The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

First, a ghastly gurgling sort of grunt … Then a rasping, squawk-like screech … and lastly a kind of honking hoot which changed halfway into a croaking squeal.

‘Who’s there?’ shouted Ned.

The noise stopped abruptly. The silence was absolute.

‘Maybe it was an animal?’ suggested Rollo.

But what kind of animal? And there had been more than one.

‘I’m not going to let it stop me,’ said Sunita. ‘If it’s werewolves, we can deal with them. They can’t hurt ghosts.’

She began once more to glide round the patch of freshly dug earth, trying to make contact with the spirits of the creatures who lay below. Madlyn had brought a bunch of flowers; she held them in her hand, waiting till Sunita should give the signal and the ceremony begin.

But Sunita kept gliding steadily round the edge of the burial ground, then across it, and they could see that she was becoming troubled and uncertain.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she murmured.

Five minutes passed, and then ten. It grew darker and colder, and Sunita became more and more bewildered and unsure.

Then the noise came again. It was louder than before, and even more horrible, and it died away in a hopeless kind of gurgling splutter.

And from behind a large digger there emerged … three grandmothers.

At least, they looked like grandmothers – the old-fashioned kind: plump, with grey hair and black clothes, and they carried not one handkerchief each but a whole bunch of them.

‘Of course!’ said Brenda. ‘I know who you are. You’re banshees.’

‘Yes, of course we’re banshees. And you’re ghosts. But I can tell you this: whatever you’re doing you’re wasting your time,’ said the eldest of the women.

‘It’s a disgrace,’ said the middle one. ‘We’re going to complain when we get back – the Banshee Bulletin used to be a reliable newspaper but it seems it’ll print any sort of rubbish nowadays. They don’t check their facts. And poor Greta’s in a dreadful state.’

‘Yes, I am,’ said the youngest. ‘My insides are all knotted up and my throat’s as curdled as custard.’

‘People make a fuss about constipation, but it’s nothing to what happens when a howl gets stuck inside you,’ said the eldest banshee.

‘We came three hundred miles to have a good wail and – well, you heard us,’ said the middle one. ‘If the Banshee Choral Society had been there, we’d have been struck off the register, making a noise like that.’

‘But why? Why can’t you wail?’ asked Brenda, who felt herself close to these women.

‘We can’t wail because there’s nothing to wail about.’

‘There’s nothing to wail for.’

‘Wailing doesn’t happen for nothing, you know. There has to be a reason.’

Sunita now glided closer to the women. She looked relieved, as though a weight had fallen off her shoulders.

‘Yes, I see, I see,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t understand it. I thought I’d lost my power to connect. But they aren’t here, are they?’

‘You can say that again,’ said the eldest banshee. ‘There’s nothing under that earth except more earth and more earth still.’

Rollo had stepped forward; he was trembling with excitement. ‘You mean they aren’t dead?’

The banshees shrugged. ‘As to that, we couldn’t say. But they aren’t here and that’s for sure.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

They had forced open the door of the workmen’s hut and the banshees were making tea.

It was a crush with all of them inside – unlike the ghosts, the banshees were solid – but the fug was cosy. They had missed the last bus back to Clawstone, but the banshees had offered to drop them off on their way home.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Ranulf yet again. ‘Why say the cattle are buried here when they aren’t? What is Lord Trembellow up to?’

‘If it was Lord Trembellow,’ said Mr Smith. ‘He may have been had.’

But why?

No one could understand it. The Feet had climbed on to the eldest banshee’s knee and refused to get down.

‘I feel I’ve seen them somewhere before,’ she said, patting the hairy toes.

‘Yes, I feel the same,’ said the middle sister. ‘Somewhere where we went to do a job. A funeral, I suppose, but I can’t think where.’

And the youngest sister nodded and said that she too felt that The Feet were familiar.

But Rollo could think of one thing only. The fate of the cattle.

‘Where can they be?’ he said again and again, and Madlyn sighed because it seemed to her cruel that Rollo should once again be given hope. If the animals weren’t buried here they would be buried somewhere else.

‘All the same, it’s really strange,’ said Ned. ‘Why pretend to bury them?’

They had searched the site, using their torches, but found nothing. After the torrential rain, any hoof marks or tracks there might have been would have been washed away.

The banshees sipped their tea. The fug in the hut increased.

‘We need some more water for the kettle,’ said the middle banshee.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Rollo.