The Great Ghost Rescue

Seventeen

After that, of course, there was only one thing to do. ‘A party!’ said the Hag. She was still full of aches and pains, the Gliding Kilt’s left thumb was still missing but the Hag loved parties and couldn’t resist giving them.

Rick went out to see if Peregrine wanted to come but he had fallen asleep in the cockpit of the Cherokee, so they just covered him with a blanket and left him there.

There is nothing like release from danger to make you feel ecstatically and wonderfully gay. Outside, the owls hooted and a baleful moon glared through the scudding clouds. Inside, the ghosts ate toadskin rissoles, stewed spookfish and minced gall bladder, and showed each other their exorcism scars.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to make you any maggot sandwiches?’ the Hag kept asking the children. ‘It would be no trouble at all.’

But Rick and Barbara and Peter said they were perfectly happy with the chocolate and apples they’d brought from the plane.

As the night went on, everyone got merrier and merrier. Rick was surprised to see a fat bull seal among the guests but when he tried to walk through him to help the Hag serve drinks, he went sprawling over his very solid body.

‘That’s Henry,’ Sucking Susie explained. ‘Rose’s Dinner. He’s so fond of her he won’t let any of the other seals feed her at all.’

The Gliding Kilt’s thumb appeared just after midnight and then a very nice thing happened. The Grey Lady found her teeth. At least she said they were her teeth and they were certainly a very good fit. She’d just glided out to get some air and was quite carelessly turning over the earth on Aunt Hortensia’s burial mound and there they were!

Everybody was very happy for her and no one said that perhaps it was a bit unlikely when she’d died three hundred miles away on the Isle of Man that her teeth would turn up in the north of Scotland but as Aunt Hortensia’s head wisely said: ‘When all’s said and done, teeth are teeth!’

And of course when they’d eaten and drunk and played games and managed to persuade the Finnish harp-playing ghost that she was still too weak to give a concert on the clifftop, they all got to their feet and drank the toast that the ghosts always drank now when they were together.

‘Rick the Rescuer!’

But though Rick was very pleased, this time he decided to make a speech himself. ‘Ladies, gentlemen, ghosts and seals,’ he said, leaping up on to the table. ‘I would like to say something about my friend, Humphrey.’

Everybody looked at Humphrey who was playing with Baby Rose and his ectoplasm turned dark pink from pleasure and embarrassment.

‘If Humphrey had not come to fetch us there would be no Henderson Ghost Sanctuary. And no ghosts.’

Everyone looked at everyone else, and Aunt Hortensia’s head nodded so hard that the Shuk dropped it.

‘Humphrey was ill and weak but he glided all those many, many miles to get help. Ladies, Gentlemen, Seals and Ghosts,’ said Rick, getting excited and waving his arms. ‘Humphrey may not be Horrible. In fact if you want my opinion, Humphrey will never be Horrible. But Humphrey is something better than Horrible. Humphrey is Heroic.’

There was a short silence while the ghosts took this in. Then a great beam of pride passed across the faces of the Hag and the Gliding Kilt while the whole hall full of ghosts rose to their feet, raised their glasses of rats’ blood and thundered with a single voice: ‘HUMPHREY THE HEROIC!’

After that, the good-byes could not be postponed any longer. It only lacked another hour till dawn and the children had their way back to make.

They were just starting the long round of hugs and kisses when something most extraordinary happened. First a kind of chill passed through the hall. An owl screeched. And then, there appeared in one of the high, arched windows, a ghost that none of them had ever seen before.

He was not a very nice-looking ghost. Even when he’d been alive he’d been horrid to look at. Now, he was undoubtedly a mess.

‘Can… Can I come in?’ stammered Lord Bullhaven. (He had woken up in the hotel with a swollen jaw and in such a fiendish temper that he’d left the clergymen and Professor Brassnose stranded, leapt into his car and driven away at ninety miles an hour — straight into a stone wall.)

There was a stunned silence. Then:

‘You!’ shrieked the Hag, going through the roof.

‘Ghost Murderer,’ yelled the Mad Monk.

‘Exorcist!’ roared the Gliding Kilt.

‘The nerve of it, coming here!’ shouted Aunt Hortensia’s head.

Lord Bullhaven’s ghost stood waveringly on the windowsill. Then it seemed to shrink into itself and began slowly to turn away.

And then, once again, Rick leapt on to the table.

‘Ghosts of Britain, I’m ashamed of you,’ he said. ‘Did I or did I not tell you what a sanctuary is?’

The ghosts looked up at him, silent and ashamed.

‘A sanctuary is a place of safety. For everyone. I admit that when he was alive, Lord Bullhaven was a total and unutterable pig.’

Lord Bullhaven’s ghost, on the windowsill, nodded sadly.

‘But after all you weren’t all that wonderful when you were alive yourselves, were you? What about Henry the Eighth’s housekeeping money — was it really a mistake?’ he said, looking at Aunt Hortensia’s stump which blushed crimson. ‘And why was the Mad Monk walled up alive in the first place, have you asked him that? And what about all the people the Gliding Kilt killed in the Battle of Otterburn?’

‘That was a battle.’

‘It was still killing,’ said Rick sternly. ‘Ghosts of Britain, I appeal to you to forget Lord Bullhaven’s past and open this sanctuary to every spook or ghoul or wraith or lost spirit in need of a place to lay his head.’

For a moment there was silence. Then the ghosts, deeply moved by his words, moved forward towards the window.

‘Welcome to Insleyfarne, Lord Bullhaven,’ said the Gliding Kilt.

And with a sob of gratitude, the wicked spectre flew down and stretched out his gory hands in greeting.

When the children got back to the plane they found poor Peregrine standing sadly beside the engine and looking out to sea. He’d woken up without remembering anything that had happened and had absolutely no idea how he’d come to land his aeroplane on a cold grey beach in the middle of nowhere. There didn’t seem to be any way of explaining either, so they just spoke to him gently and told him to fly back home which he was only too pleased to do.

In the plane Rick was very silent. Saying good-bye to the ghosts had made him feel completely hollow and though the Hag had promised that Humphrey could come and haunt Norton Castle School in the spring, he felt flat and tired and grey.

Barbara looked at him quietly for a moment. Then she leant forward. ‘Before we came away I was reading about the polar bears,’ she yelled in his ear. ‘The ones in Alaska.’

Rick nodded. ‘What about them?’

‘They’re in a very bad way. Becoming very rare. Extinct perhaps. Rich people go and hunt them from aeroplanes and snowmobiles. It’s perfectly disgusting.’

Rick was still silent but his face had changed. He was working things out. How soon could he get to Alaska, how much would it cost? Should he take Barbara and Peter or go alone? What exactly did polar bears eat?

Barbara watched him for a while. Then she leant back, satisfied. He’d be all right now. For a boy like Rick, there is always something important to do.