Dial a Ghost

‘Like air sickness. Upset stomachs and so on. Yes, that could explain a lot. Some of those bloodstains do look a little disordered,’ said Sister Phyllida, who was the one that had been a nurse.

It wasn’t just the Shriekers’ bloodstains that were out of order. The Shriekers themselves were in a ghastly state. They were lying on the floor and kicking the air with their mouldering feet, and every time they thrust their legs out, they bellowed and whooped and howled and squealed.

They had remembered that it was the anniversary of their Great Sorrow. On an April day just like this one, the terrible thing had happened which had driven them mad with guilt and turned them into the ghastly, tortured and revolting creatures they now were.

‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ moaned Sabrina. ‘How could we have done it? How could we have been so cruel to our flesh and blood?’

‘It is right to punish,’ whined Pelham. ‘People must be punished for doing wrong.’

‘But not like that. Whipping would have been all right, taking food away would have been all right. Thumping and scourging and walloping would have been all right, but not what we did.’

She began to moan again and roll about on the floor among the owl droppings and scrabble her feet in the filth. Even as she did that, the guilt and sin made her little toe go all wibbly and Pelham slapped her hard on the behind and said, ‘Stop it! I too suffer. I too feel my guilt and my sin, but you have hardly any toes left and enough is enough. We must act. We must be revenged on the world. We must see that no other child is left unharmed to remind us of that ghastly day when our—’

‘No!’ shrieked Sabrina. ‘Don’t mention that name. Don’t dig the knife deeper into my bosom.’

‘You haven’t got a bosom any more,’ said Pelham. ‘It’s all skin and bone and—’

They began quarrelling again about whether or not Sabrina had a bosom. Then they sat up and tried to pull themselves together.

‘It’s true that we have to rid the world of children,’ said Pelham. ‘It’s not till the sobs and moans of other parents mingle with our own that we shall get some rest. But there don’t seem to be any children here, and in the meantime...’

He glided over to the window and stood looking out at the fields and stables and orchards which the nuns had tended so lovingly.

‘In the meantime what?’

Pelham’s scarred face was a grimace of hatred. ‘Meanwhile, there are little lambs gambolling—’ he spat out the word. ‘And puppy dogs playing... and baby goats – ugh – leaping for joy.’

Sabrina came to join him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And you know what they call baby goats. They call them kids . . .’

Chapter Thirteen

‘Bend over,’ said Fulton Snodde-Brittle – and the small boy standing in front of him in his study bent over.

‘Right over,’ said Fulton, and the child doubled up over the arm of the leather chair. His name was Toby Benson and he was just seven years old.

Fulton went for his cane, and then frowned and put it back. Canes left marks and the school inspector was due in the next couple of weeks. Not that it mattered – by then he and Frieda should be living in Helton Hall and the school could go to the devil. Still, might as well play safe. He fetched his gym shoe out of the cupboard and bent it back. You could get quite a decent thwack with that, but it wasn’t the same. Everything had become namby-pamby nowadays.

‘You know why I’m going to beat you, don’t you?’ said Fulton.

Toby sniffed and a tear ran down one cheek. ‘Yes, sir. Because I was eating sweets in the gym, sir. My mother sent me—’

‘That’s enough,’ roared Fulton, raising his arm.

But when he had finished, and the little boy had hobbled out, Fulton didn’t feel as cheered as he usually did after beating a child. His mind was on Helton Hall and what was happening there. Oliver had been alone now for nearly a week and he had hoped to hear that he had been taken ill or gone off his head. Perhaps they should phone and find out what was happening? He went down to find Frieda, who was in the school kitchen telling the cook to remove one fish finger from every one of the children’s helpings laid out for lunch.

‘But that’ll just leave one, Miss Snodde-Brittle,’ said the cook. ‘One fish finger’s not much for a growing boy.’

‘Are you telling me what growing boys should eat?’ said Frieda, towering over the poor cook. ‘You don’t seem to be aware that over-eating is very bad for children. It makes them fat and gives them heart disease. Now let me see you take the extra finger away and put it in the freezer for next week. And I thought I said one tablespoon of tinned peas. She bent over a plate and began to count. ‘I find it very hard to believe that twenty-three peas make up one tablespoon. I do hope you can count because—’

But at this moment Fulton appeared by her side and said he wanted to speak to her.

‘I’m going to telephone Miss Match,’ he said, when they were alone in the study.