Toby Ibbotson - Mountwood School for Ghosts

Daniel lay down again and tried to think. Perhaps Mrs Bosse-Lynch was secretly a very tragic person, with a horrible sad secret that she crept up to the attic and cried about at night. He hoped not, because he didn’t want to feel sorry for someone whom Great-Aunt Joyce approved of. But it was far more likely that they had a prisoner in the attic. They had kidnapped someone, probably a rich man’s daughter, and sneaked her into the house. Soon they would cut off her ear and send it to the desperate parents. On the other hand, it could be a poor mad relation whom they didn’t want anybody to know about. Charlotte had read a book about someone like that. It was called Jane Eyre and was one of her absolute favourites.

Either way, Daniel had to make contact. He sat up again and knocked three times on the wall. The sniffling stopped.

‘Hello, who’s there?’ he called. ‘Do you need help?’

Still there was no sound. But then part of the wall slowly went soft and bulgy. The bulge got bigger, and separated itself from the wall. It was swirly and colourless, almost transparent. Then parts of it started taking shape, a hand appeared here, a leg there. The air in the room was suddenly icy cold, and in front of Daniel stood a small boy in a nightshirt, with golden curls and big weepy eyes.

‘You are a ghost, aren’t you?’ said Daniel. ‘I thought you were someone in trouble.’

‘I am someone in trouble,’ said the ghost, and huge ghostly tears started to roll down its cheeks. ‘I am someone in terrible trouble.’

‘I think I saw when you came,’ said Daniel. ‘You were in the removal van.’

‘Yes, I was,’ said the ghost. ‘It wasn’t a bus.’ The tears rolled ever faster down its pale cheeks.

‘Of course it wasn’t a bus, it was a removal van.’

‘But I thought it was,’ gulped the ghost. ‘And I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where Father and Mother are and—’

‘Please try to stop crying,’ said Daniel. ‘And keep your voice down or you’ll wake Great-Aunt Joyce.’

The ghost was obviously a young child, and seemed to be working himself into hysterics. ‘If you calm down and tell me about it, I might be able to help.’

Daniel was secretly a bit disappointed. Ever since the arrival of the removal van he had been hoping for something really shockingly ghastly, perhaps a leering headless skeleton or a viciously grinning ghost murderer who dissolved his victims in acid. Anything really that would scare Great-Aunt Joyce to death, or at least make her flee from Markham Street and never return. But if she came up now and saw this weeping boy, she would probably just slap him and shoo him out.

However, even a small sad ghost is better than no ghost at all, and Daniel was a kind person and more than willing to sort out his problems if he could.

‘You’d better tell me the whole story,’ he said, and Perceval, for that was his name, came and sat on the bed and began.

Percy told his story with lots of pauses for miserable sniffing and cries of ‘Oh, what am I to do?’ and ‘I shall be alone forever!’, so it took him quite a long time.

Ronald and Iphigenia and Percy had materialized in good time at the service station, where they had met up with Cousin Vera and the other ghosts and spectres who had applied for Mountwood. There was quite a crowd milling about the parking bay where the bus was to pick them up. Some of them were old acquaintances, and they hung about, chatting, catching up on each other’s news. After a while, when the bus still hadn’t come, Percy had got bored and wandered off. There were lots of great big lorries standing silent and dark in the parking area. Percy glided among them, peeping in sometimes to look at the drivers snoring in their cabs. They had little beds with curtains, which reminded Percy of when he had been alive and his mother had read poetry to him before he went to sleep. His favourite one had started, ‘Where the bee sucks there suck I.’

When Percy got back to the pick-up place, he saw a bus standing in the parking bay, revving its engine. There were no ghosts to be seen. He cried, ‘Help, help, wait for me! Don’t leave without me!’ and threw himself through the side of the bus just as it drew away and rumbled off into the night.

‘But it wasn’t a bus,’ said Percy sadly, looking with at Daniel with tragic eyes. ‘The bus had already left.’

‘Well, why didn’t your parents wait for you? They must have been worried sick when you didn’t show up.’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I have been aba… adn…’

‘Abandoned.’

‘Y-y-yes. Like the Babes in the Wood.’ Percy collapsed in hopeless weeping.

When he had recovered slightly Daniel said, ‘I still don’t see how you could mistake a removal van for a bus.’

‘But I’ve never been on a bus. And it had words on the side like where we were going.’

‘What do you mean?’

But Percy could speak no more. With a final wail of ‘Poor me! Oh, sad unhappy me!’ he threw himself face down on the bed.

Daniel heard Great-Aunt Joyce’s bedroom door opening, and her tread on the stair.

‘That’s done it,’ he said.

‘I’ll disappear,’ said Percy. ‘I’m quite good at it.’ And he started to fade, vanishing just as Great-Aunt Joyce appeared in the doorway.

Daniel turned on his bedside light. Great-Aunt Joyce was wearing a flannel dressing gown and tartan slippers, and her hair was in curlers. She looked very angry, and peered around the room.

‘Really, Daniel, this is appalling. What on earth is going on? I must have silence after my pill. I shall be speaking to your father.’

‘Oh, it’s you, Great-Aunt Joyce. I was having a terrible nightmare.’

‘Were you now?’ said Great-Aunt Joyce suspiciously, and it seemed to Daniel that she stared intently at the exact spot where Percy had just vanished. ‘A nightmare, was it? That’s what comes of not chewing your food properly. Poor digestion.’

When she had gone, a small voice spoke from the empty bed.

‘She doesn’t seem very nice,’ said Percy.

‘She isn’t. We’ll have to be absolutely quiet now, Percy. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.’

Percy’s parents hadn’t abandoned him. They would never do a thing like that. But when the ghost bus finally arrived there was quite a lot of confusion. It is always the same when people, or ghosts, are getting on a bus; there is quite a lot of pushing and shoving. Some of the ghosts were worried about travel sickness and wanted to be sure of a seat near the front; others wanted to sit with their friends, or bag a window seat. Ghosts are invisible a lot of the time, and sometimes as many as four or five ghosts tried to get in to the same seat. So it took quite a long time before they were all sorted out, and by that time the bus was well on its way, rushing north through the night.

The bus was old, and so was the driver. In fact both bus and driver had passed away many years before, when an unfortunate combination of too much beer and a sudden downpour had put an end to them at the bottom of an old quarry in the Peak District. It was quite surprising how fast the rusty old wreck with its mouldy seats and shattered windows could go, considering the crumpled mess that had once been its engine. But it was powered by something quite different from diesel fuel, and could even take cross-country short cuts if necessary.

‘Where is Percy sitting?’ said Iphigenia, when she had finally managed to persuade a pair of rather silly water-sprites to move from the seat next to her husband.

‘I should think he is up at the front somewhere, near the driver. You know how he was looking forward to it.’