Maskerade

Agnes hurried across to the big window and turned to look at Granny, who was standing by the fireplace.

The old witch faded. She didn't disappear. She merely slid into the background.

An arm gradually became part of the mantelpiece. A fold of her dress was a piece of shadow. An elbow became the top of the chair behind her. Her face became one with a vase of faded flowers.

She was still there, like the old woman in the puzzle picture they sometimes printed in the Almanack, where you could see the old woman or the young girl but not both at once, because one was made of the shadows of the other. Granny Weatherwax was standing by the fireplace, but you could see her only if you knew she was there.

Agnes blinked. And there were just the shadows, the chair and the fire.

The door opened. She ducked behind the curtains, feeling as conspicuous as a strawberry in a stew, certain that the sound of her heart would give her away.

The door shut, carefully, with barely a click. Footsteps crossed the floor. A wooden scraping noise might have been a chair being moved slightly.

A scratch and a hiss were the sound of a match, striking. A clink was the glass of the lamp, being lifted…

All noise ceased.

Agnes crouched, every muscle suddenly screaming with the strain. The lamp hadn't been lit — she'd have seen the light around the curtain.

Someone out there was making no noise.

Someone out there was suddenly suspicious.

A floorboard squeaked verrrry slowwwly, as someone shifted their weight.

She felt as if she was going to scream, or burst with the effort of silence. The handle of the window behind her, a mere point of pressure a moment ago, was trying seriously to become part of her life. Her mouth was so dry that she knew it'd creak like a hinge if she dared to swallow.

It couldn't be anyone who had a right to be here. People who had a right to be in places walked around noisily.

The handle was getting really personal.

Try to think of something else…

The curtain moved. Someone was standing on the other side of it.

If her throat weren't so arid she might be able to scream.

She could feel the presence through the cloth. Any moment now, someone was going to twitch the curtain aside.

She leapt, or as close to a leap as was feasible — it was a kind of vertical lumber, billowing the curtain aside, colliding with a slim body behind it, and ending on the floor in a tangle of limbs and ripping velvet.

She gulped air, and pressed down on the squirming bundle below her.

“I'll scream!” she said. “And if I do your eardrums will come down your nose!”

The writhing stopped.

“Perdifa?” said a muffled voice.

Above her, the curtain?rail sagged at one end and the brass rings, one at a time, spun towards the floor.

Nanny went back to the sacks. Each one bulged with round hard shapes that clinked gently under her questing finger.

“This is a lot of money, Walter,” she said carefully.

“Yes Mrs Ogg!”

Nanny lost track of money fairly easily although this didn't mean the subject didn't interest her: it was just that, beyond a certain point, it became dream?like. All she could be sure of was that the amount in front of her would make anyone's drawers drop.

“I suppose,” she said, “that if I was to ask you how it'd got here, you'd say it was the Ghost, yes? Like the roses?”

“Yes Mrs Ogg!”

She gave him a worried look. “You'll be all right down here, will you?” she said. “You'll sit quiet? I reckon I need to talk to some people.”

“Where's my mum Mrs Ogg?”

“She's having a nice sleep, Walter.”

Walter seemed satisfied with this.

“You'll sit quiet in your… in that room, will you?”

“Yes Mrs Ogg!”

“There's a good boy.”

She glanced at the money?bags again. Money was trouble.

Agnes sat back.

Andre raised himself on his elbows and pulled the curtain off his face. “What the hell were you doing there?” he said.

“I was— What do you mean, what was I doing there? You were creeping around!”

“You were hiding behind the curtain!” said Andre, getting to his feet and fumbling for the matches again. “Next time you blow out a lamp, remember it'll still be warm.”

“We were… on important business…”

The lamp glowed. Andre turned. “We?” he said.

Agnes nodded, and looked across at Granny. The witch hadn't moved, although it took a deliberate effort of will to focus on her among the shapes and shadows.

Andre picked up the lamp and stepped forward.

The shadows shifted.

“Well?” he said.

Agnes strode across the room and waved a hand in the air. There was the chair back, there was the vase, there was… nothing else.

“But she was there!”

“A ghost, eh?” said Andre sarcastically.

Agnes backed away.

There is something about the light of a lamp held lower than someone's face. The shadows are wrong. They fall into unfortunate places. Teeth seem more prominent. Agnes came to realize that she was alone in a room in suspicious circumstances with a man whose face suddenly looked a lot more unpleasant than it had before.

“I suggest,” he said, “that you get back to the stage right now, yes? That would be the very best thing you could do. And don't meddle in things that don't concern you. You've done too much as it is.”

The fear hadn't drained out of Agnes, but it had found a space in which to metamorphose into anger.

“I don't have to put up with that! For all I know, you might be the Ghost!”

“Really? I was told that Walter Plinge was the Ghost,” said Andre. “How many people did you tell? And now it turns out that he's dead…”

“No, he's not!”

It was out before she could stop it. She'd said it merely to wipe the sneer off his face. This happened. But the expression that replaced it was no improvement.

A floorboard creaked.

They both turned.

There was a hat?stand in the corner, next to a bookcase. There were a few coats and scarves hanging from it. It was surely only the way that the shadows fell that made it look, from this angle, like an old woman. Or…

“Damn floors,” said Granny, fading into the foreground. She stepped away from the coats.