The Haunted Nursery
by Brian Stableford
 
The Englishman, the Scotsman, and the Irishman agreed that they would take turns entering the haunted nursery and make every effort to stay there all night. They each put £100 into the pot; the one who contrived to remain in there for the longest time would scoop the pool. They cut cards to decide who would go first, and the Englishman drew the lowest.
After twenty-five minutes, the Englishman was back in the drawing-room pouring himself a very large brandy.
"That's no *ordinary* haunted room," he told the Scotsman and the Irishman. "I met the Devil himself. That wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been able to face up to him man-to-man, but I wasn't. The moment I looked at him I was thirteen again, in my first term at Eton, fagging for that sadistic bastard Harding. He made my life a living hell- I can't go into details. A living hell. It was worse than the army- worse than the Gulf, worse than Belfast before the cease-fire- because I wasn't *equipped*. I wasn't trained. There's only one thing worse than being thirteen in a living hell, and that's *going back* to being thirteen in a living hell- being stripped of all the adult equipment, all the training, being reduced to absolute helplessness and *knowing* just how pathetically and ridiculously helpless you are. I'd forgotten it all, buried it and blanked it out- but *he* brought it all back again. I could take having my eyes plucked out, but not that."
The Scotsman and the Irishman had a good laugh about that before the Scotsman took his own turn in the haunted nursery.
He was back in the drawing-room twenty-five minutes later, pouring himself a huge whiskey.
"Same bloody thing," he said, in his terse Scottish manner. "Devil in disguise. I wor nae but a six year old an' ma bloody da had his bloody belt off again. Blubbin' like a babe, I was. All ma life I've been tellin' maesel' that if ever I'd got holt o' that bastard when we were two of a size I'd ha' kicked the shit out o' him an' spat on the wreck- but I wor nae but six year old and there was nithin' I could do while that brass buckle came down an' down an' down agin. Nithin' at all- an' I *remembered* everythin' I'd forgot about all o' that stuff. Every bloody thing I'd buried an' blanked. I could ha' taken havin' ma eyes plucked out, but no' that. No' that."
This time, it was only the Irishman who laughed. As the Irishman went off to the haunted nursery to take his turn, the Englishman said: "Do you think he has sense or sensitivity enough to be taken the same way?"
"I give him ten minutes," the Scotsman said, grimly. "Not a bloody minute more."
The Irishman came back after exactly ten minutes. He poured himself a modest glass of whiskey and sipped it delicately, as if he'd never tasted it before. Then he turned to his adversaries.
"'Twas the Divvil all right," he said. "Hisself in all his foul an' fire-an'-brimstone glory, just like the Faithers up at Saint Pat's used to tell us. Never thought to see the like. Four years old, I thought I was, before me first communion- an' lookin' the Divvil hisself in the burnin' yeller eye." He stopped, and took another appreciative sip from his glass.
"And then what?" said the Englishman, breathlessly wanting to hear the gory details before he and the Scotsman split the pot.
"I just said, 'How d'ye do, Musther Divvil- 'T must be awful dull an' lonely stuck in this pokey little room fer all eternity. Would you like to swap bodies wi' me for a little while, so that I can win a bet against a Presbyterian an' a public schoolboy?' An' the Divvil said 'Sure'- an' here he is."
And the Irishman- or whatever was wearing his body just then- reached out with one clawed hand to pluck out the anxious eyes of the Englishman and the Scotsman, while the other collected the £300.