The Great Ghost Rescue

Fifteen

Poor Peregrine Rowbotham had been lying in his four-poster bed in Rowbotham Hall, wearing his best blue silk pyjamas and snoring gently. It was the middle of the afternoon and an odd time to be asleep but Peregrine had been to a party which had gone on all night and hadn’t got to bed till eight in the morning.

At first Peregrine’s dreams were the sort he usually had: about beautiful girls and fast cars, and the horses he had backed winning their race. And then gradually his dreams changed. He saw purple heather and brown, tumbling streams and bracken; and then a promontory of land stretching out into the wild, Atlantic sea. It was a bleak and windblown place, with stunted trees and a dark, ruined castle but Peregrine, in his dream, wanted to go there more than anything in the world.

‘Insleyfarne,’ said Peregrine, talking in his sleep, ‘I want to go to Insleyfarne!’

A sudden, jabbing attack of cramp in his right leg jerked him awake. Without quite knowing what he was doing, he began to pull on his clothes….

‘Insleyfarne,’ he went on saying, standing there in his underpants. ‘Insleyfarne.’

But when he was dressed and had climbed into his gleaming E-type Jag, he found he didn’t want to drive straight to the field where he kept his aeroplane. Something was making him turn left instead of right, towards the village.

‘Lonely,’ said Peregrine, still in that dazed voice. ‘Poor Peregrine needs friends to go to Insleyfarne.’ And he had driven straight to the village hall.

And now he was flying steadily north with three unknown children in the plane beside him and an odd, cobwebby scrap of grey that kept catching his eye when he turned round.

‘It was hypnotism, really, wasn’t it?’ said Barbara.

Rick shrugged. ‘Hypnotism. Willpower. Witchcraft — it’s all the same I guess. Just as long as we’re not too late.’

They flew over dark lochs and rocky islands, over spruce forests and rolling moors. The country grew wilder, bleaker. And then at last:

‘Insleyfarne!’ cried Rick. ‘Look! There!’ And Peregrine banked, circled and came neatly in to land on a long, empty beach of hard, packed sand to the north of the promontory.

It is not easy to surround what is practically an island, and quite a big one, with only four men, but Lord Bullhaven had done his best.

He’d put Mr Heap, the clergyman who looked like a pig, on a rocky outcrop just below the castle, and Mr Wallace, the nice one with nine children, on a shingle beach near the causeway which led to the mainland. Dotty Mr Hoare-Croakington was up on the hill by the rocket site and Professor Brassnose was down by the ruined chapel and the well. All of them had folding chairs to sit on and packets of sandwiches to eat and thermos flasks of hot coffee to drink, so that they could go on and on exorcising and of course all of them had books of ghost-laying spells and rowan twigs, and Professor Brassnose also had bottles of vinegar and iron filings and cymbals to bang and a hold-all of strange ointments and powders from his laboratory.

Lord Bullhaven himself was too mad to sit quietly on a chair exorcising. He just rampaged round the island yelling things like, ‘Vile, disgusting creepie-crawlies!’, ‘Filthy, foul scum!’, ‘Britain for the British’, and making lopsided pentacles out of anything he could lay his hands on. And if any of the clergymen stopped even for a second, just to stretch his legs, Lord Bullhaven came charging up and said: ‘Back, blast you! Back to your post.’

Mr Heap didn’t take much notice of the aeroplane that passed overhead and landed a mile or two to the north. He was sitting with his back to the sea and his big, bristly face turned up to the castle. Cigarette packets and sandwich papers flapped round his ankles because he was a litter lout as well as a crook and he was gabbling ghost-laying spell No. 976 with such venom that bits of spittle came out of his mouth and dropped disgustingly on to the pages of the book.

gabbled Mr Heap.

And then quite suddenly he wasn’t sitting on his chair. He was sitting on a patch of wet and slippery rock and a small, fair boy who seemed to have come out of the sea was standing over him.

‘I’d like you to stop now, please,’ said Peter Thorne politely.

‘Why… you…you….’ Mr Heap struggled to his feet and put out a huge hairy hand to seize Peter by the throat.

Only it wasn’t any longer Peter’s throat. It was just thin air and Peter himself had somehow become a ball of lead charging straight at Mr Heap’s fat and unprotected stomach.

‘Yaaow!’ yelled Mr Heap and crashed down on to the rocks again. By the time he was up once more, Peter was running up the steps of the castle, the book of ghost-laying spells under his arm.

‘Give me back that book, you little swine,’ yelled Mr Heap.

Peter turned at the top of the steps. ‘If you want it, come and get it,’ he shouted.

He ran on up the steep cliff track to the drawbridge which crossed the pit of slime and mud that was the castle moat. Then he stopped quietly and waited for Mr Heap — steaming with sweat and gibbering with fury — to catch up with him.

‘Here’s your book,’ said Peter sweetly.

Mr Heap lunged forward to grab it. Peter narrowed his eyes, concentrating very hard. The Uki-Otoshi hold was a bit tricky; one had to get it exactly right. Then he dropped on one knee, stiffened his other leg — and as the flabby, panting man collapsed against him, pushed with all his might.

And Mr Heap sailed quietly into the air and fell — all sixteen quivering stone of him — with a splash that sent up a flock of startled seagulls — into the green and putrid waters of the moat.

Meanwhile poor Mr Hoare-Croakington, up on the bleak and windy hill by the rocket site, was getting more and more confused. He had been so absolutely certain that he had been asked to Insleyfarne to shoot grouse. Mr Hoare-Croakington had never before shot grouse — he had never before shot anything — and he wanted to very much.

But no one had handed him a nice shotgun and some pretty, pink cartridges. Instead they had put him on a canvas chair on a very cold hill and told him to say poetry out of a book. Mr Hoare-Croakington was not fond of poetry and he found the whole thing very disappointing and sad.

After a while however he cheered up and the reason was this: at the hotel where they had spent the night, Lord Bullhaven had ordered everyone’s thermos flask to be filled with coffee so as to keep them awake. But the hotel kitchen-maid, who was very overworked, had made a mistake and mixed up Mr Hoare-Croakkigton’s flask with the flask of someone called General Arkwheeler who always ordered his thermos to be filled with neat whisky.

So every time Mr Hoare-Croakington took a little sip, things got more and more cheerful and more and more muddled up.

sang Mr Hoare-Croakington. And then: ‘Bang, bang,’ he said. And again: ‘BANG!’

‘No,’ said Barbara, appearing quite suddenly out of the waist-high bracken.

‘No?’ said Mr Hoare-Croakington, very surprised to see her. ‘No bang-bang?’

Barbara shook her head. ‘Well, there’s nothing to bang bang, is there?’ she pointed out, gently easing the ghost-laying book off the old man’s knees.

‘Grouse?’ said Mr Hoare-Croakington hopefully.

‘No grouse here,’ said Barbara firmly, scuffing Mr Hoare-Croakington’s rather grotty pentacle aside with her shoe. ‘But I know where there are some lovely, lovely grouse. If you come with me. Big, FAT grouse with huge plump chests….’

Mr Hoare-Croakington liked the sound of that.

‘Huge, plump chests….’ he murmured happily.

And very quietly and meekly he let Barbara lead him away by the ends of his woollen muffler towards Lord Bullhaven’s big, black car which was parked on the far side of the causeway.

Rick wasn’t normally much of a boy for fighting. He preferred to think things out. But on his way to tackle Professor Brassnose, he passed the ruined chapel. And when he’d seen what was inside — the Mad Monk writhing in agony on a sea of pus made from his own boils — Rick wasn’t interested any longer in thought.

Professor Brassnose was sitting on his chair beside the well, clashing his brass cymbals together and gabbling a spell from the book on his knees. A bottle of iron filings and vinegar was propped against his chair and the rest of his ghost-laying paraphernalia spilled out of a big carpetbag nearby.

At least that was how it was one minute. The next minute the contents of the hold-all were scattered to the winds, the ghost-laying book had been snatched from his hands and the pages ripped to shreds, and the bottle of vinegar and iron filings lay smashed to pieces against a stone.

‘Stop it,’ squeaked Professor Brassnose, waving his arms. ‘Stop it at—’

‘Don’t you dare to speak to me, you filthy, murdering swine,’ said Rick managing to kick the Professor’s chair, his shins and his stone pentacle all at once.

‘Help!’ screamed the Professor, who was definitely not a fighting man. ‘Lord Bullhaven! Help! Help! There’s a bad moy down here. I mean a mad boy. Help! Help!’

Lord Bullhaven was in an evil mood. He had just come across a green, slime-covered cursing THING which turned out to be Mr Heap, stumbling towards the car and refusing absolutely to return to his post. Then he had gone up to the rocket site and found Mr Hoare-Croakington’s chair empty. And now that idiot, Brassnose….

‘Coming,’ shouted Lord Bullhaven and started lumbering downhill towards the chapel, slashing about with his rowan switch as he came. When he saw Rick his sludge coloured eyes widened like dustbin lids. ‘You!’ he thundered.

Rick stood still and faced him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Me. The boy to whom you promised sanctuary for his ghosts.’

Lord Bullhaven’s face had turned purple. ‘Get off my land,’ he screamed. ‘Get off it and stay off it.’

For answer, Rick pulled over Professor Brassnose’s chair, tipping the squealing Professor out on to the grass and hurled the cymbals into the well.

Lord Bullhaven now seemed to lose the last scrap of his reason. He ran at Rick and started hitting him viciously with his rowan stick. ‘It’s your fault, you young devil, you’ve spoilt my plans. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to—’

‘No,’ said a quiet voice, ‘I think not.’ It was Mr Wallace, the nice clergyman with the nine children, who had heard the shouting and come to see what was up. ‘You’re hurting the boy,’ Mr Wallace went on, still in a quiet, level voice. ‘Let him go.’

Lord Bullhaven gave Rick a last blow across the shoulders and turned on Mr Wallace. ‘You’re on their side,’ he screamed. ‘You’re in with the spooks. You’re a paid agent, you’re a witch lover. I’ll have you flogged if you don’t go back, I’ll have you hanged—’

He put down his head, ready to charge at Mr Wallace. Mr Wallace, who had been Boxing Champion at his Theological College, just had time to ask God, very quickly, to forgive him. Then he bunched up his fists — and that was that.

They were dragging the unconscious Lord Bullhaven towards the car, when the most dreadful, desolate and shuddering scream came from the castle.

Rick turned white and began to shiver. ‘It’s the Hag,’ he said, ‘I recognize her voice.’

‘You go and see to them,’ said kind Mr Wallace, to whom Rick had told the whole story. ‘I’ll drive this lot back to the hotel.’

Rick nodded his thanks. Then with Barbara and Peter at his heels, he turned and ran towards the castle.