The Great Ghost Rescue

‘Stumpy Stumps,’ said Maurice wildly. ‘Hateful Heads. Black Bats—’

‘You’re bats,’ said Rick sternly. ‘You’ve been having a nightmare. Now be quiet. Close your eyes and go to sleep again.’

‘Rather a rude boy,’ said Aunt Hortensia’s head, when Maurice had begun to snore once more.

‘We had hoped to be able to stay here,’ said the Gliding Kilt, ‘but I see now that it wouldn’t do. Too many children give me indigestion. Not you, of course,’ he added politely to Rick.

‘Well I’ve been thinking,’ said Rick. ‘It isn’t just you that have been driven out of your homes.’ And he explained about the whales and the cannibals and all the other things that were on his mind. ‘I think you ought to find a place where all ghosts can live safely.’

‘Somewhere dark,’ said the Hag wistfully.

‘Somewhere damp,’ said Aunt Hortensia, rubbing some dried skin off the end of her stump.

‘Somewhere with owls and bats and rats,’ said Winifred, who loved animals.

‘Somewhere with lots of thunderstorms,’ said George.

‘Somewhere with other ghosts for me to play with,’ said Humphrey.

‘What you need is a ghost sanctuary,’ said Rick.

‘What’s a sanctuary?’ said Humphrey.

‘It’s a place where people can be safe and no one bothers them. In the old days if someone was being chased by soldiers, or by anyone, and he went into a church, that was a place of sanctuary. No one could get at him there.’

‘I wouldn’t like a church,’ said Winifred nervously. ‘You practically never find ghosts in a church.’

‘No, I know. I’m only explaining. I mean, they have bird sanctuaries for puffins and cormorants, where they can make nests and breed and no one is allowed to shoot them or collect their eggs. And you have them for Native Americans in America.’

‘But Native Americans don’t lay eggs,’ said Humphrey.

Rick sighed. ‘What I mean is, they have sanctuaries. Only they’re called reservations, where the Indians can go on living the way they’re used to and no one bothers them. And that’s what you need. A sanctuary for ghosts.’

‘A sanctuary for ghosts,’ they all repeated, and nodded their heads. What Rick said made sense. It was a wonderful idea. What’s more it made them feel good to think that they were looking for somewhere that all ghosts could be happy in, not just they themselves.

‘I wish it could be here,’ said Humphrey. He didn’t at all like the idea of leaving Rick.

There was a sudden shriek from the next bed. It was the new boy, Peter. He had woken up and found himself looking straight into the Shuk’s single, saucer eye.

‘Go to sleep,’ said Rick. ‘It’s just a nightmare.’

All the same, he saw that it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to all the boys in the dormitory that they’d had the same nightmare. And soon now it would be properly light and Matron, who looked like a camel, would come clucking in, which could be awkward. Of course he could tell the ghosts to vanish. But telling a ghost to vanish is a bit like telling a friend to get lost. It just isn’t a thing you want to do.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s Sunday. I’ll take you over to the gym – it won’t be used today. And I’ll go and see a friend of mine, someone very clever, and we’ll make a plan. O.K.?’

‘O.K., dear boy,’ said the Gliding Kilt. ‘Er, does your gymnasium have parallel bars? And a vaulting horse?’

‘Yes. All those sort of things.’

‘Oh, good,’ said the Gliding Kilt, following Rick down the dormitory. He was not one to boast but when he was alive he had been very good at sport indeed. Tossing the caber, hurling the Clachneart and all those other clever Scottish things had been nothing to the Gliding Kilt.

Five

The friend Rick went to talk to about the ghosts was the daughter of the school cook. Her name was Barbara and she was plump with thick, long, chestnut-coloured hair, the sort of dreamy, brown eyes you get in well-fed dairy cows and a smooth, pinky-brown skin with lots of dimples. She did everything very slowly and never got excited, and if she wasn’t interested in what people were saying, she just quietly fell asleep.

Although Norton Castle School was a boys’ school, the Crawlers let Barbara do lessons with the boarders. This was not because the Crawlers were nice – they were exceptionally nasty. It was because Barbara’s mother was a very good cook and they were afraid of losing her. Barbara never seemed to do any work, or take much notice of what the teachers were saying but whenever they asked her a question she knew the answer backwards and when there was a test she wasn’t just top but so far ahead it was almost funny, like finishing half an hour early in a maths exam and getting one hundred per cent.

Rick found her in the kitchen helping her mother to make castle puddings. But she came away when she saw Rick had something on his mind and they went to talk behind an old willow tree which grew near the back entrance to the school.

It didn’t take long for Rick to tell his story. Barbara didn’t sneer or say he’d been dreaming but she did look very surprised. ‘Ghosts,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought it!’