Eva Ibbotson - The Ogre of Oglefort

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.