“‘The Hound bayed out on the Moor—’”
And the echo of that bay, that most forlorn cry, came from her traveling companion’s soul, wailed from his throat.
As the night grew on and the moon arose and a Woman in White crossed a landscape, as the old nurse said and told, a bat that became a wolf that became a lizard scaled a wall on the ghastly passenger’s brow.
And at last the train was silent with sleeping, and Miss Minerva Halliday let the last book drop with the thump of a body to the floor.
“Requiescat in pace?” whispered the Orient traveler, eyes shut.
“Yes.” She smiled, nodding. “Requiescat in pace.” And they slept.
And at last they reached the sea.
And there was mist, which became fog, which became scatters of rain, like a proper drench of tears from a seamless sky.
Which made the ghastly passenger open, ungum his mouth, and murmur thanks for the haunted sky and the shore visited by phantoms of tide as the train slid into the shed where the mobbed exchange would be made, a full train becoming a full boat.
The Orient ghost stood well back, the last figure on a now self-haunted train.
“Wait,” he cried, softly, piteously. “That boat! There’s no place on it to hide! And the customs!”
But the customs men took one look at the pale face snowed under the dark cap and earmuffs, and swiftly flagged the wintry soul onto the ferry.
To be surrounded by dumb voices, ignorant elbows, layers of people shoving as the boat shuddered and moved and the nurse saw her fragile icicle melt yet again.
It was a mob of children shrieking by that made her say: “Quickly!”
And she all but carried the wicker man in the wake of the boys and girls.
“No,” cried the old passenger. “The noise!”
“It’s special!” The nurse hustled him through a door. “A medicine! Here!”
The old man stared.
“Why,” he murmured. “This is—a playroom.”
She steered him into the midst of all the screams.
“Children! Storytelling time!”
They were about to run again when she added, “Ghost-story-telling time!”
She pointed casually to the ghastly passenger, whose pale moth fingers grasped the scarf about his icy throat.
“All fall down!” said the nurse.
The children plummeted with squeals all about the Orient traveler, like Indians around a teepee. They stared up along his body to where blizzards ran odd temperatures in his gaping mouth.
“You do believe in ghosts, yes?” she said.
“Oh, yes!” was the shout. “Yes!”
It was as if a ramrod had shot up his spine. The Orient traveler stiffened. The most brittle of tiny flinty sparks fired his eyes. Winter roses budded in his cheeks. And the more the children leaned, the taller he grew, and the warmer his complexion. With one icicle finger he pointed at their faces.
“I,” he whispered, “I,” a pause. “Shall tell you a frightful tale. About a real ghost!”
“Oh, yes!” cried the children.