The Ogre of Oglefort (13 page)

But could she in fact do any serious magic? Wasn't her power all gone? Yet Ivo believed in her; she could feel his trust streaming toward her. On her other side, Dr. Brainsweller was muttering something. It sounded like a spell. Was he trying to prompt her? Yes, he was. . . .

The Hag threw the soup tureen, closed her eyes, called on the Great Witch of the Nether Regions—and began to mutter.

And down below the soldiers started to bat away something with their arms, to make noises of disgust. One tore off his helmet to try and squash a thing which had appeared on his horse's neck. There were cries of “Ugh,” and “Disgusting,” and “Horrible, slimy things.”

There is nothing terrible in itself about frogs. One or two at a time can be pleasant to have about—but a whole host of them is different: frogs on the saddles, frogs in the arrow pouches, frogs on one's face—that is different. They got into the horses' ears and were squashed under the horses' hoofs and slid down the necks of the riders—and as the soldiers looked upward, they landed in their mouths.

“It's a very common spell,” said the Hag modestly, “a Plague of Frogs—but it can be useful. This one came off well, I must admit.”

Mirella was still trying to climb out of the moat, and two men, batting away the frogs, had begun to chop down the tree which was to make a bridge across the water. The marksmen, making noises of disgust as their hands encountered the slimy amphibians, went on firing.

Up on the ramparts, the wizard spoke a single word—and the Hag nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “I can do those.”

Nothing happened at first—then the men who were chopping down the tree put down their axes.

“There's something on your nose,” said one.

“And there's something on your nose,” said the other.

They began to finger their faces, to make noises of disgust. The warts were enormous, with tufts of hair on them, and wobbly dark skin.

Shrieking with fear, they ran back to the rest of the army. Everybody was touching their noses now, looking at their reflections in the polished harness, pointing at each other.

All the soldiers were upset, but Prince Umberto, still at the back of the troop astride his charger, was almost out of his mind.

“What will my tailor say, and my hairdresser?” he squealed.

“There's witchcraft about,” said Prince Tomas.

Prince Phillipe agreed, but they had sworn to slay the ogre and bring back the princess, and once again both princes gave the signal to fire.

“Ow!” said Ulf—and put his hand to his shoulder.

It came away streaked with blood, but when the others rushed forward to help him he pushed them away.

“It's only a scratch,” he said. “Trolls don't feel pain.” And he called up to Nandi for more tiles.

But the Hag was very upset. She and the troll had been friends for a long time. She took a deep breath and turned to Ivo. “The one I'm going to do now is a nasty one—very physiological. Are you all right with that?” and Ivo said, “Oh yes! Please.”

The Hag muttered again—and down below the soldiers, ignoring the frogs and the warts, began to scratch themselves. They scratched their armpits and their heads and behind their knees. They tore off their doublets to get to their skin. They howled and twitched and cried out as their bodies turned into a fiery hell.

There are ordinary itches—itches you get from mosquito bites and sunburn. There are serious itches you get from eczema and chilblains and scabies. But the Great Itch, which the Hag had unloosed, was like none of these! After a few hours of the Great Itch, men are ready to leap into the sea and drown.

The ogre threw a kitchen table. Soon there would be no furniture left in the castle.

But now came the gnu. He trotted up slowly, because going to war was not to his taste, but he did not mean to fail his friends.

He came up behind the army—and as he drew closer he increased speed and put his head down . . . and choosing the largest horse with the strongest buttocks, he charged!

The horse was Prince Umberto's. It was a brave and fiery horse, but being charged in the backside by a gnu was too much. The stallion reared, whinnied, swung around—and bolted from the battlefield.

The gnu pawed the ground and looked for another backside. He took care not to charge too hard, for his quarrel was not with the horses but with the men who rode them—but the soldiers now had had enough.

“We'll retreat to the top of the hill and then re-form for another attack,” ordered Prince Tomas, scratching like a flea-ridden monkey.

And gathering up their wounded as best they could, they rode away.

But they did not re-form. When they reached the crest of the hill the men, still itching madly, gazed upward and pointed to the sky. Flying above them toward the castle was a swirl of dark shapes so terrifying that they could not even cry out.

In a moment they had urged their horses into a gallop and were out of sight.

And the ghosts smiled and glided on, making their way to the castle.

I
n 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.