Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

He turned round to see a face peering at him through the window. Impossible! The site office was ten metres off the ground. The features were those of an elderly woman. Her hair was tangled and filthy, full of dust and plaster, and her expression one of anguish. The foreman backed against the wall, all the blood draining from his face, as the apparition came closer, seemed to pass through the window. Now he saw the rest of her. Dressed in a flowery nightdress, her feet in a pair of woolly bedsocks, the old lady floated towards him.

She put her hands to her wizened chest. ’Oh, I can’t breathe,’ she wheezed. ‘Buried alive, smothered by dust and darkness. Oh the weight of it… the weight…’

The foreman burst into floods of tears and fell to his knees.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he wailed. ‘I didn’t know you were in there. Please…’

‘I shall never grant you peace,’ the spectre croaked, ‘until you have done some good in this world.’

And then she was gone.

Iphigenia was rather pleased with the effect she had had. She would have to remind Kylie that research, a bit of careful listening before going into action, could make all the difference. Seize the moment. That was the key. And she went off to find her husband and see how he had got on.

When Big Robby walked towards his car he was deep in thought. This was without exception the worst bit of business he had ever got mixed up in. He got in, started the engine and headed off towards the works entrance. Right in the middle of the open gateway stood a man in a bowler hat.

‘That’s all I need,’ he muttered. ‘Some nosy official. Probably Health and Safety. What’s he doing here in the middle of the night?’

The man didn’t move until Robby drove right up to him and sounded his horn. Then he moved towards the car, with a polite expression on his face.

Robby glared at him and opened the window. ‘What’s it about?’

‘That is a very interesting question,’ replied the man. ‘Very philosophical, I declare.’

For some reason the radio in Robby’s car came to life. Sombre organ music was playing, reminding Robby suddenly of when his grandma used to drag him to chapel on Sundays.

‘Look here,’ said Robby, sticking his arm out of the window and pointing at the man. ‘I’ll have you know I’m the contractor.’

‘And I am the Shortener,’ said the man, lifting his hat and making a little bow. ‘Allow me to help you contract.’

Before Robby could do anything about it, the window of his car shot up, trapping his arm. Robby swore and struggled, but he was stuck.

The man smiled gently, reached into his inside pocket and brought out a small butcher’s cleaver.

‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘About here should do it, I think.’

He raised the cleaver high in the air and brought it flashing down.

Robby fainted.

Big Robby was at home. He lived in a modern house in the suburbs, with everything that someone with his money has to have. He had two expensive cars in the garage: a big expensive one for himself, and a small expensive one for his expensive wife. He didn’t mind that she was expensive and had three walk-in wardrobes full of clothes, and about eight different handbags that each cost at least five thousand pounds. Rich men had to have the right kind of wife, and the right kind of car. That cost money.

Now he sat drinking very expensive Italian coffee in his kitchen. He didn’t like it much. He preferred a cup of tea, the ordinary kind from the supermarket, but if you have paid a lot of money for an Italian coffee machine, and you have an Italian live-in maid who knows how to work it, then you have to make the best of it.

Robby sat at the table with the newspaper in front of him.

‘Horror in Markham Park,’ said the headline. Journalists just love mysteries, and ghost mysteries are the best of all. The article started, ‘Is this General Markham’s revenge?’ and went on to quote some of his workmen.

His foreman had quit. Apparently he was going to start a charity for old ladies who couldn’t afford to heat their homes properly or eat decent food. Robby wasn’t going to go to the police with that old business with the wrecking ball. He had only wanted to scare his foreman into staying on. The last thing he wanted was the police poking around in his affairs.

Now he rubbed his arm thoughtfully. He couldn’t believe it was still there. Had it been a nightmare? That man in the bowler hat had seemed perfectly solid, just an ordinary person. When he had come round, with his arm still stuck in the window but still attached, he had driven shakily home, determined to pack the whole thing in, whatever it cost him. But now, in the light of day… Big Robby was a cheat, a liar and a bully, but he was not a coward. He had the kind of grim bravery that never backs down from a fight. This time though… he wasn’t so sure. It was one thing to take on a tough navvy in a pub brawl. But ghosts… How did you fight ghosts?

Robby looked out of the window and saw a sleek car turn into his driveway. He knew who that was. Jack Bluffit was paying a call. The doorbell rang, and he heard the maid open the front door.

‘Where is he?’

‘Mr Mayhew inna di kitchen.’

‘Right then, out the way.’

Bluffit stormed in. He didn’t waste time on good mornings. ‘Don’t back out on me, Robby. I can break you, you know I can. And I will.’

Big Robby clenched his fist, thinking how nice it would be to stand up and punch him on the jaw. Instead he said, ‘You can’t scare me, Jack. But I got a scare last night.’

Jack snorted. ‘Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe that stuff. Spooks and phantoms — I ask you.’

‘Well, you explain it then,’ said Robby, and told Jack about his meeting with the Shortener.

Jack calmed down while he was talking, nodding his head from time to time.

When Robby was finished he sat down at the table opposite him, leaned forward and said, ‘Look Robby, it’s clear enough. That was no ghost. That was someone trying to put the frighteners on you. Someone trying to muscle in on your patch. They want you to quit, so they can take over the job themselves. Don’t you have any enemies in this business?’

He certainly did, lots of them. Robby thought of that big contractor from Liverpool, who, he knew for a fact, wanted to expand his business north. That man would stop at nothing.

‘I think you’re right, Jack. I’m not giving up yet.’

Robby felt better. Having real enemies to fight suited him fine. He had been fighting all his life.

The night was clear, and a big yellow moon rose over the city, shrinking and turning pale as it climbed into the sky, as though it was getting sadder the more it saw.

Daniel had gone to bed, but he knew there was not much point in trying to sleep. For the last two nights Percy had shown up, full of his own problems. Percy felt small and useless. In some ways this was absolutely true, and Daniel felt that Percy’s parents were not helping matters at all. He was being torn in half; poetry here, gymnastics there. He had to find his own way. But Percy also told him about the ghosts’ escapades in Markham Park. And tonight was the big push. It really looked as though they might succeed, if the newspapers were anything to go by.

His father had been really impressed when he read the paper that morning. ‘This is incredible, Daniel. Your friends are doing an amazing job. Just make sure, will you, if I ever doubt you again, that you remind me about this.’

Daniel had felt so pleased that he didn’t say anything at all.

The room went cold, and the wall beside his bed began to bulge outwards and go wavery. Daniel sat up, ready to discuss the events of the night with Percy.