The Great Ghost Rescue

Four

Rick was usually the first person in the dormitory to wake. This morning he woke up particularly early because he had been thinking very hard the night before and the thinking had got into his sleep.

He was a serious boy with a thin face, big dark eyes and ears which stuck out because when he was a baby his mother had liked him too much to stick them down with sellotape as the doctor had told her to.

What Rick was thinking about was the world. The world, it seemed to Rick, was in a bad way. In the Antarctic, the penguins were all stuck up with oil and couldn’t even waddle. Blue whales were practically extinct, no one had seen a square-lipped rhinoceros for ages and a tribe of cannibals in the Amazon jungle which Rick had hoped to visit when he grew up had been moved to a housing estate in Rio de Janeiro. It seemed to Rick that by the time he was grown up, all the interesting animals and plants and people would have gone and there’d be nothing left but huge blocks of flats and boring shops and motorways. The whole thing annoyed him.

He looked round the dormitory. Norton Castle had been built about a hundred years ago by a rich toffee manufacturer called Albert Borringer. Mr Borringer was one of those people who couldn’t see an animal without wanting to shoot it and stuff it and stick it on the wall, and when he died and the castle became a school, the stuffed animals stayed. In the bed opposite Rick’s, under a huge wildebeeste with mild, glass eyes, Maurice Crawler was snoring. What with his dimpled knees, hot feet and piggy eyes the colour of baked beans, Maurice was not really a great joy to anyone. On the other hand if it wasn’t for Maurice there wouldn’t have been a school because his parents were the headmaster and headmistress. They had started the school for Maurice because he hadn’t settled in the school they sent him to. He hadn’t settled in five schools they’d sent him to and no wonder. Maurice was a bully and a liar and a cheat.

Rick sighed. In the bed next to him, a new boy called Peter Thorne moaned in his sleep. He was still terribly homesick. Rick was sorry for him but he would have liked an ally. Someone to help him get things done.

Suddenly he leant forward. What was that funny pink, cobwebby thing hanging on the end of his bed. He put out a hand to touch it. To his amazement, his hand went right through and hit the end of the bed. And yet he could see something there. And then:

‘No!’ said Rick under his breath. ‘I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it!’

Before putting him to bed, the Hag had ordered Humphrey most particularly not to become visible until she told him to. But of course if someone tickles your elbow when you are fast asleep you don’t always think what you are doing, and the next second, rubbing his eyes and yawning, Humphrey had become as visible as daylight.

‘What don’t you believe?’ said Humphrey sleepily.

‘But you can’t be. It’s impossible. You can’t be a ghost.’

Humphrey was not a touchy person but this annoyed him. ‘What do you mean I can’t be a ghost? I am a ghost. I’m Humphrey. The Horrible.’

Rick just couldn’t believe his eyes. Yet there it was, sitting on the bed, transparent as air, with a ball and chain on its left ankle, rubbing its eye sockets with skeletal fingers.

‘Who are you?’ asked Humphrey. ‘I suppose you’re a human. A boy?’

‘Sure. I’m Rick.’

‘Just Rick? Not Rick the Revolting or Rick the Repulsive or anything like that?’

‘No. Just Rick Henderson. Rick’s short for Richard. Come to that you’re not so very horrible, are you? I don’t mean to be personal.’

‘I will be later,’ said Humphrey confidently. ‘I’m growing into it. My mother and father are horrible,’ he went on proudly. ‘So are my brother and sister. And my Aunt Hortensia is really disgusting.’

‘Oh,’ said Rick. He still hadn’t got over the fact that a real live — well, a real dead ghost — was sitting on his bed. ‘Are they here too?’

‘Oh yes, they’re all here. We came last night.’

And he began to tell Rick the story of their adventures, beginning with the man who’d put central heating into Night Abbey, going on to the people who’d turned Craggyford into a holiday camp and ending with the poor Shuk who’d been found trying to haunt a coal mine. And as Rick listened he got angrier and angrier. Not just penguins and whales and cannibals were being driven out and made homeless or extinct but ghosts as well.

‘It’s disgusting,’ said Rick when Humphrey had finished. ‘Ghosts have as much right to be around as anybody else. Something must be done.’

‘What?’ asked Humphrey, looking at Rick admiringly. He already thought him incredibly clever.

‘I shall think. Do you suppose I could meet your family?’

‘Of course,’ said Humphrey, gliding over to Maurice Crawler’s bed.

‘My goodness,’ said Rick. From the fat hump which was Maurice’s stomach there rose two huge, black, scaly wings. For a moment they flopped up and down while the Hag did her early morning stretch. Then they parted to show a huge, crooked nose, squinty eyes and masses of black and tangled hair. At the same time, the smell of burnt tripe crept sickeningly into Rick’s nose.

‘This is my mother,’ whispered Humphrey proudly. ‘Mummy, this is Rick.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Rick politely. All the same he couldn’t help being glad he hadn’t met Humphrey’s mother first.

As soon as she was properly awake, the Hag flew up to the ceiling to wake her husband. The Gliding Kilt had fallen asleep across the horns of a large, stuffed gnu. He looked rather peculiar as he began to appear, with his kilt caught on one horn and his sword, which he’d not bothered to take out because he was too tired, dangling downwards from his chest.

‘Where are his legs?’ whispered Rick to Humphrey.

‘He hasn’t got any,’ said Humphrey proudly, and explained about the Battle of Otterburn.

Waking George was a problem because they were afraid he would start to scream at once and disturb the other boys in the dormitory. So they borrowed Rick’s pillow and found George, who had rolled under the bed of a boy called Terence Tinn and put it over him straight away. Winifred, the sensible girl, woke by herself and came gliding down between the beds, not letting out a single wail even though she was longing for a wash and her bowl was being perfectly beastly.

Most of the ghosts managed to pile on to Rick’s bed but the faithful Shuk had to stay on the floor with Aunt Hortensia’s head because the Hag didn’t approve of dogs on the blankets. Though he was getting fond of the ghosts already, the Head gave Rick a bad moment. It never looked very good before breakfast and today, with one eye gummed up and a couple of cockroaches playing hide and seek in its left ear-hole, it really wasn’t very appetizing at all.

‘Where’s the rest of Auntie?’ complained the Hag. ‘Here’s this nice boy going to help us—’

But at that point Hortensia’s large, yellow feet appeared hovering in the air above them. She’d spent the night on a gigantic wardrobe with her phantom coach and came down grumbling that she’d got cramp in her stump.

‘Right. Is that everybody?’ said Rick.

The ghosts nodded.

‘Humphrey has told me that you’ve been turned out of your home,’ Rick went on.

‘That’s right.’

They had forgotten to whisper. Suddenly Maurice Crawler lifted his head, and let out a yell of terror. ‘Things!’ he gabbled. ‘Googly, ghastly things!’

Rick jumped out of bed and went over to him. ‘Do be quiet, Maurice. You’ll wake the others.’

‘Stumpy Stumps,’ said Maurice wildly. ‘Hateful Heads. Black Bats—’

‘You’re bats,’ said Rick sternly. ‘You’ve been having a nightmare. Now be quiet. Close your eyes and go to sleep again.’

‘Rather a rude boy,’ said Aunt Hortensia’s head, when Maurice had begun to snore once more.

‘We had hoped to be able to stay here,’ said the Gliding Kilt, ‘but I see now that it wouldn’t do. Too many children give me indigestion. Not you, of course,’ he added politely to Rick.

‘Well I’ve been thinking,’ said Rick. ‘It isn’t just you that have been driven out of your homes.’ And he explained about the whales and the cannibals and all the other things that were on his mind. ‘I think you ought to find a place where all ghosts can live safely.’

‘Somewhere dark,’ said the Hag wistfully.

‘Somewhere damp,’ said Aunt Hortensia, rubbing some dried skin off the end of her stump.

‘Somewhere with owls and bats and rats,’ said Winifred, who loved animals.

‘Somewhere with lots of thunderstorms,’ said George.

‘Somewhere with other ghosts for me to play with,’ said Humphrey.

‘What you need is a ghost sanctuary,’ said Rick.

‘What’s a sanctuary?’ said Humphrey.

‘It’s a place where people can be safe and no one bothers them. In the old days if someone was being chased by soldiers, or by anyone, and he went into a church, that was a place of sanctuary. No one could get at him there.’

‘I wouldn’t like a church,’ said Winifred nervously. ‘You practically never find ghosts in a church.’

‘No, I know. I’m only explaining. I mean, they have bird sanctuaries for puffins and cormorants, where they can make nests and breed and no one is allowed to shoot them or collect their eggs. And you have them for Native Americans in America.’

‘But Native Americans don’t lay eggs,’ said Humphrey.

Rick sighed. ‘What I mean is, they have sanctuaries. Only they’re called reservations, where the Indians can go on living the way they’re used to and no one bothers them. And that’s what you need. A sanctuary for ghosts.’

‘A sanctuary for ghosts,’ they all repeated, and nodded their heads. What Rick said made sense. It was a wonderful idea. What’s more it made them feel good to think that they were looking for somewhere that all ghosts could be happy in, not just they themselves.

‘I wish it could be here,’ said Humphrey. He didn’t at all like the idea of leaving Rick.

There was a sudden shriek from the next bed. It was the new boy, Peter. He had woken up and found himself looking straight into the Shuk’s single, saucer eye.

‘Go to sleep,’ said Rick. ‘It’s just a nightmare.’

All the same, he saw that it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to all the boys in the dormitory that they’d had the same nightmare. And soon now it would be properly light and Matron, who looked like a camel, would come clucking in, which could be awkward. Of course he could tell the ghosts to vanish. But telling a ghost to vanish is a bit like telling a friend to get lost. It just isn’t a thing you want to do.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s Sunday. I’ll take you over to the gym — it won’t be used today. And I’ll go and see a friend of mine, someone very clever, and we’ll make a plan. O.K.?’

‘O.K., dear boy,’ said the Gliding Kilt. ‘Er, does your gymnasium have parallel bars? And a vaulting horse?’

‘Yes. All those sort of things.’

‘Oh, good,’ said the Gliding Kilt, following Rick down the dormitory. He was not one to boast but when he was alive he had been very good at sport indeed. Tossing the caber, hurling the Clachneart and all those other clever Scottish things had been nothing to the Gliding Kilt.