The Great Ghost Rescue

And of course there were the new ghosts to be settled in. Almost every day some poor, weary ghost arrived and asked for sanctuary. There were two soldiers called Ugh-tred and Grimbald who had fought with King Alfred, the one who was supposed to have burnt the cakes. They used to haunt an old, crumbling cow-byre under the Malvern hills until it was rebuilt and turned into a Factory Farm, and they had to glide up and down uttering hoarse war cries between three hundred squawking battery chickens laying eggs. They were rough, uncouth fellows, but everybody liked them. Soldiers are often very gentle and good-hearted when you get to know them.

Then there were the Ladies. Ladies kept arriving all the time. There was a Green Lady who was looking for the key to her treasure chest, and a Blue Lady who was looking for her dead husband. (She had smothered him with a pillow and forgotten where she put him.) And when they’d been at the sanctuary for about a fortnight, their old friend the Grey Lady arrived, the one that used to haunt the churchyard at Craggyford and she, of course, was still looking for her teeth.

Soon word of the sanctuary spread so far afield that ghosts came from other countries. Most of them fitted in very well but there was a musical ghost from Finland who was rather a trial to them. It wasn’t just that she liked to play the harp on the cliff top by the light of the moon, it was that she got very offended if everybody didn’t come and listen.

‘Not ghostly, I call it, but ghastly,’ said Aunt Hortensia crossly. She was not musical and sitting on a cliff by moonlight made her bunions shoot.

Still, on the whole the ghosts were very, very happy. Best of all they liked the evenings when they all sat in the Hag’s kitchen and talked about their adventures, and about Rick.

‘What was he like, this great Rick the Rescuer?’ one of the new ghosts would ask.

‘Oh, he had sort of big eyes and a thin face and sticking-out ears,’ Humphrey would begin, and the Hag would clout him with her wings and say: ‘Humphrey, what are you saying. Rick’s ears were absolutely straight.’

Because Rick, you see, was becoming a hero in their minds and heroes don’t have sticking-out ears. And they would tell and re-tell how Rick had fed the vampire bats from his own wrist and led them to the Prime Minister of Britain, and even Poldi, a rather mischievous poltergeist who had come up from Putney, would stop chucking things about and listen.

‘And now here we are, thanks to him, safe and sound for ever,’ the Hag would end, her whiskers twitching with emotion.

But she was wrong.

Twelve

The following morning the Hag woke with a headache. Like most mothers, the Hag often had a headache. George’s screaming, for a start, frequently had her flat on her back by teatime with a damp frogskin on her forehead. But this was a much worse headache than usual. It pounded and jabbed and thumped inside her skull till she felt she just couldn’t move another step. Then the backache started, creeping up her hump on one side and down the other as though someone was running a meat chopper along her spine.

‘I think I’ll just lie down a little,’ she said to her husband.

The Gliding Kilt, usually so sympathetic, just stared at her. ‘I think I’ll just lie down, dear,’ she repeated – and stopped because her husband had a very frightened look on his face.

‘I can’t hear what you’re saying, Mabel,’ he said. ‘There’s an awful buzzing in my ears and I’m so giddy.’ His kilt was swaying as if caught in a gale and the sword in his chest had a tarnished, rusty look. But the Hag had no time to see to her husband before the most agonized screaming from the East Tower pierced her ears. It was George, of course, but this wasn’t George’s loud and lusty roar. This was a hoarse, pitiful scream; the scream of somebody in pain.

‘Oh what is happening to us all?’ wailed the Hag, gliding up to the tower and cradling George in her arms. His skull had gone terrifyingly fuzzy and the bones felt soft and buttery in her hand.

‘What is it, darling, what is it?’

‘I hurt,’ screamed George. ‘I hurt, I hurt, I hurt!’

Holding him lovingly in her claws and ignoring the terrible pain in her back, the Hag flew down looking for the rest of her children. She found Winifred lying on the steps leading from the dungeons. She looked completely stunned. ‘My bowl’s smashed, Mummy. My bowl’s smashed. My bowl ...’

‘Something terrible is happening,’ said the Hag desperately. ‘We must stay together. Where’s Humphrey?’

But before she could look for Humphrey, Aunt Hortensia came flying in. Her knobbly knees stuck out like ramrods; her neck stump was as stiff as a board.

‘I’ve gone rigid, Mabel,’ she said, circling the room like a great iron cross. ‘Can’t bend a thing. And my head’s like rock.’