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.
“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.