But there they were.
Three riders. Very pale. As if the night air had gone moldy. And they were staring up at me.
Everything about them was drained of color: capes, boots, gloves, belts—and the swords hanging from their sides. They looked like men who’d had their blood sucked out by the night. The tallest one’s straggly hair hung down to his shoulders, and I could see the bricks of the garden wall through his body. The one next to him had a hamster face and, just like the third ghost, was so see-through that the tree behind him seemed to grow right through his chest. Their necks were marked with dark bruises, as if someone had tried to slice their heads off with a very blunt knife. But the most horrible thing about them was their eyes: burned-out holes filled with bloodlust. To this day those eyes scorch holes into my heart.
Their horses were as pale as the riders. Ashen fur hung from the animals’ skeletal bodies like tattered rags.
I wanted to cover my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the bloodless faces anymore, but I was so scared that I couldn’t even lift my arms.
“Hey, Jon, what are you staring at out there?”
I hadn’t even heard Stu climb out of his bunk.
The tallest ghost pointed a bony finger at me, and his shriveled lips mouthed a silent threat. I stumbled back, and Stu pushed in next to me and pressed his nose against the windowpane.
“Nothing!” he observed disappointedly. “I can’t see anything.”
“Leave him alone, Stu!” Angus muttered sleepily. “He’s probably sleepwalking. Sleepwalkers go bonkers when you talk to them.”
“Sleepwalking? Are you blind?” In my panic I talked so loudly that Stu shot a worried glance toward the door. Luckily, the Popplewells were sound sleepers.
The ghost with the hamster face grinned at me. His mouth was a gaping slit in his pale face. Then he drew his sword, slowly, very slowly. Blood started dripping from the blade, and I felt a pain in my chest so sharp it made me gasp for breath. I fell to my knees and crouched, shivering, under the windowsill.
I can still feel that fear. And I always will.
“Jon! Go back to sleep!” Stu shuffled back toward the bed. “There’s nothing out there, ’cept for a bunch of rubbish bins.”
He really couldn’t see them.
I plucked up all my courage and peered over the windowsill.
The night was dark—and empty. The pain in my chest had gone, and I felt like an idiot.
Great, Jon, I thought as I crawled back under the scratchy blankets. Now you’re officially going crazy. Maybe it was all a hallucination because I’d barely eaten anything except Stu’s gummy bears.
Angus started humming again. I got up a few more times and crept back to the window, but all I saw out there was the deserted street in front of the floodlit cathedral. Finally I managed to fall asleep, having made myself a solemn promise to try to force down at least some of the school’s food from then on.
HARTGILL
The next morning I was so tired that I barely managed to tie my shoes. Angus and Stu exchanged a worried look as I went to the window to stare down at the wall where I had seen the ghosts. Yet none of us said a word about what had happened during the night. At breakfast I ate as much oatmeal as I could without throwing up, and then I decided to forget about the whole thing.
By lunchtime I was already back to thinking about The Beard roasting in the Spanish sun with my mum, and by the afternoon a grammar test had made me forget the three pale figures completely.
It was just beginning to get dark when Mr. Rifkin, as he did every evening, gathered the boarders in front of the school to guide us across the sparsely lit Cathedral Close and back into the care of Alma and Edward Popplewell. None of us liked Rifkin. I believe he didn’t even really like himself. He wasn’t much taller than any of us, and he would always eye us with a sour face, as if we were causing him a permanent toothache. The only thing that made Mr. Rifkin happy was old wars. He’d enthusiastically grind through at least a dozen sticks of chalk as he sketched on the blackboard the deployment of troops in some famous military encounter or the other. That, as well as his vain attempts to comb his sparse hair over his bald skull, had earned him the nickname Bonapart. (Yes, I know there’s an e missing—French spelling was not our thing.)
On the lawn in front of the cathedral, the floodlights were just coming on. They bleached the walls, as if someone had rinsed them with moonlight. At that time of evening, the Cathedral Close was nearly empty, and Bonapart impatiently herded us past the rows of parked cars. The air was cool, and while we were all shivering in the damp breeze of an English evening, I wondered whether The Beard had already gotten sunburned and whether that would make him less attractive to my mother.
The three riders were by then no more than a bad dream, washed from memory by the light of day. They had not forgotten about me, however. And this time they made it very clear that they were more than figments of my overactive imagination.
The school’s boardinghouse does not stand right on the street. It lies at the end of a broad footpath that branches off the road and leads past a couple of houses toward a gate, beyond which lie the house and its garden. And it was next to that gate that they were waiting for me. They were sitting on their horses, just as they had the night before. Only this time there were four of them.
I stopped so abruptly that Stu stumbled into my back.
Of course, he couldn’t see them. Nobody saw them. Except me.
The fourth ghost made the other three look like homeless thugs. His gaunt face was stiff with pompous pride, and his clothes clearly had once been those of a rich man. Yet he also wore iron chains around his wrists and a noose around his neck.
He was so horrible to look at that all I could do was stare at him. Bonapart, however, didn’t even turn his head as he walked right past the specter.
As I stood there, unable to move a limb, I heard a whisper inside my head: Go on, Jon Whitcroft, you might as well face it. Why do you think nobody else can see them? They are after you, and only you!
But why? I screamed back in my head. Why me? What do they want from me?
A raven cawed on a nearby roof, and the ghost leader spurred his horse, as if the bird’s hoarse cry had given him a signal. The horse reared with a hollow whinny, and I turned and ran.
I’m not a good runner. That night, however, I was running for my life. Thinking back, I can still feel my heart racing and the searing pain in my lungs. I ran past the old houses that stand in the shadow of the cathedral as if they seek protection from the clamoring world outside the walls; I ran past parked cars, lit windows, and locked gates. Run, Jon! Behind me hoofbeats rang out across the darkening close, and I thought I could feel the demonic horses breathing down my neck.
“Whitcroft!” Bonapart screamed my name. “Whitcroft, what the devil is going on? Stop immediately!” But it was the devil who was after me, and then I suddenly heard another voice… if that’s what you could call it.
I heard it in my head and my heart. Hollow, hoarse, and so savage that it felt like a blunt knife being driven right through me.
“Yes! Run, Hartgill!” the voice taunted me. “Run! We love nothing better than hunting down your filthy brood. And none of you have evaded us yet.”
Hartgill? That was my mother’s maiden name. Not that they looked as if they’d care about such details. I stumbled on, sobbing with terror. The tall one with the straggly hair was cutting me off, and the other three were right behind me. To my right was the cathedral, its tower reaching toward the stars.
Maybe I ran toward it because it looked as if nothing would ever penetrate its walls. The wide lawn that surrounds it was wet from the rain, and I slipped with every step, until I finally ended up on my knees, gasping for air. I curled up on the cold ground, shivering, wrapping my arms over my head as if that could make me invisible to my pursuers. An icy cold enveloped me like a fog. I heard a horse neighing above me.
“A kill without a hunt is only half the sport
, Hartgill!” the voice whispered in my head. “Though the hare always ends up dead.”
“My… my name is… Whitcroft!” I stammered. “Whitcroft!” I wanted to strike out and kick, send those white corpses back to hell, or wherever they’d come from. Instead, I crouched on the wet grass and nearly threw up.
“Whitcroft!” Bonapart was leaning over me. “Whitcroft, get up!”
Never had I been happier to hear a teacher’s voice. I buried my face in the grass and sobbed—this time with relief.
“Jon Whitcroft! Look at me.”
I did as Bonapart told me. He looked at my tear-streaked face and quickly fished a handkerchief from his pocket. I reached for it with trembling fingers before carefully peering past him.
The ghosts had gone. As had the voice. But the fear was still there, sticking to my heart like soot.
“Heavens! Whitcroft! Get yourself on your feet already!” Bonapart pulled me up. The other kids were standing by the edge of the lawn, their wide eyes staring at us.
“I can only pray you have an explanation for this pointless sprint through the night?” Bonapart asked, eyeing my muddy pants with obvious disgust. “Or were you trying to prove how fast you can run?”
Puffed-up bastard.
My knees were still shaking, but I tried my best to sound reasonable as I answered him. “There were four ghosts. Four ghosts on horses. They… they were after me.”
The whole thing sounded idiotic, even to my ears. I was so embarrassed, I wished the damp lawn would swallow me up on the spot. Fear and shame. Could it get any worse? Oh, yes, Jon. It could—and it would.
Bonapart sighed. He glanced at the cathedral with a look of deep exasperation, as if it had been the old church itself that had suggested the story to me.
“Fine, Whitcroft,” he said, pulling me rather roughly back toward the street. “It seems to me you’ve had an unusually intense bout of homesickness. Maybe those ghosts ordered you to run right home. Did they?”
We had reached the others again, and one of the girls started giggling. The rest, however, all gave me worried looks, just as Stu had the night before.
I should have bitten my tongue, swallowed my rage over so much blindness and unfair mockery. But I’ve never been very good at swallowing—still haven’t learned it.
“They were there! I swear! How is it my fault that nobody else can see them? They nearly killed me!”
A leaden silence descended on the group. Some of the younger kids inched away from me, as if my madness might be contagious.
“Very impressive!” said Bonapart, his stubby fingers clamped firmly on my shoulder. “I hope you’ll show as much imagination in your next history test.”
Bonapart only let go of my shoulder when he’d delivered me to the Popplewells. Luckily, he didn’t say a word to them about what had happened. Stu and Angus were very quiet during the rest of the evening. By then they were convinced they were sharing their room with a madman, and they were beginning to worry about what was going happen once I completely lost my mind.
ELLA
That night, despite everything, Angus and Stu slept soundly, whereas I of course couldn’t sleep a wink. In my desperation I even thought about calling my mother. But what was I going to tell her? Mum, forget about Spain. Four ghosts are hunting me, and their leader called me Hartgill and threatened to kill me? No. She would tell everything to The Beard, and there was probably not a single dentist on this planet who believed in ghosts. He would just convince her that this was another one of my ploys to make her life difficult.
Get used to it, Jon Whitcroft, I told myself. Looks like you’re not going to be alive to see your twelfth birthday. And while the sun rose I was wondering whether, after they killed me, I would also turn into a ghost, haunting Salisbury until the end of time, scaring Bonapart and the Popplewells. It’s quite likely, Jon, I told myself, but first you have to make sure of one thing: that you don’t become the joke of the whole school. Not that it should have really mattered to someone who was going to be dead soon, but I’ve never been good at being laughed at.
The next morning I told Angus and Stu that I’d only made up that whole ghost story to fool Bonapart. Both looked at me with great relief (after all, who likes to share a room with a lunatic?), and Stu’s concern immediately turned into admiration. During breakfast he spread around my new version of events so successfully that, later, while Bonapart was trying to explain Richard the Lionheart’s strategy during the attack on Jerusalem, two fourth graders started screaming, claiming that they could see his royal ghost, covered in blood, standing by the blackboard. For that they got to join me for detention in the library. At least I was no longer considered crazy but actually some sort of a hero.
If only I could have felt like one. Instead, my fear nearly choked me. During lunch, while all the others were gorging themselves on meat loaf and mashed potatoes, I stared out of the window, wondering whether this gray September day was going to be my last.
I tried to force down a bit of meat loaf, telling myself that I wouldn’t be able to run if I starved myself. Suddenly a girl sat down opposite me.
The meat nearly went down the wrong pipe.
That just did not happen. Ever. Girls my age usually stayed well clear of boys. Even the younger girls constantly felt the need to show us older boys how childish they thought we were.
She wasn’t one of the boarders, but I had seen her a few times around the school. Her most striking feature was her long dark hair. It fluttered around her like a veil whenever she walked.
“So, there were four?” she said casually, as if asking me about the food on my plate (and there really wasn’t much to talk about there).
She eyed me intently, as though she were measuring me inside and out. Only Ella can look at someone like that. But I didn’t know her name yet back then. She hadn’t introduced herself. Ella never wastes time with unnecessary words.
Despite having two sisters, I wasn’t very good at dealing with girls. My sisters may have actually made that worse. I just didn’t know what to talk to them about. And on top of that, Ella was pretty—something that would bring an embarrassingly red blush to my face. (Luckily, that’s under control now.) So, anyhow, I began to recite my Bonapart prank story. But one cool glance from her made the words die right there on my lips.
She leaned over the table. “Keep that version for the others,” she said in a low voice. “What did they look like?”
She wanted to hear the truth. I couldn’t believe it. But no matter how much I wanted to talk to someone about it, she was a girl! What if she laughed at me? What if she told all her girlfriends that Jon Whitcroft was an imbecile who actually believed in ghosts?
“They looked dead. How else would they look?” I avoided looking at her by staring down at my fingernails—only to notice that they were dirty. (The presence of a girl makes you notice things like that.) Why the heck wasn’t she embarrassed? I gave myself the answer: Because her kind doesn’t get embarrassed like you, you idiot. They also don’t start stammering as if they’d forgotten how to talk.
“What were they wearing?”
Well, if that wasn’t a typical girl-question. Ella took my fork and began to eat my mashed potatoes.
“Old-fashioned stuff,” I muttered. “Boots, swords…”
“What century?” Ella took another forkful of potatoes.
“What century?” I was flabbergasted. “How would I know? They looked like they climbed out of some damn painting.” (Stop cursing, Jon! I started swearing whenever I became self-conscious. My mother had tried for years to get me to stop.)
“Could you see through them?”
“Yes!” It felt so good to finally talk to someone about the ghosts. Even though I was still struggling with the fact that it was a girl I was talking to.
Ella took in my description as coolly as if I’d been describing our school uniform. “And?” she asked. “Anything else?”
I looked around, but nobody was paying att
ention to us. “They had bruises on their necks,” I whispered across the table. “As if… as if they’d all been hanged. Their leader still has the noose around his neck. And they want to kill me. I know it. They said so.”
I admit I expected that piece of information to impress her. But Ella just raised her eyebrows a little. They were very dark eyebrows. Darker than dark chocolate.
“That’s nonsense,” she observed drily. “Ghosts can’t kill anyone. They just can’t.”
This time I blushed with anger, which wasn’t any less embarrassing.
“Well that’s great, then!” I hissed at her. “I’ll let them know the next time they chase me across the close.”
A few third graders at the neighboring table turned toward us. I shot them what I hoped was an intimidating look. I lowered my voice again. “And why,” I breathed, while Ella, still perfectly calm, helped herself to another forkful of my potatoes, “did one of them have blood dripping from his sword when I saw them the first time?”
Ella made an unimpressed shrug. “They like doing that sort of thing,” she said in a perfectly bored voice. “Blood… bones… it means nothing.”
“Oh? Thanks for the insight!” I barked at her. “You seem to know everything about the blasted ghosts in this town. But where I come from it’s not at all normal to see them outside your window, pointing bloody swords at you!”
Now the whole dining hall was staring at me.
Ella, however, just gave me one of her Jon Whitcroft, you’re really getting all worked up about nothing looks that I would come to recognize all too well.
“Well, looks like you’re in trouble,” she said, pushing back her chair. And without looking around once more, she returned to the table where her friends were eating.
I must have looked particularly stupid as I stared after her, because Stu and Angus exchanged a worried glance before they set their trays down on my table.
“Don’t tell me you’re seeing ghosts down here as well,” Stu said.