The Ogre of Oglefort

CHAPTER 22 The Haunting

In the kitchen of the castle they were celebrating.

The ogre sat in his big carved chair, stuffing himself with anything the Hag could put on his plate.

“Shouldn’t you start eating gradually?” she asked in a worried voice. “You must have shrunk your stomach with all that refusing to eat, and you might be ill, suddenly filling it up.”

But the ogre said that was nonsense; the Ogres of Oglefort had cast-iron stomachs and he now felt absolutely fine.

“Repelling a whole army did me all the good in the world,” he said — and no one liked to suggest that it wasn’t just he who had repelled the army, but the Hag with her spells and the animals, not to mention the troll and the wizard and the children manning the ramparts. They also wondered what would happen when the aunts arrived to attend his deathbed and found him restored to health.

Meanwhile nothing could stop him from celebrating. The gnu and the aye-aye had been invited in, and the spider sisters hung down over the table by a specially long thread so that they could see what was going on.

“We showed them, didn’t we?” said the ogre, gulping down the Hag’s plum cordial.

Only Mirella found it difficult to rejoice. Bessie had helped her out of the moat by swimming underneath her and making a kind of shelf. She had changed out of her wet clothes and had a hot drink — but seeing her father’s army had frightened her badly, and Umberto’s stupid face, under the ridiculous helmet, wouldn’t go out of her mind.

“What if they come back?” she whispered to Ivo.

“They won’t. We really scared them,” said Ivo, and he looked proudly at the Hag, who had shown herself to be a proper witch.

No one in the castle had seen what the army saw: a swirl of hideous black shapes flapping across the sky, and then dissolving into nothingness.

The ghost train had become a boat train for the first part of the journey. The Norns had sent it on the ferry to Osterhaven with the ghosts still inside, but once they arrived in Ostland they had been forced to glide to the castle under their own steam.

The long cold journey, and the need to be invisible most of the time, had annoyed them, but now they were settling in. They had found a suitable place for their headquarters — a clump of trees not far from the castle and close to a large mound of bones which seemed somehow familiar — and they were planning their special effects.

The Bag Lady had emptied out her shopping bags and was rummaging with pale, plump fingers among her filthy clothes, looking for her corset. Being blinded by a corset often got people very upset.

The Honker was spitting steadily onto the grass. In spite of his age and the missing leg, his aim was still good.

The Aunt Pusher ran at an oak tree, his great hands held out in front of him, and the tree trembled and swayed.

“What’s keeping him?” asked the Smoking Girl, lighting a cigarette from the stub of her old one. “It’s nearly dark.”

The Inspector had glided off on his own to investigate, which was his name for spying.

“You’d better unstick your jaws,” said the Man with the Umbrella to the Chewing Head. “You can’t grin properly with all that gum, and severed heads are no good unless they’re grinning.”

The ghosts had been feeling quite cheerful, getting ready for the night’s work, but now they felt a shivery kind of bleakness, and looking up they saw the Inspector.

His stony gaze traveled over them, taking in the Smoking Girl’s untidy scarf, the Honker’s crutch thrown on the ground.

“We leave in half an hour,” he said.

They all knew what to do; they had rehearsed it again and again. The rescuers must be punished, but the ogre must be killed — and killed absolutely. Only then would the ghosts get the reward they so yearned for: new stations, new junctions, new tunnels — perhaps even a new viaduct.

Their eye sockets glittering with greed, the ghosts took to the air.

It began with Charlie. He woke up in Ivo’s bed with a yelp of fear and stood with his coat on end, shivering.

“What is it, Charlie?” asked Ivo sleepily.

Charlie leaped off the bed and disappeared under it, moaning pitifully.

Then there came a thud from next door.

Ivo went out into the corridor. It had been a warm night, but now there was an icy chill. Ulf always left a single lamp burning and the flame was flickering as though in a high wind. Then the door of the Hag’s room opened, and she stumbled across the threshold and fell to the ground.

“Don’t,” she begged. “Don’t do that, I haven’t hurt you.”

Running to help her, Ivo saw the dark shape of a man with enormous hands standing above her. He was so angry that he almost forgot to be frightened. What sort of a man pushed an old woman to the ground?

And then he realized. Not a man of course. Something different. And suddenly the corridor was filled with specters. An old man glided past waving a crutch, and Ivo felt a blob of something so disgusting in his face that he began to retch. This couldn’t just be spit — this slimy, creeping, slithery nothingness which yet got into every crevice and hole.

These were not ordinary ghosts; they were something obscene and diabolical.

Mirella came out of her room, blinking, still half asleep, and saw Ivo bending over the Hag.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”—and then cried out as she felt a steel spike digging into her shoulder.

“Steady on, she’s the princess,” said the Aunt Pusher, floating in midair. “Must be. They didn’t say there was a girl with the rescuers.”

“Can’t be,” said the Man with the Umbrella. “That’s not how princesses look.” And he gave her another jab.

“Stop it, stop it,” screamed Ivo, rushing toward her, but the Umbrella Man had seen Ulf coming out of his room and swooped toward him. Ghosts really hate trolls, their uprightness and strength, and he thrust the steel point of the umbrella into the troll’s arms and chest and legs.

The wizard woke, sat up in bed, found himself staring at a grinning bodiless head — and fainted.

Suddenly there was a kind of exodus — a swirl of phantoms along the passage toward the ogre’s room. Punishing was one thing but now the killing had to begin.

It began quietly, with the ogre waking to find a girl sitting on his bed, draped in gauzy scarves. The ogre was surprised, but not displeased — and he sat up and said politely, “Who are you?”

The next second he was fighting for breath, coughing uncontrollably — great racking coughs which shook his whole frame, while poisonous fumes poured into his lungs.

“Go away, you’re horrible,” said the ogre.

He tried to bat away the Smoking Girl but his hand encountered only air. Not clean air, though. Sticky, malodorous, polluted air.

But an even more unpleasant woman now floated across the ceiling, and from her upturned shopping bags there came a shower of filthy things: clothes or rags — the ogre could not be sure, but they had a life of their own, a stink and a malevolent, slinky way of floating down — and then one of them, something unspeakable and elastic, wrapped itself around the ogre’s face and blinded him.

The ogre had never seen a corset — Germania did not wear them — and he fought the ghastly garment bravely, but it was useless. It only wound itself more tightly around his eyes.

The children found him like this when they managed to reach him — staggering around the room tearing at something which covered his face. They ran to help him, snatching and pulling and tugging at the vile thing. It had no substance yet they could feel it, and smell it — it was the most horrible thing they had ever touched.

Able to see again, the ogre tried to make his way to the door, but before he had taken more than a few steps he slipped on a sea of spittle and heard the Honker’s manic titter.

And now the real torture began. Every time he tried to get up the Aunt Pusher threw him to the floor, and the Man with the Umbrella pierced him again and again, twisting the rapier point in his wounds.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” yelled the ogre.

The troll had come in, ignoring his own injuries, and tried to help, but his healthy strength was no match for the specters’ evil nothingness, and he found himself thrown back against the wall.

The phantoms now were everywhere, filling the room with their hideous shapes, pushing, piercing, poisoning.

Then from a dark space above their heads, there came a disembodied voice.

“Cackle!” commanded the Inspector.

And the ghosts cackled! The cackle of ghosts is an octave higher than the highest laughter of a human being, and it is one of the most dreaded sounds in the world. Eardrums can be pierced by it; and the pain is unbelievable.

The children cried out in agony. The ogre put his hands to his ears and they came away stained with blood. Quite demented, he lurched out of his room and along the corridor to the stairs which led to the Great Hall.

Ghosts can kill a person by frightening him till his heart gives out — but they can also kill by causing a fatal accident. They followed the ogre gleefully. Leading from the Great Hall was a door which led to a long flight of steps to the courtyard. Steep stone steps, more than a hundred of them, down which a person could tumble and break his neck.

The ogre blundered around the Hall; shards of glass fell on him as the Honker batted his crutch into the chandelier. A lone brassiere fell from the Bag Lady’s shopping bag and wrapped itself around the ogre’s face so that he banged into the furniture — and still the ghosts kept up their dreadful cackling.

Everyone was in the Hall now — the Hag and the wizard had come stumbling in; anything was better than being alone. The children stood with their hands to their ears, paralyzed by pain. When they were not torturing the ogre, the phantoms turned on the rest.

“No,” cried Ivo, trying to warn the ogre, for he could see now that the ghosts had a plan — that they were pushing the ogre closer and closer to the flight of steps. “Don’t let them—”

But it was useless trying to warn the ogre; he could hear nothing, and the Aunt Pusher came up behind Ivo and sent him sprawling.

Suddenly the cackling stopped. It stopped completely, and the silence was so amazing that for a moment everybody forgot their wounds — and dared to hope that their torture might be coming to an end.

And it really seemed as if it might be so, for the ghosts were no longer attacking; they were standing quietly around the edge of the Hall.

The ogre looked around, then tottered toward the couch with its bearskin cover and collapsed onto it.

The room darkened for a moment — and when they could see again, the children saw that the ogre was not alone. There was a man sitting beside him. It was not easy to make out his shape, but he seemed ordinary enough — he wore some kind of uniform and held a small gadget in his hand. If he was a ghost he did not seem to be a dangerous one.

But what was the matter with the ogre? The man had not touched him, yet the ogre’s face was drained of every trace of color, and he fell back against the cushion and began to whimper like a small child.

The children clutched each other’s hands. What was happening here?

The man in the uniform bent over him and his lips formed just two words. Harmless words, surely, yet the ogre looked as though he wanted nothing except to die.

“Tickets, please,” was what the Inspector had whispered.

But when the Inspector said “Tickets, please,” he was not asking for tickets. He was pulling out the person’s heart and soul, his dreams and his reasons for living.

Anyone the Inspector spoke to only wanted not to exist anymore, and Ivo closed his eyes because the look on the ogre’s face was more than he could bear.

The Inspector vanished; the other ghosts surrounded their quarry — and now it was easy because the ogre had given up the fight.

They drove him to the top of the steps and he looked down. For a moment he hesitated — then a grinning, dismembered head appeared suddenly in front of him, and he lost his balance and went tumbling down and down and down, to land on his head on the hard stone below. The ghosts grinned in triumph and flew off into the night.

And yet he was not dead. He should have been, but he wasn’t. The troll, in spite of his open wounds, managed to help the ogre into bed, and he lay with his eyes open and a look of utter bewilderment on his face. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this.

“They’ll be back,” said the Hag. “But another night will finish him. This isn’t like his deathbed, it’s serious.”

She was pale and stooped and looked years older.

“It’s the hatred,” said Ivo in bewilderment. “Where does it come from? It’s the hatred that’s destroying him.”

Almost the worst thing was what had happened to Charlie. The little dog was still; shivering and twitching and juddering in a kind of fit. He refused food and even water, and when Ivo tried to stroke him he bared his teeth.

“Be careful,” said Mirella. “In the state he’s in he might bite.”

“If Charlie bit me, I think I would die,” said Ivo.

The second night was even worse than the first. This time the cackling came at once, the maniacal earsplitting noise as the phantoms swooped into the castle. Then came the stink of unwashed clothes, the poisonous fumes… and the violence as the ogre was pierced and pushed and thrown. More terrible even than the violence were the moments when the Inspector came close to them and they were pulled down into a dark pit of hopelessness and wanted nothing except not to exist.

On the morning of the third day, everybody had given up hope.

The rescuers were huddled together in the ogre’s room, and they lay where they had fallen like the victims of a battle. No one wanted to be alone; if the end was coming they wanted to be with their friends.

The ogre lay half in, half out of his bed, one arm thrown out. His breathing was shallow and irregular; he no longer spoke. The Hag had slumped down on the mat by the washstand; the troll and the wizard were stretched out beside the door.

It was all over now. The ghosts would come once more, and this third visit would mean the end.

Mirella and Ivo were curled up beside each other. They were too tired to sleep and were afraid to close their eyes.

After a while Mirella tried to sit up. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she whispered. “Not anything at all?”

Ivo shook his head. Mirella always thought there was something one could do, but sometimes there simply wasn’t.

Ivo began to doze off, then forced himself awake. “Unless…” He shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t come for us. And anyway…”

But the children were so used to picking up each other’s thoughts that Mirella understood him.

“She might… if she knew how bad things were. But how could we let her know?”

“There’ll be some words,” said Ivo. “A spell.”

He tried to remember what he had seen in the encyclopedia in the days when he had read all about magic, but what came to his mind was Dr. Brainsweller standing on the battlements and prompting the Hag. The wizard might not do much magic but he knew every spell there ever was.

But when they crawled toward him and managed to wake him up, the wizard shook his head.

“It’s very secret,” he said. “Very dark. Mustn’t be used except in dire emergencies.”

The children only looked at him. He saw their pale exhausted faces, the bruise on Ivo’s cheek… From the bed came the ogre’s rasping breath.

The wizard struggled with his conscience. He would be giving away the secrets of his trade. And yet…

“Must… never reveal it…” he muttered. “Never on pain of death.”

“We promise,” said both children. “We swear on Charlie’s head.”

The wizard leaned forward and whispered in their ears.

Darkness had fallen and the third night of haunting was about to begin. It would be the last night, the ghosts were sure of that.

“About time, too,” said the Aunt Pusher as they stirred in their hiding place next to the burial mound. “I never thought he would hang on as long as he has.”

It had been more work than they expected, this haunting, but now it was nearly over. And then home to their reward!

They began to rise into the air, but then something happened. There was a kind of stirring, an upheaval in the mound beside them: the bones fell away… and then out of an opening in the top there appeared a gigantic figure which stood glaring at the ghosts. Her hideous hairy face was set in an angry frown, her vast body shimmered in the evening light.

But what held the ghosts transfixed was her transparency. Mighty and enormous as she was, they could nevertheless see right through her. She, too, was a ghost — and suddenly they were very much afraid.

Germania cleared her throat and the ghosts trembled. An ogress clearing her throat is a sound like no other. It is a signal — a beginning of something that it is best not to know about.

“When I was a living ogress,” she said, raking them with her eyes, “I could eat people. And now that I am a ghost ogress, I can eat ghosts. Now which one shall I start with?”

“No no, none of us,” gibbered the Man with the Umbrella. “You wouldn’t like us. No!” His voice rose in a shriek.

The ogress smiled. She took two paces forward. Then she put out her hand and fastened it around the Honker’s ankle.

“I’ll start with you, I think.” She picked up the crutch and threw it away. Then she opened her mouth, and with a howl of anguish, the Honker disappeared.

“Disgusting,” said the ogress, wiping her lips with her hand, “but it can’t be helped. Now who shall I try next?”

By now the ghosts were terrorized into action and one by one they rose into the air, trying to flee.

It did not help them. The ogress was ten times their size and had ten times their speed. She took off, still in the shroud she had been buried in, and went in pursuit.

As she rose, she snipped off the leg of the Man with the Umbrella and sent the Bag Lady’s shopping bag flying.

“I’ll teach you to torment my husband!” roared the ogress.

“We won’t do it again; we’re going, we’re going,” cried the Aunt Pusher. “We didn’t know.”

“If you come anywhere near this place again, I’ll eat the lot of you.”

The ghosts took one last look at Germania and, shrieking in terror, they fled. But there was one phantom who was sure that he could escape the fate of the others. The Inspector, cocooned in his own darkness, began to slink away through the trees, keeping close to the ground.

The ogress stood still and sniffed. Then she took a few giant steps forward, and her hand closed around him, and she brought him to her mouth.

Just for a moment after she swallowed him, Germania’s stomach did not feel well; it gave a kind of blip of horror, a sort of spasm. She felt as though no food in the world was worth eating — never had been worth eating, and never would be worth eating again. That where her stomach with its happy memories had been, there was now a pit of cold ghastliness — and the cold ghastliness would go on forever.

Then her ectoplasm got to work digesting the swallowed specter, reducing him to a miasmic pulp — and Germania smiled because her stomach was itself again, and her work was done.

And she made her way back to the mound and climbed inside and the bones settled over her again — and all was peace.