Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

“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?