Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

‘We have been asked to let you speak,’ said Fredegonda frostily when they came to a halt in front of her. ‘So speak.’

Fredegonda, tall, gaunt and forbidding, was enough to make anyone unsure of herself, but the children collected their thoughts as best they could.

Daniel began. ‘Our houses are about to be destroyed; we have tried everything. We need your help.’

‘Why should we help you? What concern is it of ours?’

‘Only fear can stop them,’ said Charlotte. ‘We thought… We thought that’s what this was all about.’ And she gestured around the gloomy chamber with its milling spectres.

‘And so it is. But we would also be helping you and your families. It would be a good deed. That is not what this is all about.’

‘But you would be helping those old houses too. Don’t ghosts need old houses to haunt? And they’re going to make such a mess of Markham Park. It’s been there for ages.’

There was a desperate appeal in Charlotte’s voice. She didn’t know it, but she had hit the spot. The Great Hagges were very much against mess. Drusilla was a Lifetime President of the Society for the Preservation of the British Heritage, and had kept up contact even in retirement.

Now she said, ‘Markham Park? I think I heard something about that. There is a Head of Planning whom the members have been complaining about for years.’

‘Jack Bluffit,’ said Daniel.

‘That’s the chap. I knew the original Markham, you know — Sir Guy of March Hamlet he was then, of course. Very respectable, and had a firm hand with the serfs.’

‘There is another thing,’ said Daniel. Suddenly he felt that they might be getting somewhere. ‘We thought your students might need a bit of practice. You know, like trainee teachers, or soldiers on an assault course.’

It was this last remark that clinched it. Ever since Mrs Peabody’s little jaunt they had been discussing the need for a bit of fieldwork. ‘The litmus test,’ Fredegonda called it.

The Great Hagges exchanged glances, and then Fredegonda nodded.

‘Very well. We agree to your request, assuming that there are volunteers for the task. I will not make helping human children obligatory, of that point I am quite adamant. So,’ she declared, turning to her students, ‘who wishes to be a part of this enterprise?’

A surge of spectres, squawking and shrieking, ‘I’ll go!… Me, I’ll do it!… I’m on, count me in!’ told her that she would have no difficulty in raising her squad.

‘I assume you can organize billets,’ said Goneril.

‘Billets?’

‘Yes, of course. Where are they going to stay?’

‘But I thought—’ Daniel began.

‘I doubt that. You clearly did not think. Ghosts need somewhere to attach themselves. Occasionally you might meet a wanderer, like the Druid here, but for the most part ghosts don’t just haunt, they haunt places — houses, castles, ruins, graveyards…’

‘Aye, and wells,’ boomed Angus Crawe, from the depths.

‘Exactly. I should have thought that was obvious. So can you accommodate them?’

‘Yes. Yes, we can, it won’t be a problem,’ said Daniel quickly, before Charlotte could get an attack of honesty and admit that it might well be a problem.

Once a decision had been made, Fredegonda did not hang about.

‘In three days from now, at midnight,’ she declared.

It started the day after they returned from Mountwood. Mike came round to Daniel’s house, and when Daniel came to the door he said, ‘They’re here. Let’s go up and look.’

They walked up to the park. Before they even got there they heard the roar of a big diesel engine, and when they came around the corner they saw that a wide gap had been torn in the low wall surrounding the park. A huge yellow bulldozer with caterpillar tracks was forcing its way through, pushing stones and rubble before it with its great blade. It headed straight across the grass. Along one of the streets that surrounded the park a line of lorries stood waiting, each one carrying a large container like a railway carriage with no wheels.

As they stood there, a heavy truck came rumbling up the road. It had lots of big wheels with deep treads and a crane was folded on to its flatbed.

‘Boom truck,’ said Mike. He was a great explorer and had climbed over lots of fences; he knew most of what there was to know about heavy-duty construction machinery. ‘They’ll be rigging up the site offices first.’

Daniel and Mike sat on the wall of the park and watched. The bulldozer crawled backwards and forwards, flattening out a large area at edge of the park. A laurel bush and a young sycamore were swept aside and dumped like litter. Then some big dumper trucks drove straight through the gap in the wall. They turned round, churning up what was left of the grass and flower beds into a quagmire, backed into the space that the bulldozer had made and started tipping huge piles of gravel and hard core.

Next to come was a front-loader.

‘Hitachi,’ said Mike. ‘He can take a few tons in that bucket.’

The bulldozer was hard at work, spreading hard core and then gravel over a space as big as two tennis courts. Finally, with the front-loader as assistant, the bulldozer evened out the track that it had come in on, and the two machines ground to a halt. Their drivers jumped down from their cabs and stood chatting with each other.

Now it was the boom truck’s turn. It entered the park followed by the lorries that had stood patiently waiting. There was a hiss of air brakes, and then the engine revved as the crane’s hydraulics unfolded the arm on its back. It lifted the portable site huts off the beds of the lorries and piled three of them on top of each other. The fourth was placed a bit to the side.

Daniel saw that they had windows and doors. On the top one was a sign saying ‘Site Office’, on the middle one ‘Canteen’ and on the lowest one ‘Stores’.

On the one that stood by itself was a sign saying ‘Toilets’.

Now a four-wheel-drive pick-up drove in and parked in front of the huts. It disgorged four men in yellow hard hats who started unloading scaffolding from the back. In no time at all they had bolted together the huts, and a set of steps rose up the side, with gratings to stand on in front of the doors of the top two huts.

‘Pretty nifty work,’ said Mike admiringly.

Just then Daniel heard a shout.

‘Daniel, Daniel, are there diggers?’

Charlotte’s youngest brother, Alexander, was dragging his sister towards them, while she complained, ‘Take it easy, Alex, they’ll be there for months.’

‘But I want to see them now.’

Alexander had Heavy-Machinery Disease. An excavator making a hole in the road could put him into a trance. He could stand the whole day with his thumb in his mouth just watching. It is a disease which sometimes infects small boys and there is no quick cure. Sometimes they grow out of it. Sometimes they don’t.

‘Hi,’ said Charlotte breathlessly. ‘I didn’t want to see this, but I didn’t have much choice.’ She looked out over the park. ‘Oh no, what an ugly mess.’

‘What time is it, Charlotte?’ asked Mike.

‘About half twelve, I suppose.’

‘I’ve got to go. See you.’ Mike sauntered off.

Charlotte lifted Alexander up on to the wall, which was taller than he was, keeping a good grasp on the back of his coat. He settled down happily and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

‘They’d better come soon,’ said Daniel quietly.

‘They said the day after tomorrow.’

‘Do you think they’ll be all right in number twelve?’

‘I don’t see why they shouldn’t be. Empty houses are just the sort of places you find ghosts.’