The Great Ghost Rescue

The first clergyman Lord Bullhaven went to see was his own vicar and he said ‘No’ straight away because he knew enough about Lord Bullhaven to know that he didn’t want to go anywhere with him, let alone to the north coast of Scotland, and anyway he had the children’s Sunday School outing to organize. The second vicar, who lived in a big, rambling house in the next town, said he rather liked ghosts and would prefer not to help get rid of them.

‘But these are disgusting, unclean spooks!’ screamed Lord Bullhaven.

But the Vicar of Netherton just smiled and said he was sorry but he wouldn’t come.

It went on like this for days. Lord Bullhaven drove all over the south of England in his big, black car trying to find vicars who were willing to come with him but all of them were too busy or too sensible or too kind, and some of them thought it was shocking to go and exorcise anybody in a place of sanctuary.

Then in the end he found a very poor vicar who had nine children. The roof of his vicarage leaked, his church was falling down and his wife was so tired from managing on next to nothing that she used to sit down every evening after the children were in bed and cry.

‘If you come with me,’ said Lord Bullhaven craftily (because he was very rich as well as very bad), ‘I will give you one hundred pounds.’

So Mr Wallace, which was the vicar’s name, thinking of all the shoes for his children and nourishing food for his wife which he could buy, agreed to come. After that Lord Bullhaven found a very old, very deaf vicar called Mr Hoare-Croakington. Unfortunately Mr Hoare-Croakington (who wasn’t just old and deaf but quite, quite ga-ga) thought he was being invited to Scotland to shoot grouse and this made rather a muddle later on.

The last man Lord Bullhaven got hold of was a very unpleasant character indeed. His name was Mr Heap and he had been a clergyman once but got chucked out of the church for stealing the money out of the offertory box and using it to buy whisky. But he still wore his clerical collar and called himself the Reverend Bertram Heap so Lord Bullhaven was quite taken in and thought he had got a proper vicar. Mr Heap was one of those people who look as though they were meant to be an animal – an ox or a bullock or a pig. He had huge shoulders, a red neck and a large bloated face with bristles.

After that Lord Bullhaven simply could not get any more clergymen so the last person he took with him was a rather peculiar Professor from the University of London called Professor Brassnose who wrote books about ghost-hunting and who wanted to try out a lot of stuff like brass cymbals to bang and baking powder to sprinkle and sulphur crystals to burn, all of which he thought might work against ghosts but one couldn’t be sure.

And on a bright day in late October, Lord Bullhaven filled the boot of his huge, black Rolls Royce with books of ghost-laying spells and folding chairs to sit on and thermos flasks to drink from while sitting on the folding chairs – and then the clergymen and Professor Brassnose got inside, and they all set off on the long drive to Insleyfarne to go and murder Rick’s ghosts.

Fourteen

‘I... don’t think... it will be... much longer now,’ said the Hag.

She was lying on a bed of mouldering leaves in the roofless Banqueting Hall of the castle. In her arms she held what was left of her beloved husband, the Gliding Kilt. It wasn’t very much. His leg stumps had gone; his chest and arms were so faint that they seemed to be just a shimmering in the air; only the brave tartan of the kilt remained – that and his wise and comforting words.

‘We’ve been... so happy together. Don’t be sad.’

But the Hag was sad. She was unbearably sad. Tears rolled down her whiskery cheeks and a whole mix-up of smells: mashed mice stomachs, pig’s trotters, Camembert cheese, rolled from her sick body as she remembered the wonderful times they had had together. ‘And my Little Ones,’ she moaned.

‘It is best... that we should all go... together,’ said the Gliding Kilt, whose face was beginning to break up on one side.

With her weak and aching arms, the Hag reached out to George who lay at her feet. His skull had almost melted and his screams sounded like the muffled squeaking of a mouse.

‘Winifred?’ whispered the Hag brokenly. A hopeless sobbing answered her. Without her bowl,

Winifred was nothing.

‘Humphrey?’

No answer.

‘Humphrey!’ screamed the Hag again.

Still no answer. Yet just now he had been lying close beside her. Humphrey was dead then. Exorcised. Sent back for ever to where ghosts come from, never to return. Quite, quite desperate, the Hag closed her eyes and prepared for death.

Humphrey, however, was not dead. He was terribly, terribly weak and for a while, as he lay between George and Winifred feeling the stabbing pain in his poor ectoplasm, watching the pink colour drain from his tortured limbs, he just wanted the end to come quickly.