Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

‘… so now she’s gone over to Mrs Wilder’s and is terribly upset,’ she was saying. ‘But honestly, I think all this trouble has gone to her head. Should I ring a child psychiatrist, John? I think she needs help.’

‘Let’s ask Daniel what he thinks,’ said Mr Salter, looking at his son. ‘I suspect he can enlighten us.’

So Daniel told his father the whole story. When he had finished, he looked at his father, and feeling tears starting to his eyes he said, ‘You don’t believe a word of it, do you? I told Charlotte that we should lie about it. I told her.’

‘Daniel, first of all, you’re right, it is impossible to believe you. But you knew that, didn’t you? At least you and Charlotte are telling the same story. So you’re probably not insane.’

‘Just simple liars.’

‘Daniel, you are both very unhappy about moving; you need to comfort yourselves; it’s all perfectly understandable.’

The telephone rang.

Daniel’s father went out into the hall. When he came back he said, ‘That was Lottie Wilder. She wonders if we could come round.’

They walked round in silence to number eight. The door was open and they went straight up to Mrs Wilder’s big room on the first floor. Charlotte was sitting in a chair by the window, staring out. She didn’t turn her head when they came in.

‘Hello, Lottie. You’re out, I see,’ said John Salter.

‘Yes. They put a car thief in the cell next door last night. Fascinating. I came home this morning and found Charlotte sitting on the front steps. I think we should have a little chat.’

‘I agree,’ said Daniel’s father. ‘But it seems a shame to bother you with all this, Lottie.’

‘No bother at all. And I have a guilty conscience. I was part of it all.’

So Mrs Wilder told them about crossword puzzles, and finding Mountwood.

When she was finished, Charlotte’s mother burst out, ‘But why didn’t you tell me? I’m her mother!’

‘There is a simple answer to that. Charlotte told me in confidence. I respected that.’

‘But…’

‘There are no buts in this case, I am afraid. I am not, and never will be, a tale-teller.’ Now they saw the other Lottie Wilder, the one who wrote about hard-boiled detectives and had made mincemeat of Jack Bluffit at the inquiry.

Charlotte turned her head from the window and said bitterly, ‘You wouldn’t have believed me anyway. You don’t believe me now.’

John Salter spoke. ‘Lottie, this is all very well, but a tale of ghosts and Great Hagges and haunting school, I mean, surely you don’t think…’ He was suddenly uncertain.

‘I shall tell you what I think,’ said Mrs Wilder, ‘and then of course as these children’s parents you must make up your minds whether to let them go on their… quest.’

‘In the first place,’ she went on, leaning back in her chair, ‘have you considered what an odd thing it is to make all this up. As one who is interested in mysteries, I wonder how Daniel and Charlotte, quite out of the blue, got the idea that there must be a place, not too far from here, whose name bears a resemblance to the words “forest” and “hills”, and then in fact went on to find such a place. Now that would be insane. Unless they had prior information. As to the question of whether they received that information from a small frightened ghost in a nightdress… well, now we come to my second point.’

She was quiet for a moment. Then in a different voice, more dreamily, she said, ‘It’s all forgotten now, beyond our ken. Human beings no longer believe in the Perilous Realm, and that, I might add, is perilous indeed. But some day, some quiet evening perhaps, when you are walking off your supper, or having a breath of fresh air on your balcony, or taking a short cut down some backstreet to your favourite cafe, there will be a lull in the traffic, a moment quiet enough to hear a few starlings settling down for the night, or a mouse skittering along the guttering; and in that little lull, you will see something out of the corner of your eye: a movement, a shape, a shadow. And you will sense a small door opening in your mind.’

Mrs Wilder sighed. ‘And then you will have to decide whether to shut it, or keep it open. It’s your choice, and yours alone.’

For quite a long time nobody said anything. John Salter was remembering one late evening down on his allotment, when he had been tying up his broad beans, and had been so sure that someone was watching him over the fence that he actually called out to him. But when he looked again, there was nobody there. He was the first to speak.

‘You’d better go, I think. Any port in a storm. What do you say, Margaret?’

‘Yes, yes. Charlotte’s always known her own mind.’

Charlotte jumped out of her chair, gave Daniel an I-told-you-it-would-be-all-right grin and ran over to Mrs Wilder, gave her a huge hug and planted a kiss right on the top of her grey head.

‘Silly girl,’ said Mrs Wilder.

Mr Salter had a talk with his wife when he and Daniel got back from Mrs Wilder’s. At first she didn’t want to let Daniel go, but she saw that her husband had made up his mind. He was quite determined. He might not quite believe in ghosts, but he believed in Daniel, and that was enough. And once he got into that state, as Sarah very well knew, then there was nothing to be done. Daniel was exactly the same. But she absolutely insisted on driving them all the way there.

‘But you can’t come to the actual castle, Mum. They don’t know you.’

Mrs Salter was about to say something, but she saw her husband shake his head.

‘That will be fine, Sarah. I’ll book a room for you in the village and you can wait for them there.’ For Sarah Salter the thought of a peaceful night all on her own in a quiet inn was such bliss that she gave in at once.

‘In that case they must have proper sandwiches and sleeping bags,’ she said, trying unsuccessfully to sound as if she was in charge.

Drusilla was splashing about happily in a mossy pool about half a mile from Mountwood. It lay in a marshy dell where one of the peat-brown burns that came off the moors had a chance to slow down and spread itself out a bit before tumbling on down to the valley floor. She was collecting frogspawn to make her very own variety of tapioca pudding for the Hagges’ breakfast.

They usually breakfasted at around six in the evening, before the ghosts were astir, so that they could discuss the night ahead and get themselves organized. But Drusilla was an early riser, and there was nothing she liked better than to take a little walk on the hills in the slanting evening light and see what she could collect. She had taken off her shoes and socks and waded out into the pool. It was quite delicious to feel the marsh mud oozing up between her toes as she scooped spawn into her little bucket.

Work was going on apace at Mountwood. The Hagges had not told the students that they were secretly rather pleased about Iphigenia’s little escapade. However, they had let them off with a stern warning, and the ghosts were so relieved that they worked even harder than before.

Only last night Drusilla had had a wonderful success. The Druid had finally achieved smell control. After weeks of effort, trying and failing and trying again, the breakthrough had come. He had turned up as usual for his special-needs class, accompanied by a swirling stench of dead fish and untreated sewage.

Drusilla had said, ‘I think you are trying too hard. You must relax; don’t fight it; it is your greatest asset. Your stink is also you — you must greet it as your friend. Say quietly to yourself, “I am one with my smell; I embrace it.”’