The Great Ghost Rescue

Seven

It was a frightful moment. Everything he’d ever read about vampires flashed through his mind: how they sucked blood from people’s throats while they slept; how they robbed graves; how they lived in dark and ghastly places; how they terrorized everyone who saw them. He must have screamed without realizing it because the mad red eyes came closer. Gloating. Waiting.

And now, beside him, Humphrey stirred and sat up, rubbing the ball and chain on his ankle. Then, before Rick could stop him, he had darted forward — right at the largest of the terrible, staring eyes.

‘Cousin Susie!’ he shouted. ‘It’s me! Humphrey! Humphrey the Horrible!’

The red eyes closed, opened again, and the largest of the vampire bats came forward into the light of the dying fire. ‘Good heavens! If it isn’t Mabel’s boy,’ said Sucking Susie. She peered forward, slicing through his ectoplasm with her ghastly fangs. ‘Well, you’re not getting any horribler are you, my poor child.’

‘I will later,’ said Humphrey, sighing. He couldn’t help wishing that everybody didn’t make the same remark. ‘This is Rick, Cousin Susie. He’s a human and he’s going to find us all a place to live.’

‘A human, eh?’ said Sucking Susie. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

She edged closer. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’

Rick tried to look pleased too, but he couldn’t make it. Haunting was one thing, blood-sucking was another, and as Susie came towards him it was all he could do not to move away.

‘Actually, this Sanctuary’s what I’ve come about,’ Susie went on. ‘I heard something from a little bat that came through yesterday.’

‘Susie!’ There was a shriek from the mossy hollow and the Hag swooped over, giving off stale sheep’s brains, rotten eggs and dead earthworm all at once in her excitement, while she and the vampire bat started hugging each other in a tangle of black wings, noses, warts and claws.

‘Well, fancy,’ said the Hag again and again. ‘What a pleasure, what a pleasure. How are the boys?’

The Vampire turned. ‘Sozzler! Gulper! Syphoner! Fred! — Come here,’ she called, and four pairs of eyes flickered and came forward into the firelight.

‘Fine boys,’ said the Hag. ‘But thin.’

‘Thin, Mabel? Not just thin. Skinny. Starving.’ She prodded the one nearest to her in the stomach. ‘ “Gulper,” I christened him,’ she said bitterly. ‘That child hasn’t had a decent gulp of fresh, warm blood since the day he was born.’

‘I’ve heard things were bad for you,’ said the Gliding Kilt, coming over to join them. He could never go on sleeping when the Hag had left his side.

‘Bad! They’re terrible. Unbelievable. You know our valley — a nice bit of farmland it used to be. Lots of plump farmer’s wives, healthy young cow-hands, clean-living shepherds. Villages with butchers and bakers who slept with open windows — oh, there was lots to eat! A nip or two every other night and we vampires were as happy as you could wish.’

‘You mean you used to fly in and suck people’s blood at night? You really did?’ said Rick, backing away.

‘Certainly we did,’ said Susie, looking crossly at Rick. ‘What do you expect blood-sucking vampires to do except suck blood? The people never knew. A vampire that knows its job doesn’t leave a hole bigger than a mosquito.’

‘Well I think it’s disgusting all the same.’

‘Oh you do, do you? And what’s that you’re wearing on your feet, pray?’ said Susie, her red eyes glinting.

‘Shoes,’ said Rick surprised.

‘Exactly. Made of leather, no doubt. From a cow, I dare say. And I suppose you went up to the cow first and said: “Excuse me, Madam, but would you mind being murdered so that I can have a pair of shoes?”’

Rick flushed. He hadn’t thought of it like that.

‘And what did you have for breakfast before you set out. Bacon, I suppose. From a pig.’

Rick nodded.

‘Precisely,’ said Susie. ‘What’s more you didn’t have the good manners just to go up to that pig and take only a little bite out of him so that he could go on living? Oh no. You had to kill the whole animal and slice it up. Really, human beings make me tired.’

‘Rick’s my friend,’ said Humphrey the Horrible, laying his skeletal fingers lovingly on Rick’s arm.

Rick took no notice. What Susie had said had shaken him. But could you not wear shoes, or not eat meat? Some people were vegetarians, he knew, and maybe one could just wear gym shoes. But no roast chicken, no hot dogs, or pork chops…

‘Well, what happened in the valley? Why did things go wrong?’ asked the Hag.

‘Well, first people began to drift away; they wanted jobs in the towns. Better pay. Bingo. The cinema. More to do, they said. Every day you’d see some family pack up and leave. Lovely, plump dinners just piling into their cars and leaving.’ She sighed. ‘But that isn’t all. Do you know what they’ve done now?’

They all shook their heads.

‘Flooded the whole place. Built a huge concrete dam at each end. Made a reservoir. To provide water, they say, for the factories down south.’

‘Dear me,’ said the Hag. ‘Dear me, dear me, dear me.’

‘You can say that again,’ said Susie. ‘There isn’t a warm-blooded human left in the place. Just water and a few wretched fish.’

‘You couldn’t feed on the fish, I suppose?’

‘We tried, Mabel, we tried,’ said the vampire sadly. ‘But of course fish are cold-blooded. We got the most ghastly chills on our stomachs. My poor old Uncle Slurper — do you remember him? — died after sucking the blood of some fiendishly cold trout last January. Gave him pneumonia. I tell you, Mabel, we can’t go on.’

‘But what would you live on, Susie, if you came with us? There won’t be any people in this sanctuary.’

‘Cows would do. Surely you could keep a cow or two?’

‘You can’t go sucking the blood of—’ began Rick.

‘Oh we can’t, can’t we?’ said Susie, turning on him. ‘And if you were a cow, which would you rather? A nip or two at night while you were asleep or people pounding and squeezing your udders and taking all the milk you wanted for your calf?’

Rick sighed. It seemed to be very difficult to argue with Sucking Susie.

‘It isn’t just me,’ she said and her voice changed and became soft and motherly. ‘The boys and I — we’d get along somehow. It’s… well, look.’

She fumbled in the loose skin on her stomach and from what seemed to be a black pouch of skin she took something out and held it up to them.

‘Oh!’ said the Hag, and the whiskers on her long nose quivered with emotion.

It was a tiny baby vampire bat. Its little face was hardly bigger than Rick’s thumbnail, its wings were so frail and thin you could see the firelight through them and as it felt the cold night air the little creature opened its pathetic mouth and made a pitiful, mewing sound.

‘It’s my Little One,’ said Susie. ‘My Baby Rose. And I don’t think,’ she went on, bursting into tears, ‘that she’s going to live.’

An hour later, the little wood was silent once again. The ghosts had gone back to sleep. Sozzler, Gulper, Syphoner and Fred were roosting in the branches of a great beech; their mother, snoring slightly, lay among its roots.

Only Rick found sleep impossible. He sat with his arms round his knees looking into the embers and thinking about the things that Sucking Susie had said.

After a while he gave a little nod and got to his feet. What he had decided to do was difficult, very difficult, but he was going to do it. He remembered reading about a man who trained fleas for a flea circus and who used to let the fleas feed from his arms. And there was a naturalist who had gone to study leeches in Africa and who used to stand in the river and let them suck his blood.

All the same, he was shivering a bit as he went over to the pile of beech leaves on which Sucking Susie lay asleep. It was all the things one heard; all those creepy stories….

Susie was lying on her back, her fangs stretched to the stars. Very carefully, very slowly, Rick felt for the pouch on her stomach. Yes, there was Rose, a soft, painfully thin bundle of skin and claws…. He began to lift her out, stopping dead every time Susie stirred. It took a long time but at last she was free and crouching in his hand. He could feel her heart beating very fast against his fingers. ‘Don’t be frightened, Rose,’ he whispered.

Back in the warmth of the fire he rolled up the sleeve of his jersey and placed her fangs against the blue veins in his wrist. ‘Come on, Rose,’ he urged her. ‘Come on.’

It was an awful moment — like holding a crumb to a sick fledgling and wondering if it was strong enough to feed. Would she? Would she not?

For a moment Rose stayed still, hunched and trembling. Then her head turned, her mouth groped along his arm and Rick shut his eyes as she made a sudden jab at his wrist.

And, after all, it was nothing. Susie was right. Less than a pinprick, and then he sat happily watching the tiny thing suck and feeling her warm life in his hand.

The next day they set off across the moors. No one bothered any longer to tell the vampire bats that they couldn’t come. When Susie woke and found Rick had fed Rose she burst into a storm of tears. ‘Oh the relief!’ she cried, flying round and round Rick’s head. ‘Oh, you wonderful boy. I’m sorry I said all those silly things to you. Oh, my baby — look how pink her cheeks are! What excellent blood you have, you dear, dear boy!’

Rick had been afraid that Susie would also want him to feed Sozzler, Gulper, Syphoner and Fred and this he thought would be going too far, but she didn’t. Though they were skinny the boys seemed strong enough, circling round and round the phantom coach and doing somersaults.

It was a long walk along the side of the new reservoir which looked cold and bare, not a bit like a natural lake. Walter the Wet jumped in, of course, and they could see a little whirlpool made by the top of his head moving along beside them. No one said anything but there was a sort of hope in the air that Walter might like to stay there. They were fond of him but all that wetness was trying. But when he came out he said he hadn’t liked it at all. ‘Clean, I grant you that. But all that concrete. Gives me the willies. No, a nice natural bit of water, that’s what I like.’

As he walked along Rick tried not to worry but he couldn’t help feeling that things were getting a bit out of hand. A river spirit meant that the sanctuary would have to have water in it; now the vampire bats needed a place to keep cows or some other warm-blooded animals to feed on. ‘And anyway,’ he said to Humphrey the Horrible who as usual was gliding along beside him, ‘are vampires really ghosts?’

Humphrey frowned. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think they’re made of ectoplasm. I mean, you can’t see through them like you can see through us, can you?’

‘Still,’ said Rick, ‘a sanctuary’s a sanctuary as I’ve said before. It’s for keeping people safe, not for leaving anybody out. All the same. ’

They walked all day through that gloomy valley, and as they walked the vampire bats told them of the sad things that were happening to the ghosts and werewolves and spirits all over Britain. Apparently the Hag of the Dribble, a very famous Welsh Hag who was a sort of second cousin to Humphrey’s mother, had had her Dribble drained and was in a very bad way indeed.

‘You don’t say! Her Dribble drained,’ said the Hag. ‘How dreadful!’

‘What’s a Dribble, Mother?’ said Humphrey.

‘A Dribble? Well, it’s a… well it’s a Dribble. A sort of marsh, maybe. Or perhaps a bog. All I know is that a Dribble must Never Be Drained.’

There were lots more sad stories: werewolves dying of food poisoning, forest spirits having their trees cut down, ancient and famous ghosts having to haunt fish and chip shops, or discos, or Bingo Halls.

‘And you’ll have heard of poor Wolfram? Wolfram the Withered I mean, not that dreary uncle of his.’

‘Haunting a swimming bath, I understand,’ said Aunt Hortensia, who was half hanging out of the phantom coach so as to listen better.

The vampire nodded. ‘He was a town ghost and when they pulled down his house they built a Public Swimming Bath instead. He says it’s quite unbearable: all those dreadful pink thighs and shoulders and bottoms splashing through him all day. And of course the chlorine in the water is just murdering his ectoplasm.’

‘Poor Wolfram. We’ll have to invite him to the sanctuary as soon as we’re settled,’ said the Gliding Kilt, shaking his head.

Rick didn’t say anything. He didn’t like to point out that there wasn’t a sanctuary yet and might never be one. One had to go on hoping. It was the only thing to do.