Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

Now Vince finished his beer, thumped his glass down on the bar and said in a loud voice, ‘Three old wrinklies and a funny noise? It doesn’t take much to scare you lot.’

He took a greasy comb out of his back pocket and ran it through his hair. He wouldn’t have minded an argument, or even a bit of a fight. He was that sort. But nobody in the room could be bothered. They just looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. People in country villages very rarely fight with people they don’t know.

Vince laughed, went out to the car park and drove off into the night.

He took the narrow road that wound upward through the woods. Rounding a sharp bend, his headlights picked out a pale figure standing at the side of the road. As he got closer, he saw that it was a woman with a mass of auburn hair; she was wearing a long, old-fashioned dress. She must have been stranded on her way to a party, thought Vince. Maybe her car had broken down.

Normally he would not have stopped to help. He had never helped anyone in his life. But as he slowed down for a better look, he burst out, ‘You’re in luck, Vince, my boy.’

She was a real stunner. Ten out of ten.

Vince stopped the car and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. Irresistible, that’s what he was. Looked like a film star. He leaned over and opened the near-side window. ‘Need a lift, pet?’

Iphigenia (for it was she) gave him the most endearing smile imaginable.

‘Oh, thank you so much. I am quite lost and alone.’

‘Are you now?’ Better and better, thought Vince. ‘Hop in then.’

The beautiful woman said something under her breath, and then seemed almost to float towards the car. She got into the passenger seat. The words that Vince hadn’t caught had been directed to Kylie, who had melted into a tree close by.

‘Come along, darling, watch and learn.’

Vince put the car into gear and drove on, out of the dark woods and on to open moorland. A thin fingernail of crescent moon rode the night sky, not bright enough to dull the stars whose soft light bathed the heather in an eerie glow.

‘Oh my,’ simpered Iphigenia. ‘It is wild up here.’

‘It’s wild all right,’ said Vince.

High up on the moors, where you could see right across to the dark ridge that scarred the horizon on the other side of the valley, Vince pulled off the road and stopped the car.

‘Why are you stopping?’

Vince grinned his wolfish grin. ‘To enjoy the view, you know.’ He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a bottle of vodka. He unscrewed the top and took a swig. ‘That’s better. Here you go. Should warm you up a bit.’

‘No, thank you.’

Vince’s next trick was to tell a spooky story, so that she would squeak a bit and cuddle up to him. ‘See that big rock up there? That’s Gibbet Rock, where they used to hang the border reivers, when they could catch them.’

‘Ooh,’ said Iphigenia, trying to sound frightened. Vince was talking rubbish. Gibbet Rock was a mile farther down the road, as she knew very well. She had met some of the hanged criminals only the other night. They were mates of Angus Crawe and had popped in to have a little natter at the bottom of the well.

‘And then there was Mad Meg,’ Vince went on, ‘She was going to be burned at the stake for a witch, but she pulled a knife out of her sleeve and slit her own throat before they could light the pyre.’

This was complete nonsense. Vince was making the whole thing up.

‘How interesting.’ Suddenly Iphigenia’s voice had changed. It was a chilling, toneless whisper.

Vince looked at her in surprise. She sat there smiling as before, her beautiful face framed by her marvellous hair, but her eyes… there were two blank staring white holes where those soulful eyes had been. The hair rose on the back of Vince’s neck.

‘Was it a knife like this?’ Iphigenia asked in the same frozen whisper, and from her sleeve she drew a dagger. Dark red liquid dripped from the blade. Still smiling the same empty-eyed smile, she stuck the point into her neck just below the ear and drew the blade across her own throat. A thin line of blood oozed from the wound and ran down her neck. She spoke again. ‘It’s cold on the moors of a night. Won’t you join me?’

In a spasm of horror Vince lashed out. His fist passed right through Iphigenia, who was rapidly fading.

‘We’ll meet again.’

Her voice was barely audible now. It seemed no more than a wind soughing across the heather. ‘Remember me, Poor Meg o’ the Moor, remember me…’

Vince forced the car into gear and drove off like a madman. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold the wheel. He drove at breakneck speed, skidding around bends with his foot on the floor. He didn’t slow down until he was back in the valley among the trees.

‘Somebody must have drugged me,’ he mumbled. ‘What a total nightmare.’

Then he happened to glance in his rear-view mirror. Sitting on the back seat was Iphigenia, blood still running down her neck and covering her dress in an ever-widening stain. The same eyeless smile was on her face.

‘I’ll never leave you, my dear one,’ she whispered. ‘I’m yours forever.’

It was too much. Vince screamed and collapsed over the steering wheel. Out of control, the car careered off the road and crashed into a tree. He was thrown clear and lay in a lifeless heap in the bracken a few yards from the wreck, his face set in a grimace of terror. His hair had gone completely white.

Kylie appeared on the back seat of the car beside Iphigenia, where she had been sitting all the time.

‘Oh, Mrs Peabody, that was unbelievable. It was fabulous. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Iphigenia smiled at her. ‘It’s technique, darling. It can be learned.’

‘No, no, it’s more than that. Inspired it was. And you hadn’t even prepared.’

‘Well, my love, one must be open to the moment. Improvisation is a skill too.’

Happily they glided out of the car together, all their past enmity forgotten. At that moment Ron Peabody’s manly tones echoed through the night.

‘Iffy! Iffy!’

All the ghosts swarmed out of the forest with Ron at their head. Everyone gathered around Vince’s lifeless form.

‘Will you look at that!’ said the Legless Anglo-Saxon Warrior from the Isle of Thanet. He was not only without legs, he had no nose and a detached ear, so it was not always easy to judge his mood. But now it was clear he was impressed. ‘That man’s been scared to death. Haven’t seen that for a while.’

There was huge excitement among the ghosts. Kylie told them all about the marvellous performance she had witnessed, and of course Iphigenia was heaped with praise. Everyone agreed that this was one in the eye for plastic Halloween masks and jolly jokey ghost cartoons.

They were chattering cheerfully, pointing out Vince’s rigid terrified face (‘That’s what I call a Halloween mask,’ said the Shortener, and everyone laughed and said how witty and clever he was), when they heard a car coming. The Phantom Welder instantly recognized the throaty hum of a perfectly engineered six-cylinder engine.

‘That’s the Rolls,’ he said. ‘We’re toast.’

‘Perhaps we should make ourselves scarce,’ said the Shortener, putting on his bowler hat. The ghosts thinned out and scattered into the unseen as fast as they could.

Too fast. The starving duchess left her right foot behind, and the ear of the Legless Anglo-Saxon Warrior hung about just a bit too long. It got caught in the beams of the headlamps as the Rolls swung round the last bend.

Inside the car Fredegonda said, ‘Stop! I know that ear.’

Goneril braked, and the Great Hagges could see Vince’s car with its front end crumpled against a tree trunk and its rear wheels in the air. They could also make out the figure of Vince, lying like a discarded rag doll a little way off.