Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

Rick stood still and faced him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Me. The boy to whom you promised sanctuary for his ghosts.’

Lord Bullhaven’s face had turned purple. ‘Get off my land,’ he screamed. ‘Get off it and stay off it.’

For answer, Rick pulled over Professor Brassnose’s chair, tipping the squealing Professor out on to the grass and hurled the cymbals into the well.

Lord Bullhaven now seemed to lose the last scrap of his reason. He ran at Rick and started hitting him viciously with his rowan stick. ‘It’s your fault, you young devil, you’ve spoilt my plans. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to—’

‘No,’ said a quiet voice, ‘I think not.’ It was Mr Wallace, the nice clergyman with the nine children, who had heard the shouting and come to see what was up. ‘You’re hurting the boy,’ Mr Wallace went on, still in a quiet, level voice. ‘Let him go.’

Lord Bullhaven gave Rick a last blow across the shoulders and turned on Mr Wallace. ‘You’re on their side,’ he screamed. ‘You’re in with the spooks. You’re a paid agent, you’re a witch lover. I’ll have you flogged if you don’t go back, I’ll have you hanged—’

He put down his head, ready to charge at Mr Wallace. Mr Wallace, who had been Boxing Champion at his Theological College, just had time to ask God, very quickly, to forgive him. Then he bunched up his fists — and that was that.

They were dragging the unconscious Lord Bullhaven towards the car, when the most dreadful, desolate and shuddering scream came from the castle.

Rick turned white and began to shiver. ‘It’s the Hag,’ he said, ‘I recognize her voice.’

‘You go and see to them,’ said kind Mr Wallace, to whom Rick had told the whole story. ‘I’ll drive this lot back to the hotel.’

Rick nodded his thanks. Then with Barbara and Peter at his heels, he turned and ran towards the castle.

‘Oh, Hag ,’ cried Rick, and it was all he could do not to burst into tears then and there. She was only just there still; her whiskery nose had gone and her crooked back, and her scaly black wings were as weak and worn through as winter leaves. But what frightened Rick most of all was that she was giving off absolutely no smell.

‘Rick!’ whispered the Hag, looking pitifully up at him.

‘It’s all right, we’ve got the men who were exorcising you. It’s over!’ cried Rick, bending over her.

The Hag tried to shake her head. ‘Too late,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘Look!’

She put out a faint claw and pointed to a piece of tartan cloth spread on the floor beside her. It was absolutely all that was left of the Gliding Kilt. On the other side of the wretched Hag was a little pile of yellowish bubbles — George’s softened and melted skull. Winifred, wrapped in her shroud, had fainted.

‘And my Little One… lost for ever. My Humphrey. He’s been laid!’

‘No, Mother! No, I haven’t. Look at me!’ said Humphrey. As soon as the exorcism stopped he’d felt his strength return and left the aeroplane. Now as he glided up to hug his mother, he looked almost his old self.

‘I went and fetched Rick and he got the people who were trying to lay us. He went bang wallop, wallop bang,’ said Humphrey, waving his arms excitedly. ‘And Peter and Barbara. I knew Rick would rescue us.’

‘ Humphrey ,’ said the Hag. She couldn’t believe that it was really him and kept passing her claws through and through his ectoplasm to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

Suddenly she made faint, flapping movements with her wings, like a stranded chicken, and they realized she was trying to sit up.

‘We must… help the others,’ said the Hag. ‘If the exorcism’s over perhaps there is still hope for them. We must get organized.’

‘A hospital?’ Barbara suggested.

The Hag nodded. ‘Bring… everyone… in here.’

So Rick and Barbara and Peter went out to look for the other ghosts. They fetched in the poor Mad Monk and laid him on the refectory table and then they went to the burial mound to find Aunt Hortensia. Because ectoplasm is made of nothingness and you can’t get rid of nothing, exorcism often makes ghosts go solid before destroying them. Aunt Hortensia, who always seemed to do things more than other people, hadn’t just gone solid, she’d gone like granite. Her neck stump was like one of those poles that firemen slide down to get to fires quickly, and as they dragged her along the castle corridors her bunions gave off a clanging, metallic sound.

Peter and Barbara found the Colourless Ladies lying in a heap near the moat and Rick, stumbling across what seemed to be a gigantic, grey, dried-out dish cloth, found that he had stepped on Walter the Wet.

One of their worst sights was the Shuk, lying on his back with his legs in the air and blood coming out of his mouth from trying to carry Aunt Hortensia’s stone-hard head. All his tails had gone, his eye was closed and when Rick lifted him he whined with pain. As for the Head itself, Barbara couldn’t lift it; she had to dribble it into the castle like a football.

The children had never worked so hard as they did that night. They found an old tin bath which someone had left on the rocket site and put Walter in to soak. Barbara dressed the Mad Monk’s boils and Peter screamed and screamed at the buttery mess which had been George to see if he could get him to scream back. They massaged Aunt Hortensia’s stump till their fingers ached, rubbed the Ladies with different coloured moulds and lichens to see if they could get their colours back and made poultices for Ughtred and Grimbald who were doubled up with stomach cramps.

Though she was still so weak, the Hag was wonderful. ‘Say Latin curses over him backwards,’ she advised Barbara as the Mad Monk groaned in pain. Or; ‘There’s some dried wormwood in the larder; try that on the Shuk’s tail.’

But though they never stopped for a minute, though Humphrey did everything to make himself useful, it seemed for a while as if most of the ghosts were too ill to recover. And then:

‘Oh, children!’ screamed the Hag, the tears absolutely rushing down her nose. ‘Oh look! Oh, Hamish. My husband! My Gliding Kilt!’

Rushing over, they saw a rusty sword begin to form itself very slowly and waveringly in the air. For a while, the sword just hung there patiently, waiting. Then slowly a wound appeared, gaping and bloody, and round it a torn shirt and some skin — and then with a relieved ‘whoosh’ the sword dropped down into the chest. The Gliding Kilt’s face came next, then his arms, and lastly his knee stumps peering out below the kilt like young asparagus tips pushing through the earth.

‘Hamish! Oh, Hamish,’ said the Hag, and as she took him in her arms the room filled suddenly and gloriously with the smell of mouldering pig’s intestine.

It must have been a sort of magic time limit when the effect of the exorcism began to wear off because Peter jumped up as the skull he was holding began to scream softly. One tail reappeared on the Shuk’s back, then two, then three….

‘Oh look!’ said Humphrey. ‘Winifred’s bowl’s back! Winnie! Winnie, your bowl!’

A Colourless Lady turned blue, another showed patches of green. The Grey Lady got up and began at once to totter about looking for her teeth.

‘Head?’ said Aunt Hortensia’s stump, and when they brought her head to her they saw that it was almost back to its old, disgusting, white-haired nothingness.

This happy scene was suddenly and terribly interrupted by a shriek of anguish as Sucking Susie, followed by the four vampire boys, came flapping into the room.

‘My Baby, my Rose,’ howled Susie, quite beside herself. ‘She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s DEAD!’