The creature crawled inside the handbag and the figure trudged quickly away from the Hall. That’s why she had smelled of raspberries: she had Garstigan hiding in her handbag the whole time. He must have let himself out and hidden when she came to pick up the twins. That would explain how the handbag had moved!
He made sure the window was properly shut, then quickly returned all the books to their places on the shelves. What if Mrs Puddingham-Pye decided to try again that night? There was no way he was going to be able to sleep after that, so he might as well guard the secret passage as best as he could. He curled up on the sofa and, cuddling Sherbet for warmth, went over everything that had happened since he had first arrived in Dundoodle. He was still thinking when the sky lightened behind the curtains and the snow-covered world outside was revealed.
After a bleary-eyed breakfast, he was surprised to find Fliss and Billy knocking at the front door, bundled up in heavy coats and scarves and stamping snow from their boots.
‘School’s closed!’ said Fliss, marching gleefully into the hallway. ‘The pipes have burst so there’s no heating. If we’re lucky it won’t reopen until after Christmas.’
‘I’ve some news of my own!’ said Archie. The two children warmed themselves up in front of the roaring library fire as he told them what had happened.
‘Mrs P-P is the keeper?’ said Billy, astonished. ‘That means she must be some kind of witch. Or know something about magic.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, amongst other things,’ said Archie. ‘Great-Uncle Archibald must have known about magic, and they’re both McBudges. Maybe there’s magic running in the family.’
‘It also means she’s the one who’s trying to stop you completing the Quest,’ said Fliss, tickling Sherbet’s ears. ‘Whatever we’re looking for, she doesn’t want you to get it. I bet she stole the map from my hideout!’
Billy perked up at the mention of the map.
‘That reminds me!’ he said. ‘I knew I’d seen that building plan before.’ He rummaged in his black bag and dragged out a folder bound with an elastic band. ‘During my research on wyrdie-related places in Dundoodle, I found this in the school library.’ He began to flick through the yellowed pages of the folder as the others looked on curiously. ‘Years ago, some pupils did a project on local buildings and landmarks, finding out about their history, making drawings of them, that kind of thing. They even made plans of the rooms in the buildings using information from historical documents.’
‘Did you find our building?’ said Fliss excitedly. ‘If you have, then we don’t need to worry about the stolen map.’
‘I did,’ grinned Billy. ‘And you’ll never guess where it is …’
‘I will,’ said Archie. ‘It’s Pookiecrag Castle.’
‘You’re right!’ said Billy, slightly deflated.
‘Pookiecrag Castle?’ squealed Fliss. ‘The most haunted place in Dundoodle?’
‘Nobody goes there,’ said Billy. ‘It rates nine point eight on the Macabre Creepy Scale – just below Auntie Doreen and her moustache.’
‘Nobody goes there except a true McBudge,’ said Archie, ‘and I have the Ring of the McBudges.’ He had brought the wooden box belonging to his dad out from its hideaway in the wardrobe and placed it on his great-uncle’s desk that morning. Opening it now, he laid out each of the items they had found on the desk’s leather-lined surface.
‘Do you think that’s what you’re supposed to do?’ asked Fliss, joining him at the desk. ‘Travel to the castle?’ Archie nodded.
‘Yesterday you said that the things we had collected reminded you of your tool kit. I think that’s exactly what this is – a tool kit to help us find the treasure.’
‘Do you know what each object is for?’ said Billy, turning over the scrap of paper with the peculiar words on it.
‘No,’ Archie admitted. ‘But I’ve an idea of where to start. And I’ve an idea what the treasure is too.’
‘What?’ said Fliss eagerly. ‘Gold? Diamonds?’
‘Or an enchanted amulet?’ said Billy hopefully. ‘One that grants the power to cross over into the nether realm and converse with the spirits of the ancient druids?’
‘No, no,’ said Archie. ‘And no. I have to prove I’m worthy of the name McBudge, worthy to carry on the business. In the last few days I’ve learned that the McBudge business relies almost entirely on one thing.’
‘The secret ingredient!’ said Fliss. ‘That’s the treasure!’
‘There’s no trace of it anywhere in the Hall or the factory,’ said Archie, replacing all the items in the box. ‘But where better to hide this really valuable dod stuff than the one place no one will go – Pookiecrag Castle. Remember how the golden Dragum pointed to it?’
‘I still like my amulet idea better,’ said Billy. ‘But if the treasure is “dod” then I can see why Mrs P-P would want to stop you finishing the Quest. Without the ingredient, the McBudge business falls apart. Then she’s ready to buy it up cheaply.’
‘And if she gets her hands on the secret ingredient later,’ said Archie, ‘she can get the business going again and make a tidy profit.’
‘But Pookiecrag Castle island is on the other side of the loch,’ Fliss pointed out. ‘How do we even get there? All the paths are blocked by snow and it’s not like there’s a bridge.’
Archie tucked the box under his arm. Walking over to the bookcase, he tugged the copy of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, opening the secret passage. ‘We have our own personal entrance to the loch,’ he said. ‘I’ve a hunch we’ll find our transport nearby.’ As he entered the hidden doorway he glanced at the painting above the fireplace. Was that a smile he saw on the face of his great-uncle?
Fliss and Billy were uneasy, but grabbed their coats and followed him down the steps of the shadow-filled tunnel, with Sherbet trotting behind. In the cave, the wyrdie-lantern still shone from its place on the wall. Ice encrusted the edges of the loch, which was veiled in a silvery mist.
Archie placed the box on the stone floor and opened the lid.
‘The first thing we found was the bell,’ he said, taking it out and holding it up to the light. ‘I think it’s the first part of the tool kit we have to use.’ They watched as he carried it over to the empty alcove he had noticed the day before. The bell had a metal loop on its top, which fitted neatly over the hook. Archie picked up the tiny hammer that hung from the chain beneath the alcove.
‘Do you think you should ring it?’ said Billy. ‘You could be summoning Saggie Aggie, the mermaid of the loch. Macabre Creepy Scale rating of seven. She’s supposed to be so old her hair’s all fallen out so she uses her comb to scratch her scaly bum.’
‘It’s what I have to do,’ said Archie. ‘I just know it.’
He tapped the bell gently with the hammer and it vibrated with a clear note.
They waited. Nothing happened. No elderly, bald mermaid appeared. There was silence.
Then, from the distant shore, where they knew the castle lay hidden behind the wraith-like mist, a dark shape appeared, gliding through the water.
‘Look!’ said Fliss, pointing at the loch. ‘Something’s coming towards us.’
It was a small boat. There was no doubt it was heading straight for them, its dragon-headed prow glaring at them fearsomely.
‘Who’s steering it?’ said Archie. ‘There’s no one aboard!’
‘It could be the dreaded invisible oarsmen of the Viking ghost ship of the Fjord of Fjurge!’ warned Billy. ‘They used to raid these parts over a thousand years ago.’
The mysterious empty boat gently came to rest on the beach. Sherbet growled but no ghostly Vikings appeared. The children approached it cautiously.
‘It’s like it’s waiting for us,’ said Archie.
Fliss rapped the sides of the boat with her knuckles, testing for a concealed engine.
‘Maybe it’s remote-controlled,’ she said.
‘No,’ said Archie, running his hand over the boat’s carved dragon
’s head. ‘There’s no machinery in here at all. This is magic. This is how we’ll get to the castle.’
‘Do you really want to go?’ said Billy. He looked at them anxiously.
‘Yes,’ said Archie. ‘I’ve never been so sure of anything.’ The end of the Quest – and the end of the factory’s troubles – could be in sight.
Archie removed the wyrdie-light lantern from the wall and placed it and the box into the boat. Then they clambered inside. Sherbet whined, unsure of the strange craft.
‘How do we make it move?’ asked Fliss. As if in answer, the boat slid smoothly into the loch and was swallowed up by the mist. It cut through the gloomy water, picking up speed as it went. The children clung tightly on to its sides as the frosty air churned around them. Archie held up the lantern to see better, but the mist was too thick. However, its golden light helped to soothe their nerves and keep their spirits up, as they made their hushed journey.
Eventually the jagged towers of the castle emerged from the haze in front of them. The boat navigated a course for itself through a labyrinth of sharp rocks that jutted from the water like teeth, and drew alongside a snow-covered stone quay.
But theirs wasn’t the only boat moored by the castle. Someone else had got there first.
‘It must be Mrs Puddingham-Pye!’ whispered Fliss. ‘She’s beaten us to it!’
They scrambled out on to the quay, warily approaching the motorboat. It was empty. Fresh footprints led away towards the silent, threatening walls of the castle.
‘These are the same footprints as those we found in the factory,’ said Billy, as Sherbet sniffed around the flattened snow. ‘So she’s the one who stole the map!’
‘What shall we do?’ said Fliss.
‘We go on,’ said Archie. ‘She might have the map but she doesn’t have the rest of the tool kit. And there’s three of us and one of her.’
‘She’s got her flying monkey as well, don’t forget,’ said Fliss.
‘And we’ve got Sherbet,’ said Archie. The dog wagged its stubby tail determinedly.
Archie tucked the box under his arm and held up the lantern to light their way in the mist, as they trudged towards the castle’s crumbled gates. A cold wind moaned through the skeletal building, its doleful ruins smothered with frostbitten ivy. There were no lights in any of the windows and no signs of life of any kind. But the place had a feeling of watchfulness, just like Archie had noticed when he had first arrived at Honeystone Hall.
‘If a wolf were to howl right now I would probably wet myself,’ said Billy in a slightly strangled voice. ‘I just thought I’d warn you.’
‘You’re supposed to be the expert on creepiness!’ hissed Fliss.
‘We were meant to come here,’ said Archie firmly. ‘We mustn’t be afraid. But we must be quiet and watch out! Mrs P-P is in there somewhere …’
They stepped through fallen doorways, and slipped and slid over tumbled walls and stairs, the stones slick with moss and ice. It was hard work. The snow was patchy inside the castle and they soon lost the trail of footprints. Billy’s chilled hands held the old hand-drawn map up to the lantern’s light.
‘Do you know where we are?’ asked Fliss. ‘It feels like we’re walking in circles.’
‘The stolen map had a dragon on it,’ Billy said, ‘which pointed to a room in the centre of the castle. But the castle’s so ruined it’s hard to tell where one room starts and another finishes. It’s just a great big frozen pile of spooky rubble.’
‘We can’t give up,’ said Archie. ‘Let’s try and head to the middle and see what we find.’
They followed a passage that led under a grand arch and into a wide hall, open to the heavy sky. More snow was on its way. A massive stone fireplace was slumped against one wall, the broad chimney breast reaching to where the roof had once been, like the crooked backbone of a giant.
‘I think this is it,’ said Billy. ‘This was the room the dragon was pointing at.’ Archie glanced at the map. Something on the page caught his attention. He was about to speak when Fliss grabbed his arm.
‘Look at the sky!’ she said. ‘What’s that?’
At first Archie thought they were shooting stars: fast-moving smudges of light leaving fiery trails through the clouds. But it was still daylight, and these stars moved in formation like a flock of birds, now diving downwards towards the castle. The glowing fireballs swept into the hall, circling the room several times, and buzzing past the astonished children. They weaved in and out of the tumbledown walls and doorways, lighting up the stonework so that spiked shadows danced about the ruins. More and more of the little comet-like objects followed, a swarm of living fireworks.
Archie and the others looked on, both amazed and delighted. One smaller fireball paused by the children for a moment, as if to inspect them, before chasing after the others. All at once they launched themselves into the sky, before turning back towards the earth and plummeting down the chimney, one after the other. The children saw that the stone hearth had opened – there was a hidden trapdoor in the floor of the fireplace! The procession of fireballs funnelled out of the bottom of the chimney, into the fireplace and straight through the trapdoor, disappearing into the gloom underground. With the last one through, the trapdoor shut with a heavy clunk and the castle fell once more into its watchful half-light, leaving them with only the glimmer from Archie’s lantern.
‘Did you see?’ said Fliss, turning to face the boys and breathless with excitement. ‘Did you SEE?’
‘Yes,’ said Archie, his eyes shining. ‘Dragons. Lots and lots of little dragons!’
‘The legends about Pookiecrag Castle were true!’ said Billy, as they scrambled over to the fireplace. ‘It is haunted by flickering shapes – but not ghosts. Dragons!’
‘They weren’t any bigger than kittens,’ said Fliss. ‘Not what I expected dragons to look like at all. They looked … cute.’
‘Dragons are everywhere in McBudge history,’ said Archie. ‘Now we know why. The dragon on the map pointed here, to the fireplace. We have to follow them!’
Billy stamped on the hearth. It looked solid and certainly wasn’t going to move easily.
‘You must need to use something from the tool kit!’ he said. ‘Perhaps the hammer?’
Archie shook his head. The hammer was tiny – it would never work against these large flagstones. He waved the lantern over the chimney breast. It had been carved with shapes and patterns: dragons and plants snaked over the canopy, drawing Archie’s eye along with them. The twisting design focused on a single point, a small circle cut deeply into the stone.
‘Look at this,’ he said. The circle contained an image they all recognised.
‘A tower on a shield,’ said Fliss. ‘The McBudge crest that’s on all the packets of McBudge Fudge. And on that ring we found.’
Archie took the Ring of the McBudges from the box.
‘The circle in the wall is the same size,’ he said, placing the ring into it. ‘They were made to fit.’ As soon as the metal touched the stone, they heard a soft scraping sound from the ground beneath them. A flagstone in the hearth slowly moved aside, revealing a pitch-black tunnel below, accessed by some worn steps.
‘This is why we needed the lantern,’ said Archie, as he gingerly made his way into the tunnel. He waited for the others to follow him down the steps. ‘We’ve used the bell, the map, the ring and the lantern. That just leaves the message on the piece of paper, and the hammer. We must be getting close to finding the treasure.’
There was no sign of the dragons anywhere. They walked at a swift pace, with Sherbet trotting a little in front. The tunnel seemed to go on for miles. The passage’s walls were decorated with the same patterns as the fireplace, the light from the lantern reflecting off gems inlaid in the eyes of strange beasts or from the centres of flowers.
Sherbet barked from the darkness ahead of them. The dog appeared, running in terror. He hid behind Archie’s ankles, staring back at the shadows.
‘What
’s the matter, boy?’ said Archie. He moved forward slowly, holding the lantern up high. An enormous face stared out at him from the blackness. All three children jumped back in fright, ready to run, but the face didn’t move. It was carved from the rock, its features frozen into a forbidding expression. It filled the tunnel from floor to ceiling, creating a dead end. Cold eyes glared at the intruders.
‘It’s Gregor McBudge,’ said Archie, recognising the face from the portrait room. ‘He’s my ancestor. He’s supposed to have helped a dragon in the forest.’
‘He doesn’t look very friendly,’ said Billy. A deep, unearthly voice, like the sound of wind whipping through sand, echoed from the face in answer.
‘ONLY THOSE WHO REMEMBER MAY PASS,’ it said. They trembled at the noise.
‘He doesn’t sound very friendly either!’ Billy squeaked.
‘Remember?’ said Archie, quaking. ‘Remember what?’
‘What’s left in the tool kit?’ said Fliss. Archie opened the box. There was the hammer and the strange message still left unused. The hammer didn’t feel right – he wasn’t going to try and smash his ancestor in the face. He held the lantern over the paper.
MEMENTO MISERICORDIAE.
REMEMBER MERCY.
‘We remember!’ Archie yelled at the face. ‘We remember mercy!’ The face was silent.
‘It’s not working,’ said Fliss. ‘The message isn’t getting through.’
‘It’s not a message,’ Archie realised. ‘It’s a password.’ He cleared his throat and said, ‘Memento misericordiae.’
There was a clank from behind the face, followed by a grinding sound. The face split into two at the mouth, the two halves sliding slowly into the rock in opposite directions so that the mouth opened wide. A golden, welcome glow poured into the tunnel from between the teeth, dazzling them after they had been in the dark for so long. Archie shielded his eyes with his hand and stepped into the mouth.
The Chocolate Factory Ghost Page 8