The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

you want to try again?” said Cart. “That looks painful.”
    â€œNaturally,” Imogen said haughtily. “One is bound to suffer in the cause of Art.” She pulled her trousers almost up to her armpits and stood waiting. “Pull.”
    Obediently Fenella leaned backward, pulling on the wooden handle. In front of her, Cart leaned backward, too, almost on top of Fenella, and heaved on the rope. Creak-creak-creak. The rope traveled over the beam until Imogen was raised on tiptoe. Then it stuck.
    â€œWhat are you doing ?” raved Imogen, swaying this way and that on her toe tips. “Pull me up , you great weak things!”
    â€œWe’re trying!” gasped Fenella.
    â€œYour center of gravity’s different or something,” Cart said breathlessly.
    â€œThen use your huge weight,” commanded Imogen. “You’re twice as heavy as I am.”
    This was true. Cart nodded and tried to brace herself with one foot against the bed. The bed promptly shot away from under Imogen, sending Cart backward into Fenella. Since Cart and Fenella both hung on to the rope in order not to fall in a heap, the result was that Imogen rose in a rapid set of creaking jerks, until she was hanging about a foot under the beam. There, for some reason, she started to twiddle round and round. Her feet rotated, mauve and dropping, almost in Cart’s face. Her hands clutched at the green nylon trousers to stop them coming down. Her face, every time it twirled into view, looked less and less happy.
    Let her down! shouted Sally. It looked exactly like a hanging now.
    But Imogen’s sisters hung on to the skipping ropes and stared critically upward.
    â€œYou still don’t look graceful,” Fenella said. “Stretch your arms out.”
    Imogen, whose blue eyes now had a curious wide, bulging look, spared first one hand, then the other, from her trousers. The trousers at once fell down. Imogen held her arms out stiff and straight and swung slowly round and round like a rather unhappy scarecrow.
    Cart shook her head. “Smile,” she suggested.
    After a moment when she seemed to have forgotten what smiling meant, Imogen succeeded in baring her teeth. Her head twiddled like a Halloween lantern. Her face was beginning to look a curious color.
    â€œYou still don’t look pretty,” Fenella said discontentedly. “Try doing something graceful with your legs.”
    Imogen tried. Probably she intended to stretch one leg backward like a ballerina. But what happened was that both her legs spread stiffly apart and bent at the knees, causing a great green web of stretched nylon to form between them. She twirled like a grinning wrestler frozen in mid-leap, and the dangling end of her trousers hanging from her feet made her look as if she had an extra pair of knees. Her face was a muddy mauve.
    Sally was suddenly sure Imogen was not breathing. She shot into the air to see. For a moment she was twiddling dizzily with Imogen under the beam, with sickening glimpses of unmade beds and childish drawings whirling round her and, beyond the taut, creaking rope, the wide, interested balloon face of Cart, with Fenella’s insect legs and skinny white feet sticking out behind. She could see the skipping rope cutting into Imogen’s chest under her arms.
    Help! Sally bawled. Mother! They’re hanging Imogen and Imogen hasn’t noticed!
    â€œShe still doesn’t look nice,” Fenella said.
    Imogen tried to improve matters by stretching her grin to a sort of leering simper. But Sally was right. She had given up breathing.
    Sally wondered frantically what she could do, when even Imogen herself did not seem to see she was strangling. And Phyllis was not going to come. Sally suddenly knew that. Phyllis never did come to see them these days. She was too tired after a day in school. Sally had been thinking of the far-off days, when they were all four little, when Phyllis had managed to come