The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

The last thing Ned saw as he raced back to the lab was the old lady with the gold tooth leaning over the railings, waving goodbye.

The steel doors were open. The lab was a welter of broken glass, spilt liquid and upturned furniture. Rollo was hanging on to the rope of the calf. Madlyn was bent over a sink, trying not to be sick.

And the ghosts had become visible – but although they had saved the children and the calf, they did not look triumphant or victorious.

They were clustered anxiously round Ranulf, who was sitting on a locker with his head in his hands. No wonder that this stately and dignified ghost had given such a dreadful scream. Ranulf’s shirt was open, and something – obviously – was most seriously wrong.

Of Manners and Fangster there was no sign.

They had locked themselves into the cloakroom. It was the room where they scrubbed up before operations: white and clinical and disinfected. There were a row of basins, a shower and two toilets in adjacent cubicles.

They were safe here. The door of the cloakroom was barred, and if necessary they could retreat further, into the toilets, and lock them too.

‘They won’t ... get us ... here,’ said Manners. His teeth were chattering and he had bruises on his cheek from one of the canisters which had flown through the air and hit him. The vet was the colour of cheese and was trembling uncontrollably. Both men had forgotten unicorns and the millions of pounds they had hoped to make. All they wanted now was to save their skins.

And then they saw that something had happened to the door. It was still tightly shut, but in the wooden panel there had appeared a kind of fuzziness ... a shimmering shape which leaped down on to the floor and crept towards them.

‘It’s a rat,’ screeched Manners, backing away.

But not an ordinary rat. A rat out of the vilest of dreams: huge and misshapen and scabrous, with yellow teeth and with a body that wavered and flickered and disappeared and then re-formed itself.

Slowly, it crawled forward, opening its mouth, searching – and then stopped.

‘Shoo! Shoo – go away.’

Fangster grabbed the toilet brush and hit the animal hard across the back. There was a strange, squelchy sound and the rat vanished.

‘It’s gone!’

‘No. No. Look, it’s re-formed itself. Oh Lord, it’s obscene!’

The rat moved closer and the two men backed away, gibbering with fear. This was the worst thing so far, this disgusting, shape-changing thing, looking for something to chew.

‘Maybe we could jump over it and make a dash for it,’ suggested Manners.

But as soon as they moved, the rat moved too – sitting up on its hind legs, chomping ... seeking ...

It had come very close to Manners’s foot; it opened its mouth.

But what it found was wrong. It did not want hard non-ectoplasmic shoes; it did not want trouser legs smelling of disinfectant.

The rat wanted what it had always had and needed. It wanted what had violently and suddenly been torn from him. It wanted the familiar hairy chest and well-known heart of the man to whom it belonged.

Shaken and upset and displaced, Ranulf’s rat held the two men prisoner and waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Uncle George was a careful driver. His old Bentley usually chugged through the village at not much more than the speed of a tractor.

But he was not driving slowly now. Ever since Ned’s message had come over the crackling receiver of a schoolboy in the village who belonged to a radio club, Uncle George had behaved like a maniac.

He had collected his blunderbuss, and his pistol from the war, and his grandfather’s fowling piece, ready to blow to smithereens anyone who had harmed the children. Emily wanted to come with him; she had become quite hysterical since she had found that the children had gone.

‘I want to be beside you,’ she cried. ‘I want to shoot somebody too!’

But George had persuaded her that it would be best if she went down to the police station in case they wanted some more particulars. And then, just as he was setting off, a car had drawn up, and out poured three plump ladies in black overcoats who greeted him like long-lost relations, though he had never set eyes on them before.

‘Cooee – we’re the banshees,’ shouted the eldest and plumpest of the ladies. ‘We thought we’d call in on our way to Blackscar to tell—’

‘Blackscar,’ said Uncle George sharply. ‘What do you know about Blackscar?’

‘Well, it’s the most extraordinary thing,’ said the eldest banshee. ‘We just had a flash!’

‘It came to us when we woke from our nap,’ said the middle banshee. ‘We’d been wondering and wondering ever since we saw them in the gravel pit.’

‘So we thought we must go up and make sure, because we could see how troubled they were and when we remembered—’

But Sir George was in no mood to listen to this insane and meaningless babble.

‘Could you stand aside, please?’ he barked. ‘If you want to go to Blackscar you can follow me later.’

But the banshees had taken no notice.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to Blackscar too? You mean you had the same idea about The Feet and—’