Dial-A-Ghost

  ‘Yes.’ Frieda put down the newspaper and looked down at the street. Toby Benson was just running out to meet his parents. They were going to take him out to Africa with them rather than send him to another boarding school. ‘You don’t think he’ll... Oliver... he’ll come up from the lake and haunt us?’

  ‘For Pete’s sake, Frieda, what’s got into you?’ He pushed the newspaper under her nose. ‘You can read, can’t you? There isn’t a spook on the planet we can’t destroy with what they’ve got there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fulton was right. It was silly to think of Oliver lying at the bottom of the deep dark pit that was the Helton lake. No one got anywhere who let themselves get soft.

  Chapter Twenty

  The letters above the grimy redbrick building said The Safeguard Sewing Machine Company, but it wasn’t sewing machines that they made in that sinister place. It was something quite different.

  It was a liquid – as Dr Fetlock now explained – that you could spray on to ghosts so as to destroy them completely and for ever.

  ‘We have to keep our work secret,’ he told Fulton Snodde-Brittle. ‘That story in the paper did us a lot of harm. You see there are feeble and soppy people about who might make a fuss. They might think that ghosts have a right to be around and then there would be questions asked and laws passed. So I have to tell you that everything you see and hear in this building is top secret. Will you promise me that?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes indeed,’ said Fulton. He had wasted no time in coming to see the doctor. ‘I’d rather not have my part in this talked about either. In fact I’d like it if your men could come and spray Helton under cover of darkness.’

  ‘There shouldn’t be any problem about that. Now you will want to know what you are getting for your money, so let me show you round.’ Dr Fetlock leant forward and stared hard at Fulton with his black pop-eyes. His long hair straggled down his back, he wore thick glasses and looked as though he hadn’t been in the open air for years. ‘But first of all I have to ask you something: can you personally see ghosts? Are you a spook seer?’

  Fulton stroked his moustache. A piece of kipper had caught in it from his breakfast, but he didn’t know this and thought he looked good. ‘Well, actually, no. I can’t.’

  Dr Fetlock nodded. ‘Perhaps it’s as well. But it means I’ll have to explain the experiments to you. I will have to describe what we have done to the ghost animals we keep here, so that you will see how amazing our product is. Now if you will just put on this white coat, we will go into the laboratory.’

  He opened the door for Fulton and led him down a long dark corridor. ‘You will find that everyone here is really keen on their work. All the staff of EEB Incorporated – that’s what we call ourselves – have suffered from disgusting spooks. The lab boy who is looking after the animals has a gash down the side of his cheek, as you will see. He got it when a head on a platter came out of the larder of his mother’s house in Peckham. Just a severed head and nothing else – well, you know how these creepy-crawlies carry on. He fell over backwards and gashed his cheek on the fender and he’s got the scar to this day.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Fulton.

  Dr Fetlock opened the door of the animal house. What Fulton saw were rows and rows of cages with straw in the bottom and numbers nailed to the top. Beside the numbers were charts showing how much liquid the animals had been given and at what dose. A strange smell of decay hung about the room, and a murky fog clouded the windows.

  ‘That’s the dissolving ectoplasm,’ said Dr Fetlock. ‘We’ll get the fan going on it in a minute. Now this top row is the rabbits. Of course we had to drill a small hole in their brains and squirt it with EEB – that’s the name of our product – so as to destroy their will power. Otherwise they’d just have glided through the bars – keeping ghosts caged up is the devil, as you know. The first three cages are the ones where we’ve destroyed the rabbits’ left ears, and in the next row they’ve lost their right ears – it’s a pity you can’t see because it’s a very neat experiment. Then below them we’ve got the mice. We’ve got rid of all the tails in the first batch and the second batch have got neither tails nor forepaws.’ He turned round and shouted: ‘Charlie!’, and a youth in a spattered overall with a scar down the side of his face came out with a clipboard. ‘Show Mr Snodde-Brittle the figures, Charlie.’

  Fulton took them and ran his eyes down the pages. They seemed to be graphs of different strengths of the EEB mixture set against the loss of limbs and ears and eyes.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said.

  Dr Fetlock had moved to another group of cages. ‘Now these are the hamsters,’ he said. ‘You see we’ve managed to destroy their pouches completely. That’s only the beginning of course... we’re going to make the spray stronger and liquidate their front ends altogether so—’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Fulton was feeling a little queasy. ‘But how do I know it’s going to work on humans? The ghosts I want to exterminate are people – well, they were.’

  Dr Fetlock seemed to be thinking. ‘I think we’d best take Mr Snodde-Brittle to the rest-rooms, Charlie.’

  The rest-rooms were just cubicles, rather like police cells, each with a camp bed, a grey blanket and a water jug.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to look in here?’ said Dr Fetlock. ‘If you’re sure it won’t upset you.’

  ‘Nothing upsets me,’ blustered Fulton. He stared at the empty bed and the folded blanket – and saw nothing else.

  ‘He was only a tramp,’ said Dr Fetlock. ‘We thought it was quite right to use him for science. He was sleeping rough under Waterloo Bridge when he became a ghost. So we lured him in here – we said he could rest in peace and he is resting in peace!’ He began to titter. ‘What’s left of him!’

  ‘Er... what is left?’

  ‘A shoe with a broken sole... half a sock... look there, hanging over the bed. We came at him while he was asleep – three squirts from one of the big aerosols and well, you’ll see. We’ve got two more in the next rooms. The old bag lady is completely gone, but there’s a drunk we found on the Embankment – his arms and legs have disappeared but his torso’s left, if you’d like to have a look.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, thank you. I think I’ve seen enough,’ said Fulton. ‘But are you absolutely sure there’s no effect on living people? I mean, I shall want to move back into the house when it’s cleared.’

  Dr Fetlock turned to Charlie. ‘Go and get Number Five – it’s just been filled.’

  Charlie went away and returned with a large metal canister rather like a fire extinguisher, with a hose and nozzle. The letters EEB were written on it in red paint. Dr Felton put out his arm. ‘Right. You can give me a full dose.’

  Charlie pressed the nozzle. There was a hiss, and an evil-smelling liquid shot on to the doctor’s sleeve. Apart from the smell and a damp stain nothing happened at all.

  ‘Satisfied?’ asked Dr Fetlock.

  Fulton nodded. ‘Yes, indeed. It’s all exactly as I hoped. But... could one ask... what is EEB? What do the letters stand for?’

  Charlie and Dr Fetlock looked at each other. ‘Well, Mr Snodde-Brittle, we don’t trust everyone with this, but... all right... we’ll take you along to the preparation room. It isn’t I who discovered the EEB, you see – it’s Professor Mankovitch. But I warn you, the Professor is completely dumb. She’s probably the most brilliant scientist in the world – a Hungarian; they’re very clever in Eastern Europe – even the little children play chess – but she can’t say a word. She lost her voice as the result of a frightful shock.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘She was picnicking with her boyfriend in a forest. They have a lot of forests over there. And suddenly a whole lot of white, shimmering creepies came out of the trees – wibbly, wobbly slithering ghoulies – they call them villis or tree spirits or some such thing. And they stretched out their awful arms and grasped her boyfriend and went off with him into the woods and he never came back. So she swore s
he would spend the rest of her life finding out how to destroy things that shouldn’t be there. Come along; I’ll show you.’

  Fulton followed him. As they came closer to the lab he could hear a kind of bumping and gurgling, and the temperature rose. Then the door was thrown open and he saw an enormous vat which reached from the floor to the ceiling. A great piston went thump, thump, thump, stirring whatever was inside; tubes came from the vat and curled round the walls. Beside the vat, a woman with a blank face and white hair was twiddling a dial.

  ‘This is it, Mr Snodde-Brittle. This is the fruit of twenty years’ work on the part of Professor Mankovitch. She has scarcely stopped to eat or sleep in all that time, but the result is success. Complete and total success. This vat is full to the brim of the most amazing discovery of the century. It is full, Mr Snodde-Brittle, of EEB.’

  ‘Yes, but what is EEB? What’s inside it?’

  ‘You have heard of ectoplasm, surely?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And you have heard of bacteria? Of germs? The things that cause measles and chicken-pox and everything that’s vile?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we have found out how to grow a bacterium that eats ectoplasm. The Ectoplasm Eating Bacterium or EEB. We are manufacturing it as Rid A Spook and soon every hall, house and mansion in the land will be free of ghosts!’

  Fulton was convinced. He had come to the right place. But when they were back in the office he had a shock.

  ‘How much would it cost to rid Helton Hall of ghosts? Completely?’

  ‘Well, the charge is a thousand pounds a room. Which I’m sure you’ll see is reasonable—’

  ‘A thousand pounds a room! But Helton has got thirty rooms.’

  ‘Then it will cost you thirty thousand pounds. Which does not seem a lot to make sure that Helton is free of nasties for ever. And I’m afraid I have to ask you to let me have the money in cash. You won’t believe it, but we completely cleared a castle for a well-known British lord and when we came to cash the cheque it bounced.’

  Fulton was thinking, chewing on his moustache. How on earth was he going to get thirty thousand pounds? But once people knew that he was going to be the master of Helton, they’d lend it to him. After all, Helton wasn’t worth thousands of pounds; it was worth millions.

  ‘Very well, Dr Fetlock,’ he said. ‘You shall have it in banknotes, I promise you.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Addie perched on the arm of the sofa and glared at her long-lost parents. A night and a day had passed since the Shriekers had seen the birthmark on Addie’s arm and realized that she was their daughter, and the change in the evil pair was staggering. They crawled about on the floor, they tried to touch the hem of Addie’s nightdress, they wept – and all the time they begged and implored and beseeched their daughter to forgive them.

  ‘We shouldn’t have done it,’ wailed Sabrina.

  ‘We only meant to punish you a little. We didn’t think you would jump into the lake.’

  ‘We haven’t had a moment’s peace since that dreadful day we found that you were gone.’

  ‘That’s why we tried to strangle other children. We couldn’t bear to see them well and happy while our Little One was lost to us.’

  Addie took not the slightest notice. The python, with his sad bulge in the middle, had been hung on the towel rail in the bathroom and all she cared about was helping Oliver. He said he was all right; he’d wanted to go out and fetch the clothes he’d left strewn by the lake the day before when he was helping Mr Jenkins, but he still looked very pale, and the Wilkinsons insisted that he stayed indoors and rested.

  Aunt Maud would have been ashamed to moan and grovel like the de Bones, but she had never felt more wretched in her life. She felt sure that she was going to lose Adopta. Addie might say now that she was a Wilkinson, but how could she stand out against two such grand spectres – spectres with titles, who knew about the upper classes? Sooner or later Addie would want to become Honoria de Bone, Aunt Maud was sure of that, and she felt as if her heart was breaking.

  Uncle Henry and Grandma were almost as upset. They had known that they were only foster parents, but somehow they had not really thought that things would ever change.

  All the same, Uncle Henry was a fair man and now he said, ‘I think the de Bones must be allowed to tell their story. What was it that made Adopta jump into the lake and drown?’

  So the Shriekers began.

  ‘It happened on the night that Queen Victoria came to supper with us in our house near the Scottish Border. You must remember our house, Honoria?’ said Sabrina.

  ‘I’m not called Honoria,’ said Addie, scowling, ‘and I don’t remember a thing.’

  Sabrina sighed and went on with her story. ‘You have to understand how important it was to us to have the great Queen in our house. She was the Empress of India, remember, and the Mother of the Country, and it was her husband who first brought Christmas trees to England.

  ‘So we prepared a tremendous banquet. We slaughtered seven oxen and shot one hundred and twenty pheasants and killed five dozen salmon and—’

  ‘Well I think that’s disgusting,’ said Addie. ‘All those animals killed just to stuff into the stomach of a fat little queen.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what you said. You were very angry. You were always an angry child – though we love you, of course – we absolutely adore you—’

  ‘Go on with the story,’ said Adopta.

  ‘So de Bone Towers was decorated with flags, and the crimson bedroom was hung with fresh tapestries and there were flowers everywhere. It meant a lot to us, this day. You see, your father was expecting to be made an earl – people often were when they had the Queen to stay. But you had been getting crosser and crosser because of the dead animals. Of course we quite understood but—’

  Pelham put up his hand. ‘I will go on with the story,’ he said. ‘Queen Victoria arrived and we put on our evening clothes and our medals and our knee breeches. The footmen were in livery; the Great Hall sparkled with candlelight and the table was set with gold plates and crystal goblets and decanters of priceless wine. Queen Victoria sat at the head of the table and the ladies-in-waiting sat at the foot of the table, and the pheasants were just being brought in on great platters – all one hundred and twenty of them – when the long windows on to the terrace opened – and a cow entered the dining room.’

  Addie was wrinkling up her forehead. ‘Daisy?’ she said dreamily. ‘A cow called Daisy?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ cried Sabrina. ‘Oh, my little darling!’

  ‘Go on,’ said the child. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Daisy was a large cow, ready for milking. She came up to the Queen and mooed and pushed her head on to the table and the glass fell over and spilled wine on to the royal skirt. Then came Buttercup . . . and after Buttercup came Violet . . . and after Violet came Rose and Geranium and Marigold. All our cows were named for flowers. Twenty-three cows were herded into the dining hall, mooing and shoving their heads into the plates and . . . er . . . lifting their tails to spatter the ground with manure . . . And after them came the bull. The bull was called Hector – he weighed over a ton – and he began chasing Daisy. Daisy was his favourite. You can imagine . . . chairs turned over, people on the table, tails swishing . . . and the Queen, the famous Queen whose throne was inlaid with ivory and tourmaline and gold, shrieking and stepping in cow-pats and being butted in the behind by Daisy’s horns.’

  ‘And then came the sheep,’ said Adopta suddenly. ‘The cows were easy – I just shooed them up the steps – but the stupid dog couldn’t get the idea of herding sheep into the house.’

  Both the de Bones turned to her. ‘So you do remember! It’s all coming back to you,’ they said excitedly. ‘You see now that you are truly our child!’

  Addie shrugged. ‘I remember the cows and the sheep – and that silly Queen honking at the end of the table.’

  ‘Anyway, that was the end of all Pelham?
??s hopes of becoming an earl. The Queen left that night and never came back and we were very, very angry. So we locked you in the tower at the edge of the lake. We just wanted to keep you there for the night and make you realize what a terrible thing you had done. We never imagined you would jump into the water and try to escape. Oh, the misery and the guilt and the wretchedness . . . After that I’m afraid we let ourselves go.’

  ‘You certainly did that,’ said Grandma, looking at Lady de Bone’s dress and the bare feet with their mouldering toes.

  ‘Even before we became ghosts we had become hermits in the castle,’ Sabrina went on. ‘And we decided that if our little girl was lost to us for ever, no other children should sleep unharmed in their beds. But now everything will be quite different if only you will come into my arms and call me “Mother”.’

  ‘And come into my arms and call me “Father”,’ Pelham put in.

  Addie twitched her nightdress out of his hand. ‘You must be mad,’ she said. ‘Do you really think I want parents who tried to kill my best friend? Not to mention what your beastly snake did to the budgie.’

  The de Bones sidled up to Oliver. ‘We are really very sorry, dear boy. Very sorry indeed,’ said Lady de Bone.

  ‘On the other hand,’ put in Pelham, ‘you must remember that we were particularly asked to come here and do our most sinister haunting. We were told to go to the tower room and pull out all the stops. Mrs Mannering said that the gentleman who ordered us most particularly wanted evil ghosts.’

  Everyone now looked at everyone else. The de Bones might be loathsome, but they seemed to be telling the truth.

  Someone – and it had to be Fulton – had wanted Oliver harmed or even dead.

  ‘Now do you believe me?’ asked Adopta, turning to her friend.

  But Oliver still had trouble believing that anyone who had sent him the Wilkinsons could be totally evil. ‘You don’t think he guessed that the Shriekers were your parents and wanted to give you a surprise?’