An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman Page A

here and they linger like warmth. It’s in the air, like that silence after a concert, just before the applause starts.’
    Kirsty drank her coffee. The grind brought here with other half-used jars and tins tasted different. That could be the water, of course. At the Hollow, they didn’t need to filter. She had stopped taking sugar in tea and coffee.
    ‘Do we want to talk about the magic,’ she began, hesitantly, ‘or are we afraid that if we do, it’ll go away?’
    ‘Magic?’ queried Steven.
    ‘Yes,
magic
,’ Jordan was eager to confirm it. ‘Things moving, things appearing. Presences.’
    ‘Are they what’s behind the mystery collection?’ asked Steven. ‘Ghosts?’
    ‘Not exactly, or not just,’ said Jordan.
    ‘The IP are friendlies,’ said Tim. ‘They extend full cooperation.’
    ‘You’ve
seen
them, Tim?’
    ‘You don’t see them, Dad. If you saw them, they wouldn’t be them.’
    Kirsty thought about it.
    ‘I haven’t seen anything either, but I’ve been given things. In a way I can’t explain.’ She was wearing a bracelet from the bottom drawer. ‘And I’ve felt it. We’ve all felt it. Even you, Steven.’
    Her husband took her hand and squeezed her fingers. He did not think she was mad. Another miracle.
    ‘I’ve seen something like a ghost,’ said Jordan.
    Kirsty was surprised. She had never suspected.
    Tim raised his arms and went ‘woooo-wooooo’. Everyone laughed, including Jordan.
    ‘Yes, that sort of ghost. A floating white thing. The shawl on the sofa, moving by itself. Dancing.’
    ‘I haven’t seen anything like that,’ said Steven. ‘I must have angered the spirits or something.’
    ‘I don’t think so, Dad,’ said Jordan. ‘It’s different for each of us, but it’s different again for all of us together.’
    ‘So who is it?’ Steven asked. ‘Louise?’
    ‘More like Weezie,’ said Kirsty.
    ‘Didn’t Miss Teazle die only last year?’ asked Jordan. ‘It’s older than that. I think the Hollow has been this way for a long, long time. It’s in the ground as well as the house, in the trees and the streams.’
    ‘Maybe we’re on top of an Arthurian burial ground?’
    ‘I’m not sure it’s to do with the dead.’
    Steven was puzzled by Jordan’s statement. ‘Ghosts are the dead, surely? Spirits left behind, business left undone. They avenge their murders or haunt their heirs.’
    ‘Those would be unhappy ghosts, Dad.’
    Kirsty had a thought. ‘In the Weezie books, the little girl is friends with ghosts. There’s a grisly ghost in the first one – no, a
gloomy
ghost – which is like your idea of a ghost, the “woooo woooo” misery and chain-rattling ghost. But she meets it, makes friends with it, and it changes. I think Louise turned her own experience into a story.’
    ‘Cashing in?’ laughed Steven. ‘Maybe we should too? Have haunted holidays.’
    ‘No, dear,’ Kirsty said, serious. ‘Louise wasn’t like that. I think she was like the house. She wanted to share.’
    ‘Well, thank you, Weezie,’ said Steven, raising his coffee cup. ‘And thank you too, whoever or whatever you are. Thank you, ah, for having us.’
    Kirsty lifted her cup too. And Jordan, and Tim.
    A delicious shiver ran through her, and she knew her family shared it. It wasn’t like a wind. The window-panes didn’t rattle and magazine pages didn’t riffle. It was warm and cool at once, like a caress.
    ‘That was, um, enlightening,’ said Steven.
    The red glow of sunset was splashed across every pane of the picture windows, bathing the Summer Room in petal-pink light. The windows formed a giant screen. Images swirled in the panes, turning the wall into living stained glass. Kirsty recognised the colours of the watercolours which illustrated the Weezie books.
    The orchard and the moor were still there, but strings of phantom light wound between the trees. Shapes danced a midsummer gavotte. Faces formed in the interplay of the trees and the flowers and the light. It