Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

He’d put Mr Heap, the clergyman who looked like a pig, on a rocky outcrop just below the castle, and Mr Wallace, the nice one with nine children, on a shingle beach near the causeway which led to the mainland. Dotty Mr Hoare-Croakington was up on the hill by the rocket site and Professor Brassnose was down by the ruined chapel and the well. All of them had folding chairs to sit on and packets of sandwiches to eat and thermos flasks of hot coffee to drink, so that they could go on and on exorcising and of course all of them had books of ghost-laying spells and rowan twigs, and Professor Brassnose also had bottles of vinegar and iron filings and cymbals to bang and a hold-all of strange ointments and powders from his laboratory.

Lord Bullhaven himself was too mad to sit quietly on a chair exorcising. He just rampaged round the island yelling things like, ‘Vile, disgusting creepie-crawlies!’, ‘Filthy, foul scum!’, ‘Britain for the British’, and making lopsided pentacles out of anything he could lay his hands on. And if any of the clergymen stopped even for a second, just to stretch his legs, Lord Bullhaven came charging up and said: ‘Back, blast you! Back to your post.’

Mr Heap didn’t take much notice of the aeroplane that passed overhead and landed a mile or two to the north. He was sitting with his back to the sea and his big, bristly face turned up to the castle. Cigarette packets and sandwich papers flapped round his ankles because he was a litter lout as well as a crook and he was gabbling ghost-laying spell No. 976 with such venom that bits of spittle came out of his mouth and dropped disgustingly on to the pages of the book.

gabbled Mr Heap.

And then quite suddenly he wasn’t sitting on his chair. He was sitting on a patch of wet and slippery rock and a small, fair boy who seemed to have come out of the sea was standing over him.

‘I’d like you to stop now, please,’ said Peter Thorne politely.

‘Why… you…you….’ Mr Heap struggled to his feet and put out a huge hairy hand to seize Peter by the throat.

Only it wasn’t any longer Peter’s throat. It was just thin air and Peter himself had somehow become a ball of lead charging straight at Mr Heap’s fat and unprotected stomach.

‘Yaaow!’ yelled Mr Heap and crashed down on to the rocks again. By the time he was up once more, Peter was running up the steps of the castle, the book of ghost-laying spells under his arm.

‘Give me back that book, you little swine,’ yelled Mr Heap.

Peter turned at the top of the steps. ‘If you want it, come and get it,’ he shouted.

He ran on up the steep cliff track to the drawbridge which crossed the pit of slime and mud that was the castle moat. Then he stopped quietly and waited for Mr Heap — steaming with sweat and gibbering with fury — to catch up with him.

‘Here’s your book,’ said Peter sweetly.

Mr Heap lunged forward to grab it. Peter narrowed his eyes, concentrating very hard. The Uki-Otoshi hold was a bit tricky; one had to get it exactly right. Then he dropped on one knee, stiffened his other leg — and as the flabby, panting man collapsed against him, pushed with all his might.

And Mr Heap sailed quietly into the air and fell — all sixteen quivering stone of him — with a splash that sent up a flock of startled seagulls — into the green and putrid waters of the moat.

Meanwhile poor Mr Hoare-Croakington, up on the bleak and windy hill by the rocket site, was getting more and more confused. He had been so absolutely certain that he had been asked to Insleyfarne to shoot grouse. Mr Hoare-Croakington had never before shot grouse — he had never before shot anything — and he wanted to very much.

But no one had handed him a nice shotgun and some pretty, pink cartridges. Instead they had put him on a canvas chair on a very cold hill and told him to say poetry out of a book. Mr Hoare-Croakington was not fond of poetry and he found the whole thing very disappointing and sad.

After a while however he cheered up and the reason was this: at the hotel where they had spent the night, Lord Bullhaven had ordered everyone’s thermos flask to be filled with coffee so as to keep them awake. But the hotel kitchen-maid, who was very overworked, had made a mistake and mixed up Mr Hoare-Croakkigton’s flask with the flask of someone called General Arkwheeler who always ordered his thermos to be filled with neat whisky.

So every time Mr Hoare-Croakington took a little sip, things got more and more cheerful and more and more muddled up.

sang Mr Hoare-Croakington. And then: ‘Bang, bang,’ he said. And again: ‘BANG!’

‘No,’ said Barbara, appearing quite suddenly out of the waist-high bracken.

‘No?’ said Mr Hoare-Croakington, very surprised to see her. ‘No bang-bang?’

Barbara shook her head. ‘Well, there’s nothing to bang bang, is there?’ she pointed out, gently easing the ghost-laying book off the old man’s knees.

‘Grouse?’ said Mr Hoare-Croakington hopefully.

‘No grouse here,’ said Barbara firmly, scuffing Mr Hoare-Croakington’s rather grotty pentacle aside with her shoe. ‘But I know where there are some lovely, lovely grouse. If you come with me. Big, FAT grouse with huge plump chests….’

Mr Hoare-Croakington liked the sound of that.

‘Huge, plump chests….’ he murmured happily.

And very quietly and meekly he let Barbara lead him away by the ends of his woollen muffler towards Lord Bullhaven’s big, black car which was parked on the far side of the causeway.

Rick wasn’t normally much of a boy for fighting. He preferred to think things out. But on his way to tackle Professor Brassnose, he passed the ruined chapel. And when he’d seen what was inside — the Mad Monk writhing in agony on a sea of pus made from his own boils — Rick wasn’t interested any longer in thought .

Professor Brassnose was sitting on his chair beside the well, clashing his brass cymbals together and gabbling a spell from the book on his knees. A bottle of iron filings and vinegar was propped against his chair and the rest of his ghost-laying paraphernalia spilled out of a big carpetbag nearby.

At least that was how it was one minute. The next minute the contents of the hold-all were scattered to the winds, the ghost-laying book had been snatched from his hands and the pages ripped to shreds, and the bottle of vinegar and iron filings lay smashed to pieces against a stone.

‘Stop it,’ squeaked Professor Brassnose, waving his arms. ‘Stop it at—’

‘Don’t you dare to speak to me, you filthy, murdering swine,’ said Rick managing to kick the Professor’s chair, his shins and his stone pentacle all at once.

‘Help!’ screamed the Professor, who was definitely not a fighting man. ‘Lord Bullhaven! Help! Help! There’s a bad moy down here. I mean a mad boy. Help! Help!’

Lord Bullhaven was in an evil mood. He had just come across a green, slime-covered cursing THING which turned out to be Mr Heap, stumbling towards the car and refusing absolutely to return to his post. Then he had gone up to the rocket site and found Mr Hoare-Croakington’s chair empty. And now that idiot, Brassnose….

‘Coming,’ shouted Lord Bullhaven and started lumbering downhill towards the chapel, slashing about with his rowan switch as he came. When he saw Rick his sludge coloured eyes widened like dustbin lids. ‘You!’ he thundered.