Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

‘O.K.,’ said all the ghosts happily. They were looking forward to the evening very much. It is always nice to be busy.

It was seven thirty, and in the Wilks’ drawing room, which had a sage-green carpet, gold brocade curtains and very uncomfortable striped satin chairs, the dinner guests were drinking sherry and eating nuts.

All the people the Wilks had invited were Important People — the Wilks wouldn’t have bothered with them if they hadn’t been. There was a millionaire called Harry Holtzmann, who had got rich making guns and selling them to foreign countries so that people there could kill each other better, and a man called Professor Pringle who had written a book about What Was Wrong With Young People (which seemed to be practically everything). There was also the Honourable Lucy Lamworth whose father was a viscount, and a young man called Crispin Craig who interviewed people on television and smiled a lot. And of course there was Mr Wilks, looking hot, and Mrs Wilks who had a shrill voice and a head full of bubbly yellow curls.

It is difficult to say anything interesting while waiting for dinner to be ready and feeling salty inside from too many nuts, and no one was saying anything interesting. They were saying things like: ‘Hasn’t it been hot for the time of year?’ or, ‘Wasn’t that a truly ghastly film on television last night?’

And then, suddenly, there was a scream.

Actually, for George it was nothing, that scream. It was the sort of scream you might have got when torturing twenty or thirty people painfully to death, but for George it was nothing. He was just starting things off gently as Rick had told him to.

The Honourable Lucy jumped so hard that the Lamworth emeralds, crashing against her bare and scraggy chest, left bruise marks, and said: ‘What on earth was that?’

The Wilks looked at each other. Then Mr Wilks got up and went out into the hall. What he saw was a young skull sitting peacefully on top of the umbrella stand. Its jawbones were open and it was just settling down for another good scream. Mr Wilks mopped his brow and went tremblingly back into the drawing room. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘the… er… the maid’s dropped something. I think we’d better go in to dinner.’

Everybody filed into the dining room and the maid brought in the hors d’oeuvre. Hors d’oeuvre is always rather a slippery thing to eat: a little bit of olive, a slither of anchovy, that kind of thing — and for a while everyone was busy spearing it with forks. Then Mr Holtzmann turned to the Honourable Lucy and said: ‘Do your feet feel all right?’

The Honourable Lucy, who had got wind from her anchovy, burped gently and said actually her feet felt cold. Also wet. In fact, if she didn’t know it was nonsense she would say her feet were sitting in a pool of water. Crispin Craig, who was sitting opposite, said it was odd but his feet felt just the same.

After the hors d’oeuvre came the soup. One by one the guests picked up their spoons, and one by one they put them down again.

‘Does your soup taste of rotten eggs?’ whispered Crispin Craig.

Mr Holtzmann said, no, dead mice.

‘Mine’s unwashed underwear,’ said Professor Pringle, grimacing. And the Hag, invisible but working hard as she fluttered over the plates, nodded happily. It is always nice to be appreciated.

But it wasn’t till the main course (pheasant in cream with potato croquettes, sprouting broccoli and red currant jelly) that Rick, hiding in the summerhouse, gave the ghosts the signal for full steam ahead. And then it all happened at once.

Through the french windows sailed Aunt Hortensia, astride one of her horses. She had borrowed some of Winifred’s bloodstains to spatter her stump, her nightdress billowed out like an old, yellowing parachute and as she galloped up and down the dining room table her extremely nasty toenails clacked against the wine glasses like pistol shots.

‘AAOOH!’ screamed the Honourable Lucy and fell to the ground.

‘A curse on the House of Wilks,’ roared Aunt Hortensia’s head which was sitting behind her on the backside of her horse.

‘Scotland away!’ yelled the Gliding Kilt, appearing suddenly, upside down, on the chandelier.

‘I’m drowning, I’m drowning!’ screamed Lucy from under the table. It is not easy to lure somebody to a Watery Grave under a dining room table, but Walter the Wet was doing his best.

‘Ribicus, Maerticus, Furissimus,’ giggled the Mad Monk, leaping from the sideboard and fetching Mrs Wilks a wallop with his rosary. George appeared on a bowl of chocolate mousse and began to scream properly .

Rick judged that his time had come. He threw open the french windows and marched into the dining room.

‘ Now do you believe in ghosts?’

Mr Wilks was huddled in his chair, groaning and quivering and trying to wipe the soup off his face.

‘Yes,’ he moaned. ‘Yes… yes.’

‘And will you take me to the Prime Minister?’

‘I can’t just take you to the Prime Minister,’ mumbled Mr Wilks, ‘it’s very difficult to arrange.’

‘All right, then,’ said Rick — and clicked his fingers. The next second five huge vampire bats came flying into the room, their red eyes glinting.

‘Bags I that one,’ said Guzzler, looking longingly at Mrs Wilks’ plump, pink shoulder rising like a delicious blancmange out of her low-cut silver dress.

‘No, I want her!’ said Syphoner.

They began to squabble over Mrs Wilks who leapt on to a chair, started batting at the vampires with a table knife and fell forward, howling with terror, into a bowl of redcurrant jelly. Sucking Susie, meanwhile, landed hungrily on Mr Wilks’ glistening, bald head.

‘Stop it!’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘For heaven’s sake stop! I’m being murdered !’

Rick made a sign to Susie and she closed her terrible mouth obediently.

‘I’ve asked you before and I’m asking you again. Will you take me to the Prime Minister?’

‘Anything,’ gabbled Mr Wilks. ‘I’ll do anything.’

‘The Prime Minister. Tomorrow,’ said Rick.

‘Yes,’ yelled Mr Wilks. ‘Tomorrow. Anything. But STOP them. STOP them!’

Rick snapped his fingers. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come on everybody. We’ve done it. It’s over.’

The ghosts didn’t really want to stop, they’d been having such a lovely time. But they thought the world of Rick by now. In a second they had vanished. The pool under the table dried up, the smell disappeared; silence fell on the shattered remains of the Wilks’ dinner party.

They were all in the summerhouse congratulating themselves on how well things had gone when a shrill little voice drifted out of an upstairs window.

‘But I don’t want you to go away,’ said the piping little voice. ‘You’re a lovely ghost. I like you. I want you to stay with me for ever and ever.’

The ghosts looked at each other. ‘Oh, dear!’ said the Hag. They had sent Humphrey upstairs to haunt the bedrooms in case any of the guests went up to powder their noses and Rick remembered now that the Wilks had a little daughter.

‘I did say ‘‘Boo!’’’ said Humphrey, gliding down towards them shyly. ‘I said ‘‘Boo!’’ quite a lot of times.’

But his parents were too pleased with the way things had gone to scold him for not being horrible.

‘It’s the Prime Minister tomorrow, then!’ said the Gliding Kilt.

Rick nodded. ‘It looks as though there’s a real chance of a ghost sanctuary at last!’

Two days later, Rick found himself walking through the door of Number Ten Downing Street which is perhaps the most famous house in England because it is where the Prime Minister lives. Beside him walked Mr Wilks and gliding quietly above him, though Mr Wilks didn’t know it, were the Craggy-ford ghosts — the Hag and the Gliding Kilt, Winifred, George, and of course Humphrey the Horrible. Rick knew better by now than to try and go anywhere without Humphrey.