Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

After that Lord Bullhaven simply could not get any more clergymen so the last person he took with him was a rather peculiar Professor from the University of London called Professor Brassnose who wrote books about ghost-hunting and who wanted to try out a lot of stuff like brass cymbals to bang and baking powder to sprinkle and sulphur crystals to burn, all of which he thought migh t work against ghosts but one couldn’t be sure.

And on a bright day in late October, Lord Bullhaven filled the boot of his huge, black Rolls Royce with books of ghost-laying spells and folding chairs to sit on and thermos flasks to drink from while sitting on the folding chairs — and then the clergymen and Professor Brassnose got inside, and they all set off on the long drive to Insleyfarne to go and murder Rick’s ghosts.

‘I… don’t think… it will be… much longer now,’ said the Hag.

She was lying on a bed of mouldering leaves in the roofless Banqueting Hall of the castle. In her arms she held what was left of her beloved husband, the Gliding Kilt. It wasn’t very much. His leg stumps had gone; his chest and arms were so faint that they seemed to be just a shimmering in the air; only the brave tartan of the kilt remained — that and his wise and comforting words.

‘We’ve been… so happy together. Don’t be sad.’

But the Hag was sad. She was unbearably sad. Tears rolled down her whiskery cheeks and a whole mix-up of smells: mashed mice stomachs, pig’s trotters, Camembert cheese, rolled from her sick body as she remembered the wonderful times they had had together. ‘And my Little Ones,’ she moaned.

‘It is best… that we should all go… together,’ said the Gliding Kilt, whose face was beginning to break up on one side.

With her weak and aching arms, the Hag reached out to George who lay at her feet. His skull had almost melted and his screams sounded like the muffled squeaking of a mouse.

‘Winifred?’ whispered the Hag brokenly. A hopeless sobbing answered her. Without her bowl,

Winifred was nothing.

‘Humphrey?’

No answer.

‘Humphrey!’ screamed the Hag again.

Still no answer. Yet just now he had been lying close beside her. Humphrey was dead then. Exorcised. Sent back for ever to where ghosts come from, never to return. Quite, quite desperate, the Hag closed her eyes and prepared for death.

Humphrey, however, was not dead. He was terribly, terribly weak and for a while, as he lay between George and Winifred feeling the stabbing pain in his poor ectoplasm, watching the pink colour drain from his tortured limbs, he just wanted the end to come quickly.

And then something happened. A little wriggling, thinking worm sat up in his brain and said: ‘No. You’re not just going to lie down and die. You’re too young to die, Humphrey the Horrible,’ said this little worm. ‘You’re going to do something. You’re going to get help.’

And when the little wriggling worm in Humphrey’s brain got to the word ‘help’ it got much bigger and reared up and said the one word: ‘RICK.’

‘But I can’t ,’ said Humphrey weakly to the little worm. ‘How can I get to Rick? I can’t even move.’

‘Can’t you?’ said the wriggling worm. ‘Are you sure you can’t? Try. Move one leg. Go on — try. There. Now the other.’

‘It hurts ,’ said Humphrey to the little worm.

‘That doesn’t matter. Now up. Glide. Go on. Go on .’

And then Humphrey really was up in the air and gliding, weakly and slowly but gliding… past Aunt Hortensia lying like an iron girder on her tomb, past the poor Shuk whimpering in agony with only one tail left of his three, past the moaning, fast-dissolving Ladies…

As he came over the causeway which separated Insleyfarne from the mainland, he felt a stab of pain so agonizing that he nearly fell to the ground. He was flying right into the beam of Mr Wallace’s exorcism. Mr Wallace was the youngest and the strongest of the clergymen. He was also the nicest, and though he hated the job he was doing he thought it only fair to do it well. So he was sitting on Lord Bullhaven’s folding chair waving a rowan wand in one hand and gabbling Spell 293 out of the ghost-laying book as hard as he could.

There was a lot more of this spell and if Mr Wallace had been able to get to the end of it, Humphrey would probably have been done for. But poor Mr Wallace only had a very thin and threadbare coat and it was bitterly cold sitting on the shingle with the wind howling in from the sea and quite suddenly he was attacked by a terrible fit of sneezing.

It lasted only a few moments, this gap in the exorcism, but it was enough. Humphrey was able to glide on over Mr Wallace’s head and to set off on his long and exhausting journey to find Rick the Rescuer.

It was a journey that Humphrey never forgot. Though he grew a little stronger as he got away from the exorcism, he was still very weak. His ball and chain felt like a ton of lead, and sometimes he was so dizzy he didn’t know whether he was gliding on his head or his heels. Worst of all, he wasn’t too certain of the way he had to go. South East, he knew, but exactly how far? What if he should miss Rick’s school altogether?

But he couldn’t; he couldn’t miss it. His parents were dying; George and Winifred, and all the other ghosts who had been trapped so cruelly and hideously on Insleyfarne… He had to find Rick. What Rick could do to save an island full of dead and dying ghosts, Humphrey never thought. He wasn’t very clever. He just had faith.

It had been a clear and blustery morning when he set out from Insleyfarne. Now the clouds gathered; it began to rain and the wind was dead against him. Without the protection of the phantom coach he was bitterly cold and he was shivering so much that he began to lose height.

‘I can’t do it,’ he sobbed. ‘I can’t go all that way.’

Then he remembered what the Gliding Kilt had told him once. ‘If you’ve got something difficult to do, don’t think of it all laid out in front of you. Just think of the one next step. You can always take just one step more.’

So Humphrey glided one step more and then another and another, and at last the land below him changed and became gentler: fields and hedges instead of wild moorland, and he knew he was getting to the English border. East now… over the river, and a moment of panic as a flock of starlings rose suddenly into the air and nearly blinded him. And then, wasn’t that a familiar fir wood and there, in the clearing…Was it…?Oh it had to be…Yes! There they were! As smelly as ever, hung out on the window sill by the other boys — Maurice Crawler’s striped and disgusting football socks!

With a sob of exhaustion, Humphrey lost height, glided through the dormitory window and fell, in a heap of utter weariness, on to Rick’s bed.

Rick was in Classroom V having a history lesson. The lesson was about Henry VIII whom Rick had never liked anyway and now really hated for having cut off Aunt Hortensia’s head and burnt down the Mad Monk’s monastery and making such a nuisance of himself generally.

Barbara, sitting beside him, looked as though she was asleep but Rick knew that if Mr Horner asked one of his silly, pointless questions, she would know the answer straight away.

‘Please, sir, can I be excused?’ said Maurice Crawler.

Rick exchanged a glance with Peter Thorne who sat on his other side. All the boys knew what Maurice did when he was excused. He went up to the dormitory, took a box of sweets from under his pillow and stuffed himself before he came back to the classroom. Probably Mr Horner knew it too but what could he do with Mrs Crawler always defending her ‘Honeybunch’.