If I do, the Ghost Mother will be able to do whatever she wants. I can’t . . . let her . . .
He shifted his weight, giving his lungs as much room as he could, but it was no use. A slick sweat ran down his neck. He began to shake.
Gwyneth floated helplessly in the air, discarded. She tried to raise her head, find a way out of the room, but could not. The Ghost Mother yanked her up again, grazing in a leisurely way at her lips—but this time stopped quickly. Even Jack, almost unconscious, felt the coldness invading the room.
The Nightmare Passage had come for the last of the ghost children.
It tore a hole in Gwyneth’s neck, and she screamed.
The Ghost Mother retreated toward the door.
For a moment Gwyneth looked more astonished than terrified. She put a hand inside the gap of her neck to see what was there. Only darkness. Jack fell unconscious with Gwyneth’s screams ringing in his ears.
Daniel’s wind-whitened teeth gleamed.
Ann had heard his words of forgiveness over the wind, and as he carried her into the high, safer reaches of the upper wave, she looked into his eyes and felt like crying. They weren’t a boy’s eyes. They were appallingly lined and wrinkled. Squinting against the wind made them look old, she realized. I’ll be like him soon.
Looking around her at the desolation of the Nightmare Passage, she felt herself shriveling. Even the agonized soul of the Ghost Mother, and the others like her who had refused for one reason or other to go to the Other Side when their loved ones came for them, didn’t deserve to be in this appalling place, she thought. As for the innocents—like her, like Daniel, and all the other children who had ended up here through no fault of their own— there was no mercy or leniency.
Another wave approached. It slipped pitilessly across the ice, smashing into those unable to get out of its way, and, watching it, Ann knew that there would be no end to her misery here. There was nothing to look forward to in the Nightmare Passage. There was no warmth, no comfort, no food, no water even, except that which could be sucked from the icy ground. There would never be any end to the day, no sunset to offer hope, no morning dawn, just an everlasting cold twilight waiting for the next wave to arrive. No relief and n
o real rest. Even that was denied them. The only sleep she ever got would be tiny naps snatched between the storms.
The wave came, they rode it, and finally it slowed and deposited her and Daniel back to the windy surface. Ann twisted her ankle as she landed. Daniel tenderly felt the area, took off a vest and wrapped it around the bone. Before he’d finished, yet another wave was already heading toward them, collecting up the lost and weary and hopeless causes on its way. Ann wanted to just give up, but there was no possibility of that, either. If she gave up she would end up like the nearly naked woman on the plain, being ripped to pieces forever.
She kissed Daniel, tested her ankle, and readied herself.
The wave was almost upon them now, a black front frothing with violence. Ann was already so used to the waves that they no longer terrified her as much as before, but when she looked ahead of this wave-front her heart quailed.
It was Charlie. He was directly in the path of the wave. He had obviously just arrived in the Nightmare Passage, because his back was turned to the wind, thinking he could hold out against it. His eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. He couldn’t see the approaching wave.
Ann yelled for him to jump, but he couldn’t hear her. He looked blearily around him and attempted to stand. As soon as he did the wind gleefully picked him up and threw him on his back. He skidded across the ground, yelling in pain.
Someone else tumbled past him—a flash of yellow nightie. Ann knew who it was at once and screamed. Gwyneth was too small and light to fight the winds. They picked her up and threw her wherever they liked.
Behind her an older boy was crawling his way across the ice. He couldn’t catch Gwyneth, but he was trying to reach Charlie.
“Oliver!” Ann wailed.
Daniel stared at her curiously.
“Please! Can we reach them in time?” she begged. Daniel gazed at the wave, and shook his head, no.
“Not even Charlie?”
Daniel estimated the size of what was coming and shook his head again. Gwyneth was already just a smudge of yellow, lost in the distance. Charlie and Oliver hung on, both clinging to the bare ice with their fingernails.
The storm-wave brewed behind them. This one was so huge that other people were risking themselves to try to reach the boys, but there wasn’t enough time. Oliver made a last desperate attempt to slide sideways across the plain to snag hold of Charlie. The wind flowed under him, flipped him over and dragged him several yards on his face. He slammed his hands into the ground as a break, and stood again. The last thing Ann saw before the wave swept over her was Oliver leaning into the wind, his bloodied face pointed at the oncoming wave, shrieking defiantly into the heart of the Nightmare Passage.
The Ghost Mother sat in Isabella’s old chair, gently rocking herself back and forth. She felt robust and strong—Sarah’s body was far healthier than hers had ever been. Eventually, using it, no doubt she would be able to leave this house and find a child somewhere to love again. She sighed, feeling calm, strangely calm considering what she was about to do. Naturally, she had regrets about that. Why couldn’t Jack have just accepted her? Why had he so mercilessly pressed her until she showed him too much? There was no chance of transforming him into a loving son now, not after he saw what she did to Charlie and Gwyneth.
But at least that made choices simpler. No further requirement now to lie or worry about how well she was imitating Sarah. She only needed to get up, go to Jack’s room, and do it quickly. Perhaps she could do it while he was still unconscious. Before he woke again. Yes, if he was asleep she wouldn’t have to chase him around the room. It would be less messy that way, and she’d waste far less energy on the task.
“Don’t. Please don’t,” begged Sarah. “There’s no need to kill him. If you let him go, I won’t fight you anymore. I’ll leave you alone. You can have my body for as long as you want. I’ll leave you in peace. I’ll never say a word. Let me talk to him, explain. He’ll understand. I’ll make him stop fighting you. Just don’t hurt him.”
“I have to,” the Ghost Mother answered. “Now that the other children are gone, I need Jack’s soul-energy to keep me out of the Nightmare Passage. I can’t take it from him while he’s alive. You shouldn’t have fought me so hard, Sarah. It’s because of you that I’m so weak.”
“Please . . .”
Sarah continued to plead with her. Eventually the Ghost Mother grew weary of it. She decided to get it over with and stood up from the chair. Sarah started to scream, of course, but the Ghost Mother had a feeling that she would be less noisy after her own hands had done the work on her son.
Jack woke midmorning from his blackout on the floor of Sarah’s bedroom, with no idea how much time had passed. He’d never felt weaker in his life. His legs shook as he stood up and his tongue felt thick and filmy. But at least he was breathing. At least he was still alive.
“Jack? Are you awake?”
He swung around with the crazy hope it might be Isabella.
But it was her, of course.
The Ghost Mother stood in the doorway, holding a pillow. She slowly entered the room and closed the door behind her. She placed the pillow beside the bed. Jack didn’t trust himself to say anything. Her eyes refused to meet his.
“I had hoped you would be asleep, and . . .” The Ghost Mother stopped herself, gave Jack a thin smile. “Well, never mind, never mind.” She moved toward him and he backed off, but not quickly enough. Her hands were all over him. “You wanted to know it all, Jack,” she whispered in his ear, stretching her hands across his face, cradling his scalp. “Perhaps you deserve to. Yes, I think you deserve that much.”
The Ghost Mother floated like a patch of wild lonely grief in Isabella’s room. Her husband, William Terence Rosewood, was long dead. Isabella Kate Rosewood was long dead. The Ghost Mother herself was long dead. Winters and summers dead in Isabella’s old room, alone, and ignoring each new family that came to occupy the farmhouse. Especially the children. After Isabella’s suicide, she did not believe she deserved any more children. Though desperate for another child, someone to love again, she hid in the shade of the cellar to avoid them.
The years rolled by, a lifetime of years, with only the discarded rocking chair for company, until one chilly autumn afternoon arrived when the Ghost Mother could no longer recall Isabella’s face. She screamed that day. More years, and she began to forget what it was like to be a mother at all. She forgot more than that. She forgot what it means to be human.
And eventually, of course, the Nightmare Passage came to claim her anguished soul. If she possessed any remaining sanity before then, it vanished with the first touch of the Nightmare Passage. Jack, in Sarah’s room, felt it now, and twitched with fear despite all the years that had passed since that moment.
With the first brush of the Nightmare Passage across her face the Ghost Mother fled the house. Her spirit had never left the house before, never wanted to, but it did now. It fled, hoping to escape. In her despair, the Ghost Mother even called out to Isabella to save her, but it was too late for that.
She flew. Like all those before her, the Ghost Mother did everything she could to elude the Nightmare Passage. She fluttered across night fields. She let gales blow her far and wide. She coasted across towns that had not even existed when she was alive. And she was fortunate. For a boy was dying that night.
A ten-year-old boy, Daniel. He was at the point of death from a cancerous growth in his brain, but all the pain was now over as his loved ones came for him. From the sky they came, dozens of them, their pale arms reaching down. But the Ghost Mother reached him first. In her desperation to avoid the Nightmare Passage she clung to him, and as her fading spirit held his fresh one, felt the aliveness there, she could not help herself. She took it. She fought off his loved ones until they had to leave, and pressed her face against his, siphoning off the energy she required, not stopping until the shriek of the Nightmare Passage receded.
It was only then that she looked at the boy. Daniel stared at her, terri
fied, watching his loved ones diminish into the sky.
The Ghost Mother understood his terror, but it was so good to hold him. To embrace a child again. To have one in her arms! To care for someone. She saw Daniel’s loved ones depart and knew he was alone with her now.
“I am a mother, or was once,” she told him. “Do not be afraid. I will love you and be your mother now.”
“I only want my mother!” he murmured, but she didn’t listen. Holding him made the loss of Isabella almost bearable again at last. For days she waited in hollows and behind rocks, clutching him tightly, avoiding the winds that would whisk her away, taking only those that guided her back to the house again. Ignoring Daniel’s screams, she flew back.
As soon as he was inside the house, Daniel attempted to leave, but part of his soul was already inside the Ghost Mother. He could not go. His soul was trapped in the house with her, at least until the Nightmare Passage claimed him. He often stood beside an open window, hoping a strong breeze would blow him out of the house, but it never did.
Nevertheless, Daniel had a will of his own. There was one thing he could do to hurt the Ghost Mother. He’d never loved her. He’d withheld that. Even in his loneliness, he never gave in to her pleading for love; he gave her nothing.
So she looked for another who might.
It took a long time, but the Ghost Mother was patient, and eventually, in another town, she discovered a fourteen-year-old girl sweating out her final scarlatina breaths. She waited until all those breaths were gone—and took Ann.
But Ann loved the Ghost Mother no more than Daniel did, and supported Daniel’s disobedience. As punishment, the Ghost Mother did something even she regretted afterwards. The energy she’d removed in her first draft from Daniel was already fading and, after a particularly fierce argument, in a single draft of fear and hunger she drained all of him—his whole soul—and sent him into the Nightmare Passage.
Somehow, it was easier to take souls after that. When Ann rejected her, the Ghost Mother went out and found Charlie and Gwyneth. And when they in their turn rejected her she took a chance on a boy embedded in a car.