The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

  What happened next was so ghastly that Manners thought he would die of it. His head was thrust back by an invisible hand. He was seized and shaken, and beaten and punched ... but that was not the worst of it. As he fell back against the wall there was a kind of flurry as though something was being dislodged.

  And then he felt claws scrabbling across his face. He could not see them but he knew that they were there – grey and vile and utterly obscene. And after the claws, trailing across his cheek, came something long and cold and scaly. A tail ...

  Then, from the dark nothingness that was attacking him, there came a scream.

  Ned had wasted no time after the doors clanged shut and left him outside.

  Somehow he had to get a message through to Sir George and the police – but how? And then he remembered the whaler tied up to the jetty. All seagoing ships had a short-wave radio. If only he wasn’t too late.

  The boat was still there – but there were signs of activity; ropes being coiled, the sound of an engine starting, and men moving purposefully on the deck. It was only now that he was afraid that they wouldn’t let him use the radio. Men who poached the rarest and loveliest of whales would not be the kind that helped people in need.

  Then, as he ran along the jetty, he noticed something strange. The Norwegian flag had gone and a new flag had been hoisted in its place.

  It was a most unusual flag, made up of a pair of long red underpants, a green scarf and a purple cap.

  Where had he seen those colours before? Of course! On the walls of the Mundanians’ hut. They were the national colours of Mundania! And now the man who had been coiling the rope turned.

  ‘So! What you do here?’ said Slavek. ‘You must go to tell—’

  Ned in a rush of words explained. ‘I need to use the radio. I need someone to send a message, please, please. They’re in such danger!’

  Slavek nodded. ‘Come with me.’

  He led him into a cubicle where a man in oilskins was sitting, guarded by one of Slavek’s cousins with a gun.

  ‘We have taken over boat,’ said Slavek cheerfully. ‘Now we go home.’ He prodded the radio operator. ‘When he has sent your message we throw him in sea with the others.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. We need boat.’

  ‘But what will happen to them?’

  Slavek shrugged.

  ‘They can swim, perhaps. Is pity, because they are bad men.’

  The last thing Ned saw as he raced back to the lab was the old lady with the gold tooth leaning over the railings, waving goodbye.

  The steel doors were open. The lab was a welter of broken glass, spilt liquid and upturned furniture. Rollo was hanging on to the rope of the calf. Madlyn was bent over a sink, trying not to be sick.

  And the ghosts had become visible – but although they had saved the children and the calf, they did not look triumphant or victorious.

  They were clustered anxiously round Ranulf, who was sitting on a locker with his head in his hands. No wonder that this stately and dignified ghost had given such a dreadful scream. Ranulf’s shirt was open, and something – obviously – was most seriously wrong.

  Of Manners and Fangster there was no sign.

  They had locked themselves into the cloakroom. It was the room where they scrubbed up before operations: white and clinical and disinfected. There were a row of basins, a shower and two toilets in adjacent cubicles.

  They were safe here. The door of the cloakroom was barred, and if necessary they could retreat further, into the toilets, and lock them too.

  ‘They won’t ... get us ... here,’ said Manners. His teeth were chattering and he had bruises on his cheek from one of the canisters which had flown through the air and hit him. The vet was the colour of cheese and was trembling uncontrollably. Both men had forgotten unicorns and the millions of pounds they had hoped to make. All they wanted now was to save their skins.

  And then they saw that something had happened to the door. It was still tightly shut, but in the wooden panel there had appeared a kind of fuzziness ... a shimmering shape which leaped down on to the floor and crept towards them.

  ‘It’s a rat,’ screeched Manners, backing away.

  But not an ordinary rat. A rat out of the vilest of dreams: huge and misshapen and scabrous, with yellow teeth and with a body that wavered and flickered and disappeared and then re-formed itself.

  Slowly, it crawled forward, opening its mouth, searching – and then stopped.

  ‘Shoo! Shoo – go away.’

  Fangster grabbed the toilet brush and hit the animal hard across the back. There was a strange, squelchy sound and the rat vanished.

  ‘It’s gone!’

  ‘No. No. Look, it’s re-formed itself. Oh Lord, it’s obscene!’

  The rat moved closer and the two men backed away, gibbering with fear. This was the worst thing so far, this disgusting, shape-changing thing, looking for something to chew.

  ‘Maybe we could jump over it and make a dash for it,’ suggested Manners.

  But as soon as they moved, the rat moved too – sitting up on its hind legs, chomping ... seeking ...

  It had come very close to Manners’s foot; it opened its mouth.

  But what it found was wrong. It did not want hard non-ectoplasmic shoes; it did not want trouser legs smelling of disinfectant.

  The rat wanted what it had always had and needed. It wanted what had violently and suddenly been torn from him. It wanted the familiar hairy chest and well-known heart of the man to whom it belonged.

  Shaken and upset and displaced, Ranulf’s rat held the two men prisoner and waited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Uncle George was a careful driver. His old Bentley usually chugged through the village at not much more than the speed of a tractor.

  But he was not driving slowly now. Ever since Ned’s message had come over the crackling receiver of a schoolboy in the village who belonged to a radio club, Uncle George had behaved like a maniac.

  He had collected his blunderbuss, and his pistol from the war, and his grandfather’s fowling piece, ready to blow to smithereens anyone who had harmed the children. Emily wanted to come with him; she had become quite hysterical since she had found that the children had gone.

  ‘I want to be beside you,’ she cried. ‘I want to shoot somebody too!’

  But George had persuaded her that it would be best if she went down to the police station in case they wanted some more particulars. And then, just as he was setting off, a car had drawn up, and out poured three plump ladies in black overcoats who greeted him like long-lost relations, though he had never set eyes on them before.

  ‘Cooee – we’re the banshees,’ shouted the eldest and plumpest of the ladies. ‘We thought we’d call in on our way to Blackscar to tell—’

  ‘Blackscar,’ said Uncle George sharply. ‘What do you know about Blackscar?’

  ‘Well, it’s the most extraordinary thing,’ said the eldest banshee. ‘We just had a flash!’

  ‘It came to us when we woke from our nap,’ said the middle banshee. ‘We’d been wondering and wondering ever since we saw them in the gravel pit.’

  ‘So we thought we must go up and make sure, because we could see how troubled they were and when we remembered—’

  But Sir George was in no mood to listen to this insane and meaningless babble.

  ‘Could you stand aside, please?’ he barked. ‘If you want to go to Blackscar you can follow me later.’

  But the banshees had taken no notice.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to Blackscar too? You mean you had the same idea about The Feet and—’

  But Sir George had run out of patience.

  ‘Out of my way, ladies,’ he snapped.

  He opened the door and climbed in, but before he could start the engine the three banshees had got in the back.

  ‘It’s amazing. It’s such a coincidence! And think how much petrol we’ll save! We’re all ready, Sir George. Aren’
t we, girls?’

  If there had been one banshee George would have thrown her out. Even two. But throwing three well-fed banshees out of his car was going to take too long. He ground his dentures together and stepped on the accelerator.

  So now he drove through the night. The message from the ship giving the location of the island had mentioned the stolen cattle, but to his surprise it was not the cattle he was thinking about, it was the children. He tried to remember how upset he had been when he heard that Rollo and Madlyn were coming for the summer, and now he realized that nothing mattered except that they and Ned were safe.

  Sir George was an old man. The drive in the mist and the rain exhausted him more than he would have believed. When at last he came to Blackscar and stopped the car he almost slumped over the wheel.

  Then slowly he raised his head. He had stopped at the edge of a small bluff which overlooked the sea and the island.

  And what he saw was something out of a story from the beginning of time.

  Seemingly walking on the water, came the Wild White Cattle of Clawstone, their horns glinting in the first rays of the morning sun. At their head was the king bull, and sitting on his back, urging him forwards, a shimmering Indian goddess with streaming hair. Behind the king came the old cow with her crumpled horn, limping a little; and then, strung out in single file over the causeway, the rest of his beasts: the angry bull, the two calves who were special friends, the cow who loved stinging nettles ...

  He saw them all and he knew them all. The morning light grew stronger and the shimmering goddess turned into Sunita. And now George saw the children. Water was already lapping over the causeway but they walked steadily, their heads held high. Ned and Madlyn were in front, helping to keep the cattle moving.

  And at the end of the procession came Rollo, leading the smallest calf on a rope.

  For a moment Sir George just looked, ashamed of the moisture in his eyes. The banshees were asleep. Then he hurried down to the sands. The king bull, finding himself on dry land, bellowed and tossed his head, then set off for a field behind the chapel, and the rest of the cattle followed him.

  ‘Let them be,’ said Sir George. ‘We’ll get them rounded up later.’ He could see how dozy the beasts were, still drugged perhaps. They would not roam too far. ‘What about you?’ he asked the children. ‘You’re not hurt?’

  Ned shook his head. ‘We’re fine. Madlyn’s breathed in some anaesthetic, but she’s getting better.’

  Madlyn nodded. ‘I’m all right – but the ghosts are a bit shaky, and Ranulf’s had an awful shock.’

  But Sir George was not interested in the ghosts. What he wanted was to get his revenge on the villains.

  ‘Where are they?’ he asked. ‘Where are the men who did this?’

  It had taken some time to get all the cattle ashore and into the field. Now Rollo handed his uncle the binoculars, and pointed.

  Sir George focused and turned the glasses on to the Blackscar Box. The tide, they say, comes in at the speed of a galloping horse. Now it had completely drowned the causeway, and the two men who had tried to run off the island had been caught fair and square.

  Looking through the glasses, Sir George found himself staring at the terrified, grimacing faces of Dr Manners and the vet.

  ‘I’ll get them when they come ashore,’ said Sir George gleefully. ‘I won’t save my bullets.’

  But at that moment there was the noise of sirens and three police cars came roaring down the hill.

  ‘Bother,’ said Sir George. ‘They’ll want to arrest them, I suppose.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I haven’t shot anyone for years.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The cattle were back in Clawstone Park. The drugs they had been given had worn off; the beasts roamed as they had always done. Rollo, during his last days before his parents’ return, watched from the wall.

  The fuss and the excitement had died down – the stories in the newspapers, the visits from the police – but not everything was quite the same. The smallest calf, the one the children had rescued from the operating table, no longer behaved in the way that the Wild White Cattle of Clawstone Park were supposed to behave. It had become tame and stood by the gate mooing for the children, and though Sir George did not approve of this, the calf became a pet and wandered in and out of the courtyard and up the stairs.

  Nor were the ghosts completely the same. They had used up so much ectoplasmic force at Blackscar that they wanted to rest rather than haunt.

  ‘We will haunt, of course; we’ll do anything to help,’ said Brenda. ‘But I don’t seem to be into strangling the way I was.’

  But the real trouble was Ranulf. Ranulf in a way had been the leader of the ghosts, the one that spoke for them. Without the rat he became a slightly fatter ghost, and quieter.

  ‘You’re pleased, though, aren’t you?’ people would ask.

  ‘Of course I’m pleased,’ he would snap. ‘What do you think?’

  But he was very grumpy all the same – and of course the horror of Ranulf opening his shirt had been very much part of the haunting. When a ghost opens his shirt and shows people a rat gnawing his heart it is one thing. When he opens his shirt and shows them an ordinary chest with a few hairs on it, it is another.

  Then there were The Feet. They had forced The Feet to come back with them, but they were damp all the time and no one doubted that it was tears rather than sweat that they were producing. Nor was there any chance that they would be much use on Open Days. Ned had put on the CD of eightsome reels, and one toe had twitched slightly but that was all.

  ‘I could go back to making lavender bags,’ said Aunt Emily, but Madlyn said quickly that she thought this would be bad for Aunt Emily’s eyes and they would think of some other way of getting hold of money.

  And then something quite unexpected happened.

  An American who was on holiday in Great Britain stopped his car outside Clawstone and asked if it would be possible to look round. He was very interested in old buildings, he said, and though he knew it was not an Open Day he would be so pleased.

  Because he had asked so nicely and seemed such a friendly man, Sir George agreed, and he asked the children if they would show him round.

  The American liked the dungeon and the armoury and the banqueting hall – and then they showed him the museum, where he admired the sewing machine and the stuffed duck that had choked on a stickleback and the collection of Interesting Stones.

  And then he stopped in front of the Hoggart.

  ‘My, my!’ he said. ‘But that’s amazing. That’s extraordinary. I’m a Hoggart!’

  The children looked at him, hoping he had not gone off his head. A Hoggart was a small brown thing with a few letters stamped on it. What’s more, it had been found in Clawstone; there was no other Hoggart in the world. Cousin Howard had spent many hours in his library trying to find out about Hoggarts and he had found nothing.

  But the man repeated what he had said.

  ‘I’m a Hoggart. I’m Frederick Washington Hoggart. Here – look.’

  And he took out his wallet and showed them his credit cards – rows and rows of them – and sure enough, he was a Hoggart. He was also in a very excited state.

  ‘Could you please ask your great-uncle to let me see that thing? I’ll handle it so carefully you wouldn’t believe. Only I must see it. I must see those letters underneath.’

  So they called Uncle George and he took the Hoggart from its stand and handed it to the American.

  He looked at it for a long time. Then very slowly he turned it inside out, to reveal a few patches of matted hair.

  ‘Oh my, my ... I can’t believe it – it’s incredible,’ he said, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘This is the most amazing day of my life.’

  He was so overcome that they had to find him a chair.

  ‘See those letters,’ he said when he had recovered himself. ‘They are the name of my great-greatgrandfather.’

  And he told them about Josiah F
rederick Hoggart, who had fought under George Washington in the American War of Independence.

  ‘He was with him when they crossed the Delaware and overcame the British, and later he helped him with his business affairs. And of course Washington never forgot a friend and before he died he left instructions that Josiah should be invited to his funeral. It was a big honour, you can imagine – he was given a place right in front and needless to say he ordered a new wig. A special one made by the best craftsman in the state. It was powdered, of course; he wore it under his tricorne. And then when everyone swept off their hats because the coffin was coming past, Josiah swept off his wig as well!’

  Mr Hoggart broke off, overcome again by emotion.

  ‘Oh, the disgrace,’ he went on. ‘The embarrassment! He sent his slaves running after it but it was blown into the Potomac River and was washed away. It was a terrible blow to his family – the wig worn at the interment of George Washington lost and gone. It would have been our way of proving what an old family the Hoggarts are.’

  He stopped and dabbed his eyes again.

  ‘It’s very small for a wig,’ said Madlyn.

  ‘Well, it’s only part of it, of course – but it’s enough to show that it’s authentic. Oh, wait till I tell my wife – Clara’s so proud of the Hoggart ancestry.’ He broke off again, shaking his head. ‘Only I don’t understand – how could it possibly have got to Clawstone?’

  Sir George had been listening carefully. ‘Actually it was found in an old chest in our attic – and now I think of it, it was a sea-chest. My great-great-uncle was the captain of a frigate and he might well have sailed as far as the mouth of the Potomac. It’s not impossible that one of his sailors picked it up.’

  The American was still holding the Hoggart in his hands. It looked more than ever like part of a Pekinese that had fallen on hard times. Now he rose to his feet.