Mountwood School for Ghosts

by Toby Ibbotson

  ‘I would suggest Kylie,’ said Goneril. ‘She is flighty, I admit. But we are talking of a building site, and we must assume that most of the employees will be men. And men are rather her speciality.’

  ‘True,’ agreed Drusilla. ‘A temptress is indispensable, I would say.’

  ‘And also the Phantom Welder,’ Goneril went on. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, when the other two looked doubtful, ‘He has not been the most exceptional of students, but if anyone knows his way around a construction site, it is he. If he is on familiar ground it might inspire him. And he has one indubitable strength, and that is in the telekinesis department.’

  The other two nodded at this. Not all ghosts can affect the material world, moving objects around or making them levitate. Some of them can do this, many can’t. The Phantom Welder was no poltergeist, but he had had a good pair of hands when he was alive and had kept a strong contact with things physical even after passing over.

  These were the easy choices. A long and enjoyable argument followed.

  Fredegonda suggested the Legless Anglo-Saxon Warrior, on the grounds that he was crude and violent. But he had absolutely no control over his few remaining body parts, in Goneril’s opinion, and what is more he was a martyr to stage fright.

  Finally they settled on the Druid, who they felt deserved recognition for his sterling efforts, and the Shortener, whose materialization skills would be a valuable asset to the team.

  ‘That seems to be it, ladies,’ said Fredegonda. ‘It has been a long session. I thought maybe one more team member of the grimmer variety might be useful, but I think we can be satisfied.’

  The bus was booked. It would depart in the late evening, to arrive at Markham Street at midnight.

  There was great excitement among the ghosts who had been chosen. They decided to call themselves Team Spectre, and although they were very modest when talking to the other ghosts, they couldn’t help feeling that they were part of an elite, that they were set apart.

  A final assembly had been called. The Great Hagges, sitting straight-backed and formal on their chairs, were going to address them and give them some last words of advice before seeing them off on the bus. The ghosts who had not been included were terribly disappointed, of course, but they cheered and clapped when Team Spectre glided into the dimly lit chamber, looking very serious and determined. The rest of the phantoms swirled about them, wishing them well and raising the occasional ‘Hurrah!’ or ‘Go, team, go!’ All except Cousin Vera.

  She stood limply in the middle of the hall by the well-mouth. Her head hung limply, her dress hung limply, her hands hung limply at her sides. She was limp. The fat housemaster was in the middle of a pompous little speech telling Ron Peabody to ‘keep a firm hand on the wheel’ and ‘stay the course’, when Iphigenia caught sight of Vera. She excused herself, leaving Ron to say, ‘Yes, of course,’ and, ‘Jolly good,’ and glided over to her.

  ‘Vera, Vera darling. We will be back in no time. I’m sure you will be fine.’

  ‘I wanted to come with you,’ gulped Vera, ‘but there was no point in my even applying. I’m bottom of the class. My wail is not. A banshee without a wail is like a . . . like a . . .’ She had been about to say ‘a bird that cannot fly’, but then she remembered that there are birds that can’t fly, so she burst into tears instead.

  Iphigenia floated over to the Great Hagges, who were waiting for the tumult and chatter to die down before saying their final words.

  ‘Excuse me, but could I have a word?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Peabody.’ Fredegonda was beginning to find Mrs Peabody just a tiny bit too much. Not that she wasn’t a good student, but it would be no bad thing to have her out of the castle for a while. ‘What do you wish to say?’

  Fredegonda’s voice, as always, caught the attention of every wraith in the room. The Phantom Welder had once compared it unfavourably to the sound of a blunt hacksaw on three-quarter-inch cast-iron pipe. The crowd fell silent.

  ‘Could not Vera accompany us? She could see to Percy while I am at work.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ said Fredegonda, ‘but this is an enterprise requiring both skill and strength of purpose. I cannot honestly say that Vera has either.’

  Vera slumped in despair.

  ‘Aa divna ’boot that. Yer niver kna.’ A hoarse voice echoed from below. ‘Anyways, aa’m thinkin’ aa’ll gan along wi’yus.’

  Angus Crawe rose slowly from the depths. First his head appeared. His craggy freckled face and hollow cheeks were encircled by a straggly beard, sandy hair and side whiskers, and one could instantly see why he was a little hard to understand. Added to his rather strong accent was the fact that a Scottish claymore had at some point cloven both his upper and lower lips, so that he seemed to be wearing a permanent mad grin, showing his blackened stumps of teeth and bright red tongue.

  The rest of him emerged. He was wearing only a leather jerkin on the upper part of his body, displaying a scarred chest almost as hairy as his head. The lower part of him was wearing a pair of woollen long johns. They were not very clean. He had inherited them from his father, who had never washed them either.

  He floated above the dark mouth of the well and spoke directly to Vera. ‘Aa’ll see yer areet, petal. Nae worries.’

  Drusilla spoke up. ‘How nice to meet you properly at last, Mr Crawe. However, we have decided—’

  Angus interrupted her. ‘Divn’t be daft. Aa’m gannin’, and so’s the lassie.’ He pointed at Vera. ‘Just a tick, I’ll fetch up Doris.’

  He swooshed back into the well, re-emerging a moment later with a huge two-handled sword that was almost as long as he was. He whirled it around his head, and it whistled and hummed. Then he emitted a blood-curdling yell, the battle cry of the Crawes.

  As the echoes died away in the rafters above their heads, he said, ‘Haway then. Time t’di a bit’a damage.’

  At that moment the hooting of an ancient klaxon was heard from the courtyard. There was no more to be said. The Great Hagges had no time to deliver their carefully prepared speech; they bowed to the inevitable. Team Spectre, surrounded by a fluttering throng of phantoms, glided out to the bus. Last to board was Vera, accompanied by Angus Crawe.

  Twenty-seven

  The Phantom Welder

  The hour approached. Just before midnight Daniel and Charlotte sat on the kerb outside Daniel’s house, under a street lamp. They didn’t know how the ghosts would arrive, but they had decided to be there to welcome them anyway. They were nervous and excited.

  ‘I hope they come,’ said Charlotte.

  ‘They’ll come.’

  ‘You seem very sure.’

  ‘I am. It’s a funny thing about those Great Hagges. I mean, they are absolutely foul, and I bet they would have done something terrible to us if Percy’s mother hadn’t stopped them – they’re capable of anything – but I can’t imagine them breaking a promise.’

  ‘Now that you mention it, neither can I.’

  Just then the street lamp above their heads flickered and died. One by one all the lamps on the street went out. The temperature seemed to drop suddenly, and Charlotte shivered and pulled her jacket closer about her shoulders.

  In the grubby neon glow reflected from the city sky they saw an ancient bus coast silently round the corner at the end of Markham Street. It drew to a halt in front of them. It seemed to be completely empty, apart from the driver; and even he, in his peaked cap and uniform, was whitish blue and transparent. Slowly the bus filled with unearthly luminescence, and the various apparitions took shape and glided out of it. The first to greet them was Iphigenia, with a smiling Percy at her side.

  ‘Well, here we are, children. How nice to see you again.’

  Ronald stepped forward and stood to attention. With his pumping arteries and twitching muscle fibres he looked every bit the soldier.

  ‘Team Spectre reporting for duty. All present and correct.’

  ‘I think you’ve met everybody,’ said Iphigenia. ‘Except perha
ps Mr Crawe.’

  Angus came forward and winked. Both Daniel and Charlotte were impressed. He really did look as though he might frighten anyone, particularly when he smiled.

  They said, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ and, ‘How do you do.’

  The bus moved off up the street.

  ‘He’ll have to turn round,’ said Daniel. ‘This is a cul-de-sac.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ said the Phantom Welder. ‘He usually finds a way.’

  The bus disappeared into the gloom and was gone.

  ‘Now,’ said Ron Peabody, ‘I wonder if you could show us to our quarters. We need to set up camp and get ourselves organized before daylight. Is this the place?’ Ron pointed at Daniel’s front door. ‘Or that one?’

  ‘No, we waited outside my house because Percy has been here before and we thought it would be easiest to find us. And the Bosse-Lynches are next door.’

  ‘The who?’

  It was the Phantom Welder who spoke, and all his companions turned to him. He had spoken in a voice they had never heard him use before. His usual cheery expression had gone. He looked as though he had seen a ghost.

  ‘The Bosse-Lynches,’ said Daniel. ‘We haven’t mentioned you to them – they’re not the kind of people . . .’ Daniel broke off.

  The Phantom Welder had drifted away, hardly visible at all.

  ‘What’s got into him?’ said Ron. ‘Perhaps, since we’re all a bit tired and wound up . . .’

  ‘Your house is further down, not far,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s empty, and we think you will be comfy there.’

  ‘Right, off we go then.’

  Daniel and Charlotte walked down to number twelve, with Percy gliding happily beside them and burbling about how he was teaching Samson to roll over and play dead.

  ‘Here we are.’ Number twelve looked dark and abandoned, in the way that houses do almost as soon as their owners have left.

  ‘A very suitable edifice, to be sure,’ said the Shortener. ‘Let us enter. After you, miss.’ He took off his hat and made a little bow to Kylie, who was close by. All the ghosts said good evening, and vanished. The front door of number twelve seemed to waver a bit, and then all was silent.

  One by one the street lamps came back on.

  If Daniel and Charlotte had thought about it, they would have realized that ghosts, just like cats or human beings for that matter, need their own space. In an enormous country house with a hundred rooms you might find two or even three ghosts, but mostly the rule is one ghost per churchyard, or well, or whatever. It was asking a lot of no fewer than nine to squeeze into one terraced house.

  But Team Spectre was prepared to rough it. You can’t expect to enjoy the comforts of home when you are out on a special mission. If you can’t take a bit of hard lying, then you shouldn’t be there in the first place. Soldiers have to share their bivouacs with people who pick their noses or have smelly feet; that’s just part of the job. Sailors have to bunk in cramped cabins with mess-mates who are learning to play ‘Greensleeves’ on the mandolin or say ‘down the hatch’ every time they drink something. So the ghosts of Team Spectre were prepared to make the best of camping out in number twelve. But it can’t be denied that it was rather a tight fit.

  Already on that first night there were small irritations. The Peabodys decided to haunt the main bedroom, and there were no objections to that. The others spread themselves around the house as best they could. But the Shortener, who thought he might make himself comfy in the cupboard under the stairs, found that Angus Crawe was already in there, stroking Doris and humming quietly to himself.

  Kylie and Vera both tried to get into the bath at the same time, and a lot of ‘No, you take it . . . No, you found it first’ ended up with both of them rather rattled and neither of them in the bath.

  As for the Druid, he was a wanderer by nature. They had solved the problem at Mountwood, which was very large, by giving him the whole loft space under the roof to wander about in, on condition that he didn’t come down until called. But in Markham Street all he could do was wander up and down the stairs, chanting ‘The Mabinogion’ in lilting Welsh. That is bad enough if you speak Welsh, and close to torture if you can’t. There are no phantom earplugs to stick into phantom ears.

  One of the ghosts wasn’t there at all. Not just invisible, but actually not there. The Phantom Welder had followed the rest of the team into the house, but while the others were floating around trying to get themselves settled, he simply melted into the wall and was gone.

  After an hour or two, when the ghosts had got their sleeping arrangements sorted out, at least for the time being, it was time for a meeting to plan their strategy. They gathered in the empty living room, with its bare floorboards and marks on the wall where the Bennetts’ pictures had hung.

  ‘No time for anything tonight, I think,’ said the Shortener.

  ‘A bit of a recce, maybe, if anyone feels up to it,’ said Ron Peabody. ‘Just to get the lie of the land.’

  ‘It will be night work for the most part, I suppose,’ said Iphigenia, ‘but perhaps some unseen activity during the day to soften them up. I thought that the Phantom Welder . . . Where is he, by the way?’

  At that moment an ear-splitting scream was heard. The ghosts vanished, and rushed to the window in time to see Mr Bosse-Lynch run down his front path, stark naked, screaming and soaking wet. Lights went on and windows were opened all along Markham Street.

  The Phantom Welder knew perfectly well that they were not there to use their expert haunting skills on the innocent inhabitants of Markham Street. They were there to help them, not go wandering through the walls frightening people. But there was something he just had to do.

  When he had heard the name of the people who lived at number five he had got a terrible shock, and bitter memories of the past came flooding back. Bosse-Lynch. Such an unusual name. There couldn’t be any doubt about it. It was the Bosse-Lynch family that had done for him; ruined his life, and in the end killed him.

  He had never told the others much about his past, he wasn’t that sort of person, but he remembered it well enough. He had been a proud workman, one of the best welders in Crewe, and there were a lot of good men working there in the heyday of the great steam engines. But then came the Great Depression; the Bosse-Lynches, who owned the factory where he worked, shrugged their shoulders and sold up. Supply and demand, they said. The work was gone, and before you knew where you were you were walking the streets, rummaging through garbage bins, living on scraps and leftovers. Until one day, when he found an old newspaper with some cold greasy chips still wrapped in it. A feast to him. He didn’t know that it was full of rat poison; how could he? But Mr Bosse-Lynch had known, because he had put it there. The garbage bin was in the alley behind his posh house.

  So now, although he knew he was letting the team down, the Phantom Welder drifted from house to house until he came to number five.

  Although it was almost one o’clock in the morning, Mr Bosse-Lynch was in the bath. He had stayed up late to watch a film on television, but he still wasn’t feeling very tired, so he had poured himself a large whisky and taken it into the bathroom with him, and locked the door. He would have time to pour it down the sink if Mrs Bosse-Lynch woke up.

  He lay with his eyes closed, peacefully soaking in the tub, with his glass on a stool within easy reach. Without warning something cold splashed into his face and ran down his chin. He tasted whisky. He sat up and wiped his stinging eyes. He was sure he had locked the door. She couldn’t have got in.

  He saw his empty glass float through the air and hurl itself against the bathroom mirror, where it splintered into a thousand shards. Then the room was plunged into darkness. He saw an apparition standing by the bath looking down at him, wearing a boiler suit and carrying a welding torch. The apparition adjusted the torch until he had got the perfect mixture – the flame was sharp, dazzling blue-white, and lethal. The apparition bent down slightly, and the flame disappeared below the side of the
bath.

  Then the apparition spoke. ‘I’ll have this water boiling in about three minutes, I reckon, Mr Bosse-Lynch.’

  That was when Mr Bosse-Lynch screamed.

  The Phantom Welder got a proper telling-off when he returned to number twelve. The other ghosts were waiting for him in the living room.

  ‘We agreed not to terrify our hosts,’ said Iphigenia. ‘What can you have been thinking?’

  ‘I wasn’t doing much thinking,’ replied the Phantom Welder, who was feeling very guilty now that he had calmed down a bit.

  He explained about his past. The others couldn’t help but feel that he should be forgiven for his rash actions, even though when they had thought about it, and counted back on their fingers, they realized that the Bosse-Lynch whom he had terrified must be the son of the one who had killed him.

  ‘Well, they’re all the same breed, them capitalists,’ he said. ‘But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get started right away, as soon as they start work in the morning.’

  ‘But surely you’re too tired for that now. You can’t stay up all day,’ said Kylie.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve worked double shifts before.’

  There were no more secrets on Markham Street. After the Phantom Welder’s little adventure the whole thing had to be explained to everybody.

  Mrs Wilder and Daniel and Charlotte’s parents already knew of the plan, but it came as quite a surprise to Mr Jaros and Karin Hughes and Peter and Jim. Jim Dawson, who was the kindest person you could ever hope to meet, was the one who found it hardest to accept.

  ‘I simply do not believe in ghosts,’ he said, when Charlotte tried to explain what was going on. ‘I’m a scientist, I’m not allowed to. It’s against the rules.’

  ‘Have you talked to Mr Bosse-Lynch?’

  ‘Yes, I have. I think he has a bad conscience about something in his family’s past, and he has been suppressing it; he must have had some kind of mental breakdown.’

  ‘Would you like to meet them?’

  Jim laughed. ‘I certainly would, Charlotte. Bring them round any time.’