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they're too much for you, Ben, don't be afraid to ask questions. Now what's this I see coming for a good boy? I do believe it's a glass of milk."
    Ben thanked the housekeeper politely and concentrated on drinking the milk. He had plenty of questions, but he was sure that the answers weren't here. The priest must be mistaken in his thinking; he'd said himself that he didn't know what God meant. But then was the church mistaken about death and what was waiting beyond it? Ben thought so, and he felt as if Father Hynn had separated him further from his family, had sent them further into the unknown dark.
    That night Ben prayed for them more intensely than ever, under his breath so that his aunt wouldn't hear. He prayed in front of the photograph and then in bed until he fell asleep. He kept imagining them in purgatory, naked and writhing like insects thrown on red-hot coals, unable even to die. He gripped his praying hands together as if their aching would drive out the pain which clenched his whole body, and prayed so hard that he no longer knew what he was saying. When the vision faded, there was only the cold dark that felt like a promise of peace.

    SIX

    On Halloween night the streets smelled of mist and charred leaves. All day Ben had felt surrounded by signs too secret to interpret: the dance of decaying leaves in the air, the long shadows where the autumn chill lurked like winter biding its time, a sun which looked swollen with blood as the mist dragged it down beyond the unconvincing cut-out shapes the houses had become. He was almost able to believe that the anticipation with which the growing nights affected him was only the excitement he could see on the faces of the children around him, but then why was it making him nervous?
    The Milligans invited him and his aunt to spend the evening with them. After dinner Ben's aunt led him through the streets, gripping his arm harder whenever they met figures wearing masks or pointed hats. "They're just children dressed up," she kept muttering, unaware that he was nervous of them only in case they might jeer at his costume, a sheet which she had reluctantly lent him and which he had to bunch in his fist to prevent the skirt of it from tripping him up. At long last they reached their destination, where a grinning pumpkin flickered in the front-room window, and Mr Milligan opened the door. "Why, here's a Roman senator," he shouted. "Hitch up your toga, Bennius, and come in."
    Mrs Milligan bustled out of the kitchen, carrying two aprons and an apple from which she took a loud bite. "He looks more like a little old pagan priest," she said and then, so forcefully that she spat bits of apple, "You don't really, Ben. You're the best ghost I've seen tonight. It makes me shiver just to look at you."
    She gave him and Dominic an apron each so that they could duck for apples in a washing-up bowl placed on a bath towel in the front room. The water and the apple which Ben eventually snagged with his teeth tasted of soap and of the smell of the candles which illuminated the room. Afterwards Mrs Milligan brought in sausages protruding from snowdrifts of mashed potatoes on large oval plates, followed by conical cakes meant to resemble snouts of rats, from which one had to pull the inedible whiskers. Ben's aunt kept glancing unhappily at the shadows of the sausages, flexing on the tablecloth like fingers threatening to shape a silhouette, and she wouldn't touch the snouty cakes. Mrs Milligan cleared the table and came back into the room, her shadow billowing after her as though the dark of the hallway had sent part of itself to join them. "Time to tell some tales," Mr Milligan said.
    "Nothing unsuitable," Ben's aunt warned.
    "Nothing to turn anyone's hair any whiter."
    "Tell us about the man who found the whistle on the beach at Felixstowe," Dominic said.
    The boys sat on either side of the fire, their backs against the fireplace, which felt to Ben as if the snatches the heat made at him kept