The Time of the Ghost (12 page)

“About once a year,” muttered Fenella.

Phyllis shut her eyes in order not to hear this. It was one of Fenella's stupid remarks. “Every time,” she repeated, “I'm impressed by the serenity and passion of her profile. It reminds me of Myra Hess. I know Imogen is cut out to be a concert pianist. Your father would be so disappointed if she gave up.”

At this Imogen turned her weak smile on Cart. She seemed comforted.

Phyllis noticed Cart and seemed to feel Cart might feel left out. “Just as,” she said kindly, “Charlotte has all the brains and none of the looks in the family, so Imogen has both the looks and the musical talent. Charlotte must go to university. She's cut out to be a teacher.”

“What about me?” said Fenella.

Phyllis turned her golden gaze on Fenella. “Well—” she said. She was rather at a loss.

“I shall be an acrobat,” Fenella said earnestly.

Phyllis ignored this. It was another of Fenella's silly remarks. “It will be something quaint and unusual, that I do know.”

Cart, meanwhile, had been considering, in a slow, puzzled way. “You know, I don't think I
am
cut out to be a teacher,” she said. “People don't listen to what I say.”

Phyllis ignored this, too. It was one of Cart's silly remarks. She gave them all a tired smile and turned to leave.

Sally jumped—or rather hovered—up and down on the Rude Rug.
What about me?
Such was her anxiety to be noticed that she actually caused one or two feathers to drift up from the floor, but if anyone noticed them, they must have thought they were blown in the draft from the door as Phyllis held it open.

It was Imogen who, typically, broke the rules of the Plan. “What about Sally?” she asked. She still could only speak in a husky gasp.

“Sally?” Phyllis paused in the doorway. She did glance at Sally's bed. She seemed surprised—but only mildly surprised—to find it empty. “Well, people who are not brainy are usually very good at art, you know. I think Sally has a great career as an artist.” By now she was nearly through the door.

A great black feather whirled halfway to the ceiling as Sally called out despairingly,
But I'm NOT HERE!

“Mother,” Fenella said abruptly, in the deep, commanding voice she used on Mrs. Gill. “Mother, don't you think we are all rather neglected?” Phyllis turned and frowned at Fenella over her shoulder. Fenella twisted her beaky face somehow into an improbably enchanting smile. “We suffer from lack of attention,” she said. She took up one of the knots her hair was tied into and twiddled it meaningly. “You look after the boys, but you don't look after us,” she explained, twiddling.

Cart and Imogen were aghast at Fenella's daring, but Phyllis was merely wearily amused. It was another of Fenella's silly remarks. “Oh, Fenella! The boys are all away from home and they need attention. Besides, boys are helpless and girls know very well how to look after themselves. Now be a good girl and go to sleep.”

She went away downstairs as she said it, leaving them all speechless. Downstairs they heard her golden voice murmuring to Oliver in the way which always made Oliver try to lick her face. Then they heard the green door shut behind her.

“I made sure she was going to notice my knots,” Fenella said, mortified.

Imogen husked, “At least we didn't get into trouble.”

“Wait a moment!” Cart exclaimed. “Who
did
push the panic button? It couldn't have been me, because I was hanging on to the rope.”

“So was I,” said Fenella. “So.”

“And I was strangling,” husked Imogen.

“That's just what I mean!” shouted Cart. “But the bell rang because Phyllis heard it. So who
did
push it? There's only one person I know who'd do a stupid thing like that.”

Sally's sisters stared at one another, frightened, annoyed, and astonished. “Sally!” they all said together.

“Do you mean the ghost was really Sally after all?” Imogen quavered. She gripped the edge of her bedclothes, ready to pull them over her head.

“No,” Cart said thoughtfully. “We know Sally's with Audrey, so it can't be
really
Sally. But what's to stop it being a poor lost spirit that
thinks
it's Sally?”

Fenella chuckled, the deep, dirty chuckle which she called her Evil Laugh. “And what's more, it's here at the moment, listening to every word we say!”

Imogen uttered a husky scream and slid under her bedclothes.

“What did you want to say that for?” Cart said to Fenella. “Imogen's had an awful day, one way and another. Keep your big mouth shut, or I won't let you help me get rid of it.”

“Do you know how to get rid of it?” Fenella said.

“Yes,” Cart said tightly. She got off Imogen's bed and lumbered over to the chest of drawers again. This time she opened her own tidy, nearly empty drawer and took out a small red leather book. Sally, fluttering by her shoulder, saw that it was a prayer book and felt suddenly peculiar. “Fenella,” said Cart, “I'll need your cowbell.”

Fenella's mouth came open, showing two large, gappy front teeth. And well might Fenella be astonished, Sally thought, remembering that cowbell. Fenella had gone about clanking it for a whole fortnight and intoning, “Unclean! Unclean!” at the top of her large, booming voice. Fenella had intoned and clanked until all three of her sisters, driven to three different distractions, had threatened Fenella with three different dreadful fates if that bell was ever seen or heard again. And how, Sally thought, suddenly indignant, could a person remember that bell and not be Sally? Of course she was Sally, ghost or not!

“And we'll need your Monigan candle, too,” Cart said to the quaking heap that was Imogen.

A cautious flap of sheet peeled back. Imogen's face appeared, looking—maybe because it was flushed from being under the bedclothes—rather healthier than before. “You're going to exorcise it,” she said, “with bell, book, and candle, aren't you? I think it's an extremely intelligent idea.”

No, it isn't!
Sally said, angry and unheard.
I refuse to be exorcised! I've as much right to be here as you have!

As she said it, Cart's drawer and Sally's own were being pushed heavily in, releasing a further cloud of black feathers, and Fenella was rather helplessly turning over wads of music in Imogen's drawer.

“It's down the left-hand side,” Imogen said, sitting up warily.

Fenella found the candle. Sally remembered the candle as well as the cowbell, which Fenella next dug out from among the dolls in her own drawer. Cart had made the candle a year ago, when she invented the Worship of Monigan, out of stumps of other candles and the lace of a gym shoe. She had tried to dye it blue by melting poster paint in the wax, and she had tried to scent it by pouring in some perfume Imogen had bought at Woolworth's. The result was a gray, knobby thing, like a monster fungus, with a most peculiar smell.

“Where are the matches?” said Fenella.

There was a short silence. “Downstairs,” said Imogen. “And,” she added in a gabbling shriek, “I'm not going. There's a ghost down there! I'm
scared
!” Upon which she vanished under the bedclothes again.

“Bags I not either,” Cart said hastily.

Fenella stood up with scornful grandeur. “I sometimes think,” she said, “that I do all the dirty work round here. Of course I'll go.” She marched to the door and then turned, so that only her nose and her gray nylon stomach showed beyond the door frame. “Stupids,” she said. “The ghost was what Oliver was growling at all day. And he's not growling now, so the ghost is up
here.
” The nose and the stomach vanished. Fenella's bony feet went thudding downstairs.

Sally had half a mind to go after Fenella so that Oliver would growl. On the other hand, she had two people to scare up here. The lump in Imogen's bed was quivering and uttering low, howling sounds. Cart's face was pale and her fingers shook as she turned over the little thin pages of the prayer book.

“Oh, dear,” Cart said, trying to sound natural. “The Order of Baptism for Those of Riper Years, The Catechism, The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony. They don't seem to give exorcism. Do you think the Litany would do? Or should we use The Order for the Burial of the Dead?”

“Ooh-ow! Ooh-ow!” went the lump that was Imogen.

“The Thanksgiving of Women After Childbirth,” said Cart. “No, that won't do. A Commination—what's that?—or Denouncing of God's Anger and Judgments Against Sinners. That looks more like it. I think we'd better use that. The rest is all Prayers at Sea and ordaining bishops.”

Sally made a gesture she hoped was folding her nonexistent arms and stayed hovering among the feathers on the Rude Rug. Nothing they could do would induce her to leave. She was their sister, for goodness' sake!

Nevertheless, when Fenella thumped upstairs with the matches, and Imogen was induced—by means of a very unkind prod from Cart—to sit up shakily holding the smoking, flickering fungoid candle, Sally had a sudden feeling of uneasiness. It was not serious. It was as if she had lost something just a little important, like a book or a pen. But it was definite. When Fenella took up the fat cup-shaped cowbell and began to clank it backward and forward, the feeling increased. Sally felt frightened and lost and somehow desperate.

“Will it work without a priest?” Fenella said through the clanks.

“We have to will it to,” said Cart. She began to read in a pompous, priestly voice. “‘Cursed is the man that maketh any carved or molten image to worship it. And the people shall answer and say, Amen.'”

“Amen,” said Imogen and Fenella obediently.

“‘Cursed is he that curseth his father or mother. Cursed is he that removeth his neighbor's landmark.'”

“Are you sure that's right?” said Imogen.

“That's what it says,” said Cart. “Perhaps I'd better skip that and get on to the solid stuff. Here we are. ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God: he shall pour down rain upon the sinners, snares, fire and brimstone, storm and tempest; this shall be their portion to drink. For lo, the Lord is come out of his place to visit the wickedness of such as dwell upon the earth.'”

The now-familiar panic began to grow in Sally. She looked from face to face. Cart's was set and concentrated, so that the big features were no longer blurred, but clear and implacable. Fenella's face, as she swung her bell, looked older, intense and beaky and ferocious. Imogen stared at her wavering candle with a little clear crease in her brow. She looked worried, as she always did when she was exercising her willpower. Sally knew they were all willing, willing mightily, the ghost to go away. The panic went on rising in her, and with it a sense of loss and desolation.

Cart intoned, “‘But who may abide the day of his coming? Who shall be able to endure when he appeareth? His fan is in his hand, and he will purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the barn; but he will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. The day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.'”

And suddenly, as it had before the séance, Sally found the scene was splitting apart. Shreds of Cart, of Fenella, of Imogen and the candle swung this way and that.

“‘But let us,'” intoned Cart, “‘while we have the light, believe in the light, and walk as the children of light; that we be not cast into utter darkness, where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Let us not abuse the goodness of God, who calleth us mercifully to amendment.'”

Now, with every word Cart intoned, with every clank of the cowbell, the splits in the scene grew wider. And behind the splits—Sally screamed, a soundless scream. There was a fat, shapeless gray thing there, in the darkness behind, like a cocoon, or a mummy, or a beetle grub. It was huge, and it was trying to draw her in, through the widening splits, into itself.

No!
Sally shrieked. Anything rather than be drawn in by that fat gray grub. She let herself be whirled by her panic, out, along, away, through the night, she had no idea where, whirling and tumbling, until at last the panic faded. She found herself out in the dark countryside, going up the road she had first come down.

Perhaps I shall just go away again, the way I came, back into nothing
, she said miserably. But there seemed no reason in that. Maybe her sisters did not want her, but there were still so many things she did not understand. She still had no idea why she was a ghost like this. She wanted to know. And while she was considering how she might find out, she was drifting steadily—almost purposefully—up the road. It was a still, mild night, scented with hay and indistinct flowers. Sally felt soothed by it. But it was so dark that she was scared at first.

Silly!
she told herself.
Ghosts aren't scared of ghosts!

Besides, she soon realized, it was not utterly dark. The road glimmered, a faint grayish white between the jetty black, rustling hedges. The stars blazed overhead, like diamonds strewn on blue-black velvet, so bright that some were clearly green, or orange, or faintly blue—not the twinkly silver things Sally had always supposed they were. Some were pearly in places where small wisps of cloud hung in front of them. And when Sally raised herself above the hedges, the fields beyond were pearly, too, silvered with damp, scented mist, with black trees standing expectantly about in it.