The Great Ghost Rescue

‘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.