Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

The bus moved off up the street.

‘He’ll have to turn round,’ said Daniel. ‘This is a cul-de-sac.’

‘Don’t worry about him,’ said the Phantom Welder. ‘He usually finds a way.’

The bus disappeared into the gloom and was gone.

‘Now,’ said Ron Peabody, ‘I wonder if you could show us to our quarters. We need to set up camp and get ourselves organized before daylight. Is this the place?’ Ron pointed at Daniel’s front door. ‘Or that one?’

‘No, we waited outside my house because Percy has been here before and we thought it would be easiest to find us. And the Bosse-Lynches are next door.’

‘The who?’

It was the Phantom Welder who spoke, and all his companions turned to him. He had spoken in a voice they had never heard him use before. His usual cheery expression had gone. He looked as though he had seen a ghost.

‘The Bosse-Lynches,’ said Daniel. ‘We haven’t mentioned you to them — they’re not the kind of people…’ Daniel broke off.

The Phantom Welder had drifted away, hardly visible at all.

‘What’s got into him?’ said Ron. ‘Perhaps, since we’re all a bit tired and wound up…’

‘Your house is further down, not far,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s empty, and we think you will be comfy there.’

‘Right, off we go then.’

Daniel and Charlotte walked down to number twelve, with Percy gliding happily beside them and burbling about how he was teaching Samson to roll over and play dead.

‘Here we are.’ Number twelve looked dark and abandoned, in the way that houses do almost as soon as their owners have left.

‘A very suitable edifice, to be sure,’ said the Shortener. ‘Let us enter. After you, miss.’ He took off his hat and made a little bow to Kylie, who was close by. All the ghosts said good evening, and vanished. The front door of number twelve seemed to waver a bit, and then all was silent.

One by one the street lamps came back on.

If Daniel and Charlotte had thought about it, they would have realized that ghosts, just like cats or human beings for that matter, need their own space. In an enormous country house with a hundred rooms you might find two or even three ghosts, but mostly the rule is one ghost per churchyard, or well, or whatever. It was asking a lot of no fewer than nine to squeeze into one terraced house.

But Team Spectre was prepared to rough it. You can’t expect to enjoy the comforts of home when you are out on a special mission. If you can’t take a bit of hard lying, then you shouldn’t be there in the first place. Soldiers have to share their bivouacs with people who pick their noses or have smelly feet; that’s just part of the job. Sailors have to bunk in cramped cabins with mess-mates who are learning to play ‘Greensleeves’ on the mandolin or say ‘down the hatch’ every time they drink something. So the ghosts of Team Spectre were prepared to make the best of camping out in number twelve. But it can’t be denied that it was rather a tight fit.

Already on that first night there were small irritations. The Peabodys decided to haunt the main bedroom, and there were no objections to that. The others spread themselves around the house as best they could. But the Shortener, who thought he might make himself comfy in the cupboard under the stairs, found that Angus Crawe was already in there, stroking Doris and humming quietly to himself.

Kylie and Vera both tried to get into the bath at the same time, and a lot of ‘No, you take it… No, you found it first’ ended up with both of them rather rattled and neither of them in the bath.

As for the Druid, he was a wanderer by nature. They had solved the problem at Mountwood, which was very large, by giving him the whole loft space under the roof to wander about in, on condition that he didn’t come down until called. But in Markham Street all he could do was wander up and down the stairs, chanting ‘The Mabinogion’ in lilting Welsh. That is bad enough if you speak Welsh, and close to torture if you can’t. There are no phantom earplugs to stick into phantom ears.

One of the ghosts wasn’t there at all. Not just invisible, but actually not there. The Phantom Welder had followed the rest of the team into the house, but while the others were floating around trying to get themselves settled, he simply melted into the wall and was gone.

After an hour or two, when the ghosts had got their sleeping arrangements sorted out, at least for the time being, it was time for a meeting to plan their strategy. They gathered in the empty living room, with its bare floorboards and marks on the wall where the Bennetts’ pictures had hung.

‘No time for anything tonight, I think,’ said the Shortener.

‘A bit of a recce, maybe, if anyone feels up to it,’ said Ron Peabody. ‘Just to get the lie of the land.’

‘It will be night work for the most part, I suppose,’ said Iphigenia, ‘but perhaps some unseen activity during the day to soften them up. I thought that the Phantom Welder… Where is he, by the way?’

At that moment an ear-splitting scream was heard. The ghosts vanished, and rushed to the window in time to see Mr Bosse-Lynch run down his front path, stark naked, screaming and soaking wet. Lights went on and windows were opened all along Markham Street.

The Phantom Welder knew perfectly well that they were not there to use their expert haunting skills on the innocent inhabitants of Markham Street. They were there to help them, not go wandering through the walls frightening people. But there was something he just had to do.

When he had heard the name of the people who lived at number five he had got a terrible shock, and bitter memories of the past came flooding back. Bosse-Lynch. Such an unusual name. There couldn’t be any doubt about it. It was the Bosse-Lynch family that had done for him; ruined his life, and in the end killed him.

He had never told the others much about his past, he wasn’t that sort of person, but he remembered it well enough. He had been a proud workman, one of the best welders in Crewe, and there were a lot of good men working there in the heyday of the great steam engines. But then came the Great Depression; the Bosse-Lynches, who owned the factory where he worked, shrugged their shoulders and sold up. Supply and demand, they said. The work was gone, and before you knew where you were you were walking the streets, rummaging through garbage bins, living on scraps and leftovers. Until one day, when he found an old newspaper with some cold greasy chips still wrapped in it. A feast to him. He didn’t know that it was full of rat poison; how could he? But Mr Bosse-Lynch had known, because he had put it there. The garbage bin was in the alley behind his posh house.

So now, although he knew he was letting the team down, the Phantom Welder drifted from house to house until he came to number five.

Although it was almost one o’clock in the morning, Mr Bosse-Lynch was in the bath. He had stayed up late to watch a film on television, but he still wasn’t feeling very tired, so he had poured himself a large whisky and taken it into the bathroom with him, and locked the door. He would have time to pour it down the sink if Mrs Bosse-Lynch woke up.

He lay with his eyes closed, peacefully soaking in the tub, with his glass on a stool within easy reach. Without warning something cold splashed into his face and ran down his chin. He tasted whisky. He sat up and wiped his stinging eyes. He was sure he had locked the door. She couldn’t have got in.

He saw his empty glass float through the air and hurl itself against the bathroom mirror, where it splintered into a thousand shards. Then the room was plunged into darkness. He saw an apparition standing by the bath looking down at him, wearing a boiler suit and carrying a welding torch. The apparition adjusted the torch until he had got the perfect mixture — the flame was sharp, dazzling blue-white, and lethal. The apparition bent down slightly, and the flame disappeared below the side of the bath.