The Time of the Ghost

by Diana Wynne Jones

  If you say so, said Sally. I wish I knew the alphabet better. She stared round in search of the S.

  “It’s stopped,” said Fenella, bitterly disappointed.

  “Shsh!” said the others.

  The S was not far from the Z, of course. Sally dragged the glass round there.

  “S,” said Julian Addiman. “Next letter please,” he added loudly.

  All right, snapped Sally. I’m doing my best. This is hard work. Heave on the fizzing fingers and heave. They had the idea now. The arms were yielding more easily. She heaved toward the other end of the alphabet. And stopped. How do I spell my name, anyway? A vowel next. There’s one.

  “E,” said Julian Addiman. “Next letter please.”

  The next part was no one’s fault exactly. It was simply that excitement seized them all, Sally included. She was really communicating! It was the best thing that had happened all day. When she pushed the glass, the arms yielded swiftly, readily—too readily. She had been aiming for the L. Never mind. There’s two L’s in Sally. Bother—missed again! They’re letting it go too hard. Ah, got it. Now I know the rest. There, there, there. Exhausted, Sally pulled away from the ring of fingers and hovered toward the ceiling. Wow, that was hard work! The five round the table took their fingers off the glass and rubbed aching elbows, almost equally exhausted.

  “Imogen, can you read that back?” Julian Addiman said, puzzled.

  Imogen’s voice shook. “S-E-M-O-L-I-N-A,” she said. Then she gave a squawk of laughter and covered her face with the pad.

  “It’s a ghost called Pudding,” said Fenella.

  “Ask them to spell it again,” Ned said urgently.

  “Yes, do,” Howard said, catching the urgency. Sally could actually feel the surge of worry coming from them both. It piled upward out of them like smoke from a bonfire.

  “Why?” said Cart. “Oh, we might as well, but it seems to have gone dead.” She shoved the glass with her finger and nearly toppled it over.

  “See if it will come back again,” said Ned. “Howard and I will if you don’t want to.”

  Ned Jenkins and Will Howard looked at one another. Both of them put their fingers back on the glass.

  “What’s the fuss?” said Julian Addiman. “We’ve got a ghost with a strange sense of humor, that’s all.”

  Cart and Fenella put their fingers to the glass again. Julian Addiman sighed and did the same, with a flourish.

  “There,” he said. Then, loudly, “Spell your name again, please.”

  Oh, very well! said Sally. You’re trying to bore me, aren’t you? But it’s the only way I’ve got to talk to you, so I’ll have to do it. She descended once again and pushed her nonfist into the gentle heat of the gas ring of fingers.

  “Ah!” said Julian Addiman, and his eyes glared laughing excitement. Ned and Will, however, were entirely serious. Their eyes flickered nervously to each letter in the circle as the glass trundled off toward it. This time it was easier. Sally was getting to know where the letters were. The others were ready for the movement of the glass when it came, and there was less excitement to interfere. With very little trouble, Sally spelled out S-A-L-L-Y.

  “I thought so!” said Ned, and Cart burst out, “It can’t be! It must be some other Sally!”

  “Everyone in School House calls your Sally Semolina,” said Howard. “Because of her being Selina.”

  “I tell you it can’t be!” Cart said vehemently. “Our Sally’s all right! She’s just gone to stay with Audrey Chambers—just up the hill.” This was news to Sally. She stared at Cart to see if she was telling the truth. She seemed to be. Cart was a bad liar. Then she stared at Fenella as Fenella said, “But don’t tell anyone. That’s the other part of the Plan.” Fenella was a good liar. There was no way to tell if this was the truth or not. Sally turned to Imogen as Imogen added, “We hope the parents will think she’s dead or kidnapped—if they notice at all, that is.” Imogen was a rotten liar. This was obviously the truth.

  Then what’s going on, then? Sally cried out.

  “Come on,” said Ned. “Before it goes away again.” He spoke clearly to the air in front of him. “Prove to us that you’re Sally Melford.”

  “By saying something we know only you could know,” Howard added.

  Sally could think of one thing—only one. It seemed a pity it was going to embarrass Howard, but she had to make them sure. She heaved on the fizzing space between the fingers again. Where’s the H? Down that side. The glass traveled easily to H to O to W, but after that Sally lost her way again. She stopped beside the W, looking at everyone’s intent face, wondering where she was supposed to be taking the glass next. Nobody spoke. Somebody breathed heavily. Beyond Cart and Ned, Imogen sat bowed toward the pad of paper, pencil ready, still with that odd listening look. Again Sally was struck with how miserable Imogen was. She was supposed to be talking about Howard and Imogen, of course. Where was the I now?

  “I-M-O,” everyone murmured as the glass slid. Sally was rather put off her stride by it. When people spell a thing out as you write it, you feel you have to hurry to provide them with the next letter. Hurry! thought Sally. What comes after Imo? Obvious, really. “G-R-I-V-I-E-N-G,” everyone murmured. Sally paused, rather pleased she had remembered to put the E in grieving. It was so easy to get lost between letters.

  “That doesn’t prove much,” Howard murmured to Ned. They both seemed disappointed, but oddly relieved at the same time.

  That reminded her. Oh, this is bothersome! She set the glass trundling again. W-L-L—there should have been an I in that, but too late now. H-O-M-S-J—Bother! Missed!—K-I-N-H-E-D-G-I-M-O-G—

  “Oh, good gracious!” Imogen shrieked, jumping up. “It really is Sally!”

  Sally hovered, resting from her labors, watching two round, heavy tears roll across Imogen’s cheeks. Howard’s otter face glowed dark pink.

  “Why is it Sally?” Julian Addiman asked, leaning back and stretching. “What’s Homsjkin? Somewhere in Holland?”

  Cart explained, “Imogen found Will being homesick in the hedge. But Imogen—” Julian Addiman looked round at Howard and chuckled, not kindly.

  Imogen clenched her hands and dug the air with her elbows for emphasis. “I know it’s Sally! She’s reminding me about Will, and she’s worrying about me. That’s just Sally all over!” She spoke to the air above Julian Addiman’s head. “It’s all right, Sally. You mustn’t worry about me. You tell us what’s the matter with you. Move up, Cart. I’m sure she’ll find it easier to talk if I’m holding the glass, too.” And Imogen thrust Cart sideways to plunge one of her fingers down on the glass. “Now, Sally,” she said, “tell me all about it.”

  Sally was touched. Another tear was trickling down Imogen’s face. All the same, she was a trifle annoyed. She had not meant to ask about Imogen, and she did wish everyone would not speak to her so loudly and slowly, as if ghosts were deaf or very stupid.

  “It’s not moving,” said Ned.

  “It was a mischievous ghost playing a trick, I expect,” said Fenella.

  Shut up, Fenella, said Sally. Here we go again, then. Imogen’s finger made the glass harder to push, not easier. Sally put her whole force into it and heaved. The trouble was, she thought as she heaved, she could not tell Imogen all about it because she did not know herself. It seemed easiest to ask a question. A-M, spelled Sally, with great effort, M-no-J-no-N—oh, I give up!—D-E-A-D.

  She was thoroughly startled by the effect this had. Cart, Will, and Ned jumped up beside Imogen. At least two chairs fell over, and somebody must have trodden on Oliver, too. He sprang up with a yelp. There was such a babble of worried talk that Sally went right up to the ceiling and hung there to avoid the noise.

  Imogen was shrieking. “Oh, what’s happened, what’s happened?” and Ned was shouting, “I knew it was!” Howard was saying, “Look here, this is serious. I think your practical joke misfired somehow.” And Cart was bellowing, “Shut up, everyone! Keep calm! This is serious!”

>   Julian Addiman scraped his chair and coughed for attention. “Look, if this nonsense really worries you, all you’ve got to do to disprove it is to telephone Sally’s friend.”

  “Stupid,” said Fenella. “If Sally’s dead, she can’t talk on the phone.”

  “I don’t think this was Sally,” said Julian. “Not for one moment. Come on, Cart. You go and phone. I’ll come with you.”

  “It was a ghost, though!” Fenella called after Julian as he and Cart hurried to the door.

  Julian Addiman held the door open for Cart and answered as he followed her through it, “Don’t believe in them.”

  What do you think I was, then? Sally yelled after him.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Julian and Cart were gone a long time. For the first ten minutes everyone sat quiet and tense. For the second ten minutes everyone fidgeted. Howard built a pile of Scrabble letters, and Imogen made a swift, bold drawing of him doing it. It was quite like him, Sally thought, watching over Imogen’s shoulder. Then Imogen threw down her pencil.

  “Whatever are they doing?”

  “Perhaps they ran into Himself,” Ned suggested uneasily.

  Fenella turned in her chair to give him her most scathing stare. “They’re kissing,” she said, with deep contempt.

  This caused another silence, an embarrassed one. During it Sally wondered if Fenella was right. She had a strong feeling that Julian Addiman might kiss people when it was dark, as it was by now. She could not understand why this should make her feel so relieved. She had just decided to set off and find out the truth when Howard said, “This Plan of yours—does Sally just disappear indefinitely, or what?”

  “Until a parent notices,” said Imogen.

  “But,” said Howard, “wouldn’t it have made more sense to have sent your parents some kind of letter?”

  “We tried that,” said Imogen, “but none of us could think of the right thing to write. So we decided just to wait until they noticed.”

  “It seems a bit strange to me,” said Howard.

  “We are strange,” said Fenella.

  At that point Cart came back. She was alone. She crashed through the door into the kitchen like an advancing tank, and her face was radiant with relief. “It’s all right!” she said. “Sally is at Mangan Farm. They’d gone up to bed—Sally and Audrey—but Mrs. Chambers said she could hear them talking. So, phew! I was worried for a moment, but it really is all right. That couldn’t have been Sally.”

  There was a certain amount of laughter and some exclaiming from the others, but it was short and troubled and rather sheepish. Howard and Jenkins said they would be going now. While Fenella was seeing them through the green door, Imogen swept the Scrabble letters back into their sponge bag. “Good,” she said. “It must have been an evil spirit then. Where’s Julian?”

  “He didn’t bother to come back. It’s almost time for the bell,” Cart said, dismissing Julian without a trace of self-consciousness and even with some impatience.

  Sally found herself looking at Cart in dismay. Cart was no longer keen on Julian Addiman; nothing could be plainer. Whatever had happened over the telephone, it had been final. Some of Cart’s obvious relief was due to this. What Sally could not understand was why Cart’s relief should make her heart sink so. She felt doomed, as if there was something she must go through with now. And that was as inexplicable as the fact that Cart so clearly believed that Sally was at Mangan Farm with Audrey Chambers. There must be some mistake, surely! Yet Cart was just not capable of lying and looking relieved at once. Sally did not know what to think.

  A bell began to ring beyond the green door, meaning it was bedtime in School. Howard and Jenkins had only just left in time. “Bedtime,” said Cart. “I’m tired out.”

  From sheer habit Sally went upstairs with the other three. She felt tired and depressed after her efforts at pushing the glass—efforts which had come to nothing, too, except to give Imogen the idea she was an evil spirit. Sally’s disembodied mind hurt that Imogen should think that. I’m Sally, she told herself. I know I am. When Mother comes in after School bedtime to tuck us up, I shall make her notice me and get her to realize I’m not an evil spirit. But I wish I understood how I can be in two places at once!

  While she waited for Phyllis, she hung around watching her sisters undressing. None of them troubled to wash, not even Imogen, who took more care over undressing than the other two. Fenella was ready first. She put on a short grayish nylon nightgown, out of which her stomach bulged crudely, and went wandering round the room, surveying the pictures on the walls.

  “Can mice knock over wastepaper baskets?” she asked, when she came to the Rude Rug.

  “Probably not,” said Cart.

  To Sally’s disgust, nobody bothered to pick the basket up or made the slightest attempt to gather up the fallen papers. Cart stood in the middle of the torn letters with only a pair of pants on, looking down at her large, wobbly body rather critically.

  “Do you think Phyllis would let me wear a bra?” she asked Imogen.

  “No. Himself would say it was too expensive,” said Fenella, and climbed on the bureau.

  Imogen was carefully arraying herself in a wilted pair of pale green pajamas. Sally knew those pajamas. They had once belonged to Phyllis. Imogen had rescued them from the dustbin. Like the yellow trouser suit, they were far too big for Imogen. They were decorated with grimy green lace, most of which was torn, and hung off Imogen’s wrists and ankles in loops. Imogen, however, carefully slid a mirror out from behind one of the beds and looked at herself in it with some complacency. Her tear-swollen face looked happier at what she saw. “You don’t need a bra,” she said to Cart, “if you intend to be a properly liberated woman.”

  “I don’t think I am that liberated,” said Cart, still surveying herself.

  “No, Imogen,” said Fenella. “Cart means, will it please boys?”

  Fenella’s voice came from above somewhere. Sally looked and found that Fenella had climbed onto one of the three wavy beams that ran across in the roof. As she spoke, Fenella set off to walk along the beam, spreading her bony arms wide and swaying like a banking airplane. Stop it! Sally shrieked, quite horrified. You’ll break your neck!

  Fenella, of course, did not hear. She continued to shuffle and sway along the length of wavy black timber. Neither of her sisters seemed alarmed. Cart said coldly, “Shut up, Fenella,” and put her head inside a great baglike nightdress. Imogen lay down on the unmade bed nearest her. She put her arms behind her head and stared up at Fenella without seeming very interested. Sally had a strong feeling that Fenella had walked along that beam many times before. But she was still terrified. Suppose Fenella fell! She was so frightened that she found she had zoomed up beside Fenella and was flittering round her, before she was aware.

  Sally’s presence seemed to disconcert Fenella. Her thin arms whirled. She leaned out sideways. Next second she was hanging upside down, with her knees hooked over the beam. Her face looked exasperated.

  “You look like a monkey,” remarked Imogen.

  “The evil spirit knocked me off,” Fenella said crossly, upside down. “Throw me up a skipping rope. I want to play Tarzan.”

  “Get one for yourself,” said Cart. She was climbing into bed, and, to Sally’s astonishment, it was the one bed which was neatly made. So that meant that one of the two remaining unmade beds must be Sally’s.

  In her disgust, Sally descended to the Rude Rug again. I don’t think much of your Plan! she said. If you don’t make my bed, how on earth is Phyllis to know it hasn’t been slept in when she comes?

  She need not have spoken. Imogen and Cart were both laughing at Fenella’s attempts to climb back on the beam again. Fenella was laughing, too. In fact, as Sally saw with exasperation, they had all three suddenly become very silly. This happened quite often. Usually they got silly after something upsetting had happened. In this case, it must have been the séance. Now it was as if a gale of idiocy swept among them, whirli
ng Imogen’s grief away, forcing high, neighing giggles from Fenella’s upside-down mouth, and carrying Cart into such gusts of hilarity that not one of her fenced and careful thoughts remained. It was maddening. The room rang with screams and squeals of silly laughter.

  Sally hovered up and down on the Rude Rug, shouting, What about ME? If Phyllis comes to tuck us up and finds you like this, she’s never going to NOTICE your beastly Plan!

  “No, no!” Cart shrieked, lying heaving and red-faced on her neat bed. “No—a pantomime!” Sally had no idea what she was talking about.

  “With all the fairies flying upside down!” giggled Fenella.

  “Let’s try!” howled Imogen. “Bags I try! I’ve always wanted to know how it feels!”

  “All right! Let’s try it!” screamed Cart, bouncing from her bed.

  At the same moment Fenella, screaming “Whoopee!” whirled out from her beam and landed with a jangle on the bed Cart had just left. It was a miracle that she hit the bed and did not collide with Cart on the way. But, Sally recalled shakenly, Fenella always did jump to Cart’s bed. Sometimes she hit Cart, sometimes not, but she never hurt herself, and she always looked as if she was going to miss the bed entirely. And Sally always protested.

  Fenella! You could kill yourself! she was saying, when Cart arrived on the Rude Rug, too, and shoved her aside. Sally found herself squashed against the paintings on the wall, watching the ballooning Cart heave at the second drawer down in the bureau. Hey! Sally complained. That’s my drawer!

  “It’s all right,” Cart said over her shoulder to Fenella. “I know she had at least two.”

  “That should be long enough,” Fenella agreed.

  Imogen was still lying staring up at the beams. Her face had become suffused with silly dreaminess. “I think it will be the most exquisitely beautiful experience,” she said.

  Irritably Sally wondered what was going on. She suspected it was something idiotic and that Phyllis would arrive in the middle of it and be angry—too angry to notice Sally was missing. She watched anxiously as the loaded drawer was heaved out.