Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones

at Chris to tell him, and Chris’s face was a white staring blur, gazing at me.
    â€œYou look as if you’ve seen a ghost!” I said.
    â€œI have,” he said. “The ghost from my room. He was standing right beside you a second ago.”
    I ran then. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I went tearing my way through the bushes all across and down the little hill and then out into a field of some kind and then into another field after that. I remember a wire fence twanging and a hedge which scraped me all over, and a huge black and white beast suddenly looming at me out of the twilight. It was a cow, I think. I did a mad sideways swerve round it and ran on. I wanted to scream, but I was so frightened that all I could make was a little whimpering sound. After a while I could hear Chris pelting after me, calling out, “Cool it, Mig! Wait! He’s not frightening at all, really!” I wanted to shout back “Then why did you look so scared?” but I could still only make that stupid mewing noise. “Hm-hm-hm!” I said to Chris, and rushed on. I don’t know where all I went, with Chris rushing after me telling me to stop. It was getting darker all the time. But I think some of where I ran must have been the vegetable plots along the back of Cranbury, because it was all cold and cloggy and I kept treading on big clammy plants that went crunch and gave out a fierce smell of cabbage. My feet got heavier and heavier like they do in nightmares. I could see town lights twinkling to one side and orange streetlight shining steadily ahead, and I raced for the orange light with my huge heavy feet, and my chest hurt and I kept going, “Hm-hm-hm!” until Chris caught me up and I suddenly ran out of breath.
    â€œHonestly!” he said. He was disgusted.
    We were beside an iron fence just outside the station car park, with dew hanging off it and glittering on all the cars in the orange light. A train was just coming rattling into the station. I had a stitch in my side and I could hardly breathe. I lifted first one foot then the other into the light. They were both giant-sized with earth and smelled of cabbage. We looked at them and we laughed. Chris leaned on the fence and squealed with laughter. I hiccuped and panted and my eyes watered.
    â€œIt wasn’t really the ghost,” I said when I could speak. “Was it?”
    â€œI just said it to frighten you,” said Chris. “The result was spectacular. Get some of that mud off. Aunt Maria will be telling everyone we’re drowned and Elaine will be giving Mum hell for letting Auntie get so worried.”
    Now I’m writing it down, I can see Chris was lying to make me feel better. I didn’t realize then, and I did feel better. I stood on one leg and took my shoes off in turn and scraped them on the iron fence. Chris scraped his a bit, but he wasn’t anything like as muddy. He had looked where he was going.
    While we were doing it, the train had stopped and all the people from it began to come out of the station. They came one after another along past the fence under the light. They didn’t look at us. They were all staring straight ahead and walking in the same brisk way, looking kind of dull and tired. “Rush-hour crowd,” Chris said. “Funny to have it out here, too. I wonder where they all commute to.”
    â€œThey look like zombies,” I said. Most of them were men and they mostly wore city suits. About half the line marched out through the gate at the end of the car park. We could hear their feet marching twunka twunka twunka down the road into Cranbury. The other half, in the same unseeing way, walked to cars in the car park. The space was suddenly full of headlights coming on and starters whining. “Zombies tired after work,” I said.
    â€œAll the husbands of the Mrs. Urs,” said Chris. “The Mrs. Urs take their souls away and then send them out as zombies to