The Case of the Spellbound Child Read online

  And now what was he going to do? The night-time hours stretched before him, and there was not one single item in the entire list of things that used to give him pleasure that he was able to do anymore.

  And the one thing he could do—spy on people—wasn’t any fun if he didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. What was the good of knowing secrets about people if you couldn’t make use of those secrets?

  He stood there in the passage, brooding, while customers came and went. After last night’s revelations, he really didn’t want to watch the whores anymore.

  Someone walked through him on his way upstairs, whistling “You’ll Miss Lots of Fun When You’re Married,” and this time it struck him like another (but pleasant) blow to the head that now he could get into any music hall and any theater in the city for free, and stay as long as he liked. In the toff seats, too!

  A surge of cheer went through him at the thought, and suddenly everything seemed brighter. Bloody hell if I can’t get into them fancy toff whorehouses too! He’d heard they had all sorts of goings-on there, music and dancing and orgies, good as a music hall or better, ’cause the girls had less on.

  Without actually thinking about going anywhere, he found himself out on the street again, heading in the direction of the Old Mo. That’d be a good place to start!

  And to his pleasure he discovered he could stride along as fast as he cared to without his legs tiring a bit. He increased his pace to a trot, then a run, with the same lack of fatigue, and began to laugh as he ran along. This is more like! he thought, giddy with the freedom of it.

  But just as he thought that, he became aware of a tugging on his insides, as if the guts he no longer had were tethered to something behind him, or the air in front of him was solidifying like curdled milk. He slowed from a run to a trot, within a few paces more from a trot to a walk, and within a few more paces—he couldn’t move forward against the pull at all. He strained against the invisible tether to no avail; he just could not move forward another inch.

  But he could move sideways.

  So he did, pushing through building walls, crossing streets at a slight angle, straining as hard as he could. He felt as if he’d been harnessed to a beer-wagon and was trying to pull it. But of course, he didn’t break into a sweat. Presumably because he couldn’t sweat. He wasn’t panting, because he didn’t need to breathe.

  At one point in the Herculean effort, he wondered why he was doing this. But the answer was obvious, really. He was doing it because it was something to do.

  He knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand, although he’d never traversed it in quite this way before, literally cutting through shops and private spaces. That was how he recognized what was happening the moment he crossed the same street he had been on before, but facing in the opposite direction. He stopped then, and looked back over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the point from which he’d started; that gray fog that hung over everything, even indoors, obscured things beyond about fifty feet. But he knew where he was, and he knew where the whorehouse was from here, and by his best guess he was about five hundred yards from where he’d died. So he’d likely just toiled his way halfway around a circle that was about a thousand yards across, centered on the whorehouse.

  Slowly, he began to understand just what this meant. He could not go more than five hundred yards from where he’d died. This, then, was going to be his world. One tiny music hall, three whorehouses, a half dozen pubs and cookshops, some goods shops.

  He sat right down in the middle of the street, defeat crushing him to the ground. What was the point then, after all? He’d escaped Hell—but for what? He remained there in a dull, unthinking haze until a growing sense of sick unease roused him, and he felt, without knowing why he felt this, that the unease had a direction.

  He looked up, to see that the sky was definitely lighter in the direction of his unease.

  There was only one thing he could think of that would account for that. The sun was about to rise.

  He got wearily to his feet, and shuffled toward the nearest building, which happened to house a cookshop whose owner was just opening up to catch the dawn risers. With the door wide open, at least he didn’t have to shove his way into the building. Without a glance at the waiting food—which he could neither smell nor taste—he passed through another doorway and found himself in the kitchen of the shop. Off to one side was a third doorway whose dark mouth beckoned to him. A cellar.

  He plodded his way down into the comforting darkness, sat on the floor, and let the numb nothingness of yesterday engulf him.

  * * *

  When he came back to himself, it was to the sound of footsteps coming down into the cellar. The owner’s wife, lantern in hand, was halfway down the steps before he roused himself enough to stand up. He knew her of old; she went out of her way to sell him the oldest of pies, the sandwich with the rind of the cheese instead of a good slice, and the stalest bread. He’d been sick more than once after eating what he’d bought here. He’d accused her of trying to poison him. How she would laugh at him if she could see him now!

  The thought made him furious, and he stood in the middle of her cellar, knee-deep in a basket of taties, and snarled at her. “And what’re yew comin’ down ’ere for, ye old sow?” he snarled. “Spoilt taties t’bake up fer t’pisen summat else?”

  And to his astonishment, she looked right at him, and froze.

  Her eyes widened in horror; she shook as if she had an ague. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out of it.

  She can see me?

  He cackled wildly, and snarled at her, making the worst face he knew how to do. Then he reached for her.

  She shrieked at the top of her lungs and dropped the lantern, which shattered on the floor, the flame immediately igniting the pool of spilled oil. With another shriek, she whirled, with only purest good luck keeping her from setting her skirts on fire, and raced up the stairs, still screaming.

  Leaving him laughing harder than he had ever laughed before in his entire life.

  He backed up and tucked himself into a corner as the cookshop owner clattered down the stairs, more concerned about his property burning down than about the hysterics of his spouse, and stamped out the flames with a pair of sturdy hobnailed boots. Once the danger was over, the man left and came back again with a lantern of his own, cleaned up the mess, and then peered in every corner of the cellar, looking right into Alf’s eyes more than once—but he clearly saw nothing.

  “Yew stupid cow!” he called up the stairs. “Yew broke th’ good lantern and spilled me good oil an’ there ain’t naught down ’ere but taties an’ turnips!”

  The woman cried out something incoherent amid her sobs, which made her husband spit in disgust and stomp his way back up the stairs, shouting abuse the entire time.

  Alf couldn’t contain his glee, and didn’t try. If he’d been at a loss for what to do with himself before, well, he wasn’t now! “I’ll be a ’aunt, tha’s wut!” he proclaimed out loud. “’Er an’ ’er ways kep’ me awake wit’ bellyache many a night, well, I’ll be makin’ ’er nights a misery, see if I don’!” Revenge! Now there was a pleasure he was still capable of! And if he couldn’t revenge himself on Reg, he’d take his pleasure where he could find it.

  Up the stairs he went, and peeked into the kitchen. There was the hysterically weeping woman and her impatient, hectoring spouse. She’d pulled up her apron in both hands and buried her face in it. Grinning maliciously, he crept up close to her and waited for her to bring her head up to answer something her husband said.

  She found herself staring directly into his eyes. He snarled at her, and made a grab for her. His hand passed right through her and she fainted on the spot.

  Chuckling, he glanced out of the open back window and judged it was just past sunset. I wonder who else can see me?

  No time like the present to find out.

  *
* *

  Well, he’d wanted something to do, and haunting people was turning out to be the most entertaining thing he’d ever done in his life that didn’t involve a whore. It beat dog- and cock-fighting, that was certain.

  Besides the woman at the cookshop, he had a regular little flock of those he was able to terrify on a nightly basis. There was the little Cockney whore who worked on her own and had laughed at him because he wouldn’t pay her price. He’d have knocked her sideways if she hadn’t had her man with her. Well, now she had to see him stalking her every step she took, and her man didn’t believe what she was seeing any more than the cookshop owner had believed his wife. It tickled him no end when her custom fell off because of him, and her man beat her for it.

  But he didn’t spend the entire night just stalking her, oh no. He knew to the minute from the sounds of the Bow Bells just when the cookshop owner and his wife went to bed, and moments after they pulled up the covers and the old man was snoring, he was there, gobbling and grimacing at her. She’d lie there praying silently at him, shivering, tears streaming down her face. She didn’t dare wake her husband, so she had to lie there, staring at him, unable to move. Once she even brandished a cross at him, and he laughed at her and lunged for her. She fainted again.

  There was a whole family of filthy Dagos living in one room above an old-clothes shop. The parents couldn’t see him, but the brats could, and he made sure the whole lot got woke just before dawn with the carrying on and caterwauling when he made his appearance. Haunting them was how he found out that even though his hands passed right through people, they weren’t immune to his touch. When he contacted them, they felt a chill. And not like a little shiver either, a deep, bone-chilling cold, icy enough that when their parents woke to their screams after he had touched them, the adults exclaimed over the shivering bodies, and chafed the nippers with their hands or wrapped them in all the meager blankets, trying to get them warm again. At least, he was fairly sure that was what was going on, since he didn’t understand their babbling.

  Periodically he’d let them alone for a few nights—because there were others who might or might not be able to see him, depending on circumstances. The madam of the whorehouse liked to indulge in absinthe, and when she was in her cups, she got glimpses of him. There were other brats in the neighborhood besides the Dagos, and the littlest could reliably see him—it seemed as if nine or ten was the cutoff for being able to consistently see ghosts. Some drunks could see him, though their reactions varied—some were terrified, but some just took him as another spirit of drink, rather than an actual spirit. So every so often he’d give his regulars a respite from his presence and go haunt someone else. That only increased the terror and despair when he turned up again.

  And the more he frightened people, the stronger he got. He didn’t feel thinned out anymore. He didn’t have to go into that blank state by day unless he wanted to. He even managed to cross the street just before sunset without having parts of himself evaporate.

  It had been in the early spring when Reg murdered him—and Reg hadn’t been back to this neighborhood since. But now that he had his haunting and tormenting to do he found himself losing track of time, and only realized it was summer when it dawned on him that the nights were much shorter than they had been. He had decided to give his usual victims a respite, and was prowling part of his domain he usually didn’t get to, when he spotted something coming toward him that literally stunned him for a moment.

  It was a young man—dressed like a toff, he would have said—but there was something wrong with him.

  He was just as solid as Alf himself.

  And that was impossible.

  Unless—this was another ghost?

  In that moment he was terribly torn between two impulses—to hide from this apparition, and to approach him. What if this bloke was hostile? What if he was stronger than Alf? What if he was something more than a ghost, what if this bloke had been sent by Something—sent to haul him through that door he’d escaped—

  But on the other hand, it had been so long since he’d properly heard another human voice, so long since he’d exchanged words with anyone. . . .

  Loneliness—though he would never have admitted he was lonely, even to himself—won out. “’Ere!” he called out, before he could stop himself.

  The young man jumped, startled, and turned to stare at him as if surprised to see him. “What?” he replied in tones far more cultured than Alf’s. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Alf puffed out his chest and strode toward him, sure of at least one thing: a lad this nervy was no match for him. “Name’s Alf,” he said, prepared to be friendly now. “This’s my place—leastwise—” he faltered. He couldn’t say it. “Since Oi . . . since Oi . . .”

  “Since you died, you must mean,” the young man said, regaining his composure. Up close he was curiously androgynous; very well dressed for this neighborhood, with his neat suit, proper shirt and tie, and an actual hat rather than a soft cap. Alf would’ve called him a “nancy-boy” at best, and any number of obscene things at worst, and probably kicked him around back when he’d been alive, but now, well, beggars could not be choosers. This was the first time he’d seen anyone to talk to, and until this moment he hadn’t realized just how starved he was for another voice that would actually answer his. Besides, there’d be no satisfaction in kicking him about; it wasn’t as if this sort of body was able to feel or do much of anything.

  The young man stuck out his hand. “The name’s Hughs. Peter Hughs. I got knocked over by a runaway cab about five years ago, six blocks that way.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the river. Hughs eyed Alf knowingly. “I’d venture to say you popped it within the last couple of months, eh?”

  Alf scratched his head; he’d definitely lost all track of time, and the openness of the young man honestly caught him off-guard. “Prolly,” he admitted. “Oi’m not sure. . . .”

  “It’s easy to lose touch with how time passes,” said Hughs, with a nod. “Are you keeping to the half-world, or have you gone all the way over to the spirit world yet?”

  Alf shook his head. “Yew lost me, mate,” he replied, as they both ignored a beer cart that drove right through them.

  “This is the half-world, or that’s what the other ghosts call it,” Hughs explained, waving his hand to indicate everything around them. “But if you let all this fade, you end up in the spirit world. You can’t see the living anymore, and the buildings are mostly shadow, though they get more solid the older they are. The spirit world is where most of the ghosts spend the day, if they’re living in a part of it that’s safe. It’s all right here, but there’s parts of London—” he shivered. “—you wouldn’t want to meet up with the things that live in the spirit world there. Fortunately they’re as stuck in their parts as we are in ours.”

  But Alf had fixed on Hughs’ first statement. “Other ghosts? Yew mean there’s more’n us?”

  Hughs shrugged. “Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. London’s a big place and people die all the time. A lot of them don’t want to leave.”

  “’Ere,” Alf said, uncomfortably aware of the living walking all around and through them. “Le’s find someplace we ain’t got people walkin’ through us. Yew sound loike th’ kinda bloke Oi oughter know.”

  “How about up there?” asked Hughs, pointing to a rooftop, and chuckled at what must have been Alf’s expression. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to get up there.”

  And so Alf learned how to fly, as ghosts were supposed to fly in stories, just by will alone. He was still marveling over that as they settled down on the rooftree like a couple of starlings.

  Hughs taught him a lot in the time between when they’d met and dawn. Why strong emotions from the living that connected to ghosts (like fear) made them stronger, how to move completely into the spirit world and out again, what the dangerous things in the spirit world were and how
to avoid them, why sunlight was perilous, and who his ghostly “neighbors” besides Hughs were. There were more of them than Alf would have thought, but according to Hughs, most of them were crazed, and spent most of their time brooding in specific places wholly in the spirit world, none of which were within “his” territory.

  Somewhat to his surprise, Hughs was easy to like, and Alf found himself telling the young man all about his hauntings. Hughs listened intently but without comment until he had finished. He saved the cookshop shrew for last, and actually laughed for the first time since he’d been murdered as he described how she had waved a crucifix at him. Hughs was a good listener, and Alf had always liked to talk.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” Hughs said, after a few moments of silence.

  He shrugged, and looked down at the shadowy living passing to and fro below them. “There’s damn-all else wut makes me ’appy,” he replied, a little bitterly, then laughed again. “An’ it does make me ’appy.”

  Hughs nodded, then glanced behind them. “Sun will be up soon,” he said. “I need to get back to my part of town. Would you like me to meet you again some time soon?”

  Alf hesitated. What he wanted was for Hughs to come by tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. He’d had no idea he was so starved for company, but now that Hughs was about to depart, he found himself fighting the impulse to seize the young man’s arm and beg him to spend the day here.

  Which . . . would make him look desperate. He didn’t want to look desperate, he wanted to look strong, like his living self, fearless and dependent on nobody. He didn’t want Hughs to get the idea that Alf needed him.

  So he shrugged. “If yew ain’t got nothin’ else to do,” he replied, trying to appear indifferent.

  Hughs hesitated. “I do have a lot more to tell you, but I don’t want to impose on you or be a crashing bore.”

  That made Alf laugh, since the last thing Hughs was was a bore. “Termorrer then,” he said genially. “’Ang about the pub, Oi’ll meetcher there.”