Mirella and Ivo were curled up beside each other. They were too tired to sleep and were afraid to close their eyes.
After a while Mirella tried to sit up. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” she whispered. “Not anything at all?”
Ivo shook his head. Mirella always thought there was something one could do, but sometimes there simply wasn’t.
Ivo began to doze off, then forced himself awake. “Unless…” He shook his head. “No. She wouldn’t come for us. And anyway…”
But the children were so used to picking up each other’s thoughts that Mirella understood him.
“She might… if she knew how bad things were. But how could we let her know?”
“There’ll be some words,” said Ivo. “A spell.”
He tried to remember what he had seen in the encyclopedia in the days when he had read all about magic, but what came to his mind was Dr. Brainsweller standing on the battlements and prompting the Hag. The wizard might not do much magic but he knew every spell there ever was.
But when they crawled toward him and managed to wake him up, the wizard shook his head.
“It’s very secret,” he said. “Very dark. Mustn’t be used except in dire emergencies.”
The children only looked at him. He saw their pale exhausted faces, the bruise on Ivo’s cheek… From the bed came the ogre’s rasping breath.
The wizard struggled with his conscience. He would be giving away the secrets of his trade. And yet…
“Must… never reveal it…” he muttered. “Never on pain of death.”
“We promise,” said both children. “We swear on Charlie’s head.”
The wizard leaned forward and whispered in their ears.
Darkness had fallen and the third night of haunting was about to begin. It would be the last night, the ghosts were sure of that.
“About time, too,” said the Aunt Pusher as they stirred in their hiding place next to the burial mound. “I never thought he would hang on as long as he has.”
It had been more work than they expected, this haunting, but now it was nearly over. And then home to their reward!
They began to rise into the air, but then something happened. There was a kind of stirring, an upheaval in the mound beside them: the bones fell away… and then out of an opening in the top there appeared a gigantic figure which stood glaring at the ghosts. Her hideous hairy face was set in an angry frown, her vast body shimmered in the evening light.
But what held the ghosts transfixed was her transparency. Mighty and enormous as she was, they could nevertheless see right through her. She, too, was a ghost — and suddenly they were very much afraid.
Germania cleared her throat and the ghosts trembled. An ogress clearing her throat is a sound like no other. It is a signal — a beginning of something that it is best not to know about.
“When I was a living ogress,” she said, raking them with her eyes, “I could eat people. And now that I am a ghost ogress, I can eat ghosts. Now which one shall I start with?”
“No no, none of us,” gibbered the Man with the Umbrella. “You wouldn’t like us. No!” His voice rose in a shriek.
The ogress smiled. She took two paces forward. Then she put out her hand and fastened it around the Honker’s ankle.
“I’ll start with you, I think.” She picked up the crutch and threw it away. Then she opened her mouth, and with a howl of anguish, the Honker disappeared.
“Disgusting,” said the ogress, wiping her lips with her hand, “but it can’t be helped. Now who shall I try next?”
By now the ghosts were terrorized into action and one by one they rose into the air, trying to flee.
It did not help them. The ogress was ten times their size and had ten times their speed. She took off, still in the shroud she had been buried in, and went in pursuit.
As she rose, she snipped off the leg of the Man with the Umbrella and sent the Bag Lady’s shopping bag flying.
“I’ll teach you to torment my husband!” roared the ogress.
“We won’t do it again; we’re going, we’re going,” cried the Aunt Pusher. “We didn’t know.”
“If you come anywhere near this place again, I’ll eat the lot of you.”
The ghosts took one last look at Germania and, shrieking in terror, they fled. But there was one phantom who was sure that he could escape the fate of the others. The Inspector, cocooned in his own darkness, began to slink away through the trees, keeping close to the ground.
The ogress stood still and sniffed. Then she took a few giant steps forward, and her hand closed around him, and she brought him to her mouth.
Just for a moment after she swallowed him, Germania’s stomach did not feel well; it gave a kind of blip of horror, a sort of spasm. She felt as though no food in the world was worth eating — never had been worth eating, and never would be worth eating again. That where her stomach with its happy memories had been, there was now a pit of cold ghastliness — and the cold ghastliness would go on forever.
Then her ectoplasm got to work digesting the swallowed specter, reducing him to a miasmic pulp — and Germania smiled because her stomach was itself again, and her work was done.
And she made her way back to the mound and climbed inside and the bones settled over her again — and all was peace.
CHAPTER 23
Germania
It is a strange thing, but while the harm that ghosts do can be truly terrible, it does not last. As soon as the specters have gone, the victims quickly recover. So within a few hours the children were able to run into the ogre’s room and tell him that the ghosts had gone for good.
“And it was your wife that did it,” said Mirella.
“We were looking out of the window and we saw her,” said Ivo. “There was a full moon and we saw everything. She chased them away and she ate some of them — she really is a marvelous woman.”
The ogre sat up in bed. “I wonder how she knew,” he said. “She’s such a sound sleeper.”
The children looked at each other. They had promised the wizard they would keep his secret, and the memory of that walk to the mound, with the ghosts so close, was one they did not want to remember.
“I must speak to her,” the ogre went on. “She will be getting impatient. I must speak to Germania and tell her that I’m coming just as soon as the aunts arrive.” He threw out his arms like someone in a play. “I must Give Myself to the Mound,” he said.
He went on saying that he must Give Himself to the Mound all the next day. He was still shaken and the marks made by the phantom umbrella had not quite healed, but as night fell he put on his clothes. Then he put his head around the kitchen door, and in case they hadn’t heard him before, he said once again that he was going to Give Himself to the Mound.
He was gone for over an hour. Though it was long past the children’s bedtime, everyone was still waiting up in case he wanted to tell them how he had got on.
He came in silently and sat down. He drummed with his great fingers on the arm of his chair.
No one dared to say anything. The Hag handed him a mug of tea.
The ogre sighed. Then he sighed again. When he spoke his voice was full of bewilderment.
“She doesn’t want me,” he said.
Everyone looked at him in a concerned sort of way.
“She will want me,” he went on. “Later. But at the moment she feels like being alone. She says sharing a mound is like sharing a bed, you have to get used to it. That was why she appeared to me when I was about to change Mirella. I thought it was because she wanted me to come, but I was wrong — it was to tell me that she wasn’t ready. And she thinks I should go away somewhere and enjoy myself.”