by Eva Ibbotson
Something had happened to the river. In a spot just below the bridge, the calm surface of the water was broken by sudden, rearing waves, as if from nowhere, a whirlpool had sprung up. But no ordinary whirlpool because now it rose up out of the river, higher and higher....
The phantom horses reared and whinnied. The Shuk whimpered in terror.
Still the whirlpool went on rising. Then, with a noise like a huge giant slapping someone, a couple of tons of water spilt through the iron rails on to the bridge where they stood.
When Rick could see again, he found that he was gazing at a most extraordinary-looking man. He had a long, grizzled beard in which a couple of dead fish hung limply; slimy, green weeds were tangled in his waist-length, grey hair, and in his hand he carried a thing like a gigantic, rusty fork.
Cautiously, Rick put out an arm. As he’d half expected, it went right through the old creature and hit the railings of the bridge.
‘You’re a ghost too, then?’ he said.
The old man nodded. ‘River spirit. Very old family, Walter’s the name. Walter the Wet.’ He pulled a dead fish out of his beard, made a face, and threw it on the ground. ‘Stinking thing,’ he grumbled.
‘Are you looking for anyone?’ said Rick cautiously.
‘Heard some people were passing. Something about a ghost sanctuary.’ He looked sharply at Rick from under his shaggy eyebrows. ‘A Hag or two maybe; a Gliding Kilt... that kind of thing.’
‘Well, they are here,’ admitted Rick.
But by now the ghosts could stand it no longer. One by one they appeared and clustered round Walter the Wet who was sneezing a water beetle out of his nose.
‘See that,’ he said picking it up. ‘Dead. Poisoned. Like the fish. Look at my ectoplasm.’
He stretched out a bare arm and flexed his muscles which looked pale and runny like semolina made with too much milk.
‘Bad,’ said Aunt Hortensia. Not to be outdone, she craned forward to show him her stump and he agreed that that was bad too.
‘Three thousand years I’ve lived in that river,’ said Walter the Wet. ‘I remember the Romans going up to build Hadrian’s Wall. Hundreds of them I’ve lured to death in that river like a proper river spirit should. I’ve drowned Picts and Scots. I’ve sent Border Raiders mad with terror, rearin’ out of the water on a dark night with my wild hair flying. Loathsome I’ve been, an’ pulpy; there wasn’t nothing pulpier than me north of the Thames. But now I tell you, this river’s finished.’
‘What exactly’s wrong with it, Mr Wet Walter?’ asked Humphrey.
‘What’s wrong with it? You name it and that’s what’s wrong with it. Everything. Sewage. Waste muck from the cement factory. Oil from the ships. Chemicals from the fertilizer plant. Here, look at my tonsils.’
He opened his mouth, letting out a stream of dirty brown water and they all took turns peering into his throat
‘Badly swollen,’ said the Hag, shaking her head.
‘I think there’s a bit of glass sticking to the left one,’ said Winifred, looking worried.
‘Glass. Rusty nails. Boots. I tell you, the bottom of that river is like a rubbish dump. And dead fish – why I’ve gone to sleep of an evening on the river bed and woken up with a good ton of dead fish on top of me in the morning, that’s as fast as they come down. Disgusting it is. Do you know what I do now when a sailor falls overboard from one of them tankers there?’
Rick and the ghosts shook their heads.
‘I just go back to sleep. No need to lure ’im to his death, I say to myself. One gulp of that river, water and ’e’ll die of poisoning. That’s if his throat isn’t cut by an old tin can. And sure enough, by morning there he is with the fish, lying among the old bedsteads and as dead as a dodo.’
Rick was very worried by all this. In a way it was the whales and the penguins all over again. ‘The poor fish,’ he said.
‘What about me?’ said Walter the Wet. ‘It’s me I’m thinking about. I tell you, I can’t go on in that river another minute. They’re starting to build a tunnel under it now, to take a road through. Blinking drills rattling in your ear hole the whole night. No, it’s no good, you’ve got to take me along to this sanctuary place.’
Everybody looked at everybody else. ‘Won’t you dry out on the journey?’ asked Rick.
‘I’ll take a dip when I can,’ said Walter. He gave a crafty look at Winifred’s bowl and Winifred stepped back a pace. She was the kindest of girls but her bowl – if she ever caught up with it – was for washing out her blood stains.
Rick was frowning. If Walter the Wet was to come it meant finding the ghosts a place with a river or a lake. It looked as though this sanctuary was going to have to be rather big. He hoped the Prime Minister was a nice and understanding man. On the other hand, it wasn’t much of a sanctuary if it was going to leave people out.
‘I’m afraid there won’t be room in the coach.’ said Aunt Hortensia. ‘Even if my stump could stand the damp. Which I very much doubt.’
Walter shook a puddle from his back and said: ‘Going south, aren’t you, to London? River flows south. So get on a boat. A coal barge, maybe.’
‘A boat!’ cried Humphrey the Horrible. ‘Oh, I’d like a boat.’
‘You mean drive the coach on to the boat?’ enquired Aunt Hortensia.
‘Could be. There’s a barge goes through here about twelve o’clock carrying coal down to Porchester. The men moor by that landing stage and go for a beer to that pub on the hill. The boy can get aboard then and hide and of course there’s no trouble about us.’
Walter the Wet was right. Just after twelve a long, flat coal barge came chugging up the river and stopped on the quay below the bridge. Two men were working her; a little, thin whiskery man and a big broad-shouldered man who got George very excited because he had a picture of a skull and crossbones tattooed on his forearm.
‘It’s me,’ George kept on screaming. ‘It’s me; it’s a picture of me!’
When the barge was safely alongside and the men had made their way to the Sailor’s Arms up the hill, Rick jumped aboard, found an old sack, dug a hole in the mountain of coal and wriggled his way inside. He was just blackening his hair with coal dust so that it wouldn’t show up when a voice beside him said: ‘Please, can I come in the coal with you?’ – and with a sigh of happiness, Humphrey the Horrible settled in beside Rick.
They all enjoyed the river journey very much. It had stopped raining, a soft wind blew across the water and the city was soon left behind. Travelling by boat is very peaceful. Cows stand and look at you, little boys wave from the bridges. Old ladies bicycle along the tow paths. Gradually Rick, though he wasn’t exactly comfortable with only his eyes above the level of the coal, stopped worrying about what he would say to the Prime Minister if he ever got to him, and just looked out at the willow trees and the ducks and wondered how people could be so idiotic as to poison such a nice river with sewage and chemicals and every sort of muck.
The barge stopped for the night at Lonsdale and as soon as the men had moored and gone down to the cabin for a brew-up, Rick scrambled out. There was no point in staying on the boat any longer because the river changed course and flowed westwards after that, whereas they had to go south across Saughbeck Moors.
It was too late to hope for cars or buses – there was nothing for it except to set out on foot. They walked for one hour, then two.... It was a moonless night with a cold, sighing wind and Rick, who’d had nothing but a few sandwiches all day, grew very tired and very hungry. Beside him, Walter the Wet, dripping steadily, was telling him about all the sailors he’d drowned. By the time he got to number twenty-three, a Viking raider called Knut the Knout who’d fallen off his long ship right into Walter’s arms, Rick’s head had begun to nod. He was almost sleepwalking.
It was the kind Hag, peering out of the door of the coach above his head, who saw how tired he was and called a halt. They found a little wood in a hollow which gave some shelter from the wind. A stream ran through
it, with ferns and mosses growing on its banks and a very squidgy toadstool called a Stinkhorn which made the Hag quite jealous because it smelled worse than she did.
There were plenty of sticks so Rick made a fire, taking great care not to damage the trees and then the ghosts helped him to make a bed out of a pile of leaves and he put his anorak on top of that. Of course as soon as he lay down, Humphrey the Horrible came to curl up beside him and then the Shuk lay across both their feet. Aunt Hortensia stretched out on the back seat of the coach, the Hag and the Gliding Kilt, tucking George and Winifred between them, found a mossy hollow, and Walter the Wet went to lie in the stream. It only wet half of him because it was so shallow but anything, he said, was better than being dry.
Rick wasn’t sure what woke him up – he only knew it wasn’t the ordinary sort of waking because one has slept enough. The first thing he noticed was an odd smell. Not the Stinkhorn, not the smell of burnt prunes which drifted from the Hag as she slept. No, this was a strange musty smell. Rats...? Mice...?
And then he saw the eyes. Weird, mad, red, greedy eyes. One pair to his left by a great beech tree, one pair straight in front of him not three yards away... Five pairs of eyes altogether, in a circle, surrounding him.
Cold with terror, Rick peered into the darkness. Were those fangs? Wings? Unspeakable folds of skin...?
And then suddenly he had it. Vampire bats. They were completely surrounded by blood-sucking vampire bats!
Seven
It was a frightful moment. Everything he’d ever read about vampires flashed through his mind: how they sucked blood from people’s throats while they slept; how they robbed graves; how they lived in dark and ghastly places; how they terrorized everyone who saw them. He must have screamed without realizing it because the mad red eyes came closer. Gloating. Waiting.
And now, beside him, Humphrey stirred and sat up, rubbing the ball and chain on his ankle. Then, before Rick could stop him, he had darted forward – right at the largest of the terrible, staring eyes.
‘Cousin Susie!’ he shouted. ‘It’s me! Humphrey! Humphrey the Horrible!’
The red eyes closed, opened again, and the largest of the vampire bats came forward into the light of the dying fire. ‘Good heavens! If it isn’t Mabel’s boy,’ said Sucking Susie. She peered forward, slicing through his ectoplasm with her ghastly fangs. ‘Well, you’re not getting any horribler are you, my poor child.’
‘I will later,’ said Humphrey, sighing. He couldn’t help wishing that everybody didn’t make the same remark. ‘This is Rick, Cousin Susie. He’s a human and he’s going to find us all a place to live.’
‘A human, eh?’ said Sucking Susie. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
She edged closer. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’
Rick tried to look pleased too, but he couldn’t make it. Haunting was one thing, blood-sucking was another, and as Susie came towards him it was all he could do not to move away.
‘Actually, this Sanctuary’s what I’ve come about,’ Susie went on. ‘I heard something from a little bat that came through yesterday.’
‘Susie!’ There was a shriek from the mossy hollow and the Hag swooped over, giving off stale sheep’s brains, rotten eggs and dead earthworm all at once in her excitement, while she and the vampire bat started hugging each other in a tangle of black wings, noses, warts and claws.
‘Well, fancy,’ said the Hag again and again. ‘What a pleasure, what a pleasure. How are the boys?’
The Vampire turned. ‘Sozzler! Gulper! Syphoner! Fred! – Come here,’ she called, and four pairs of eyes flickered and came forward into the firelight.
‘Fine boys,’ said the Hag. ‘But thin.’
‘Thin, Mabel? Not just thin. Skinny. Starving.’ She prodded the one nearest to her in the stomach. ‘ “Gulper,” I christened him,’ she said bitterly. ‘That child hasn’t had a decent gulp of fresh, warm blood since the day he was born.’
‘I’ve heard things were bad for you,’ said the Gliding Kilt, coming over to join them. He could never go on sleeping when the Hag had left his side.
‘Bad! They’re terrible. Unbelievable. You know our valley – a nice bit of farmland it used to be. Lots of plump farmer’s wives, healthy young cow-hands, clean-living shepherds. Villages with butchers and bakers who slept with open windows – oh, there was lots to eat! A nip or two every other night and we vampires were as happy as you could wish.’
‘You mean you used to fly in and suck people’s blood at night? You really did?’ said Rick, backing away.
‘Certainly we did,’ said Susie, looking crossly at Rick. ‘What do you expect blood-sucking vampires to do except suck blood? The people never knew. A vampire that knows its job doesn’t leave a hole bigger than a mosquito.’
‘Well I think it’s disgusting all the same.’
‘Oh you do, do you? And what’s that you’re wearing on your feet, pray?’ said Susie, her red eyes glinting.
‘Shoes,’ said Rick surprised.
‘Exactly. Made of leather, no doubt. From a cow, I dare say. And I suppose you went up to the cow first and said: “Excuse me, Madam, but would you mind being murdered so that I can have a pair of shoes?”’
Rick flushed. He hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘And what did you have for breakfast before you set out. Bacon, I suppose. From a pig.’
Rick nodded.
‘Precisely,’ said Susie. ‘What’s more you didn’t have the good manners just to go up to that pig and take only a little bite out of him so that he could go on living? Oh no. You had to kill the whole animal and slice it up. Really, human beings make me tired.’
‘Rick’s my friend,’ said Humphrey the Horrible, laying his skeletal fingers lovingly on Rick’s arm.
Rick took no notice. What Susie had said had shaken him. But could you not wear shoes, or not eat meat? Some people were vegetarians, he knew, and maybe one could just wear gym shoes. But no roast chicken, no hot dogs, or pork chops...
‘Well, what happened in the valley? Why did things go wrong?’ asked the Hag.
‘Well, first people began to drift away; they wanted jobs in the towns. Better pay. Bingo. The cinema. More to do, they said. Every day you’d see some family pack up and leave. Lovely, plump dinners just piling into their cars and leaving.’ She sighed. ‘But that isn’t all. Do you know what they’ve done now?’
They all shook their heads.
‘Flooded the whole place. Built a huge concrete dam at each end. Made a reservoir. To provide water, they say, for the factories down south.’
‘Dear me,’ said the Hag. ‘Dear me, dear me, dear me.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Susie. ‘There isn’t a warm-blooded human left in the place. Just water and a few wretched fish.’
‘You couldn’t feed on the fish, I suppose?’
‘We tried, Mabel, we tried,’ said the vampire sadly. ‘But of course fish are cold-blooded. We got the most ghastly chills on our stomachs. My poor old Uncle Slurper – do you remember him? – died after sucking the blood of some fiendishly cold trout last January. Gave him pneumonia. I tell you, Mabel, we can’t go on.’
‘But what would you live on, Susie, if you came with us? There won’t be any people in this sanctuary.’
‘Cows would do. Surely you could keep a cow or two?’
‘You can’t go sucking the blood of—’ began Rick.
‘Oh we can’t, can’t we?’ said Susie, turning on him. ‘And if you were a cow, which would you rather? A nip or two at night while you were asleep or people pounding and squeezing your udders and taking all the milk you wanted for your calf?’
Rick sighed. It seemed to be very difficult to argue with Sucking Susie.
‘It isn’t just me,’ she said and her voice changed and became soft and motherly. ‘The boys and I – we’d get along somehow. It’s ... well, look.’
She fumbled in the loose skin on her stomach and from what seemed to be a black pouch of skin she took something out
and held it up to them.
‘Oh!’ said the Hag, and the whiskers on her long nose quivered with emotion.
It was a tiny baby vampire bat. Its little face was hardly bigger than Rick’s thumbnail, its wings were so frail and thin you could see the firelight through them and as it felt the cold night air the little creature opened its pathetic mouth and made a pitiful, mewing sound.
‘It’s my Little One,’ said Susie. ‘My Baby Rose. And I don’t think,’ she went on, bursting into tears, ‘that she’s going to live.’
An hour later, the little wood was silent once again. The ghosts had gone back to sleep. Sozzler, Gulper, Syphoner and Fred were roosting in the branches of a great beech; their mother, snoring slightly, lay among its roots.
Only Rick found sleep impossible. He sat with his arms round his knees looking into the embers and thinking about the things that Sucking Susie had said.
After a while he gave a little nod and got to his feet. What he had decided to do was difficult, very difficult, but he was going to do it. He remembered reading about a man who trained fleas for a flea circus and who used to let the fleas feed from his arms. And there was a naturalist who had gone to study leeches in Africa and who used to stand in the river and let them suck his blood.
All the same, he was shivering a bit as he went over to the pile of beech leaves on which Sucking Susie lay asleep. It was all the things one heard; all those creepy stories....
Susie was lying on her back, her fangs stretched to the stars. Very carefully, very slowly, Rick felt for the pouch on her stomach. Yes, there was Rose, a soft, painfully thin bundle of skin and claws.... He began to lift her out, stopping dead every time Susie stirred. It took a long time but at last she was free and crouching in his hand. He could feel her heart beating very fast against his fingers. ‘Don’t be frightened, Rose,’ he whispered.
Back in the warmth of the fire he rolled up the sleeve of his jersey and placed her fangs against the blue veins in his wrist. ‘Come on, Rose,’ he urged her. ‘Come on.’