Eva Ibbotson - Dial a Ghost

‘You’re lying!’ Fulton was shaking with anger and fear. He had brought in a doctor who was as crazy as the child.

Oliver was very upset. ‘Oh how unfair, Cousin Fulton! That’s really rotten, you not being able to see the ghosts when it was you that gave them a home.’

But Addie didn’t at all want to be seen by the Snodde-Brittles. She thought they looked horrible with their long yellow faces and bulging eyes, and she was more certain than ever that Fulton was up to no good. Dr O’Hara was another matter — and now the Snodde-Brittles saw the doctor bend down and cup his hands as though something was being lowered into them.

‘Ah yes — how interesting! I’ve never seen a phantom prawn before. I think you’d be quite safe putting her in with your fish. It’s a female and they only attack when they’re laying eggs.’ He straightened himself and put his arm round Oliver. ‘You’ve certainly got a most delightful family,’ he said. ‘I haven’t met such pleasant ghosts since I was a little boy in Ireland. Our house was haunted by such an interesting couple — a schoolteacher and his wife who drowned in a bog. They were the most wonderful storytellers.’ He walked over to Fulton and Frieda. ‘I can’t see the slightest sign of mental illness in the boy; he seems as fit as a flea, and for someone who’s going to run a place like this, an open mind about unusual things is most important. You must be so relieved to know that you have nothing at all to worry about.’

But Fulton and Frieda had had enough. The last thing they saw as they hurried back to the car was a fishing rod lift itself into the air and drop into the doctor’s hand.

‘How very kind,’ they heard Dr O’Hara say. ‘I must say an hour’s fishing would be most pleasant. It so happens that it’s my day off.’

‘It’s your fault, you idiot,’ said Frieda when they were alone again. ‘You said you’d get ghosts that were going to frighten him into fits and look what you’ve done! Unless Dr O’Hara’s mad. Grandmothers. Boy Scouts. Little girls in nightgowns. It’s ridiculous!’

‘It’s not my fault — it’s the fault of that stupid woman in the agency. She swore she had a pair of spooks that would frighten the living daylights out of people. There must have been a mix-up and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I tell you, Frieda, I’m not finished yet. I’m going to Set My Foot Upon My—’

‘All right, all right,’ said Frieda grumpily.

She wasn’t really in the mood for feet.

Colonel Mersham sat on a camp stool beside a meandering dark-brown river, reading a letter.

A turtle lumbered on to a sandbar, huge blue butterflies drank in the shallows, and in the rain-washed trees a family of howler monkeys caught each other’s fleas, but the Colonel did not look up. He was completely absorbed in what he read.

‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘An interesting boy and an interesting idea.’

He was surprised. He had agreed to be Oliver’s guardian because he was sorry for the orphaned boy, but he loathed the Snodde-Brittles, who had been his mother’s cousins, and never went near Helton unless he had to.

This boy, though, was different.

He’d come upon a family of ghosts and a child who cared with all her heart for ghostly animals, and he was asking for help.

‘I want to set up a research institute for the study of everything to do with ghostliness,’ the boy had written. ‘I want to find out what ectoplasm is made of and what happens when people become ghosts — and animals too. Addie is particularly worried about the animals: she says you can tell people what happened when they pass on but you can’t tell animals, and they get muddled and bewildered and she’d like to make Helton into a safe place for them to be. Not a zoo, just somewhere they can live in peace.’

Colonel Mersham put the letter down and looked upriver to where Manuel, the Spaniard who had helped him in his travels, had drawn up the canoe. They had journeyed two days and nights to the place where the fabled golden toads of Costa Rica had last been seen. They had searched every lily leaf, every clump of rushes, every stone, but they had come back empty-handed. The beautiful, palpitating, pop-eyed creatures, who had lit up the dark landscape like shimmering suns, were gone.

The Colonel had found it difficult to be brave about this. It was happening in so many places; marvellous animals that lived on now only as memories: the aye-ayes of Madagascar, the tigers of Bali…

And now the golden toads. It had been his dream to see them ever since he was a boy.

Had he given up too early, he wondered? If he could not find a living toad, might he perhaps find… its ghost? And if so, could it be brought back to Helton and cared for, so that people in the future would know what these marvellous creatures had been like?

The Colonel folded his letter and rose to his feet.

‘Manuel!’ he called to his friend. ‘Get the canoe ready! We’re going back!’

It was the worst day of their lives, both Miss Pringle and Mrs Mannering were agreed on that.

When Mother Margaret and Sister Phyllida came into Miss Pringle’s office, Miss Pringle was delighted. She liked the nuns enormously and she hoped to get good news of her favourite family.

But one look at their faces and the question died in her throat. Mother Margaret looked as though she hadn’t slept for a week; Sister Phyllida had obviously been crying.

‘The most dreadful thing has happened,’ said Mother Margaret. ‘It has been the most terrible experience!’

‘And frankly we don’t understand how you came to do this to us, Miss Pringle. We only wanted to help.’

Miss Pringle was growing more and more frantic. ‘But what has happened? Are you not satisfied with the Wilkinsons? Surely—’

‘Satisfied!’ Mother Margaret was no longer the kind and placid nun who had been to the agency before. ‘ Satisfied ! When we have two lambs with dislocated legs and a kid with a gash in its throat still at the vet! When we nearly lost our favourite calf and the chickens will probably never lay again!’

‘But I don’t understand. What has gone wrong? Please explain — I sent you the nicest ghosts in—’

Mother Margaret rose from her chair. ‘The nicest ghosts! The nicest ! I admit we are not worldly women but you had no right to play such a trick on us. If nice ghosts swoop down on innocent animals and scratch them with their fingernails… If nice ghosts wear evil pythons round their throats and tear the feathers off baby chicks…’

She couldn’t go on. Tears choked her.

‘And the man, Miss Pringle!’ Sister Phyllida took up the story. ‘That dreadful hoofmark, the vicious knees, the stench! He picked up a goat bodily and would have torn it limb from limb if Sister Felicity hadn’t raised her crucifix. Not only that — poor Sister Bridget hit out at the lady with a rowan branch, and look!’ She felt in the pocket of her habit and took out a small box which she opened. ‘You can imagine how she felt when this dropped on to her head.’

Miss Pringle leant forward and her worst fears were confirmed. Quite clear to those who have an eye for such things, was the decayed and bloodstained toe of Lady Sabrina de Bone.

She covered her face with her hands and moaned. ‘Oh heavens, how terrible. It was a mistake… a ghastly, ghastly mistake. Our mistake of course! We were asked for some really frightening ghosts for a stately home in the north and we sent the Shriekers. At least we thought we had. And you were supposed to get the Wilkinsons. I just can’t understand it — we took such care to match you up.’ She too was almost in tears. ‘Thank goodness you knew about exorcism. I mean rowan twigs and prayers and so on.’