Eva Ibbotson - The Great Ghost Rescue

‘Sooner you than me,’ said Barbara as she and Rick left the gym together. ‘Definitely sooner you than me.’

Neither of them noticed a tiny, black bat which had been dozing in the rafters and now flew out after them and vanished from sight. Even if they’d noticed it they couldn’t have known that this particular bat was the grandson of Susie the Sucker, one of the most famous blood-sucking vampire bats in the whole of Britain. And that before night had fallen, news of Rick’s march to London would have spread like wildfire across the river, through the forests of Saughbeck and on, on to the edges of the sea.

Rick did not exactly enjoy the journey in Uncle Ted’s milk lorry.

Getting the ghosts ready had been a most exhausting job. The phantom horses were feeling frisky after their rest and didn’t want to be harnessed. Aunt Hortensia, whose bunions were shooting, slapped the Shuk for dribbling on her head and this made Humphrey so furious that he refused to sit in the coach and insisted on travelling with Rick inside the milk lorry.

‘I promise I’ll stay vanished,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘Even your elbow?’

‘Even my elbow.’

And now it turned out that Uncle Ted wrote poetry.

he shouted above the noise of the engine. ‘Did you like that?’

‘Very nice,’ said Rick politely, looking anxiously up at the sky. Later he learnt to make out where the ghosts were even when they weren’t visible — it’s a sort of knack, seeing invisible ghosts. But now he could only hope that the phantom coach was keeping up with the lorry and that everybody in it was all right.

‘What about this one,’ said Uncle Ted, who was obviously very proud of his poetry:

‘Fishes don’t sleep,’ whispered Humphrey in Rick’s ear. ‘Not properly. Because they don’t have eyelids. Or eyelashes. I know because Uncle Leonard the Loathsome took us down—’

‘Shh!’ said Rick. He turned back to Uncle Ted. ‘Have you made up a lot of poems?’

‘Oh, two or three hundred,’ said Uncle Ted casually. ‘Hey, what’s that noise?’

‘George scream — I mean, your tyres screaming,’ said Rick nervously. What was going on up there?

‘Funny. We weren’t going round a bend or anything,’ said Uncle Ted.

Altogether, Rick was extremely relieved when Uncle Ted stopped the lorry and set him down just before they came to the first of the great bridges which span the River Trant.

‘The bus goes right past here, you can’t miss it. And give my regards to your grandmother. Hope she’ll be better soon,’ he said, making Rick feel terrible for a moment. Having to tell lies to people who have been kind to you is not pleasant.

Meanwhile, back at Norton Castle School, Barbara was knocking on the door of Mr and Mrs Crawler’s study.

Mr Crawler, the headmaster, was small and pale and weedy, and seemed to get smaller and paler and weedier with every week that passed. Mrs Crawler, on the other hand, got steadily fatter, louder and pinker-looking. The boys used to wonder whether she chewed bits off her husband while he slept.

‘Come in,’ she called now.

Barbara crossed the plum-coloured carpet and walked to the big double desk where the Crawlers sat. Above Mrs Crawler hung an alligator with a pleasant smile. Mr Crawler was sitting under a sad-looking water buffalo. Barbara couldn’t help thinking how odd it was that you could shoot and stuff animals whereas everyone would make an awful fuss if you shot and stuffed people who were mostly not nearly so nice.

‘Yes?’ said Mrs Crawler sharply when she saw Barbara. She was not the sort of person to waste time being friendly to the daughter of the cook.

Barbara had a difficult job to do. She had to invent a reason for Rick having vanished from school and she had to make sure that the Crawlers would not ring Rick’s mother to check. Rick’s mother had not got any tougher since she hadn’t been able to put sellotape on Rick’s ears, and he worried about her. So now she said that Rick’s godmother had arrived very suddenly and unexpectedly that morning. ‘In a large silver grey car with the letters RR on the bonnet,’ said Barbara cunningly, knowing what snobs the Crawlers were.

‘A Rolls Royce,’ said Mrs Crawler, impressed.

His godmother was American, Barbara went on, and only in England for a few days and she wanted to take Rick up to London and get to know him. ‘It’s all in the note,’ she went on, holding out a piece of paper.

‘Well, that seems to be in order,’ said Mrs Crawler, when she’d read it. She turned to her husband. ‘She asks us to choose a present for the school. Anything we like.’

‘A cricket pavilion,’ said Mr Crawler, who was not a modest man.

‘Don’t be silly, dear, we need a new dining hall far more.’

They were still arguing, getting crosser and crosser, as Barbara tiptoed quietly to the door and left. She didn’t exactly enjoy forging notes — in fact it gave her a stomach-ache. But when people were as silly as the Crawlers there was no point in getting too upset. And really, a ghost sanctuary was so important .

Meanwhile Rick and the ghosts were standing on the great Iron Bridge which spans the River Trant. Below them the river flowed, broad and grey and placid. Factories ran down to the water’s edge; there were warehouses and smoking chimneys and barges loading coal. Bits of white scum floated on the surface of the water and there was a very strange smell.

‘Delicious,’ said the Hag, sniffing it up in her long, crooked nose.

Rick couldn’t agree. He thought the river smelt terrible — dirty, polluted, like a great drain.

He sighed and turned to the place where he hoped the ghosts were.

‘Well, we’d better plan the next—’ he began, and stopped in amazement.

Something had happened to the river. In a spot just below the bridge, the calm surface of the water was broken by sudden, rearing waves, as if from nowhere, a whirlpool had sprung up. But no ordinary whirlpool because now it rose up out of the river, higher and higher….

The phantom horses reared and whinnied. The Shuk whimpered in terror.

Still the whirlpool went on rising. Then, with a noise like a huge giant slapping someone, a couple of tons of water spilt through the iron rails on to the bridge where they stood.

When Rick could see again, he found that he was gazing at a most extraordinary-looking man. He had a long, grizzled beard in which a couple of dead fish hung limply; slimy, green weeds were tangled in his waist-length, grey hair, and in his hand he carried a thing like a gigantic, rusty fork.

Cautiously, Rick put out an arm. As he’d half expected, it went right through the old creature and hit the railings of the bridge.

‘You’re a ghost too, then?’ he said.

The old man nodded. ‘River spirit. Very old family, Walter’s the name. Walter the Wet.’ He pulled a dead fish out of his beard, made a face, and threw it on the ground. ‘Stinking thing,’ he grumbled.

‘Are you looking for anyone?’ said Rick cautiously.

‘Heard some people were passing. Something about a ghost sanctuary.’ He looked sharply at Rick from under his shaggy eyebrows. ‘A Hag or two maybe; a Gliding Kilt… that kind of thing.’

‘Well, they are here,’ admitted Rick.

But by now the ghosts could stand it no longer. One by one they appeared and clustered round Walter the Wet who was sneezing a water beetle out of his nose.