Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

After a while he gave a little nod and got to his feet. What he had decided to do was difficult, very difficult, but he was going to do it. He remembered reading about a man who trained fleas for a flea circus and who used to let the fleas feed from his arms. And there was a naturalist who had gone to study leeches in Africa and who used to stand in the river and let them suck his blood.

All the same, he was shivering a bit as he went over to the pile of beech leaves on which Sucking Susie lay asleep. It was all the things one heard; all those creepy stories….

Susie was lying on her back, her fangs stretched to the stars. Very carefully, very slowly, Rick felt for the pouch on her stomach. Yes, there was Rose, a soft, painfully thin bundle of skin and claws…. He began to lift her out, stopping dead every time Susie stirred. It took a long time but at last she was free and crouching in his hand. He could feel her heart beating very fast against his fingers. ‘Don’t be frightened, Rose,’ he whispered.

Back in the warmth of the fire he rolled up the sleeve of his jersey and placed her fangs against the blue veins in his wrist. ‘Come on, Rose,’ he urged her. ‘Come on.’

It was an awful moment — like holding a crumb to a sick fledgling and wondering if it was strong enough to feed. Would she? Would she not?

For a moment Rose stayed still, hunched and trembling. Then her head turned, her mouth groped along his arm and Rick shut his eyes as she made a sudden jab at his wrist.

And, after all, it was nothing. Susie was right. Less than a pinprick, and then he sat happily watching the tiny thing suck and feeling her warm life in his hand.

The next day they set off across the moors. No one bothered any longer to tell the vampire bats that they couldn’t come. When Susie woke and found Rick had fed Rose she burst into a storm of tears. ‘Oh the relief!’ she cried, flying round and round Rick’s head. ‘Oh, you wonderful boy. I’m sorry I said all those silly things to you. Oh, my baby — look how pink her cheeks are! What excellent blood you have, you dear, dear boy!’

Rick had been afraid that Susie would also want him to feed Sozzler, Gulper, Syphoner and Fred and this he thought would be going too far, but she didn’t. Though they were skinny the boys seemed strong enough, circling round and round the phantom coach and doing somersaults.

It was a long walk along the side of the new reservoir which looked cold and bare, not a bit like a natural lake. Walter the Wet jumped in, of course, and they could see a little whirlpool made by the top of his head moving along beside them. No one said anything but there was a sort of hope in the air that Walter might like to stay there. They were fond of him but all that wetness was trying. But when he came out he said he hadn’t liked it at all. ‘Clean, I grant you that. But all that concrete. Gives me the willies. No, a nice natural bit of water, that’s what I like.’

As he walked along Rick tried not to worry but he couldn’t help feeling that things were getting a bit out of hand. A river spirit meant that the sanctuary would have to have water in it; now the vampire bats needed a place to keep cows or some other warm-blooded animals to feed on. ‘And anyway,’ he said to Humphrey the Horrible who as usual was gliding along beside him, ‘are vampires really ghosts?’

Humphrey frowned. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think they’re made of ectoplasm. I mean, you can’t see through them like you can see through us, can you?’

‘Still,’ said Rick, ‘a sanctuary’s a sanctuary as I’ve said before. It’s for keeping people safe, not for leaving anybody out. All the same. ’

They walked all day through that gloomy valley, and as they walked the vampire bats told them of the sad things that were happening to the ghosts and werewolves and spirits all over Britain. Apparently the Hag of the Dribble, a very famous Welsh Hag who was a sort of second cousin to Humphrey’s mother, had had her Dribble drained and was in a very bad way indeed.

‘You don’t say! Her Dribble drained,’ said the Hag. ‘How dreadful!’

‘What’s a Dribble, Mother?’ said Humphrey.

‘A Dribble? Well, it’s a… well it’s a Dribble. A sort of marsh, maybe. Or perhaps a bog. All I know is that a Dribble must Never Be Drained.’

There were lots more sad stories: werewolves dying of food poisoning, forest spirits having their trees cut down, ancient and famous ghosts having to haunt fish and chip shops, or discos, or Bingo Halls.

‘And you’ll have heard of poor Wolfram? Wolfram the Withered I mean, not that dreary uncle of his.’

‘Haunting a swimming bath, I understand,’ said Aunt Hortensia, who was half hanging out of the phantom coach so as to listen better.

The vampire nodded. ‘He was a town ghost and when they pulled down his house they built a Public Swimming Bath instead. He says it’s quite unbearable: all those dreadful pink thighs and shoulders and bottoms splashing through him all day. And of course the chlorine in the water is just murdering his ectoplasm.’

‘Poor Wolfram. We’ll have to invite him to the sanctuary as soon as we’re settled,’ said the Gliding Kilt, shaking his head.

Rick didn’t say anything. He didn’t like to point out that there wasn’t a sanctuary yet and might never be one. One had to go on hoping. It was the only thing to do.

It was evening before they had crossed Saughbeck Moors and reached the place where the small road they had been walking along joined the main road to London.

At the crossroads there was a big lay-by with a garage and a restaurant from which there came one of the most satisfying smells in the world: the smell of frying chips.

‘You’d better go and eat something,’ said the Hag to Rick. ‘You must be starving. We’ll wait for you outside.’

So Rick opened the door of the restaurant and went in, blinking a bit at the bright lights and the people. It was a ‘help yourself’ place where you took a tray and slid it along past lots of glass cases till you got to your tea or coffee at the end. He still hadn’t spent any of the money he’d brought from school and the food looked marvellous. The first thing he took was a huge plate of sausage, peas and baked beans. The sausages looked simply beautiful — sizzling hot and grilled to a turn. But then he remembered what Sucking Susie had said about cutting up pigs so he sighed and put it back and had egg and chips instead. It wasn’t quite the same but by the time he’d added a bowl of tomato soup, two doughnuts and a helping of apple tart and custard, he thought that he would manage not to collapse with hunger.

And when he’d eaten and found the ghosts again, Rick climbed into the back of a parked lorry which said Alfred Barchester. London Road. Bigglesford and hid under a pile of sacks. There was no reason at all for doing this since the driver, who was a nice fat man called Albert with a wife and four children, would have given him a lift anyway, but Rick was too tired by then to think straight. Then Aunt Hortensia drove her coach over the top and all the other ghosts piled in just as Albert, looking rather tired, with a growth of stubble on his chin, came back to the lorry and climbed into the cab.

And they had hardly turned south, on the main road to London, before Rick — completely worn out by the day’s adventures — fell fast asleep.

When he woke it was morning. Albert had parked the lorry in a lay-by and had gone to stretch his legs. They must be quite near London, Rick reckoned, because they were on a huge, six-lane motorway with a big clover-leaf flyover a few hundred yards on. Even at this early hour the traffic streamed along continuously: blue cars, beige cars, green cars, red cars; lorries and caravettes, trailers and delivery vans; huge Rolls Royces and tiny Fiats, on and on and on.