‘And do you know where he found it?’ Fulton would say, bringing his face close up to Oliver’s. ‘In an old coffin chest exactly like the one in your room!’
Then he would pat Oliver on the head and Frieda would come and say, ‘Bedtime, Oliver!’ – and the little boy would go alone through the Long Gallery with its faceless marble statues, along the corridor lined with grinning masks, up the cold stone staircase, past the bared teeth of shot animals – and reach, at last, his room.
Oliver did not cry; he did not run back and beg to be allowed to stay downstairs. But as he lay in the cave he had made for himself under the bedclothes, he thought he wouldn’t mind too much if it was soon over; if they came quickly, the ghosts that were going to get him. If he was frightened to death he could go and lie quietly under the ground in the churchyard. He had seen the graves and the tombstones covered with moss and it had looked peaceful there.
And for a child to think like that is not a good idea at all.
Chapter Eight
In the knicker shop, the Wilkinsons were having a party. It was the day before they were due to leave for their new home in the country and they had invited their friends to say goodbye. Mr Hofmann had come from the bunion shop, sniffing a little because he was going to lose Grandma, and a lovely Swedish phantom called Pernilla, with luminous hair and gentle eyes, had drifted in from the music store. There was a jogger who had jogged once too often, and various children Addie had picked up: the son of a rat-catcher who came with a dozen of his father’s phantom rats, and a pickpocket called Jake who knew everything there was to know about living off the land.
It was a good party. Though the ghosts were sad to see such a nice family leave the district, they tried hard not to begrudge the Wilkinsons their good luck.
‘Aaah... imagine... to breathe again the fresh clear air,’ sighed Pernilla, who was dreadfully homesick for the pine forests of her native land.
‘And living with nuns,’ said the jogger, who had been a curate before he dropped dead of a heart attack on the A12. ‘Such good people!’
Aunt Maud was everywhere, filling glasses with her nightshade cordial, making people feel comfortable.
‘If only you could all come with us,’ she sighed.
‘Maybe you can,’ said Adopta. ‘If the nuns are so kind, maybe they’ll make room for you all!’
She had filled Grandma’s gas mask case with the ghosts of beetles and woodlice which she meant to re-settle in the country and was so excited that she found it impossible to keep still.
Everyone had been very well behaved up to then, but perhaps Aunt Maud’s drinks were stronger than she realized because Eric, who was usually so quiet, suddenly said, ‘No more knickers!’ and sent a box of mini-briefs tumbling to the floor.
‘No more Tootsies and Footsies and Bootsies,’ shouted Grandma, who had been particularly annoyed at the silly names that people nowadays gave to socks, thwacking at the display stand with her umbrella.
‘And down with tummy buttons,’ yelled Adopta, and a pile of polka-dot bikinis tumbled from their shelves.
At first Aunt Maud and Uncle Henry tried to stop them, but it was no use. The relief of getting away from all that underwear was just too great, and soon even Mr Hofmann, who could hardly glide, was thumping a see-through nightdress with his crutch, while Pernilla zoomed to the ceiling with a box of body stockings which she draped like streamers round the lamp.
But when the clock struck eleven, they quietened down. Mr Hofmann was led away by Grandma, the jogger jogged back to the A12, the rat-catcher’s son called to his rats – and the host and hostess, as is the way with parties, were left to clean up the mess.
There was only one more thing to do. Sober and solemn now, the Wilkinsons filed out into the street and called to Trixie.
‘We love you, Trixie,’ they said, bowing to the north.
‘We need you, Trixie,’ they said, bowing to the east and the west and the south.
‘And we shall never forget you,’ they promised.
Of course if Trixie had come just then it would have been a miracle, but she didn’t. So they went back to pack and cover the budgie’s cage, while Uncle Henry made his way to the Dial A Ghost agency and the office of Miss Pringle.
The folder with all their instructions and the maps was exactly where she had said it would be, on the window sill beside the potted geranium. Uncle Henry took it and passed it backwards and forwards across his chest so as to cover it with ectoplasm and make it invisible.
And an hour later, the Wilkinsons were on their way.
The Shriekers did not have a farewell party. To have a party you need friends and the Shriekers didn’t have any. All the same, in their dark and nasty way they were excited.
‘A place that’s fit for us at last,’ said Sabrina. ‘Statues... suits of armour . . . a tower!’
Mrs Mannering had come herself to tell the Shriekers about Helton Hall, which was noble of her because the frozen meat store had not been a nice place even before the de Bones came, and now it was unspeakable. Sides of beef lay sprawled on the floor where they had tried to drink blood from them; sheep’s kidneys and gobbets of fat squelched underfoot.
‘Perhaps there’ll be some children we can scare to death,’ said Sir Pelham, and the hatred in his eyes was terrible to see.
‘A little girl I can scratch with my fingernails,’ gloated Sabrina. ‘Long, deep scratches right to the bone.’
‘A little boy I can squeeze and squeeze till he turns blue and chokes.’
But now it was time to thaw out the ghoul and get ready to leave. They had tipped him out of his container the night before but he was still rigid, and while Sir Pelham beat him with his riding crop, Sabrina jerked the rope round his neck and screamed her orders. ‘You’re to get up, you pullulating blob. You’re to get up and cook something and clean something and pack something and hurry!’
While the poor ghoul tottered about muttering, ‘Fry! Sizzle! Sweep!’ Sabrina made herself beautiful for the journey. She squeezed the juice from a pig’s gall bladder and dabbed it behind her ears; she smeared her dress with lard to give a shine to the bloodstains, and she unknotted the python from her neck and fed him a dead mouse.
Meanwhile Sir Pelham glided to the Dial A Ghost agency and through the window of Mrs Mannering’s office. The folder with the maps in it was just where Mrs Mannering had promised. It even had ‘de Bone’ on it in Ted’s rather wiggly handwriting.
And as midnight struck, the de Bones too, dragging their wretched servant by his rope, set off for their new life.
Oliver had woken with the feeling that he just couldn’t go on. He would have run back to the Home, but the letter he wrote to Matron begging her to let him return had gone unanswered like all his other letters.
So there was nowhere to go. He got up wearily and dressed and began the long journey down to the dining room where Fulton and Frieda were waiting.
‘We have a nice surprise for you, Oliver,’ said Frieda. ‘You’ve been looking a bit pale lately so we’ve asked Mr Tusker to drive you to the sea. He’s going to York tonight to visit his sick sister, so this is your last chance to see something of the countryside.’
Oliver felt guilty, of course. He’d thought how creepy Frieda and Fulton were and here they were planning a treat. The idea of seeing the sea cheered him up. They’d gone to the seaside a few times from the Home. There’d been donkey rides and ice cream and he and Trevor and Nonie had made the best sandcastle on the beach.
But when doddery Mr Tusker stopped the car beside the dunes, Oliver realized he’d been silly again. The sea at Helton wasn’t at all like that. The butler wouldn’t even get out but shut all the windows and unfolded his newspaper. Then he handed Oliver a packet of sandwiches and said, ‘Don’t come back till four. We’re to stay out till then.’
So Oliver trudged off across the tussocky grass and tumbled down on to the shore. The wind hit him so hard he could scarcely stand upright; the waves slapped and
pounded and thumped; dark clouds raced across the sky. The tide was high, so there were no rock pools, and as he fought his way up the beach he was almost blinded by flying sand. After a while he gave up the struggle and climbed into a hollow between two dunes, where he ate his sandwiches. Then he dug a deep hole and lay down in it and fell asleep.
It was teatime when they got back to Helton. Mr Tusker drove off to the station and Oliver made his way to the dining room. A glass of milk and some biscuits were laid out on the table, but there was no sign of Fulton and Frieda. Instead, beside his plate, there was a note.
‘Dear Oliver,’ he read. ‘I’m afraid we have had to go away for a few days. The boys in our school have been unhappy without us and there has been some trouble which we have to put right. I know you will not mind being alone. After all, the master of Helton Hall has got to get used to being by himself. Miss Match has left your supper on the kitchen table; it is her day off and she is going to spend the night in the village, but there is plenty of food in the larder. We will be back as soon as possible... Your affectionate Cousin Fulton.’
Oliver looked up, straight into the sinister marble face of the god Pan crouching on top of a clock. It was true then. In all the thirty rooms of Helton, he was the only living soul.
I won’t panic, he told himself. I’ll manage. He drank his milk and went outside. It was less frightening out of doors, but no more cheerful. He walked round the dark lake with its drowned farmer, through the grove of weeping ash trees, up the hill where the two hikers had died...
The cold drove him in at seven, and he went to fetch his supper. The kitchens were down in the basement. He made his way through the maze of dank stone corridors, sure that at every corner something was waiting to pounce... past a pantry where dead birds hung by their legs... past an iron boiler chuntering like an evil giant...
The kitchen was huge, with a scrubbed wooden table. On the table was a tray with a salad, slices of bread and butter, a glass of lemonade. He ate it there, and when he had finished, carried his empty dishes to the sink. It was then that he noticed the calendar hanging on the wall. It was a pretty calendar with views of the countryside, and the day’s date ringed by Miss Match.
Friday the 13th. The unluckiest day of the year! The day that ghosts and ghouls and vampires like best of all!
At that moment Oliver knew that it would happen this very night – the thing he waited for every time he crawled into the great bed and pulled the covers over his head. It might be the flesh-eating phantom at the window, it might be the wailing nun who strangled people with their sheets, or the skeleton looking for his skull – but one of them would come.
And when they did so, he would die.
Chapter Nine
The Wilkinsons travelled by train.
The 1 a.m. from King’s Cross goes direct to York, where you must be sure to leave the train, said the instructions in the folder.
So the Wilkinsons, who were all invisible of course, settled themselves down and had a very pleasant journey. The one o’clock was a sleeper, the kind with cubicles and bunk beds, and people were already lying in them, but the ghosts were used to mucking in. Grandma stretched out on the luggage rack, Addie and Eric lay down on the floor, and Uncle Henry and Aunt Maud took the budgie to the deserted dining car.
Travelling by train is always enjoyable, and when you don’t have to pay fares there is an extra glow, but Uncle Henry, as the train raced through the night, was troubled. He was so sure that Miss Pringle had said the nuns lived in the West Country, and there was no doubt that York was in the north. Several times he checked the instructions in the folder but what they said was perfectly clear.
‘I must be getting forgetful,’ he said worriedly. ‘It’s a good job I’m not a dentist any more. I’d be pulling out the wrong teeth.’
At York they got out, stretching their limbs in the cold dawn, and made their way to the station buffet.
Your next train, which leaves from Platform Three, is the 11.40 for Rothwick. You must, however, get out at Freshford Junction, which is the fifth station after York.
‘Well, nothing could be plainer than that,’ said Henry. ‘And yet I was sure Miss Pringle said that the nuns lived in the west. I remember her mentioning the gentle climate.’
‘It certainly isn’t very gentle here,’ said Aunt Maud, for a fierce draught was whistling in at the door of the refreshment room.
They decided to say nothing to the others for fear of worrying them and, punctual to the minute, the 11.40 drew up at Platform Three.
The next part of the journey was slow and the scenery wild and beautiful. They travelled through heather-clad hills and valleys with brown rushing rivers and little copses of wind-tossed trees. Both the children, as they looked out of the window, were lost in dreams. Eric imagined himself camping alone by a stream, his tent perfectly pitched, his kettle hissing over the fire which he had lit with a single match as Scouts have learnt to do. He would be whittling a stick with his lethal knife and there she would be, Cynthia Harbottle herself, stumbling into his camp, soaked to the skin and terrified.
‘Eric,’ she would say, ‘Eric, I am lost, save me, help me and I promise I will never look at an American soldier again.’
Addie’s dreams were different. She was watching the hillsides covered with shaggy, black-faced sheep. Surely in a place where there were so many of these animals, just one would pass on and become a ghost? She had always wanted a phantom sheep; she was absolutely sure she could train it to sit, or even to fetch a ball she threw for it. Sheep were much cleverer than people realized. They had to be or Jesus would not have preached about them so much.
Grandma’s thoughts were in the past. She was worried about Mr Hofmann in the bunion shop. He was such a clever man, a German professor who had been a teacher in the university before he fell into the canal from thinking about poetry instead of looking where he was going. But he was not very strong-minded. Every time he woke and saw a picture of a stomach he got a tummy ache and every time he saw an enamel bowl, he wanted to cough into it, and he was working himself into a dreadful pother.
‘I shouldn’t have left him,’ thought Grandma.
At Freshford Junction the last part of their journey began.
You must now take the bus to Troughton-in-the-Wold, which leaves from the first stand opposite the station. Go to the terminus at the Horse and Hounds, cross the road, and make your way along the lane which leads uphill between clumps of firs.
Once again, everything went like clockwork. They found the lane and glided along it in the fading light. Then suddenly their way was blocked.
Uncle Henry opened the folder once more.
After two kilometres you will find yourself in front of a high gate with a pair of griffons on the pillars. When you reach that, your journey is over.
‘This is it then,’ he said. ‘No doubt about it. This is the place.’
It was a shock. Their new home was not at all what they expected. Jagged battlements glowed black against a crimson sunset, writhing statues led up to the great front door – and the griffons’ claws rested on a shield with the words ‘I Set My Foot Upon my
Enemies’ carved into the stone.
Grandma was the first to speak.
‘I won’t curtsy,’ she said. ‘Let’s get that clear. It may be grand but I won’t curtsy to nobody.’
She had been very poor when she was young and forced to go and work as a housemaid in a big house, and it had made her very cross with anyone who was a snob and ordered people about.
‘No, of course not, Grandma,’ said Maud. ‘Who ever heard of a curtsying ghost?’ But she herself was very troubled. ‘Henry, are you sure it’s us they want? I mean... shouldn’t we be more... you know... skeletal and headless? Won’t they expect hollow rap-pings and muffled moans... and that sort of thing?’
through my muffler, Ma,’ said Eric. But he was only trying for a joke. The little scarves that Scouts wear round their necks are not at all suitable fo
r moaning through.
The only person who wasn’t in the least put out was Adopta.
‘I can’t see what the fuss is about,’ she said. ‘It’s just a house with roofs and windows like any other’ – and as she spoke Aunt Maud wondered yet again what Addie’s life had been before she came to them.
But Uncle Henry now read out the last of the instructions.
You are asked to wait till midnight and then go to the master bedroom in the East Tower and begin your haunting. Good luck and best wishes for your new life.
‘Come on then,’ said Addie. ‘What are we waiting for?’ And before they could stop her, she had swooped up the gravel drive and zoomed into the house.
Oliver did not think he would be able to sleep, but he did sleep – a restless, twitchy sleep filled with hideous dreams.
Then suddenly he was awake. The clock in the tower was striking the hour, but there was no need to count. He knew it was midnight. He knew by the frantic beating of his heart, by the shivers of terror running up and down his spine, and by the clamminess of his skin.
He tried to sit up, and felt the familiar tightening of his chest. He was going to have an asthma attack
– and he reached out for the inhaler before he realized it was gone.
And then, as he was struggling for air, he saw it. A hand! A pale hand coming through the wardrobe door, its fingers searching and turning... The hand was attached to an arm in a white sleeve: a wan and lightless limb, sinister and ghastly.
The wailing nun? The murdered bride?
The other arm was coming through the fly-stained mirror now – and dangling from it on a kind of string was something round and horrible and loose.