Shrinking Ralph Perfect

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph gulped.

  But he’d no idea how.

  That night was the loneliest Ralph had ever known. Even though he lay snuggled up close to his mother (for the first time since he was five years old, when a thunderstorm had chased him into her bed), he couldn’t break away from the utter despair of being held prisoner in a house he could fit into his bedside cupboard.

  So he might have been excused for lying awake in a drowsy state of terror or a woozy state of woe, but it was neither of these moods which kept him from tipping into some relief of sleep. In the early hours of that first bleak morning, with a weak ridge of moonlight slipping through a tear in the blue plastic sheeting and knifing across the bare wooden boards, he became aware of a woman’s voice.

  ‘Rafe… Oh, Rafe… Where are you, my love?’

  It floated through the house like a gathering mist.

  The candle light flickered.

  Ralph opened his eyes very wide indeed.

  ‘Speak to me. Don’t be a stranger, I beg you. All these years. I’ve been waiting so long.’

  A window rattled. Ralph’s shoulders froze. He made a moustache of the hem of his bedsheet and held it tightly up to his nose.

  ‘Oh, Rafe, I just know you’re here,’ cried the voice.

  And then came the sound of dainty sobbing.

  ‘Jemima?’ Ralph whispered. ‘Is that you?’

  What remained of the chandelier clinked.

  A door creaked.

  The candle light went out.

  ‘Miriam?’ Ralph squeaked, barely moving his lips. But that tiniest of verbal acknowledgement seemed to be all the contact required to call the Miniville ghost into being. Within seconds, a current of air had dropped through the ceiling and was thickening into a swirling cloud. The cloud funnelled to a point just below the chandelier, then began to descend to the floor in a column. Although Ralph had not long visited the toilet, his body was screaming that he really ought to think about going again. Now.

  ‘Mum,’ he tried to say, but the word seemed as frightened to rise up as he was.

  And so there he lay, tongue-tied, glued…while a spectre materialised at the foot of his bed.

  A Ray of Hope

  As hauntings went – those which Ralph had read about at any rate – it wasn’t quite the expected thing.

  ‘My darling,’ the ghost said brightly and opened her shimmering arms to him.

  Ralph’s bedsheet immediately flapped aside. For shame! How glad was he that everyone in Miniville slept with their clothes on. Drawing his knees up tight to his chest, he tried again to call to his mother. But Penny was asleep and Ralph couldn’t jolt her. He felt the way he did when a nightmare gripped him: in another dimension, unable to move.

  Yet, apparently, he could. With no conspicuous effort – no ropes, no tackle, no mirrors of any kind – his body was swept upright, onto his feet.

  ‘Rafe…’ the apparition implored, floating like a giant sea anemone before him.

  Ralph covered his face. He didn’t like this. Why had the ghost picked on him to haunt? And why did she insist on calling him ‘Rafe’, just like Kyle Salter did? Just his luck if she turned out to be Kyle’s great-great-long-dead aunt or something.

  ‘Wh-wh-what do you want?’ he spluttered, risking a peek through the cracks of his fingers.

  The ghost blinked, cocked her nose and turned away sniffily – ‘petulantly’ Ralph’s mum would have said. He’d learnt this word during a crushing defeat at Scrabble when his mum had not only cleared her tiles but scored huge triple points by adding ‘ulantly’ to his trifling, five-point-scoring, ‘pet’. Right now, things were well beyond Scrabble. Ralph’s bloodstream was in top gear and racing. And somewhat worryingly, despite her huffy mannerisms, he had the strange sensation that Miriam liked him. This was so weird. Ralph had never had a girlfriend and didn’t really want one. But he’d never expected his first taste of romance to begin with a pretty, flirtatious phantom.

  And she was pretty. Extremely pretty, if a little ashen (but then, she was dead). Her small, round face was set alight by her sparkling doe eyes. The bob of her hair and the straight-cut fringe gave her an innocent, boyish appearance, but she was clearly a stylish, elegant young woman, probably no more than seventeen years old and slimmer than a blade of fresh spring grass. She wore a long white dress that displayed no curves (not that Ralph really knew about curves) which seemed to be practically bandaged to her body. It stopped below her knee in a sea of fringes that whispered when she turned or cocked her hip.

  Swush. She cocked her hip now. ‘I suppose it’s too much to ask, why you chose a giddy thing like Cecily above me?’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Ralph. Who the heck was Cecily?

  ‘Oh,’ went Miriam, pressing the back of one hand to her forehead. ‘Even now you have to tease and taunt me. Why were you always such a cad to me, Rafe?’

  Ralph opened his mouth and shut it again. He’d done this twice, before a sentence tumbled out. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ he said as politely as he could, ‘but I think you’ve mixed me up with someone else. This isn’t my house. I don’t really live here. And I don’t know anyone called Cecily, either.’

  Miriam made a gesture of disbelief and turned away with her back to him now. When she tilted her head to look back across her shoulder, she was puffing away at the longest cigarette holder Ralph had ever seen. ‘How could you leave me on our wedding day, you bounder?’ She blew a smoke ring that passed right through his face.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Ralph. ‘I’m only twelve.’

  ‘Hah!’ exclaimed Miriam, laying a gloved hand flat across her breast. ‘My poor heart, broken like a piece of crystal. Why should I forgive you, you faithless rake? If only you weren’t so devilishly handsome.’

  ‘Help!’ Ralph shrieked as she turned to face him, batting her ghostly eyelids so fast that it felt as if butterflies were fanning his face. Through her wispy body, he could see the far wall in perfect detail. Goosebumps rose on his trembling forearms. And if his hair had not been spiky in the first place, it was certainly doing a really good hedgehog show now.

  Miriam raised a hand to his face. She made a stroking movement but didn’t quite touch. Ralph felt as though a shower of ice cold glitter or a small comet had just flown by. ‘You do seem a little youthful,’ she said, ‘without your moustache and monocle. But then you always were a frivolous thing. Oh Rafe, tell me you’ve come back for ever. Stop teasing. Show me your manly form.’

  Ralph made a noise like a squealing rat.

  ‘Say you love me. Show me the ring.’

  ‘What ring? I haven’t got a ring,’ Ralph tweeted. In panic, he fumbled around in his pockets. Perhaps if he showed her there was nothing there but a pebble and a conker and an old laggy band and… ‘All I’ve got is this.’

  He opened his hand. And lo and behold and wouldn’t you know it, there in his palm was the stone he’d taken from Jack Bilt’s fridge. It twinkled in the darkness and changed colour twice, gradually shaping a soft blue halo right around Miriam’s vaporous form.

  The phantom gasped with delight. ‘My sweetheart, it’s so beautiful.’ And in her joy, she threw her arms around him.

  Contact. The moment Ralph had been dreading. He closed his eyes and grimaced for England, wondering if his body had now been possessed and he would turn into a woman at periodic intervals, and a priest would have to be miniaturised in to exorcise the spirit that was wrestling for his soul. But nothing quite that dramatic happened. The stone sent out a pulse of light and Miriam was propelled like a burst balloon into the cobwebs in the corner of the room.

  ‘Oh, Rafe. You cad. How could you?’ she wailed, her voice thinning out to a faraway dot as she disappeared back to humanknowswhere.

  Freed from her aura, Ralph found he was able to shout without restraint. Mini-people stirred on their mini mattresses. Tom came hurrying up, pulling on a T-shirt. ‘Ralph, are you OK? Are you having a nightmare?’

  Ralph shook his head. ‘M
iriam was here.’

  A look of concern passed over Tom’s face.

  But Ralph was no longer afraid. In fact, a sudden ray of hope had fired his heart. He looked at the stone, bouncing its blue light off the four walls. It had power, this stone, the power to ward off ghosts. So what had it been doing in Jack Bilt’s fridge?

  And was it the key to defeating him?

  Problems, Problems

  Early next morning, Tom called a meeting of the whole house. ‘Last night,’ he announced, ‘Ralph had a visitation – from Miriam.’

  ‘So what’s new?’ Kyle grunted, faking a yawn.

  ‘He saw her,’ said Neville, knocking ash from his pipe. (Ralph wished he’d knock it against Salter’s head.)

  ‘Saw her?’ Jemima gasped. Her long, fair curls shook like wallflowers in a spring breeze.

  ‘Oh, how lovely, what’s she like?’ asked Mrs Spink.

  ‘Huffy,’ said Ralph. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

  Mrs Spink steepled hers in a thoughtful pose. ‘In the spirit world, they’d say “troubled”, Ralph.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ muttered Wally, who’d been hit by a flying can just the day before and had a spreading purple bruise on his elbow to prove it.

  Tom called the group to order. ‘She appears to be a young society girl, aged about seventeen. We’re not sure why she materialised. It seems she made a connection with Ralph and confused him with someone called ‘Rafe’, who we’re guessing was her intended partner.’

  Kyle Salter exploded with laughter.

  ‘Be quiet. It’s not funny,’ Penny snapped at him.

  And just for a second, the bully flinched. Ralph wondered idly if a good strong word from a loving parent early in his life might have made Kyle a different boy. He was certainly getting savaged for his bad behaviour now. Sweeping her hair firmly out of her eyes, Penny lectured him sharply. ‘Ghosts don’t haunt a place without good reason. There’s usually some kind of tragedy involved. This Miriam girl would have died here, most likely. And from what Ralph’s told me it sounds as though she was jilted by her fiancé. It’s my guess she died of a broken heart.’

  ‘Oh dear. How dreadful,’ Mrs Spink said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Penny. ‘If she’s throwing things about, she’s emotionally disturbed and might be seeking revenge on my son.’

  ‘I don’t think she was, Mum,’ Ralph said quietly.

  ‘Ralph,’ his mum hissed in that not so very quiet ‘please don’t contradict me in company’ voice.

  Ralph shuffled his feet. ‘It’s just…I don’t know. I thought she sort of liked me.’

  Tom coughed into his fist. ‘Your mum has a point, though, Ralph. We should be on our guard. You did zap Miriam, remember. If she wakes up somewhere with a big ghostly headache she might really start to move the furniture about.’

  As if by magic, bangs and crashes of all description began to filter down from the tower room. This wasn’t the first commotion Ralph had heard up there. It seemed to be Miriam’s focal point, as though she was having an ongoing ‘domestic’ with the occupant of that strange, locked place. As the crashes settled, the wailing voice shouted, ‘Belt the keeper!’ or something like it. Ralph scratched his head. What was that deranged voice saying?

  ‘Zapped her?’

  He turned to see Kyle staring hard at him.

  Salter switched his gaze to Tom, who by now had seated the stone on his palm, showing it round like a jewel on a cushion. ‘Ralph took this from Jack’s fridge, just before he was miniaturised. We’re not sure what it is, but it repelled Miriam when she touched it. Doesn’t seem to have the same effect on humans.’

  Mrs Spink closed her eyes and cupped a hand above the stone, catching its radiance in her palm. It was pulsing away like an amber-coloured heart. Twice now Ralph had seen it change colour. Was the heat making it unstable? he wondered.

  ‘It is a crystal. It has great energy,’ said Sylvia. ‘I do not believe it is of this world.’

  The electrician, Wally, leant forward to inspect it. ‘Look how the light’s bouncing round inside it. I think it’s sparking, creating a charge.’

  ‘It is in tune with the cosmos,’ Mrs Spink pronounced.

  ‘Dunno about that,’ said Wally. ‘If you ask me, it’s some sort of power cell or battery. Maybe it’s connected with the workings of the transgenerator?’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s really dandy,’ said Kyle.

  ‘Meaning?’ Tom asked.

  Kyle threw up a hand. ‘How often do you go to your fridge?’

  Neville blew a funnel of smoke from his nose. ‘I take the lad’s point, Tom. How long’s it going to be before Jack checks t’fridge and finds out this stone thing’s missing?’

  ‘And when he does,’ applauded Kyle, ‘where’s the first place he’ll look for his ‘cosmic battery’? Right here, in Miniville. Well done, Rafe, old bean, nice double whammy – bagged off the ghost and set us all up for a rumble with Jack. The only consolation is, with any luck, you’ll be first in the fingernail jar.’

  ‘But the stone was shut away in a box,’ said Ralph, clocking fretful glances from the miniones around him; Jemima’s face was a mess of despair. ‘He probably doesn’t open it all that often.’

  Which was a perfectly reasonable conclusion to arrive at, because nothing nasty had happened…yet. Kyle’s logic, though, was harsh but correct. If Jack discovered the stone was missing, his list of suspects for the robbery would be short. Very short. One name, most likely. ‘The boy,’ R. Perfect.

  Tom took a more optimistic view. ‘All the same, this could still be a breakthrough. If this does turn out to be something Jack needs, we might be able to use it to our advantage.’

  ‘How?’ asked Wally. ‘We’re workmen, not scientists.’

  Tom looked at them all in turn. ‘It’s possible we could do a deal with him: exchange the stone for the release of Penny, Sylvia and the children.’

  ‘No,’ said Penny, standing up, facing him. ‘One out, all out. Or I don’t go.’

  Tom looked at her sadly.

  ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘I won’t go. That’s final.’

  Without you, thought Ralph, filling in the gaps. She won’t go without you, that’s what she means.

  ‘Me, neither. I’m no kid,’ growled Kyle, beating his gorilla fist against his chest. But Ralph didn’t buy this act of bravado. Why, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the greedy squint in Kyle’s cold eyes when his gaze fell upon the mysterious stone? Or maybe it was just Kyle Salter, period?

  Daylight flooded in.

  ‘Time’s up; he’s lifted the sheet,’ said Tom.

  Ralph glanced through the window and saw Jack throwing the covering aside. The builder’s thin, scarred face loomed close. His bloodshot eyeball searched out his workforce.

  ‘RISE AND SHINE!’ He sneezed violently and knocked the trestle table. The house shook as though a minor earthquake had hit. Spud O’Hare, with only one arm for balance, lost his footing and fell against the wall, crying out in pain as his shoulder took the impact. Penny and Mrs Spink went to him, settling him onto a nearby mattress. A slate came crashing off the roof and the vase that Luke Baker was cruelly mixed up in wobbled and toppled off the mantelpiece.

  Kyle Salter dived forward and caught it.

  Even Ralph, for all he hated the Salter gang, breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘To work,’ said Tom, picking up his toolbox. ‘We’ll discuss this again, later. Any bright ideas about the stone, I’d like to hear them. Ralph, come on, you stick with me today. Long time since I trained an apprentice.’

  And they went downstairs, into the parlour.

  On the way, Tom returned the stone to Ralph and told him to keep it well out of sight. Ralph buried it deep in his hanky, in his pocket. He thought back to Tom’s words about doing a deal and a terrible sadness gripped his heart. He said, ‘Jack’s never going to let us out of here, is he?’

  Tom paused a second, then walked on. ‘We need to fix a valve o
n this,’ he said, dropping his tools beside an old-fashioned radiator.

  ‘He can’t let us out. We’ll tell,’ Ralph continued. ‘He’ll keep us here, won’t he? Looking after the house? Putting doors right when they fall off their hinges. Making sure the wallpaper peels when it’s supposed to. We’ll be his workmen for ever, won’t we? We’ll all be Miniville ghosts.’

  Tom thought about this quietly and then he said, ‘During the Second World War, three captured British soldiers found a way out of their prison camp by digging a tunnel in the yard outside their hut. They covered the hole with a gymnasium horse the Germans had allowed them to exercise with. The prisoners dug for months, concealing the soil they’d scraped from the tunnel in bags suspended inside their trousers, which they shook out when they walked around the yard. All three escaped, because they were clever and had courage and because they never once stopped believing they could do it – and neither will we. Jack will slip up one day, Ralph. We’ll find his weakness; this stone may be it. Keep looking. Keep believing. That’s all I ask. Now, radiator.’

  Ralph nodded and studied the valve. ‘Is it leaking?’

  ‘No, but it’s going to. This is Miniville, remember.’ Tom opened his tools and took out a wrench. He was spinning its silver-coloured jaws to size when Ralph heard a splattering noise outside.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Tom, aware that he’d lost his mate’s concentration.

  ‘Nothing. I think it’s just started to rain.’

  A few pudgy drops flew past the window.

  ‘Rain?’ said Tom.

  Ralph looked again. Yes, a heavy shower was definitely coming down.

  And then the dumb gong banged inside his head…

  …erm, Ralph, how can it rain inside a fish tank?

  Water! Water!

  ‘WATER!’ Tom yelled at the top of his voice, clanking the side of his toolbox with the wrench. To Ralph’s amazement, he quickly turned the box over and spilt the contents with a loud, metallic clatter.