The Great Ghost Rescue

Rick exchanged a glance with Peter Thorne who sat on his other side. All the boys knew what Maurice did when he was excused. He went up to the dormitory, took a box of sweets from under his pillow and stuffed himself before he came back to the classroom. Probably Mr Horner knew it too but what could he do with Mrs Crawler always defending her ‘Honeybunch’.

‘Very well,’ said Mr Horner, and started telling the class about Henry’s second wife, poor Anne Boleyn.

He hadn’t got very far before the classroom door burst open and Maurice came tottering in, trembling like a great, white jellyfish.

‘A THING!’ He pointed at Rick. ‘Like before. On Henderson’s bed. A b... beastly, ghastly g... ghost!’

‘Now really, Crawler,’ began Mr Horner. And then: ‘Henderson! How dare you leave the classroom without—’

But Rick, with Barbara running at his heels, had gone.

‘Humphrey! Oh, Humphrey!’ Rick swallowed the lump in his throat. ‘What’s happened? What have they done to you?’

‘I’m all right,’ said Humphrey weakly, waving a skeletal finger. ‘It’s all the others... Rick, it was a trap. And they’re all dying. Perhaps dead. My mother and father, George, Winifred – everybody!’

And between the hiccuping sobs which shook him now that he’d reached Rick at last, he told him of the dreadful things that were happening at Insleyfarne.

‘You’ve got to help us, Rick,’ said Humphrey. ‘And quickly, before—’

He broke off as the door of the dormitory burst open and Peter Thorne rushed in.

‘They’re all coming up, Rick – Mr Horner and the Crawlers and beastly Maurice – to see this—’ He stopped dead. ‘Goodness! It’s true then. It really is a ghost.’

‘Yes, it’s a ghost,’ said Rick quietly. ‘It’s also my friend and he needs help. Try and stop them coming in.’

Without any more fuss, Peter rushed back to the door and started pulling a chest of drawers across it. For someone so frail-looking he was surprisingly strong.

‘Humphrey, can you still vanish or are you too weak?’

Humphrey turned his grey, exhausted face to Rick’s. ‘I’ll... try...’ he said. It was obviously a tremendous effort but after a moment his poor, lumpy ectoplasm began to disappear and only his elbow hung like a shred of old sheep’s wool in the air.

The hammering on the door began. Rick ignored it. His face had gone as grim as stone. As soon as Humphrey had said the dread word ‘EXORCISM’ he knew how serious the danger was.

‘How many clergymen were there?’

‘Three,’ came Humphrey’s voice. ‘And another man with a beard. And Lord Bullhaven, of course.’

Rick wasn’t a silly, daydreaming kid. To tackle five grown men he’d need help.

‘Open up,’ screeched Mrs Crawler outside the door. ‘Open up, you wicked children.’

‘I can’t hold them much longer,’ said Peter, braced against the chest of drawers. And suddenly Rick remembered something. Peter was tiny and pale and thin with fair curls and pansy blue eyes. What’s more, he’d been so homesick the first few weeks of term that he’d practically never stopped crying. And yet no one teased or bullied him. Not that they hadn’t tried. Right at the beginning, Maurice Crawler had tried shoving him against the roughcast corridor leading to the gym – and then suddenly Maurice was sprawling on the floor.

‘Was it Judo?’ Rick had asked Peter, because Maurice was at least twice as big.

Peter had shaken his head. He used Judo quite a lot, too, he said, but this was something called Aikido. Japanese, too, but reckoned to be neater. His father had taught him. And then when he got to the word ‘father’ he started snivelling again and Rick had left him. Now, though, he made up his mind.

‘You’d better come with us,’ said Rick to Peter, pushing open the dormitory window. ‘Can you get down the ivy, Barbara?’

Barbara nodded. She was so furious at what they’d done to Humphrey that she couldn’t even speak.

‘Come on, then,’ said Rick. And as they climbed down the ivy and started running down the gravelled drive away from school, he turned to comfort Humphrey. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ said Rick the Rescuer. ‘I promise you, it’s going to be all right.’

Rick spoke bravely but he wasn’t nearly as sure or as hopeful as he sounded. Insleyfarne was over three hundred miles to the North West – ghosts glide so fast they can get you very muddled about distances. Even if they could find a car or train to take them there it would most likely be too late. ‘It’s how to get there quickly,’ said Rick, thinking aloud.

He had forgotten Barbara.

‘I know how,’ she panted, running beside him. ‘Miss Thistlethwaite, that’s how. It’s Miss ... Thistlethwaite we need.’

Rick was so surprised, he stopped dead. ‘Miss Thistlethwaite? Are you crazy?’