by Cliff McNish
Today, Ann saw, was going to hurt. The Ghost Mother looked in no mood to restrict her appetite. The new boy, Jack, clearly excited her beyond belief.
As the Ghost Mother dipped her face closer, Ann stared straight ahead. “Don’t take too much,” she said, hating how feeble she sounded. “I am . . . already close to the Nightmare Passage.”
The Ghost Mother drew back. “You have felt it?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“Like a cold lip on my heart.”
The Ghost Mother nodded, satisfied that Ann wasn’t lying.
Ann had never forgotten her only glimpse of the Nightmare Passage. She’d seen a child’s soul enter it, a boy—eleven-year-old Daniel. When the Ghost Mother first captured Ann, and took her back to the farmhouse, Daniel’s soul was already there. He’d been trapped for many years already. Gradually Ann saw his energy dwindle, until the Nightmare Passage came to claim him. Ann always blamed herself for that. She could have delayed the moment. But Daniel had a rebellious spirit, like Oliver, and she’d enjoyed that, and actively encouraged him to resist. As a result, Daniel’s spirit faded faster.
“I am coming toward you now,” the Ghost Mother said.
Ann nodded. She had learned that it was best not to resist the Ghost Mother at these times. If she did, the Ghost Mother only went berserk and took more. Better to pretend a little affection—or at least acceptance. Not to cringe when she came too close.
Oliver hated to see Ann submit this way, but he didn’t understand. He thought nothing could be worse than allowing the Ghost Mother to slowly feed off their souls. Ann knew better. The Nightmare Passage was worse. Even this miserable life—playing hide-and-seek around the house, avoiding the Ghost Mother as often as they could—was better than anything awaiting them in the Nightmare Passage. Eventually their souls would all end up there, of course, but Ann did what she could to delay that moment. Ever since Gwyneth’s and Charlie’s spirits had been dragged into the house, her efforts had gone into shielding them from the Ghost Mother’s appetite as best she could.
But the price was high. The price was her own soul.
“Do the others realize you are close to the Nightmare Passage?” the Ghost Mother asked.
“Only Oliver.”
“Why haven’t you told Charlie and Gwyneth?”
“Why should I?”
That’s what you’d have done, isn’t it? Ann thought. Frightened them. Used them to gain a little sympathy, then sacrificed them to save yourself, as you always do. But Ann didn’t say this. The Ghost Mother was impulsive enough. Better to give her everything she needed without objecting. However, part of Ann wanted to delay the moment the Ghost Mother started to feed. She couldn’t help that.
“Do you remember Daniel?” she asked, stirring up the oldest memory between them.
The Ghost Mother took her time to recall. “Yes,” she said eventually. “How could I forget? Of all of you, Daniel was most like Oliver. When I left the house, and found him in that town, he fought me hard. I was lucky to be able to fend off his loved ones when the moment came. I had to dig my nails into his soul for a long time before they left and I could bring him back here.”
“He entered the Nightmare Passage forty-two years ago.”
“That long?” The Ghost Mother pondered a moment. “Well, he was my first soul. I did not know how to ration myself. If I had not made such a mistake, he might still be here for me to feed from. You taught me a great deal, Ann. I am grateful for that, and for what you are about to give me now.” She faced her expectantly. “Well?”
“I’m ready.”
Ann straightened out her slip. The Ghost Mother approached, enveloping her in her arms. It was the clumsy, almost sentimental, way she preferred, and Ann allowed it. Then, knowing what was next, she parted her lips. The Ghost Mother took hold of Ann’s head, twisting it this way and that, until she found the best angle, a good seal on her mouth. Ann did not resist her. It was easier this way. She didn’t want the Ghost Mother to have to fight her; it would only make her take more.
Ann’s energy shot into the Ghost Mother, and the Ghost Mother convulsed. Closing her eyes in disgust, Ann felt the ripples through her body, the emptying, but did not pull away. It was difficult, but over the years she had learned not to scream. The pain was more bearable once the flow was underway, but at the start it was always hard.
This time, however, felt worse than usual; something was wrong.
“Wait,” she tried to say, but the seal on her lips was too tight.
She struggled to pull away. The Ghost Mother grunted, holding her more tightly.
What was happening? The flow felt different. And then Ann realized what was wrong. Already weakened after all the years of giving, she had almost nothing left. For the first time, Ann’s soul was truly close to entering the Nightmare Passage.
“No!” she begged, trying to pull her lips away.
The Ghost Mother pressed herself closer, not ready to end the feeding yet.
“What . . . what are you doing?”
A voice from the kitchen.
It was Jack, in disbelief, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. He’d heard whispering, and arrived to see the Ghost Mother’s face attached to the mouth of a teenage girl with long red hair. He saw Ann pull her face away from the distracted Ghost Mother, and something leak out of her mouth. Then Ann quickly jumped on a breeze that took her beyond Jack into the kitchen. “Thank you,” she murmured brokenly, as she floated past him.
The Ghost Mother wiped her lips, an obscene gesture, obviously wanting to follow Ann, but held rooted by whatever Jack made of this.
Fluttering, nervous, she eyed him warily.
“I saw you doing something to her face,” he said. “What was it?”
“Nothing, Jack. She was . . . unharmed, as you saw.”
“Unharmed?” Jack watched Ann drifting with difficulty down the corridor, a hand across her mouth. Oliver came back, lifting Ann in his arms, his face anguished. Then he soared away along the corridor, holding Ann’s head up.
Jack turned back to the Ghost Mother.
“Whatever the children told you earlier is untrue,” she said. “I warned you about them, Jack.”
“They say you have their souls.”
“That is not so.”
“I know about the Nightmare Passage.” He watched her face twitch with fear. “You left this house, found their souls, and used them somehow to keep you out of it, didn’t you?”
The Ghost Mother said nothing.
Jack stepped toward her, determined to grasp her wrists, find out that way if she wouldn’t tell him voluntarily.
She swayed away. “It’s . . . a lie, Jack. I haven’t hurt them.”
“Haven’t you?”
She stared at him, a pitiful look asking for forgiveness.
“I’ll never love you,” Jack said. “And I’ll never call you mother. You know that, don’t you? I’ll never do it. Let their souls go!”
The Ghost Mother shook her head. “Don’t blame me. Please . . .” Her face crumpled. “Please, Jack, don’t hate me. I can see it in your eyes. Please . . .”
“If you let them go, I’ll try to help you. I’ll stay with you if I can.”
“Stay with me? Oh, but Sarah will not change her mind about leaving tomorrow, Jack. That is not going to happen, is it?” Her face was suddenly resigned. “In any case, what hope do I have that you will truly love me now that you have seen this?” She sighed deeply, turning her back on him. “Soon you will be gone,” she muttered. “And once you are, nothing will have changed. It will be just me and the ghost children again, living together as we always have these past years. You have broken my heart, Jack, but I have become acquainted with many such disappointments and lacerations of the heart. Yes, I can live with this one as well.”
She drifted away, slipping beyond his reach.
“No. Don’t leave yet,” Jack said. “Let me . . . help you. I want to. I
want to understand!”
He followed her as she floated out into the corridor toward the staircase.
Oliver, with Ann lying in his arms, slipped down the banister to the lower part of the house. The Ghost Mother flowed up the staircase, for once not chasing him. Jack couldn’t follow both the children and the Ghost Mother. After an agonizing moment of indecision, he chose to follow the Ghost Mother.
“Don’t leave now,” he begged, as she headed away. “Please. I have to talk to you. I need to!” His voice was frayed—the asthma acting up again. Stopped from following her by a sharp pain in his chest, he reached out an arm to the Ghost Mother. She did not look back at him. Rising, she slipped under a crack between the stairs and entered a part of the house where Jack could never follow. He stood there, thumping the stairs in frustration, asthma building in his lungs.
When he next looked up, Sarah was staring down at him from the landing.
How does a mother protect her child from something she cannot understand? Sarah saw only this: Jack crazily bashing the stairs, pleading at the empty air, screaming over and over for a ghost to come back to talk to him. As he rushed through his story, it was the sheer detail of the world Jack had constructed for himself that dismayed her more than anything. What a terrible mistake, coming to this old house, she thought. It had only worsened the grief he felt over his father’s death. The expression of heartfelt certainty on Jack’s face when he told her his dad’s spirit was still alive somewhere nearly made her cry.
Obviously, they had to get out of this house. She would have left at once, there and then, except Jack was bound to resist, and she didn’t dare risk a physical struggle with him right now. His breathing was erratic, out of control, on the verge of another asthma attack. If he had a second major attack so soon after the last the consequences could be appalling. Somehow she had to keep him calm. So she lied. She told him what he wanted to hear. She pretended that if he got some genuine rest, real sleep, she’d consider staying.
“Really?” Jack could tell she didn’t mean it. “Mum, I’m not making this up. I’m not! It’s all true.”
“I’ll think about staying, all right? I’m not promising anything. But there can’t be any more sneaking around the house. I want you in your room, resting.”
“All right, I will, I will.”
“And you’ll sleep?”
“Yeah, I’ll . . . I’ll try.”
“And no more wandering around the house?”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Jack. You’ve just got to let your chest get some rest.”
Jack stared at her, his shoulders slumping. There was no point going along with the pretense that they were going to stay. Where would that get him?
“Mum, we’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t we? You’ve already decided. You aren’t going to change your mind, are you?”
“Jack . . . I know you’re convinced that—”
“Yes, but you don’t believe me! You don’t, do you?”
“I just think . . .” She hesitated, trying to find a phrase that would keep him calm. “. . . that we ought to get away from here, only a few days, that’s all—”
“No! It won’t just be for a few days, will it? You’ll never let me come back once we’re out of here. I know you won’t!”
“Jack—”
“Mum, you’re wrong! I’m not obsessing over Dad. I’m not. If you’d seen how scared that girl ghost looked you’d do everything you could to help her. It’s not okay to leave the ghost children here. We’ve got to do something to help them. The Mother had her face up against her, and she was—”
“Okay, calm down, calm down.” Please, please, she thought. This argument was stupid, only inflaming his asthma. “Look, the doctor’s coming late tomorrow morning,” she said, in a tone to end the discussion. “Let’s see what he’s got to say. We’ll talk more about it then.”
Jack stared at her sullenly, trying to come up with an argument to change her mind. I’ll beg and plead, he thought. Whatever I need to do to stay. But even as he thought that, Jack knew his mum had the upper hand. After the asthma attacks, she was physically stronger than him. If she wanted to manhandle him out of the house he’d have trouble stopping her.
He allowed himself to be led upstairs, anxious to cooperate about the sleeping if there was any chance it might make any difference in her decision. In any case, he was genuinely exhausted. She was right: too much asthma, not enough catch-up rest. All he wanted to do was go on another search for the ghosts, but he’d only be staggering around or worse if he didn’t get some rest first.
He got into his pajamas and lay on his side, the best position for his lungs. Sarah placed her hands on his shoulder blades, to focus him. It was a method she’d used endless times in the aftermath of asthma attacks, and Jack made himself relax into it. There was no point trying to fake sleep. She’d know. To the sounds of birds singing outside the window, he let the solid warm pressure of her fingers send him off.
While Sarah stayed with Jack, the Ghost Mother waited outside, unable to bear the thought of seeing any tenderness between the two of them. It was only after Sarah left that she sneaked through the open door. Jack was sleeping and, seeing that, the Ghost Mother smiled. He’d said some hurtful things about not loving her earlier, but there was no point letting that spoil their final precious hours together.
How long would she have alone with Jack before Sarah came back? No way to tell. The Ghost Mother hoped she would have at least the early evening with him all to herself. It was as good a time to be with him as any, a gentle warmth slanting across his cheekbones, showing his features off at their finest. Soon the sun would set, and the shadows grow, but even then she would stay near him. Like his own true mother, she would watch over him. And that was appropriate for, after all, hadn’t she once been a mother herself? Now she was a Ghost Mother, but her desire to care for a child was no less strong than that of the live one striding around so anxiously downstairs.
Jack dozed on into the evening, and Sarah, grateful, didn’t wake him. Instead, she made arrangements with a friend to stay the following night, then packed a couple of bags so that they could leave as soon as the doctor gave Jack the all-clear tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to leave now. It wasn’t possible to enjoy a moment in the house after hearing Jack’s bizarre story. Stuffing a raincoat into a backpack, she even caught herself looking up sharply at her reflection in the hall mirror, as if one of his ghosts might be there.
“Stop it,” she told herself. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Later, she crept up to Jack’s room and listened. Even from outside the door she could tell he was lying down, on his side. With relief she noticed that his breathing was more regular, the wheeze gone altogether. She listened for a hesitation, any kind of catch in his throat that might represent an underlying problem. Nothing. He was sleeping soundly.
Tiptoeing back downstairs, she finished packing. Tonight I’ll bring my mattress and sleep in Jack’s room whether he likes it or not, she thought. Making herself a cappuccino and a bite to eat, she wandered into the living room. The fire still glowed faintly and she threw on a last log. For a while she perched edgily on the sofa, looking around for something to occupy her. Then she went to check on Jack again. She was relieved to find him still sleeping. Snoring, in fact. Hearing that, she relaxed for the first time that day. She went back downstairs and lay on the sofa, stretching out her tense back muscles. The fire was almost gutted, and the living room fairly dark.
The Ghost Mother sighed, listening to Jack gently snoring. A boy’s snore. Nothing ugly about it. You could hardly hear it at all. My last hours with him, she thought. My very, very last. But as the minutes ticked by, and the sun dipped like a last chance below the horizon, the Ghost Mother became increasingly anxious. She tried to resign herself, but in truth she couldn’t bear to think of Jack no longer being with her in the house. He was a real boy, not an ethereal spirit like the ghost children. Anyway, the others all despised her. E
ven Ann, the only one who made any effort to comfort her, had little soul-energy left. She’d soon end up in the Nightmare Passage, followed in time by Charlie and Gwyneth. The prospect of being left alone in the house with only Oliver to try to seek affection from was unbearable.
Leaving Jack’s room, the Ghost Mother floated downstairs. Sarah sat in front of the fire, nursing her coffee. The Ghost Mother brooded nearby, hating her.
“It isn’t fair that you should have him all to yourself for the rest of your life!” she howled. “How dare you take him from me!”
Sarah wandered into the kitchen. Restless, needing something to do, she slid on rubber gloves, smeared bleach on a scouring pad, and wiped the nearest surface clean.
The Ghost Mother had seen others before her in the house using such modern cleansing agents. “Do you know what I had?” she muttered enviously. “Soap, turps, and pipe clay mashed into a paste!” But she couldn’t hold on to her bitterness for long, because there was something deeply satisfying about seeing another woman at work in the house. To work again. To clean. To scrub. To have a purpose. People who depended on you. A proper family. Good things like Jack.
The Ghost Mother sighed and draped herself across Sarah’s back. Overlaying her hands on top of the gloves, she followed her movements. Back and forth, fingers fully stretched. Then closer, her deadness tight against Sarah’s shirt. Then even closer, brushing up against the small fair downy hairs above the skin of Sarah’s neck.
