Hilda - The Challenge

than they could take. There was the occasional howl from the ghost, but that was hardly impressive anymore.

  "Gods, I wonder who has such a taste," said William, "most of that is an attack on the eyes."

  Hilda nodded. "I know. It's interesting to see how much garbage is produced. So, ready for another ghost meet?"

  "Sure. I ain't afraid of no ghost," William giggled.

  It earnt him a frown from Hilda who then opened the door. They went down the stairs again, this time not needing a torch. They'd been here before.

  The ghost was nowhere to be seen. It howled once in a while, but kept itself hidden.

  "Hey, ghost! Come out where we can see you. We need to talk." Hilda magicked up two chairs, on which they sat down. "We're not leaving until we've talked to you. And you'd better make it snappy or we're going to make things really hard on you."

  William wondered if she was referring to his non-existing second plan.

  64. Bustin' makes me feel good

  They waited. And waited quite a while, their only source of entertainment being their chatting and the howls of the ghost that did not show up.

  "Not really snappy, is it?", William commented.

  "As I said, ghosts have no sense of time. We'll just wait."

  A loud howl later the ghost hung before them, again at a safe distance.

  "Well, look who we have here," Hilda took control of the situation. "I'd love to ask you to sit down, but that would be a bit odd."

  "There are only two chairs," a hollow voice said.

  William tried to keep his surprise under control but failed miserably. He did leave the talking to Hilda, that evidently was the safest thing to do.

  "Right..." Hilda made a third chair appear.

  The ghost went and hovered over that. "Thank you." It seemed to wait for more.

  "So, what brought you here?", Hilda asked as if she was talking to someone she had not seen for a while.

  "An opening," was the simple and hollow answer. Then the ghost howled again, be it moderately loud. "I take it this annoys you. I mean to annoy."

  "I must say that I have heard nicer sounds," Hilda agreed. "Now, what opening brought you here? This is the King's Castle and he's a bit ticked off with the sound you make."

  "Oh. That is good." The ghost howled full force for a moment. That probably was its way to tell the world how pleased it was.

  "Actually that is not good, because a ticked-off king is not good for the people. And ticked-off people are very bothersome to deal with, which in turn will anger the king even more."

  The ghost rose up from the chair and bobbed down again. "And all that because I am here?"

  "Quite, yes."

  A loud and long howl was theirs to not enjoy. "I had no idea that my presence here would have such an impact. I am happy here, this is a good ghosting place."

  "Crappedy crap, you don't get it, do you?", asked Hilda. "This is not the place for you to be, ghost. You had your own place to howl, and you got here by accident. Now you will show us where that opening was that you came through, and you will go back through it."

  "No." The ghost sounded very determined. And even more hollow. "My old place was no fun. People were not scared of me there."

  "So it is scaring them that you want, not annoying them," William pitched in.

  "The scaring comes after the annoying," the ghost replied.

  "I beg to differ. You seem to be uncertain of what you want. You first claimed annoying, then you claimed scaring and now you claim both," argued William.

  Hilda stared at her wizard, not really understanding what he was getting at, but since he had the ghost's attention, she sat back and let him have a go at it.

  The ghost was silent for a moment. "But isn't scaring a higher level of annoying?"

  "It is definitely not. I have worked with books and language for many years, and there is no book that I have found which would underwrite your statement. Annoying people will in the end make them nervous and break down. If you scare people, they will in the end either get used to it or turn against you."

  "Ah." The ghost sounded now mostly hollow. It seemed to become unstable a bit, more and less opaque.

  Hilda now got William's meaning. He was trying to confuse the ghost. "I agree with the wizard," she told the ghost. "And you don't want to be there when people turn against you. That is when they bring in the heavy artillery, like witches and wizards. Now, you may have gathered that we are a witch and a wizard. What does that tell you?"

  "Uhm... that the people are scared already?" The ghost clearly had problems coping with being questioned like this.

  "No, dumb ass," William said, "they are getting smarter. You won't get away with the same old routine over time. People understand by now that all they have to do is call in the help of wizards and witches to deal with a ghost. They hire the ghostbusters, as it were."

  "And that's us," Hilda said, "and you see that it works when they call us."

  "It does?" The ghost was losing ground by the minute. "I am still here, am I not?"

  "Yes, you are," William confirmed as he got up. "The question is: for how long..." He drew his wand and conjured up a set of weird looking utensils. He just did his best remembering the objects he had seen in the Ghostbusters movie long ago. "Perhaps you care to know what these things are."

  The ghost hovered away from the chair and hung over the assembly of strange things. "Do I need to know?"

  Hilda grinned to herself. So far they had managed to keep the ghost from howling for quite a while already, and whatever it was that William was doing: it worked!

  William tried to feed Hilda some information about the fake equipment as he was explaining about what looked like a mutilated vaccuum cleaner. "See, this thing is what we use for Slimers."

  "What are slimers?", the ghost asked.

  "I beg your pardon? You don't know what Slimers are? The silly round ghosts that spit around slime and other goo? We have this magical tool to simply suck them up. Once they're inside this, they can't escape." William patted the vaccuum cleaner. "Good thing, works perfectly."

  Hilda got up as she wanted to join in the fun and grabbed another device. It looked like the cup of a giant blender. "This is what we have to put the small ones in," she told the ghost.

  William stood back and watched Hilda go on, biting his tongue to keep from laughing.

  "See, the smaller ghosts, as you probably know, are not that fast. So we only have to wait for one to zoom by" -she took the lid off the cup- "whack it over the ghost" -in a fierce and fast movement she whacked the cup over the ghost- "and close the cup." Which is what she did. Then she stared at the transparent cup. "Suck an elf. It worked." She shook the cup a few times. A faint howl came from it as the ghost was frantically moving around.

  William was totally flabbergasted. "How the hell did you do that?"

  "Not sure. It looked like a good thing to try." The witch held up the cup. "See, we warned you." She looked at William. "What are we going to do with it?"

  "Good question. How about we give it to the king, as a present? I don't know if it is a common thing for a king to have his own ghost in a... blender."

  "Shiny!! Let's go and do that!" Hilda grinned a wide smile. She watched how William made all the strange equipment disappear, including the three chairs, and then they walked up the stairs again, and down the long corridor that took them to the courtyard.

  Many eyes followed them as Hilda carried the big cup to the king. "King Walt, we have your ghost. Here it is, all yours." She put the cup on the table, in front of the chubby royal man.

  "That is... the ghost?" The king picked up the cup and reached for the lid.

  "I would leave that on, King," William said, "unless you want to be the first king with a ghost in his garden. They're pretty hard to catch."

  Quickly King Walt put the cup down. "Yes, I thought the same. I was just making sure the lid was on tightly." He blushed for a moment. He got up and thanked the witch and the wizard.
"I will see to it that a proper compensation will be brought to your home, dear magical people. And thank you ever so much for this speedy operation. It is definitely not pleasant to be a king when you have to sit... there." He pointed at the small seat that had probably hurt his extensive royal rear quite a bit.

  The witch and her wizard remained near the castle until the entire staff had entered the castle again. They then went inside with the king.

  "The ghost told us it had come in through some opening. It is probably a good thing to let some good people check the cellar and make sure that there are no openings left that should not be there," Hilda warned the king. "Otherwise there is no saying what will come through that opening next."

  "Yes, yes, my thoughts exactly," King Walt nodded as he handed them both a glass of wine. A servant offered them a tray with a choice of handmade chocolates.

  "Oh, chocolate!" Hilda grabbed a handful and happily munched away.

  William took one and was happy with that.

  "I am really grateful that we have such a fine working relationship, dear witch and wizard," Walt said as he lowered himself on a comfortable couch.

  They chatted for a short while longer, and then the magical couple left the king, fetched their brooms and made for home.

  65. No buts or maybe's

  The days after catching the ghost went by rapidly. The couple was preparing for the challenge which now was coming close.

  "Today we have to pack up and go there, William." Hilda lay in his arm, close to him. She enjoyed the feeling of closeness and the strength in his arm with which he pulled her even closer to him