Read The Last of the Spirits for Free Online Page A

her. We can’t talk to her. I can’t tell how I . . . I can’t . . .’
    His voice gave way to sobbing and he slumped to his knees. Lizzie was unmoved.
    ‘Well, I don’t care,’ she said coldly. ‘I’d rather stay here like this than go back. I’d rather be a ghost here than be what we was back there.’
    ‘We don’t get to choose,’ said Sam quietly, without looking up. ‘Don’t you understand? People like us never –’
    ‘Sam!’ hissed Lizzie.
    He made no reply.
    ‘Sam!’ she repeated. ‘She can see me. I mean I can see me. I can see us!’
    ‘What are you on about?’ said Sam, looking up.
    But as soon as he did, he saw what she meant. Lizzie’s younger self was staring at them, wide-eyed and giggling, alternately clapping her hands and pointing.
    ‘See?’ said Lizzie. ‘I can see us.’
    Their mother and Sam’s younger self both followed little Lizzie’s gaze, wondering what it was that so enthralled her, but they could clearly see nothing.
    ‘What is it, Lizzie, dear?’ said their mother with a chuckle.
    ‘I think I can remember this . . .’ said Lizzie.
    ‘Remember what?’ said Sam.
    ‘Remember us standing here,’ she said. ‘Like we are now. I think I can remember this. I can remember now.’
    ‘No, you can’t,’ said Sam. ‘How could you? You were too little. Look at you.’
    But Sam said these words without his usual certainty. He had lost all sense of what was real and what was fanciful, and Lizzie remembering was no stranger than them standing there like ghosts, looking at themselves through time. So little had seemed possible only a day or so ago. Now nothing seemed im possible.
    Sam remembered this day too, though not for that reason. Whenever he tried to picture their early life, his mind was irresistibly drawn back to this day, this summer’s afternoon. It was why he was so reluctant to talk about it with Lizzie. He knew where this memory led.
    A visitor appeared beside them, as oblivious to their presence as their mother and younger selves. It was their neighbour, a busybody. Sam tried to remember her name but could not. She had some news she was clearly and obscenely eager to impart. Sam and Lizzie’s father had been arrested and taken to the debtors’ prison at the Marshalsea.
    This was it: this was the very moment they fell into the pit.
    There was a shout from the house behind them and Sam and Lizzie both turned to the sound. Confusingly, Sam was sure that the shout came from their mother, but how could it? When they turned back to her, the family was gone.
    Not only that, the day was different. The white clouds overhead were replaced by grey, and the garden was wearing its dull winter colours. The river looked darkly mysterious, a joyful thing turned grim and fearsome.
    They moved away through the vegetable patch towards the house and entered through the kitchen door. They heard their mother sobbing and they saw a man standing with his back to them, their mother seated beyond, the two children at her side. The man’s hair was tied in a pigtail that hung between his shoulders.
    They were no longer in the cottage by the river, but in the hateful lodgings their mother had rented near the prison, rent that had taken all the money gained from pawning everything of value remaining to her.
    Sam’s younger self looked older than before and some of the hardness that was now such a feature of his face had taken root. Lizzie too looked less of the joyful tot she had been moments before. How much time had flown? Not more than a few months.
    The greatest change had occurred in their mother though. The light had almost disappeared from her sapphire eyes, which once had evoked a summer sky and now looked like ice. Her rounded features were sunken and wan. She seemed tired and dazed, like a gin addict.
    ‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ said the man. ‘I only do as I am required to do.’
    ‘But what an occupation,’ said their mother.
    ‘It is the only one I