The Ministry of Ghosts

by Alex Shearer

‘You,’ he said. ‘And you. And you. And you.’ Then Mr Beeston said, ‘Ahhhh!’ several times over. Then he fled. He crashed from the room and down the stairs and out of the front door and along Bric-a-Brac Street. He ran and ran for all he was worth until he came to the bus terminus, where, fortunately for him, a bus was waiting.

  He banged on the door. The driver, who was on his break, beckoned him to wait. But Mr Beeston just banged again until the door was opened and he could get on board.

  ‘You all right?’ the bus driver said, a little worried about being alone in the bus with such a passenger. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Mr Beeston reached out and gripped the driver by his arm. ‘You mean you’ve seen them too?’ he said.

  The driver looked very uneasy.

  ‘Plenty of seats at the back,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go and sit down?’

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Mr Beeston said. ‘Soon as we can. Before they come for me!’

  ‘Oh?’ the driver said. ‘They’re coming for you, are they? Well, don’t you worry. I’ll have a word with them if they do, and I’ll tell them to leave you alone.’

  ‘Would you?’ Mr Beeston said. ‘I’d be so grateful. One of them exploded, you know. All over me. And then the cat sat on my head.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘And Copperstone threatened to get inside the inkwell.’

  ‘Well, no wonder you’re upset,’ the driver said – for he was used to humouring difficult passengers, especially late at night, when the pubs closed, though not so much during the day.

  ‘I’m never going back there again,’ Mr Beeston said. ‘It’s a nightmare!’

  ‘No, if I were you, sir, I’d try to forget about the whole thing. I’d just bury it, if I were you.’

  ‘Bury it,’ Mr Beeston said. ‘Yes. Bury it all. Yes. You might be right.’

  25

  The End is Nigh

  Bury it all. Yes. Maybe that was right. Just move on to other matters, forget what had happened. Let all the weird and wonderful and inexplicable things in the world simply take care of themselves. And get on with your life, and enjoy what you could.

  Tim Legge and Thruppence Coddley were in the churchyard at St Bindle’s, and they had brought flowers with them. They had bought them themselves, with their ghost hunting earnings.

  They carefully sought out four of the graves, and tenderly laid flowers by each of them. The names on the graves were Copperstone, Scant, Rolly and Gibbings. It had been many a year since anyone had come with flowers or had mourned these passings. Many a long, long year.

  As they lay the flowers by the gravesides, the Reverend Reggie Mangle happened along, and intrigued by the sight of children placing flowers on ancient tombstones, he stopped to chat, and to ask if they were in any way related to the long deceased and the dear departed. For it seemed to him that these people had left the world a good while ago, long before these children had been born.

  ‘No, we’re not related,’ Thruppence said. ‘We’re more along the lines of … how would you describe it, Tim?’

  ‘Friends,’ Tim said. ‘That’s all. We’re just friends.’

  Far from satisfying the Reverend Mangle’s curiosity, these replies but intensified it. Intrigued, he followed up with further questions, until finally the children told him all. In many ways they were glad to, for it was a weight off their shoulders. To have to carry such knowledge around and not to be able to share it was quite a burden.

  ‘Ghosts!’ the Reverend Mangle said, on first hearing. ‘Don’t you worry. Bell, book and candle, and a splash of holy water! I’ll soon have them shifted. I’ll soon get rid of them for you. I’ve dealt with things like this before. It reminds me of my wrestling days, when I had a bout with The Phantom and he tried to chew my ear off –’

  ‘No, no, please,’ Thruppence said. ‘We don’t want to get rid of them. They’re the nicest, kindest ghosts you could ever imagine. We just want them to be left in peace. They seem to like each other. They’re happy together. We just want to make sure that they’re never disturbed.’

  ‘I see. Yes. So it’s those four round at the Ministry, is it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tim said. ‘Plus the cat.’

  ‘You know, I thought there was something strange about that set-up,’ the Reverend Mangle said. ‘There was something odd about the place. And a chill in the rooms … ’

  ‘Well, as long as Mr Beeston doesn’t come back, they ought to be left in peace. So you won’t hurt them, will you, Mr Mangle?’

  ‘My dear girl,’ the fearsome Reverend said. ‘I wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  Nor would he. Not since the day he had seen the light.

  Mr Beeston never did come back. He returned to his office and summoned Mrs Peeve to him.

  ‘Just file all these papers, if you would, Mrs Peeve,’ he said.

  ‘The Ministry of Ghosts, sir? But I thought you intended to close the place with immediate effect.’

  ‘I’ve, eh … changed my mind. More important matters to deal with. Just file it all away and forget about it.’

  ‘But, sir, I –’

  ‘That’ll be all, thank you, Mrs Peeve. That’ll be all.’

  And so it was. And so it may have remained forever. The ghosts continued to haunt the Ministry in which they had once been employees, and which place they could not bear to leave, any more than they could bear to be parted from those they had loved – even if that affection had never been fully declared.

  Every weekday morning they were at their desks. And Mrs Scant continued to promise tea – tea that never did nor ever would arrive. And Mr Copperstone took forty winks. And Miss Rolly and Mr Gibbings sat together during their lunch hours (of uneaten and non-existent lunch) and talked much of the future, and of women’s rights, and of greater equalities, and of the brave new world that would one day come into being, even if not in their lifetimes.

  In the evenings, all would seem to doze, and to fall into slumber, and the Ministry was so quiet, so silent then, it seemed the whole building was empty. It was so quiet you could have heard a distant tap drip, a spoon stir, a gnat sneeze.

  But every now and again, real live visitors would appear. They had their own keys and they let themselves in. Tim Legge and Thruppence Coddley, growing up now, but still coming to see their old friends the ghosts.

  For a while their visits tailed off. Teenage years. Better things to do than to visit old fogeys and such.

  But, as more years passed, the visits resumed. It was always nice to sit and to chat with the four ghosts, to hear first-hand accounts of the past.

  One day, Thruppence Coddley and Tim Legge had news of their own. They were grown up now, and they had known each other so long, and had grown so fond of each other, that they felt they wanted to be together all the time. Just like Mr Copperstone and Mrs Scant. And Miss Rolly and Mr Gibbings.

  So guess what? Guess what!

  Yes. That’s right. That’s right.

  And, in time again, Tim took over his father’s business, and Good Coddley’s Fish Shop became Thruppence’s affair. She worked hard and she worked long hours. But she always smelled of fresh strawberries somehow. It was a wonder how she managed that.

  Then a baby came along. And then another. The first called Jeremiah Jarvis Arnold Peregrine, after Mr Copperstone and Mr Gibbings; the second called Olive Gladys Virginia Petunia, after Mrs Scant and fiery Miss Rolly.

  And that was how things could have gone on. But things never do go on the same forever. There is always change. It waits and it lurks around every corner, and it takes you by surprise.

  Scaffolding appeared one morning, outside of the Ministry of Ghosts. The brass plate was dull and tarnished again now and had been so for years. Thruppence had long since stopped polishing it. She felt anonymity was best. She and Tim were walking past. Young Jeremiah was toddling along beside her. Tim was pushing Olive in her pram.

  ‘Tim. Whatever’s going on?’

  They used
their key and let themselves inside. The ghosts greeted them and were pleased to see the baby and young Jeremiah, and yet they looked worried too.

  ‘What’s going on, Mr Copperstone? What’s the scaffolding for?’

  ‘It seems that the building has been sold,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘It’s twenty years or more since that awful Beeston was here. He must have retired and someone new has taken over. They have realised that no one works here and nothing happens here any more, and they have sold the place. There’s a letter … ’

  The letter drifted over to Thruppence on a ghostly breeze. She read it and passed it to Tim.

  ‘New offices? A keep-fit centre? A sauna? A coffee shop?’

  ‘Yes. It’s going to be so noisy, isn’t it? I don’t know what we’re going to do. I don’t know where we’re going to go.’

  ‘I do,’ Thruppence said. ‘We do, don’t we, Tim?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Tim said. ‘There’s only one place you can go.’

  ‘You mean back to the cemetery, I suppose,’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘To move on to the afterlife. And maybe never to see each other again, ever, for all … all eternity.’

  Mrs Scant stifled a ghostly sob.

  ‘No,’ Thruppence said, indignantly. ‘Of course we don’t mean that. You must come and live with us, naturally. You shall come and live with us.’

  ‘Oh can we?’ Mr Copperstone said. ‘Can we really? Only, won’t we frighten your children?’

  But the children were so used to ghosts they weren’t frightened at all. In fact, they were rather fond of them.

  So that is what happened. There they were and there they remained, and there they are to this day. They live with Thruppence and Tim.

  They have their own little room, with a television and a remote control that they can use by levitation, and in the winter the ghosts all hibernate up in the loft.

  Sometimes, if both Tim and Thruppence have to be out, the ghosts keep an eye on the children. It’s only ever for a few minutes. And they can usually levitate things out of danger should any trouble arise. They also house-sit for the family, when they go on holiday, and frighten off any burglars.

  As for the Reverend Mangle, he was moved on to another parish. Before he left, he came round to say goodbye. In some ways he felt that the four ghosts should also move on, and that it was his job to see they did.

  But then, as Thruppence pointed out to him, if all people want to do is to be together, and they do no one else any harm, then why not let them? Why break the spell? Why not just live and let live? You surely wouldn’t begrudge people a little happiness, would you? When it took them so long to find it?

  The Reverend Mangle thought long and hard about that one, very long, and very hard.

  Then, no, he said. He wasn’t one to begrudge anybody a little happiness at all. Because that was what life was for – life and all eternity.

  Live and let live, he agreed. Live and let live.

  Then he said goodbye to Thruppence and to Tim and to their children, and to Mr Copperstone and to Mrs Scant and to Miss Rolly and to Mr Gibbings and to Boddington, the pale shadow of a cat.

  And then he was gone, away down the street. Vanished.

  Like a ghost.

  Alex Shearer

  Alex Shearer was born in Wick, in the far North of Scotland. He has written several TV series, stage plays, radio plays and comedy scripts. Moving into writing for children, his novels Bootleg and The Greatest Store in the World were adapted for television by the BBC, and his 2003 novel The Speed of the Dark was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. He has previously published The Cloud Hunters and Sky Run with Hot Key Books, and he lives in Somerset and is married with two grown-up children.

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hot Key Books

  Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT

  Copyright © Alex Shearer 2014

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4714-0389-7

  This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher

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  Hot Key Books is part of the Bonnier Publishing Group

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