The Great Ghost Rescue

Fourteen

‘I… don’t think… it will be… much longer now,’ said the Hag.

She was lying on a bed of mouldering leaves in the roofless Banqueting Hall of the castle. In her arms she held what was left of her beloved husband, the Gliding Kilt. It wasn’t very much. His leg stumps had gone; his chest and arms were so faint that they seemed to be just a shimmering in the air; only the brave tartan of the kilt remained — that and his wise and comforting words.

‘We’ve been… so happy together. Don’t be sad.’

But the Hag was sad. She was unbearably sad. Tears rolled down her whiskery cheeks and a whole mix-up of smells: mashed mice stomachs, pig’s trotters, Camembert cheese, rolled from her sick body as she remembered the wonderful times they had had together. ‘And my Little Ones,’ she moaned.

‘It is best… that we should all go… together,’ said the Gliding Kilt, whose face was beginning to break up on one side.

With her weak and aching arms, the Hag reached out to George who lay at her feet. His skull had almost melted and his screams sounded like the muffled squeaking of a mouse.

‘Winifred?’ whispered the Hag brokenly. A hopeless sobbing answered her. Without her bowl,

Winifred was nothing.

‘Humphrey?’

No answer.

‘Humphrey!’ screamed the Hag again.

Still no answer. Yet just now he had been lying close beside her. Humphrey was dead then. Exorcised. Sent back for ever to where ghosts come from, never to return. Quite, quite desperate, the Hag closed her eyes and prepared for death.

Humphrey, however, was not dead. He was terribly, terribly weak and for a while, as he lay between George and Winifred feeling the stabbing pain in his poor ectoplasm, watching the pink colour drain from his tortured limbs, he just wanted the end to come quickly.

And then something happened. A little wriggling, thinking worm sat up in his brain and said: ‘No. You’re not just going to lie down and die. You’re too young to die, Humphrey the Horrible,’ said this little worm. ‘You’re going to do something. You’re going to get help.’

And when the little wriggling worm in Humphrey’s brain got to the word ‘help’ it got much bigger and reared up and said the one word: ‘RICK.’

‘But I can’t,’ said Humphrey weakly to the little worm. ‘How can I get to Rick? I can’t even move.’

‘Can’t you?’ said the wriggling worm. ‘Are you sure you can’t? Try. Move one leg. Go on — try. There. Now the other.’

‘It hurts,’ said Humphrey to the little worm.

‘That doesn’t matter. Now up. Glide. Go on. Go on.’

And then Humphrey really was up in the air and gliding, weakly and slowly but gliding… past Aunt Hortensia lying like an iron girder on her tomb, past the poor Shuk whimpering in agony with only one tail left of his three, past the moaning, fast-dissolving Ladies…

As he came over the causeway which separated Insleyfarne from the mainland, he felt a stab of pain so agonizing that he nearly fell to the ground. He was flying right into the beam of Mr Wallace’s exorcism. Mr Wallace was the youngest and the strongest of the clergymen. He was also the nicest, and though he hated the job he was doing he thought it only fair to do it well. So he was sitting on Lord Bullhaven’s folding chair waving a rowan wand in one hand and gabbling Spell 293 out of the ghost-laying book as hard as he could.

There was a lot more of this spell and if Mr Wallace had been able to get to the end of it, Humphrey would probably have been done for. But poor Mr Wallace only had a very thin and threadbare coat and it was bitterly cold sitting on the shingle with the wind howling in from the sea and quite suddenly he was attacked by a terrible fit of sneezing.

It lasted only a few moments, this gap in the exorcism, but it was enough. Humphrey was able to glide on over Mr Wallace’s head and to set off on his long and exhausting journey to find Rick the Rescuer.

It was a journey that Humphrey never forgot. Though he grew a little stronger as he got away from the exorcism, he was still very weak. His ball and chain felt like a ton of lead, and sometimes he was so dizzy he didn’t know whether he was gliding on his head or his heels. Worst of all, he wasn’t too certain of the way he had to go. South East, he knew, but exactly how far? What if he should miss Rick’s school altogether?

But he couldn’t; he couldn’t miss it. His parents were dying; George and Winifred, and all the other ghosts who had been trapped so cruelly and hideously on Insleyfarne… He had to find Rick. What Rick could do to save an island full of dead and dying ghosts, Humphrey never thought. He wasn’t very clever. He just had faith.

It had been a clear and blustery morning when he set out from Insleyfarne. Now the clouds gathered; it began to rain and the wind was dead against him. Without the protection of the phantom coach he was bitterly cold and he was shivering so much that he began to lose height.

‘I can’t do it,’ he sobbed. ‘I can’t go all that way.’

Then he remembered what the Gliding Kilt had told him once. ‘If you’ve got something difficult to do, don’t think of it all laid out in front of you. Just think of the one next step. You can always take just one step more.’

So Humphrey glided one step more and then another and another, and at last the land below him changed and became gentler: fields and hedges instead of wild moorland, and he knew he was getting to the English border. East now… over the river, and a moment of panic as a flock of starlings rose suddenly into the air and nearly blinded him. And then, wasn’t that a familiar fir wood and there, in the clearing…Was it…?Oh it had to be…Yes! There they were! As smelly as ever, hung out on the window sill by the other boys — Maurice Crawler’s striped and disgusting football socks!

With a sob of exhaustion, Humphrey lost height, glided through the dormitory window and fell, in a heap of utter weariness, on to Rick’s bed.

Rick was in Classroom V having a history lesson. The lesson was about Henry VIII whom Rick had never liked anyway and now really hated for having cut off Aunt Hortensia’s head and burnt down the Mad Monk’s monastery and making such a nuisance of himself generally.

Barbara, sitting beside him, looked as though she was asleep but Rick knew that if Mr Horner asked one of his silly, pointless questions, she would know the answer straight away.

‘Please, sir, can I be excused?’ said Maurice Crawler.

Rick exchanged a glance with Peter Thorne who sat on his other side. All the boys knew what Maurice did when he was excused. He went up to the dormitory, took a box of sweets from under his pillow and stuffed himself before he came back to the classroom. Probably Mr Horner knew it too but what could he do with Mrs Crawler always defending her ‘Honeybunch’.

‘Very well,’ said Mr Horner, and started telling the class about Henry’s second wife, poor Anne Boleyn.

He hadn’t got very far before the classroom door burst open and Maurice came tottering in, trembling like a great, white jellyfish.

‘A THING!’ He pointed at Rick. ‘Like before. On Henderson’s bed. A b… beastly, ghastly g… ghost!’

‘Now really, Crawler,’ began Mr Horner. And then: ‘Henderson! How dare you leave the classroom without—’

But Rick, with Barbara running at his heels, had gone.

‘Humphrey! Oh, Humphrey!’ Rick swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘What’s happened? What have they done to you?’

‘I’m all right,’ said Humphrey weakly, waving a skeletal finger. ‘It’s all the others… Rick, it was a trap. And they’re all dying. Perhaps dead. My mother and father, George, Winifred — everybody!’

And between the hiccuping sobs which shook him now that he’d reached Rick at last, he told him of the dreadful things that were happening at Insleyfarne.

‘You’ve got to help us, Rick,’ said Humphrey. ‘And quickly, before—’

He broke off as the door of the dormitory burst open and Peter Thorne rushed in.

‘They’re all coming up, Rick — Mr Horner and the Crawlers and beastly Maurice — to see this—’ He stopped dead. ‘Goodness! It’s true then. It really is a ghost.’

‘Yes, it’s a ghost,’ said Rick quietly. ‘It’s also my friend and he needs help. Try and stop them coming in.’

Without any more fuss, Peter rushed back to the door and started pulling a chest of drawers across it. For someone so frail-looking he was surprisingly strong.

‘Humphrey, can you still vanish or are you too weak?’

Humphrey turned his grey, exhausted face to Rick’s. ‘I’ll… try…’ he said. It was obviously a tremendous effort but after a moment his poor, lumpy ectoplasm began to disappear and only his elbow hung like a shred of old sheep’s wool in the air.

The hammering on the door began. Rick ignored it. His face had gone as grim as stone. As soon as Humphrey had said the dread word ‘EXORCISM’ he knew how serious the danger was.

‘How many clergymen were there?’

‘Three,’ came Humphrey’s voice. ‘And another man with a beard. And Lord Bullhaven, of course.’

Rick wasn’t a silly, daydreaming kid. To tackle five grown men he’d need help.

‘Open up,’ screeched Mrs Crawler outside the door. ‘Open up, you wicked children.’

‘I can’t hold them much longer,’ said Peter, braced against the chest of drawers. And suddenly Rick remembered something. Peter was tiny and pale and thin with fair curls and pansy blue eyes. What’s more, he’d been so homesick the first few weeks of term that he’d practically never stopped crying. And yet no one teased or bullied him. Not that they hadn’t tried. Right at the beginning, Maurice Crawler had tried shoving him against the roughcast corridor leading to the gym — and then suddenly Maurice was sprawling on the floor.

‘Was it Judo?’ Rick had asked Peter, because Maurice was at least twice as big.

Peter had shaken his head. He used Judo quite a lot, too, he said, but this was something called Aikido. Japanese, too, but reckoned to be neater. His father had taught him. And then when he got to the word ‘father’ he started snivelling again and Rick had left him. Now, though, he made up his mind.

‘You’d better come with us,’ said Rick to Peter, pushing open the dormitory window. ‘Can you get down the ivy, Barbara?’

Barbara nodded. She was so furious at what they’d done to Humphrey that she couldn’t even speak.

‘Come on, then,’ said Rick. And as they climbed down the ivy and started running down the gravelled drive away from school, he turned to comfort Humphrey. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Rick the Rescuer. ‘I promise you, it’s going to be all right.’

Rick spoke bravely but he wasn’t nearly as sure or as hopeful as he sounded. Insleyfarne was over three hundred miles to the North West — ghosts glide so fast they can get you very muddled about distances. Even if they could find a car or train to take them there it would most likely be too late. ‘It’s how to get there quickly,’ said Rick, thinking aloud.

He had forgotten Barbara.

‘I know how,’ she panted, running beside him. ‘Miss Thistlethwaite, that’s how. It’s Miss… Thistlethwaite we need.’

Rick was so surprised, he stopped dead. ‘Miss Thistlethwaite? Are you crazy?’

Miss Thistlethwaite was the visiting music teacher. She taught the violin and the piano, arriving on her bicycle on Thursday mornings and Tuesday afternoons. She was a rather odd-looking lady who wore long, flowing black dresses hitched up with dressing-gown cord and could be heard screaming in pain when Maurice Crawler missed his Top E or Smith Minor crashed like a runaway tank through Schubert’s Cradle Song.

‘Let’s see, it’s a full moon tonight, isn’t it?’ said Barbara. ‘Yes. Then it’s the village we want.’

If it had been anyone but Barbara, Rick would have argued. Now he just shrugged and set a steady pace, looking backward now and then for signs of the Crawlers.

The village hall was a low, wooden building in a lane beside the church. The door was locked, the blinds were drawn. A notice painted in red said Norton Women’s Tea Club. Members Only.

‘Try the back.’

At the back of the hall was a little door leading into a small cloakroom. Quickly the children crept inside, and the worn scrap of grey that was Humphrey’s elbow followed. Then they opened the door into the hall a crack and peered through.

The hall was dark except for the light of tall candles set in branched candlesticks on the window sills, and a strange, blue flame flickering in a bowl of charcoal on the upright piano. Three sides of the room were lined with trestle tables on which were all the usual things one brings, or buys, at village sales: jars of jam, and cakes, and crochet mats…. But the thirteen ladies who seemed to make up the Norton Tea Club were not, at the moment, buying or selling anything.

No, they were dancing. A kind of chain dance, weaving in and out, kicking up their legs and stamping….

‘Look at their hats,’ whispered Barbara.

And indeed the ladies’ hats were strange. Their own Miss Thistlethwaite wore a hat decorated with yew berries, mistletoe and poppies. Mrs Bell-Lowington, who lived in the manor, had a whole stuffed owl on her head. Miss Ponsonby, who ran the post office, wore a pink cloche embroidered with black triangles.

And now they had joined hands and were singing. The tune was pretty but the words were odd.

sang the ladies of the Norton Village Tea Club.

‘Ready?’ whispered Barbara — and opened the door.

The circle of ladies stopped dead still. Their mouths shut on the last word of their song and thirteen pairs of eyes with rather unpleasant expressions fixed themselves on the three children.

‘Miss Thistlethwaite?’ said Barbara. ‘Please, Miss Thistlethwaite?’

Miss Thistlethwaite took an uncertain step forward.

‘Fredegonda,’ thundered Mrs Bell-Lowington, who had been leading the dance, ‘what are these children doing here?’

Miss Thistlethwaite shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Nocticula,’ she said nervously.

‘Oh please don’t be cross,’ cried Barbara. ‘We know you’re witches and we won’t tell a soul. Only, please, please can you help us? We’re in trouble!’

A flutter passed through the coven of witches, the circle broke, and Fredegonda (which was Miss Thistlethwaite’s witch name because it is difficult to be a witch with a Christian name like Ethel) came towards them, followed by the chief witch, Nocticula. (Her Christian name was Daisy which was even worse.)

‘What is it that you want of us?’

For answer, Rick clicked his fingers and poor Humphrey, shivering with exhaustion, appeared before the witches. For a moment they looked in silence at his lumpy, curdled ectoplasm, his swollen ankles, the rash round his battered face….

‘Exorcism!’ thundered Nocticula. ‘A disgusting habit.’

‘The poor little fellow,’ said Fredegonda.

‘That’s the iron-filings spell, I think,’ said Melusina, who was really Miss Ponsonby from the post office, lifting Humphrey’s left hand. ‘A very cruel and uncivilized spell, I always think. Look at the softening of the joints.’

‘Who was responsible for this?’ said Nocticula her eyes glinting. Witches and ghosts have always been fond of each other and the sight of Humphrey made her very angry.

So Rick told them the whole story: of the ghost sanctuary and the trap it had proved to be; of the dreadful plight of the ghosts on Insleyfarne; of their desperate need to get up there at once.

‘On a broomstick maybe?’ said Peter who was rather young.

‘A broomstick!’ snarled Nocticula.

‘Or whatever you use nowadays? A vacuum cleaner?’ said Peter.

‘You may be young,’ said Nocticula, ‘but there is no reason to be silly. I doubt if witches ever flew on broomsticks. They certainly don’t do so now.’

‘But isn’t there any way you can get us there?’

‘Witchcraft isn’t a lot of stupid tricks,’ said Nocticula. ‘Witchcraft is about power. Willpower. Making things happen. White witches make good things happen. Black witches make bad things happen. Flying about on broomsticks, turning people into toads — that’s all cheap trickery and rubbish.’

‘So you can’t help us?’ said Rick sadly.

‘I don’t remember saying that,’ said Nocticula irritably. ‘In fact I didn’t say it.’ She turned to the other witches. ‘Come on, girls, quickly now.’

Rick and Peter and Barbara followed the witches over to the trestle tables lined against the wall. Now that they were close up to them they could see that some of the exhibits were rather odd. In the Cookery section there were jars of wormwood jam, bottles of powdered gall and a lot of small jars labelled CORIANDER SPELL OR PERIWINKLE SPELL OR LOVE PHILTRE: Dilute as needed.

On the table labelled Needlework there were little sachets filled with Moonwort and Cinquefoil and Smallage and in the Pottery part were cauldrons and double-handled cups with strange signs painted round the sides.

But the table where Nocticula now stopped was the most interesting of all. It was covered in handmade puppets — beautiful life-like puppets in modern clothes.

‘Oh look, there’s Mrs Crawler,’ said Rick suddenly, pointing at a fat puppet in a blue dress which had won second prize.

‘And there’s the Vicar!’ said Peter.

‘And Ted — the groundsman.’

As they looked carefully the children realized that every one of the puppets looked exactly like somebody who lived in, or around the village.

‘This one, I think,’ said Nocticula. She picked up a puppet in a dark blue flying suit and earphones.

Rick recognized it at once. It was a young man called Peregrine Rowbotham who lived in Rowbotham Hall about three miles north of the village. His father was very rich so all Peregrine did was to go to lots and lots of parties and fly about in his private Piper Cherokee aeroplane.

‘Right,’ said Nocticula. She hitched up her skirt, fished a piece of chalk out of the pocket of her green, Chilprufe knickers and drew a triangle on the floor. Meanwhile Fredegonda threw some incense on to the bowl of glowing charcoal and Melusina went over to the Cookery table and began pounding up various powders on a wooden board. It was rather like watching nurses get ready for an operation.

‘We’re out of Graveyard Dust,’ said Melusina.

‘Not important,’ said Nocticula impatiently. ‘Use Dragon’s Blood.’

When the preparations were over, they put the puppet down in the middle of the triangle and stood round it. You could see that they were all concentrating very hard.

‘In the name of Cernunnos the Horned One, we wake thee from sleep, O Peregrine Rowbotham,’ said Nocticula.

‘May the travel thirst roam through your limbs and make you rise from your bed,’ chanted a second witch.

‘May your soul seek greedily the distant soil of Insleyfarne,’ said a third.

‘Wake, O Peregrine! Wake, wake, wake and come!’ cried all the witches.

Then Nocticula took a hatpin out of her hat and stuck it gently into the puppet’s foot. The witches raised their arms and a blue flame shot upwards from the crucible.

cried all the witches.

Then: ‘Unlock the door,’ ordered Nocticula.

Two minutes passed, five, ten…. And then they heard the sound of a car screeching to a halt outside. There was a knock on the door. It creaked open and on the threshold, blinking and looking totally bewildered, stood Peregrine Rowbotham.

‘I say, would anyone like a jolly old spin in my crate up to Insleyfarne?’ he said. ‘I suddenly had a fancy to see the place.’

And with their mouths hanging open, Rick and Barbara and Peter went slowly up to him and said, ‘Yes, we would. Please.’