The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780007383528
Publisher: HarperTrophy
Published: 1981-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“He called himself that because he thought we might have forgotten him, I think,” Cart said. “As if anyone could forget Howard! And when I read it first, I thought it was just Howard being silly. Then Mrs. Gill phoned, and my spine crawled. I thought, It can’t be! It’s a day early, Monigan’s cheated!”

“Two days early,” said the patient. “It happened last night.”

“Yes, I know,” Cart said, sitting soberly down again. “But it’s occurred to me that there have been two leap years since.”

A gray chill seemed to settle over the little glassed-in antiseptic room.

“But it’s so silly!” Cart burst out. “Monigan was just a stupid game! And I curse myself for inventing her—I curse my wretched imagination! I keep on telling myself that Monigan isn’t real. Perhaps it’s all a matter of belief. Perhaps you should try very hard not to believe in Monigan—because I can see you do, just as much as Howard does.” She lifted the telegram up, to stand for Howard. “Stupid boy!” she said. “Stupid, humble boy! Fancy thinking we might have forgotten him!”

The water in the patient’s eyes welled and rolled away down the sides of her stitched and plastered face. “But I have,” she confessed. “I mean, I haven’t forgotten him, but I haven’t the faintest memory of him going to Canada!” She could see Cart turning to stare at her. “It’s seven years since—since I last knew,” she explained. “I’ve been having the weirdest experience. I’ve been a ghost, and I went home, and you were all there—I saw everyone. Howard was one of the first people I saw. But he was a schoolboy.”

“Don’t you really remember?” Cart said wonderingly. “It was just after the row over the hen, after we’d all been sent to Granny’s. Will Howard suddenly turned up at Granny’s and mooned about, almost crying, because his parents had decided to take him and live in Canada, and he didn’t want to go. We said we’d hide him. But,” Cart concluded, remembering gloomily, “Granny phoned his parents, and they came and fetched him away.”

There was a pause. Then Cart turned to look at her sister again.

“Ghost, did you say? There was a ghost—or we all thought there was—just before the hen trouble. I think you’d better tell me.”

She told it, hurrying, sobbing a little, and hurrying on. She was suddenly obsessed with the feeling that there was not much time. She told it all, more or less, right up to the exorcism and the farmhouse and Sally’s midnight dedication to Monigan. But what she did not say, and this was the fact pressing behind all the rest which she could not bring herself to tell even Cart, was that she did not know which sister she was. Not Cart. Not Sally, she thought as she spoke. So I’m either Imogen or Fenella. But I can’t bear Cart to know I don’t know.

Cart listened, bent forward, with two clear creases on her brow—the same clear creases her sister remembered as belonging to Imogen when Imogen was thinking.

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