Dial a Ghost

Chapter Eight

In the knicker shop, the Wilkinsons were having a party. It was the day before they were due to leave for their new home in the country and they had invited their friends to say goodbye. Mr Hofmann had come from the bunion shop, sniffing a little because he was going to lose Grandma, and a lovely Swedish phantom called Pernilla, with luminous hair and gentle eyes, had drifted in from the music store. There was a jogger who had jogged once too often, and various children Addie had picked up: the son of a rat-catcher who came with a dozen of his father’s phantom rats, and a pickpocket called Jake who knew everything there was to know about living off the land.

It was a good party. Though the ghosts were sad to see such a nice family leave the district, they tried hard not to begrudge the Wilkinsons their good luck.

‘Aaah… imagine… to breathe again the fresh clear air,’ sighed Pernilla, who was dreadfully homesick for the pine forests of her native land.

‘And living with nuns,’ said the jogger, who had been a curate before he dropped dead of a heart attack on the A12. ‘Such good people!’

Aunt Maud was everywhere, filling glasses with her nightshade cordial, making people feel comfortable.

‘If only you could all come with us,’ she sighed.

‘Maybe you can,’ said Adopta. ‘If the nuns are so kind, maybe they’ll make room for you all!’

She had filled Grandma’s gas mask case with the ghosts of beetles and woodlice which she meant to re-settle in the country and was so excited that she found it impossible to keep still.

Everyone had been very well behaved up to then, but perhaps Aunt Maud’s drinks were stronger than she realized because Eric, who was usually so quiet, suddenly said, ‘No more knickers!’ and sent a box of mini-briefs tumbling to the floor.

‘No more Tootsies and Footsies and Bootsies,’ shouted Grandma, who had been particularly annoyed at the silly names that people nowadays gave to socks, thwacking at the display stand with her umbrella.

‘And down with tummy buttons,’ yelled Adopta, and a pile of polka-dot bikinis tumbled from their shelves.

At first Aunt Maud and Uncle Henry tried to stop them, but it was no use. The relief of getting away from all that underwear was just too great, and soon even Mr Hofmann, who could hardly glide, was thumping a see-through nightdress with his crutch, while Pernilla zoomed to the ceiling with a box of body stockings which she draped like streamers round the lamp.

But when the clock struck eleven, they quietened down. Mr Hofmann was led away by Grandma, the jogger jogged back to the A12, the rat-catcher’s son called to his rats — and the host and hostess, as is the way with parties, were left to clean up the mess.

There was only one more thing to do. Sober and solemn now, the Wilkinsons filed out into the street and called to Trixie.

‘We love you, Trixie,’ they said, bowing to the north.

‘We need you, Trixie,’ they said, bowing to the east and the west and the south.

‘And we shall never forget you,’ they promised.

Of course if Trixie had come just then it would have been a miracle, but she didn’t. So they went back to pack and cover the budgie’s cage, while Uncle Henry made his way to the Dial A Ghost agency and the office of Miss Pringle.

The folder with all their instructions and the maps was exactly where she had said it would be, on the window sill beside the potted geranium. Uncle Henry took it and passed it backwards and forwards across his chest so as to cover it with ectoplasm and make it invisible.

And an hour later, the Wilkinsons were on their way.

The Shriekers did not have a farewell party. To have a party you need friends and the Shriekers didn’t have any. All the same, in their dark and nasty way they were excited.

‘A place that’s fit for us at last,’ said Sabrina. ‘Statues… suits of armour… a tower!’

Mrs Mannering had come herself to tell the Shriekers about Helton Hall, which was noble of her because the frozen meat store had not been a nice place even before the de Bones came, and now it was unspeakable. Sides of beef lay sprawled on the floor where they had tried to drink blood from them; sheep’s kidneys and gobbets of fat squelched underfoot.

‘Perhaps there’ll be some children we can scare to death,’ said Sir Pelham, and the hatred in his eyes was terrible to see.

‘A little girl I can scratch with my fingernails,’ gloated Sabrina. ‘Long, deep scratches right to the bone.’

‘A little boy I can squeeze and squeeze till he turns blue and chokes.’

But now it was time to thaw out the ghoul and get ready to leave. They had tipped him out of his container the night before but he was still rigid, and while Sir Pelham beat him with his riding crop, Sabrina jerked the rope round his neck and screamed her orders. ‘You’re to get up, you pullulating blob. You’re to get up and cook something and clean something and pack something and hurry!’

While the poor ghoul tottered about muttering, ‘Fry! Sizzle! Sweep!’ Sabrina made herself beautiful for the journey. She squeezed the juice from a pig’s gall bladder and dabbed it behind her ears; she smeared her dress with lard to give a shine to the bloodstains, and she unknotted the python from her neck and fed him a dead mouse.

Meanwhile Sir Pelham glided to the Dial A Ghost agency and through the window of Mrs Mannering’s office. The folder with the maps in it was just where Mrs Mannering had promised. It even had ‘de Bone’ on it in Ted’s rather wiggly handwriting.

And as midnight struck, the de Bones too, dragging their wretched servant by his rope, set off for their new life.

Oliver had woken with the feeling that he just couldn’t go on. He would have run back to the Home, but the letter he wrote to Matron begging her to let him return had gone unanswered like all his other letters.

So there was nowhere to go. He got up wearily and dressed and began the long journey down to the dining room where Fulton and Frieda were waiting.

‘We have a nice surprise for you, Oliver,’ said Frieda. ‘You’ve been looking a bit pale lately so we’ve asked Mr Tusker to drive you to the sea. He’s going to York tonight to visit his sick sister, so this is your last chance to see something of the countryside.’

Oliver felt guilty, of course. He’d thought how creepy Frieda and Fulton were and here they were planning a treat. The idea of seeing the sea cheered him up. They’d gone to the seaside a few times from the Home. There’d been donkey rides and ice cream and he and Trevor and Nonie had made the best sandcastle on the beach.

But when doddery Mr Tusker stopped the car beside the dunes, Oliver realized he’d been silly again. The sea at Helton wasn’t at all like that. The butler wouldn’t even get out but shut all the windows and unfolded his newspaper. Then he handed Oliver a packet of sandwiches and said, ‘Don’t come back till four. We’re to stay out till then.’

So Oliver trudged off across the tussocky grass and tumbled down on to the shore. The wind hit him so hard he could scarcely stand upright; the waves slapped and pounded and thumped; dark clouds raced across the sky. The tide was high, so there were no rock pools, and as he fought his way up the beach he was almost blinded by flying sand. After a while he gave up the struggle and climbed into a hollow between two dunes, where he ate his sandwiches. Then he dug a deep hole and lay down in it and fell asleep.

It was teatime when they got back to Helton. Mr Tusker drove off to the station and Oliver made his way to the dining room. A glass of milk and some biscuits were laid out on the table, but there was no sign of Fulton and Frieda. Instead, beside his plate, there was a note.

‘Dear Oliver,’ he read. ‘I’m afraid we have had to go away for a few days. The boys in our school have been unhappy without us and there has been some trouble which we have to put right. I know you will not mind being alone. After all, the master of Helton Hall has got to get used to being by himself. Miss Match has left your supper on the kitchen table; it is her day off and she is going to spend the night in the village, but there is plenty of food in the larder. We will be back as soon as possible… Your affectionate Cousin Fulton.’

Oliver looked up, straight into the sinister marble face of the god Pan crouching on top of a clock. It was true then. In all the thirty rooms of Helton, he was the only living soul.

I won’t panic, he told himself. I’ll manage. He drank his milk and went outside. It was less frightening out of doors, but no more cheerful. He walked round the dark lake with its drowned farmer, through the grove of weeping ash trees, up the hill where the two hikers had died…

The cold drove him in at seven, and he went to fetch his supper. The kitchens were down in the basement. He made his way through the maze of dank stone corridors, sure that at every corner something was waiting to pounce… past a pantry where dead birds hung by their legs… past an iron boiler chuntering like an evil giant…

The kitchen was huge, with a scrubbed wooden table. On the table was a tray with a salad, slices of bread and butter, a glass of lemonade. He ate it there, and when he had finished, carried his empty dishes to the sink. It was then that he noticed the calendar hanging on the wall. It was a pretty calendar with views of the countryside, and the day’s date ringed by Miss Match.

Friday the 13th. The unluckiest day of the year! The day that ghosts and ghouls and vampires like best of all!

At that moment Oliver knew that it would happen this very night — the thing he waited for every time he crawled into the great bed and pulled the covers over his head. It might be the flesh-eating phantom at the window, it might be the wailing nun who strangled people with their sheets, or the skeleton looking for his skull — but one of them would come.

And when they did so, he would die.