The Great Ghost Rescue

‘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.

Eight

It was evening before they had crossed Saughbeck Moors and reached the place where the small road they had been walking along joined the main road to London.

At the crossroads there was a big lay-by with a garage and a restaurant from which there came one of the most satisfying smells in the world: the smell of frying chips.

‘You’d better go and eat something,’ said the Hag to Rick. ‘You must be starving. We’ll wait for you outside.’

So Rick opened the door of the restaurant and went in, blinking a bit at the bright lights and the people. It was a ‘help yourself’ place where you took a tray and slid it along past lots of glass cases till you got to your tea or coffee at the end. He still hadn’t spent any of the money he’d brought from school and the food looked marvellous. The first thing he took was a huge plate of sausage, peas and baked beans. The sausages looked simply beautiful – sizzling hot and grilled to a turn. But then he remembered what Sucking Susie had said about cutting up pigs so he sighed and put it back and had egg and chips instead. It wasn’t quite the same but by the time he’d added a bowl of tomato soup, two doughnuts and a helping of apple tart and custard, he thought that he would manage not to collapse with hunger.

And when he’d eaten and found the ghosts again, Rick climbed into the back of a parked lorry which said Alfred Barchester. London Road. Bigglesford and hid under a pile of sacks. There was no reason at all for doing this since the driver, who was a nice fat man called Albert with a wife and four children, would have given him a lift anyway, but Rick was too tired by then to think straight. Then Aunt Hortensia drove her coach over the top and all the other ghosts piled in just as Albert, looking rather tired, with a growth of stubble on his chin, came back to the lorry and climbed into the cab.

And they had hardly turned south, on the main road to London, before Rick – completely worn out by the day’s adventures – fell fast asleep.

When he woke it was morning. Albert had parked the lorry in a lay-by and had gone to stretch his legs. They must be quite near London, Rick reckoned, because they were on a huge, six-lane motorway with a big clover-leaf flyover a few hundred yards on. Even at this early hour the traffic streamed along continuously: blue cars, beige cars, green cars, red cars; lorries and caravettes, trailers and delivery vans; huge Rolls Royces and tiny Fiats, on and on and on.

He felt in his pocket for the piece of bread that he’d saved from his supper the night before. As he lifted it to his mouth he noticed a tiny, new, red mark on his wrist. Baby Rose must have taken breakfast by herself while he was asleep. He felt very proud of her. She was obviously going to be a very intelligent vampire indeed when she got older.

When he’d finished his bread he looked out for Humphrey’s elbow. It didn’t seem to be anywhere on the lorry. Then he saw that there was a disused barn facing away from the road on a piece of waste ground – and there they all were: the Hag fixing Humphrey’s ball and chain, Walter the Wet grumbling because Winifred wouldn’t let him paddle in her bowl, Sozzler, Gulper, Syphoner and Fred looking hungrily at a cow grazing in a distant meadow...

But it was at quite a new figure that Rick was looking. A wavering, crazy-looking old creature wearing a monk’s habit.

Not another one?

‘I tell you I can’t stand it any longer,’ he was moaning. ‘Look at me!’ He held out his quivering, thumbless hands and Aunt Hortensia, who was the expert on ectoplasm, agreed that he looked in very poor shape.